Fawn Weaver 0:00 

Grab the gemstones in the challenges and move forward. Don't look at the past. What can we build together? What are you on earth to build? We're all here to build something. So what is it? What are we here to build?

David Novak 0:20 

Welcome to our leaders. Lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is fawn Weaver, the founder and CEO of Uncle nearest premium whiskey, which has been the most awarded whiskey in the world for six years running, it's named after a former enslaved man named nearest Green who taught Jack Daniel everything he knew about stilling whiskey. Nearest contributions had been lost to history, but by sheer force of will, Vaughn helped uncover his story and bring it to life, all while building an incredible brand that's valued at over $1 billion in today's conversation, you're going to learn how she did it, including some excellent insights into the world of PR and branding, and you're going to love her passion, her faith and her relentless ability to learn from the past while always moving forward. One quick content note before we get started in this episode, Vaughn talks about how she flirted with suicide twice at age 20, so I just want you to be aware of that. She talked about how she learned from it and used it as fuel to live a fulfilling life. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Vaughn Weaver, you

I want to start at the beginning of of your life and and basically, I want to, you know, we'll get into how you, you know, started this great whiskey business. But, you know, let's just start out by talking about your background. What's, what's a story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today.

Fawn Weaver 2:03 

I would say the story that I don't tell very often, because there's several that I tell all the time. So I'll tell you one that I don't think that I have shared. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah, is when I was when I was growing up, and I don't know what this age was, I just remember that in class, my teacher was requiring us to read Judy Blume novels, so whatever age that was, and we were supposed to do reports on it, and I refused to read the book, and I refused to do a report on it, and then there were all these other books that were similar novels, and I refused because I had an Encyclopedia Britannica, not just one. I had the whole collection. That was a big deal in the 80s to have a whole collection of Encyclopedia Britannica. I mean, they sold those door to door and and so I would spend every moment of free time that I had literally just reading the encyclopedia, going from A to B to C to D, and so I refused to do reports on the stories that I knew weren't true, and I instead would turn in reports on the stories that I believed to be true.

David Novak 3:11 

And so the very early age, you had this tremendous conviction, you know, this courage and conviction to really go against the trend, you know, take on, you know, your elders, you know, and yeah, and in fact, you left on your own, as I understand it, you left home at the age of 15. Yes, tell us about that. What? What drove that? Well,

Fawn Weaver 3:34 

my parents, I grew up in a really religious household, and it, and religion is, is a very interesting thing, because when it's wielded as I don't want to call it a sword, but when it's used to control and to tell you, you must do this, you must do this, you must do this, but you don't have an explanation. I am the child who was reading Encyclopedia Britannica, which meant that my parents would say, do this, and they would give me a reason for it, and I'd go, I don't know that that's true. And and I wanted the why behind everything, which serves me well now as a leader, because I want I live my life by the why. But at that time, as a child, for a parent, a parent is not interested in having to explain why about everything to their child. They want to be able to just say, do this, and you do it. And I think they call it gentle parenting now, right where they actually take the time to explain, I can tell you that wasn't happening when I was growing up, and so my parents, at the age of 15, they really had it up to here we I had a new baby sister, and they wanted this, this child, to be able to be raised without what they considered negative influence, which was me and and so they said, Listen. You either can listen to. What we say and follow our rules, or you can leave. This is our house. We pay for everything that's in this house, and if you want to stay here, you have to follow our rules. So they essentially gave me a shape up or ship out. And I don't even think I was at the house more than a couple more hours and I left. Wow.

David Novak 5:20 

And so you ship out, and where did you go, and what you learned about leadership from where you went? I went

Fawn Weaver 5:29 

to the projects, and I went to a project called Jordan downs. It's in Watts, and that was home of the Grape Street Crips. Across the way was home of Nickerson Gardens, and it was the bounty hunter Bloods. And the reason why that matters is this was the bloodiest during the bloodiest war between Bloods and Crips in Los Angeles history. I am living in one of those projects, and I'm dating a guy in the other project and going between the two, with, with, with no fear. And I still to this day don't understand why I did not have fear, but there was something about me that felt very safe. What

David Novak 6:11 

skills did you pick up in the hood? Oh,

Fawn Weaver 6:15 

if you ever negotiate against me, you'll see them come out.

David Novak 6:21 

That's not happening.

Fawn Weaver 6:24 

Rule number one, never set the price. Never set the price. When someone comes to you and they want to do a deal and they say, tell me what you want from this. No, no, you tell me what you want, and I will respond to that first person to put an offer in loses every time so that I learned in the hood,

David Novak 6:48 

and then you break out and you actually start your own PR firm. I did 10 years old.

Fawn Weaver 6:56 

I did but we skipped a couple things that I think is really important, which is I lived in the hood, but I also then moved into a homeless shelter. After a while, it was there was a situation that happened where I was living, where I felt not welcome, and so I moved into a homeless shelter, and by the time I was 18, I was living in my third homeless shelter, and I learned so much through that period of time. But on the other side of that, I began interning for a woman in Los Angeles, in PR and I, to this day, can't remember how I even met her, but whatever I said, clearly impressed her. And one of the things she was having I heard her talking to other people. I wasn't really brought into it. I was in more of secretarial type of thing. And I heard them talking about the these two clients, that no matter what they did, they weren't able to get them press. And I looked at how they were doing it, sending out press releases, doing a pitch, and I thought, well, if I'm the press, why would I respond to that? My job is not to my job is not to sell your product. My job isn't to promote your product. My job is to get more viewers, more readers, more more listeners. And so I began to approach it differently. And so I had a pitch for the owner of that PR firm, because she it was very clear she was going to lose these clients. And so my pitch was, instead of sending out a press release and trying to pitch the press, how about we take the product to where we already know the press is going to be, let's take the product into green rooms, where the press will already be there, and they will be filming celebrities. They'll be doing interviews of celebrities, if we have these products behind them. Then when they take the photos, now, people are looking at this and going, well, what's that behind that celebrity? And we now all these years later, we call it product integration, but in the early 90s, that didn't really have a name, you would do it. You would see it on on TV, Marlboro, right? Marlboro, and the cigarettes and all the rest of that, they did a lot of product placement. But in terms of doing it just out in the world for the purposes of being captured for the press. That was a pretty novel idea, so much so that although the woman I was interning with was one of the top PR agency owners in California, she didn't get it. She literally had no idea what I was talking about, but she said, I'm going to lose the clients anyway. So pitch it to them, and if they like it, execute it. And that's what I did. And it worked, and the clients loved

David Novak 9:47 

it, and then they said, Hey, we would if you want to start an agency, we'll go with you. Was that hard for you to break off from the person that gave you the break. It

Fawn Weaver 9:56 

wasn't because I was young and not loyal. I was. Is 18 years old, and I'm looking at two clients offering me $5,000 a month, and I had just been homeless. That was an absolute no brainer to me. Now, if I went back now, the person I am now, would I have done that? Absolutely not. But at 18 years old and coming on the other side of being homeless, I can't say I was standing on moral high ground, I can tell you. And

David Novak 10:24 

$10,000 a month, 1994 it's lot of money. It's a lot of money, you know. So I totally get it. So you moved out of the PR business, and you know why you were off to such a great start? Well, because

Fawn Weaver 10:39 

I didn't know how to run a business. I'm I'm young. I then go out and hire people. I assume, well, it was so easy to get these two clients, and in my own head, I multiply, and I said, Well, surely I can get eight more. So as long as I have the staffing to be able to do that. And so I staffed up so heavy, and learned a very expensive lesson early on, which is, as much as I had to staff up, I then had to staff down. And so I started off with it being one person, and I ended up with it being one person. But the beautiful thing about it is I then learned how to do everything myself. So today we launched what's off to be a pretty huge product for our company. Probably will end up being the the biggest launch we've ever had. And from the conception of the idea of the commercial to the shoot, to the putting out on social media this morning to the concept we we joked that, from me coming up with the idea to bringing everyone in to execute the idea, to editing the idea doing all of that, it took me longer to figure out how to put on fake lashes, because I couldn't get my makeup artist out here in time. Then it took me to go from idea to conception and then creating something that the press would pick up. And it has worked brilliantly, and and, but again, I think it comes from when you staff down to one person, and now you're having to do all of it that stays with you. Even years down the road, when you have a full team, you still can go from concept to execution very quickly, and you've

David Novak 12:15 

got this great sense of urgency, but you're enormously creative. You know? Where did how did you develop that skill? Are we just born with it? You

Fawn Weaver 12:23 

know, I don't, I don't know. I think that I'm incredibly purpose driven. So one of the pieces of my backstory, it that I am always very open about, is at the age of 20, when everything seemed to be crashing down and coming to an end. Instead of in my head as a kid thinking, Well, I just bring my company down to one. It just felt like a failure and and it was just 20 years of a very difficult life, and I tried to commit suicide twice. Wow. And in that moment, the second time, while I was still laying in the bed, and the irony of Uncle nearest in the process that nearest green taught of taking traditional bourbon distillate, running it through sugar maple charcoal to purify it before it goes into the barrel. Well, I had an A tube stuck down my nose, and they were pumping a similar charcoal into my stomach to pull out the contaminants that I had taken to try to kill myself. And it's It's amazing all these years, 28 years later, it's the same thing we're using to purify. Is what kept me alive and and I remember that second time being in the bed, making two decisions, very clear decisions. The first decision was I wasn't able to take myself out, even though I was a very determined person, which meant that God had me here for a reason, and I was determined to figure out what that reason was. The second thing was, I had tried to take me out, and I'm a very determined person, which meant if I could not take me out, no one could take me out. And so I've lived my life for the last 28 years as if no one could take me out, no big player in any industry, no individual. I just go through and I'm not concerned about what someone else might do, because I couldn't take me out. You can't take me out.

David Novak 14:12 

I'm gonna be very careful about one question I ask you. I'm not gonna take you on. I can tell you that you know and you know, but I've heard you say that one of your greatest strengths is that you don't look backward, no, and I do not so you know, explain why is that so important for you as a leader?

Fawn Weaver 14:28 

Well, because the the looking backwards, I don't understand the purpose of it. You take the gyms with you, and every struggle, every challenge, every difficulty, you have to find the gym in it. There always is. There is no difficulty that comes to anyone at life, just to be difficult. Every single thing is basically, there's a it's wrapped around a gift. And the question is, is, how quickly can you get to that gemstone? And that's. Would I take with me? And so the the old school Atari video games, where they, you know, you would collect the gyms along the way. That's essentially been my life. But I'd be foolish to go back to where there's no longer a gym. I took it with me. And so I take the gyms and I move forward. I take those lessons with me, and they inform how I move in the future, but they do not take me back to my past. You

David Novak 15:24 

talked about the importance of finding your mission. You know, when you couldn't, couldn't take yourself out or you, what did you settle on as your mission? To

Fawn Weaver 15:33 

live a life that wasn't for me, to live a life that truly was for others, but not in a burdensome way. I see a lot of people where they give so much of themselves that it becomes a burden. Their life becomes a burden. And the irony is is then they still continue looking for purpose. In the middle of it, my purpose is wrapped around really helping others to succeed, helping others to grab the gemstones in the challenges and move forward. Don't look at the past. What can we build together? What are you on earth to build? We're all here to build something. So what is it? What are we here to build? And and so that's what I've I've done with my life, is just keep moving forward, taking the lessons with me and building on them.

Koula Callahan 16:24 

Hey everyone, it's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app, and start your day every day, with two minutes of leadership wisdom, it'll take 20 seconds go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead. You have

David Novak 17:12 

such a radiant personality. I mean, you've got the big smile and you know, they all the research says that the happiest people in the world are other directed, yeah, you think that's driving your happiness, because You sure seem to be. You

Fawn Weaver 17:26 

know what I will tell you, and I tell people this, and it's an odd statement to make, but I have to make it, because it's true. I am genuinely the happiest person I know, and I am genuinely that most happily married person I know, because I know what my life is like when no one is around, when social media is off, and I really enjoy my life. I don't feel like any element of it, that I'm searching for anything and and so, yeah, I think the radiating is the fact that every single day I get up, and even if it's a really hard day, a hard week, a hard month, a hard year, whatever it is, I'm still getting up with excitement, because I know I was purposed to be here this day. Let's get to it. What do we have to get done? And

David Novak 18:12 

I want to get to Dear screen, but I got to ask you this, because you brought it up. You're happily married. You actually, you actually started the happy Wives Club. I did. Wrote a book on it. I

Fawn Weaver 18:23 

did. I did

David Novak 18:24 

tell us about that. I mean, how did that possibly get in your head?

Fawn Weaver 18:28 

So I was married for 10 years, and my husband and I have always had a really incredible marriage, an incredible relationship in which we just have an enormous amount of respect and honor and adoration for one another. And so He's my rock. I'm his rock. And at the time, we were about 10, well, I think we were actually about eight years into marriage, and I noticed that Desperate Housewives was the number one show in the country at that time. And these Real Housewives of Orange County New Jersey, they were all starting to pop up, and I was like, What is this caricature of marriage that we're watching here? And it actually bothered me, because my husband was so incredible, and I wanted other people to experience what I was experiencing, and I didn't want the television to cause this generation to believe that a happy marriage isn't possible, that a really good spouse isn't possible. And so I decided I would start a club. And I decided I would look for a million women who were like me, who chose, well, who chose the right spouse, and that we would just connect. We'd connect online, and then we started connecting in person. And one of the things that I began looking for were, what is the secret to a happy marriage, not just in America, but what is that one thing that couples from around the world that have been married 25 years or more? I wasn't writing the book to give people advice. I was going around the world and talking to people happily married 25 years or more. To deduce the common denominator for myself, and then I was sharing that because I wanted to be happily married for all of my life. And

David Novak 20:07 

the answer is, give me that common denominator.

Fawn Weaver 20:11 

The crazy part is, There ended up being 12 no matter where I was in the world, New Zealand, India, Philippines. It didn't matter. But the number one thing, the number one was mutual respect. And the interesting thing is, at that time, the really popular book on marriage was called Women want women want love. Men want respect, or men want respect. Women want love, something like that. That's the title. And my meeting with all of these happily married couples, no, both wanted respect, both needed respect, and that's where it began, and everything else. So number one was respect. Number two was trust. The one that was most surprising to me is every single couple had a daily ritual. That's

David Novak 20:54 

so interesting because I thought, you know the Bible, it says that men need recognition and women need respect. That

Fawn Weaver 21:01 

is not what the Bible says. Yes, it does. You

David Novak 21:03 

better go back and read a few more scripture here. I know your dad was a let

Fawn Weaver 21:07 

me tell you preacher now here, let me tell you something. I probably know the word better than most pastors.

David Novak 21:13 

Okay, I'm not going to take you on. Let's move on. You win. You win. Okay, you

Fawn Weaver 21:19 

wrote the book in Scripture, you win.

David Novak 21:21 

Okay, okay, I'll let you win. Okay, I'll just, I'll move on. Okay, now I want to, now I want to take you back to the beginning of this remarkable brand story. When did nearest greens life intersect with yours? Tell us that story.

Fawn Weaver 21:37 

I was in Singapore, and we were just my husband and I were there for just a couple of days, and it was on the cover of The New York Times International Edition, Jack Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient help from a slave. And there was a photo, and it was group of white guys. One was Jack Daniels, obviously, and to his immediate right was a black man. So everyone is trying to figure out with the headline in this photo, who's the black man? Who's the black man? And what the people in Lynchburg were saying was the story that's been told about who taught Jack and who was his mentor is not true. It wasn't a white preacher and distiller, it was an enslaved man on his property. So they were guessing that the photo was of near screens Sun, which it is true, that is what it turned out to be, is that was George Green. But the internet decided very quickly. And you know, we see this now, David, so much. The Internet decided on its own, with no research, no facts whatsoever, that Jack Daniel was a slave owner. He stole the recipe, he hid the slave. I looked at the photo, and I thought, This photo is taken somewhere at the end of the 18th century, 19th century, top of the 20th century. If you didn't want to give a black man credit, you don't put them in the photo, and you certainly don't put them to your right. And so I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at the photo, and very quickly come to the determination that social media is wrong, the press is wrong. That Jack Daniel was, in fact, trying to tell us something with that photo, and I believe that he was trying to make sure that America would not be able to to wipe out whoever this person was to us, right? So I ordered, while the whole internet had made a determination of what it was, and it was all over, it ended up being one of the top 10 red stories of New York Times for the year. It spread like wildfire. And I ordered Jack Daniel's legacy, written in 1965 1966 and published in 1967 height of the Civil Rights era. So think about this. This is Lynchburg, Tennessee. You have a white reporter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama that comes to Lynchburg to tell the authoritative biography of the most famous whiskey Maker of all time, and he includes nearest green and his boys more times than Jack's own family. Wow. And then I got the original photo. So the photo in the New York Times was cropped. I then got the original photo. And Jack Daniel didn't just have the African American man seated to his right, George Green. He actually seated the entire center position of the photo to nearest Green's son, George. And in addition to that, if you look at the photo closely, everyone else is seated. Jack never grew to be more than five foot two. He is standing. But what George Green and his nephew limb in front of him, what they're covering on his behalf is the fact that he has no right leg. His leg has been amputated. So he's actually leaning on a cane, and they're covering that infirmity. The amount of trust you must have in the man you put to the right of you to do that is enormous. That's the story I wanted to know about. So tell

David Novak 24:58 

us about nearest green. So. He isn't in the picture. Who is nearest green? Nearest

Fawn Weaver 25:02 

green is the first known African American master distiller. He is now who we know to be Jack Daniel's teacher, his mentor. And Jack Daniel distillery number seven did, in fact, exist. It is where old number seven comes from, and distillery number seven was where nearest Green was the master distiller. He's the only known master distiller for distillery number seven, and he made the whiskey for Jack Daniel. So

David Novak 25:29 

it's so interesting. You see this article, you do all this research, and you know, as leaders, we've got to discern which ideas are worth pursuing. So you're getting more and more intrigued by this, how'd you know this was the one to lean into? And what advice would you give leaders on on how to figure out what to lean into and spend your time in and really go after like you ultimately did, everything

Fawn Weaver 25:52 

was available. And by that I mean literally everything, the online real estate, which is very difficult to get Now, that's the the URLs, the social media handles, they were available. The trademarks were all available. The 313 acre property where Jack Daniel distillery number seven, where it was, where Jack grew up, where nears green lived, and his family lived, and they worked. It was for sale there. There are certain things that come into play, where you have to look at it and go, Okay, this is just meant to be.

David Novak 26:26 

Stars are aligned. The stars

Fawn Weaver 26:29 

are aligned here, but, but what I will say is, for leaders to answer your question is, is? Is because I was going to be coming in the middle of a $24 billion company at the time, brown former that owns Jack Daniel. I was going to be coming in the middle of it, adjusting their story quite significantly. For a lot of leaders, they would run, they would not pursue it out of fear. And so I think when we're looking at things, if we are destined to do something, we have to figure out how to do it and be in alignment and not and not be fearful. And so that was the biggest piece. Even people that look at our story now, our company, our brand, they still get scared for me and I'm go, guys, it's okay. We've been at this for eight years now. It's okay.

David Novak 27:20 

Nobody's gonna take you out. Okay, yeah, so tell me about this first trip to Lynchburg Tennessee. You know where Jack Daniels was, yeah, started. I mean, that's Lynchburg Tennessee. I mean, you know,

Fawn Weaver 27:36 

it doesn't sound great, but I tell you what it is, 15 minutes to the left of me where so Jack Daniels distillery is literally 15 minutes to the left of my home. Nearest green distillery is 15 minutes to the right. I am smack dab in the middle. And there is no place I feel safer in the world than between Lynchburg, Tennessee and Shelbyville, Tennessee. But coming down here, there was, I think this kind of goes back to if I can't take me out, nobody can take me out, is I came down here with a pretty in a pretty bold manner. I wasn't hiding what I was doing. There was nothing secretive about it. I was very open. I'm here to research the story of nearest green and his intersection with Jack Daniel and the beginning of Jack Daniel distillery and and what was great is because I told everyone from the beginning, I believe that social media has this wrong. I believe the press has it wrong. I do not believe that Jack was who they say he is. I believe this is a story of love, honor and respect. I believe Jack was a good guy. I believe that he did not steal the recipe and hide the enslaved man. In fact, he treated the enslaved man with respect and made sure that he left enough bread crumbs that America would not be able to write out his story and and so I shared that with everyone that I talked to. I actually walked into one of the very first things I did was walk into the Jack Daniels store on the square and buy up every t shirt, because I decided I was going to wear a Jack Daniels t shirt every single day, so that people understood I'm not here to harm the legacy of Jack Daniel but

David Novak 29:10 

you had people. I know there had to be skeptics. I understand that you met with one of Jack Daniels descendants. Yeah, yeah. So you can say one thing, okay, yeah. But people could see you and say, Hey, there's, there's another motive that,

Fawn Weaver 29:25 

Oh, yeah. How

David Novak 29:26 

did you, you know? So you buy the T shirts, yeah. What else did you do to really get that trust? Because I was

Fawn Weaver 29:32 

just there, I never left. So they under. I literally. So if you think about it, I think, are you up in Louisville? Are you Louisville? Yeah, yeah. So you're Louisville. You're where the Brown family is. And so they own Jack Daniels. But they're never here. I literally moved into the town and and so they, they the town, looked at it and said, this woman is serious, like she literally bought the farm. I put articles in. The newspaper or an ad in the newspaper every day, every Friday, and I explained exactly what I was doing, what I was doing research on, and I welcomed the community to help me. Every Friday, there was an ad, and people would bring me artifacts from their basements, from their attics, documents, photos. They'd go, I don't know who these African American people are, but they may be a part of your story, and they would literally just show up at the Dan call farm, which we had purchased by then, and they helped me piece this story together. So were there skeptics? Yes, but this is what I think is the amazing thing about God is it doesn't matter if there are skeptics, if you are fully protected, he's not just protecting me with angels you can't see. He protected me with people like Chuck Baker, who own Barrow house barbecue, who dared anybody to come near me and touch me. He protected me by my next door neighbors, who both white, both born and raised, grew up there. And if people showed up at our property and they didn't look like they belong there. They would jump in their truck and roll over with their shotguns and go, Why are you here? And then we'd get a phone call from people going, uh, we're at your property, and they're people here with guns. I go, Oh, just pass the phone. Those are my neighbors, right?

David Novak 31:22 

So you go to this town, okay, you talk to Jack Daniels to send it. Oh, you buy a 300 acre farm. I mean, come on. Now, how did that happen? I mean, it's like it was there for you set, you say, but still you gotta, you gotta go all in now, you know, 300 acres that had to take a little bit of money. Listen,

Fawn Weaver 31:45 

it did, but, you know, we looked at it and said, This is American history. This is where Jack Daniel grew up. This is where the distillery was. We have no idea why it's been on the market for 15 months, but we're going to take the leap of faith, and we're going to buy it just from a pure, just a pure real estate play. It made no sense to us that had been on the market for that long.

David Novak 32:09 

You know, people say stories are critical to brand building, but in the whiskey business, you've got to, you've got to have a have a story. You know, you know what's your, what's your belief about the necessity of having a story and telling it? I

Fawn Weaver 32:25 

do not believe that. There's a couple things. Number one, I don't believe you can succeed in bourbon without an authentic story, but an authentic story with roots. So you'll see a lot of really popular brands in Europe and Louisville. So you see it all the time, where they'll come in and they'll take up a whole entire half of a shelf become really, really popular, and people will buy, buy, buy, but then all of a sudden you start seeing them fall off. I've seen it a lot in the in the eight years that we've been around this business, in the seven years we've actually been on the shelves, is you see them come, take a ton of shelf space, and then all of a sudden they, poof, disappear. And the question is, is, where do they go? I can answer that question every single time. If they didn't have an authentic brand story to tie back to, then they only get the newness. And then people go back to the story that they can sit with a glass, a glass of whiskey, and they want to be able to have a conversation with their friends, have cigars, and they want to be able to talk about the backstory of this bourbon. And so I don't believe that you can build a successful bourbon brand. I truly don't believe it without a story that has authentic roots. I don't believe it. So, what

David Novak 33:43 

do you think of these celebrity brands like, you know, Eric Church's gypsy and, yeah, sweetness Cove, Peyton Manning, Beyonce, she's got her brand, you know, what do you think? You think that they have a shot? Well, 99.9%

Fawn Weaver 34:00 

of the celebrity brands that have come out since we entered the market have failed. So they've got a point zero 1% chance of succeeding. And you know, it's really, truly one of those things that only time can tell. But even if you look at cost amigos, cost amigos, tequila isn't even required. Doesn't require as much of an authentic story. Celebrities can do well in that. But even if you look at someone like a cost amigos that I think last time I looked, they were down 25% right now, I think they got rid of like a sales force of 65 people, or something wild like that, over the last six months. And that's the brand that that we were all talking about five years ago, like it was the new Mount Rushmore, if you will. Sweden's Cove came in, and I can't find him on a Nielsen report if I tried, because it came in, people bought but then they moved back to a heritage brand, and so. So the celebrity brands one of the things. And I get celebrities that come to me all the time to ask if I'll do a partnership, and every single time I say no, because my job, my responsibility, is cementing the legacy of nearest green you are a distraction if I are to do that, but I will always give them my advice based on what I have seen celebrities do well, and why, I've seen so many fail. And if you treat those the whiskey business especially, like a side hustle, you will not win. I don't care if people buy it like crazy for the first six months or the first 12 months, you will eventually completely fall off the Nielsen report. I've seen it every single time you will stop being on the shelves.

David Novak 35:43 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Vaughn Weaver in just a moment talking to fawn. It's clear if you want to build a great brand, you've got to tell a compelling story, and storytelling is a big part of the way that Ben Weprin leads to it's how he crafted the vision for his graduate hotels brand, which Hilton acquired earlier this year for over $200 billion we're

Ben Weprin 36:07 

building something that's in the future. You have to be able to believe my story, or you're not gonna invest in that, being part of that journey. And you know, hopefully people connect it, and some people won't. You know, a lot of people think I'm out of my mind, or they think that, you know, this product, this looks like a living room, and I'm like, well, that's great, because what we're doing is not for everybody, all of those obstacles or opportunities and work clothes, that's okay. We want to build something that's differentiated, and to be differentiated is actually very difficult. One, it's hard to bring it to life. And then two, it's not for everyone. That's okay, because the people that like it will really resonate with us and those people, the lifetime value of that customer, the brand ambassadorship them, taking ownership and sharing it with people. That's the most valuable salespeople there are for us in the world. That's exactly what we're looking for. We're not for everybody, but for our people. They're going to say, these people get me. They understand me. I'm going to take that journey with them, because I believe in the story. Go

David Novak 37:04 

back and listen to my entire conversation with Ben, episode 143, here on how leaders lead. You have this massive determination. Nothing is going to stop you. You got to take on five major companies to really get distribution. What kind of leadership did it take you, being this tiny little brand, starting out with a start, you're taking on all these giants. Tell me about the leadership challenge you had just to get distribution and just get on the shelf? Yeah,

Fawn Weaver 37:34 

well, I had to. It was very it was very interesting, because coming into it, you have these, these five spirit conglomerates, and if you add Tito's in there six. But we'll take him out just because he's vodka and he's got just vodka, flavored vodka, he's got one bottle, but he could buy most of these other guys at this point. But let's just take the Big Five Guys, right? Those big five that all have bourbon in their portfolio, they all are, who pay for the distributors. They keep the lights on, they pay their bonuses. They so coming into this industry, I kept hearing that, you know, from people of color and from women and independents that they can't get the distributor to work. They can't get the distributor work. So I began diving into it, and very quickly realized, well, if 90% and this is actually the number, I know it's the number of at least two of the big three. I don't know about southerns, but two of the big three, if a 90% of your revenue is coming from only 10% of your brands, well, those 10% better get 90% of your attention. And and so you have, they have these 1000s and 1000s of little brands that they can't give their attention to, not because they're jerks, not because they don't want to, not because I believe the system is broken. I don't it's because they literally can't do it and stay in business. And so I came into it and said, Listen, I'm not going to complain about the distributors. I am not going to push back or fight the distributors. What I'm going to do is figure out how to succeed in the model that is currently set up. And so I told my leadership team at the time, and continued for the first five and a half years of this company. If we don't hit our goals, distributors will not be the reason that is everyone, every independent that is their reason that will not be our reason. We will treat them as high priced FedEx. We will tell them we are treating them as high priced FedEx. We will build this brand on our own, and we will build it to a place where there is a groundswell, that there is a consumer groundswell, that they will have such great pride in representing the unclear brand that they will want to do the work. And for five and a half years, we literally did not really ask for our distributors to do anything except drop off product. So

David Novak 39:52 

how did you, how did you make this brand happen? I mean, I you had to have a challenge just just getting people to even talk to you.

Fawn Weaver 39:59 

Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. In the beginning this, this will, this will make you smile, because the industry wasn't accustomed to hearing women on the other end of the line, and so you have me on the other line. Obviously my cadence in and my tone let you know I'm not a white woman. But then the other two women who were on my ELT at that time were white women. They weren't getting their phone calls returned either, and this is for basic stuff. We needed to source liquid. We needed corks. We needed distributors. No one was calling us back. And so I put the two and two together, and I called my husband, who was an executive vice president at Sony Pictures at the time, and I said, Babe, I know you don't have any time for this, but I just need to test out a theory. And I had Kate, who's our chief business officer, and I had Sherry, who was our head of whiskey operations at the time, send me an email with the names and numbers of everyone they had been trying to call that wasn't calling them back, and a synopsis of what they needed from them. I forwarded the combined email to my husband, and I asked him to make all the phone calls. And I'm bet it will not surprise you that every single person either picked up the phone when he called through, or as soon as the Secretary put him through. They don't call him secretaries anymore, but at the time, I guess they did and and, and by the time he got to the end of the calls, and it was always within the same day. If he didn't get through right away by 5pm he got that phone call, and at some point in the conversation, there would be, Hey, do you drink beer? You want to go grab a beer? Do you golf? You want to go hit some balls and and so this Keith to this day, he said it was so fun for him because it was Remington Steele, he was literally out there representing as the leader of this company. And I don't know why, no one questioned, how is he doing this? And the Executive Vice President of Global Public Policy and External Affairs for Sony Pictures, someone else has to be leading this. But nope, nope, they actually didn't. So if you look at any press interview I did for the first two years of this company, and mind you, I did hundreds. I was never the CEO and founder. I was the Chief Historian. That is what, that is what consumers in the industry could deal with at the time. I was the Chief Historian. And here's the thing, I had no ego about it, because my focus wasn't making a name for myself. My focus was making a name for nearest green, which meant that if I needed to be Chief Historian in order to make that happen, I was okay with that. Yeah. So you got this now you gotta you get in.

David Novak 42:39 

I want you to give me the elevator pitch on why nearest screen should be at my bar. Well,

Fawn Weaver 42:46 

everyone who I was pitching, by the way, look like you. So let's start there. And everything is good looking. You know, maybe not as good looking. They were pretty similar, the buyers, the the the distributors, the distributors certainly all look like you as well. And my pitch was really, really simple. It was twofold. Number one, before we ever entered the industry, I realized that when you look at the wine side of the business, you would always see the way they would market was with awards and with with critic numbers right the review points. But the bourbon industry didn't do that for some reason. And I talked to some experts in the industry, and they said, Oh, because we've tested it, and consumers of bourbon don't care about that. And I said, well, they may not care if you win one award, but I bet you they'd care if you became the most awarded. And I didn't tell them that. I just came to that conclusion. So before we ever put our first bottle into the marketplace, I had our chief business officer who was our head of sales at the time, I had her submit our bottle to every competition around the world. So before we ever hit shelves, we had already begun winning double gold back to back to back to back to a place where people were like, how the hell is this possible? They just got here. So that was the first thing, is that I would walk in and say, so those guys on your back bar, this bottle just beat them. That was, that was one part of the pitch. I'd start with the juice. The other part of the pitch was, look at your back bar and tell me a single one of your bourbons or scotches or Irish whiskey, just pick a whiskey, any whiskey that isn't commemorating a white man, and I would just wait for them to look at every single bottle and have an aha moment of holy Cow. This country is 70% women and people of color, and we haven't figured out how to represent at least one with excellence on the bat bar. And that was the pitch. It was those two things.

David Novak 44:52 

And let me ask you this, okay, you win all these awards, but how'd you get the great product to begin with? Well,

Fawn Weaver 44:58 

here's the funny thing is, we. Would go toe to toe with this, the product source, and we would get double gold, and they would get silver and a blind taste competition. And the reason is, is that we blended it so brilliantly from the very beginning, the the people think that that a great whiskey is about the distillate. It is not, I can tell you, even in Lynchburg during the times of Jack, there were 16 distilleries in a four mile radius, all using variations of the exact same recipe. It's the process that they you, that you use, but it's also the blending, and we've done that extraordinarily well near screens. Great, great granddaughter, Victoria Edie Butler, our Master Blender has now won master blender of the year four times, and we are about to enter our sixth year in a row of being the most awarded bourbon in the world. You know,

David Novak 45:52 

you have an incredible process for making decisions. You got to tell us about what you call your box. Me in prayer. Absolutely,

Fawn Weaver 45:59 

it's very, it's a very simple thing. The reason why I'm able to go through doors with absolute abandon and not peeking through them looking for who might harm me on the other side, as I pray a very simple prayer, which is, Lord, if this is your will, open the door in a manner in which no man can close, including myself. And if this is not your will, close the door in a manner that no man can open, including myself. So when I roll out a marketing campaign, and I I've already run it through that prayer, through that test, so I already know it's going to work. So let me ask

David Novak 46:41 

you, okay, a lot of a lot of brands start, they believe in starting out very slow. You go in a regional basis, and then you go to the next step, and you don't get out of your geography. You set the goal, I think, to get in all 50 states within two years. Yes, yeah. I don't know why you said two years instead of one? But so, so let's How did that prayer work in that process?

Fawn Weaver 47:10 

Yes, and I will tell you it was two years because it wasn't physically possible for us to get to all 50 states. There was only three of us employed, and so we had to do all of the GSM, all the general sales meetings. We could not get there physically in a single year, but, but otherwise, I would have absolutely gone for it in that first year. We did get in less than two years. But again, this was a go after it set the goal. Why not? Because if it's not meant to happen, it won't happen, but at least I didn't set the goal short. And the reason why I set that goal, it wasn't to to have some type of bragging rights. It. The reason I set the goal is is because I knew the five spirit conglomerates, Tito's wasn't really doing a lot of advertising at the time, so I wouldn't count him. He does now, he does a ton of it, but at the time it was mostly brown foreman, Diageo, Sazerac, LVMH, those guys spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on marketing. Well, I'm this little guy. How do I compete? It's very simple, earned media. I go back to my roots 28 years ago. How do I build it from almost 30 years now? I had to be able to tell stories that got the press more eyeballs, more viewers, more listeners. I knew how to do it. But here's the thing, national press will not tell a regional story. The only way the national press is interested is you must be a national brand. So I didn't have the luxury of being regional. If I was going to grow in this industry. I needed the press to help me, and to this day, we calculated to this day, there are at least five press outlets reporting on myself, nearest green uncle, nearest or our team, five days a week, Monday through Friday, five times a day, five days a week. Hey, you need to start up another PR

David Novak 49:13 

agency. You might be a hell of a lot better. So anyway, the results have been amazing. You've had, I don't know, 910, quarters of triple digit growth, and now I understand it. You're in the midst of a building of $50 million distillery, or that may be, oh,

Fawn Weaver 49:31 

that's built. We've already got that. Yeah, that's it. Those

David Novak 49:34 

are some how do you forecast like that? How do you have this little brand? Yeah, you know, the whiskey business, forecasting is tough. How do you get the, how do you get the guts to go out and spend $50 million on a distillery, and you've just said that it's so easy to just come and go. I mean, so, so

Fawn Weaver 49:51 

this was the key to that is, again, distributors, there is only one place that I can sell my brand. Directly to the consumer, and that is at my own distillery, and it didn't make sense for me to build a small distillery, because why that would not have picked up press the $50 million number, and the build out was because it needed to be a press story. It needed to be the malt Disney World of the whiskey business. And guess what? It worked. We are now the seventh most visited distillery in the world. Last year, we had 230,000 people here. Will beat that this year. And when you think about it, there's 10s of 1000s of distilleries in the world. We're number seven. And every single person who comes through the door. I've got a 4500 square foot space that just has uncle nears merchandise. That's it. Everyone is walking out with a bottle, a t shirt, an uncle near his hat. So now I have ambassadors around the world wearing uncle near his hats, wearing uncle near his T shirts, they paid me to represent me. Are you kidding me that? But, but if I had this tiny distiller, why would anybody come an hour south of Nashville for a tiny distillery? Absolutely not. It had to be something that was magical. You know, your

David Novak 51:17 

brand is spectacular, and I want to compliment you on your packaging. You know, the brand that that is like, that's fantastic, the heritage that you have, the way I use showcase the brand name, how did you What process did you use as a leader to get the best in that area?

Fawn Weaver 51:35 

Well, the interesting thing is, is I started off bringing in people from the outside, and very quickly realized that the continuity between marketing, branding and press strategy is me, and so it didn't make sense for me to bring people from the outside because the voice wouldn't be consistent. One of the reasons why our brand is resonating is the branding matches the marketing, matches the origin story, matches the way that we tell the story in the press. To this day, I run press strategy. My press team. It's October 1. They will get an entire press plan for next year within the next seven days. I do it every year, if you

David Novak 52:21 

are such a force of nature, I mean, you're like a you know, you You're You're such a strong person, a strong leader. How do you get people to work for you? Easy

Fawn Weaver 52:32 

is I find people that are just as strong, just as passionate, that that are inch that literally are entrepreneurs. I'm always looking for entrepreneurs. I want people who want to be entrepreneurs, but they don't want the risk of it, so they want to come into a company, they want to do their jobs, and they want you to leave them alone. That works really well for me. Here's your goal, here's your area. I don't care if you're doing it at two o'clock in the afternoon or two o'clock in the morning on the beaches of Ibiza. Get your goals done. That that is. And so

David Novak 53:05 

get those goals

Fawn Weaver 53:08 

done. But I could care less at what time you're doing it, when you're doing it. And so I hire entrepreneurs, and I get out of their way. Fantastic.

David Novak 53:17 

You know, I knew this was going to be fun, and it has. And now I want to have a little bit more fun with you, with and I want to do my lightning round of questions, yeah. Are you ready for this?

Fawn Weaver 53:27 

I love this. Yes, okay,

David Novak 53:29 

the what three words best describe you, oh,

Fawn Weaver 53:34 

doting wife, Child of God, baby girl of God, and enormously powerful, innately. Boy,

David Novak 53:45 

that's nine words, but I'm gonna let you know I'm not taking you on. Okay, if you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?

Fawn Weaver 53:54 

Jack Daniel, what's your biggest pet peeve? People who don't take responsibility for their mistakes, who would play you at a movie Gary Washington

David Novak 54:10 

back in the day, your dad wrote some of Motown's biggest hits. What's your favorite song of his

Fawn Weaver 54:15 

keep on truck and Eddie. Eddie Kendricks,

David Novak 54:17 

what's the biggest lesson that being homeless taught you

Fawn Weaver 54:22 

just keep going. Never let your surroundings define you

David Novak 54:26 

as someone who's traveled to all but one of them. Which continent Do you wish people could experience the most?

Fawn Weaver 54:35 

Oh, my goodness, my favorite place to travel ever was the South Island of New Zealand. So I'm going to go with that continent. Being from

David Novak 54:45 

Pasadena, what's something you've come to appreciate about life in Tennessee?

Fawn Weaver 54:50 

Oh, I love everything about Tennessee, the California micro aggressions of race people pretend. And that just because it's liberal, that there is a greater acceptance of race, I don't believe it. What I believe is people hide it better in the south, I know if you're racist, I appreciate that. I can respect you, because I know who you are. I never have to guess. I love the South.

David Novak 55:18 

Tell me about your Sunday routine.

Fawn Weaver 55:20 

It is the Sabbath. We eat, we make uncle, nearest cocktails. I watch TV. I usually I watch transformation church. Either I'm in person in Tulsa, we will fly down to the service, or watch it online. And yeah, we just eat and have uncle. Nearest cocktails. Love it.

David Novak 55:35 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Oh, transformation worship. What's something about you? Few people would know

Fawn Weaver 55:44 

that I don't listen to music that isn't gospel.

David Novak 55:47 

What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? I

Fawn Weaver 55:55 

saying I love you probably a million times to my husband and giving him lots of hugs and kiss. Awesome,

David Novak 56:01 

awesome. That's great. Great job on the lightning round. Very good. Now, you've been, you've built this business that's now valued over a billion dollars, and I would bet you have people knocking on your door now, I mean, you know, you got the seventh most visited distillery, people trying to buy, I'm sure, or at least making offers. What keeps you from falling prey to the maybe the big box at this stage, what

Fawn Weaver 56:27 

am I going to do if I did that? I love what I do. I do not believe anyone could do it better. I am able to do it without being under anyone's thumb. I'm not I'm able to do it and have 100% focus on building the legacy of near screen. I could not do that in somebody else's company, and I am confident I can do this for the next 25 years at this pace. So that's what I plan to do. You know,

David Novak 56:54 

it's very human for all of us to want to get some credit, and yet, I've heard you talk about being okay if you're forgotten as the builder of this brand, as long as nearest is remembered, say more.

Fawn Weaver 57:07 

I don't care. I've never cared about my legacy. It is I don't know any other way to say it, other than I'm not living for my obituary. I don't care what people say when I'm gone. I care about doing what it is that I believe that I have been called to do, and I don't believe that that is cementing the legacy of faune Weaver. I believe it's cementing the legacy of nearest green and I'm perfectly content with putting everything into making his name ubiquitous around the world. I can't share that glory if my goal is to make his name ubiquitous around the world, then my name cannot do the same. And, you know,

David Novak 57:46 

I've heard you say that you couldn't screw up Jack Daniels if you tried, and that's what you want to do with their screen. Is that correct? Yeah,

Fawn Weaver 57:52 

there is a it gets to a place where no that if you build it big enough, the next generation can't screw it up, no matter how bad they are at it. And and that is, it's not just jack. That's every brand you build it big enough, and the next generation can't screw it up.

David Novak 58:11 

You know, at the top of the show you were, you talked about this new product that you've just Yes, can you tell me about it?

Fawn Weaver 58:19 

Absolutely nears green Tennessee whiskey. It is the first time we are offering a product that goes in the well, and it is phenomenal. So this you will love just because you're also a branding person. Is the way that we kicked it off this morning. Well, it broke the internet, literally, it broke reserve bar and social media is is has gone absolutely nuts about it, and my phone is completely full. So the launches has been highly successful. We launched it only six hours ago, and we'll keep going. But we launched it with nearest versus everybody part two. So here's the part that I love, because I study history so much, that's why you don't want to go toe to go toe to toe with me, with the Bible. To me, it's just, it's

David Novak 59:04 

history. So send you the Scripture. Okay, we'll get back to that later. Good

Fawn Weaver 59:07 

luck with that one. Good luck with that one.

Unknown Speaker 59:10 

I'm going to be reading my butt

Fawn Weaver 59:14 

off in chat. GPT to save you some time until you is not in there, but, but we but nears versus everybody. Part two, when Jack was alive, he was a brilliant PR man. This is why I said a day in a life I would love to just do it, because I have a feeling that he and I are so similar that it would almost be like living my same life all over again. He was such a PR guy, such a marketing guy, and the way that he got people to try his whiskey over others, because, mind you, he was out there making Tennessee whiskey right, not Kentucky. He's going toe to toe advertising in the newspapers in Kentucky and and saying his was the best. Well, the way he got people to try it is he would go into a bar, he put down a silver dollar, and he would challenge. Binge. Whoever was going to order from the bar, whatever their well was, he would challenge them to try his product instead of theirs. Well, guess what he was doing? He was saying NIRS versus everybody, because that's who's juiced he was selling. And so we launched this warning, nears versus everybody part two. And I've got a whole lot of Susan B Anthony silver dollars and going bar to bar and challenging, blind taste testing, you taste nearest green Tennessee whiskey against whoever is in that Well, I guarantee we're going to win it. The only exception, the only rule, is we won't go toe to toe with Jack. We'll never do that. Nearest would have never done it. We will never do it.

David Novak 1:00:43 

You're You're incredible. You know, last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Fawn Weaver 1:00:52 

Be you. Do not try to be someone else. Don't try to morph into who the world tells you a leader is supposed to be. Every 10 years, there's a slew of new leadership books that come out that tell you how you're supposed to do and then, if you wait 10 years, those leadership books, for the most part, are then ripped apart. I mean, radical candor and how Netflix was built that was massively popular and huge, and we read it, we thought it was incredible. And now the exodus of folks over at Netflix going that was the worst culture we have ever been in. And so you really have to go with your gut. If you are a person who leads from a place of love, if you are a person who leads from a place of respect. Start there. Start with your why. And that's it. Don't change it for anybody else. Don't morph into what other people say. This is what leadership looks like today. It won't look like that in a decade. So you might as well just stick to who you are.

David Novak 1:01:55 

Well, you know, von, my my passion, my mission, is to make the world a better place but developing better leaders, and the way I do it is to get people like you to come on this show and share your your wisdom and and insights. And I want to thank you so much. I told you I was excited about this. I am even more excited now, because I want everybody to hear your story and and have some of your great, great whiskey.

Fawn Weaver 1:02:22 

Thank you, David. I appreciate you so much.

David Novak 1:02:30 

You know, fawn really is a force of nature, and look, she may sell Tennessee whiskey, but even this Kentucky boy can say without reservation, I am so glad she has used her incredible leadership skills to share uncle Nira story with the world. And by the way, it's one heck of a good tasting whiskey. Now, I love her idea that the difficulties in your life come wrapped up around a gym, some lesson you need to uncover and take with you. It's a great insight to help you learn from the past without dwelling on it too much, and instead keep moving forward and applying what you learn towards bigger and better things. Great leaders know how to mine their life for insights. So this week, reflect on what gems you've taken from the difficulties in your life. So do you want to know how leaders lead. What we learned today is the great leaders keep moving forward. Coming up next on how leaders lead is John Payton, CEO of dine brands. That's IHOP, Applebee's and fuzzy taco shops.

John Peyton 1:03:33 

We need to act with urgency, because our competitors are putting good ideas in place, because the economy is putting some stress on our guests wallets, and like I said, the world is changing quickly, and they got the message that we need to act with urgency.

David Novak 1:03:48 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be. You.