How I Built This with Guy Raz - Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey: Fawn Weaver (2021)

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

In 2016, Fawn Weaver became fixated on a New York Times article telling the little-known story of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel—yes, that Jack Daniel—how to make Tennessee whiskey. After diving deeper into the story, Fawn ended up purchasing the farm in Lynchburg, Tennessee where Nearest had taught Jack how to distill; and she began meeting the descendants of both men. She eventually decided the best way to preserve Nearest’s legacy was with a bottle of the best Tennessee whiskey she could make. With no background in distilling, she threw herself into the insular world of spirit-making, an industry mostly dominated by white men. In the eight years since Fawn first discovered his story, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey has become one of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in the world, and one of the most awarded American whiskeys.This episode of How I Built This was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Neva Grant. Research help from Claire Murashima, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better your home might be worth more than you think find out how much at arbb.ca slash host for today's show we're running a favorite of ours from our archives this is the story of fawn weaver and how she built a fascinating brand with an amazing life story to go with it enjoy

If you walk into any type of liquor store, if you walk into any restaurant, any back bar, and you ask them a very simple question, tell me what whiskey or bourbon is on your back bar that represents someone who is not a white male and just wait. Wow. White males represent 30% of this country and 100% of the whiskies up until Uncle Nairist. 100%. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today,

how Fawn Weaver stumbled onto a piece of southern history that she couldn't forget and built a brand around it, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, one of the fastest growing whiskey brands in the country. This is not a business show. Or at least I don't think of it that way. This show is about stories. It just so happens that every business is a story.

Now, think about that for a moment. It may not make immediate sense. After all, a business is about selling a product or a service in exchange for money or goods. But a business, especially a consumer-facing business, is also about the question why. Why did you decide to pursue this idea? Why do you think the world needs to hear about it?

Why does it add value to someone's life? And each of these answers is a story. It's what connects you and me and everyone out there to the thing you're building. So how is it that Fawn Weaver, best known for her books on marriage, is now the founder of one of the fastest growing whiskey brands in the U.S.? How is it that Fawn, a black woman, with no bad, background in distilling, managed to break into a largely white male dominated industry, spirits, and win every conceivable award for her product.

And how did she do all of this in just five years? Now, that's a story. And it actually begins more than 150 years ago in Lynchburg, Tennessee. A young apprentice who worked in a whiskey distillery named Jack Daniel met a master distiller, named Nearest Green. Everyone called him Uncle Nearest. Nearest was a black man, formerly enslaved, and it was Nearest who took young Jack under his wing and showed him how to distill Tennessee whiskey. And of course, out of that relationship came one of the best-known whiskey brands in the world, Jack Daniels. But only a few people knew the name of the man who had helped it come about.

Now, Fawn Weaver first heard about this story when she read an article in the New York Times several years ago. It intrigued her so much, she decided to investigate it more deeply. After all, she was already a published author, and she thought maybe there's a book to be written, or even a movie. But on a whim, she ended up buying an old farm in Lynchburg, the farm where Uncle Nearest had taught Jack Daniel how to distill. And eventually, she decided to distill. still her own brand of whiskey. She would call it Uncle Nearest. And today, it's one of the very few independently owned whiskey brands in America. And as I mentioned earlier, one of the fastest growing. But the journey to building her brand was filled with landmines. For starters, Fawn had to convince

investors that the Jack Daniels brand wouldn't try and quash her idea. And then she had to figure out how to get her bottles on the shelves of liquor stores across the country. Not an easy task when virtually every major spirit brand is owned by one of the five big multinational liquor companies. But once you understand Fawn's story, it becomes clear that nothing was going to stand in her way. Fawn grew up in Pasadena, California. Her dad was a producer and songwriter for Motown Records.

So he was one of the very first hit makers for Motown. Wow. He was there from the beginning. So he's credited with Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations and the Four Tops and Michael Jackson and just really from the beginning, Smokey Robinson. And then when Stevie came in. And so that was sort of his world. And in 75, I believe it was either while my mother was pregnant with me or shortly, before my father decided not to sign another contract with Motown.

Now, understanding the picture is my dad is in this huge house on the top of Hollywood Hill, all the fancy cars, everybody would come to the parties, everybody would come to the parties that he threw. And he decides that he really truly does believe God is calling him to move away from Motown and to move away from that industry. and to go into ministry. Wow. And so I'm born into a period of transition.

When he is transitioning from being a songwriter, and I should mention, from what I understand, he co-wrote, he's a co-writer, and he's credited on the songs, Castles in the Sand, the Stevie Wonder song, Love Child by the Supremes. I mean, major, major hits for Motown. Absolutely, absolutely.

He was a really, really, really big deal, producer, top of his game, and he decides to completely leave no backup plan and really not enough money in the bank to be able to continue to live the life he was living for very long. When you're living a lifestyle like he was, big glass house at the top of Hollywood Hills, that consumption rate, that consumption rate is really, really high. And so they had to downsize. They had to downgrade. I think that there was a part of him that did not want people to know that there were financial challenges. And so we lived in a world that was a bit split. But it was very interesting growing up in this dynamic because you had all of these celebrities coming.

Everybody in Motown, my father became their pastors of sorts. So he goes into the ministry, but he still begins to bring everyone with him. So Smokey, and Stevie and Eddie Kendricks and all these different folks are at the house all the time. I mean, was that, what was like, like, all these celebrities would be coming in and out? Because your dad basically became their pastor. Yeah, and so for all of them, they were auntie and uncle to me, all of them. And that's the world that I knew. But I didn't know my father as any sort of celebrity.

And I actually didn't know these people as celebrities. Right. I knew these people as normal people with normal problems coming into our home to be ministered to more than anything. That's what I knew. When I grew up, I only knew him as a minister. And what was your relationship like with your mom and dad? Were they strict? Yeah.

Very contentious. Interesting. My mom and I, we can laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny back then, is I'd say that we were their pastor's guinea pigs. because anything that the pastor or the leadership of the church said, this is how you should raise your children, they did it. And is a hot mess. So what did that mean for you? Like as a teenager,

you were really restricted in... Restricted in everything. There was, it was incredibly, I mean, we're Christian, but could not wear pants as girls. Because there is a scripture that says men should not wear anything pertaining to women. Women should not wear anything pertaining to men. And their pastor took that to mean women should not wear pants. So imagine me as a teenager and it's wintertime and I'm trying to explain why I'm in skirts.

It was not a fun upbringing for me, for sure. And the way that I've been wired from day one, day one, is to challenge everything. I came out of the womb challenging everything. I came out of the womb saying no. You were a kid who clearly were just waiting for the moment when you could. leave and start your own with you. From the time I was five, I was trying to pack bags. No doubt about it.

I actually left home at 15. Wow. And my mom said she still remembers the day I walked down the driveway and she watched me leaving with a backpack and a lunch pail in hand. And that was basically all I had was a backpack and a lunch bale. And I was like, I'm out of here. And so it wasn't a big blowout fight or anything of that nature. I just said this, this won't work for me.

How long were you away? For the rest of my life. Do you think from your parents' perspective, they kind of wrote you off as our lost child at that time? I do. I do. I don't think that they loved me any less. Right.

I don't think that they ever stopped loving me. But I think it's difficult not to write a child off who has made it very, very clear they don't want to be parented. Wow. I don't know. I've actually never had a conversation with them about it because the one thing about how I am wired and it's, I think, probably one of my greatest strengths is I don't go

backwards. So after leaving home, I guess you started living independently and even spent a few years in shelters and homeless shelters, right? I did. I went to a place called Covenant House. It's a homeless shelter for adults in Hollywood. And it was probably one of the most important moments of my life because I'd always been independent.

And at Covenant House, the way that they have it set up, it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's one of the most amazing transition places that has ever been created. You go out, you get a job, you come back. You bring the paychecks. They save all of your money for you. So you're not having to do any of that. You literally just turn over the checks. They save it for you. And then once you get to a certain amount and you can go out and get your own apartment, that's what you do. Fawn, I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea of that. I mean, because moving into a homeless shelter, you know, especially for a kid who had a home, right, where everything was provided for you is a radical step to take. Even for a teenager when, you know, let's be honest, our judgment is, is a little bit different when we're teenagers than it is when we're adults, but still a radical move. Yeah, I think my life has been marked by radical decisions. I, you know, I look back at that time, and if I could do it all over again, I would have done it the exact same way. And I gained a freedom by living in the homeless shelters.

I thrived in them. And I think that in part not because there weren't rules. And I love rules. I live my life by rules, but I have to understand and agree with those rules. And the rules and the homeless shelters made complete sense to me. And I mean, you obviously got an incredible grounding there because I read that at like the age of 18,

you actually started your own business at 18? Yeah, yeah. It happened a little more serendipitous than that. I was an intern for an African-American PR firm in Los Angeles, the woman who owned it, Pat Tobin, very, very, very popular publicist. And I don't even remember how I met her, actually, but she brought me in. I was in as an intern.

And they were working on a bunch of a different accounts. And there were these two accounts that they were working on. And I had radically different ideas about how to garner PR for these two particular companies. So the way they were thinking about PR is you send out a press release and you see who picks it up and you pitch the story. And I was looking at PR as something that was fully experiential, something that was. something that was literally interwoven into other things. So now what they would call that is brand integration. But at the time, that didn't really exist.

And so, you know, brand placements and things of that nature, that wasn't something happening in the early 90s. But it was how I was looking at how you garner earned media. And so for these two accounts, I had come up with a plan. And it was so unfamiliar to the way that they, did business, but the two clients absolutely loved the pitch. And so Pat said run with it. You know, and keep in mind, so I'm about to turn 45. And if you put side-by-side pictures up of me at 18 and 45, I do not look that turn, which I'm very happy about now. But I looked very mature at that age.

So I would, I did not come across in any way, shape, or form as an 18-year-old. And after I successfully did a few of the integrations that I had suggested, both of the clients said to me individually, if you ever decide to start your own PR firm, will come with you. That's how it began. So I began at 18 with two clients paying me $5,000 a month, which that's not a lot of money now, but for an 18 year old, that was pretty significant, right? Yeah. And so what kind of PR were you doing? I mean, who were your clients? Yeah. One is a painter by the name of Thomas Blackshire. And the other was a company called Daddy Long Legs. They did those dolls with the hanging legs. And what would you do? Would you like call newspapers and magazines and trade

publications and try to place articles? I would do that, but I would also integrate it in events. And so I remember, for instance, with Thomas Blackshare, there was a big Hollywood Bowl event that was going to be with a bunch of jazz artists. And remember, I knew all these people from growing up. right? The music world was very easy for me to touch. And so I'd pick up the phone and call them directly and say, hey, this is, this is what I'm doing. What are you thinking? And again, people weren't getting paid for product placement, right? And that wasn't even a thing. So me going in and saying, hey, can I place these products? They're like, sure. Where do you want to put them? So you would you would just like place these dolls or his paintings at events? Yeah, the sculptures, the paintings,

and that's where it was being introduced. Well, the journalists and those folks were coming in to interview the artists. Well, all around the room are things related to Thomas Blackshare. So that was naturally going to end up being a part of the story because it was everywhere. That was essentially my PR plan. Wow. All right. So you're running this PR firm for a few years. And was it just you running it? No. So this is why my PR firm failed. It wasn't just me. So what I understood was, you know, how to get clients and how to do this integration and how to do all these things. What I did not understand, and I think this kind of comes back to what we were talking about before where there was, you know, my father and mother were majorly downgrading, but didn't want anyone to know they were downgrading. So they still had this very big persona, even though they didn't have a lot.

Well, that was me in business. So I hired a ton of people. and far too many people for what was needed at that time and ran out of money. Let's just say I do business different now, by the way. So I think after about five years, a few entertainment folded. And it basically folded because you ran out of money. Oh, yeah. It was like a young girl figuring it out in real time.

But, I mean, you clearly made some good contacts over those years in PR because I think you were able to pivot. into the restaurant business. And you would go in to help launch a pretty high-end restaurant called G. Garvins. And then you stayed in the industry for like several years, right? Yeah. Meantime, around this time, early 2000s, I think you met Keith Weaver, the man who eventually married. And the story I heard was that you met him through his mom, who, who owned.

owned a salon, a hair salon? Yeah. I was going to her and, you know, the thing that happened in a lot of African-American hair salons and barbershops is there's just a lot to talk. There were two conversations in the hair salon and there were probably about 20 stylists. It was either gossip or it was Keith's mother talking about how amazing her son is. These were the two conversations going on. and there was one particular week that I went in, and I would go in weekly to get my hair done.

And she said, you know, I've been watching you all these weeks coming here. And it's amazing that you're so young and you're so smart and you're so business-minded. And she literally puts her head over mine and says, you have to meet my son. And I very quickly pivoted the conversation. but after that moment she was relitless. And at the time, he was a vice president for Sony Pictures. Yeah. And for,

pretty impressive. She's like, my son's vice president. Sony Pictures. I want you to meet him. Yeah. Wow. And was it an instant match when you met? Immediately.

Wow. So I get this phone call on myself and I just started laughing and I said, this must be the second coming. And he just fell out laughing immediately. And he's like, you've been talking to. to my mother. I have. And so we started off with a great deal of laughter. And so we're getting to the end of the conversation. And I had had an ongoing prayer with God that I still have to this day that I call my box me in prayer. And I'll use it for large decisions even for this day, which is, you know,

if this is not for me, close this door in a way that I can't even open. And if it is for me, open the door in a way that no man can close. And so then it makes it a little easy for me to make decisions. I mean, it's a scary prayer to pray because you're now taking yourself out of it. But that was my prayer then. It still is my prayer on big decisions now. And so we finally met for the first time May 9th, 2003. He proposed on September 6th. We were married on December 27th, same year. Wow. I think around this time, you kind of also pivoted once again in your career. You'd work as a manager in the hotel industry at some pretty top hotels. And then I think around 2010, you started to write as a freelance writer.

And it really came out of, I guess, a blog you started, maybe on a whim, which is called Happy Wives Club. Yeah, what's the story? Yeah, I didn't even know it was a blog. but yes, I called it just a website because I wasn't actually blogging on it. I introduced who I was and said, I want to find a million women around the world

who are just like me, who are not represented in the media, who are not represented, whose marriage, it doesn't look anything like Desperate Housewives, Real Housewives, or all of these books that are now popping up that are, you know, really berating men.

And so I said, I know that there are other wives out there like me who have amazing husbands who support them, who love them, who are not caricatures. And I said, I'm going to start a club for women like me. And I'm going to call it and just like literally paused for a second. And I said, I know what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it the Happy Wives Club. And so I emailed it to one of my sisters and three of my girlfriends who I knew had

similar marriages. And then they sent it out. And within four weeks, I had people who had signed up from 20 different countries. Wow. So you essentially become a writer with this blog. And at some point, clearly it attracts the attention of a literary agent or publisher because someone asks you to write a book about the secrets to great marriage. Yeah, the irony is, as I had always written, writing for me is cathartic to this day.

The Happy Wies Club wasn't actually initially anywhere on my radar in terms of writing about it. But when they made the suggestion, I told my literary agent, I said, well, I've always wanted to travel the world. So how about I go to all seven continents? And I interview couples happily married 25 years or more and deduced the common denominator. So that began my journey of finding couples. And so I would reach into people that I knew that lived in other countries and asked that exact same question. And they would always point me to that one couple in the community that everyone knows is a true, true, happily married. not for the, it's not for, well, at that time, there wasn't even really Instagram, so it wasn't

for the gram. And I did. I went and I, I traveled, I traveled the world. So, I mean, you have this phase in your, in your life where you had had a range of different experiences and have these best-selling books. And the story, from what I understand, the story is, and it's more or less, you know, probably an oversimplification, but you know, you know, You're on vacation in Asia. You read an article in the New York Times about Jack Daniels, the whiskey brand, that they discovered or found out or disclosed that actually Jack Daniel, the person who is the distiller, learned how to make whiskey from a black man named Nearest Green or Uncle Nearest, as he was known.

What do you remember thinking after you read that article? I remember first and foremost the photo. So what I see is this photo of Jack Daniel. And a lot of people saw it and immediately began wondering who is this black man to the right of Jack. But what I saw when I saw that photo was something a little different, which was Jack Daniel, the most famous whiskey maker of all time was taking a photo with his team and he had ceded the center position to the black man. That's what you notice immediately. Immediately because everyone else around Jack is white. This was his leadership team, if you will.

And the question was, is this nearest green, this story that had been floating around Lynchburg, Tennessee for so long about this African American formerly enslaved man who was the teacher of John. Jack Daniel, is this him? That was the question that people were asking. But the headline was Jack Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient, help from a slave. And I remember my eyes got wide as saucers, and I know that because Keith sitting across from me panics.

And I literally flip the paper around to him. And he's like, you've got to be kidding. And, you know, for us as African Americans, until that point in our lives, there was no brand that was like a quintessential American brand that was known around the world that was able to be pinpointed to an African American being there in the beginning. So were you, just as an aside, were you at that point a whiskey drinker? Like, because there are people who are super into whiskey as there are people who are super into wine and beer, Like, was whiskey a thing for you?

Whiskey was my drink of choice. Wow. Specifically bourbon, high proof and neat. So this article spoke to you on multiple levels, not just the story of a black man who essentially invented Jack Daniels, but as a whiskey drinker. Yeah, it speaks to me not because it was whiskey. It speaks to me because it was a ubiquitous American brand that it was very possible that a black man was at the very beginning of it.

Right. And so I began looking into the story even more. And I got on Amazon and I ordered Jack Daniels legacy. It was a biography by a local journalist out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who goes to Lynchburg, Tennessee to write the authoritative biography on the most famous whiskey maker in the world. And very early on into the book, it introduces this white preacher and distiller who Jack came to work for him as a chore boy and Nearest Green was working the still at that time. This preacher, according to this biography, says that he introduces Jack to Nearest by saying, this is Uncle Nearest. He's the best whiskey maker that I know of. And then every page, it was either Neers Green or his son's Eli Green and George Green. I mean, they were

very, very prominent in terms of mentioned. in this book. And they were mentioned more times than Jack's own family. So this was known. This was known for a long time. Oh, it was well known. Yeah, yeah.

This was not a, this was, it's the worst kept secret if it was supposed, it was never supposed to be a secret. And that's what I realized when I read his biography is, is at that time, you know what the internet does. They take an article, they turn the headline into clickbait, and then everybody makes an assumption. Yeah.

So all, around the internet at that time was that they very quickly determined that Jack was the slave owner, that he stole the recipe, hid nearest, and all these other things. Well, I'm reading this biography and going not a chance because I believed that it was a story of love, honor, and respect. And it really does spark something to the point where a few months later you decide maybe there's a book here. Like maybe I can do something deeper. Like maybe I can do something deeper. Like maybe And maybe I need to go to visit, like, the source of this to go to Lynchburg, Tennessee. Yeah.

And maybe it would result in more thinking about a book or a film or maybe not. But the idea was you would go down to Lynchburg and just kind of check it out. From what I understand, Keith didn't want to go. In part, because the name Lynch is in Lynchburg. And obviously... Well, yes. I mean, and understandably. understandably. So he did not want to go to a town with Lynch in the name as a California boy and

who's African-American. That is not what he would do intentionally, not in the South, but he did go. And we were there for a very short period of time where, you know, talk about a life of serendipitous things and just sort of following those paths. We were in the library, top of the morning, and we're just, we're trying to find anything on this story and we can't find anything. And so I asked the assistant librarian, comes over and asks how she can help. And I told her what we were looking to do. And she said, well, let me go call my director. And she calls the director.

Well, long story short, the director then calls who is Jack's eldest descendant. And if you think about it, and I understand it as well, this is a very small town. Their family has officially been drugged through the mud because people concluded that they were slave owners and hid the original recipe maker and all the, rest of this stuff. And so Jack's eldest descendant, she walked through the door of the library. And when I looked at her, I could visibly see concern. She thought you were coming to further, you know, go after her family's name. Wouldn't you have? Maybe, yeah. A black couple, an author and a movie person from L.A. comes to Lynchburg, Tennessee to do research on the story that everybody online has already made a determination about.

That this is a very cut and dry story. Jack Daniel had a slave, forced this man to make whiskey, then stole the recipe, and then took credit for it. That was the narrative. Exactly. And she was under the impression that you were going to further, you know, pursue that narrative. I would imagine so. I would have been under that impression as well. But actually, the narrative that you had learned was very different, that, that Jack, Jack Daniel did not own slaves, that Nearest was a mentor to him. Yeah. And that the Daniel family actually acknowledged that, that they credited Nearest for his role as a whiskey maker.

Yeah. And I said to her, I need you to understand I am not here to harm your family's legacy. I am here because I believe that there was a relationship here that deserves to be explored and shared. I write stories on love, and that is the story I'm here to find. And she said, well, in that case, I want to help you. And she pulls out her cell phone, and she gives me names and number to Nearest Green's descendants. Wow. They all grew up together.

They were friends. They ate around the same dinner table. And they were still there in Lynchburg, Tennessee. They were also there. The descendants of Jack Daniel, the descendants of Uncle Nearest. They're all there. They're all there. They're still there. And while you're there, you find out that actually somebody says, oh, by the way, the original distillery where the two of them made whiskey, you should go check it out.

And I think it's for sale. It was her that told me. So we're in the library. We were not there very long. And she said, hey, you know that book that brought you here, that farm where Jack grew up and all this stuff happened in the book, it's for sale. And her cousin then calls me about an hour and a half later, maybe two hours later, and says, you met my cousin at the library. She says, you want to go see the Dan call farm.

I'm a realtor. I can take you. Would you like me to take you tomorrow? Wow. And so I've not spoken to anyone from nearest his family, but have now had contact with two people from Jack's family, and I've only been there a few hours. So, all right, so you go and see it? And what do you make of it?

I mean, was it in disrepair? Was it an old farm? Well, you drive up to this farm and there's cows everywhere. So the current owners that had purchased it in the early 60s, they were dairy farmers. And I will say that Keith and I were not through the door for longer than five minutes before we looked at each other and said, we're buying this place. When we come back in just a moment, how Fawn realizes that the best way to honor the story of nearest green is not with a book, but with a bottle, actually many bottles of Tennessee whiskey.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, it's Guy here, and before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing. We are launching on how I built this. So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, We might put you on the show. Yes, on the show. And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting real-time branding advice from sunbums, Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you each week. We'll pick a few callers to join us on this show.

You can send us a voice memo at hibt at ID.wondery.com or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon, and we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, back to the show. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2016, and Fawn Weaver and her husband, Keith,

have made a huge decision to buy and restore the 300-acre farm where nearest green taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. The most important part was the second floor was an absolute time capsule. So the room where Jack stayed in, there was walls with barrel stencils that you could still very visibly read. And so it was so easy for us to go, we don't know what we're going to do with this, but this is a piece of American history and we're going to restore it and figure it out later. This was Jack Daniels. This was his home. farm. This was his, yeah, this is where he worked as a chore boy and where he lived with the other boys.

So in your mind, at that when you made the offer on the property, it sounds like maybe in your mind you were thinking, this will be part of the book. You know, the part of the book's story will be me buying this place and restoring this amazing place and telling the story of Uncle Nearest and maybe they'll be a film. I wish I could tell you I had that kind of foresight. I looked at that really truly purely as a real estate play and that we could restore this property and put this on the National Historic Registry like there there was a lot there but maybe a couple days later is when what came to mind is that I could do my research from there. You could actually live there and be steeped in that place. Exactly. And my thought process was when I was when I

walk the grounds of plantations, it's very, it's very rare for me to go on to a plantation because I walk the grounds and I can literally feel the spirit of those harmed on those plantation grounds. But when I walked across this farm, the Dan call farm, I got no such feeling. It was absolute and complete peace. And so I did the research from there. The story would truly come alive because I would be among their spirits. Dan Call, we should mention, was the, he was a preacher and a distiller. This was the guy that Jack Daniel went to work for originally.

Yeah, and the irony is, is both the church and the distillery were on his property. And his distillery and his church were on the furthest points, for the most part. And so he lived a world in which these two were very separate. And then he married a woman who was a teetotaler, who wanted nothing to be. do with him having a distillery. So she did not want him to be doing that. And so the reason why

Nearest Green is credited as the first known African American master distiller is because he fully turned over the steel to Nearest. But I think that had everything to do with the fact that his church and his wife were really pushing against him having it all together. This is 2016 when you buy the place. You permanently relocate to Tennessee from L.A. To any of your friends, friends say like, what are you guys doing? Are you nuts? No, because it was so remarkable the way things unfolded. The realtor who helped us, so this is, you know, Jack's lineage, as it turns out, as we continue doing the research, and I'm bringing my research into the property, she comes to me and she says, hey, you know, I know you're focused on a book and a movie, but if you ever decide to honor

nearest with a bottle, I'll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right. Well, she was in the family business for 31 years. When she left Jack Daniel distillery, she was their head of whiskey operations. Just the serendipitous nature of every aspect and element that has happened, you could not convince me that this is completely natural. That there's, I have been convinced from very early on that there was something supernatural at play here. And so when I would share with our friends and family the different things that had happened since we arrived in Lynchburg, no one had any question whatsoever that we were to complete this mission.

No one. Wow. Okay. So you are fully in Tennessee. Meantime, you're learning all these new things through your research about Uncle Nearest and about his legacy. and it's clear you are, you're not quite sure how, but you are going to help to preserve his legacy somehow and celebrate it. One of the things that you decided to do is to actually produce a commemorative bottle of whiskey.

That's what it was supposed to be. Was a singular commemorative bottle? That's what it was supposed to be. Was this an idea that you had? Like, let me just do this for fun or how did it come about? I had looked into it and had frankly concluded, that it was going to cost way too much money. And so the idea of having to go out

and to raise money from people, I was not excited about. I hadn't raised money in a very long time. Not fun. I mean, how much was it going to cost you to just make 500 commemorative bottles or something? Well, originally, with the commemorative bottles, you know, maybe a million or so dollars

because it's not just a matter of making the bottles. You'd also still have to market it. It's a very crowded field. So distributors are not going to pick you up if you cannot show that you have an ability to get people to buy it. Yeah. We're a three-tier system, the alcohol businesses, which means that you can't get it to the shelves without a distributor. Yeah. So if no distributor will pick you up, you don't have a product to sell. It sounds like making a commemorative bottle is a waste of time because nobody's going to distribute something that's

never going to come out again. Exactly. Hence why I moved away from the idea altogether is because to do it is to basically set yourself up for failure. Right. You couldn't just make a one-off. It's impossible to do it. Which is interesting because you can do that with wine. You know, I know people who buy some wine and put it in, you know, bottles and then hand it to friends of theirs for gifts. Like, and it's their own wine. Yeah, but wine is very different. Their tiered system is different. So, for instance, wineries can ship to end users. Alcohol business cannot. Because of the regulations, right. Exactly. I can be a, a winery in Napa and have a, you know, a club in which I've got thousands and thousands of people

that get wine. That's not legal for spirits. Right. And so you have to be able to get on shelf space. And that means that we would have to show a distributor two things. One, we have enough product to keep it stocked. Yeah. Which means that we were going to have to spend a lot of money on aged whiskey. And the second thing is that we were going to have enough money to put behind the marketing. Yeah. And so in order. order to source the right kind of what we call juice, but really high premium whiskey, it was going to be really difficult. So if you go to Scotland, scotch is so easy because all the distilleries just kind of buy from each other. They blend it. Everybody sources, it's not a big deal. America, we treat it

a little differently. And so it was going to be so difficult and so expensive. Is that because existing distilleries will only work with specific brands? It's because. It's because, Because we, up until more recently, because we produce so little extra. In Scotland, the distilleries produce enough for themselves, but they also produce enough for a ton of others to be able to purchase from them. It's a part of their overall business model. Right. That's not our business model in America.

There's basically not enough to build a major brand. And this business is so expensive and so difficult that if you can't build a large brand, you're basically just kind of waiting to die. That's the truth of it. And also, presumably, whiskey in America is dominated by just a few major multinationals. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. There are very, very, very, very few small players. And are the big brands, Jack Daniel, Jim Beam, I mean, is that more or less true? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you have Jack Daniels owned by Brown Foreman. Beam is owned by Centoria, a Japanese company, you can kind of go down the list of every major of every major American whiskey brand and I can tell you who owns them. So like all the

Diageos and the Pernaud recards, they're all in the business. Zazirax, LVMH, absolutely. You have essentially five that own everything. So it's not like beer where you've got these kind of tiny microbreweries. In spirits, they're very few. independent brands? There are very few independent brands that make it. You have a lot that try. But clearly, you made a, you had a change of mind. So what was the change of mind? If you already determined this was a bad idea, what gave you the confidence to say, well, maybe I should do this? So the way that it came about was, one, was Sherry Moore, who is our director of whiskey operations, who was previously director of whiskey operations for Jack Daniel, her saying she would come out of

retirement. So at least I knew. And she was the real estate agent who had offered to help you make the whiskey. Exactly. But I even told her, I have no interest. But then I, as a part of doing my interviews with Nearest's family, I interviewed close to a hundred of Nearest's descendants and spent time with them. And on one particular occasion, I went to interview a whole group of them, a pretty large group of them in Nashville. They got together at their local church. And they shared with me what they knew. I shared what I knew. And at the end of it, I asked what was the one thing that they thought should happen to honor their ancestor. And then one person in the room, one of the family members, raised his hand and he said, you know, we think Nearest deserves to have his own

bottle. His name should be on a bottle. And you could kind of see just the nodding that there was not just an agreement, but there was conversation that it happened previously. And I left out of that time. Keith was with me. We got into the car. It's pretty late. And I called Sherry from the car and said, if you will come out of retirement, I will raise the money and we will make this happen. All right. So you start to raise the money to create a brand. Meantime, you know, Brown Foreman, which owns Jack Daniel, they presumably catch wind. of your idea. They didn't catch wind. I invited them and told them. And what did they say? Because there was a risk that they could say, wait a minute, that's our IP. You can't mess with this. Like, this is ours. Yeah, but it wasn't their IP. I had already, I already had the trademarks. So by the time I shared with them what I would be doing, I made sure I had the trademarks.

For Uncle Nearest, for that brand. Yeah. So you were, you were stealth. You were operating quietly. Had to. And you can. came to them and you said, look, I'm going to make a whiskey here. And what was their response? Well, the person who I told at the time was the president of Jack Daniels and I could have pushed him over with a feather. He was just, he was blown away by the fact that we had done all of this. So they could have destroyed the brand before you even debut? They could have made it very, very difficult and very expensive. Because they could have said, hey, that's our, that's our story and that's our brand.

Yeah, I still would have won. That I'm not concerned about. But the thing is, is that it would have cost me so much to win. That the question becomes, is it worth it? And do I want to lose all of the investors' money in order to fight it? When we come back in just a moment, Hafan manages to launch Uncle Miris Whiskey in the backyard of a potential rival. But then faces another hurdle. being a woman of color in industry dominated by white men.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017, and Fawn Weaver is getting ready to launch a new whiskey brand in the name of Uncle Nearest Green, the man who helped Jack Daniel learn to make whiskey. But Jack Daniels, let us not forget, is already an established brand. with its own story to protect. So when Fawn goes to talk to the head of the company, she knows she has to tread lightly.

When we began working on this, I knew that they could have one of two reactions, and one of those reactions could be to point every missile that they had in their arsenal at me. And if they did that, I had to make sure that if, The way that I would describe it is if we're going down, we're going down with a thud so large that everybody will know it happened. Yeah.

But did you get the impression that maybe they might lawyer up? I didn't need to get the impression. They were very clear. Oh, what did they say? It was more of a they were going to protect their trademarks, not a we're going to prevent you from doing it. I think because the way that they had always seen the story is it was, a part of Jack's story. Yeah.

And so I think it was a little challenging for them to see Nearest's story stand alone. And so the question that they had was, how can you even tell this story without including Jack, which means that I would then be encroaching upon their trademarks. And so I was very clear in that I knew exactly how to tell this story without ever touching their trademarks. And that's what we did. So you actually, I think on your website, the name Jack Daniel doesn't even exist. No, it doesn't. It never has.

Amazing. It never has. If you, if the only time that Jack's name has ever been associated with our brand is if the story is being told historically in the press, or it was told historically in the short film that we did with Jeffrey Wright. And even if you watch the story is being told historically. that film, take out the credits, the film is a little more than 10 minutes. Jack's name isn't mentioned until maybe minute 10, and even then it's in passing. But from your perspective as a brand owner, manager, creator, it didn't matter because you didn't need the Jack Daniel Association.

Correct. But I mean, for me, and I said it to them from day one, that my job in cementing nearest is legacy was about building up the legacy of one person without harming the legacy of another. And so I've always been very transparent with them because I want for both of our brands and companies to continue to grow at astronomical rates. I want to see Jack's legacy continue to rise because the only reason we know of Nearest's legacy versus all the other African Americans who did work for so many of the bourbon distilleries whose names we still don't know. The only reason that we know the name Uncle Nearest,

the only reason that Nearest Green Distillery exists is because Jack Daniels' family made sure Nearest Green would never be forgotten. That's the only reason. So, Fawn, you, I mean, you are just a force of nature. You are unstoppable. You are going to do this no matter what, and that's clear. But it doesn't mean it's easy and it doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing. And so 2017, you have this business plan.

You know you're going to put it out into the world. You're going to manufacture. But that means you don't have a distillery yet. I mean, you had to find distilleries and bottle manufacturers and people to make the labels and to pack the bottles and to put them in boxes and then to distribute them. And this is an industry that we've already discussed totally dominated. by a few major corporations. And there are not a whole lot of women

and they're not a whole lot of black women in this industry. I mean, I have to imagine, you know, whether it's intentional or not, there's kind of a network of people who know each other and, you know, call Jim. And how did you break into that? Without question, there was a lot of blockage coming into it. But the way that I look at it is,

is that you just keep turning over every stone until you get it done. And so for me, it's not that I didn't have just a ton of hurdles and I am, you know, positive, some traps set, but I was absolutely determined and I truly, truly and still believe that I had both nearest and Jack in my sales. And so I would walk into situations with absolute abandon believing without question that Nearest and Jack both wanted this story to be told and they wanted Nearest's legacy to be cemented. And for whatever reason, I have the great honor of being the one who was chosen to do that. But still, fun, I mean, this all had to be challenging, right? I mean, I read a story that certainly in the early days,

you actually had Keith, your husband, pretend like he was the CEO of the company. Is that in order to get, because you weren't getting callbacks? Is that true? It wasn't just I wasn't getting callbacks. My entire team, my entire leadership team are women. And we were having a call one day. And I realized that every single one of us had the same problem, which is whatever it was we needed. This is before the brand came out. We were trying to get things in place, the distributor, the bottles, corks, things that, that, that, that, that, we have to have things that you were talking about earlier, all of these different things that we had to have to put this label out,

no one was calling us back, bottling partners, no one. And so I told Kate and Sherry, I said, let me test out a theory here. And then I called Keith and I said, babe,

can you call all of these people? And Keith called every single person on our collective list. And he got through either immediately when calling or they called him back by the end of the day. He didn't have to wait 24 hours to get in touch with any of those people that we had been trying to reach for three and four weeks. Fon, I'm going to confess that I'm not a whiskey expert in any way. I love wine, and so I know that a bit better,

but how we understand what Tennessee whiskey is? What makes it special? Yeah. The thing I love about Tennessee whiskey is it is the one spirit that we can look, at and say it was a process that came in with the enslaved people that made the difference. So Tennessee whiskey is a straight bourbon whiskey. So that's where we should start. A lot of people get confused about this.

Tennessee whiskey is a bourbon at its core. And that means it's distilled from grains, right? Yes, it's distilled from grain. It has to be cereal grains and it has to be at least 51% corn. Really truly, bourbon can be made anywhere in America. It's not like champagne where it has to be made in a really, region or tequila that has to be made in Holisco. It can be made anywhere in America, although I think 90-something percent of it comes out of Kentucky. However, Tennessee whiskey can only be made in Tennessee.

And the only difference other than geography, the only significant difference, is the process that came in with the enslaved people. And that is taking a traditional bourbon distalate and filtering it through sugar, maple, charcoal. It pulls out. conjurers, it pulls up fusel oils, it's basically natural carbon that is in the wood. Wow. And so if you use it just to filter, it attaches itself to the congeners, fusel oils. Fusel oils is essentially what gives you headaches, gives you hangovers and things of that nature. Okay, that's the thing about like, so when, so is, is Tennessee whiskey smoother?

Like, does it not have that, like, burning sensation that you get with it with bourbon? It just depends, because, because keep in mind, there's. so many elements that go into it. How much you char the barrels is going to determine more than that initial filtration, but also how you filter on the other side of it after its age is also going to have a lot to do with it. And so you can have two different Tennessee whiskey makers using the exact same mash bill and process before it goes into the barrel and it can taste completely different coming

now based on where they age it in the warehouse top floor, bottom floor, based on how they, how much they char. So we have, for us, I can't speak for all of the whiskey companies. Ours, we use triple filtration. So we obviously have the process that nearest taught to Jack and to other distillers and that process that was passed down to him from other enslaved people, this filtration that happens before it goes into the barrel. but then we do two additional filtrations when it comes out of the barrel,

but it's already been filtered once before it goes into the barrel, so it's already starting off ahead. Yeah. I wonder, I mean, you're obviously so gifted as a storyteller, and you had some press attention already around the story behind it, but that doesn't necessarily always translate into sales, right? Look at their Instagram influencers with millions of followers who create brands that go nowhere or have podcasts.

Yeah. How did you take this brand? Okay, you have a bottle now. It's 2017 and, you know, 2018, you've got this plan, this rollout plan. But, you know, really the only, at that time, the only way to sell this stuff was on the shelves of liquor stores and, you know, maybe some big places like Bev Mo and Costco or whatever. But how did you even begin to get into the liquor stores? What was your, because it takes a lot of marketing money and, right? It does. It does. It takes a lot of marketing. money and the first thing I did was hire people. Hire who? What kind of people? Higher salespeople. Just sale and what was their charge? What did you say? I need you to do what? Their charge was to go in and make sure that people knew the significance of this bottle that was coming into the marketplace. And the way that I would say it is if you walk into any type of liquor store, if you walk into any restaurant, any back bar, and you ask them a very simple question, tell me

what whisky or bourbon is on your back bar that represents someone who is not a white male and just wait. Wow. And that was the approach that your sales reps took? Absolutely. Because we had to understand that white males represent 30% of this country and a hundred percent of the whiskeys up until Uncle Nairist. 100%.

And so I would ask the question and then I'd go, I'll wait. And it was always amazing to see the enlightenment of those who look at their, and they just one by one would look at every bottle and go, holy cow, this entire time, a country that was built with blacks and whites. And this is our native spirit. And we know without question that African Americans, specifically the enslaved African Americans were involved in every bit of the process from manufacturing to barrel making and barrel rolling and charing and and they would go home to to whatever home they had covered in smut and and just black

from top to bottom because of all of the hard work and not one bottle on any shelf represented someone who was not white male. And that was enough to convince enough bars and liquor stores to at least carry the brand? It convinced him to carry the brand, and then it was our job to make sure that people understood that what they were doing when they bought a glass or a bottle of Uncle nearest was not simply to sip on the whiskey. We need them to tell the story. We need for the first African-American master distiller his name to be forever known

and honored the same way that Jack Daniel and Johnny Walker and Jim meme have been known and honored for over 150 years. We're just now starting to praise nearest 150, 160 years after those guys. What I'm trying to understand is once you, I mean, the story is so compelling, right? And it's clear that that was going to be enough in some cases to get it on the shelves, right, or to get it on the bar. But it's still not enough to connect it to the consumer, right? Because once your sales reps leave, they've told the story to the liquor store owner or the bartender, I walk into a liquor store and there are, let's say, 40 or 50 different whiskey brands to pick from. How do you then create awareness? How did you get people to choose your brand? Because they may not know the story and maybe all they care about is a great whiskey, which is what you're producing. But how did you go from being on the shelves to people actually buying it? Well, there's a couple of things we did.

Very early on, I asked my head of sales to enter our whiskey into every spirit competition around the world. Right. And I knew that if we could begin taking double gold and best in class in every major competition, which, by the way, there's been, I think, 16 major competitions this year, and we've received 13 best in class. So we have swept all of the major competitions this year with the exception of a few. even in those we got gold and double gold.

And so I knew that we had to have a product that ran with the big dogs. And one of the places where we were going to be able to achieve earned media is if we kept sweeping all the awards. And so that's where we began. But we also utilized scarcity marketing. Last September, we were out of stock in the entire country, meaning we were. we were selling much faster than we could bottle. I spent a million dollars in commercial ads when we were out of stock everywhere in the country.

And the reason I did that is because individual consumers would then walk into a store and say, do you have Uncle Nearest? No, we're out of stock. And then the next one and the next one. So then you have these clerks who all day long are selling spirits and not thinking anything of it. But if you keep having people come in and you have to keep telling them that there's a particular one that's sold out, now they're Googling to find out why is this brand sold out. Now all of a sudden, they have the story and they understand the brand. You have now created ambassadors all over this country. It seems like, and I don't want to be presumptuous, I don't know if this is the case, but it seems like you had a huge boost. in sales in 2020, part of that because alcohol and beverage sales in general had a huge year

because of the pandemic and in part because there was a greater awareness around your brand and other black-owned brands in the wake of, you know, massive social justice demonstrations around the country. Is that true? Did that happen? I don't think so. I actually don't think that either one had to do with the propelling of our company. And the reason why I can say that is because we're craft spirits, we're independent. No independent saw big years last year because the big guys, once the pandemic happened, they've got to keep those shares up, right?

And so they took over the shelf space. There was very little shelf space that remained for craft distillers. And I think that we did something very different during the pandemic, which is what propelled us and continued to propel us through the summer, which is we had 13 open sales. sales positions. And once we got shut down and we're quarantined, I told the team, we are not changing our strategy. We are staying peddled to the medal, our 13 positions. We are going to pick up people that have been furloughed and laid off rock stars all over this

country. And what I want for all of us to do during this period of time when we are in quarantine and we can't get out in the field is everyone write a marketing. marketing plan for your specific market. I told my team, do not pay attention to what's going on in the world. We are going to hunker down and be ready for the moment markets begin to open up. So one of the ideas, for instance, was from my team member in Ohio, Ronica, and she had this idea of to go cocktails. Now, to go cocktails were not legal anywhere at the time she had the idea. And the thought process was, well, if Ronica is right and to go cocktails become a thing and they push it through the legislation, if we're the first company who has branded pouches already made in branded mason jars, if we have this plan for all of our markets, that moment each market gets approval for to go cocktails, then we're going to be the first ones out. And it was huge. So our sales, I would, like to say that those things that you refer to have something to do with it, but we just

celebrated our 11th quarter in a row of triple-digit gains. So we've been 100% year over year for 11 quarters. That was only three quarters. Yeah, I remember I interviewed Jim Cook of Sam Adams' Boston Beer Company a few years ago on the show and he said, you know, the big guy spill more beer every year than we make. And people think of Sam Adams is a huge brand, but it is tiny compared to the Bloodwiser's Coors and others, Millers. Whiskey is like, I think Diageo and Chivas and a few other companies, you know, Bramford and William Grant and Bacardi Centauri. They dominate this industry.

And you are a brand new, independent. Little guy. Little little, little guy. So presumably you are a teeny tiny fraction of this market. So small. Yeah. Yeah. But have been growing at.

just a rapid pace since, since your founding. Do you have, I mean, I have to imagine it's so cash intensive, you know, and this is a business show. So we obviously talk about, you know, the challenges of running a business and the cash involved. I mean, is it, is there a clear horizon when, when, if you haven't yet reached profitability? Is that, is that? So yes, we're, we have achieved profitability, but at the same time, we're building a a $50 million distillery that we've already put more than $25 into.

And so our distillery, even though it's open to the public and phase one and phase two are open and it's sold out every weekend and thank God for all of the people who literally pilgrimage to nearest green distillery because they come and they get shirts and hats. And we've got, I hired the former president of Disney Store worldwide to merchandise. Wow. But no, it's incredibly, incredibly expensive. I've raised over $60 million. That's not enough.

We've had to structure debt in such a way to be able to make sure that we're continuing to build out this legacy. And that distillery is not cheap. So yes, we are in the black, but at the same time, everything that we earn, all profitability goes into building of the distillery. I read that in March of 2021, you had sold about a million and a half bottles by now, you know, in the Sairs, it certainly will be much more than that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you're growing really, really fast. But still, you're still so new that you can't sell like 15, 16 year old age whiskey, right, that you've distilled yourself.

I mean, could you've imagined being where you are now, four or five years ago when you kind of. settled on this idea? Yeah, where we are now is where I forecast it. Wow. So absolutely, but what we were very clear about doing is that we understood that we were about 160 years behind. And so we work at a different urgency than I think that others do. When I look at Jack Daniels, they were purchased by Brown Foreman in 56, if I remember,

correctly and you have a brand that is so well established that even if brown foreman sold it off to you know for no who's a French company and may not have any idea what to do with an American brand like Jack Daniel they still can't screw it up right and that's the way that I look at my mission here as it relates to Uncle nearest is to build this brand so large and make it so the name so ubiquitous around the world that no future generation can screw it up. Jack died in in 1910. We're still talking about him as if he's still alive. Yeah. That's what I want to see for nearest 150 years from now is for people to be talking about him

in a manner that you forget he's no longer here. That's the task. That's the goal. And that means I cannot grow this company incrementally at, you know, a few thousand cases a year. I'm not going to be alive that long. So I look at it and think, I am 45. I have no doubt that everything that has happened in my life,

whether success or failure, investments that I made that were good, investments that I made that were poor, every single aspect of my development up until Uncle nearest, I believe 100% of it was to prepare me for what I'm doing right now. So I look at this and say, can I go pedal to the metal for the next 35 years? And if I do, where have I built this brand to by the time I transition to the next life. That's Fawn Weaver, founder and CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. We first ran the story back in 2021, and the company's distillery near Lynchburg, Tennessee is expecting more than 350,000 visitors this year.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Rumtin Arableu. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Catherine Seifer, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estabez, and Malia Agadelo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.