Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey: Fawn Weaver (2021) About this episode In 2016, Fawn Weaver became fixated on a New York Times article telling the little-known story of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel—yes, that Jack Daniel—how to make Tennessee whiskey.
After diving deeper into the story, Fawn ended up purchasing the farm in Lynchburg, Tennessee where Nearest had taught Jack how to distill; and she began meeting the descendants of both men. She eventually decided the best way to preserve Nearest’s legacy was with a bottle of the best Tennessee whiskey she could make.
With no background in distilling, she threw herself into the insular world of spirit-making, an industry mostly dominated by white men. In the eight years since Fawn first discovered his story, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey has become one of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the world, and one of the most awarded American whiskeys.
This episode of How I Built This was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Neva Grant. Research help from Claire Murashima, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.
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Transcript 13,497 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Guy Raz? Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,
0:46 Guy Raz? build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.
1:32 Guy Raz? Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back
2:16 Guy Raz? on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,
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3:45 Guy Raz? or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best
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5:11 Guy Raz? For today's show, we're running a favorite of ours from our archives. This is the story of Fawn Weaver and how she built a fascinating brand with an amazing life story to go with it. Enjoy.
5:26 Speaker 01 If you walk into any type of liquor store, if you walk into any restaurant, any back bar, and you ask them a very simple question, tell me what whiskey or bourbon is on your back bar that represents someone who is not a white male? And just wait.
5:43 Guy Raz? Wow.
5:44 Speaker 01 White males represent 30% of this country and 100% of the whiskies up until Uncle Nerest. 100%.
6:01 Guy Raz? From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
6:13 Guy Raz? I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Fawn Weaver stumbled onto a piece of Southern history that she couldn't forget and built a brand around it, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, one of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the country.
6:32 Guy Raz? This is not a business show, or at least, I don't think of it that way. This show is about stories. It just so happens that every business is a story. Now, think about that for a moment. It may not make immediate sense. After all, a business is about selling a product or a service in exchange for money or goods. But a business, especially a consumer-facing business, is also about the question, why? Why did you decide to pursue this idea? Why do you think the world needs to hear about it? Why does it add value to someone's life? And each of these answers is a story.
7:16 Guy Raz? It's what connects you and me and everyone out there to the thing you're building. So how is it that Fawn Weaver, best known for her books on marriage, is now the founder of one of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the US? How is it that Fawn, a Black woman with no background in distilling, managed to break into a largely white male-dominated industry, spirits, and win every conceivable award for her product? And how did she do all of this in just five years? Now, that's a story, and it actually begins more than 150 years ago, in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
7:59 Guy Raz? A young apprentice who worked in a whiskey distillery named Jack Daniel met a master distiller named Nearest Green. Everyone called him Uncle Nearest. Nearest was a Black man, formerly enslaved. And it was Nearest who took young Jack under his wing and showed him how to distill Tennessee whiskey. And of course, out of that relationship came one of the best-known whiskey brands in the world, Jack Daniel's.
8:28 Guy Raz? But only a few people knew the name of the man who had helped it come about. Now, Fawn Weaver first heard about this story when she read an article in The New York Times several years ago. It intrigued her so much, she decided to investigate it more deeply. After all, she was already a published author and she thought, maybe there's a book to be written, or even a movie. But on a whim, she ended up buying an old farm in Lynchburg, the farm where Uncle Nearest had taught Jack Daniel how to distill. And eventually, she decided to distill her own brand of whiskey. She would call it Uncle Nearest. And today, it's one of the very few independently-owned whiskey brands in America, and, as I mentioned
9:13 Guy Raz? earlier, one of the fastest-growing. But the journey to building her brand was filled with landmines. For starters, Fawn had to convince investors that the Jack Daniels brand wouldn't try and quash her idea. And then, she had to figure out how to get her bottles on the shelves of liquor stores across the country. Not an easy task when virtually every major spirit brand is owned by one of the five big multinational liquor companies. But once you understand Fawn's story, it becomes clear that nothing was going to stand in her way. Fawn grew up in Pasadena, California. Her dad was a producer and songwriter for Motown Records.
9:56 Speaker 01 So he was one of the very first hitmakers for Motown.
10:01 Guy Raz? Wow.
10:02 Speaker 01 He was there from the beginning, so he's credited with Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations and The Four Tops and Michael Jackson and just really from the beginning, Smokey Robinson, then when Stevie came in. And so that was sort of his world. And in 75, I believe it was either while my mother was pregnant with me or shortly before, my father decided not to sign another contract with Motown. Now, understanding the picture is, my dad is in this huge house on the top of Hollywood Hill, all the fancy cars, everybody would come to the parties, everybody would come to the parties that he threw.
10:44 Speaker 01 And he decides that he really, truly does believe God is calling him to move away from...
10:52 Speaker 01 Motown and to move away from that industry and to go into ministry.
10:58 Guy Raz? Wow.
10:58 Speaker 01 And so I'm born into a period of transition.
11:04 Guy Raz? When he is transitioning from being a songwriter, and I should mention, from what I understand, he co-wrote, he's a co-writer and he's credited on the songs Castles in the Sand, the Stevie Wonder song, Love Child by The Supremes. I mean, major, major hits.
11:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:20 Guy Raz? For Motown.
11:21 Speaker 01 Absolutely, absolutely. He was a really, really, really big deal producer, top of his game. And he decides to completely leave, no backup plan and really not enough money in the bank to be able to continue to live the life he was living.
11:41 Guy Raz? Yeah.
11:42 Speaker 01 For very long. When you're living a lifestyle like he was, big glass house at the top of Hollywood Hills, that consumption rate, that consumption rate is really, really high. And so they had to downsize, they had to downgrade. I think that there was a part of him that did not want people to know that there were financial challenges. And so we lived in a world that was a bit split. But it was very interesting growing up in this dynamic because you had all of these celebrities coming. Everybody in Motown, my father became their pastor of sorts.
12:19 Guy Raz? Wow.
12:19 Speaker 01 So he goes into the ministry, but he still begins to bring everyone with him. So Smokey and Stevie and Eddie Kendricks and all these different folks are at the house all the time.
12:32 Guy Raz? I mean, was that, was like, like, all these celebrities would be coming in and out? Cause your dad basically became their pastor?
12:38 Speaker 01 They, yeah. And so for all of them, they were auntie and uncle to me, all of them. And that's the world that I knew, but I didn't know my father as any sort of celebrity.
12:50 Guy Raz? Yeah.
12:50 Speaker 01 And I actually didn't know these people as celebrities.
12:53 Guy Raz? Right.
12:53 Speaker 01 I knew these people as normal people with normal problems coming into our home to be ministered to more than anything. That's what I knew when I grew up. I only knew him as a minister.
13:08 Guy Raz? And what was your relationship like with your mom and dad? Were they strict? Were they?
13:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, very contentious, very contentious. My mom and I, we can laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny back then, is I'd say that we were, we were their pastor's guinea pigs, because anything that the pastor or the leadership of the church said, this is how you should raise your children, they did it. And it was a hot mess.
13:32 Guy Raz? So what did that mean for you? Like as a teenager, you were really restricted in?
13:37 Speaker 01 Restricted in everything. There was, it was incredibly, I mean, we are Christian, but could not wear pants as girls, because there is a scripture that says, men should not wear anything pertaining to women, women should not wear anything pertaining to men. And their pastor took that to mean women should not wear pants. So imagine me as a teenager and it's winter time and I'm trying to explain why I'm in skirts. It was not a fun upbringing for me, for sure. And the way that I've been wired from day one, day one, is to challenge everything. I came out of the womb challenging everything. I came out of the womb saying no.
14:17 Guy Raz? And you were, you were a kid who clearly were just waiting for the moment when, when you could leave and,
14:25 Speaker 01 Oh, from the time I was five.
14:28 Speaker 01 From the time I was five, I was trying to pack bags.
14:30 Guy Raz? Yeah.
14:30 Speaker 01 No doubt about it. I actually left home at 15.
14:33 Guy Raz? Wow.
14:34 Speaker 01 And my, my mom said she, she still remembers the day I walked down the driveway and she watched me leaving with a backpack and a lunch pail in hand. And that was basically all I had was a backpack and a lunch pail. And I was like, I'm out of here. And, and so it wasn't a big blowout fight or anything of that nature. I just said, this, this won't work for me.
14:55 Guy Raz? How long were you away?
14:57 Speaker 01 For the rest of my life.
14:59 Guy Raz? Do you think from your parents' perspective, they kind of wrote you off as our lost child at that time?
15:06 Speaker 01 I do. I do. I don't think that they loved me any less.
15:10 Guy Raz? Right.
15:11 Speaker 01 I don't think that they ever stopped loving me. But I think it's difficult not to write a child off who has made it very, very clear they don't want to be parented.
15:23 Guy Raz? Wow.
15:24 Speaker 01 I don't know. I've actually never had a conversation with them about it because the one thing about how I am wired and it's, I think, probably one of my greatest strengths is I don't go backwards.
15:36 Guy Raz? So after leaving home, I guess you started living independently and even spent a few years in in shelters and homeless shelters, right?
15:45 Speaker 01 I did. I went to a place called Covenant House. It's a homeless shelter for adults in Hollywood. And it was probably one of the most important moments of my life because I'd always been independent. And at Covenant House, the way that they have it set up, it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's one of the most amazing transition places that has ever been created. You go out, you get a job, you come back, you bring the paychecks. They save all of your money for you. So you're not having to do any of that. You literally just turn over the checks.
16:26 Speaker 01 They save it for you. And then once you get to a certain amount and you can go out and get your own apartment, that's what you do.
16:31 Guy Raz? Fon, I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea of that. Because moving into a homeless shelter, especially for a kid who had a home, right? Where everything was provided for you is a radical step to take, even for a teenager when, you know, let's be honest, our judgment is a little bit different when we're teenagers than it is when we're adults, but still a radical move.
16:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think my life has been marked by radical.
17:00 Speaker 01 I, you know, I look back at that time and if I could do it all over again, I would have done it the exact same way. And I gained a freedom by living in the homeless shelters. I thrived in them. And I think that in part, not because there weren't rules and I, I love rules. I, I live my life by rules, but I have to understand and agree with those rules. And the rules in the homeless shelters made complete sense to me.
17:36 Guy Raz? And, and I mean, you obviously got an incredible grounding there because I read that at like, the age of 18, you, you actually started your own business at 18?
17:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. It, it happened a little more serendipitous than that. I was an intern for an African-American PR firm in Los Angeles. The woman who owned it, Pat Tobin, very, very, very popular publicist. And I don't even remember how I met her actually, but she brought me in. I was in as an intern and they were working on a bunch of different accounts. And there were these two accounts that they were working on. And I had radically different ideas about how to garner PR for these two particular companies.
18:30 Speaker 01 So the way they were thinking about PR is you send out a press release and you see who picks it up and you, you pitch the story. And I was looking at PR as something that was fully experiential, something that was literally interwoven into other things. So now what they would call that is brand integration. But at the time that didn't really exist. And so, you know, brand placements and things of that nature, that wasn't something happening in the early nineties. But it was how I was looking at how you garner earned media. And so for these two accounts, I had come up with a plan and it was so unfamiliar to
19:11 Speaker 01 the way that they did business, but the two clients absolutely loved the pitch. And so Pat said, run with it, you know, and, and keep in mind, so I, I'm about to turn 45. And if you put side by side pictures up of me at 18 and 45, I do not look that.
19:30 Speaker 01 Which I'm very happy about now, but I I looked very mature at that age. So I would I did not come across in any way, shape or form as an 18 year old. And after I successfully did a few of the integrations that I had suggested, both of of the clients said to me individually, if you ever decide to start your own PR firm, we'll come with you. That's how it began. So I began at 18 with two clients paying me $5,000 a month, which that's not a lot of money now, but you know, for an 18 year old, that was pretty significant, right?
20:03 Guy Raz? Yeah. And so what kind of PR were you doing? I mean, who who were your clients?
20:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, one is a painter by the name of Thomas Blackshire. And the other was a company called Daddy Long Legs. They did those dolls with the hanging legs.
20:18 Guy Raz? And what would you do? Would you like call newspapers and magazines and trade publications and try to place articles?
20:25 Speaker 01 I would do that, but I would also integrate it in events. And so I remember, for instance, with Thomas Blackshire, there was a big Hollywood Bowl event that was going to be with a bunch of jazz artists. And remember, I knew all these people from growing up, right? The music world was very easy for me to touch. And so I'd pick up the phone and call them directly and say, hey, this is, this is what I'm doing. What are you thinking? And again, people weren't getting paid for product placement, right? And that wasn't even a thing. So me going in and saying, hey, can I place these products? They're like, sure. Where do you want to put them?
21:04 Guy Raz? So you would you would just like place these dolls or the his paintings at events?
21:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, the sculptures, the paintings, and that's where it was being introduced. Well, the journalists and those those folks were coming in to interview the artists. Well, all around the room are things related to Thomas Blackshire. So that was naturally going to end up being a part of the story because it was everywhere. That was essentially my PR plan.
21:31 Guy Raz? All right. So you're running this PR firm for a few years and was it just you running it?
21:35 Speaker 01 No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me. So what I, what I understood was, you know, how to get clients and how to do this integration and how to do all these things. What I did not understand, and I think this kind of comes back to what we were talking about before, where there was, you know, my father and mother were majorly downgrading, but didn't want anyone to know they were downgrading. So they still had this very big persona, even though they didn't have a lot. Well, that was me in business. So I hired a ton of people and far too many people for what was needed at that time and ran out of money. Let's just say I do business different now, by the way.
22:16 Guy Raz? So I think after about five years, Few Entertainment folded. It basically folded because you ran out of money.
22:23 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. It was like a young, a young girl figuring it out in real time.
22:29 Guy Raz? But I mean, you clearly made some good contacts over those years in PR because I think you were able to pivot into the restaurant business and you were going to help launch a pretty high-end restaurant called G. Garvin's. And then, and then you stayed in the industry for like several years, right?
22:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:48 Guy Raz? Meantime, around this time, early 2000s, I think you met Keith Weaver, the man you eventually married. And the story I heard was that you met him through his mom?
23:06 Speaker 01 His mother.
23:07 Guy Raz? Who owned a salon, a hair salon?
23:09 Speaker 01 Yeah. I was going to her and, you know, the thing that happens in a lot of African-American hair salons and barber shops is there's just a lot to talk. There were two conversations in the, in the hair salon and there were probably about 20 stylists. It was either gossip or it was Keith's mother talking about how amazing her son is. These were the two. Conversations going on and there was one particular week that I went in and I would go in weekly to get my hair done. And she said, you know, I've been watching you all these weeks come in here and, and it's amazing that you're so young and you're so smart and you're
23:51 Speaker 01 so business minded. And she literally re- puts her head over mine and says, you have to meet my son. And I very quickly pivoted the conversation. But after that moment, she was relentless. And at the time, he was a vice president for Sony Pictures.
24:11 Guy Raz? Yeah.
24:11 Speaker 01 And for
24:12 Guy Raz? Pretty impressive. She's like, my son's
24:14 Speaker 01 Pretty impressive, right?
24:15 Guy Raz? Sony Pictures. I want you to meet him.
24:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:18 Guy Raz? Wow.
24:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:19 Guy Raz? And was it an instant match when you met?
24:21 Speaker 01 Immediately.
24:22 Guy Raz? Wow.
24:23 Speaker 01 So I get this phone call on my cell and I just started laughing and I said, this must be the second coming. And he just fell out laughing immediately. And he's like, you've been talking to my mother. I said, I have. And so we, we started off with a great deal of laughter. And so we're getting to the end of the conversation and, and I had had an ongoing prayer with God that I, I still have to this day that I call my box me in prayer. And I'll use it for large decisions, even for this day, which is, you know, if this is not for me, close this door in a way that I can't even open. And if it is for me, open the door in, in a way that no man can close. And so then it makes it a little easy for
25:05 Speaker 01 me to make decisions. I mean, it's a scary prayer to pray because you're now taking yourself out of it. But that, that was my prayer then. It still is my prayer on big decisions now. And so we finally met for the first time, May 9, 2003. He proposed on September 6. We were married on December 27, same year.
25:27 Guy Raz? Wow. I think around this time, um, you, you kind of also pivoted, uh, once again in your career. Um, you'd worked to the, as a manager. In the hotel industry at some, some pretty top hotels. And then I think around 2010, you started to write as a freelance writer. And it really came out of a, I guess, a blog you started, maybe on a whim, which is called Happy Wives Club. What, yeah, what's the story?
25:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, I didn't even know it was a blog, but yes, I called it just a website because I wasn't actually blogging on it. I introduced who I was and said, I want to find a million women around the world who are just like me, who are not represented in the media, who are not represented, whose marriage, it doesn't look anything like Desperate Housewives, Real Housewives, or all of these books that are now popping up that are, you know, really berating men. And so I said, I know that there are other wives out there like me who have amazing husbands who support them, who love them, who are not caricatures. And I said, I'm going to start a club for women like me and I'm going to call it. And just like literally paused for a second and I said, I know what I'm going to call it.
26:39 Speaker 01 I'm going to call it the Happy Wives Club. And so I emailed it to one of my sisters and three of my girlfriends who I knew had similar marriages. And then they sent it out. And within four weeks, I had people who had signed up from 20 different countries.
26:55 Guy Raz? Wow. So you essentially become a writer with this blog. And at some point, clearly it attracts the attention of a literary agent or publisher because someone asks you to write a book about the secrets to great marriage.
27:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, the irony is, is I had always written, writing for me is cathartic to this day. The Happy Wives Club wasn't actually initially anywhere on my radar in terms of writing about it. And, but when they made the suggestion, I told my literary agent, I said, well, I've always wanted to travel the world. So how about I go to all seven continents and I interview couples happily married 25 years or more and deduce the common denominator. So that began my journey of finding couples. And so I would reach into people that I knew that lived in other countries and ask that exact same question. And they would always point me to that one couple in the community that everyone knows
27:52 Speaker 01 is a true, true happily married. It's not for the, it's not for, well, at that time, there wasn't even really Instagram. So it wasn't for the gram.
28:01 Speaker 01 There and I did, I went and I traveled, I traveled the world.
28:07 Guy Raz? So, I mean, you have this phase in your, in your life where you had had a range of different experiences and have these bestselling books. And the story, from what I understand, the story is, and it's more or less, you know, probably an oversimplification, but you're on vacation in Asia, you read an article in the New York Times about Jack Daniels, the whiskey brand, that they discovered or found out or disclosed that actually, Jack Daniel, the person who is the distiller, learned how to make whiskey from a black man named Nearest Green, or Uncle Nearest, as he was known. What do you remember thinking after you read that article?
28:52 Speaker 01 I remember first and foremost, the photo. So what I see is this photo of Jack Daniel, and a lot of people saw it and immediately began wondering, who is this black man to the right of Jack? But what I saw when I saw that photo was something a little different, which was Jack Daniel, the most famous whiskey maker of all time, was taking a photo with his team, and he had seated the center position to the black man.
29:26 Guy Raz? That's what you noticed immediately?
29:28 Speaker 01 Immediately, because everyone else around Jack is white. This was his, his leadership team, if you will. And, and the question was, is this Nearest Green? The story that had been floating around Lynchburg, Tennessee for so long about this African American, formerly enslaved man who was the teacher of Jack Daniel, is this him? That was the question that people were asking. But the headline was, "Jack Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient, help from a slave." And I remember my eyes got wide as saucers, and I know that because Keith, sitting across from me, panics. And I literally flip the paper around to him, and he's like, "You've got to be kidding."
30:13 Speaker 01 And, you know, for, for us as African Americans, until that point in our lives,
30:20 Speaker 01 There was no brand that was like a quintessential American brand that was known around the world that was able to be pinpointed to an African American being there in the beginning.
30:38 Guy Raz? So were you, just as an aside, were you at that point a whiskey drinker? Like, because there are people who are super into whiskey, there are people who are super into wine and beer. Like, was whiskey a thing for you?
30:51 Speaker 01 Whiskey was my drink of choice, specifically bourbon, high proof and neat.
30:56 Guy Raz? So this article spoke to you on multiple levels, not just the story of a black man who essentially invented Jack Daniels, but as a whiskey drinker.
31:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, it speaks to me not because it was whiskey. It speaks to me because it was a ubiquitous American brand, that it was very possible that a black man was at the very beginning of it.
31:19 Guy Raz? Right.
31:20 Speaker 01 And so I began looking into the story even more. And I got on Amazon and I ordered Jack Daniel's Legacy. It was a biography by a local journalist out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who goes to Lynchburg, Tennessee to write the authoritative biography on the most famous whiskey maker in the world. And very early on into the book, it introduces this white preacher and distiller who Jack came to work for him as a chore boy. And Nearest Green was working the still at that time. This preacher, according to this biography, says that he introduces Jack to Nearest
32:01 Speaker 01 by saying, "This is Uncle Nearest. He's the best whiskey maker that I know of." And then every page, it was either Nearest Green or his sons Eli Green and George Green. I mean, they were very, very prominent in terms of mentions in this book. And they were mentioned more times than Jack's own family.
32:20 Guy Raz? So this was known. This was known for a long time.
32:23 Speaker 01 Oh, it was well-known. Yeah, yeah. This was not a... This was... It's the worst kept secret if it was supposed... Never suppose to be a secret. And that's what I realized when I read his biography is, is at that time, you know what the internet does. They take an article, they turn the headline into clickbait, and then everybody makes an assumption.
32:45 Guy Raz? Yeah.
32:46 Speaker 01 So all around the internet at that time was that they very quickly determined that Jack was the slave owner, that he stole the recipe.
32:54 Guy Raz? Right.
32:55 Speaker 01 He hid nearest and all these other things. Well, I'm reading this biography and going, not a chance, because I believed that it was a story of love, honor, and respect.
33:05 Guy Raz? And it really does spark something in you to the point where a few months later, you decide, maybe there's a book here. Like, maybe I can do something deeper. Like, maybe, and maybe I need to go to visit, like, the source of this, to go to Lynchburg, Tennessee.
33:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:24 Guy Raz? And maybe it would result in, in, in, in more thinking about a book, or a film, or maybe not. But the idea was you would go down to Lynchburg and just kind of check it out. From what I understand, Keith didn't want to go, in part because the name Lynch is in Lynchburg, and obviously...
33:40 Speaker 01 Yes. I mean, and understandably, understandably. So he did not want to go to a town with Lynch in the name as a California boy, and who's African American. That is not what he would do intentionally, not in the South. But he did go, and, and we were there for a very short period of time where, you know, talk about a life of serendipitous things and just sort of following those paths. We were in the library, top of the morning, and we're just, we're trying to find anything on this story, and, and we can't find anything. And so I, I asked the, the assistant librarian comes over and asks how she can help. And I told her what we were looking to do. And she said, well, let me go call my director.
34:22 Speaker 01 And she calls the director. Well, long story short, the director then calls who is Jack's eldest descendant. And if you think about it, and I understand it as well, this is a very small town. Their family has officially been drug through the mud because people concluded that they were slave owners and hid the original recipe maker and all the rest of this stuff. And so Jack's eldest descendant, she walked through the door of the library. And when I looked at her, I could visibly see concern.
34:57 Guy Raz? She thought you were coming to further, you know, go after her family's name?
35:03 Speaker 01 Wouldn't you?
35:04 Guy Raz? Maybe, yeah.
35:05 Speaker 01 A black couple, author and a movie person from LA comes to Lynchburg, Tennessee to do research on the story that everybody online has already made a determination about.
35:17 Guy Raz? That this is a very cut and dry story. Jack Daniel had a slave, forced this man to make whiskey, then stole the recipe and then took credit for it. That was the narrative.
35:26 Speaker 01 Exactly.
35:27 Guy Raz? And she was under the impression that you were going to further, you know, pursue that narrative.
35:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would imagine so. I would have been under that impression as well.
35:37 Guy Raz? But, but actually, the, the narrative that, that you had learned was very different, that, that Jack Daniel did not own slaves, that Nearest was a mentor to him.
35:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:49 Guy Raz? And that the Daniel family actually acknowledged that, that they credited Nearest for his role as, as a whiskey maker.
35:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I said to her, I need you to understand, I am not here to harm your family's legacy. I am here because I believe that there was a relationship here that deserves to be explored and shared. I write stories on love and that is the story I'm here to find. And she said, well, in that case, I want to help you. And she pulls out her cell phone and she gives me names and numbers to Nearest Green's descendants.
36:27 Guy Raz? Wow.
36:29 Speaker 01 They all grew up together. They were friends. They ate around the same dinner table.
36:33 Guy Raz? And they were still there in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
36:36 Speaker 01 They were all still there.
36:36 Guy Raz? The descendants of Jack Daniel, the descendants of Uncle Nearest.
36:40 Speaker 01 They're all there.
36:41 Guy Raz? They're all there.
36:42 Speaker 01 They're still there.
36:43 Guy Raz? And while you're there, you find out that actually, somebody says, oh, by the way, the original distillery where the two of them made whiskey, you should go check it out. And I think it's for sale.
36:58 Speaker 01 It was her that told me. So we're in the library. We were not there very long. And she said, hey, you know that book that brought you here, that farm where Jack grew up and all this stuff happened in the book, it's for sale. And her cousin then calls me about an hour and a half later, maybe two hours later, and says, you met my cousin at the library. She says, you want to go see the Dan Call Farm. I'm a realtor. I can take you. Would you like me to take you tomorrow?
37:26 Guy Raz? Wow.
37:26 Speaker 01 And so I've not spoken to anyone from Nearest's family, but have now had contact with two people from Jack's family, and I've only been there a few hours.
37:34 Guy Raz? So, all right, so you go and see it, and what do you make of it? I mean, was it in disrepair? Was it an old ranch farm?
37:40 Speaker 01 Well, you drive up to this farm, and there's cows everywhere. So the current owners that had purchased it in the early 60s, they were dairy farmers. And I will say that Keith and I were not through the door for longer than five minutes before we looked at each other and said, we're buying this place.
38:08 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Fawn realizes that the best way to honor the story of Nearest Green is not with a book, but with a bottle, actually many bottles, of Tennessee whiskey. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
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40:43 Guy Raz? If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,
41:27 Guy Raz? Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com. Hey, it's Guy here. And before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing we are launching on How I Built This. So if you own your own business
42:11 Guy Raz? or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show. Yes, on the show! And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting real-time branding advice from
42:36 Guy Raz? Sun Bums Tom Rinks, or Marketing Tips from Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected] , or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon. And we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, back to the show.
43:30 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2016, and Fawn Weaver and her husband Keith have made a huge decision to buy and restore the 300-acre farm where Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.
43:48 Speaker 01 The most important part was the second floor was an absolute time capsule. So the room where Jack stayed in, there was walls with barrel stencils that you could still very visibly read. And so it was so easy for us to go, we don't know what we're going to do with this, but this is a piece of American history, and we're going to restore it and figure it out later.
44:14 Guy Raz? This was Jack Daniel's-- this was his home. This was his farm.
44:18 Speaker 01 This was his-- yeah, this is where he worked as a chore boy and where he lived with the other boys.
44:23 Guy Raz? So in your mind, at that-- when you made the offer on the property, it sounds like-- Maybe in your mind, you were thinking, this will be part of the book. You know, the part of the book's story will be me buying this place and restoring this amazing place and telling the story of Uncle Nearest, and maybe there'll be a film.
44:41 Speaker 01 I wish I could tell you I had that kind of foresight. I looked at that really, truly, purely as a, as a real estate play. And that we could restore this property and put this on the National Historic Registry. Like, there, there was a lot there. But maybe a couple of days later is when what came to mind is that I could do my research from there.
45:06 Guy Raz? You could actually live there and be steeped in that place.
45:10 Speaker 01 Exactly. And my thought process was, when I walk the grounds of, of plantations, I, it's very diff, it's very rare for me to go onto a plantation, because I walk the grounds and I can literally feel the spirit of those harmed on those plantation grounds. But when I walked across this farm, the Dan Call farm, I got no such feeling. It was absolute and complete peace. And so I did the research from there. The story would truly come alive, because I would be among their spirits.
45:44 Guy Raz? Dan Call, we should mention, was the, he was a preacher and a distiller. This was the guy that Jack Daniel went to work for originally.
45:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, his, and, and the irony is, is both the church and the distillery were on his property, and his distillery and his church were on the furthest points, uh, um, for, for the most part. And so he lived a world in which these two were very separate. And then he married a woman who was a teetotaler, who wanted nothing to do with him having a distillery, so she did not want him to be doing that. And so the reason why Nearest Green is credited as the first known African-American master distiller is because he fully turned over the steel to Nearest. But I think that had everything to do with the fact that his church and his wife were really pushing against him having it all together.
46:35 Guy Raz? This is 2016 when you buy the place. You permanently relocate to Tennessee from LA. Did any of your friends say like, what are you guys doing? What are you, are you nuts?
46:46 Speaker 01 No, because it was so remarkable, the way things unfolded. The, the realtor who helped us, so this is, you know, Jack's lineage. As it turns out, as we continue doing the, the research and I'm bringing my research into the property, she comes to me and, and she says, hey, you know, I know you are, you're focused on a book and a movie, but if you ever decide to honor nearest with a bottle, I'll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right. Well, she was in the family business for 31 years. When she left Jack Daniel Distillery, she was their head of whiskey operations.
47:25 Speaker 01 That just the serendipitous nature of every aspect and element that has happened. You could not convince me that this is completely natural, that there's, I have been convinced from very early on that there was something supernatural at play here. And so when I would share with our friends and family, the different things that had happened since we arrived in Lynchburg, no one had any question whatsoever that we were to complete this mission. No one.
47:57 Guy Raz? Wow. Okay. So you are fully in Tennessee. Meantime, you're learning all these new things through your research about Uncle Nearest and about his legacy. And it's clear you are, you're not quite sure how, but you are going to help to preserve his legacy somehow and celebrate it. One of the things that you decided to do was to actually produce a commemorative bottle of whiskey.
48:24 Speaker 01 That's what it was supposed to be. Was a singular commemorative bottle. That's what it was supposed to be.
48:30 Guy Raz? Was this an idea that you had? Like, let me just do this for fun? Or how did it come about?
48:35 Speaker 01 I had looked into it and had frankly concluded that it was going to cost way too much money. And so the idea of having to go out and to raise money from people, I was not excited about. I hadn't raised money in a very long time.
48:49 Guy Raz? Not fun. I mean, how much was it going to cost you to just make 500 commemorative bottles or something?
48:53 Speaker 01 Well, originally with the commemorative bottles, you know, maybe a million or so dollars, because it's not just a matter of making the bottles. You'd also still have to market it. This is a, it's a very crowded field. So distributors are not going to pick you up if you cannot show that you have an ability to get people to buy it.
49:12 Guy Raz? Yeah.
49:13 Speaker 01 You, we're, we're a three-tiered system, the alcohol business is, which means that you can't get it to the shelves without a distributor.
49:20 Guy Raz? Yeah.
49:21 Speaker 01 So if no distributor will pick you up, you don't have a product to sell.
49:26 Guy Raz? It sounds like making a commemorative bottle is, is a waste of time because nobody's gonna distribute something that's never gonna come out again.
49:33 Speaker 01 Exactly. Hence why I moved away from the idea altogether is because to do it is to basically set yourself up for failure.
49:41 Guy Raz? Right. You couldn't just make a one-off.
49:42 Speaker 01 It's impossible to do it.
49:44 Guy Raz? Which is interesting because you, you can do that with wine. You know, I've, I know people who, who buy some wine and put it in, you know, bottles and then hand it to friends of theirs for, for gifts, like it's their own wine.
49:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, but wine is very different. Their, their tiered system is different. So for instance, wineries can ship to end users. Alcohol business cannot.
50:05 Guy Raz? Because of the regulations. Right.
50:06 Speaker 01 Exactly. I could be a winery in Napa and have a, you know, a club in which I've got thousands and thousands of people that get wine. That's not legal for spirits.
50:18 Guy Raz? Right.
50:18 Speaker 01 And so you have to be able to get on shelf space. And that means that we would have to show a distributor two things. One, we have enough product to keep it stocked.
50:28 Guy Raz? Yeah.
50:28 Speaker 01 Which means that we were gonna have to spend a lot of money on aged whiskey. And the second thing is that we were gonna have enough money to put behind the marketing. And so in order to source the right kind of what we call juice, but really high premium whiskey, it was going to be really difficult. So if you go to Scotland, Scotch is so easy because all the distilleries just kind of buy from each other. They blend it. Everybody sources, it's not a big deal. America, we treat it a little differently. And so it was going to be so difficult and so expensive.
51:02 Guy Raz? Is that because existing distilleries will only work with specific brands?
51:07 Speaker 01 It's because we, up until more recently, because we produce so little extra. In Scotland, the distilleries produce enough for themselves, but they also produce enough for a ton of others to be able to purchase from them. It's a part of their overall business model. That's not our business model in America. There's basically not enough to build a major brand. And this, this business is so expensive and so difficult that if you can't build a large brand, you're basically just kind of waiting to die. That's, that's the truth of it.
51:43 Guy Raz? And also presumably whiskey in America is dominated by just a few major multinational.
51:50 Speaker 01 Yes, it is. Yes, it is. There are very, very, very, very few small players.
51:57 Guy Raz? And are the big brands, Jack Daniel, Jim Beam, I mean, is that more or less true?
52:02 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you have, Jack Daniel's owned by Brown Foreman. Beam is owned by Centauri, a Japanese company. You can kind of go down the list of every major, of every major American whiskey brand, and I can tell you who owns them. So like all the-
52:18 Guy Raz? The Diageo's and the Pernod Ricard.
52:20 Speaker 01 The Sazeracs, LVMH, absolutely. They, you have essentially five that own everything.
52:29 Guy Raz? So it's not like beer where you've got these kind of tiny microbreweries. In spirits, there are very few independent brands.
52:36 Speaker 01 There are very few independent brands that make it. You have a lot that try.
52:42 Guy Raz? But clearly, you made a, you had a change of mind. So what was the change of mind? If you already determined this was a bad idea, what gave you the confidence to say, well, maybe I should do this?
52:52 Speaker 01 So the way that it came about was, one, was Sheri Moore, who is our Director of Whiskey Operations, who was previously Director of Whiskey Operations for Jack Daniel, her saying she would come out of retirement. So at least I knew.
53:05 Guy Raz? And she, she was the real estate agent who, who had offered to help you make, make the whiskey.
53:09 Speaker 01 Exactly. But I even told her I have no interest. But then I, as a part of doing my interviews with Nearest's family, I interviewed close to 100 of Nearest's descendants and spent time with them. And, and on one particular occasion, I went to interview a whole group of them, a pretty large group of them in Nashville. They got together at their local church. And they shared with me what they knew. I shared what I knew. And at the end of it, I asked, what was the one thing that they thought should happen to honor their ancestor? And then one, one person in the room, one of the family members raised his hand. And he said, you know, we think Nearest deserves to have his own bottle.
53:54 Speaker 01 His name should be on a bottle. And you could kind of see just the nodding that there was not just an agreement, but there was conversation that had happened previously. And I left out of that time. Keith was with me. We got into the car. It was pretty late. And I called Sheri from the car and said, if you will come out of retirement, I will raise the money and we will make this happen.
54:21 Guy Raz? All right. So you start to raise the money to create a brand. Meantime, um, you know, Brown Foreman, which owns Jack Daniel, they presumably catch wind of your idea.
54:35 Speaker 01 They didn't catch wind. I invited them and told them.
54:38 Guy Raz? And what did they say? Cause there was a risk that they could say, wait a minute, that's our IP. You can't mess with this. Like this is ours.
54:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, but it wasn't their IP. I had already, I already had the trademarks. So by the time I shared with them what I would be doing, I made sure I had the trademarks.
54:56 Guy Raz? For Uncle Nearest, for that brand?
54:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:58 Guy Raz? So you were, you were stealth. You were operating quietly.
55:02 Speaker 01 Had to.
55:03 Guy Raz? And you came to them and you said, look, I'm gonna make a whiskey here. And what was their response?
55:09 Speaker 01 Uh, well, the person who I told at the time is the president of Jack Daniels, and I could have pushed him over with a feather. He was just, he was blown away by the fact that we had done all of this.
55:21 Guy Raz? So they could have destroyed the brand before you even debuted?
55:24 Speaker 01 They could have made it very, very difficult and very expensive.
55:27 Guy Raz? Because they could have said, hey, that's our, that's our story and that's our brand.
55:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, I, I still would have won. That I'm not concerned about. But the thing is, is that it, it, it would have cost me so much to win.
55:39 Guy Raz? Yeah.
55:40 Speaker 01 That the question becomes, is it worth it? And do I want to lose all of the investors' money in order to fight it?
55:51 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Fawn manages to launch Uncle Miras whiskey in the backyard of a potential rival, but then faces another hurdle. Being a woman of color in an industry dominated by white men. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
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57:54 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017 and Fawn Weaver is getting ready to launch a new whiskey brand in the name of Uncle Nearest Green, the man who helped Jack Daniel learn to make whiskey. But Jack Daniel's, let us not forget, is already an established brand with its own story to protect. So when Fawn goes to talk to the head of the company, she knows she has to tread lightly.
58:24 Speaker 01 When we began working on this, I knew that they could have one of two reactions. And one of those reactions could be to point every missile that they had in their arsenal at me. And if they did that, I had to make sure that if... The way that I would describe it is if we're going down, we're going down with a thud so large that everybody will know it happened.
58:52 Guy Raz? Yeah. But did you get the impression that maybe they might lawyer up?
58:58 Speaker 01 I didn't need to get the impression. They were very clear.
59:01 Guy Raz? Oh, what did they say?
59:03 Speaker 01 It was more of a, they were going to protect their trademarks, not a, we're going to prevent you from doing it. I think because the way that they had always seen the story is it was a part of Jack's story.
59:17 Guy Raz? Yeah.
59:17 Speaker 01 And so I think it was a little challenging for them to see Nearest's story stand alone. And so the question that they had was, how can you even tell this story without including Jack? Which means that I would then be encroaching upon their trademarks. And so I was very clear in, in that I knew exactly how to tell this story without ever touching their trademarks. And that's what we did.
59:44 Guy Raz? So you actually, I think on your website, the name Jack Daniel doesn't even exist.
59:51 Speaker 01 No, it doesn't. It never has.
59:53 Guy Raz? Amazing.
59:54 Speaker 01 It never has. If you, if the only time that Jack's name has ever been associated with our brand is if the story is being told historically in the press.
1:00:07 Guy Raz? Right.
1:00:08 Speaker 01 Or it was told historically in the short film that we did with Jeffrey Wright. And even if you watch that film, take out the credits, the film is, is a little more than 10 minutes. Jack's name isn't mentioned until maybe minute 10? And even then it's in passing.
1:00:25 Guy Raz? But from your perspective as a brand owner, manager, creator, it didn't matter because you didn't need the Jack Daniel Association.
1:00:34 Speaker 01 Correct. But I mean, for me, and I said it to them from day one, that my job in cementing Nearest's legacy was about building up the legacy of one person.
1:00:48 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:00:48 Speaker 01 Without harming the legacy of another. And so I've always been very transparent with them because I want for both of our brands and companies to continue to grow at astronomical rates. I want to see Jack's legacy continue to rise because the only reason we know of Nearest's legacy versus all of the other African Americans who did work for so many of the, the bourbon distilleries whose names we still don't know. The only reason who, that we know the name Uncle Nearest, the only reason that Nearest Green Distillery exists is because Jack Daniel's family made sure Nearest Green would never be forgotten. That's the only reason.
1:01:29 Guy Raz? So Fawn, you are just a force of nature. You are unstoppable. You are going to do this no matter what, and that's clear. But it doesn't mean it's easy, and it doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing. And so 2017, you have this business plan. You know you're going to put it out into the world. You're going to manufacture. But that means you don't have a distillery yet. I mean, you had to find distilleries and bottle manufacturers and people to make the labels and to pack the bottles and to put them in boxes and then to distribute them. And this is an industry that we've already discussed, totally dominated by a few major corporations.
1:02:10 Guy Raz? And there are not a whole lot of women, and there are not a whole lot of black women in this industry. I mean, I have to imagine, whether it's intentional or not, there's kind of a network of people who know each other and call Jim. How did you break into that?
1:02:29 Speaker 01 Without question, there was a lot of blockage coming into it. But the way that I look at it is, is that you just keep turning over every stone until you get it done. And so for me, it's not that I didn't have just a ton of hurdles, and I am positive some traps set, but I was absolutely determined, and I truly, truly, and still believe, that I had both Nearest and Jack in my sails. And so I would walk into situations with absolute abandon, believing without question
1:03:11 Speaker 01 that Nearest and Jack both wanted this story to be told, and they wanted Nearest's legacy to be cemented. And for whatever reason, I have the great honor of being the one who was chosen to do that.
1:03:24 Guy Raz? But still, Fawn, I mean, this all had to be challenging, right? I mean, I read a story that Certainly in the early days, you actually had Keith, your husband, pretend like he was the CEO of the company. Is that in order to get, because you weren't getting callbacks? Is that true?
1:03:40 Speaker 01 It wasn't just I wasn't getting callbacks. My entire team, my entire leadership team are women. And we were having a call one day, and I realized that every single one of us had the same problem, which is whatever it was we needed, this was before the brand came out. We were trying to get things in place, the distributor, that bottles, corks, things that we have to have, things that you were talking about earlier, all of these different things that we had to have to put this label out, no one was calling us back. Bottling partners, no one. And, and so I told Kate and Sheri, I said, let me test out a theory here. And then I called Keith, and I said, babe, can you call all of these people?
1:04:21 Speaker 01 And Keith called every single person on our collective list, and he got through either immediately when calling, or they called them back by the end of the day. He didn't have to wait 24 hours to get in touch with any of those people that we had been trying to reach for three and four weeks.
1:04:39 Guy Raz? Fun. I'm gonna confess that I'm not a whiskey expert in any way. I love wine, and so I know that a bit better. But how do we understand what Tennessee whiskey is? What, what makes it special?
1:04:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. The thing I love about, the little thing I love about Tennessee whiskey is, it is the one spirit that we can look at and say, it was a process that came in with the enslaved people that made the difference. So Tennessee whiskey is a straight bourbon whiskey. So that's where we should start. A lot of people get confused about this. Tennessee whiskey is a bourbon at its core.
1:05:18 Guy Raz? And that means it's distilled from, from grains, right?
1:05:20 Speaker 01 Yes, it's distilled from grain. It has to be cereal grains, and it has to be at least 51% corn. Really, truly, bourbon can be made anywhere in America. It's not like champagne where it has to be made in a region, or tequila that has to be made in Jalisco. It can be made anywhere in America, although I think 90 something percent of it comes out of Kentucky. However, Tennessee whiskey can only be made in Tennessee. And the only difference, other than geography, the only significant difference is the process that came in with the enslaved people. And that is taking a traditional bourbon distillate and filtering it through sugar maple charcoal.
1:06:00 Guy Raz? Charcoal.
1:06:01 Speaker 01 It pulls out congeners, it pulls out fusil oils, it's basically natural carbon that is in the wood.
1:06:08 Guy Raz? Wow.
1:06:08 Speaker 01 And so if you, if you use it just to filter, it attaches itself to the congeners, fusil oils, fusil oils is essentially what gives you headaches, gives you hangovers and things of that nature.
1:06:19 Guy Raz? That's, that's the thing about like, so when, so is, is Tennessee whiskey smoother? Like, does it not have that like burning sensation that you get with the bourbon?
1:06:28 Speaker 01 It just depends because, because keep in mind, there's so many elements that go into it. How much you char the barrels is going to determine more than that initial filtration. But also how you filter on the other side of it after it's aged is also going to have a lot to do with it. And so you can have two different Tennessee whiskey makers using the exact same mash bill and process before it goes into the barrel and it can taste completely different coming out. Based on where they, they age it in the warehouse, top floor, bottom floor, based on how they, how much they char.
1:07:08 Speaker 01 So we have, for us, I can't speak for all of the whiskey companies, our, ours, we use triple filtration. So we obviously have the process that Nearest taught to Jack and to other distillers. That, and that process that was passed down to him from other enslaved people. This filtration that happens before it goes into the barrel. But then we do two additional filtrations when it comes out of the barrel. But it's already been filtered once before it goes into the barrel. So it's already starting off ahead.
1:07:38 Guy Raz? Yeah. I, I wonder, I mean, you're obviously so gifted as a storyteller and you, you had some press attention already around the story behind it, but that doesn't necessarily. Always translate into into sales, right? Look at their Instagram influencers with with millions of followers who who create brands that go nowhere or or have podcasts.
1:07:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:59 Guy Raz? How did you take this brand? Okay, you have a bottle now. It's 2017 and, you know, 2018. You've got this plan, this rollout plan. But, you know, really, the only, at that time, the only way to sell this stuff was on the shelves of liquor stores and, you know, maybe some big places like Bevmo and Costco or whatever. But how did how did you even begin to get into the liquor stores? What was your? Because it takes a lot of marketing money and, right?
1:08:26 Speaker 01 It does. It does. It takes a lot of marketing money. And the first thing I did was hire people.
1:08:31 Guy Raz? Hire who? What kind of people?
1:08:33 Speaker 01 Hire salespeople.
1:08:34 Guy Raz? Just sale? And what was their what was their charge? What did you say? I need you to do what?
1:08:38 Speaker 01 Their charge was to go in and make sure that people knew the significance of this bottle that was coming into the marketplace. And the way that I I would say it is if you walk into any type of liquor store, if you walk into any restaurant, any back bar, and you ask them a very simple question, tell me what whiskey or bourbon is on your back bar that represents someone who is not a white male? And just wait.
1:09:05 Guy Raz? Wow. And that was the approach that that your sales reps took?
1:09:09 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Because we had to understand that white males represent 30% of this country and 100% of the whiskeys up until Uncle Nerest. 100%. And so I would ask the question and then I'd go, I'll wait. And it was always amazing to see the enlightenment of those who look at their and they just one by one would look at every bottle and go, holy cow. This entire time, a country that was built with blacks and whites, and this is our native spirit, and we know without question that African Americans,
1:09:54 Speaker 01 specifically the enslaved African Americans, were involved in every bit of the process, from manufacturing to barrel making and barrel rolling and charring. And, and they would go home to, to whatever home they had covered in smut and, and just black from top to bottom because of all of the hard work. And not one bottle on any shelf represented someone who was not white male.
1:10:22 Guy Raz? And that was enough to convince enough bars and liquor stores to at least carry the, the brand?
1:10:28 Speaker 01 It convinced them to carry the brand, and then it was our job to make sure that people understood that what they were doing when they bought a glass or a bottle of Uncle Nearest was not simply to sip on the whiskey. We need them to tell the story. We need for the first African American master distiller, his name to be forever known and honored, the same way that Jack Daniel and Johnny Walker and Jim Beam have been known and honored for over 150 years. We're just now starting to praise Nearest 150, 160 years after those guys.
1:11:08 Guy Raz? What I'm, what I'm trying to understand is, once you, I mean, the story is so compelling, right? And it's clear that that was going to be enough, in, in some cases, to get it on the shelves, right? Or to get it on the bar. But it, it's still not enough to connect it to the consumer, right? Because once your sales reps leave, they've told the story to the liquor store owner or the bartender. I walk into a liquor store and there are, let's say, 40 or 50 different whiskey brands to pick from. How did, how do you then create awareness? How did you get people to choose your brand? Because they may not know the story, and maybe all they care about is a great whiskey, which is what you're producing. But how did you go from being on the shelves to people actually buying it?
1:11:50 Speaker 01 Well, there's a couple of things we did. Very early on, I asked my head of sales to enter our whiskey into every spirit competition around the world. And I knew that if we could begin taking double gold and best in class in every major competition, which by the way, there's been, I think, 16 major competitions this year, and we've received 13 best in class. So we have, we have swept all of the major competitions this year with the exception of a few, and even in those, we got gold and double gold. And, and so I knew that we had to have a product that ran with the big dogs. And one
1:12:30 Speaker 01 of the places where we were going to be able to achieve earned media is if we kept sweeping all the awards. And so that's where we began. But we also utilized scarcity marketing. Last September, we were out of stock in the entire country, meaning we were selling much faster than we could bottle. I spent a million dollars in commercial ads when we were out of stock everywhere in the country. And the reason I did that is because individual consumers would then walk into a store and say, do you have Uncle Nearest? No, we're out of stock. And then the next one, and the next one. So then you have these clerks
1:13:13 Speaker 01 who all day long are selling spirits and not thinking anything of it. But if you keep having people come in and you have to keep telling them that there's a particular one that sold out, now they're Googling to find out, why is this brand sold out? Now, all of a sudden, they have the, the story and they understand the brand. You have now created ambassadors all over this country.
1:13:37 Guy Raz? It seems like, and I don't want to be presumptuous, I don't know if this is the case, but, but it seems like you had a huge boost in sales in 2020, part of that because alcohol and, and beverage sales in general had a huge year because of the pandemic. And in part because there was a greater awareness around your brand and other black-owned brands in the wake of, you know, massive social justice demonstrations around the country. Is that, is that true? Did that happen?
1:14:08 Speaker 01 I don't think so. I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling of our company. And the reason why I can say that is because we're craft spirits, we're independent. No independent saw big years last year because the big guys, once the pandemic happened, they've got to keep those shares up, right? And so they took over the shelf space. There was very little shelf space that remained for craft distillers. And I, I think that we did something very different during the pandemic, which is what propelled us and continued to propel us through the summer, which is we had 13 open sales
1:14:48 Speaker 01 positions. And once we got shut down and were quarantined, I told the team, we are not changing our strategy. We are staying pedal to the metal. Our 13 positions, we are going to pick up people that have been furloughed and laid off rock stars all over this country. And what I want for all of us to do during this period of time when we are in quarantine and we can't get out in the field, is everyone write a marketing plan for your specific market. I told my team, do not pay attention to what's going on in the world. We are going to hunker down and be ready for the moment markets begin
1:15:30 Speaker 01 to open up. So one of the ideas, for instance, was from my team member in Ohio, Veronica, and she had this idea of to-go cocktails. Now, to-go cocktails were not legal anywhere at the time she had the idea. And the thought process was, well, if Veronica is right, and to-go cocktails become a thing, and they push it through the legislation, if we're the first company who has branded pouches already made and branded mason jars, if we have this plan for all of our markets, that moment each market gets approval for to-go cocktails, then we're going to be the first ones out. And it was-
1:16:07 Speaker 01 Huge. So our sales, I would like to say that those things that you refer to have something to do with it, but we just celebrated our 11th quarter in a row of triple-digit gains. So we've been 100% year over year for 11 quarters. That was only three quarters.
1:16:28 Guy Raz? Yeah, I remember I interviewed Jim Cook of Sam Adams Boston Beer Company a few years ago on the show, and he said, you know, the big guy spill more beer every year than we make. And people think of Sam Adams as a huge brand, but it is tiny compared to the Budweisers, Coors, and others, Millers. Whiskey is like, I think Diageo and Chivas and, you know, and a few other companies, you know, Bran Forman, William Grant, Bacardi, Suntory, they dominate this industry. And you are a brand-new independent.
1:17:01 Speaker 01 Little guy, little, little, little guy.
1:17:03 Guy Raz? So presumably you are a teeny, tiny fraction of this market.
1:17:07 Speaker 01 So small.
1:17:09 Guy Raz? Yeah. But have been growing at just a rapid pace since your founding. Do you have, I mean, I have to imagine it's so cash-intensive, you know, and this is a business show, so we obviously talk about, you know, the challenges of running a business and the cash involved. I mean, is there a clear horizon when, if you haven't yet reached profitability? Is that?
1:17:37 Speaker 01 So yes, we have achieved profitability, but at the same time, we're building out a $50 million distillery that we've already put more than 25 into. And so our distillery, even though it's open to the public, and Phase 1 and Phase 2 are open, and it's sold out every weekend, and thank God for all of the people who literally pilgrimage to nearest green distillery, because they come and they get shirts and hats. And we've got, I hired the former president of Disney Store Worldwide to merchandise. But no, it's incredibly, incredibly expensive. I've raised over $60 million. That's not enough. We've had to structure debt in
1:18:17 Speaker 01 such a way to be able to make sure that we're continuing to build out this legacy. And that distillery is not cheap. So yes, we are in the black, but at the same time, everything that we earn, all profitability, goes into building of the distillery.
1:18:37 Guy Raz? I read that in March of 2021, you had sold about a million and a half bottles by now. You know, when this airs, it certainly will be much more than that.
1:18:46 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:18:47 Guy Raz? Um, and you're growing really, really fast. Um, but still, you're still so new that you can't sell like 15, 16 year old aged whiskey, right, that you've distilled yourself. I mean, could you have imagined being where you are now, four or five years ago, when you, when you kind of settled on this idea?
1:19:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, where we are now is where I forecasted.
1:19:11 Guy Raz? Wow.
1:19:12 Speaker 01 So absolutely, but what we were very clear about doing is that we understood that we were about 160 years behind. And so we, we work at a different urgency than I think that others do. When I look at, at Jack Daniels, they were purchased by Brown Foreman in, in 56, if I remember correctly. And you have a brand that is so well established that even if Brown Foreman sold it off to, you know, Pernod Ricard, who's a French company and may not have any idea what to do with an American brand like Jack Daniel, they still can't screw it up.
1:19:57 Guy Raz? Right.
1:19:58 Speaker 01 And that's the way that I look at my mission here as it relates to Uncle Nearest, is to build this brand so large and make it so, the name so ubiquitous around the world that no future generation can screw it up. Jack died in, in 1910. We're still talking about him as if he's still alive.
1:20:22 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:20:23 Speaker 01 That's what I want to see for nearest 150 years from now, is for people to be talking about him in, in a manner that you forget he's no longer here. That's the task, that's the goal. And that means I cannot grow this company incrementally at, you know, a few thousand cases a year. I'm not going to be alive that long. So I look at it and think, I am 45. I have no doubt that everything that has happened in my life, whether success or failure, investments that I made that were good, investments that I made that were poor,
1:21:07 Speaker 01 every single aspect of my development up until Uncle Nearest, I believe 100% of it was to prepare me for what I'm doing right now. So I look at this and say, can I go pedal to the metal for the next 35 years? And if I do, where have I built this brand to by the time I transition to the next life?
1:21:30 Guy Raz? That's Fawn Weaver, founder and CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. We first ran the story back in 2021, and the company's distillery near Lynchburg, Tennessee, is expecting more than 350,000 visitors this year. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Catherine Seifer, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, John
1:22:12 Guy Raz? Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Malia Agudelo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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