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Fawn Weaver's $1.1 Billion Whiskey Empire
The Remarkable Story of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey
Justin Gordon
July 29, 2024
Hey! Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders!
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A founder with 25 years of experience in tech who is "on a mission to make financial services innovation accessible for everyone by building the AWS of financial services" and also serves on the board of one of Egypt's leading financial solutions providers.
A founder, startup advisor, and former COO of Wag! whose current company has done $5 million in sales off less than $1.5 million raised.
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I recently created a website to share more details about the retreat, which features a speaker session with a founder who sold his company for $600M+ a few years back. Take a look.
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Deep Dive
Fawn Weaver, Founder of Uncle Nearest
Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest, built the fastest-growing American whiskey brand in history.
In May, Forbes estimated her business worth at $1.1 billion, and her net worth at around $480 million, making her the 68th richest self-made woman in America.
I only learned about Fawn last year and after researching her story I’m even more impressed.
It’s hard not to be.
The sales of Uncle Nearest have tripled since 2021, and the company is expected to generate $100 million in revenue in 2024.
The story behind the brand, of Nathan “Nearest” Green, the first master distiller for Jack Daniel’s Distillery and the first known African-American master distiller, is remarkable.
Let’s get to it.
Early Days
Fawn Weaver grew up in Pasadena, California, with strict, religious parents.
Her father, Frank Wilson, was a songwriter, singer, and record producer for Motown Records. He moved with his wife Philomina to California in 1976 to enter the ministry, the same year Fawn was born.
From an early age, Fawn proved to be a handful for her parents:
As a kid, I don't know that I would say I was entrepreneurial, I would say that people would have called me rebellious as they did.
That rebelliousness was a problem.
When Fawn’s parents had a new baby girl, they didn’t want her negative influence at home.
She had two options: change her ways or leave.
She left.
At 15, Fawn left home with “a backpack and a lunch pail.”
She initially lived with friends, but soon dropped out of high school.
She stayed at homeless shelters - My Friend’s Place and Children of the Night - but was moved to Covenant House at age 18.
There, she learned an important lesson about herself:
At Covenant House every day you go out with your resume and you look for a job. It's a requirement. You either have to go to school or you have to go out and look for a job.
I went out the very first day and I came back and we have these campfire things that you would do and everyone around the campfire was lamenting about how hard it is to find a job and they went out and they put out this and that and I sat there silent because I went out and came back with four jobs.
I sat there and I was like, “okay, I'm different.”
With that knowledge, Fawn pursued her own entrepreneurial start early.
Early Career
In an interview with Guy Raz on the How I Built This podcast, Fawn described her valuable experience interning with Pat Tobin at her PR firm in Los Angeles.
The experience allowed Fawn to shine.
Working on a brand integration strategy, she found ways to garner earned media.
Her work was so good that two clients said they’d be her first customers if she ever started her own firm.
So that’s what she did.
At 18 years old, Fawn started a business called FEW Entertainment, specializing in PR and events, and each client paid her $5,000 monthly.
But Fawn tried to staff up too quickly and the business soon had problems.
Then, at 20 years old, she tried to take her own life:
I remember laying there and going, “I have got to be here for a reason because I've now tried to take myself out twice and have been unsuccessful both times,” and so literally laying there in that hospital bed I committed myself to figuring out why am I here on earth.
After her first business failed, Fawn became a minority partner and business manager for the chef Gerry Garvin, a role she’d have for 4.5 years:
After a year of being at the helm of that restaurant and just when I was about to move out of the PR and special events business, Gerry told me he wanted to start his own restaurant.
I was honored to be able to provide my help and end up writing the entire business plan, which raised the initial $500,000 needed to open the restaurant.
I began as a minority owner in the business but eventually made my way up and took over as business manager. And it’s true when they say anyone who has ever been in the restaurant and bar business knows, you must love it, or you won’t last as it is one of the most exhausting industries that never sleeps.
In hindsight, Fawn developed the skills and demonstrated the work ethic she needed to build Uncle Nearest.
But we’re not there yet.
She spent the next 6 years continuing to work in hospitality, as a Manager at the Viceroy Hotel Group and later as General Manager of Dimension Development Co (DDC), which is the operator of many Marriott and Hilton brand hotels.
The significance of those experiences?
To me, it’s that she is very familiar with the grind and intimately understands how to work with people.
Then, in 2014, she published the New York Times best-selling book, Happy Wives Club after traveling the world gathering stories of women and their marriages.
Two years later, a New York Times article changed everything.
Starting Uncle Nearest
On a vacation with her husband, Keith, Fawn read a New York Times article titled Jack Daniel’s Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave.
It told the story of how Nathan “Nearest” Green, known as “Uncle Nearest”, an enslaved man, taught a young Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.
A Forbes story told more of Nearest Green’s methods:
Until 1865, Green had been enslaved on a Tennessee plantation, whose farm housed and employed a young Jack Daniel.
Green’s whiskey became renowned in the region, thanks to his method of using charcoal from burned trees to mellow the spirit, a practice originally developed in Africa.
His bottlings were so popular that charcoal filtration became a hallmark of Tennessee whiskey, and a key differentiator from its Kentucky cousin, corn-based bourbon.
Green didn’t invent the method, but he perfected it, as Weaver points out in her forthcoming book, Love & Whiskey, without formal training or the ability to read or write.
For Fawn, she was intrigued enough by the article to read Jack Daniel’s Legacy, the book mentioned in it.
In the book, Nearest is mentioned more times than Jack’s own family.
It led to Fawn diving deeper. Much deeper.
After reading the New York Times article, Fawn decided to take a trip with her husband for her 40th birthday to Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniel’s Distillery.
On that trip, they visited the 313-acre farm where Nearest taught Jack how to make Whiskey.
They discovered the farm was for sale and the real estate agent who showed it to them, Sherrie Moore, was a descendant of Jack Daniel.
Sherrie retired in 2006 after 31 years working at Jack Daniel Distillery, most recently holding the position of Director of Whiskey Production.
She told Fawn, who at the time thought the farm could be a great real estate investment and that she might then do a book or movie about Nearest Green, that, “If you ever decide to put his name on a bottle I'll come out of retirement to make sure you get it right.”
Fawn and her husband purchased the farm for $900,000 within a week.
Later, Fawn discovered Jack Daniel had his first distillery there.
Through extensive research, Fawn learned that Jack Daniel hired Nearest Green to be his first master distiller in 1866.
And she wasn’t the only one to dive deeper into the story of Uncle Nearest:
The crazy part is I didn't recruit anyone. People just kept showing up. To this day, I have counted that I had 20 archivists, archeologists, genealogists, historians that all worked alongside me. Not a single person ever billed me.
People were as drawn to the story as I was for the same reason. There was this level of hope in this story that said, we as Americans, black and white, know how to fix this. We know how to do this right because Jack and Uncle Nearest did it right.
Collectively, Fawn and her helpers logged 2,500+ hours of research into the story of Uncle Nearest.
Fawn gathered trademarks and, with the encouragement of Green’s descendants, as well as the commitment of Sherrie Moore, she got to work bringing Uncle Nearest whiskey to life.
Of course, you’re probably thinking what anyone would be thinking now: What about Jack Daniel’s?
Did they fight Fawn?
Sue her?
Make her life difficult?
Not exactly.
Fawn told the president of Jack Daniel’s about her plan to launch a whiskey brand, after, of course, she had already secured the trademarks for Uncle Nearest.
Jack Daniel’s could have made Fawn’s journey starting Uncle Nearest much more difficult, but they didn’t.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a very delicate situation.
Jack Daniel’s made it clear they were going to protect their trademarks and, with Uncle Nearest playing a part in Jack’s story, Fawn had to be careful.
But she got creative, figuring out how to tell Uncle Nearest’s story without telling Jack’s story.
She wanted to build up the legacy of Uncle Nearest without in any way bringing down Jack Daniel’s legacy, which in many ways was motivated by the fact that Jack Daniel himself made it a point to mention how Nearest Green helped him. Jack is the reason we know Nearest Green’s name at all.
Of course, Fawn’s vision was going to take some startup capital:
To bootstrap startup costs for the distillery, the Weavers sold all their West Coast real estate, including their dream home in Old Agoura, California, and two Mini Coopers.
They took their credit scores on a ride—at one point she was more than $1 million in debt—but after securing $500,000 from Keith’s former boss for the initial seed round, she got five others to invest, too.
This funding allowed Fawn to launch the first Uncle Nearest whiskey in Oregon, an alcohol control state, in July 2017.
In the first year alone, she spent $1 million on marketing.
Fawn hired salespeople and she would have them tell the liquor stores, “Tell me what whiskey or bourbon is on your back bar that represents someone who is not a white male.”
This convinced enough people to start carrying the bottle.
Then she had her sales rep enter Uncle Nearest whiskey into every major competition to get the word out, garnering them earned media as they swept many of the awards.
Finally, as Uncle Nearest grew in popularity and was out of stock everywhere in the country, Fawn continued to spend on advertising.
Why?
Because customers would repeatedly come into the stores asking for Uncle Nearest whiskey. Over time, the store clerks kept hearing the story of Uncle Nearest and they became ambassadors for the brand.
Fawn essentially built a national brand ambassador program with those ads through storytelling.
Genius.
But Fawn’s ambitions were much grander.
Making Major Moves
On December 22, 2017, a press release was published in Business Wire with Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey announcing plans to build “a distillery, tasting room and music venue” in Shelbyville, Tennessee.
The 270-acre property where they would build it is about 16 miles north of the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, which was intentional - they didn’t want to build it in Lynchburg.
The project, which would cost $50 million, was one part of Fawn’s plan to build Uncle Nearest her way, for the long term:
What I knew is this industry wasn't set up for me to succeed, so every time someone would give me advice I would completely disregard it and do the opposite.
Everyone told me you should start in one state, build over the next four years or so in that one state, and then try to pick up the states that are adjoining it.
I went to my Chief Business Officer and I said, “I want to be in all 50 states by the end of the first two years.”
Why?
Because there's a reason that strategy has failed us. Even investors that I had brought in were like “Fawn, why would you invest so much in a distillery when none of these other bourbon brands are spending that kind of money? Put all that money into marketing.”
I looked at it and said the home place for Uncle Nearest Green Distiller is going to become the best marketing tool that we had, so I announced we're going to spend $50 million on building out a distillery.
We weren't even 2 years old. People are like “This woman is crazy, like legitimately, this woman is crazy. She has no idea what she's doing. She's going to fail.”
And quite frankly, if you look at the the moves I was making, I should have failed, but they were the right moves.
That $50 million investment ended up being one of the most important decisions Fawn made:
One of the most important decisions I made was to spend $50 million on building out a distillery during a period of time where people were like, “That doesn’t make any sense… You’re brand new… Nobody really knows who you are yet… Why would you spend that kind of money — raise that kind of money?”
My thing is, I had to own everything from beginning to end because I couldn’t let anybody shut down my supply chain.
If distributors acted a fool, it’s okay. I could still sell enough product through my own distillery to be able to keep going and thriving.
And her other important decision?
The second most important strategic decision I made was decentralizing the distributors. I don’t have a national distributor. I have 17 distributors, and if one is not performing, I’ll swap ’em out.
One of the ideas that stands out to me in Fawn’s story of building Uncle Nearest is ownership.
It’s the same idea that Oprah harped on to Tyler Perry which made him a billionaire and that Felix Dennis said made him one of the richest men in Britain.
Fawn owned the buildings and property that they were built on, making it easier for her to find investors and bankers if she ever needed them.
Preferring ownership, she also decided not to take money from venture capitalists or private equity firms, instead raising tens of millions of dollars from more than 160 high-net-worth individuals, like the billionaire Byron Trott:
Weaver’s ban on institutional investors didn’t scare away institutional players. With his BDT & MSD merchant bank left out, billionaire Byron Trott invested personally.
“Fawn consistently demonstrates exceptional leadership, long-term vision and resilience, which are all critical traits for a successful founder,” he says.
From these investments, on September 14, 2019, phase one of the Nearest Green Distillery opened to the public.
Less than two years later, by March 2021, they had sold 1.5 million bottles of Uncle Nearest, fueled by an urgency other companies didn’t have:
We understood that we were about 160 years behind and so we work at a different urgency than I think that others do.
By October 2021, Uncle Nearest had experienced 11 quarters in a row of triple-digit growth.
Wild.
Fawn and her team were only just getting started.
Uncle Nearest Today
By October 2022, Uncle Nearest had surpassed $100 million in sales since its July 2017 launch.
In 2024 alone the business is expected to generate $100 million in sales.
The Nearest Green Distillery, now an incredibly popular tourist destination, has grown to encompass 458 acres which includes a 518-foot bar (the world’s longest), a music venue, a barbecue restaurant, and much more.
The distillery had more than 200,000 visitors in 2023, not bad considering Jack Daniel’s receives 300,000 people a year to their distillery.
At this point, many would expect Fawn to sell.
But she is wired to move forward and keep building.
Instead, she’s expanding:
Last October, Uncle Nearest bought Domaine Saint Martin, a 100-acre French estate built in 1669 by the Lord Mayor of Cognac, for an estimated $6 million.
There’s a distillery, expansive cellars and even a cooperage where barrels are made—all ready to be transformed under Uncle Nearest.
Weaver plans to buy other small spirits brands, owned by Black entrepreneurs or women, to add to the roster.
So far, she has made investments in four Black-owned brands, including Equiano rum and Sorel, a Brooklyn-based liqueur.
And that’s just the start:
Her ambition extends much further. She has 100 acres set aside to farm corn that will eventually create a small-batch whiskey.
An under-construction still-house—where some of the whiskey actually gets made—will have enough capacity to produce 18,000 barrels annually.
She also plans to build a hotel nearby and stage more local events, like last year’s hot air balloon festival, the first since Jack Daniel held one in the area in the early 1900s.
Fawn is building for the long term, hoping to cement the legacy of Nearest Green, and one day turn the business over to his descendants.
That dream is part of the reason why she’s so proud of not selling:
This industry has an over 99% failure rate for new brands that launch. I'm one of the 1% to succeed.
It would have been so easy to sell it for a billion dollars and go “I'm just going to rest.”
But to know that my purpose is so much greater and that no matter how hard it was there wasn't a price that they could buy this company for and that I've stood my ground even when people were like “she has to have a number.”
They've thrown every number at me and gotten the same response, “no.”
That's what I'm most proud of.
Fawn’s Wisdom
In each edition of the Just Go Grind newsletter, I like to include a few more quotes at the end from my research into the founder who is featured, sharing their wisdom.
There are challenges and struggles that happen every day, but it is my philosophy that I don’t put my lips on those.
Whatever a person focuses on is what grows, so I choose to focus on all that I want to see grow, and struggles and challenges are the two things I don’t want to see grow.
What I can tell you is the global supply crisis of 2021 and 2022 nearly took us out, and if it weren’t for pure grit, determination, a whole lot of faith, and focusing on what I wanted to see grow, the company may not have survived.
Instead, and as a result, we are continuing to build a brand and a company so large for the next generation.
On her top company principle:
Our number one company principle is that we do it with excellence or don't do it at all.
If we're working on something and it's not working, we pivot. I think the ability to shift has to do with confidence.
Everyone in my company knows our assignment is to build this company, this brand, and this distillery so big that the next generation can't screw it up.
On competing in a male-dominated industry:
I came in like a wrecking ball, so I didn't look around to figure out how people looked at me. I still don't.
What I'm not going to do is be concerned about how people on the outside view me.
I have a mission. I have a vision. All I care about is doing that while I'm alive and how other people take it, it's not my responsibility to care, and I don't.
Her advice for other entrepreneurs:
Fail faster and harder, because if you are trying to play it safe, you're never going to reach any true dream that makes a difference for anybody else.
Failure isn't failure unless you give up before you succeed. Strive to become someone more extraordinary than you were the day before.
The best way to achieve today, is to figure out your gifts in the beginning. Because if you look at every person who is genuinely gifted, talented, and successful, what they're doing now, you can find in a direct line to what they were doing when they were five years old. It's just a matter of which one of us decided to stick to it.
📚 Recent Founder Deep Dives
In the past year, I’ve written dozens of deep dives on world-class founders, sharing how they built their companies. These typically take 20-30 hours to research and write. The most recent ones are below:
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