September 13, 2024 • 35 mins
The Breakfast Club Sits Down With Fawn Weaver To Discuss Building A Black-Owned Liquor Empire, And The Story Of Nearest Green. Listen For More!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club
Morning everybody. It's the j Envy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We are the Breakfast Club. La La Rosa is feeling
in for Jesson. We got a special guest in the building.
We have Fawn Weaver.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome the book. Here you guys, somebody, Okay, here we go,
there you go four wea Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
New book out now called Love and Whiskey, The Remarkable
story of Jack Daniel, his Master Distiller Nearest Green and
the Improbable Rise.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Of Uncle Neris. How are you feeling this morning? Dollars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
This has to be here?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
What do you Why did you call the rise of
Uncle Nearest improbable? Because when you was up here with
maybe a couple years ago.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Seven years ago, it's improbable because no black person, no
person of color, and no woman has ever succeeded in
this industry ever, not as a founder. And so it's
improbable because I shouldn't be here, This Uncle Nearest should
not be where it is when you look at it.
(01:12):
Most come into an industry, and even if you come
into an industry like the whiskey industry where it's ninety five,
one hundred percent dominated by white men. You come in
and you already know that you're going to have to
play offense and everybody's going to ignore you. Well I
had to come in play defense. I was telling a
story in the middle of what was then a twenty
(01:33):
four billion dollar company, and I was going right in
the middle of it and saying, I'm going to add
Nearest Green to your story. That put a lot of
arrows at me. Well, really put a lot of grenades
on me.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
But it felt like when you all was here telling
the story seven years ago, it was almost like, no,
Uncle Nears is actually the beginning, yeah, of the story.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It was like now bringing everybody back home.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That's what it felt like to me, because people might
not know what you're talking about because you're seven years
old with seven years when you came up here. So
break down what Uncle Nearest is it and explain what
Charlamage is talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It all right, it's got the bottle, So this is
the bottle. So this is Uncle Nearre's premium whiskey. It
is the most awarded bourbon of the last five years
in a row worldwide. It's about to be six. That
also is improbable because we're coming into an industry that's
been dominated by the same people for hundreds of years,
and it became the fastest growing still is bourbon or
(02:26):
American whiskey in US history. And Uncle Nearest is the
first known African American master distiller. His name is Neares Green.
His legal name was Nathan, but we don't use Nathan
because he didn't use Nathan. Any document on him that
he was involved in post slavery, he didn't use Nathan,
which it was very common if you were given a
name that after you were free, if you didn't like
(02:49):
the name, you changed the name. So he went by Nearest.
His kids called him Nears, his grand kits called him Nears,
So we call him Nearest Green. But now, when this
came out, it was the first time an African American
was ever commemorated on a spirit bottle. And when we
opened Nearest Green Distillery, it was the first time ever
that a distillery had been named after an African American.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now, seven years ago, you explained it a lot. What
got you into doing this with people that don't remember
the interview.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
When you get yeah, yeah, it really was cementing the
legacy of Nares Green. So my mother's a teetotler, so
she said she really wished he made lemonade, and quite frankly,
if he had made jeans or like Lucille's down in Houston.
I don't know if you all have been down there,
but Lucille's down in Houston. Her family argues, her descendants
argue that Pillsbury is using her recipe, that they reverse
(03:39):
engineered it because she refused to sell it to them,
And so you have those types of stories that have
been in American history forever. Now we actually had a
company that was willing to admit that they're founding that
there was an African American, an enslave man that would
was at least the teacher of Jack Daniel. And then
(04:02):
after that became, after he was free, became the first
master distiller.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Can you break down the whole Jack Daniels of it all?
Everybody knows Jack Daniel, YEA, yeah, down.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Like why he's.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Because Nearest Green was the teacher of Jack Daniel. He
was a teacher, He was the mentor before this story
came out, before I did the research and brought the
researchers together, Jack Daniels, the company didn't realize that Distillery
number seven ever existed. Their records only went back so far,
and so they're looking at it and looking at their distillery number.
(04:34):
I said, no, no, no, you got to take that back.
Old number seven was the actual distillery and Nearest Green
is the only known master distiller for Distillery number seven.
So when I came to this story, the very first
thing that I did was by that original property where
Distillery number seven was, where Jack grew up, the three
hundred and thirteen acres above Lynchburg, Tennessee. Because that allowed
(04:56):
me to start piecing the story together and and to
be able to I mean, coming into a story that
is so iconic. Jack Daniels is an ubiquitous brand around
the world, and I was coming in and saying, not
only was an African American there at the beginning of it,
but Jack treated him fairly. And you're talking about the
south Lynchburg, Tennessee, and for a person to be treated
(05:21):
as an equal that was a black person, that was
unheard of. But here was this this So this is
in the nineteenth century, so everywhere from about fifty six,
eighteen fifty six into until Jack died in nineteen ten.
Because I know what prohibition too, because a lot of
people will hear this story and say, who if he
treated him nicely, why did you have to go back
and say, check out the stillary number seven? But were prohibition,
(05:43):
there were so many different things that happened where they
made it where like after the like with when Harlem
Renaissance came along, and like just the political powers that
black people couldn't say, oh I did that, well in
this instance it was a little different. So in this
instance during prohibition, prohibition was twenty years in our country
nineteen twenty years, but in Tennessee it was thirty. They
(06:03):
started ten years before, so most people don't know that
Jack Daniels moved to the loop. Jack Daniels was in
Saint Louis for ten years, gotcha, and leading up to prohibition.
So on the other side of prohibition, it reopens, but
it's in so much trouble. Jack's nephew is in trouble.
So they eventually had to sell it to another company.
It's under that company's watch, gotcha that the story disappeared,
(06:26):
But under Jack and his descendants they made sure. So
when you look at this photo. The reason why I
started this book with this photo is Jack Daniel didn't
just put a black man to his right in nineteen
oh four, he seated the entire center position of the
photo to the black man. So that was Jack's way
of saying, America's gonna try to write you out. I'm
not gonna allow him to wow. And then his biography
(06:49):
written in nineteen sixty seven, high to the civil rights era,
and you have Nears and his boys mentioned more times
than Jack and Jack's own family. And so you knew
that Jack wanted us to know. So not only was
he here at the beginning, don't ever forget it. And
so that's the reason why the story mattered to me.
If this was another one of the stories where African
(07:10):
Americans were done wrong and we were like pushed to
the side, this story would have had no interest to me.
We have enough of those stories. Yeah. What interested me
about this story is I felt as though it was
a story that we may have been treated right, and
I wanted to prove it if it was true, because
if we don't have any hope, like if every story
we hear, we don't have anything to go toward, If
(07:32):
every single story lacks hope, then we just walk around
here thinking, well, it's always been terrible, It's always going
to be terrible. But if every generation we can find
those glimmers of hope that move us forward, then we
know where we're going.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Well, got you into spirits.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Nares Green so cementing his legacy originally book movie, right,
super simple. But if I were to, well, you all
in this room, you might know. But if I go
in and I have a room, and I have a
thousand people in that room, and I'm talking to them
and I say, how many people saw Hidden Figures? Ninety
nine percent of the room hands up right? If I said,
(08:09):
name for me the three women who were the hidden figures,
played by Taraji p Henson, Otavia Spencer and Janelle Monnet,
you were the first person to ever sot why because.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
My daughter wants to be an astronaut.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That's why counted in the story. Because he always has
this wealth of information. That's but in a room like that,
nobody can never name. So we all walk into a
movie theater and we walk out remembering the same people
we knew before we went in. And so if we
wanted to make sure that this story one hundred years
from now, someone wasn't having to uncover it again. Then
(08:49):
we had to do with Johnny Walker, Jim Bean and
Jack Daniel. Why why do we all know who those
people are because we're watching them every time we go
into a bar, we see that.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I mean, that's how I feel about Uncle Nears now,
because I'm walking through the airport and i see big
Uncle Nera's signs and I'm just like, oh wow, I
wanted to ask you, like, the fastest growing whiskey in
history US history, right, You've been named on the fours
listen is the richest self made woman in America for
tween twenty four. Uncle Nera's has a one point one
billion dollar valuation. What do you contribute to success? Because
(09:23):
you know, we live in the era of everybody want
to be an entreprene everybody want to be a boss.
You actually did it in a very successful way. What
do you contribute to success?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I contributed it to one real, real simple thing, God,
That's right. So a lot of people they want to
write God out of the story of alcohol because during
Prohibition the Temperance movement decided to tell people that the
Bible said that alcohol was wrong. Bible never says it.
I would love to go toe for toe to toe
(09:52):
with any pastor that claims it. There is not a
single scripture that it ever says it. What it talks
about is drunkenness. Right, So everything in moderation, including alcohol.
But the foundation of this company, the foundation of Uncle Nears,
it's God. It is doing what we believe we were
purposed to do, which is cement the legacy of Nears Green.
(10:14):
But also to show how you can come, how our group,
women and people of color can come into an industry
that has always locked us out and not only opened
the door, but opened the door for everyone to come
right behind us. When we came into the industry in
twenty and seventeen, the entire industry about ninety percent of
(10:35):
the alcohol. Six spirit conglomerates they run everything, Diageo, LVMH, Bacardi.
Every time y'all have an alcohol in it, it's mostly
one of those. Well, there were no women. It was
all every single one of them founded by, owned, by
led by white men. When we came in, then Uncle
Nearest began to have such a level of success that
(10:55):
we weren't supposed to. That all their boardrooms, the conversations
were about us as much as it was about their
own company, and they started trying to reverse engineer their success,
and they realized, wait a minute, this country is fifty
percent women. If there are no women in these rooms
where the decisions are being made, we're missing a huge
part of the buying population. So all of a sudden,
(11:17):
three of the women of the six spear conglomber I
mean three of the six spear colombers all had women CEOs.
What was your fight like? Because I used to work
with a Sequila brain and we worked a lot with
the distributors and having that relationship, like the people who
take it to those bars and we see it is important.
What was your fight like in the beginning, just trying
to make distributors like make it where they think it's
(11:38):
important because you were like, you were kind of like
a unicorn in the space. Yeah. So going back to
your question, that's probably the smartest thing that we did
coming out the gate. Number one. I didn't go with
one distributor, the largest distributor in this country asked to
take us national. I said absolutely not. I'll give you
eleven states. And they're like, it's either all or nothing,
(12:01):
and I said, well, that's the easiest decision I've ever made.
It's nothing because nobody puts the baby in the corner.
And I've seen every black brand that come before me
sit in a corner, and I have to believe it's
catch and Keell, it doesn't make sense. We can't keep
saying that there's not a market for us, And so
then we have to ask the question of if the
buyers want it, if the consumers want it, then why
(12:24):
don't they get it? And so I determined it was
the distributor tier. So I told the team number one,
I want to be in all fifty states within the
first two years, which we did unheard of. But the
other thing was I built a distributor network of seventeen distributors.
That's so smart. So I could say, hey, California, why
are you being outsold by Georgia New York? Why are
(12:45):
you being outsold by Tennessee DC. Why in the world
are you being outsold by Alabama? Like I can literally
it gets them going. But also, and this goes back
to your question, is I think the smartest thing that
we did, beside having seventeen distributors, where we could do
it that way, As I told the team, if we
(13:05):
do not hit our goals. Distributors cannot be the reason
because everyone complained about distributors. Fifty is going through right now,
puff through his lawsuit. Jay did it with his Everyone
complains about the distributors. I said, they will not be
the reason we don't succeed. So I went to every
distributor and I said, I have no expectation from you
that except that you will be a high price FedEx.
(13:28):
My team will build it. I will be on the
ground every single day. But there will come a day
where I will let you know when I do expect
you to work. But we did all the work for
like the first four and a half years, and the
fifth year, I said, now is the time I need you.
I need you. And so by then we had proved ourselves.
(13:49):
Nobody had us in a corner, nobody could put us
in a corner, and we had proved ourselves to be
valuable enough to them that they would then invest in us.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I saw for the book that you interviews some people
that were one hundred and six years old.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Nearess's granddaughter was still alive.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
When nearest his granddaughter was alive, and Jack's great niece
was alive. She died at one oh four and nearest
his granddaughter died at one o eight. Did they drink whiskey?
So here's the deal is. You will find in that
book a lot of the African American elders that I
interviewed were ninety ninety five and so yeah, whiskey might.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Be the key man.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
You know, when you're down South, it's crazy right because
they eat everything they say you're not supposed to eat.
Her South Carolina eat everything you're not supposed to eat.
It's me and they drink kanyak every day or whiskey
every day.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That's me, you know what I'm saying. Bisky every day
every day. But it's a moderation. It's a moderation. Listen,
if you had poorn to glass, I'd be drinking and
it's like ten o'clock in the morning. You no, I'm good.
I'm good. But the thing is is that I don't
ever drink to a point of being tipsy. Got you.
I love to I love it. I love how it
brings inhibitions down. I love how you're able have great conversations.
(15:01):
But the moment I even feel my head buzz, I
will put it down until until it doesn't anymore. So
I don't like tipsy, I don't like drunk, but I
do love I have I have Uncle Nerris every night.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
How were memories.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
His grand His granddaughter's memory was not great, but everyone
else's memory was great. And the thing that I love
about being able to capture their interviews both I had
a crew with me so on video and tape tape recording,
and that kind of thing was that so many people
between the time I started the research and the time
that Uncle Nears came out, or at least the distillery opened,
(15:38):
so many of them passed away. And it's almost like
they were just holding on to tell their piece of
this story and then they're like, Okay, I'm done. And
it got to a place where almost every couple of
weeks there was another funeral, and so people held on
and so I got to capture all of their all
of their words in this book.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Wow, you know, this story is amazing, but your story
is even more amazing. Where you came from and the
fact that you left home at fifteen, the fact that
you live in homeless shelters, the fact that you decided
to start your own is a real a testament to
who you are. Because your dad was a writer and
producer from Hotown, and you know you could have stayed there.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But what made you leave home at fifteen?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And what said this is what I want to do.
I know you said it was a book project and
you said, you know, this is what it was. But
you didn't get a four hundred million dollar loan or
a million that alone, like Donald Trump, like you did
this from the dirt in the grond. So break down
your story a little bit, because that's the story. I
don't think people understand because you didn't get a loan.
You didn't say, Dad, let me borrow a couple million,
(16:43):
like you grinded for this. And that's what's really impressing.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Well, they look, people look at my confidence and they
assume that it's because I went to some ivy league,
and this is sort of the assumption, right, And so
when people open up this book and they learn I
left out home at fifteen, it was an ultimatum that
wasn't necessarily it was my choice, but my parents it
was an ultimately.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Why did you have to leave? Why did they want you?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
What was the ultimately strict Christian household? And I just
wasn't a child where you could say do it my way,
and I wouldn't question it. I questioned everything. I got
kicked out of the ninth grade because my teacher told
my parents. My English teacher told my parents that she
didn't know what kind of day she was going to
have in her classroom till I walked through the door. Now,
(17:28):
mind you, I was not a popular kid ever. I
was never a popular kid growing up, but somehow I
will did some level of influence even with people who
I wasn't in the popular crowd. Never was. But according
to my teacher, if I had questions, and I think
what it was is is if the topic we were
talking about, I was challenging it and she didn't have
(17:51):
an answer, it made her uncomfortable. So then she felt
like she lost control of the room. That's really what
that was about. But my parents felt the same way.
So they would say they're authoritarian. That's normal for African American,
especially our parents, our parents, and so they would just
say this is what it is, and I'd go, but
(18:12):
why is it what it is?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And how are you talking back?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Well, yeah, to them, but to me, it was a
it was a question, right.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Legitimate question.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
It was a legitimate question. And if I hadn't been
asking that those questions about the Bible then. I don't
think I would know what kind of front to backwards
now because I dove in myself because they couldn't answer
the questions for me. But they were the Christian leaders.
And so it was our way or the highway, and
I chose the highway. So that was fifteen. I moved
to Jordan Down's, I moved to Watt's home in the
(18:42):
Grape Street Cryps, and I was dating a guy from
Nicholson Gardens. And I think when I think back of
my me growing up, I remember, and that was a
bloody war. I mean we're talking about this was the nineties,
the bloods and the Cryps. It wasn't you know? It
was great saying what Kendrick did and I ruined all
the rest of it. I was like, that's amazing because
(19:03):
all of them would have shot that place up when
I was coming up and Watts and so I would
go back and forth between Jordan Downs and Nickoson Gardens,
no issues, like I never once felt like I was unsafe.
I was very comfortable in those environments, which helps me
in the liquor industry. By the way, you to walk in,
(19:25):
and so I go there. It's super cutthroat. But also
the current liquor industry was essentially founded by the mob,
so there's a lot of mob elements that are still
a part of the industry to this day. And so
that was, you know, being in Watts, and then I
was there. I was super comfortable at Jordan Down's. And
(19:47):
then I went to a hip hop concert. They called
it rapped in, But I went to a rap concert
and there was a DJ, and there was a guy
who's rapping, just local Watts rapper, and I'm in the
crowd right in the kind of front middle. And I
will never forget it to this day. Is he literally
tells the DJ, stop the music. Stop the music. DJ
(20:08):
cuts the music, and he looks at me and he
points at me, and he says, we have a half breed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
In the house, said me every morning.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
But ahead, yeah, I've seen all the lights kin jokes.
It's so many of them. It's half breathed.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I might bring that back.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
No no, no, don't bring back to do not bring
back to Havre on my account. But for the first time,
when all those eyes turned to me, I felt unsafe.
So I left home because I didn't fit in there.
I felt like I fit in and Jordan Down's and
that happened, and I was like, oh, I'm not safe here.
So I spent the next pretty almost three years living
(20:47):
in homeless shelters. I spent my eighteenth birthday at Covenant House.
I think y'all have one here in New York. Amazing organization,
but that was that was my kind of my upbringing.
The thing that's great about Covenant Houses you'd go out,
you work. I had four jobs, and you give them
your paychecks and it goes into an escro account. And
when you had a certain amount of money, you use
(21:08):
that money you go and get your own place. So
Covenant House allowed me to build the foundation of being
able to live on my own. And once I was
able to do that, it was kind of off to
the races. But I also still didn't know what I
was doing. I mean, I was still a kid, so
I didn't feel like a kid, but I was still
a kid. And I got to twenty years old and
(21:29):
I was like, this life is hard, and do I
really want to do this for the next twenty years?
And I decided no, and I tried to commit suicide,
not once, but twice, and I remember, yeah, absolutely, I'm
grateful I survived. But the second time, I was laying
in the bed and the doctors were around me, and
at that time, they would put a tube down your
(21:51):
nose and they would pump charcoal into your stomach to
absorb the impurities. It's the same thing we do to filter,
that exact same thing, and so they would put in
to absorb the pure impurities. But I remember laying there
and thinking, Okay, I've tried to take myself out twice
and I wasn't able to do it. So I came
(22:11):
to two conclusions. Number One, I was here for a purpose.
I didn't know what it was, but I was going
to figure it out and I was going to live
my life that way. The second thing was if I
couldn't take me out, nobody could take me out. So
when you see me walk into rooms, especially in this
industry where historically we have done two things, either we
shrink or we complain, and I walked into every single
(22:35):
room and had every conversation with people in this industry,
and they're looking at me like you have not earned
your stripes to be able to have a toe to
toe conversation with me, and I'm like, I earned my
stripes when I didn't die. Beyonce talked about that in
DQ when she shot at you out. First of all,
how did you feel about that when she shout it you? Yeah,
people have been tagging me when her whiskey came out
last week. I think I was in London and doing
(22:57):
literally because Love and Whiskey dropped in London and I
was doing non stop interviews and so people are tagging
me with Beyonce situation. And from what I understand from
my husband, I have a really beautiful gift at home
with her whiskey in it when I get back home,
So I'm super excited about that. She gave you guys
a really good shout out and talked about how good
it was. Yeah, all that, but she also like literally
(23:19):
the next question after they asked her about like just
navigating business and industry, and she talks about how like
when it comes to brands, women have always had to
kind of be forced into the face of the brand,
but you never like the strategy, the planner and the
like the boss of the CEO. So to hear you
say that is in line with like she really identifies
with your story. Oh no, absolutely, and she's the queen,
so you know, we kind of all bow down there.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
There's a few things I got to go back to,
at least why did he call you a heavy?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Just the crazy part is is at that time it
sounds funny now, but at that time is when black
people we thought we had enough natural SPF where we
didn't have to wear it. So I was dang near
your complexion at that time. But it was the eyes
because because I would literally sit in the sun to
get my skin darker because I love that. My eyes
(24:07):
were so bright, the darker my skin was, and so
my skin was actually much darker complexion, but my eyes
were bright green when when my skin was darker.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
And the second question, you mentioned niggas and gardens, right, yeah,
and you know the niggas and gardens. Did you when
you were launching Uncle Nearyth, did you reach out to
anybody there, like like a top.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Dog or a j Rock?
Speaker 4 (24:27):
You know those people had capital like when you No.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
So when I began, first of all, I was there,
but I like in high school, I wasn't popular, so
nobody would know, nobody would know who I am. And
and but when I began, she.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Was probably out of it, but she was out of
there before before all that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So you're talking. I mean, we're talking about ninety four,
ninety so I would have been there around it's gotta
be ninety two, right. She was there in ninety two.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Definitely, but they didn't have to label successful like they did.
She was probably around one time talking about.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
That, but the connection let me let me let me
tell you I had I had no, I wouldn't have
known like I literally, but I can tell you this.
For my Seed series, every black person I pitched turned
it down. For series A, every black person except for uh,
(25:21):
there's I only have one Devin Johnson, which is mav
and Lebron's COO. Yeah, only person, only black person. Series B.
I think maybe I picked up maybe one or two.
But unfortunately for US, we tend not to believe in
US and so we won't invest in US until we've
(25:45):
already succeeded. And one of the most frustrating things for
me is the only reason I even have African American
investors in Uncle Nearst is in one of the series,
I gave us a two month head start, get through
all the paperwork, look at before I before I opened
it up to everybody else. It's the only and I'm
(26:06):
so grateful I have incredible investors that I was able
to go to them and say, listen, y'all are white,
and I actually want my community to also make money
off of this. So do you mind standing down on
this next investor around and allowing them so they had
such a head start, still didn't take the majority of
(26:27):
the round.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I wish you thought we had money back then.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Do you think that.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
People didn't invest because they didn't believe or at the time,
quote unquote, whiskey wasn't as popular.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Oh no, whiskey was at its height when this came out.
So it wasn't It wasn't whiskey. It was that you
have a woman in an industry in which never succeeded,
a black person, an industry in which never succeeded, not
as founder and CEO. And then you have a person
who knew nothing about this industry that was about to
(27:03):
go toe to toe with a twenty four billion dollar
heavyweight in the industry. And so it was such a
huge risk. But also I think that a lot of
times we just don't believe in us. So if I
had been If I had had this exact same story,
had this exact same brand, My business plan was fifty
pages deep. The swat analysis was no joke. I think
(27:25):
if that had landed on desks and it wasn't a
black woman, there's a really good shot that black people
would have invested. And that's the crazy part. But because
we're so new to business, we're so new to succeeding
in business, and because we're first generation money and so
we feel more comfortable in the things we can see
(27:46):
in our garage than we do in a portfolio that
is completely on paper.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Always say a lot of times we look at I
don't want to say low hanging fruit, but a lot
of times we invest in what we can see.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, you always see people investing. It was the everywhere. Yeah,
but Crown Royal.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
But you don't understand it really whiskey. Let's talk about that.
That is vodka that is colored and flavored?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
You think it?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Ask me, has that sat in a barrel? Is it?
Because it's so saturating now like it's everywhere that it?
Did it start out as a whisky? What are you
are you talking about? Crown Row? Yeah? I don't know.
I can tell you what it is now. We're taking
flavored and colored vodka is what we're having right now.
Those in that purple bag.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Any of these celebrities, especially the ones that you named earlier,
reached out to you for advice because you've you've conquered you,
you're working you, you you put your foot in these
people's asses where they're having a bunch of problems, whether
it's a Diddy back then or a Ja or a
fifty or Kevin Hard or everybody else that has their
own liquor snoop, Has anybody ever reached out to you
for advice or help?
Speaker 3 (28:48):
So none of those, uh, the people who have reached
in to me are generally those who want to start
a brand, and their response is always when I say why,
it's always Clooney And I'm like, okay, so what is
you know about the Cloney deal? And that's it. They
don't know. They don't know why that one worked, why
that was one out of like easily ninety nine percent
(29:11):
plus celebrity brands fail easily in this industry, And everyone
keeps pointing to that one, and I'm like, if you're
going to point to you have to know why he succeeded.
It wasn't just his celebrity and just kind of So
I usually spend the whole conversation breaking down for them
why that customer goes actually succeeded, And by the time
(29:33):
we get to the end of the call, I usually
don't see them come out because they don't want to
do It's a lot of foot Like when I used
to be in the market, I used to always see
you in all of my accounts, and I always wondered, like,
how did you get It's hard to get an account.
I was in those accounts. Yeah you were, and you were.
People don't understand there's a business. And when you sit
at the bar, you front and center at the bar,
(29:54):
people can see you. That means your people are out
there doing the work. Absolutely, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. Yeah, this is not a
this is not posted on social media and hold up
your bottle, hold up your glass, and you think that.
I mean, if you're a big celebrity, a really big celebrity,
that will allow you to have a great launch. But
the work is not in the launch. The work is
(30:16):
how you grow it after the launch. And that's where
almost all of them fail.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Did Beyonce they reach out?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
No, well years years years, not Beyonce. Let me say that,
not Beyonce. Ye.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
I couldn't tell because the way I mean, the way
she shout it out, I couldn't tell if she had
spoke to y'all prior to launching her brand or not.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
But I can say this, and it's and it's because
the person who reached into me had me sign an NDA.
That's why I possed. But it was. It was quite
a few years ago, and I gave my advice on it.
I said, these are the things that will need to
happen if it's going to succeed. And and I said,
and by the way, I'm around, so any person in
(30:59):
this industry who was a woman or personal color will
tell you if they reach out to me, I give
them all the keys. Everything that I know, I share
freely because it's not mine to keep. It's not mine
to hold. If the information came to me and it's
going to help you succeed, I'm going to give it
to you. But you better still do the work right.
And so I told them this was probably about four
years ago. I told them, as you're working on this project,
(31:22):
feel free to reach out to me at any time
and I will share with you whatever I know. And
I didn't hear anything, so.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Woww man, you got a story.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
That's why you got a book for congratulations on everything.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Is one point one B.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I need to I want to taste whiskey.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
I'm not gonna lie, all right, And I've never thought
about drinking it before because whenever I think whiskey, I
think cowboys.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah right yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
But then when y'all got Uncle Neir's, I was definitely
appreciative of it and supportive of it, but I just
never hasted it, like.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Really, it took your time. Let me tell you so,
I personally I love to drink a neat but it
just depends. That's with no ice snow. But a lot
of people will put it on a single cube. A
lot of people will fashion a cocktail. Old fashion is I.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Was gonna say with meat, but it does old fashionation everything.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
But because there are certain liquors, you drink it when
you're eating. Say he look at him, he just goes
to the So here's the thing. So here's the thing.
I when I did research and I learned how oysters
gave us freedom being able to. I determined I was
going to find oysters that I like. Now I still
don't like most oysters, but I found like two varieties
that I like. Because it was so important to pulling
(32:33):
us out of poverty. So was whiskey so unlike cotton,
unlike tobacco. This was such a highly skilled job that
you're talking about. Nearest Green immediately following the Civil War
had more money than his white neighbors. It's because he
(32:54):
was a distiller. And when you're looking at uncle nearest
near St Green, so I should say this, and then
I know y'all have to wrap the only difference between
Kentucky bourbon and which every single person on a bottle.
I don't care who it is, white, male, founded, or
led owned all of that. But the only difference between
Kentucky bourbon and tennessee whiskey. Number one. This takes longer
(33:17):
to make, it's more expensive to make. But it's the
process that Nearest Green tot jack. It's the process of
taking a traditional bourbon, distill it, running it through sugar, maple,
charcoal before it goes into the barrel to purify it.
Same thing that was pumped into my stomach, except that
wasn't sugar maple, but you know, same thing charcoal, and
so that happens beforehand, it goes into the barrel. That
(33:39):
process was brought here by the Africans. Wow, that came
with us. And so when we're talking about spirit brands
in America, if African Americans are going to drink anything,
our roots are in whiskey and not Crown Royal Canadian vodka.
But like legit whiskey.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And people drink I drink old fashion.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Whiskey is bourbon. It's legally it is bourbon. The only
thing is is we have to do an extra step.
So since we have to pay for that extra step,
we like to make sure people know it's also legally
Tennessee whiskey, but this is bourbon.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Wow. Well, thank you for for everything.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Congratulations again whiskey. Uncle Near's everything that's right. You are
very very inspiring and so many differently and it's not
and to me, it's not because of the one point
one billion evaluation. It's just because you had a dream
and you did not give up on your dream, and
it's a dream connected to the ancestors. Because of you,
Uncle Near's story will continue to be told. Yes, that's incredible.
(34:43):
I feel like that's what we're here to do.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yes, because it is. We're not here to be reservoirs.
We're here to be rivers. And my life is a river.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Forn weave of ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Thank you dj V.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Wait to add up
to her in the morning. The Breakfast Club, MHM.
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club
Morning everybody. It's the j Envy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We are the Breakfast Club. La La Rosa is feeling
in for Jesson. We got a special guest in the building.
We have Fawn Weaver.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome the book. Here you guys, somebody, Okay, here we go,
there you go four wea Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
New book out now called Love and Whiskey, The Remarkable
story of Jack Daniel, his Master Distiller Nearest Green and
the Improbable Rise.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Of Uncle Neris. How are you feeling this morning? Dollars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
This has to be here?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
What do you Why did you call the rise of
Uncle Nearest improbable? Because when you was up here with
maybe a couple years ago.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Seven years ago, it's improbable because no black person, no
person of color, and no woman has ever succeeded in
this industry ever, not as a founder. And so it's
improbable because I shouldn't be here, This Uncle Nearest should
not be where it is when you look at it.
(01:12):
Most come into an industry, and even if you come
into an industry like the whiskey industry where it's ninety five,
one hundred percent dominated by white men. You come in
and you already know that you're going to have to
play offense and everybody's going to ignore you. Well I
had to come in play defense. I was telling a
story in the middle of what was then a twenty
(01:33):
four billion dollar company, and I was going right in
the middle of it and saying, I'm going to add
Nearest Green to your story. That put a lot of
arrows at me. Well, really put a lot of grenades
on me.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
But it felt like when you all was here telling
the story seven years ago, it was almost like, no,
Uncle Nears is actually the beginning, yeah, of the story.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It was like now bringing everybody back home.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That's what it felt like to me, because people might
not know what you're talking about because you're seven years
old with seven years when you came up here. So
break down what Uncle Nearest is it and explain what
Charlamage is talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It all right, it's got the bottle, So this is
the bottle. So this is Uncle Nearre's premium whiskey. It
is the most awarded bourbon of the last five years
in a row worldwide. It's about to be six. That
also is improbable because we're coming into an industry that's
been dominated by the same people for hundreds of years,
and it became the fastest growing still is bourbon or
(02:26):
American whiskey in US history. And Uncle Nearest is the
first known African American master distiller. His name is Neares Green.
His legal name was Nathan, but we don't use Nathan
because he didn't use Nathan. Any document on him that
he was involved in post slavery, he didn't use Nathan,
which it was very common if you were given a
name that after you were free, if you didn't like
(02:49):
the name, you changed the name. So he went by Nearest.
His kids called him Nears, his grand kits called him Nears,
So we call him Nearest Green. But now, when this
came out, it was the first time an African American
was ever commemorated on a spirit bottle. And when we
opened Nearest Green Distillery, it was the first time ever
that a distillery had been named after an African American.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now, seven years ago, you explained it a lot. What
got you into doing this with people that don't remember
the interview.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
When you get yeah, yeah, it really was cementing the
legacy of Nares Green. So my mother's a teetotler, so
she said she really wished he made lemonade, and quite frankly,
if he had made jeans or like Lucille's down in Houston.
I don't know if you all have been down there,
but Lucille's down in Houston. Her family argues, her descendants
argue that Pillsbury is using her recipe, that they reverse
(03:39):
engineered it because she refused to sell it to them,
And so you have those types of stories that have
been in American history forever. Now we actually had a
company that was willing to admit that they're founding that
there was an African American, an enslave man that would
was at least the teacher of Jack Daniel. And then
(04:02):
after that became, after he was free, became the first
master distiller.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Can you break down the whole Jack Daniels of it all?
Everybody knows Jack Daniel, YEA, yeah, down.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Like why he's.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Because Nearest Green was the teacher of Jack Daniel. He
was a teacher, He was the mentor before this story
came out, before I did the research and brought the
researchers together, Jack Daniels, the company didn't realize that Distillery
number seven ever existed. Their records only went back so far,
and so they're looking at it and looking at their distillery number.
(04:34):
I said, no, no, no, you got to take that back.
Old number seven was the actual distillery and Nearest Green
is the only known master distiller for Distillery number seven.
So when I came to this story, the very first
thing that I did was by that original property where
Distillery number seven was, where Jack grew up, the three
hundred and thirteen acres above Lynchburg, Tennessee. Because that allowed
(04:56):
me to start piecing the story together and and to
be able to I mean, coming into a story that
is so iconic. Jack Daniels is an ubiquitous brand around
the world, and I was coming in and saying, not
only was an African American there at the beginning of it,
but Jack treated him fairly. And you're talking about the
south Lynchburg, Tennessee, and for a person to be treated
(05:21):
as an equal that was a black person, that was
unheard of. But here was this this So this is
in the nineteenth century, so everywhere from about fifty six,
eighteen fifty six into until Jack died in nineteen ten.
Because I know what prohibition too, because a lot of
people will hear this story and say, who if he
treated him nicely, why did you have to go back
and say, check out the stillary number seven? But were prohibition,
(05:43):
there were so many different things that happened where they
made it where like after the like with when Harlem
Renaissance came along, and like just the political powers that
black people couldn't say, oh I did that, well in
this instance it was a little different. So in this
instance during prohibition, prohibition was twenty years in our country
nineteen twenty years, but in Tennessee it was thirty. They
(06:03):
started ten years before, so most people don't know that
Jack Daniels moved to the loop. Jack Daniels was in
Saint Louis for ten years, gotcha, and leading up to prohibition.
So on the other side of prohibition, it reopens, but
it's in so much trouble. Jack's nephew is in trouble.
So they eventually had to sell it to another company.
It's under that company's watch, gotcha that the story disappeared,
(06:26):
But under Jack and his descendants they made sure. So
when you look at this photo. The reason why I
started this book with this photo is Jack Daniel didn't
just put a black man to his right in nineteen
oh four, he seated the entire center position of the
photo to the black man. So that was Jack's way
of saying, America's gonna try to write you out. I'm
not gonna allow him to wow. And then his biography
(06:49):
written in nineteen sixty seven, high to the civil rights era,
and you have Nears and his boys mentioned more times
than Jack and Jack's own family. And so you knew
that Jack wanted us to know. So not only was
he here at the beginning, don't ever forget it. And
so that's the reason why the story mattered to me.
If this was another one of the stories where African
(07:10):
Americans were done wrong and we were like pushed to
the side, this story would have had no interest to me.
We have enough of those stories. Yeah. What interested me
about this story is I felt as though it was
a story that we may have been treated right, and
I wanted to prove it if it was true, because
if we don't have any hope, like if every story
we hear, we don't have anything to go toward, If
(07:32):
every single story lacks hope, then we just walk around
here thinking, well, it's always been terrible, It's always going
to be terrible. But if every generation we can find
those glimmers of hope that move us forward, then we
know where we're going.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Well, got you into spirits.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Nares Green so cementing his legacy originally book movie, right,
super simple. But if I were to, well, you all
in this room, you might know. But if I go
in and I have a room, and I have a
thousand people in that room, and I'm talking to them
and I say, how many people saw Hidden Figures? Ninety
nine percent of the room hands up right? If I said,
(08:09):
name for me the three women who were the hidden figures,
played by Taraji p Henson, Otavia Spencer and Janelle Monnet,
you were the first person to ever sot why because.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
My daughter wants to be an astronaut.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That's why counted in the story. Because he always has
this wealth of information. That's but in a room like that,
nobody can never name. So we all walk into a
movie theater and we walk out remembering the same people
we knew before we went in. And so if we
wanted to make sure that this story one hundred years
from now, someone wasn't having to uncover it again. Then
(08:49):
we had to do with Johnny Walker, Jim Bean and
Jack Daniel. Why why do we all know who those
people are because we're watching them every time we go
into a bar, we see that.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I mean, that's how I feel about Uncle Nears now,
because I'm walking through the airport and i see big
Uncle Nera's signs and I'm just like, oh wow, I
wanted to ask you, like, the fastest growing whiskey in
history US history, right, You've been named on the fours
listen is the richest self made woman in America for
tween twenty four. Uncle Nera's has a one point one
billion dollar valuation. What do you contribute to success? Because
(09:23):
you know, we live in the era of everybody want
to be an entreprene everybody want to be a boss.
You actually did it in a very successful way. What
do you contribute to success?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I contributed it to one real, real simple thing, God,
That's right. So a lot of people they want to
write God out of the story of alcohol because during
Prohibition the Temperance movement decided to tell people that the
Bible said that alcohol was wrong. Bible never says it.
I would love to go toe for toe to toe
(09:52):
with any pastor that claims it. There is not a
single scripture that it ever says it. What it talks
about is drunkenness. Right, So everything in moderation, including alcohol.
But the foundation of this company, the foundation of Uncle Nears,
it's God. It is doing what we believe we were
purposed to do, which is cement the legacy of Nears Green.
(10:14):
But also to show how you can come, how our group,
women and people of color can come into an industry
that has always locked us out and not only opened
the door, but opened the door for everyone to come
right behind us. When we came into the industry in
twenty and seventeen, the entire industry about ninety percent of
(10:35):
the alcohol. Six spirit conglomerates they run everything, Diageo, LVMH, Bacardi.
Every time y'all have an alcohol in it, it's mostly
one of those. Well, there were no women. It was
all every single one of them founded by, owned, by
led by white men. When we came in, then Uncle
Nearest began to have such a level of success that
(10:55):
we weren't supposed to. That all their boardrooms, the conversations
were about us as much as it was about their
own company, and they started trying to reverse engineer their success,
and they realized, wait a minute, this country is fifty
percent women. If there are no women in these rooms
where the decisions are being made, we're missing a huge
part of the buying population. So all of a sudden,
(11:17):
three of the women of the six spear conglomber I
mean three of the six spear colombers all had women CEOs.
What was your fight like? Because I used to work
with a Sequila brain and we worked a lot with
the distributors and having that relationship, like the people who
take it to those bars and we see it is important.
What was your fight like in the beginning, just trying
to make distributors like make it where they think it's
(11:38):
important because you were like, you were kind of like
a unicorn in the space. Yeah. So going back to
your question, that's probably the smartest thing that we did
coming out the gate. Number one. I didn't go with
one distributor, the largest distributor in this country asked to
take us national. I said absolutely not. I'll give you
eleven states. And they're like, it's either all or nothing,
(12:01):
and I said, well, that's the easiest decision I've ever made.
It's nothing because nobody puts the baby in the corner.
And I've seen every black brand that come before me
sit in a corner, and I have to believe it's
catch and Keell, it doesn't make sense. We can't keep
saying that there's not a market for us, And so
then we have to ask the question of if the
buyers want it, if the consumers want it, then why
(12:24):
don't they get it? And so I determined it was
the distributor tier. So I told the team number one,
I want to be in all fifty states within the
first two years, which we did unheard of. But the
other thing was I built a distributor network of seventeen distributors.
That's so smart. So I could say, hey, California, why
are you being outsold by Georgia New York? Why are
(12:45):
you being outsold by Tennessee DC. Why in the world
are you being outsold by Alabama? Like I can literally
it gets them going. But also, and this goes back
to your question, is I think the smartest thing that
we did, beside having seventeen distributors, where we could do
it that way, As I told the team, if we
(13:05):
do not hit our goals. Distributors cannot be the reason
because everyone complained about distributors. Fifty is going through right now,
puff through his lawsuit. Jay did it with his Everyone
complains about the distributors. I said, they will not be
the reason we don't succeed. So I went to every
distributor and I said, I have no expectation from you
that except that you will be a high price FedEx.
(13:28):
My team will build it. I will be on the
ground every single day. But there will come a day
where I will let you know when I do expect
you to work. But we did all the work for
like the first four and a half years, and the
fifth year, I said, now is the time I need you.
I need you. And so by then we had proved ourselves.
(13:49):
Nobody had us in a corner, nobody could put us
in a corner, and we had proved ourselves to be
valuable enough to them that they would then invest in us.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I saw for the book that you interviews some people
that were one hundred and six years old.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Nearess's granddaughter was still alive.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
When nearest his granddaughter was alive, and Jack's great niece
was alive. She died at one oh four and nearest
his granddaughter died at one o eight. Did they drink whiskey?
So here's the deal is. You will find in that
book a lot of the African American elders that I
interviewed were ninety ninety five and so yeah, whiskey might.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Be the key man.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
You know, when you're down South, it's crazy right because
they eat everything they say you're not supposed to eat.
Her South Carolina eat everything you're not supposed to eat.
It's me and they drink kanyak every day or whiskey
every day.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That's me, you know what I'm saying. Bisky every day
every day. But it's a moderation. It's a moderation. Listen,
if you had poorn to glass, I'd be drinking and
it's like ten o'clock in the morning. You no, I'm good.
I'm good. But the thing is is that I don't
ever drink to a point of being tipsy. Got you.
I love to I love it. I love how it
brings inhibitions down. I love how you're able have great conversations.
(15:01):
But the moment I even feel my head buzz, I
will put it down until until it doesn't anymore. So
I don't like tipsy, I don't like drunk, but I
do love I have I have Uncle Nerris every night.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
How were memories.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
His grand His granddaughter's memory was not great, but everyone
else's memory was great. And the thing that I love
about being able to capture their interviews both I had
a crew with me so on video and tape tape recording,
and that kind of thing was that so many people
between the time I started the research and the time
that Uncle Nears came out, or at least the distillery opened,
(15:38):
so many of them passed away. And it's almost like
they were just holding on to tell their piece of
this story and then they're like, Okay, I'm done. And
it got to a place where almost every couple of
weeks there was another funeral, and so people held on
and so I got to capture all of their all
of their words in this book.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Wow, you know, this story is amazing, but your story
is even more amazing. Where you came from and the
fact that you left home at fifteen, the fact that
you live in homeless shelters, the fact that you decided
to start your own is a real a testament to
who you are. Because your dad was a writer and
producer from Hotown, and you know you could have stayed there.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But what made you leave home at fifteen?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And what said this is what I want to do.
I know you said it was a book project and
you said, you know, this is what it was. But
you didn't get a four hundred million dollar loan or
a million that alone, like Donald Trump, like you did
this from the dirt in the grond. So break down
your story a little bit, because that's the story. I
don't think people understand because you didn't get a loan.
You didn't say, Dad, let me borrow a couple million,
(16:43):
like you grinded for this. And that's what's really impressing.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Well, they look, people look at my confidence and they
assume that it's because I went to some ivy league,
and this is sort of the assumption, right, And so
when people open up this book and they learn I
left out home at fifteen, it was an ultimatum that
wasn't necessarily it was my choice, but my parents it
was an ultimately.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Why did you have to leave? Why did they want you?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
What was the ultimately strict Christian household? And I just
wasn't a child where you could say do it my way,
and I wouldn't question it. I questioned everything. I got
kicked out of the ninth grade because my teacher told
my parents. My English teacher told my parents that she
didn't know what kind of day she was going to
have in her classroom till I walked through the door. Now,
(17:28):
mind you, I was not a popular kid ever. I
was never a popular kid growing up, but somehow I
will did some level of influence even with people who
I wasn't in the popular crowd. Never was. But according
to my teacher, if I had questions, and I think
what it was is is if the topic we were
talking about, I was challenging it and she didn't have
(17:51):
an answer, it made her uncomfortable. So then she felt
like she lost control of the room. That's really what
that was about. But my parents felt the same way.
So they would say they're authoritarian. That's normal for African American,
especially our parents, our parents, and so they would just
say this is what it is, and I'd go, but
(18:12):
why is it what it is?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And how are you talking back?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Well, yeah, to them, but to me, it was a
it was a question, right.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Legitimate question.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
It was a legitimate question. And if I hadn't been
asking that those questions about the Bible then. I don't
think I would know what kind of front to backwards
now because I dove in myself because they couldn't answer
the questions for me. But they were the Christian leaders.
And so it was our way or the highway, and
I chose the highway. So that was fifteen. I moved
to Jordan Down's, I moved to Watt's home in the
(18:42):
Grape Street Cryps, and I was dating a guy from
Nicholson Gardens. And I think when I think back of
my me growing up, I remember, and that was a
bloody war. I mean we're talking about this was the nineties,
the bloods and the Cryps. It wasn't you know? It
was great saying what Kendrick did and I ruined all
the rest of it. I was like, that's amazing because
(19:03):
all of them would have shot that place up when
I was coming up and Watts and so I would
go back and forth between Jordan Downs and Nickoson Gardens,
no issues, like I never once felt like I was unsafe.
I was very comfortable in those environments, which helps me
in the liquor industry. By the way, you to walk in,
(19:25):
and so I go there. It's super cutthroat. But also
the current liquor industry was essentially founded by the mob,
so there's a lot of mob elements that are still
a part of the industry to this day. And so
that was, you know, being in Watts, and then I
was there. I was super comfortable at Jordan Down's. And
(19:47):
then I went to a hip hop concert. They called
it rapped in, But I went to a rap concert
and there was a DJ, and there was a guy
who's rapping, just local Watts rapper, and I'm in the
crowd right in the kind of front middle. And I
will never forget it to this day. Is he literally
tells the DJ, stop the music. Stop the music. DJ
(20:08):
cuts the music, and he looks at me and he
points at me, and he says, we have a half breed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
In the house, said me every morning.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
But ahead, yeah, I've seen all the lights kin jokes.
It's so many of them. It's half breathed.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I might bring that back.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
No no, no, don't bring back to do not bring
back to Havre on my account. But for the first time,
when all those eyes turned to me, I felt unsafe.
So I left home because I didn't fit in there.
I felt like I fit in and Jordan Down's and
that happened, and I was like, oh, I'm not safe here.
So I spent the next pretty almost three years living
(20:47):
in homeless shelters. I spent my eighteenth birthday at Covenant House.
I think y'all have one here in New York. Amazing organization,
but that was that was my kind of my upbringing.
The thing that's great about Covenant Houses you'd go out,
you work. I had four jobs, and you give them
your paychecks and it goes into an escro account. And
when you had a certain amount of money, you use
(21:08):
that money you go and get your own place. So
Covenant House allowed me to build the foundation of being
able to live on my own. And once I was
able to do that, it was kind of off to
the races. But I also still didn't know what I
was doing. I mean, I was still a kid, so
I didn't feel like a kid, but I was still
a kid. And I got to twenty years old and
(21:29):
I was like, this life is hard, and do I
really want to do this for the next twenty years?
And I decided no, and I tried to commit suicide,
not once, but twice, and I remember, yeah, absolutely, I'm
grateful I survived. But the second time, I was laying
in the bed and the doctors were around me, and
at that time, they would put a tube down your
(21:51):
nose and they would pump charcoal into your stomach to
absorb the impurities. It's the same thing we do to filter,
that exact same thing, and so they would put in
to absorb the pure impurities. But I remember laying there
and thinking, Okay, I've tried to take myself out twice
and I wasn't able to do it. So I came
(22:11):
to two conclusions. Number One, I was here for a purpose.
I didn't know what it was, but I was going
to figure it out and I was going to live
my life that way. The second thing was if I
couldn't take me out, nobody could take me out. So
when you see me walk into rooms, especially in this
industry where historically we have done two things, either we
shrink or we complain, and I walked into every single
(22:35):
room and had every conversation with people in this industry,
and they're looking at me like you have not earned
your stripes to be able to have a toe to
toe conversation with me, and I'm like, I earned my
stripes when I didn't die. Beyonce talked about that in
DQ when she shot at you out. First of all,
how did you feel about that when she shout it you? Yeah,
people have been tagging me when her whiskey came out
last week. I think I was in London and doing
(22:57):
literally because Love and Whiskey dropped in London and I
was doing non stop interviews and so people are tagging
me with Beyonce situation. And from what I understand from
my husband, I have a really beautiful gift at home
with her whiskey in it when I get back home,
So I'm super excited about that. She gave you guys
a really good shout out and talked about how good
it was. Yeah, all that, but she also like literally
(23:19):
the next question after they asked her about like just
navigating business and industry, and she talks about how like
when it comes to brands, women have always had to
kind of be forced into the face of the brand,
but you never like the strategy, the planner and the
like the boss of the CEO. So to hear you
say that is in line with like she really identifies
with your story. Oh no, absolutely, and she's the queen,
so you know, we kind of all bow down there.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
There's a few things I got to go back to,
at least why did he call you a heavy?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Just the crazy part is is at that time it
sounds funny now, but at that time is when black
people we thought we had enough natural SPF where we
didn't have to wear it. So I was dang near
your complexion at that time. But it was the eyes
because because I would literally sit in the sun to
get my skin darker because I love that. My eyes
(24:07):
were so bright, the darker my skin was, and so
my skin was actually much darker complexion, but my eyes
were bright green when when my skin was darker.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
And the second question, you mentioned niggas and gardens, right, yeah,
and you know the niggas and gardens. Did you when
you were launching Uncle Nearyth, did you reach out to
anybody there, like like a top.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Dog or a j Rock?
Speaker 4 (24:27):
You know those people had capital like when you No.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
So when I began, first of all, I was there,
but I like in high school, I wasn't popular, so
nobody would know, nobody would know who I am. And
and but when I began, she.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Was probably out of it, but she was out of
there before before all that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So you're talking. I mean, we're talking about ninety four,
ninety so I would have been there around it's gotta
be ninety two, right. She was there in ninety two.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Definitely, but they didn't have to label successful like they did.
She was probably around one time talking about.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
That, but the connection let me let me let me
tell you I had I had no, I wouldn't have
known like I literally, but I can tell you this.
For my Seed series, every black person I pitched turned
it down. For series A, every black person except for uh,
(25:21):
there's I only have one Devin Johnson, which is mav
and Lebron's COO. Yeah, only person, only black person. Series B.
I think maybe I picked up maybe one or two.
But unfortunately for US, we tend not to believe in
US and so we won't invest in US until we've
(25:45):
already succeeded. And one of the most frustrating things for
me is the only reason I even have African American
investors in Uncle Nearst is in one of the series,
I gave us a two month head start, get through
all the paperwork, look at before I before I opened
it up to everybody else. It's the only and I'm
(26:06):
so grateful I have incredible investors that I was able
to go to them and say, listen, y'all are white,
and I actually want my community to also make money
off of this. So do you mind standing down on
this next investor around and allowing them so they had
such a head start, still didn't take the majority of
(26:27):
the round.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I wish you thought we had money back then.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Do you think that.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
People didn't invest because they didn't believe or at the time,
quote unquote, whiskey wasn't as popular.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Oh no, whiskey was at its height when this came out.
So it wasn't It wasn't whiskey. It was that you
have a woman in an industry in which never succeeded,
a black person, an industry in which never succeeded, not
as founder and CEO. And then you have a person
who knew nothing about this industry that was about to
(27:03):
go toe to toe with a twenty four billion dollar
heavyweight in the industry. And so it was such a
huge risk. But also I think that a lot of
times we just don't believe in us. So if I
had been If I had had this exact same story,
had this exact same brand, My business plan was fifty
pages deep. The swat analysis was no joke. I think
(27:25):
if that had landed on desks and it wasn't a
black woman, there's a really good shot that black people
would have invested. And that's the crazy part. But because
we're so new to business, we're so new to succeeding
in business, and because we're first generation money and so
we feel more comfortable in the things we can see
(27:46):
in our garage than we do in a portfolio that
is completely on paper.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Always say a lot of times we look at I
don't want to say low hanging fruit, but a lot
of times we invest in what we can see.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, you always see people investing. It was the everywhere. Yeah,
but Crown Royal.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
But you don't understand it really whiskey. Let's talk about that.
That is vodka that is colored and flavored?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
You think it?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Ask me, has that sat in a barrel? Is it?
Because it's so saturating now like it's everywhere that it?
Did it start out as a whisky? What are you
are you talking about? Crown Row? Yeah? I don't know.
I can tell you what it is now. We're taking
flavored and colored vodka is what we're having right now.
Those in that purple bag.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Any of these celebrities, especially the ones that you named earlier,
reached out to you for advice because you've you've conquered you,
you're working you, you you put your foot in these
people's asses where they're having a bunch of problems, whether
it's a Diddy back then or a Ja or a
fifty or Kevin Hard or everybody else that has their
own liquor snoop, Has anybody ever reached out to you
for advice or help?
Speaker 3 (28:48):
So none of those, uh, the people who have reached
in to me are generally those who want to start
a brand, and their response is always when I say why,
it's always Clooney And I'm like, okay, so what is
you know about the Cloney deal? And that's it. They
don't know. They don't know why that one worked, why
that was one out of like easily ninety nine percent
(29:11):
plus celebrity brands fail easily in this industry, And everyone
keeps pointing to that one, and I'm like, if you're
going to point to you have to know why he succeeded.
It wasn't just his celebrity and just kind of So
I usually spend the whole conversation breaking down for them
why that customer goes actually succeeded, And by the time
(29:33):
we get to the end of the call, I usually
don't see them come out because they don't want to
do It's a lot of foot Like when I used
to be in the market, I used to always see
you in all of my accounts, and I always wondered, like,
how did you get It's hard to get an account.
I was in those accounts. Yeah you were, and you were.
People don't understand there's a business. And when you sit
at the bar, you front and center at the bar,
(29:54):
people can see you. That means your people are out
there doing the work. Absolutely, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. Yeah, this is not a
this is not posted on social media and hold up
your bottle, hold up your glass, and you think that.
I mean, if you're a big celebrity, a really big celebrity,
that will allow you to have a great launch. But
the work is not in the launch. The work is
(30:16):
how you grow it after the launch. And that's where
almost all of them fail.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Did Beyonce they reach out?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
No, well years years years, not Beyonce. Let me say that,
not Beyonce. Ye.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
I couldn't tell because the way I mean, the way
she shout it out, I couldn't tell if she had
spoke to y'all prior to launching her brand or not.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
But I can say this, and it's and it's because
the person who reached into me had me sign an NDA.
That's why I possed. But it was. It was quite
a few years ago, and I gave my advice on it.
I said, these are the things that will need to
happen if it's going to succeed. And and I said,
and by the way, I'm around, so any person in
(30:59):
this industry who was a woman or personal color will
tell you if they reach out to me, I give
them all the keys. Everything that I know, I share
freely because it's not mine to keep. It's not mine
to hold. If the information came to me and it's
going to help you succeed, I'm going to give it
to you. But you better still do the work right.
And so I told them this was probably about four
years ago. I told them, as you're working on this project,
(31:22):
feel free to reach out to me at any time
and I will share with you whatever I know. And
I didn't hear anything, so.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Woww man, you got a story.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
That's why you got a book for congratulations on everything.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Is one point one B.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I need to I want to taste whiskey.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
I'm not gonna lie, all right, And I've never thought
about drinking it before because whenever I think whiskey, I
think cowboys.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah right yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
But then when y'all got Uncle Neir's, I was definitely
appreciative of it and supportive of it, but I just
never hasted it, like.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Really, it took your time. Let me tell you so,
I personally I love to drink a neat but it
just depends. That's with no ice snow. But a lot
of people will put it on a single cube. A
lot of people will fashion a cocktail. Old fashion is I.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Was gonna say with meat, but it does old fashionation everything.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
But because there are certain liquors, you drink it when
you're eating. Say he look at him, he just goes
to the So here's the thing. So here's the thing.
I when I did research and I learned how oysters
gave us freedom being able to. I determined I was
going to find oysters that I like. Now I still
don't like most oysters, but I found like two varieties
that I like. Because it was so important to pulling
(32:33):
us out of poverty. So was whiskey so unlike cotton,
unlike tobacco. This was such a highly skilled job that
you're talking about. Nearest Green immediately following the Civil War
had more money than his white neighbors. It's because he
(32:54):
was a distiller. And when you're looking at uncle nearest
near St Green, so I should say this, and then
I know y'all have to wrap the only difference between
Kentucky bourbon and which every single person on a bottle.
I don't care who it is, white, male, founded, or
led owned all of that. But the only difference between
Kentucky bourbon and tennessee whiskey. Number one. This takes longer
(33:17):
to make, it's more expensive to make. But it's the
process that Nearest Green tot jack. It's the process of
taking a traditional bourbon, distill it, running it through sugar, maple,
charcoal before it goes into the barrel to purify it.
Same thing that was pumped into my stomach, except that
wasn't sugar maple, but you know, same thing charcoal, and
so that happens beforehand, it goes into the barrel. That
(33:39):
process was brought here by the Africans. Wow, that came
with us. And so when we're talking about spirit brands
in America, if African Americans are going to drink anything,
our roots are in whiskey and not Crown Royal Canadian vodka.
But like legit whiskey.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And people drink I drink old fashion.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Whiskey is bourbon. It's legally it is bourbon. The only
thing is is we have to do an extra step.
So since we have to pay for that extra step,
we like to make sure people know it's also legally
Tennessee whiskey, but this is bourbon.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Wow. Well, thank you for for everything.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Congratulations again whiskey. Uncle Near's everything that's right. You are
very very inspiring and so many differently and it's not
and to me, it's not because of the one point
one billion evaluation. It's just because you had a dream
and you did not give up on your dream, and
it's a dream connected to the ancestors. Because of you,
Uncle Near's story will continue to be told. Yes, that's incredible.
(34:43):
I feel like that's what we're here to do.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yes, because it is. We're not here to be reservoirs.
We're here to be rivers. And my life is a river.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Forn weave of ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Thank you dj V.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Wait to add up
to her in the morning. The Breakfast Club, MHM.
The Breakfast Club News
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DJ Envy
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