Blitzscaling bourbon: How Fawn Weaver built Uncle Nearest whiskey

FAWN WEAVER: This is the thing about bourbon. When you’re starting a new brand, it’s a very difficult thing because you’re spending money to lay down products that you cannot sell for four years. So by lay down, put it in the barrel. And I think the first year we laid down maybe 10,000 barrels. 

JEFF BERMAN: Start-up costs aren’t the only reason the whiskey business is risky business. Fawn Weaver launched her spirits company, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, in 2017. She faced entrenched, nearly monopolistic competition from international conglomerates. Scads of regulations. Reams of red tape. And an industry unaccustomed to seeing a Black woman in charge. But Fawn was on a mission. One that she poured nearly every single penny she had into.

WEAVER: There were absolutely times where the account was overdrawn. It is so close to zero. We had nothing that we could call our own.

BERMAN: But Fawn was so determined. Because her bourbon was about more than just business. She wanted to lift a brilliant Black distiller out of the footnotes of history, and into the spotlight. 

Now, she’s doing something remarkable: blitzscaling a bourbon brand. Uncle Nearest is valued at more than a billion dollars. 

[THEME MUSIC]

BERMAN: I’m Jeff Berman, your host. 

Fawn Weaver is using every ounce of her experience as a marketer, investor and author to fuel the rise of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. 

She never meant to get into the beverage business. Her obsession with the story of Uncle Nearest started as an idea for a book. 

BERMAN: Fawn, welcome to Masters of Scale.

WEAVER: Thank you for having me.

Copy LinkDiscovering the story of Nearest Green

BERMAN: Pleasure to have you. I want to start by having you take us back to your 40th birthday. You decided to take a trip. Some people want to go to a beach or a mountain. You chose to go to?

WEAVER: Lynchburg, Tennessee. 

BERMAN: Why?

WEAVER: Because that is where the story of Nearest Green was. And I had read on the cover of the New York Times International Edition, the headline was, Jack Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient, help from a slave. The credit for being Jack Daniel’s teacher and mentor was given to a white man by the name of Dan Call, a preacher and a distiller. And the community believed that it was actually an enslaved man on his property Nearest Green that was the actual teacher, that was the actual mentor. So that’s what the story was about.

I think the reason why it struck a chord with me is up until that point, I was almost 40 years old and I couldn’t tell you a single ubiquitous American brand where we could say there was an African American at the start. But there’s zero chance that we weren’t at the beginning of a lot of these companies. But we weren’t allowed to patent.

We weren’t allowed to trademark. And so we have no way of knowing. What our role was. And so that intrigued me. The Internet decided almost instantaneously with the headline and the photo that Jack Daniel was a slave owner. He stole the recipe, he hid the slave. That was not a part of the story. It was not even insinuated. But that is the story that social media ran with. I thought that social media had the story wrong.

And so I ordered a book called Jack Daniel’s Legacy. I expect that maybe in the book it would refer to an African American or an enslaved man. I never expected to see Nearest mentioned by name and I was shocked that from the very early pages, Nearest Green, his boys, George Green and Eli Green were mentioned throughout the book. Jack Daniels, the book is dedicated to him. The people that are interviewed in the book are all the people who knew him best. His nephew, who he turned the distillery over to four years before he passed his way, his great nephews that then took over the distillery after that, just people who were either touched him or one degree of separation from him. And Nearest Green and his boys were mentioned more times than Jack’s own family.

BERMAN: So this is a hidden figure story where hidden figures are actually hiding in plain sight.

WEAVER: Where the hidden figures aren’t hidden at all. 

BERMAN: Right. Okay. So, you read the story, you order the book, you devour the book. It’s still a leap to say, I wanna go to Lynchburg for my 40th and dive into this. So … 

WEAVER: Unless you know me.

BERMAN: Okay. Well, tell us. 

WEAVER: So for me, every Sunday, I always take that time off and the way that I transition from work brain is I will find a subject and it could be something that I read in a newspaper.

And I would literally do what my husband calls go into a rabbit hole. And that’s something that I just have always loved to do. I love to do these deep dives into history or just different things that I learn about. 

And so for me to decide, I want to do a deep, deep dive for my birthday? To my husband. It actually wasn’t that odd.

Copy LinkThe Lynchburg trip that changed everything

BERMAN: So what happens when you make this trip?

WEAVER: Really what I wanted to do was spend time in the library because when I was doing research what kept coming up every photo that involved an African American from Lynchburg, Tennessee, it all said Moore County library. So I just figured I was going to go into Moore County Library and just flip through lots and lots and lots of photos. 

When I got to the library, a woman walked in after I told the assistant librarian what I was looking for, and a woman came in and, and as it turned out, second eldest descendant of Jack Daniel, and after I shared with her why I was there.

I told her I did not believe that her ancestor was what they were saying he was. I believe that the story between Jack and Nearest was a story of love, honor, and respect. I shared with her what research I had done from afar that led me to that conclusion and she said I want to help you.

BERMAN: I just want to pause for a second because it is extraordinary what happens when we start with a presumption of good intent. And we build a bridge before we begin a conversation about anything that might be harder. And what a stunning moment in that library, and maybe serendipity, but maybe providence. That she came in and you had this conversation the way you had it. Yes. It’s extraordinary.

WEAVER: It absolutely is. And what she said before she left, and mind you, she was only in the library for maybe 15 minutes. She said, “You know the property where Jack grew up, where everything happened? It’s for sale.”

BERMAN: You ended up buying this land. 

WEAVER: We did.

BERMAN: Which was the original home of?

WEAVER: Jack Daniel’s distillery number 7.

BERMAN: Fawn and her husband bought the property – more than 300 acres – in Tennessee. They were sold on the idea when they discovered that part of the home was a pristine time capsule from the early distillery days. 

WEAVER: The wallpaper was hand painted roses. And behind the wallpaper was the insulation, which was newspaper. And every single newspaper that was used for installation was written on it. October 10th or October 11th, 1898.

BERMAN: Wow.

WEAVER: Then you went into the boy’s room and someone was barrel stencil practicing all over the walls. 

Copy LinkBuilding a bourbon brand against all odds

BERMAN: Fawn moved to Lynchburg and went into an even deeper research rabbit holes. She unearthed piles of old photos and historical documents. She also interviewed countless relatives of Nearest Green.

Along the way, she heard a common request from those relatives. The best way to memorialize their ancestor? Put his name on a bottle.

Fawn couldn’t shake the idea. She started learning everything she could about how to start a whiskey brand. And quickly found that, to put it mildly, it’s a complicated industry. Many of those complications date back to the Prohibition Era.

WEAVER: The entire time of prohibition, the mob is running the liquor business. Then at the end of it, the politicians in their pockets have this brilliant idea. Well, we should make sure the mob is never allowed to run the liquor business again. So let’s create a middle tier so that the suppliers can never be the buyers. The person who’s making it can’t also own a restaurant. They can’t own a bar. They can’t sell directly to the people who are buying liquor.

BERMAN: So there’s someone who can make it and someone who can sell it to the customer directly, and then there’s someone in the middle who’s distributing it?

WEAVER: Correct. Now here’s the challenge though. Is that, that happened, but somehow every single person in that second tier is named Billy, Joey, Louie, like everybody. And now all of these generations later, that’s not changed. And so it is a really difficult business to get into because there’s a lack of familiarity of both women in power and business in the industry and people of color overall. 

BERMAN: You’ve got the intersection of both.

WEAVER: And I have the intersection of both. And so imagine coming into this industry and thinking, okay. Well, I’ll just, you know, take it straight to the consumer. No, no, you won’t. Absolutely you won’t. And so the challenge with that second tier, their bills are paid for by big guys. 

BERMAN: And that’s a huge challenge because you could create the best whiskey in the world, but if you can’t persuade a distributor to actually sell your product to the end customer, you’ve got nothing.

WEAVER: You have nothing.

Copy LinkThe battle to break into bourbon distribution

BERMAN: So what did you do to figure out one, how do we make this? And then two, how do we crack that distribution?

WEAVER: Yeah, so how do we make this? It was quite fortuitous. The realtor who we bought the home from, she said, if you ever decide to put his name on a bottle, I’ll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right.

So as it turned out, real estate was basically her second career. She spent her entire life in the family business. And when she left Jack Daniel distillery, she was the head of whiskey operations. So she knew exactly how to get the product right and how to get that in the bottle. So that piece wasn’t the issue.

It is the cost and the influence of being able to get your product on shelves. And so the process that I took to do this, I don’t know that I would recommend it for anybody. It was very risky. So in our industry, the norm is you start off in a single state, and then within about seven years, if you’re able to build traction in that single state, then you’ll try to get into maybe four states that connect to that one state.

So everything is still touching. Everything you can still kind of drive to it in a day, type of thing. And then from there, you know, hopefully after about 25 years you’ve built something. 

In my instance, I thought there’s never been a woman or a person of color to ever succeed in this industry.

So I can’t take the path that they’re suggesting because everyone else has failed. This country is 70 percent women and people of color, and we have failed in this industry across the board. And so I said I want to get into all 50 states in less than two years.

And the reason that I wanted to do that is because I knew the only way that I could level the playing field with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the big guys were spending in marketing is I would need to use unearned media to help me to tell the story. Well, national press has no interest in doing a regional story. They want a national story. Well, if I’m only in three states, I’m regional.

BERMAN: But, I mean, Fawn, if you’re Dwayne the Rock Johnson, sure, there’s a path to that. You’re a first time liquor entrepreneur building a brand that has an incredible story behind it, but how do you make that happen?

WEAVER: Well, the first thing that I did was people in the industry on the spirit side, they had this belief that awards don’t matter.

If you got San Francisco, double gold, gold, best in class, that was the only one that they believed mattered. But again, I like going against the grain and I like proving people wrong. I don’t know what that trait comes from, but it is just in me. And so my thought process was, well, maybe people don’t care about winning an award, but if we became the most awarded bourbon in the world out the gate, they would care. And I knew we had a head of whiskey operations with 31 years of experience.

I knew that we could make an incredible product, that we could blend an incredible product. And so I said, submit us into every award competition around the world. We began doing that before we ever put a bottle in the marketplace

BERMAN: Wow.

WEAVER: Because we only had so much time and so much money. So we had to get consumers talking about us even before the distributors were taking us on.

BERMAN: You pushed all your chips in on the strategy. 

WEAVER: Everything. 

Copy LinkFawn Weaver’s fundraising strategy

BERMAN: And you didn’t raise venture.

WEAVER: Still haven’t. 

BERMAN: Right. And so how did you fund this?

WEAVER: The very first investor was my husband’s former employee, uh, employer. And he did not like the plan at all. Now mind you, my business plan was really good. It was solid.

BERMAN: Ok, I’m sure. 

WEAVER: But it did have to take into account with the SWOT analysis that a massive threat was if Brown Foreman who owned Jack Daniel’s decided to wage a war against us and they could wage a quiet war. They could have opposed our trademark filings. It wouldn’t have been smart, but you’ve seen big companies do stupid things. 

And that would have been very costly. And yes, in the end, we would have won, but then we would have had no money left to actually build the brand.

BERMAN: When you were talking to your husband’s former employer and other prospective investors. Were you leaning in to this threat to the business? We talk about doing because that’s it’s a move that very few people actually do saying here the reasons not to invest in us. Talk about how you did that if you would.

WEAVER: So we leaned into it and I tell entrepreneurs all the time, when you’re doing your business plan, if you’re only looking at all of the strengths. You’re missing a huge point that the weaknesses and the threats are important because if you can’t answer how you’re going to maneuver around those, how you’re going to win, then investors are not going to be comfortable. I absolutely leaned into it and said, listen, this could happen. But the greatest rewards always come from the greatest risks. And so I didn’t shy away from the fact that they were massive risks. 

BERMAN: Right. For all of our strengths and opportunities here are the weaknesses and threats, but here’s how I intend to handle them. 

Copy LinkHow press fueled Uncle Nearest’s growth

You started raising some capital. You didn’t sell too much of the business to anyone. You’ve held on to control of it. You started making the whiskey. You started winning the awards that you set out to win. Is that when the distributors started saying, “Oh.” Like, how did you get them to the place of saying, we’re ready to take you national.

WEAVER: The press.

BERMAN: The press. 

WEAVER: I give all credit to the press because even before we began winning the awards, they just allowed me to come in to share the story and to share the story behind the brand. When we created Uncle Nearest, that was the first time in history that an African American had been commemorated on a spirit bottle, any spirit.

And so the way that I really did it was I would go to them, and I did a lot of these pitches myself. And I’d say look at all these bourbons you have which one is not a white male? Just any of them. And so it was a bit of a wake up call for them because no one had ever asked the question before.

And so then they’re realizing, yes, our country is 70 percent women and people of color, and you have never had a bourbon brand that commemorated either.

They thought, well, we can’t say no, but here’s the thing, not saying no and having any idea how to sell my brand are two very different things.

So this is how we got the distributors on board. As I told them, I didn’t expect them to do anything but drop off the product. We would sell the brand. We would do the work. They would be a high price FedEx, but I told them all at the very beginning, there will come a time where we are going to build this brand and I am going to have an expectation that you will no longer be a high price FedEx, but I’ll let you know when we get there.

BERMAN: In the meantime we’ll go to the Bebemos or the Costco’s or whoever it is.

WEAVER: We would do it ourselves. We had no expectation of them in those first couple of years. And so we built the entire thing out without having the distributors in mind, other than saying, drop off the product because we legally need you to drop off the product, but we will do the work.

BERMAN: So, you are going, selling the story, explaining why this matters, explaining the quality of the drink as well, and fighting for that precious shelf space, and promotion, whatever else they might give you. 

WEAVER: Absolutely. 

BERMAN: Just, it’s hand to hand.

WEAVER: Absolutely. And it is a, I mean, the nature of the distributor world, even to this day, it’s, it’s not static. It’s constantly changing. It’s constantly moving around. Their dynamics are constantly changing. And so I’m always having to re-figure that out.

BERMAN: Well, what’s fascinating i part about this, is it is in some ways a counterintuitive approach to scale because you are going door to door selling, but because you weren’t just doing Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, like the start one state and go regional, you were able to get it out everywhere, which I imagine created a virtuous cycle because now the press is picking up more.

WEAVER: Absolutely, absolutely. And then as there’s a little bit of success, then from that little bit of success, then we’re able to share that. And the press picks up that little bit of success. And, I think a lot of people are not very good about bragging about their brands. But the thing is that consumers actually like that being humble about your brand is not the way to go. You can be humble in your life, but don’t be humble about your brand.

You have to brag because that’s what consumers care about. That is what the press cares about. And if you are going to go toe to toe with big boys that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and you don’t have that ability, you better know how to tell your story 10 different ways from Sunday.

BERMAN: Still ahead, how Fawn prioritizes company culture in the midst of rapid growth.

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BERMAN: Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this interview and more on the Masters of Scale YouTube channel.

Copy LinkHow blitzscaling built a bourbon empire

BERMAN: I’m curious because this is really a blitzscaling journey and a category where blitzscaling does not happen. So, and when you’re blitzscaling, things break and you have to let some fires burn. You have to attend to others. Was there a moment where you said, Oh my Lord, we’re not going to make it.

WEAVER: Yeah. So this is the thing about bourbon. When you’re starting a new brand, you’re spending money to lay down products that you cannot sell for four years. So by lay down, put it in the barrel. Prices have gone up in terms of grains and barrels and all the rest of that. But at that time, I think it was just about $700 for all in for a barrel. I think the first year we laid down maybe 10,000 barrels that I can’t sell for four years. But add on top of that, I actually need product to be able to build the brand, to be able to justify paying for that. So there were absolutely times where, account is overdrawn. It is so close to zero. In our instance, the only reason the checks didn’t bounce is my husband kept a full time job at Sony Pictures. We had nothing that we could call our own.

BERMAN: Was there a moment where that flipped where all of a sudden you were able to breathe? 

WEAVER: No, I don’t think I’m breathing yet. Because the thing is, is that we are still going at such a pace. We’re acquiring other companies because one of the things I discovered coming into it is, is a single brand dies in this industry. 

I might say to a room full of consumers, I say the name Bacardi and people think of rum, but if you’re in this industry, that’s not what you think of when someone says Bacardi.

You think of Patron Tequila. You think of Grey Goose. And that’s because they are now a conglomerate that has all of these other pillars of business. And so you can just go in with that one portfolio and take care of the whole restaurant. They want you to have more stuff that they can put on their back bar. If they’re going to give you that meeting, because it doesn’t take them any longer for you to pitch them on your tequila, your rum, your bourbon, than it does for you to just pitch them on your bourbon.

BERMAN: Right. And it’s hard enough to win the hill. Then you got to defend it.

WEAVER: Then you have to defend it.

BERMAN: Right.

WEAVER: And so, it is a challenge because we’re constantly scaling. And we’re not just scaling Uncle Nearest, but then we just acquired a vodka company. And then we became the largest grand champagne vineyard owner in the city of Cognac to raise up a Cognac company.

There is so much money that goes out the door every single day. So I can’t tell you, I will probably say when all of those companies are built and doing well, maybe, I will breathe then, but I’m definitely not there yet.

BERMAN: I mean, it’s so interesting because we have this fabled story of the entrepreneur who is maxing out credit cards and, you know, a partner is keeping a full time job and that salary is keeping everything afloat. And that feels like the heart is pounding every day moment. You’re at a hundred million plus in revenue, a billion plus in valuation, and you’re still feeling that way.

WEAVER: Everybody still feels it. It does not change. And I think that that is something that people don’t understand.The bigger you are, the more money you need. The more you’re trying to grow, the more you’re trying to acquire, the more you need. Now, for those who just decide, okay, I’m going to sell and just sit back. Yeah, that’s an option. And then yes, they are just kind of sitting pretty, but then here’s the thing, and you know, plenty that have done this.

They all regret it afterwards because now they’re trying to find their next best thing. And then they realize, okay, there’s only so many trips you can go on so many boats you can travel on, and now you’re bored.

BERMAN: Right, and fun, so many people in your position would have done that by now and said I’m gonna take the pressure off, I’m gonna cash out, I bet everything and it’s paid off. You’re not doing that. Why are you sticking with it this way?

WEAVER: The moment I came into this industry, the purpose wasn’t to build a whiskey company, it was to cement the legacy of Nearest Green. And once I got in, I understood that wasn’t possible unless this brand began to go toe to toe, and it doesn’t have to be this generation, but it has to be set up in future generations to be alongside Jim Beam, and Johnny Walker, and Jack Daniel. That’s the goal. Well, they’ve got a 160 year head start. 

Copy LinkThe culture principles that fuel Uncle Nearest

BERMAN: Yeah. As you’re scaling a company through these phases, it can be very hard to maintain your culture principles. To keep people on the same train that you’re driving, I know that you’ve got 10 principles for your company. What’s your favorite one?

WEAVER: We do it with excellence or not at all. It’s number one. You know, our guiding principles are literally living principles. If you talk to anyone in my company, they know the guiding principles. 

Most will always refer back to principle number three, which is every day we pound the rock. And that comes from, you know, the, it is not the first hundred blows to that rock, but that hundred and first that cracks. You can’t say it was that one blow that did it. It was the hundred that came before it. So this every day we pound the rock notion is something that we talk about in our company.

But we don’t just have guiding principles. And I don’t know how many people have this, but I wrote out also 10 hiring principles. And the hiring principles are identical to the guiding principles in terms of action items. So when a leader is doing an interview in my company, they have the hiring principles. Each one has a checkbox.

And so, the “we do it with excellence or not at all” will actually go to a hiring principle that mirrors it. And if that person is interviewing and they can’t check every single box, that person doesn’t make it.

BERMAN: Nine out of ten doesn’t cut it.

WEAVER: No, it’s gotta be 10 out of 10. 

BERMAN: Yeah. I want to go to one of your other principles, which really struck me, which is: We pull as we climb. 

WEAVER: We do. 

BERMAN: What does that mean?

WEAVER: That means that we cannot do this by ourselves. It’s not any good. If we succeed and everybody else is still left behind, we’re still, I mean, in this industry, we’re still the only one. Again, 70% women and people of color.

BERMAN: What’s really striking about this, which I hadn’t clocked is this is both an internal and an external principle, right? We’re going to lift up internally, but also we’re going to contribute to the ecosystem that has contributed to us.

WEAVER: Absolutely. And we’re going to make sure that when we all move on from this industry, that when we all move on to the next life, that we’ve left this industry looking so remarkably different than when we came into it. And to be able to leave that kind of a footprint, and I don’t look at it as important for people to attribute it to me or to attribute it to our team.

I don’t look at it that way. I think what’s important is that two generations from now, people would have no idea that our industry at one point was almost a hundred percent white male.

Copy LinkThe mission to honor Nearest Green’s legacy & ancestors

BERMAN: Another way Fawn is focused on making sure to live out the “We pull as we climb” principle is her ongoing relationship with the descendants of Nearest Green.

WEAVER: They brought me in and supported me so early on in this journey. The only thing that they knew is that Nearest Green made the whiskey for Jack. All of the other details have come through my research. And each Green that I know has read the book now and there’s so many great Green stories in there and they’re learning about it, but it’s also reminding them that they come from a legacy of excellence.

And then what I did when I brought them all together is on where the original distillery number seven, the original Jack Daniel distillery, where it was on the property, the water still runs through there the same way that it did, and you can drink directly from the water.

It’s filtered by the limestone, and so we basically pitched this huge event tent right where distillery number seven was. And I took clothespins and the entire ceiling was covered with these clothes pins and hanging from the clothes pins were photos of their ancestors, military records, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates.

And so there were all these things that I had found. So as they’re walking through, they’re like, wait, I know that person. I know that name. Wait. That’s my name. I got my name from that uncle and so to watch their absolute wonder.

BERMAN: Phenomenal.

WEAVER: Even before we sold the first bottle of Uncle Nearest, we began paying for all the Green descendants to go to college. So if you’re of college age, all you gotta do is get into a college, and then once you get in, you just have to maintain a 3.0, and you’ve got a full ride. And we’ve done that very early on, so now, the family gets together as these graduations are happening. 

Copy LinkLightning Round

BERMAN: Fawn, we’re going to head into a bit of a lightning round if that’s okay.

WEAVER: I dig it.

BERMAN: What’s your favorite way to drink uncle nearest? 

WEAVER: Neat. I love Uncle Nearest neat. No ice. No sugar. No anything. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love a great cocktail if I go to a bar. But if I’m at home, it’s usually neat.

BERMAN: Well, it’s that good.

WEAVER: It is.

BERMAN: What’s your latest research rabbit hole?

WEAVER: It’s really funny. My latest research Rabbit Hole has been King Asa. I don’t know why I am fascinated. In Chronicles and in the Book of Second Kings. It just mentions this king very briefly. But what I’ve always been fascinated by is every king before him just had nonstop wars, and every king after him had nonstop wars. But King Asa, it says, and the Lord gave him rest. And because I love rest and I think it’s really important. I think we’re a sleep deprived country, which is why, you know, so many things are happening that probably shouldn’t be. I love this notion that a king was given rest. And so that’s been my deep dive is trying to figure out who the heck was this guy. 

BERMAN: Is there any other habit that you have that has been critical to your success that we haven’t talked about?

WEAVER: Two things: Rest we’ve talked about. I think that that has been absolutely critical because the decisions that I have to make sometimes are lightning fast. And if I am not rested, the likelihood that those will be pretty big mistakes is high. The other thing I would say is that teaching myself not to worry. Entrepreneurs spend a whole lot of time worrying. And the challenge with that is, is that when you worry, you shut down the part of your brain that you need the most to be able to troubleshoot, to come up with creative solutions. 

And so I bought a book by Dale Carnegie, the book’s got to be 80 years old. You know this book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, right? And so I read the book and it has all these different tricks and trades, but there was one that really resonated with me. 

BERMAN: Which one?

WEAVER: And it was to write down everything that you are worrying about, put it in an envelope, and I literally put it in the back of my desk, and I committed to not think about anything that was in the envelope. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still worried about another 20 other things, but I committed to myself I wouldn’t worry about the things that were in that envelope. And those were the things that had been keeping me up at night. Those are the things that I could barely get anything done because I was so fixated it on fixing those things. And after a while I completely forgot about the envelope.

And I remember going back to it, I think maybe a year later and reading those things and my God, they were foolish. Like they were absolutely silly. And so what I began thinking about from that day was how many other things did I allow to rob me of moments of life and joy and progress because I was worrying about it and they never came true.

BERMAN: Yeah. Fawn, when you’re feeling stuck or unsure about a big decision, who do you talk to or what do you do to get to the answer?

WEAVER: Yeah. For me, it’s super, super simple. I have just a foundation of faith. That is, that’s where we start with this. The person who I speak to the most is my husband about everything.

However, there are so many things that I deal with that if I went to him every single time, number one, he wouldn’t be able to get anything done. And also it would be very stressful for him. And so my process is very simple. It involves a lot of prayer. I’ve had the same prayer for almost 30 years. God, if this is your will, then open the door in a manner in which no man can close it, including myself. If it is not your will, close the door in a manner in which no man can open it, including myself. So what that does is I’m just constantly going through open doors, lit paths, open doors. I think Matthew McConaughey called it green lights, right?

If the door closes, that means that’s not for me. But what I don’t do is stand on the outside of the door, second guessing whether or not I should go through the door. I go through the door with absolute abandon without second guessing it if it’s open. 

BERMAN: Well, I’m walking out of this so inspired and so grateful for you for living your purpose, and for living it so authentically, and for coming here and sharing your story, and for inspiring thousands and thousands of others to do the same. So thank you. I’m so grateful.

WEAVER: Thank you. I’m grateful that you had me. 

BERMAN: There’s so much to learn from Fawn Weaver’s story. She has blended her insatiable curiosity and innately rebellious spirit into a brand that is growing at an incredible pace. 

If you want to learn more about the story of Nearest Green, Fawn’s book is: Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest. 

I’m Jeff Berman, thanks for listening.