I recently interviewed Uncle Nearest founder and CEO Fawn Weaver on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is one of only five Black women to found and lead a billion-dollar business in U.S. history. Fawn Weaver is the founder and CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, the most awarded American whiskey or bourbon for the last six years, and is a two-time New York Times bestselling author. Fawn, thank you for joining us.
Fawn: Thank you for having me.
Adam: You have a pretty wild upbringing. You grew up in LA. Your dad was a Motown artist turned Christian minister. And when you were 15, you left home and wound up living in three different homeless shelters. Can you take listeners back to those days, those early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Fawn: Sure. I grew up in a really religious household, and when my father left Motown, he felt pulled into ministry. Unfortunately, and this is just something the church does in general, when there’s someone from Hollywood that comes into Christendom, then we elevate them very quickly whether or not they are spiritually prepared for that. So what ended up happening is my parents were constantly implementing things as it relates to parenting styles that really weren’t their own. It was this pastor or this preacher. And for me as a child, and I’m the same way now, I always asked a lot of questions. And so authoritarian parenting didn’t work for me. Do it, I say, because I said it, but not being able to explain to me why you said it, it just didn’t work. And so it was a constant back and forth with my parents. And then when I was 15, my parents had a new baby girl, and I was the third child, and they wanted to be able to raise this girl without the interference of me being in the household asking why every two seconds. So they basically said, listen, this is our house, we pay the bills, and if you’re going to live here, you’ve got to do it our way. a typical shape up or ship out type of conversation. I think parents have that all the time with their teenagers. They don’t expect their teenagers to say, okay, I’m shipping out. And I never looked back. It was the right decision for me. To this day, I absolutely believe it was the right decision for me.
Adam: What were the biggest takeaways from living in three different homeless shelters?
Fawn: Well, one was I can build something out of anything. I can be in any environment. and feel great in that environment. And so for me, I’ve moved in and out, even going from Los Angeles, moving to Lynchburg, Tennessee, people will ask, how is that? Assuming that it was difficult or challenging. And for me, I was like, it was just another day. I went from one place to the other. I was as grateful in Lynchburg, Tennessee, as I was in Old Agoura, California. One of the things that I am quite gifted at is pivoting. very quickly. And if something isn’t working, I’m not locked into anything. I don’t hold anything so tightly. No ideas, no marketing, nothing is held so tightly that I can’t pivot on a dime. That has served me really, really well. And I think that comes from living in those homeless shelters, starting my first company at 18 years old so early, and learning what to do, what not to do, pivoting when things didn’t work out. And that’s just carried on with me till now I’m almost 50. So I greatly appreciate the time in those shelters.
Adam: I love it. As you’re recalling those early days, talking about pivoting, talking about the importance of flexibility as an entrepreneur, as a leader, one of the key characteristics of the most successful leaders, adaptability. Something else that you shared which really stood out to me. You were talking about your parents’ style that didn’t resonate with you. Talking about what I say because I said it. An authoritarian style of parenting. I don’t know a lot about parenting. I don’t have any kids. I know a little bit about leadership, and as a leader, if you try leading through an authoritarian style of leadership, you’re gonna have the same reaction that you had. It’s not gonna work. Regardless of the authority that you have as a leader, your role isn’t to lead through your authority. It’s not by saying, do this because I said to do it. It’s persuading, compelling, explaining the why. It’s information and influence. That’s how you have to lead. Give the information that is necessary. Now, in a company, there are certain people that are going to need to be on a need-to-know basis. It’s sort of a military phrase, but you don’t want to share all of the information because you’re at your company forever. Everyone else isn’t. And so you want to make sure that any information that you share, if it goes beyond your company, doesn’t come back to harm you. It’s not that you are going to share everything, but you need to share enough information that allows for your leaders and your employees to do their jobs effectively, to do them well. And a part of giving that information allows you to influence As well, how you are leading, that’s how people will respond. So if people know that you care about them, that you care about their family, that you care about their lives, then they will care more about the company. That’s a matter of influence.vAnd so information coupled with influence will allow you to lead better.
Adam: What do you believe are the keys to effective leadership and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Fawn: I think transparency is important. Not transparent to a fault, meaning not transparent to a place where you harm your team members’ belief in your ability to lead. So, one of the mistakes I see a lot of leaders make is they just share everything in the moment, even before they have things worked out. For any person who you are giving a paycheck to, they want to know first and foremost, they’re secure. They want to know their job is secure. And so if in your transparency, you’re sharing information that would cause them to feel uncertain and uneasy about their job being secure, then you’re going to have a hard time having all of their attention. That’s really important is transparency, but not transparency to a place where your team members don’t feel safe.
Adam: I love it, and I love a couple of words that you shared. Security, safety, those are two big words, those are two big responsibilities that all leaders have. Great leaders make the people who they lead feel safe, feel secure, and how do you do that? Through the steps that you just shared.
Fawn: A lot of leaders don’t consider the importance of security. For every person who works for me, the most important thing to them is, can they take care of their family? Can they take care of themselves? Taking care of the company and their job is secondary to that. They’re there to make sure that their own family is secure. And anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish. People don’t work a job for the sake of the CEO, the sake of the founder. They work a job for the sake of their own lives and their own families. And so you have to strike that balance and understanding that’s their priority. So how do you meet their priority first and foremost, so you’re able to get the most out of them?
Adam: How did the idea for Uncle Nearest come together and how were you able to actualize it?
Fawn: From the very beginning, we were never a spirits company. We have believed from the very beginning, and we do now, that we’re a legacy cementing company. Our job is to make sure that people know about the first African American master distiller, his significance in the bourbon industry, his significance in the Tennessee whiskey industry, and to make sure that generations from now, when people are talking about Jack Daniel, Johnny Walker, Jim Beam, that nearest green is in those same conversations. If you have a Mount Rushmore of whiskey, Those are the four guys that should be on it. And so we have always looked at it as our job to carve the nearest green squarely into the side of that mountaintop. And that’s how we look at it. Now, to do that, that means that coming in, being brand new, and everyone else is 150, 160, 170 years older than us, then that means that we had to make sure that the liquid in our bottles, the bourbon, the Tennessee whiskey, that that won every award humanly possible so that people knew, okay, this isn’t just about the story. This is about incredible liquid. And then when we built out Nears Green Distillery, it’s one of the largest distilleries from a footprint in the world, and now it’s the seventh most visited distillery in the world out of 4,000 distilleries. It was important also for us to do that, to cement the legacy of Nears Green, because thousands of people every single week are on those grounds, and they’re learning the story of Nears Green, and they’re taking it back with them. And so for us, we’re in the legacy cementing business, but that only works if Uncle Near’s premium whiskey is successful for generations to come.
Adam: I love what you shared. Number one, being laser focused on your product. It’s imperative to have a great product. You’ve been able to win all these awards, which have helped you generate visibility, command attention, and attract customers. Have a great story. The ability to have a story that attracts not only customers, but employees, investors, and the power of mission. A mission that you believe in with every fiber of your being. When you have a mission that drives you and that drives everyone in your organization, that’s gonna make things a lot easier. That can be a real differentiator.
Fawn: That being mission-driven, understanding, being able to articulate the why is paramount, especially to this newer generation of employees. If you can’t articulate the why, they will not stay. You will have them for maybe a week, two weeks, and then they’re out of there. Because the why matters to this incoming generation of workers more than any other generation that has come before them. If you go back a couple of generations, a CEO could tell all their employees what to do and not tell them why. That doesn’t exist anymore. If you can’t share the why, they are going to move on. We’re living in a generation of gig employment. And they’re looking for something that is meaningful, something that allows them to live a better life, something that when they’re talking about what they do to their friends, that their friends have FOMO. That’s what they’re looking for. And so by being able to get people excited about the why, get people to be excited about your vision, you’ll have to do that. I mean, it was important before, but now it’s paramount. You literally will not be able to engage this generation if you cannot fire them up.
Adam: Fawn, you bring up a really interesting topic, which is generational leadership. What advice do you have for listeners on how to understand and lead the respective generations in the workplace?
Fawn: So I actually don’t agree with adapting your leadership style. I’m watching a lot of CEOs really lose love for what they do because every new book that comes out that has a new suggestion, they’re trying to adapt to that. You really have to find team members that adapt to your leadership style. That’s what I have done. I am not looking to bring in everybody. There’s billions of people that can work for me, that can work for my company. We’re now in a global world. People can work virtually, some people on the ground. And so I am always looking for people that, number one, have complete buy-in to our 10 companies and guiding principles that we have had since almost day one. That’s a prerequisite. If our guiding principles aren’t guiding principles of your life, you should not join my company. That’s the first thing. I lead a very specific way and I’m unapologetic about it. The people who come into my company want to be led by someone who is like me. The mistakes I see a lot of leaders making these days is they’re constantly contorting to the current generation to try to bring in more people. The better thing to do is just to introduce yourself as who you really are and to find the people that are aligned with that. There are certain aspects of your leadership that will be enhanced. So, for instance, I spend a lot more time sharing the why these days than I did before, but the why was always there. I just spend more time sharing it. You have to look for the people who want to be led by someone who is of your leadership style. And there are plenty of people who are excited by the way that I lead. But there are also plenty of people that would be rubbed the wrong way. I am not a micromanager in any shape or form. If you need me, let me know. Otherwise, I trust that you’re good. Well, if you’re a person who needs to be coddled or you need every week to have a pat on your back, You should not come work for me, because if you are not an entrepreneur, if you are not self-motivated, you will not enjoy working at Uncle Nearest. You have to work for a leader who is going to sit you down every week and have conversations about you, and that’s not who I am. And I know that’s not who I am, so I’m very honest out the gate when doing interviews. This is how I lead. Does this work for you?
Adam: It’s a very interesting perspective. What I really love about what you shared is the focus on transparency and the focus on authenticity. As a leader, it’s imperative to be yourself, not try to be anyone else. I am a big believer in, as we talked about before, the importance of adaptability as a leader, but adaptability and authenticity go hand in hand they’re not conflicting concepts and as a leader you have to be your authentic self and what you shared which I love is you show up every day as yourself and in a fully transparent way so that anyone who’s considering working for you working at your organization doesn’t have any confusion about what they’re getting and what happens Often is people will take jobs and think they’re getting one thing and it turns out they’re getting something else. And that’s where a lot of the problems come in. But when you have that complete transparency, you’re able to avoid so many problems from the get-go and you’re able to, to your point, very clearly and very quickly find the right people for your team, for your culture, for your organization.
Fawn: Absolutely. The longevity is there. The leader that’s passive aggressive, that’s a problem because you’re not sharing who you are at all times. It’s flip-flopping. That’s too much. And so if you’re able to just show up exactly who you are at all times and you let folks know that ahead of time, then they’re excited to work for you. That has been my experience. with Uncle Nearest. My leadership has been my leadership for a very long time, the ELT, and the way that they lead those who report into them is the same way I lead them, making sure that every level of my organization, that my leadership style permeates every single level. Also, that our guiding principles permeate every level. We have the 10 guiding principles, which have always been on our website. And if someone is applying to work at Uncle Nearest, before they even see the job description, they will see our company principles. Because if you do not agree with the company’s principles, you don’t need to go any further. Beyond that, we have a set of 10 hiring principles that correspond with the guiding principles. So every single leader in my company who does hiring, they have hiring principles. The number one guiding principle is whether we do it with excellence or not at all. And so there is a corresponding hiring principle that goes with this. Our number three is every day we pound the rock. There is a corresponding hiring principle that goes with that particular guiding principle. And so when someone is doing an interview in my company, they are literally going through 10 hiring principles. And if a person doesn’t check every single box, that person never makes it to me for a final interview.
Adam: Fawn, something that you’re sharing that really stands out to me, every company has guiding principles. find me a company that doesn’t have guiding principles and I’ll be blown away. But very few companies are actually driven by their guiding principles. And as you talk about your guiding principles and how they genuinely guide you, guide your decision making around who you hire, how you lead, what it really comes down to is how bought in is the leader to the guiding principles and if you as the leader of your organization are 1000% bought in to running your organization in accordance with your guiding principles and this is how you’re going to lead this is how you’re going to ensure that every leader who you bring on is going to lead this is how you’re going to prioritize your hiring this is how you’re going to center your culture Those aren’t just going to be words on a wall, which they are for 99% of companies. These are going to be true guiding principles.
Fawn: Oh, absolutely. Every single team member has these pound the rock journals that they use every day. And this is the to-do list. Well, the first thing you’ll see when you flip it open is our guiding principles. Every single thing that we do. It’s very hard to get through a day at Uncle Nearest and not see some aspects of the guiding principles. But also, even the way that the guiding principles came to be, I think are unique to my company. I wrote the original 10, and every person who worked for me in the beginning, a lot of them are still here. Every single person participated. I wrote the first 10. I sent it out to everyone and I said, listen, if you think that you have a guiding principle that is more important than any of these 10, get rid of one of mine, add yours. And we sent that thing around in circles for probably six months until we had 10 guiding principles that everyone was bought in on. Well, now this is eight years later and most of those folks are leaders in my company. They helped write those guiding principles. And so the buy-in is naturally there because they were a part of the process of bringing them to life to begin with. And so making sure that every level of our company is really locked in to those guiding principles, it’s just a part of the core of who we are.
Adam: I really love it. What were the keys to growing and scaling Uncle Nearest?
Fawn: Progress, not perfection. We run fast, we break a lot of stuff. So that pivoting was really important. Having investors that understand we’re going to make some mistakes and then we’re going to pivot. We’re going to try an idea, it may not work, and we’re going to go on to the next one. If we’re working on something, I don’t care how long we’re working on it. If we’re working on something and it’s not working, We find a better solution and we pivot to it immediately. We wear everything a little bit light. Have you ever run a marathon?
Adam: I have not. I did a 5k once and that was enough for me.
Fawn: Okay, well, when you run a marathon at the beginning of the marathon, most runners, because the marathons start very early in the morning, usually before sunrise. will go out and everyone is waiting for the race to begin, but it’s cold. And so you’ll generally see people in either windbreakers they don’t care about, or more than likely you’ll see people in trash bags. The trash bags keep the body warm, but when it’s time to start running, you’ve got to be able to shed that. And we take that approach to everything in the company. We might be working on an idea. We all love the idea. That idea goes to the consumers. The consumers don’t love it. We take that thing off. And so no one can fall so in love with their ideas that if the consumer isn’t as in love, we won’t move away from it.
Adam: How do you know when to pivot? How are you able to figure out when the right time is to move on?
Fawn: I think you can figure it out pretty quickly. You can see how consumers respond to it. And a part of that is you test it. You test it and see, all right, let’s make sure that we’re testing it with this group, with this group, with this group. And I don’t mean testing necessarily beforehand. A lot of our stuff we’ve taken to market and that was the test. But the way that you’re doing it is making sure that if it doesn’t work, you move away from it. You have a backup plan. And if you’re smart, you have a backup plan to the backup plan. This didn’t work, so you already have something ready to go just in case. And for us, that’s important because you can have all the focus groups in the world, and the focus groups get it wrong a lot. So we don’t look at these silo focus groups. Sometimes we use focus groups, but really what we’re looking at as a focus group is the wider market, is the consumer. Let’s take it to market, but not be so in love with the idea that if the consumer doesn’t feel the same way, we are just doubling down on it. There’s a particular brand in our industry that’s been around forever. And I watched them roll out a new campaign. They brought in a new marketing agency. They rolled out a new campaign that took them completely away from the nostalgia that the consumers had been in love with for over a century. And I looked at the campaign and thought, my God, any spirit brand could just throw their bottle in there and the campaign doesn’t change. There’s nothing special about it. There’s nothing that ties to their roots. There’s nothing that ties to their why. So as soon as they rolled it out, I knew it wasn’t going to work. Well, because they spent so much money with the marketing agency, they kept trying to make that thing work for three years. And now they’ve realized it’s put them in such a hole that they have to climb out of where I could have told them in the first seven days, this doesn’t work. And so I do think a lot of times when companies become so large, they forget how to be nimble. And when you’re rolling out marketing campaigns, you’ve got to know how to be nimble. If the consumer is not responding to it, move on.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topic of marketing and branding? What are the keys to building successful marketing campaigns? What are the keys to building a great brand?
Fawn: Authentic storytelling, that’s the beginning and the end. Being authentic about the why, sharing the why, sharing every aspect of your story. If your story isn’t something that earned media cares about, that podcasts and radio and television and magazines and newspapers, if it’s not interesting to them, shouldn’t be a part of your marketing campaign. Because the earned media piece of it, you add the paid marketing on top of that. But if no one cares about the story when you’re telling it for free, don’t pay to tell the same story. That is something I think that people get wrong. They build the marketing campaign and then they try to add on the PR element. It’s my belief, especially for smaller companies that don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend to market a product, that you have to begin with the storytelling in earned media. You have to see, does this get whoever it is that I’m talking to? So in this case, it’s you. Does the conversation we’re having get you more listeners? Does it excite people? Does it make people wanna share what I am saying? If not, then it’s not good for you, it’s not good for my company. And so when we’re out there and we’re having these conversations about the brand, about our company, It’s important that we begin on the earned media side. And if consumers are drawn to it, then we put paid dollars behind it. I think a lot of people don’t think that way, though. They start with the marketing campaign, they bring in a marketing company, they have a great idea, and they build out the whole entire marketing campaign, and then they bring in the PR person and say, okay, amplify this.
Fawn: It is my belief it should be done the opposite way.
Adam: I agree with you completely. If you don’t have a great story, if you don’t have a compelling product, and the other thing is sitting on the other side of the table, having the right fit for the right audience. I get a lot of pitches and they could be great people, they could have great stories, but they’re not necessarily the right people or the right stories for my platform. So a lot of it is also finding the right product market fit.
Fawn: Absolutely.
Adam: You are the first black woman to lead a major spirit brand. Your company is also the first American spirit brand with an all-female executive team.
Fawn: It was all-female for the first seven years. Now my husband is the president and COO. So it is not that anymore, but if you go beneath Team Weaver, the next level of ELT is Tell All Women.
Fawn: Your company minus your husband is… Yes, it is. It is.
Adam: What role has diversity, equity, and inclusion played in the success of your business?
Fawn: I will say inclusion. I think that both the D and the E have some, well, the E has a PR problem because no one knows what equity means. If you ask a room of people, unless they’re all DEI specialists, if you ask a room of non-DEI specialists, what does the E and DEI mean? No one in that room is going to be able to tell you what that means. So the E has a problem. The diversity side, because it led to the E, has a problem. We’ve always built our company on inclusion. That means everybody’s around the table. 30% of this country are white men. To exclude white men from the table and call that diversity is not diversity. You have to have everybody there. We’ve always held the opinion and we’ve always moved forward in saying we want everyone at the table. My ELT being all women, I didn’t even realize, the press pointed it out to me. The reason I didn’t realize it is because we have so many people from different levels at the table. I always had white men that were SVPs of sales and marketing that headed up distribution. We’re all around the same table together. And so it never dawned on me that they were reporting into my chief business officer, who’s a woman. So for our company, inclusion is the key. Everyone around the table, every background, every race, every political affiliation, if you have a team of leaders in which every single one of them agrees with your political views, that’s a problem. because 50% of the country is not going to agree with your political views. That means that if you are tailoring marketing campaigns based on your beliefs, you have a problem. You want to have people around the table who don’t think like you. And I’ve got a table full of people who don’t think like me. And I think a part of the success of Uncle Nearest is I never surrounded myself with yes-men, and I never surrounded myself with people who are in a bubble. We don’t have this thought process in a bubble. There’s always a challenge going on. People have their own thoughts, their opinions. They’re not swayed by anyone else’s political beliefs or anyone else’s worldviews. They have their own. And I cherish that greatly. I encourage it because if everyone brings their diversity of thought to the table, we’re a much better company because of it.
Adam: Creativity is clearly a key driver of your success and has been for a long time. How do you get to a place where you’re at your most creative and how are you able to foster a culture of creativity?
Fawn: One of the biggest pieces for creativity that I think a lot of people miss is rest. There is this hustle culture, this no sleep culture, that’s just absolute nonsense. The portion of our brain that gives us ideas, the creativity, is the portion of our brain that is shut off if there is worry, if there is stress. It’s one of the reasons why making sure that our employees feel secure at all times is important, because that is what helps creativity. When quarantine first began in our industry, There was a lot of furloughing. It was a little like furlough first, ask questions later, before they were even looking at, well, how long might this last? And they just began furloughing very quickly. And I called an all-company Zoom call, and I said, I need you to let your families know your jobs are not at risk. You are safe and we are going to get through this. We’re going to be stronger on the other side. We’re going to be very creative in how we do it. And so I kicked off something called coming out the gate swinging. And what I basically said is we’re not going to sit at home and talk about woe is me. We’re going to sit at home and come up with business plans. in creative ideas and marketing ideas. And so those within the company that usually didn’t participate in coming up with cool marketing ideas were all a part of it. But that started with letting them know your job is secure. Do not be concerned about that. So they didn’t have the worry, they didn’t have the stress, they didn’t have the anxiety. That allows this portion of their brain where the problem solving happens, And the creativity, the creative problem-solving and solutions comes from and allows that to be in full bloom. And so with my team members, one of the most important things that I can do as a leader is making sure that the anxiety is low, the stress is low, because that allows their creativity to be at its best. It allows it to be at its peak. And I am that way with me, and I encourage every single person who works for me, to not work seven days a week. You work six. You will get more done in six with a day of rest than you will in seven. And that is a part of our company culture. It has been from day one that I really promote rest. I promote vacationing with your family. And it seems not intuitive. That is what sparks a lot of the best ideas. My team members will come back from vacation with some of the best ideas. During quarantine, some of the best ideas our company has ever had came during quarantine because people were just in their most creative state because I was pushing for rest during that period of time.
Adam: I love it. Fawn, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Fawn: It sounds interesting, but rest. Take a step back. We don’t hire outside marketing companies. It’s usually coming from my brain, whether it’s social media, PR strategy, marketing, but a part of that or to that is my day of rest because I am every Monday morning completely refreshed, and ideas tend to flood on Sundays. I don’t write them down. My strategy is if they’re great ideas, they’ll be there on Monday morning. But the rest is the piece that I see most leaders skipping on. And I think that it’s a huge mistake because you will have more creative ideas, more effective problem solving if you are not running on a treadmill all of the time.
Adam: Fawn, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Fawn: Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
