Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - How Brett Berish Built Billion-Dollar Spirit Brands by Ignoring Industry Rules | Sovereign Brands

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Building a real brand isn’t about playing it safe — it’s about testing, failing, learning, and trusting your instincts. In this episode of Right About Now, Ryan Alford sits down with Brett Berish, CEO of Sovereign Brands, to unpack how he built global spirits brands like Bumbu, Deacon Whiskey, Bel-Air Rosé, and McQueen Gin by doing the opposite of what the industry expected. Brett explains why he stopped trying to compete with giants like Bacardi or Jack Daniels and instead leaned into authenticity, taste-first product development, and bold packaging. He compares building businesses to comedians refining jokes — constantly reacting to audiences, tweaking the approach, and evolving until something truly lands From navigating America’s rigid three-tier alcohol system to building brands in over 80 countries, Brett shares hard-earned lessons about flexibility, leadership, and believing in products before the market catches up. This episode covers: • Why no one believed in Brett’s brands at launch • How taste matters more than celebrity endorsements • Why packaging is part of the brand experience • How failure shaped his leadership style • Building teams of self-starters, not followers • Why letting products “breathe” unlocked global growth • Turning personal struggle into purpose If you’re building anything — a company, a product, or a personal brand — this conversation offers a masterclass in resilience, creativity, and trusting what makes you different. Connect with Ryan & Brett 🎙 Right About Now Podcast: https://ryanisright.com 📸 Ryan Alford: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford 🥃 Brett Berish: https://www.instagram.com/brettbarishceo 🌐 Sovereign Brands: https://sovereignbrands.com Explore Brett’s brands: Bumbu, Deacon Whiskey, Bel-Air Rosé, McQueen Gin, Violet Fog, and Vione France. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to support the show.

Building businesses is like the comedian. When a comedian goes on stage and tells a joke, they get the audience's reaction and then they tweak it for the next time. And then they tweak it again and again and again. And it could be 20, 30 times before they're tweaking that same joke. And it nails it by the end. And to me, that's business. You've got to constantly learn from your audience and what's working and what doesn't work, what the consumer's reacting, how the trade's reacting. And it's constantly evolving. And that's what we're doing. a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Write About Now.

I'm Ryan Alford, your host. And you know, we used to have a little moniker. It said if it's radical, we cover it. But you know what? I don't know too many brands and too many people doing more radical things than my good friend, Brett Barris. He is the president and CEO of Solver and Brands. And if you're watching the YouTube, which you should be, you would see the lineup of beauties here on the desk. Brett, what's up, brother? How are you, Ryan? Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. My pleasure.

And just real quick, on the radical side, you made me think of my brother, who I work with, he says, what you'll get you fired at any other company will get you hired by mine. So that's how I think. It's funny. It's funny. I only, a digital agency called Radical. And our show used to call the Radcast. Now we have the Radcast network for multiple shows. We didn't want confusion.

Literally, when I have meetings with my team and I need to get acknowledgement from here, I go in there and I go, our name is fucking radical. That's right. You have the license to live up to this name every day.

And our clients hired an agency name radical. So you know what that means? It means they can't call me and go, what the hell were you thinking? And I'll go, you hired an agency named Radical.

It works. You say the quiet part are allowed. This is what you expect to expect it. I love what you're doing, man. I love anyone that's got bravado and doing things a little different and understands marketing. And you got all that in spades, pun intended. For me, with my brands, it's all based on making mistakes and kind of learning. If I'm veering off in my own direction, it's because a long time ago, I realized I have to stop being like everybody else in my industry because I can't be them. I can't be

Diageo. I can't be Bacardi. I can't be Jack Daniels. And every time I try to do things the way they do, I failed miserably. I started leaning in on what do I like? Who am I? What do I want to be? And that's when it started working. Why spirits? What got you into spirits? I like most people, I ended up following what my dad did for a living. My dad spent 45 years in the liquor business. In some ways, he loved it, loved it, loved it, and lived it. At the same time, he hated it for me. I realize this is a parent myself. You want your kids to do something that you perceive as being easier. You perceive as being just something more simple. something that's got more benefit. He really wanted me to do finance, something and money, which I started out doing. But I veered back into this, and I have never looked back. I think it's turned out all right for you. I tell this to people. I think there's one type of person who knows exactly what they want to do in life. And God bless, they're the luckiest people in the world. And there was somebody like me who had lots of ideas, and I was the worst one, never picked anything. Because I was always scared that the one idea I'm going to do is not

the right idea. I'd run out of ideas. Therefore, I'm just in kind of nowhere land. It sucked for 10, 12 years until I picked something and I picked this industry and stuck with it. It's been a fascinating industry because you've got the tiered system in the U.S. with alcohol. And I know enough to be dangerous. You can enlighten us further than my brain can probably do it. But the inability forever to not be able to do D to C and having to go through the tiered system, distributors and all that stuff, I'd love just the business of liquor.

Give us a little bit of the evolution from where things started of where it is today. It hasn't changed since we're all. Surely it's gotten a little better. We can run ads about it. I'll give you one example because it'll be come home to you in South Carolina. The industry hasn't changed. It's been a three-tier system and a three-tier system for those of you who don't know what that means is I'm a supplier. I own the brands and I sell to a distributor and the distributor sells to bars and restaurants. I is a supplier, the owner can't sell direct. And then every state's a new distributor. And then you have some states that are franchise states like the state of Georgia, whereas if you give you the brand to a distributor, you can never get it back. Or a state like Pennsylvania where a the government is the distributor. In fact, they're probably the single biggest retailer in the United States, and it's still owned by the state. So it's fucked up, but it works. But I'll give you one change that's happened in the past 20 years of South Carolina. And if you're old enough to remember in South Carolina on-premise, bars and restaurants were only able to serve the customer mini bottles, airplane bottles, by law, billions and billions and billions of mini bottles in bars.

Because it was the only way to control serve. And you get a perfect. serve. You couldn't get any more or any less because it was straight out of the mini bottle.