REPLAY: Building A Billion Dollar Brand with Fawn Weaver

Weaver, the CEO and founder of Uncle Nearest Whiskey, shares her journey of uncovering the legacy of Nearest Green, the first known African American master distiller. She discusses the historical significance of the relationship between Nearest Green and Jack Daniel, the impact of Prohibition on the whiskey industry, and the importance of honoring African American contributions to distilling. Fawn also highlights her efforts to revive Nearest's legacy through her brand, which has become one of the most awarded bourbons in the world. We also gain insight into the journey of building the Uncle Nearest brand, highlighting the challenges faced in a predominantly white industry with centuries of business and multi-generations of operation.  Weaver emphasizes the need for a broader definition of culture, the power of storytelling, and the mindset to overcome entrepreneurship challenges needed to build a legacy.

Connect: @CariChampion @FawnWeaver

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Naked Sports, the podcast where we live at
the intersection of sports, politics, and culture. Our purpose reveal
the common threads that bind them all.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
So what's happening in women's basketball right now is what
we've been trying.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
To get to for almost thirty years.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
From the stadiums where athletes break barriers and set records,
Kamen Quark broke the all time single game assists record.
This is crazy for rookies to be doing.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
To the polls where history is written, and now we
have Kamala Harrison. It feels more like women are sort
of taking what they've always deserved, as opposed to waiting
on somebody to give them what they've deserved.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Our discussions will uncover the vital connections between these realms
and the community we create. In each episode, we'll sit
down with athletes, political analysts, and culture critics, because at
the core of it all, how we see one issue
shines the light on all others. Welcome to Naked Sports.
I'm your Home, Gary Champion. A few years ago I

(01:05):
had the incredible opportunity to meet Fawn Weaver, the visionary
behind Uncle Nearest Whiskey. She welcomed me to her distillery
in Shelbyville, Tennessee, about forty five minutes south of Nashville.
I was there to do a story on the whiskey
that seemed to line the shelves at bars, restaurants, and
more importantly, every house party I attended. This distillery is

(01:27):
nestled on four hundred and thirty five acres of stunning land,
and while words can't fully capture its beauty, let me
just say it's a place that you all must see
for yourself. It's open to the public, so if you
are ever in the area and make sure you stop by. Well.
Today we are unpacking who is the woman behind Uncle

(01:47):
Nearest Whiskey, what's the origin story of this iconic brand.
And as a special treat for our listeners, Bonn has
given away some gems. That's right, free jewelry folks, for
life and for business. So stay tuned because today's podcast
is not just about whiskey. It's about legacy, empowerment and

(02:07):
the ability to think differently in a world that follows
norms and trends. Welcome to Naked Sports.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I am Fawn Weaver, CEO and founder of Uncle NAR's
Premium Whiskey and New York Times best best selling author
of Love and Whiskey. Uncle Nearest is the first known
African American master distiller. And how I learned about it
is it was on the cover of the New York
Times International edition. I was in sync for just for

(02:36):
a few days, and on the cover of it. It's
actually in the cover of my book, Love and Whiskey
is it's this photo of Jack Daniel and to his
immediate right as an African American man. Now I didn't
drink Jack then, I don't drink it now, but I
knew what he looked like. His company has done a
brilliant job at making his face ubiquitous around the world.

(02:56):
And so the moment I saw him, and then I
see this African America and next to them, and I
place it. I guessed that the image was taken sometime
in the nineteenth century, which would make it pretty astounding
that Jack, in the only known photo that he ever took,
would have had an African American man to his right.

(03:16):
The headline on that New York Times story was Jack
Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient help from a slave. So somehow,
with that photo and that headline, the internet went wild
and decided Jack Daniel was a slave owner. He stole
the recipe, he hid the slave. That's the story that

(03:38):
went all over the world. And I'm looking at this
and just as a person who loves history and especially
African American history, I'm looking at this and going, Yo,
if Jack Daniel wanted to hide this man.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
He wouldn't taken hure yet, right.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
And so the question that The New York Times was
really bringing forth was they weren't giving the answer as
much as they were asking a question. And the reason
why they were doing that is because the story had
been reported for quite some time and it was a
part of Jack Daniel's actual history that there was a

(04:16):
white preacher and distiller by the name of Dan Cole
who was the teacher and mentor of Jack Daniel. But
the town of Lynchberg was saying it wasn't actually Dan Cole,
it was an enslaved man on his property. And so
what The New York Times was doing was essentially putting
up a lob to see if there was a way
for someone to prove this Clay rise. And the journalist

(04:37):
he described it as a lob because he said Listen
didn't have all of the resources that it would take
in order to really dive into this story to prove it.
And so I lobbed it up and hoped that someone
else would do it, and sure enough, I was the
one who went ahead and took the ball and finished
the play. But when you look at that story, when

(04:57):
the entire world was looking at and saying, you know,
Jack Daniel stole it, and it's another one of these
instances where African Americans had been stolen from I'm looking
at it. I ordered Jack Daniel's legacy. His biography nears green,
and his boys are mentioned more times than Jack's own family.
And to understand the significance of that is to know

(05:18):
the reporter. The journalist who wrote the biography was essentially
hired by Jack's family to write this biography, even though
he had autonomy as to what got included and they
were not to influence it. They wanted a story of
Jack's life to be told, and so this journalist came

(05:39):
from Alabama to Lynchburg, Tennessee, interviewed all the people who
knew Jack best, all the people who knew his nephew
who took over the distillery before Jack died, and his
great nephews who were overseeing the distillery at that time,
the number of times they would have had to mention
Nearest and his boys for them to be listed in

(05:59):
this book many times. And then you take that and
you couple with the photo. I pretty quickly concluded that
not only was Jack not trying to hide who it
was that was his teacher, he was trying to make
sure America would not be able to wipe him out.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Amazing. I'm really curious when you did the research. And yes,
everyone thought because there is the story of a rasure
of African Americans being a rased in history, and it's true,
it's not wrong. It's actually very true. You found something
totally different just with the research. He wasn't trying to
erase him. In fact, he was. It sounds to me,

(06:40):
and you tell me if I'm incorrect, it sounds to
me that he was honoring a man who really was
was a huge contribution to what he was able to create,
but only what he could do during that time.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
It's absolutely accurate, and I believe that Jack and then
his descendants continued this to make sure that no one
would ever be able to erase Nearest Green and George
Green and Eli Green from their story. So when you
look at what ended up happening is Jack passed away
in nineteen eleven. However, he turned over his distillery in

(07:15):
nineteen oh seven to his nephew Limb, and lim continued
to tell the story of Nears Green and his boys.
He went on record every single time it was asked
what is the difference between Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon.
There's only one thing that distinguishes that other than location,
and that's just taking this traditional bourbon distillate, running it

(07:37):
through sugar maple charcoal to filter it before it goes
into the barrels. Well, Jack's descendants were always very clear
and giving the credit for that process to the Africans
that were living there, to the enslaved people. That's also
something they didn't have to do because we have. What
has happened historically over our four hundred plus years in

(07:58):
this country is because we weren't able to patent, because
we weren't able to trademark. We're really just now figuring
out the things that we invented correct and we're just
now figuring out where we were involved in who we
helped with. And so what's interesting is that when Jack's
great nephews took over the distillery, there was four of them.

(08:20):
They made sure that when they opened up the distillery
for tours for the public, Nears Green's legacy, George Green's
legacy was always a part of those tours, so much
so that Nearest says, descendants that went away to college
would bring their college friends back take them on tours
of Jack Daniel so that they could talk about their ancestor.

(08:41):
It was never hidden. Then, in seventy eight, the last
of Jack's descendants to pass away, Regor Motlow. When he died,
It's almost like the story died with him, because between
seventy eight and seventy nine the story disappeared. So one
of us descendants came back with friends from college and

(09:03):
called her daughter and said, they whitewashed my great great
grandfather out of this story. And so we know the
exact timeframe that had happened, and it happened right after
Jack's descendants stopped having watch over the distillery, Okay, And
so I believe that Jack knew without them overseeing this,

(09:24):
that there was a really good chance that Naris's legacy
would be erased, and he wasn't wrong because if he
hadn't taken the photo the photo, we wouldn't have been
able to prove it.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Do me a favor, do me a favorite. Let's talk
about this photo, because I feel like people might and
I just want to focus in on this photograph, that
photograph that you saw in the International section of the
New York Times that day in Singapore. What what year
was that?

Speaker 3 (09:48):
That was twenty.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Sixteen, What was the year the photo was taken?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
That nineteen oh four?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Nineteen oh four. The conditions of America in nineteen you know,
for would not suggest that a white man who is
as profitable and or as lucrative or well established as
Jack Daniels would take a photo with Uncle Nerest correct.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Well more importantly so that the African American in the
photo we've been able to positively identify as Nearest's son,
George Green. Okay, because Nearest retired and his sons George
and Eli, continued to work alongside Jack.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So George Green it wasn't Nearest city.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
It wasn't nearest. Nearest was passed away by the time
that photo was taken. But the thing that I found
I still find most significant about the photo. It's not
just that George Green is to the right of Jack Daniel.
It's that if you look at the full photo, and
it's why I began Love and Whiskey with that photo
so people could see not the crop version that was

(10:50):
in the New York Times or even the crop version
I have on the cover. When you look at the
full photo, what you will notice is is the center
of the entire photo is around the African American man.
So Jack didn't just have him to his right. He
actually seeded the center position of the entire photograph to

(11:10):
George Green. And the other reason that's important is is
Jack never took another photo with other people his entire life.
There is exactly one photo with Jack Daniel with other
people in it, and he seeded the center position to
an African American man.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
That is powerful. Do you know, Can you tell me
what happened to near screen? How did he pass away?

Speaker 3 (11:31):
We have no idea. So that the US Census is
so interesting and the reason why the archives exist, now
why it was created. So in eighteen ninety a portion
of the census in America was burned in a fire.
It was just an accidental fire. You know buildings would
burn all the time. Then someone in our government made

(11:54):
the decision that if one portion of the census was
burned and destroyed, that all of the census should be
burned and destroyed. So we don't have an eighteen ninety census.
So we know that he was alive in eighteen eighty.
We know he was no longer alive in the census
in nineteen hundred, but we have no way of knowing

(12:14):
if he was still alive in eighteen ninety. And as
I began doing my research, I have him paying pull taxes,
which is, you know, the poll tax thing every time
black people don't vote. I'm like, are you kidding me?
They the poll tax is two dollars at that time
that nearest green and I have him paying poll taxes

(12:34):
every year that he was free up until eighteen eighty four,
And so it is possible he passed away in eighteen
eighty four. It's also possible that he no longer had
to pay the taxes because of how old you would
have been. We don't have any way of knowing, but
eighteen eighty four is the last time we have a
record of him. So that's why the brand Uncle near's

(12:55):
eighteen eighty four. We look at that and say that's
the last year that we believe that he put whiskey
into a barrel for Jack. And we say that because
that's the year Jack moved to the current location for
Jack Daniel Distillery. Nears Green is the only known master
distiller for Jack Daniel Distillery number seven. But that was

(13:15):
a different property than where it is now, Okay, And
so when he moved, that would have been the last
time that Nerros put whiskey in the barrel for Jack
would have been at eighteen eighty four. And that's also
the last year that I show records that he paid
the poll tax.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Pull tax is when you want to vote, you have
to pay a tax. That was also a deterrent for
many African Americans who were free an attacks.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Well absolutely, because white people didn't have to pay the
poll tax. Yeah, we had to pay the poll tax
in two dollars at that time. That meant you made
a decision between putting food on the table for an
entire week. That was a decision you had to make.
And it was so amazing to me because every black person,
every single black person in Lynchburg, Tennessee, paid that poll

(13:57):
tax and they voted. All of Mirris's boys, every single one,
paid that poll tax and voted. Of course, women, his
daughters weren't allowed to vote. That's a whole other conversation.
But the boys all paid the poll taxes and made
sure they voted.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
When we return, we'll talk about how Fond revived the
legacy of Nearest Green and made Uncle Nears a billion
dollar brand back in a moment, welcome back to naked sports.
As far as records go, some historians estimate that Nearest

(14:35):
Green passed away in eighteen ninety. Also, Wikipedia says that
but when he passed away, his son, George took over
the business.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yep, So his son continued the businessm Master Distiller. We
don't have. It's interesting because Jack Daniels has no record,
So so much of what I've had to discover is
outside of their record. And a part of that is
because a lot of people don't understand prohibition. It essentially

(15:06):
killed Jack Daniel Distillery. So prohibition began in Tennessee ten
years before federal prohibition. So Jack Daniel Distillery as we
know it that was here, moved to Saint Louis. They
moved to Saint Louis, they start up operated his nephew
Limbs set up operation there. That entire building burned down.
Who had to build a new Jack Daniel distillery across

(15:27):
the way in Saint Louis. And so the fact that
there's Guinea records, the fact that this photo exists is
because it was about a forty year window of time
that Jack Daniel Distillery did not exist in Lynchburg.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Prohibition please explain master distillery please?

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, absolutely so. Prohibition was an experiment in America that
failed greatly.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
You you.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Had the government trying to regulate people drinking alcohol, and
they had determined that the only way that you could
drink bourbon because we didn't have all the alcohols at
that time, it was basically like it was basically whiskey,
bourbon rye whisky in the East Coast. And they determined
that the only way that you should be able to

(16:16):
get bourbon is what a prescription. And so the only
Burke people that were still making bourbon were the ones
that were doing it for the pharmacies. And I'm like,
let me get this straight. So you knew what was
healthy enough to make it a prescription?

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Tell But and So what ended up happening during prohibition
is alcohol didn't go away, just went in to speak easies.
The mob ran all the alcohol, so they made all
the money and then they paid off the government officials
to keep prohibition going.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
A movie with al Capone or anything about ulture, so
you know what prohibition was. And also the advent of moonshine,
people were making their own.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Well absolutely a lot of people don't even know that's
how NASCAR began. So when you talk about sporting events,
most people have no idea that NASCAR began in Tennessee.
And the reason it was created was to outrun the
revenuers that were chasing after the moonshiners. So the moonshiners
created these soaked up vehicles that would outrun the police

(17:13):
and the revenuers and they would basically had these back
routes through the smoky mountains into North Carolina. So they
would run moonshine between Tennessee and North Carolina with these
really fast cars. That's what became NASCAR.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Wow, I had no idea. A lot of people including me,
thank you, I know, thank you for this education. Okay, yeah, yeah, wow,
that's so powerful. Master Distiller. So and the only reason
why I ask is because these questions are people will
want to know about Uncle Nears So the next time
they buy Uncle Near's eighteen eighty four, they know why
it's eighteen eighty four.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Absolutely and a master distiller. To answer your question, what
that essentially means is that person was over the stillhouse.
It was they were over the entire production of whiskey
making at that particular distillery. And so nears Green we
knew to be the master distiller because Jack's Jack and

(18:07):
his nephew and his great nephews all made sure that
was documented that nears Green was the first master distiller. However,
between that time frame and when Jackie Summers started Surrell
in Brooklyn, New York and became a master distiller I
believe in twenty twelve, between that time, we don't know

(18:30):
of a single other African American master distiller, Wow or
Black master distiller because Jackie is Caribbean, So we.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Don't know of a saint year to what year.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
From eighteen eighty four until twenty twelve, we don't have
record of another master distiller, not because they didn't exist,
but because they weren't given credit.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
So what do you think the relationship was from your
research which you've been able to ascertain what you've been
able to discover, what was the relationship between Jack Daniels
and their screen.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
I still confident that I know what it was because
I've interviewed about one hundred of Nears' descendants. I've spent
time with them. I've gone and pulled documents from six
different states, all the states where he has branches, but
also Jack's family. And when you look at the descendants
and how their descendants were so close and continued throughout

(19:32):
the years, it's very clear that began somewhere, and it
makes the most sense that it predated his son and
Jack's nephews and those relationships that it began with Nears
and Jack. And so you have just to give a
little bit of background. Nears and Jack worked for the
same man. They worked for the same preacher on the

(19:54):
same property. I own that property now, so I have
an intimate understanding and knowledge of it. It was it's
three hundred and thirty eight acres. It's now three thirteen
because they've put roads through and all that stuff, but
it's that three hundred and thirty eight acre property. You
had this preacher in this distiller who had his home.
He married a teetotaler at a very young age. She

(20:14):
was only eighteen years old. So you have that home
on the property. They had what's really amazing, they had
eighteen kids. I think eleven survived, but that woman was
always pregnant.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
So you have good lord, and so you have their home.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
And then if you were to walk through what was
essentially forest area, if you were to walk through the
property for about twenty five thirty minutes, you would arrive
at where his distillery was on the property. But then
if you went about the same amount of time in
the other direction, it's been like a triangle, you would

(20:48):
arrive at his church. And so you had a man
who was keeping these three worlds essentially separate from one another.
His wife didn't want to have any parts of the
distillery whatsoever, the church didn't I And so you have
this distillery that's being run by an African American man
because the white man who actually owns it can't put

(21:09):
his hands on it because of his wife and because
of his church.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Interesting, and so I think.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's a part of where the dynamic was different, is
he was essentially an absentee owner, right because his church
and his wife didn't want him to have any parts
of that distillery, so he just kind of pretended like
it wasn't there. But then nearest Green was making the whiskey. Well,
Jack Daniel comes as a young kid, about seven years old,

(21:35):
as a chore boy. He's the tenth child. His mother
dies of typhus fever seven days after she contracts it,
and he was only four months old. So imagine in
those days, men didn't know how to take care of kids.
This man is left now with ten kids, one that
needs to be wet nurse breastfed by nextdoor neighbor who
has an infant around the same age. And so you

(21:57):
have this man who now has two ten children, including
a four month old. Well, back in those days, the
way that you dealt with that, it wasn't babysitters and nannies.
You went and found somebody else to marry who would
take care of you'll take kids, correct. And so Jack's
father brought in a woman pretty early on, and by

(22:18):
all accounts, she just wasn't fond of Jack. And so
Jack left home at a very early age and began
working as a chore boy for this preacher and distiller
Dan Call and so when we look at Jack, because
of who he became, we automatically assumed that he came
from privilege. But as I began diving into, what I
discovered is he's seven years old. He's living and working

(22:40):
for this family. He's going and fetching water from them
for the well. He's feeding slot to the pigs, he's
milking cows. He's living in the barn a good portion
of the time because they had so many kids, so
many babies, that it was more peaceful to sleep in
the barn with the animals. It's hard for a person

(23:03):
of any color to believe that they are of any
privilege if that's your situation, if that's your circumstance. So
I don't believe that Nearest and Jack ever really saw
each other based on race. I certainly don't think Jack did,
and I don't believe it because he had such a
tough upbringing that there would be no way for him

(23:23):
to feel as though he was above anybody.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Else because of where he was in life, his station
in life.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
His station in life did not allow him to have
any kind of privilege.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
So you believe that they were, what would you how
would you categorize that relationship mentor mentee, teacher, student, teacher,
being nearest, teacher, being nearest, mentor being nearest and over
the years, based on the relationship with Jack and nearest
his son George. And it was interesting because George Green

(23:58):
his granddaughter.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
He raised her. She lived with him until he passed away.
And one of the stories that she shared that's in
love and Whiskey, is Jack's nephew, Lim, who ran the distillery.
He would get drunk and this isn't you know everybody
in town knows this. Lim would get drunk, he'd get
a little bulligern and Miss Helen, George's granddaughter, she would

(24:22):
remember the phone ringing and someone saying, George, can you
please come talk to Lim. Lim didn't respect a single
person when he was drunk, except near his son. So
George would have to go down to the house and
go Lim, you know you can't talk to people like that. Lim,
you know you can't throw stuff like that. The level
of respect you have to have gained for the only

(24:45):
person to be able to talk down the wealthiest man
in town is a black man.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, yeah, because he knew he respected him as what
he came from. And what the work ethic in which
obviously they displayed, and how talented they were were and
did hear you? Decades later, hundreds of years later, you
come along and you find this story, and for whatever reasons,
you're intrigued, and I know the reasons, you just get

(25:12):
this black man is centered. Tell me more about this story.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Listen, I was about to turn forty. You couldn't tell
me a single story up until that point where we
would we could prove that we were there at the
beginning of a ubiquitous American brand. None, you couldn't tell
me a story where we were there at the beginning
of something that had been invented, where we where it

(25:35):
was proven, not that it's said. So you go to Houston, Texas.
You have lou Sille's restaurant. Her descendants have been very
clear in saying Pillsbury stole our recipe of instant biscuits
for her. They kept trying to buy it from her,
she kept saying no, they reverse engineered it, and all
of a sudden they have it. However, they can't prove it. Yeah, right,

(25:56):
So what we've had over the years is a history
of stories that we can't prove and with this photo
and with the accompanying documentation his biography, Jack's biography, and
a few other things. I'm looking at this and going, wait,
we could we actually have a story we can.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Prove h And that was new for us and your
idea when you knew that you could prove this story,
its origin, it's history in African American culture, your idea
was to do what then.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
A book in a movie. So Love and Whiskey was
the first chapters of Love and Whiskey I wrote back
in twenty and sixteen. Now, mind you, my editor co
writer all the rest of that I did. So she
brought in her own researchers. They went back and reinterviewed
every person who I interviewed that was still alive. And
so the structure of it is not what I originally wrote.

(26:50):
But the content is in that I originally wrote back
in October twenty sixteen. It is throughout the book, it's basis,
the formation of the book itself, and so it was
always meant to be a book. But as I began
meeting with Nearess's family and Jack's family, what became clear
is that Nearis's story had been erased once before, and

(27:13):
there was a book, and there was newspaper articles and
magazines that made it clear who he was. So the
fact that it could happen once means it could happen again,
and a book wasn't going to prevent it from happening.
And so the question became, why are we all still
talking about Jack Daniel and Johnny Walker and Jim Bean
to this day? Very simple, we see their bottles everywhere, yep.

(27:36):
So to cement the legacy of Nearest Green, that was
imperative that we made sure that not only did he
have his own bottle to sit alongside Jim, Johnny and Jack,
but it was important that it become very early on
the most awarded bourbon in the world, because we were
saying the level of excellence in which Nearest operated, we're

(27:56):
going to mirror that all these years later. I mean,
this is the sixth year in a row that Uncle
Ners is the most awarded bourbon in the world. That's
not by accident, that's very intentional. I should also clarify
why we refer to him as Uncle Nears for the brand,
but I don't refer to him as Uncle Nears as
a person. As a person. I refer to him as

(28:18):
Nearest Green. That's what he referred to himself as, but
his legal name was Nathan Green. And enslaved people on
the other side of being freed, many of them chose
to abandon the names that were given to them because
so many of them those names were tied to either
their slave owners or children of the slave owners. And

(28:40):
so what you see a lot with enslaved people is
after the Civil War, they no longer use those names anymore.
That was the case with Neares Green. He completely abandoned
using Nathan Green. But more importantly, every legal document from
his children and his grandchildren never said Nathan. Every single
one was Nearest Felled phonetically, so many different ways, but

(29:04):
every single one of them used Nearest And so I
had to begin looking at it to figure out, well,
why would he possibly have abandoned Nathan. And there's two reasons. One,
the largest land, the largest slave owner in the Lynchburg
area was named Nathan Green. That's one reason. The other
reason is the most successful, well known Confederate general in

(29:27):
this area is a man by the name of Nathan
Bedford Forest. And by in this area, I mean he
literally came through here recruiting men for forrest escorts. Well.
He also just happens to be the first Grand Wizard
of the kou Klux Plam. So in this area, the
name Nathan is not great Nathan, it's not awesome. And

(29:49):
so when we were creating the brand, we had a
pretty big challenge because we couldn't name it Nearest Green
because before we identified him as Neares Green and made
him a household name, if you or I had seen
Nearest Green on a whiskey label, it basically is like
the nearest golf the closest golf course. It's not a human,

(30:11):
it's a thing. Nearest Green, correct, It's a thing. And
so we couldn't use Nearest Green until such time as
we identified him as a human being. And so we
really only had one choice of what name to use,
and it was a name that everybody in Lynchberg, white
and black, referred to him as, which is uncle Nears.
And we struggled with that one because historically, when you

(30:33):
would call someone an aunt or an uncle and their
African American, it was really to distinguish good Negro house Negro.
That type of thing is aunt and uncle. In Lynchburg.
In that instance, the most well respected people that were
there were Uncle Nearest, Uncle Jack, and Uncle Felix. Two

(30:54):
of the three were white. Okay, So it wasn't a
matter of good negro. It was a matter it was
a term of endearment. It was more importantly a term
of respect. And so even though we knew we would
have to explain that, we decided we would go with
Uncle Nears. But if you look at the name of
the distillery we announced in twenty eighteen before we started

(31:15):
building it, all the rest of that that was always
named nears Green Distillery. It has never been named Uncle
Neris because we were confident that at some point we
would make Nearest Green's name known around the world where
when people see it on a bottle, they know who
it is. So about a month and a half ago
we released nears Green, Tennessee and whiskey. Because now when

(31:37):
people see that name on a bottle, they know it's all.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Now, that's right. You've built the name. You've built the
Uncle Nearest name in a way in which people are
very familiar and it is a part of our world
in which we live. Congratulations to you on that business model.
So smart, but so divine, but almost just it was
appointed it was God knew that you needed it happened
in every It feels to me very divine. If today,

(32:02):
in this moment, God says, look at this article while
you're in Singapore, have this vision. You want a book,
you want a movie, but then there's just so much
more to it. If everyone listening. I had that wonderful
opportunity to visit and it is a beautiful property that
you have, a beautiful You've created such a beautiful living
legacy to Nearest Green, and it is for the world

(32:23):
to see. But you've also done not even on the
business aspect, because we're going to get into that, because
that's phenomenal, but you, to me, did the unnecessary step
that most people forget to do, and you brought in
his descendants and you said, I want you also to
be a part of this. Now, that to me is
another divine appointment and why I believe there is so

(32:48):
much success because of the intention behind the product. Can
you talk to us about how you were able to
find some of Green's descendants and incorporate a relationship, a
work relationship, a mentorship if you will, to make sure
that they can understand who he is and also benefit
from it. In many ways and perhaps come back and
work for their uncle in there.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah. Yeah, So before we ever sold a bottle of
Uncle Nears, before any were in the marketplace, we had
already begun paying for the college for college scholarships for
every single one of Nearest Green's descendants. We were paying
for all of them to go to college. And so
Nearest Green's great great granddaughter, our Master Blinder, Victoria Ady Butler,

(33:33):
who was phenomenal. I met her attending the graduation of
her niece, who we had just put through college at
the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and she was graduating with honors.
She invited us out, we came out. That's how Victoria
and I met. And so the interesting thing is my

(33:53):
dream was always to have the company full of Green descendants.
But I didn't think through this very well, because if
I had, I wouldn't have paid for them all to
go to college. Because now they're looking at me like,
let me get this straight. So I now I have
my JD, I have my masters, I have my and
you want us to come work in Shelbyville, Tennessee, into

(34:16):
New York and California and Texas. And I've had zero
luck zero. So this is really just Victoria and I
and the rest of the Green family members. They come,
they support, they bring their friends to the distillery, but
they are like, yo, were not come. We're not coming
to the middle of Shelbyville, Tennessee. When we have so

(34:37):
many choices, Yeah, to do whatever we want. However, that
being said, I have not given up hope that over
most time years that we're going to have so many
Green family members working at the distillery and a part
of the family business. I look at this as them
out there sewing their royal oaths.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Right.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
You know, you got one working at a PR firm,
and and diego, you got one down A few of
them actually down in Texas, and it's just really special
to be connected. The head of security for the leadership
at Meta is actually one of Nearest's descendants.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Von Weaver has written a New York Times bestselling book,
Love and Whiskey, and she continues this great legacy of
near a screen. But when we come back, she will
explain how playing offense has kept her head and shoulders
above the rest in this liquor game. But more importantly,
she's given out those gems back in a moment how

(35:42):
do you create this business model that is now a
billion dollar valuation. Congratulations to you and all your hard work,
and your husband and your family members, and your employees
and your investors and everyone who believes in the vision.
Congratulations to you. You deserve to be celebrated. So when
I see you celebrated, it warms my heart because you

(36:02):
deserve that. So thank you for showing us it can
be done. But then now tell us how it was done.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
You know, it's so hard to condense because we did
so much so fast. So I think the easiest way
to say it is is that most of the time,
when people start a business and they go out, they're
focused on their marketing, their sales, their pr They're playing offense, right,
It's about telling the story of their brand. It's about

(36:29):
getting it out there to the public. In our instance,
because our story was smack dab in the middle of
Jack Daniels, which is now owned by another company, we
didn't have any way of knowing if whether or not
they were going to point every rocket, every grenade, and
so we came into the business playing both offense and defense,

(36:50):
and a part of our defense strategy was a little
Tasmanian like, meaning we were going to do so many
things simultaneously that if they threw a grenade over here,
it's cool, we already moved to over here. If they
pointed their rockets to us over there, it's all right,
we already moved over here. And so we went peddled
to the metal in a way that no one has

(37:11):
ever come into this industry of any race, of any gender,
No one has ever come into this industry as hard
as we did. But we did it out of survival.
We did it out of a necessity to both defend
and to play offense at the same time.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
I love it. And so when you say play offense,
what did that look like? Just giving these Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:34):
No, that part of it playing offense is getting out
there and talking about the brand, being in the press
every single day, going out and pitching the distributors. And
because every single market you can't sell to a consumer
if you're in the alcohol business, you have to pick
sell to a distributor. That means the distributor is actually
your buyer. They're the ones too you have to convince.

(37:56):
And so every day my chief brand officer, Kate, we
had one other team member, Steven and I we would
be on planes every day going and pitching distributors across
this country, and so there was no outside of the sabbath.
This has been I have worked six days a week
easily sixteen eighteen hours adays since the beginning, and we

(38:19):
look back on it and realize if we hadn't did that,
if we hadn't done that, we would be dead. Not
because Jack Daniel's parent company would have killed us, but
because this business has a ninety nine point nine to
nine percent failure rate that I mean, they didn't have
to do anything but sit back and do nothing. In
the likelihood that we would have failed was really really high,

(38:42):
and so for us, we had to do so much
to represent, to build this brand, and to build it
with a coalition of everyone. People looking at this would think, okay, well,
it was an African American story. It was built by
an African American woman, so surely the consumer is African Americans.
But that's absolutely not true. In twenty sixteen, we weren't

(39:05):
drinking bourbon. Yeah, like you could, you know, you could
count on a few hands the number of.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
People, and so everybody was drinking Jack though, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
I mean, but actually, but when you looked at even
Jack stats, African Americans didn't even represent a full percentage.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Oh really, why it was just the marketing of it, then,
just the.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Marketing of it, Jack damn African Americans black people as
the Black Americans did not represent a full percentage. Wow
that it was just and so a lot of people
don't understand how difficult it was to build this brand
because we didn't have us as a base.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Wow wow wow wow wow wow.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
So we have to build it to everybody who already
were bourbon consumers.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
What were the black folks drinking?

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Fun not that you have crowd and kognyak.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
I was gonna say, whe're a purple bag at because
the dominoes. We put the dominoes in the purple bag.
This is what you know.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
You don't know why.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
It's just in the house.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
It's so the crown, it's so funny. Because Nerost's descendants
were all drinking crown. I was like, I had never
had crown. And so I said one day because one
of his eldest descendant in Saint Louis, she would hide
the crown when I came over because he felt guilty.
I meant, Antie just let me taste the crown since

(40:27):
I know you hit it. She had it under the sink.
I was like, you don't have to hide it. When
I come around, I tasted it was terrible. I was like, no, wonder,
we have a hard time drinking bourbon. We've been drinking
trash for so long, so we don't know what quality
tastes like. And so we really had to train the

(40:49):
palettes of a lot of women and people of color
to really be able to enjoy the quality of a
pure bourbon.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Do you tell me, I'm just gonna mirror back what
I think I hear and what I've noticed. What a
lot of successful brands, even with individuals you made it.
Your story was so very niche not your audience, but
the story of Nearest Green was so very particular, and
it was the story of this this master de sailor

(41:20):
who created a hand in hand taught Jack Daniels in
many ways, right, would you? Is that fair?

Speaker 3 (41:27):
It absolutely is, I would say the way when we
began this, we were always very clear in saying we
weren't just building a bourbon brand, a whiskey brand. We
were building the next great American brand. Hard stop. Yeah,
we believe that we were creating the great, the next
great American brand that would be embraced by every American
because it's in every brands and it's American story. You

(41:49):
have an African American and a white man walking working
side by side. You have the process that is being
utilized that makes it special as being credit with having
come in with the enslaved people, having been perfected by
Nearest Green and the folks that are there. And so
you're looking at this and saying, what story is more

(42:10):
American than this?

Speaker 1 (42:12):
But fine? In a very polarized world. The reason what
I say about you just in casual I'm like, she
has been able to create a brand, and most people
will think black woman, black brand. But there is the
way in which you tell the story, how you carry yourself,
the way you move, the way you conduct business. It
is something for everyone. But it's also the brand. You
talk about a relationship, Jack and Nearest our friends. They

(42:36):
are mental as you said, mentor mentee. That is something
everybody can get behind because there is the unification in
the world where we are so polarized, especially in a
time when during that time that we're all the same.
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
I think Okay, And when you look at so white
people are still about sixty percent of this country. African
Americans Black Americans thirteen point nine percent. Right, So the
two of us combined are about seventy five percent of
the population of this country. And I'm telling a story
that is uniquely credited with those two people, with those

(43:10):
two groups. So this story, even before it reaches Latinos
and Asians and Native Americans and all the rest of
this we still it's still seventy five percent of this
country that it already covers.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
But I think also it's a story of a white
man embracing a black man in a time when that
was not considered appropriate and or legal and or kosher,
whatever word you want to use. And when you see that,
that to me is hopeful. It's a hopeful story.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
It's a hopeful story. We're looking at someone who was
potentially the first known ally for us, and not just
an ally of nearest and of his son George and
his son Eli, but you're talking about a man who
built a companympany in the nineteenth century in which he
paid people on tenure, not race. That was unheard of,

(44:07):
and so there were I was really fortunate that when
I arrived in Lynchburg, Tennessee, Nears's granddaughter was one hundred
and six. She was still alive. But you also had
all these African American men who had spent their entire
careers working at Jack Daniel Distillery. And when I tell
you, you're talking about men who were working there in the forties,

(44:29):
in the fifties and the sixties, and every memory they
had was found. How was that even possible? And they
would talk about how if they were doing a particular
job and they were paid a certain wage and a
white person came in after them to do that same job,
they were paid more than the white person. That is

(44:50):
unheard of in that day and age. And that continued
throughout the legacy of this distillery, of Jack's des Sendens continue,
they continue to be allies.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
It would be nice to find more of those allies.
It would be nice to tell more of those stories.
It would be nice to have those allies at the forefront.
And in today's America I'm talking is in twenty twenty four,
telling those stories, finding them, highlighting them, celebrating the people
that they mentor and mentee with, work with teacher, student, whatever,
that relationship is we could use so much of that.

(45:25):
Do you ultimately know, because there's so much more than
just for you. I already know that you haven't shared
that with me. There's so much more than just the
whiskey I know that you bought. You guys are working
on a Cognak for my understand.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
Absolutely, we're the largest Cognac vineyard, the largest vineyard owner
of Grand Champagne grapes, which is the Kreme dela Crome
of Cognac grapes in the city of Cognac, France. It
is absolutely the first time an African American has bought
vineyards there. But I also believe it maybe the first
time an American hass period because the process there. You

(45:57):
can't just go into Cognac and buys It doesn't work
that way. If you buy a property and it has
only if you try to buy a property, and this
could be a you know, a twenty million dollar property,
if it has even a half of an acre of vineyards,
the city controls it. The city controls the purchase process.

(46:18):
So you could go in, you could you could actually
place an offer, you could have that offer received and
go into escrow, which by the way, happened with us,
you get into escrow, it gets printed publicly in the
newspapers for people to bid against you, and there is
a single person who oversees the process that makes the
determination of who in that bidding process gets to buy

(46:41):
those vineyards.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Wow, it's no joke and so and understandably so, because
they want to keep it. Krem day la krem if
you will. I'm assuming or well generational.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
So the difference between cognac and other spirits is that
in cognac, the majority of cognac is not made by
the house. As we know, Hennessy only makes about two
percent of their own product. You have all of these
generational farmers and distillers, small family businesses that have been
doing this for twenty generations, for all the big guys

(47:15):
for Remy, for Martel, for Crevasier, and for Hennessy. So
when they're looking at it, they are looking at it
and saying, who's going to take care of these vineyards
the best and who is going to protect this for
generations to come? So smart and my mindset is so
focused on generations to come that they were comfortable and

(47:38):
when you think about it Americans in general, that's usually
not how we think, which is why I think Americans
have not been able to buy there before, because we
come in there and we're thinking about this generation, what
we can build in this generation. And I came in
and I shared the story, and I was focused on
how I'm going to keep those farmers and those distillers

(47:58):
working for the next twenty generations. My pitch was completely different,
but my pitch was from the heart, and they approved
it and we bought that property. So it's not named
Uncle Ners, but Uncle Nears Inc. Does own now that.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
French company and the name of the company not sharing it.
Get it? When do we get this year?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
In a wait, you'll begin hearing about it toward the
end of spring.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Okay, here, all right, I'm fine, I'm patient, I'm fine.
I'm here. I'm here to support and talk about all
the time. Yes, okay. So then I also, though, believe
on that there is still more beyond that.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Oh well, we already bought a vodka company that releases.
We completely have completed the rebranding of that that goes
back into the market next year as well. So Uncle
Near's Inc. Will go from being a single whiskey brand
to being a portfolio company that owns a whiskey company,
a bourbon company, that owns a vodka company, and that

(48:58):
owns a cognac company. The only we'll be missing as tequila.
And I'm not mad about that.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
I'm not mad about that we got enough. What do
you feel, Sally? I also feel not that it wouldn't matter,
if it would be wonderful to embrace, but how do
you feel? And I do know that there was some
pushback when you talked about other brands or stars or
celebrities aligning and creating their own, you know, their own
version of a kognak and or bourbon or tequila. What

(49:25):
was your philosophy on that You said you weren't necessarily
worried about that space because it was a different brand philosophy.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
I don't worry about anybody so this thing. So I So,
if you've ever spent any time around Greg Popovich, I
am the school of Greg Popovich. And players would always
come to the Spurs and they you know, come to
and if they weren't a part of the Spurs poultry
yet and they got traded in or whatever, and they
look at these scouting reports and they're like, where's the

(49:52):
scouting report? It's a page long, and Pop's philosophy was always,
if you do your job, you don't have to worry
about what they do. You do your job with excellence,
and so I don't care if it's a celebrity and
not a celebrity have. I come from a school of
thought where if we do our job, it doesn't matter

(50:13):
who else is in the industry. So I have every
celebrity that has come in, if they've reached into me
and asked for advice, I've given it to them. The
number of celebrities and they're people who have reached into
me over the years, but they reach into me wanting
to do some type of partnership, and every time it's
a no for me. And the reason it's a no

(50:34):
for me is my focus is Nearest. I don't want
a single distraction and I want Nearest to be that star. Well,
the moment a celebrity comes in, even if they're just
an investor, and their name is attached. So if you
look at it, Sincora right. Sincoro has always had five owners,

(50:55):
the husband and wife couple that own the Boston Celtics,
and the husband and wife owners that own another basketball team.
And then you had Jordan right. Jordan has never run it.
Jordan has never really been involved in it other than
he's one of five. That's why it's called Sinkoro. There
were always five equal partners. Who do we know from Cincoro?

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Jordan right?

Speaker 3 (51:18):
And so it rises and falls on Jordan. Lobos tequila
that came out and the person who founded it. I
believe this, Diego his grandfather I think created Lobos in Mexico,
and it's got this amazing story to it. None of
us know that story. We know it's Lebron's to kill it.

(51:42):
Here's the thing. Lebron drinks red wine all the time.
Barn lies the problem, right, Yeah, Lebron wins a championship,
he's going and he's drinking a bottle of red wine.
If he wins a big game, he's drinking a bottle
of red wine. And so the challenge with celebrities being
connected to spirit brands is that if that is not

(52:05):
what they are investing their time and energy into, not
just posting a social media post every six weeks or
eight weeks or whatever the agreement says, but they're really
in there creatively helping to run the business. The very
few Spirit brands that have worked that had celebrity faces.

(52:26):
When you look at them, every single one of them
put their own careers on hold and began working for
that company. If you look at Ryan Reynolds, he did
aviation and Deadpoole, and he used Deadpoole to sell aviation products,
and he used aviation to sell But you couldn't go
around this country and not see Ryan Reynolds on the

(52:47):
side of a billboard. But he was truly the chief
creative officer those commercials, all that social media stuff Ryan
was doing that you had. George Crony just went back
to the red carpet in Venice, right, it was the
whole big deal. It's his first time at the Venice
Film Festival in the last decade, all this fanfare, Well,
what happened the last decade? It was building gotta migos

(53:10):
and so you take the rock with Tearamana. He was
selling tequila before he had a brand, meaning he had
been building it up on his social media. He was
using tequila instead of milk for his corn flakes.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Like right, every one of his cheap mails, he'd always
have Teamana right there. We'd sit there and watch always.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
And so what most of the celebrities that are coming
into the Spirit's industry don't understand is you actually have
to be a part of the business. You can't just
take a few photos and do some you know, social
media posts and a commercial or billboard here or there.
The Spirits consumer is not moved by that, not for

(53:52):
any real period of time.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Was your intention, and obviously I mean initially because it changes, right,
It's almost like a TV show what it starts out
to be and ends up being something totally different. What
was your intention to create a brand that would sit
in the culture, and I'm talking about the black culture specifically,
that would sit and represent something for the culture.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
No, there's no way for that to be a plan.
The culture wasn't drinking bourbon. So I created it it
for me. I wanted to create the next great American brand, Hardstock,
and you cannot look at America and not see the
influence of the culture. It's impossible for something to be

(54:37):
a great American brand and the culture not be a
huge part of that.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
And that isn't clear. When you say the culture, you
mean the African American culture. Everything I mean what you
mean culture.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
So it's really funny I was speaking at Jordan and
Jordan Brands and they said, you know, we keep hearing
about the culture of the culture. We know the culture
assumes a lot. Can you define for me the culture.
It was the first time I ever had the question asked,
and the best way I could describe the culture. I
can't say it's black Americans are African American because I

(55:09):
don't think there's anybody in this world that would not
say that. Jlo and Eminem are a part of the culture,
very absolutely a part of the culture. I define the
culture is everybody who is moved and influenced by hip
hop and afrobeats, meaning they're on two and four. So
this is the best way to explain this. When Barry Gordy,

(55:32):
what made him so successful in Motown is he realized
that the culture this is Black America and everybody we
hang around, Everybody that hangs around us dances on two
and four, claps on two and four, all of ours.
You have friends on shore that are not black, but
they have a similar rhythm to you because they've been

(55:54):
around you a long time. Sure those people, Barry Gordy understood,
they're all on two and four. Okay, now you've got
American bandstand over here, they're all clapping and dancing all
one in three. So what Barry Gordy figured out is
if I can create music that hits one, two, three,
and four, I bring black people and white people to
the dance floor. But everybody that's on that two and four,

(56:17):
that's our culture. It's all been influenced by us. It's
all afrobeat. It started with our music. It's I think
Sidney Poitier has the best line ever in Guest Who's
Coming to Dinner where the Tracy Spencer is trying to
understand why black people have more rhythm than white people,
and Sidney Poitier's response was, you do the watch to see.

(56:41):
We are the watch two see. So every person who's
a part of that I consider a part of the culture.
I don't think we can limit the culture to just
us as African Americans are Black Americans, because you go
into any hip hop concert, any hip hop concert.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Everybody's there. But you're saying the culture is to what
I'm trying to understand is the answer. So you're saying
we are the culture, but everyone is a part of
the culture. We create the culture.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
I am saying that African Americans as a general rule,
those of us and not just African Americans Black Americans.
We have created the culture, but we are no longer
the full entirety of the culture because you're influenced so
many that they've come into it. So when we look
at the culture now, we will look at all these

(57:31):
people and absolutely say they are part of the culture
that aren't necessarily African American. I'll look at DJ Khalt.
You cannot pay me to believe DJ Khalid at a
part of the culture.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Well, he's influenced by the culture. His music is influenced
by the culture, and now he is a part of
the culture.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
J Kalid is a part of the culture. He's a
part of what moves the culture. And he's not African American,
he's not Black American, but he was so influenced by
it that he's now part of it. So my whole
my point here is is that the culture has expanded
to include people that have been moved by.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Us, and you've created something that incorporates them as well.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Everybody, like literally everybody. You come to Nears Green Distillery
on any given day, you go see everybody under the sun.
But I'm gonna tell you. You will see a group of
people on one side, we have a bar. We have
the world's longest bars at Nears Green Distillery and on isside. Saturdays,

(58:35):
on any given that Saturday, we'll have a DJ. The
DJ will be playing wobble. You will have one group
of people on the dance floor wobbling. You will have
another group of people same song line dancing. They're being
influenced by the culture. And so I don't look at

(58:57):
those people and say they're part of the culture. Absolutely not,
But they are now influenced by it. They do have
a curiosity about it and they want to embrace it.
And so for us, when I look at the culture,
I want to make sure that the culture is not
so exclusive that we actually make the culture go away,
because over time we haven't included it. But if again,

(59:21):
let's go back to our population, thirteen point nine percent,
are we saying the culture is limited to thirteen point
nine percent of the not absolutely not? So then the
question who else is included in the c culture? So
the way I define it is the people that are
on too and floor.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, that's that's why you define it.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
People who are.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Onto enforcement, people are on I think that the through line, though,
is not too far off. The through line is that
we have we are always a part of the culture.
We create the culture, and we are inclusive of the culture.
We are the wat to see, we are the what,
we are the wa too.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
We are the way to sea so Lo where it
all begins. Yes, so it all even though we now
have so many people that we have influenced from. And
that's not just in America, that's around the world. You
go everywhere. You have reinfluenced the Backstreet Boys and in
c who then country.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
All the rock and roll, you go down the lit absolutely, but.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
When you think of some of the biggest music now
is K pop pop directly influenced by Backstreet Boys, in Sync,
that whole boy band thing, and those boy bands were
directly influenced by the culture.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Yes, correct, I absolutely agree with that. Okay, sorry, before
I let you go, I want to talk about the
book because I know that you just said I feel
that there's a movie coming. But this book, people, it's
a great Christmas gift. You can buy a package. You
can buy a book as well as I get some
Uncle Nearest whiskey. That's a great package. That's a perfect
package to have this whiskey and then understand the history

(01:00:57):
behind it. Love and whiskey is what fond for people
who will purchase it. You can get it anywhere on Amazon,
wherever you buy your books. Go out and get it.
Please to what is it? What is the goal? When
people read that? What would you like them to walk
away with?

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
I think the subtitle almost tells it all, which is
the remarkable true story of Jack Daniel, his master distiller
nears Green and the improbable rise of Uncle Nears This story,
this book, it tells all those things. So people who
read it and they're looking for an incredible business book,
This thing sat on the New York Times bestseller list

(01:01:33):
on the business side for thirteen weeks and on the
nonfiction side hardcover for five weeks. And so when you
look at who it's appealing to, one of the things
I've been so fascinated with is most men read it
in two days. It's been and I kept seeing it
on social media so much that I finally DMed one

(01:01:56):
person who had posted it, and I said, can you
tell me what it is? The two day thing? And
he said, because what you're doing is so unbelievable, we
know you're still living, so we know nobody killed you
in this process, but we can't put it down till
we get to the end to figure out how did
you get to that gautlet? And so you get the

(01:02:17):
unfiltered version of how this company was built, but you
also get the unfiltered version of how Jack Daniel became
who he was, how Nearest Green became who he was,
and why we're still talking about both of them.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
And that is it? And is so shall it be done?
What a great gift? That's a gift we need to
give for everybody for the holidays. Like I feel like
that's that's it makes no perfect sense. It's the only
thing to give up, it's the only.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Thing to I agree. Women are devouring it, and I
knew that women would devour it. But I'm especially proud
that men are reading it as quickly as women are,
because it's it's very rare for there to be a
book that men and women are equally touched by.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
What keeps you up at night?

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Nothing? I sleep? Real, well, what are.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Your goals after you finish creating this huge dynasty that
you've already created and are continuing to pour into. Is
there another industry you'd like to delve into.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Absolutely not. I'll spend all of my days building in
this industry because when you look at the spirit conglomerates
around the world, they've been doing this for generations, and
so it will take me an entire generation just to
get this to a place that can even really truly
compete with these spirit conglomerates that have been doing this
for generations. So no, the spirits industry has me for

(01:03:38):
every breath that I'm here. But you will see the
Cognac Company rise to be something extraordinary and go toe
to toe with all the other big cognac houses that
are out there. You will see the same thing from
the vodka company across the board. You will begin to
see my fingerprint in every single part of this spirit's

(01:03:59):
industry street. And that'll take for me the better part
of the next twenty five years. And after that, I
just want to be chairman of the board and just
kind of chill. I don't know, chill.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah, you deserve that. You deserve that when you are
presented with the problem, How's what's the first thing you
do when you when you begin to turn to solution, orient.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Positively, pray, say it again, pause and pray, Pause and pray,
Pause and pray, And it's probably the order is probably pause,
bring my breath to a control place of calm, pray.
Because I'm always looking for solutions when problems, when challenges

(01:04:40):
come to me. I am a believer that every problem,
every challenge, is essentially the shell of an opportunity. But
you've got to get through the shell to get to
the opportunity. The question becomes how long do you spend
on the shell? And so for me, I'm always trying
to get to the opportunity at the middle of it

(01:05:02):
as quickly as I possibly can, so I do not
waste my time or breadth on the shell.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
And when you say you pause and praise the prayer, God,
lead me, show me, give me the solution. What is it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
No, it's no particular prayer. It's just a continual conversation.
And it's usually I will pause and it's whatever the
conversation is, because the thing is that I'm talking to
God all day long, and so the pause is more
so for Him to be able to share with me
what direction to go in next than it is for

(01:05:34):
anything else. I like shortcuts. Yeah, who saying so if
he don't give me a shortcut. I want to hear
it quick fasten, in a hurry.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
When you look back over your life and from the
moment you read the article to where you are today,
obviously you're in continual praise and gratefulness, but you also
know that he gave this to you. It is so
beautiful to watch the celebration of black women, and I

(01:06:06):
think that oftentimes there is this narrative that we aren't celebrated.
But if we take a moment to pause and pray
and to acknowledge, we see more of it than we
really think we do. And so I thank you today
for me for one giving me encouragement, but two reminded

(01:06:26):
me that we are celebrated and we are winning in
a world that may make us feel some times, especially
after the election. You put a post up, and I
think that people may not have received it the way
in which your intention was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
And I understood, Oh they did ninety nine percent? Did
I didn't get I didn't get negative responsiblity that I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
I'm glad. I'm glad because I felt like people were
pushing back. Maybe that was a private conversation, but I
was like, I understand what she's saying. And I love that.
I love what you said because you're like, look, no
matter what, he's still in the throne.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Y'all, this is gonna happen every four years, our every
three Yes, you have a country in which people have
different world views. People got so upset after that election,
like Jesus died again. Okay, so we need to start
there at understanding that she got further to the White

(01:07:19):
House than any person. When you look at side by
side how her performance was compared to Trump in twenty
six in twenty twenty, wipe the floor with them. If
you look at her performance compared to Hillary Clinton's performance,
she I think she got four million more votes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Mean she Hillary or she no, Kamala.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Got four I think it's four million more votes than
Hillary did. And she got like six million more votes
than Trump did on the last election.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
And Hillary won the popular vote, more people voted for her.
It was the electoral college that stopped the wind. I
hear what you're saying. What I took from your message
was and everyone could receive it because there was so
much pain, and it reminded us many of us. I'm
not speaking for all black women but it reminded them
of their personal experience, primarily at work, I would think,

(01:08:11):
But the reality was, we have to dust ourselves off,
figure this out and get back to not focusing on
the shell. Let's get back to figuring out the solution.
But most importantly, what did our ancestors go through. I'm
speaking from somebody who was broken. I'm like, my ancestors
would be embarrassed.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Listen, they would, they would beat our tails. Yes, going on,
They're like, you do realize we came here in change. Well,
even if we just go back, even if we just
go back to the sixties, y'all, we could be legally
fire hoes. So we have to understand Number one, the

(01:08:51):
progress has been that has been made has been great,
and you cannot ripe and a peach with a blowtorch.
Every four years, we keep trying to take a blow
torch to this peach called America. We are still in
our infancy. You try, I mean you travel the world
like I do. There's literally bottles of cognac older than

(01:09:11):
our entire country. Correct, So we have to remember every
four years. Democracy is working as it's supposed to. But
that means that you have people from different plate backgrounds,
different worldviews that are not going to agree with your worldview.
It's going to happen every four years. And if we
allow ourselves to be rocked every four years like people

(01:09:35):
were rocked in this election, come on.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Now, we'd be we would be exhausted, we couldn't continue.
And that's not what we're built from. It's not in
our DNA and it's not our cellular memory. And I
am aware of that. And I listened when you said that.
I was like, get I get it. Listen, But you know,
I think, and I'll be fair because I understand the hurt,
like we've all been heard before. But the reality is,

(01:09:58):
what do we do? Give this pain some per and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Remember absolutely, And it's here's the thing. It's okay to
be hurt, it's pay to grief, but move move like
what our ancestors did to get us to this place.
It is disrespectful for them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
It is this.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Ground.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
It is just they.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
I mean, every when an African American doesn't show up
to vote, if it is so annoying to me, because
knowing what our ancestors went through to get us the
right to vote, not voting to me is absolutely absurd
because this was not something that was given to us. Yes,
this is something that was fought for with blood.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
You talked about poll tax at the very beginning of
this podcast, and it's just a reminder as we wrap
this podcast, it's disrespectful. It really truly is if we
don't go out there and vote and continue to fight
in whatever way that looks for you, for me, whatever
the mission is. I when I think about how successful
you've been in business, which is why I wanted to

(01:11:07):
talk to you, your mindset is different. This is why
everybody doesn't have a billion dollar corporation right so as
I everyone doesn't have it. But if we could incorporate that,
if we could incorporate that mindset, what is your message?
What is your message? Not just to black women, but
what is your message when you go into any process?

(01:11:31):
Your business philosophy is what it is? There an elevator
pitch to your business philosophy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
No, but stop getting stuck on the challenges. Stop focusing
on the challenges the way that I describe it. Because
people love to ask me the same question, what has
been your biggest challenge? And I always respond to them
that's like asking you Sidney with Laughlin, which hurdle is
the most challenging hurdle. What the hell don't You're a hurdler,

(01:11:58):
so every hurdle is. My job is to keep the pace,
to know the rhythm in between those hurdles. That is
my job. So as an entrepreneur, you can't get stuck
on the challenges. Those are simply hurdles. They're supposed to
be there if you want to be if you want

(01:12:18):
to be a Shakatte Carrie Richardson or a Noah Alliles
or any of those folks, don't.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Be an entrepreneur. Yep, your track will not be clear.
It won't, but that's in life. You know, I needed
this in my spirit. Thank you for that. Don't get
stuck on the challenge, don't don't look at the shell.
Let's get to the middle of it. Let's get to
the solution. Let's figure it out quick. It changes your
whole philosophy. Not fine. I'm telling you, I don't know

(01:12:44):
by anybody else, but this is for me. This word
was for me. You always have a word, but this
was for me. And we so need to hear that.
We need to hear that. We need not when people
were you know, we we have different people in our lives.
And it's a mindset that's some people can't adopt. But
once you show them it can be done.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
It can be done. I tell people all the time,
I deal with challenges every day that have taken entrepreneurs
out if they had to deal with it one time
and a five year window, and I deal with them
every day. And for me, when I look at something
and there's a challenge that comes at me, I don't

(01:13:23):
have time to sit there and focus on that challenge.
I've got to find the solution as quickly as possible.
And if I feel stalemate in that solution, guess what,
I'm working on something else that I already know the
solution for. Because when that happens, it's a little bit
like if you're looking for if you're looking for keys,
you can't find the keys. You can't find the keys,

(01:13:44):
you finally stop looking for the keys, and all of
a sudden keys are right in front of you. That's
the same way it is with challenges. If you keep
looking at the challenges, you missed the solution.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
I want to thank Fann Weaver for being our guest
this week on Naked Sport. Words truly appreciate how candid
she is, and more importantly, the way in which she
only looks for solutions. I hope you all enjoyed this
edition of Naked Sports. Talk to y'all later Naked Sports
written and executive produced by me Carrie Champion, produced by

(01:14:19):
Jock Vice Thomas, sound Design and mastered by Dwayne Crawford.
Associate producer Olubusayl Shabby. Naked Sports is a part of
the Black Effect podcast Network in iHeartMedia