SPEAKER_00 0:00

Develop this thought that you have to have an like a imagine a bottomless well, an endless well of belief that you'll figure it out. There can be no bottom. As soon as you think you've hit the bottom of that well, you'll figure out that no, you it keeps going further. You need more belief to figure it out, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Yep. All right, welcome to another episode of the Brotherhood Beyond Business Podcast. Today I'm here with Andy Schwebka, the owner of Hidden Chips Distillery here in Surf City, North Carolina. And I know Andy's through, let's see, Andy, I met you. First met you through Breakaway Fitness. You come to work out, you and Amy. That's right. And you I could tell you had experience working out because you moved well and you rocked out and you were smart protecting your back. Uh, because I know you had some back. I did, yeah. But then uh I almost feel like I've I've seen your son, Brody, more than I've seen you.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, probably lately, last couple years anyway. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

It's fast too. He's fast. But it was fun watching him play. So I'm excited today to just to learn more about you, to learn more about hidden ships, and and also we'll we'll probably dive into just some of the like the specific aspects related to just being a business owner in general. And some of the hard stuff like with staff and things like that. We'll see kind of where it leads us. But sure. Before that, yeah, just tell tell us, tell, tell me a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah. Well, first, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Uh excited uh to do this as well. Uh what do you think that time frame was? I think I joined your gym probably. I was before I retired, so probably 2020. I think COVID was still kind of happening and I couldn't work out on base as frequently. So probably 2020. Um is there for Yeah, it was already. Uh was there for a solid year after I retired, and I guess that answers background, right? My background was uh I played Marine for 21 years, uh, joined in 2000, retired in 21. Uh so I was a member of your gym kind of in that year leading up to my retirement. Uh, but then as soon as I retired, my wife and I, four kids and a dog, spent a year traveling the country in an RV, uh, which was a cool experience. And, you know, we'll see if we come back to that at all. Sure. I that sounds amazing. Yeah, it was it was a unique experience, unique set of second circumstances that allowed us to do that. But four, just four, they all came with us on that trip. So paused my gym membership. And then when I came back, I was going back to the gym, probably did another solid year. And then frankly, the that's when we were into heavy construction. And um, although that's you know, probably when you need the gym the most, it was just one of the things that I I cut at that time. Yeah, I mean, I just was so focused. It was dirt floor when we got this place, so that was just taking so much of my time, decided to step away from the gym. Um, but I've always appreciated, you know, my time there and and what it is you're doing and what it is you're building. So, yeah, I mean, again, background in the Marine Corps. Uh when I retired in 2021, we spent that year traveling, but came back uh to this area in 2022, and that's when we got real serious about building this business. Um, and then we ended up opening by September, end of September 2023.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

What got you interested in opening a distillery? Like, do you remember, like, were you watching a movie, a TV show, or you just love Burden? Yeah. What was your first thought?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah, so our our origin story really starts at another distillery. Okay. Uh that was early 2019, January 2019. Uh, we were up visiting my sister-in-law, brother-in-law. Uh, they live outside of Charlotte, or they did at the time. And right around the corner from them was another distillery called Murto's Made. Uh, if any of your listeners are ever in that area, I highly recommend that distillery. Um, and just had a great experience. The Murto's has a similar business model to us in terms of the distillery in the back of the house, the front of the house, cocktail bar. I had a great experience. I had this beautifully presented, smoked old fashioned. And at that point in my life, for probably the 10 years leading up to that experience, every time I saw a brewery open, I looked at it and said, darn it, I should have done that. And that was just kind of my mindset. I was in the Marine Corps, of course, at the time, but I had that entrepreneurial kind of mindset. That yeah, I just looked at it like it would have been awesome. And so from that experience at the distillery in 2019, I started researching the craft distilling industry. Okay. Uh, and what I assessed at the time, and and even now, six years later, I think it's still true. Uh, but certainly in 2019, the assessment I made from the business perspective was I think craft distilling is where craft breweries were in terms of popularity or prevalence maybe 15 years ago. And so I thought, let me jump into this as much as I could. But I still had two years left before I could retire, so just decided to do as much as I could at the time, and that was to enroll in the University of Louisville's graduate program. Of course, Louisville is the heart of bourbon country, so I thought that was a pretty good school to go to. Uh that was an online graduate program, nothing hands-on distilling, but really they call it the business of distilling. So it gave me really firm foundation, regulatory issues, legal issues, were a highly regulated industry, but also sustainability operations, and then history of distilled spirits. And I was a history undergrad, so I really nerded out on that course, had a lot of fun with it. It was my favorite. But finished that course really in spring of 21, right at the same time I was I was retiring. So that gave me a firm foundation. And that was us, you know, thinking about the distillery at the time, dreaming of it, certainly, getting that education. But it's still, you know, I I could have gotten that degree and done nothing with it. It was still a jump after to actually, you know, dive in and open it. So but it was a great foundation of knowledge, certainly.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Didn't decide. So you were in school, let's say you graduated, but you hadn't decided 100% you were going to open a distillery at that point.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

No, I would yeah, I think that's accurate. That's a good way of saying it. So finished the program 21, retired June of 21. And again, we set right out. When I retired, like within a few days, we'd packed up our house and we spent, we started that year-long RV trip. When we left North Carolina, we essentially went right to Kentucky Bourbon Trail, though. That was our first stop, really 10, 11 days there. For us, we got to call it research. It was a lot of fun. Hit the big distilleries, of course, but also we're hitting craft distilleries since that was going to be more our size. And I would say that trip was inspirational for what it is we try to do here now, specifically with tours and tastings. It's a big deal for us. So that was inspirational, certainly. About halfway through that year-long trip, we made the business decision, the first investment into the company. And that was a decision for Amy and I both to attend Moonshine University. That's a funny sounding name, but very legitimate curriculum. Again, it's it's back in Louisville. And so this was a six-day course that we attended right after the trip ended. So we got home early May and we went back up to Louisville end of May of 2022. Uh, and I say investment because it certainly wasn't cheap. It was, you know, something like six grand for each of us to attend. And that was uh, you know, that's a big check to write. We're just still in the in the dream phase of a business plan. But it was really important, not that I I just attend, but that she attends with me. We saw during the course other husband and wife's teams and just the husband would go to class. And for me, it was really important that that Amy, my wife, was just uh involved in all of that knowledge. Plus, I knew, you know, number one, I didn't want to be responsible for taking all the notes and then, you know, downloading on her. But I also knew that she was going to gravitate towards different subjects and pick up on things that I would have missed. So specifically, you know, during that six-day course, of course, you know, it was hands-on distillation, but there was different courses kind of built into the week. One of them was marketing, uh, merchandising, and she takes lead on that now. Um and she learned a lot at that course.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Man, the more guys I've been talking to, business owners in this area, the more I learned that it's more of a husband and wife team a lot, like often. Like that seems to almost be like the local thing here. Like, and that's my wife and I worked very closely together for this, but that's not how we started. It was kind of like I just went, right? I had this opportunity and I just jumped on it. I was like, oh, by the way, honey, I'm opening a business, which there was lots of learning there for the next several years. But like a good example is I'm I'm actually interviewing uh Tyler at Chris Brazilian next or this week. And he really his wife is is the brains behind it. He ended up telling me like it's he and her, so we might interview both of them. But what when you were going to that school, like what why you might have already explained yourself, but why was it so important to you that your wife be a part of that?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, again, I'll tell you the specific example that I drew upon. So when you get out of the military, whether you do four years or twenty years, you have to do what they call uh I don't even remember the name of it. It's it's a transition seminar. And I went to the it was a week long of lots and lots of classes. And of course, you know, naturally your spouse is gonna have questions about your transition. Um for me in my case, it was about retirement. And then I would come home and I would try to explain things and I just couldn't explain it very well. And I I remember that because I had the option she could have attended with me, and it just was a timing thing. It's not that I didn't want her there, it was just we just couldn't make it happen. And that experience like really kind of developed in like, I'm not gonna be responsible for trying to explain all of this. Because you go to the courses like that. Think about a six-day course, you know, they're throwing a lot at you.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, they gotta get it.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

And it's a it's a fire hose of information. And I just knew that there was there was no way I was gonna be able to effectively pass on that information. I knew that I wanted her to be an integral part of this, and and she wanted that as well. So that that's why I say it was so important for her to be there. And again, I knew that if she was there, she would, she would pick up on things that I would have missed.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So this is, I mean, some of it, it's a a joint dream.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it probably started with me, but I've had other business ideas in the past, some of which I started, some of which I didn't. My wife, Amy, she was always supportive in terms of wanting me to go try, but maybe had reservations on some level. This was probably the first business idea that that I pitched, and this is going back to 2019, and she was immediately like, heck yeah, I'm in, let's do it. Oh, there's no question. Yeah. Yeah. For your wife to support you like that is a big deal. Yeah, for sure. And that's when I was going to the course. I wouldn't say that I necessarily, I mean, I shared with her what I was learning in the course, but even signing up for the course, she was supportive that for with that. She's like, Yeah, go go learn this stuff. And then when it came time to both of us to attend that six-day course, again, being such a large investment early on, yeah, she she was in. She's like, Yeah, I need to be there too.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

That's a big deal. You you team up, you raise your kids, you own a house, you you know what I mean? It's it's something that took me. I think it's cool that you guys started that way. Because it took me a long time. I think there's benefit in that attack to a business for most business owners. Maybe not everybody's perfect to do that with their spouse, but there's so much growth that happens with your spouse when you open a business because there's going to be growth limit, that's for sure. And I didn't start that way with my wife. But now that we're both intertwined in this thing together, now it's if I go to a course, we go to all of our courses together. Yeah. So there's another layer of of teamwork and us growing together as business owners that think I think it changes the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

So yeah, I I agree. I mean, that's been our experience. And, you know, for us, there's still a bit of divide and conquer, certainly, because again, we have to manage the household and manage the business. And, you know, there's there's there's some pretty clear lines, roles, and responsibilities that she has here. I don't know. If I was to throw a number at it, maybe it's like 70, 30 or something like that. But that is a direct correlation of of my impact and input maybe on managing the household, right? Because we homeschool our kids. So she's the teacher, she's most days homeschooling, you know, our kids at home while I'm here maybe doing distilling. But we're both involved to certainly some extent in both those areas.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yep. I can I can relate with the homeschool. Yeah. Yeah. I've mostly handled Aidan's, our older son, whereas Melody handles the younger ones. All right, dude. So you go to the course, the $6,000 course, 12 for both of us.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah, you that was a big check, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

It's an investment. That's right. Sure. That's right. So you're in that course. You know you want to open this at that point.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, for sure by then. And again, I when when I said we we wrote that, that was about halfway through that year-long trip. We had to sign up for the course and, you know, of course, pay them. But we attended May. My my plan, and this is genuine, my plan going into that course end of May of 2022. Uh, I thought I would go to it. I would come back and spend, you know, two to three, maybe even three to five years after the course figuring it out. I really assumed uh that I would get some other, you know, job, nine to five type job with my background in the Marine Corps. I had opportunities to do that. And I really thought that that's what I was gonna have to do, right? Provide for the family while I figure out this distillery. That was the plan going into the course. What I did instead was go to the course, graduate, and sign a lease for this place two days later.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Aaron Powell Tell me about that. How did that happen? What was it was that a random conversation? It was a Were you were you on the internet just kind of randomly looking at opportunities potentially?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Aaron Powell No, I think and again, the six-day course, they throw a lot at you. You can't learn it all in six days, certainly. What it did for us was give us a belief that we could figure it out. And so came back, I say two days it may have been a couple weeks, but it was pretty quickly thereafter that we started looking in the local area, looking at real estate. We did some assessment on leasing this space versus could we buy land, build our own building, et cetera, and just doing that kind of cost comparison. At the time, just to not to get too into the weeds, but Surf City at the time was a little bit restricted on new construction. So the word we were kind of getting from from the city level officials was what we have right now is what we have, and we don't know when we're gonna build more. So that influenced our decision to move quickly, and that had to do with sewer capacity of all things, right? So they had kind of a moratorium at the time on new commercial construction. And so we saw this space, this whole building, this is five units here, there's another five, ten units up there. All of it was new builds, they were all empty, unleashed. As you mentioned, this was a dirt floor when we walked the space. And we just felt like if we didn't take that opportunity, there may not be another one in the local area. And by then we had decided that we wanted to do the distillery here. So it was like, okay, if if we really want to stay here and there may not be new construction for the next couple of years, let's go ahead and do it now. So we wrote another large check to sign this lease. Didn't have a business plan at the time, didn't have funding secured, but again, it went back to belief that we would figure it out. So wrote that check in probably June of 22, and then we spent the next couple of months figuring it out. Did write a business plan. And of course, that wasn't covered in the Marine Corps, right? They didn't teach us how to do so had to had to learn that process for us, had to figure out the funding. We had to raise some uh some money from equity investors. Of course, we we put in a pretty large chunk of our own money. Yeah, which, you know, we could get into that. Uh but we raised that capital, found investors, put our own money in, and all of that was just enough money to borrow more money from the bank to actually make this place happen. So by kind of like getting scrapping together a down payment. Essentially, yeah. Think about 20% down on a mortgage. It was the same idea. We needed 20% um for the bank to fund the rest. And spent that summer doing all of that, had funding secured by probably October of twenty-two, and broke ground in this place, April of twenty-three. By then it had seemed like a really long time had passed, but you know, looking back on it, it really moved really quickly because April of twenty-three, we had our grand opening about six months later. Yeah. Yeah, and I look at other businesses or even corporations where this is what they do. They open restaurants and bars, and it'll take them a year, year plus to to get open. Yeah. Coming soon for two years. Or like two years. And you know, I don't I don't know, it wasn't all that. I don't either, but I was I was proud of it and you know, as we were going through to be like, okay, it seemed like it took a long time from the time I, you know, signed the lease to getting funding to actually breaking ground, that was a nine, ten month period. But then from construction day one to grand opening, really about a six-month period. And, you know, in terms of pushing that thing through, I think that's where my experience in the Marine Corps really came in.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Uh, because I was working with a general contractor, had a great, fantastic general contractor. I hear horror stories from other business owners about, you know, all the bad general contractors they worked with. Mine was awesome, actively helped me solve problems as they came up, couldn't have asked for anyone better during that phase. But I was also, I had to then look at his construction plan and figure out, okay, when are we bringing in distillery equipment? When can I actually start distilling, et cetera? And so we just came up with a really solid six-month plan to make that happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Right on.

unknown 17:49

That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

So you say broke ground. What does that mean? So there was there was a an outer show, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yeah. So this unit, I think, is like I said, five, five or six units. We have two. So they're divided internally. We took these two units. When I say broke ground, what I mean is started construction. It was dirt floor on April 14th. And the first thing was they brought in a little skid and started digging the trenches for plumbing. And that was like such a cool day for me just to see it like, okay, we're really starting construction. And then the next day they laid all the plumbing and you know, a couple weeks later we had concrete going over it. So that's what I mean by, you know, starting construction. Every day to pretty much did. I mean, again, I had the plan for what was supposed to be happening each day and just kind of monitored it. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I'm sure there was some unique plumbing requirements.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I would assume. I don't know. Well, I guess it's above ground right here. The the plumbing is just fairly standard for a bar. Of course, you have to have floor drains and and all the other plumbing. I had to map out what the bar was going to look like. I designed uh the bar, the space behind the bar. After I retired, one of the things I did was go be a bartender. And that was deliberately for experience. Um again, not anything I had done in the Marine Corps, so I knew I wanted to be a bartender for experience, but I every every place I w looked at or worked at, I looked at how they designed their bar back area. And I was coming up with ideas and drawing out what do I want my bar back area to look like. So when it came time to have the architect put the plans in, you know, the bar design was was was all my planning. So then it, you know, it had to be plumbed to meet that specification, knowing certain equipment was coming in. In terms of back here, the you know, the only thing kind of unique, it wasn't so much plumbing, it was reinforcing the ground. So the area underneath the stills and then behind this curtain, we we store barrels. The area underneath barrel storage had to get reinforced with rebar. And it's actually the same specifications of a runway that plans lane on or plans planes land on because there's so much weight. And so that was kind of like during the concrete pour reinforcing those areas to make sure that the ground could support it.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Did you have to do that under the still?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah. This whole area has rebar under it and then the area underneath the barrels. Which has the still way by itself. Yeah, I don't even know what it weighs anymore. I think it it had more to do with like, all right, filling it up with hundreds of gallons of of liquid after the fact. Yeah, and probably where we store the barrels is is even heavier. But I will say I think my architect over-engineered it, but that's what he told me. He said it's the same specs as a runway, which I just remember that.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

So that's that's a good fact. Do you how long you could because you distill your own bourbon? I know you do other things as well, but you distill like actual bourbon here and now. But there was a process before that, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Or am I allowed to No, I mean you're you're you're close. So bourbon is an age spirit. It takes years and years and years to sit in a barrel. Uh when I was writing the business plan, I made a decision that I wanted bourbon day one, which meant I'd be sourcing initially. Sourcing spirits in the spirits world is incredibly common. Some breweries will source from each other, some wineries will, but it's it's not as common. But in spirits, it's very common. You may have heard of a little company called Four Roses. So that company started because they went to Rose's distillery and picked out their first four barrels. So it started as a sourced, yeah, it started as a source. So again, I just mentioned that story that to, you know, kind of let everyone know it's very common. So we sourced initially, and we're still sourcing today. We are making our own stuff from grain, but it's still a couple years before that's ready. So in that meantime, we're sourcing from another North Carolina-based distillery called Southern Distilling. Uh, they're north of Charlotte. I love being partners with them. The reality is I could have saved a lot of money sourcing bourbon from other states, but it's just not the story we wanted to tell. It goes in back into branding and marketing, right? And what story do you want to tell for us? It was we wanted to be able to say that all the corn in our bourbon is grown in North Carolina, and that's how Southern does it. All the corn in that bourbon is grown within 20 miles of that distillery, which we, again, we just think is a great story. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely, for sure. So we'll stay partnered with them. One of the things we do after I get the barrels sent to me from them is we do a secondary. Sherry aging, and that's just to make it unique to us. And so that only takes two months once we get it in-house. Each barrel gets a piece of oak wood soaked in sherry. That sherry wood goes into the barrel for two months, and then when we dump it, it has a sherry finish. So that makes it unique to the marketplace. So that's kind of bourbon. Clear spirits, though, we have a vodka. We have two gins actually. We have two rums. Vaca, two gins, two rums. Um am I forgetting one? I feel like I'm vodka gin from yeah, bourbon. Yeah. So I I hit them all. But those we make, we we make those in-house. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of all done internally.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Is it what's different now? Like when you originally envisioned all this, just just from a spirit's perspective, like, is there anything different? Like, are you doing do you guys do more of something than you thought you would, or is it kind of similar to what you envisioned?

SPEAKER_00 22:49

I think it's basically what I envisioned. I think what I probably would have envisioned by, so we're a little over two years old now, is I I'm sure at one point I thought that our production cycle would be much more dialed in. How often we're distilling, you know, and it would just be, I would be able to set this perfect calendar of like, all right, distill this day, distill this day. And and as things have turned out, that's just that's not where we're at yet. Not to say we wouldn't get there at some point. You know, we have pretty good data now of sell-through rates. So how many bottles are we selling, how many bottles do we go through in the bar? But our big push now is distribution. So my really my whole business model is based on distribution. The bar is essentially we show seasonality. So some months are bigger than others. But year-to-year growth is, you know, if we get an 8 to 10% growth on the bar, that that's pretty solid. Whereas on distribution, I think we have an opportunity for significant growth. And I anticipated early on that it would take us our first 36 months before we would see that spike in distribution. And being about 27 months in, I think we're on track for that. And that for us in North Carolina is predominantly through the ABC system. Yeah. So I mean, there's 140 different boards. So there's a state ABC board. And of course, we have requirements to give to them. But essentially, each board, think of it, the easiest way to think about it is each county kind of controls. And so we have to sell to each of those boards individually. They make decisions, they make decisions on what's coming in to their stores because they're all running their own businesses and they only want to bring in things that are profitable. They have their own overhead to worry about, they have their own costs to deal with. And so a year ago today, we were only kind of in three boards, which is our home county, where Jacksonville, North Carolina is, and where Wilmington is. Most of last year I spent being the kind of number one and only sales rep, and that was okay. That was intentional at the time. Uh, but we ended up bringing on our first full-time sales rep um end of July of last year. And it took him a few months, and I knew that it would to kind of uh figure some things out. Uh and he's done that, and and already, you know, I think we're in 14 boards now as opposed to a year ago being in three. Yeah, it it's significant. You know, for us, that's where the significant growth opportunity lies to the point where it should by this October, our sales from distribution should exceed what the bar does on an annual basis. That's exciting. Yeah. That's gotta be really exciting. Yeah, it'll help me sleep at night better no matter what the bar does. Yeah, even if the bar has a slow night, I know that we're selling bottles out there across the state.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

So what's I mean, what's it like if you're a if you're a salesperson focused on distribution for your business outside of the regulations and the things you had to get done just base level, what did you have to do? I mean, were you literally just were you calling, scheduling appointments to meet with the owner at the ABC stores? I mean you just walk in and you're like, hey, I guess they can't legally sample it there, right? You can do that in other states.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, so there's this kind of a two-tiered approach to throw out some industry terms. We would call it on-premise, which means you drink the alcohol there. So think bars and restaurants. That's on-premise. And then off-premise would be where you take it off, you take it home. So that's an ABC store. And we go after both. In this state of North Carolina, every single bar and restaurant is assigned to an ABC store to go pick up everything that they need to operate. Uh which means if we can convince a bar manager to bring us in, they have to get it through the ABC system. And it makes it easier for that ABC store to order it, knowing that they have, you know, this one bar already is gonna make an order. So we'll go after bar managers and those that order. And but simultaneously we'll go right to a board and say, hey, you know, here's our story. I can do tastings with them at like general manager level. So we'll do a tasting with them. If they like us, uh, they'll bring us in. So we just did that down in Brunswick County, a couple of counties down, um, and had a great meeting with the GM, and and after the tasting, they decided to bring us in. And so that's kind of the approach to growing our footprint across the state.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

So the guy that you have hired now, did you did he come with you a lot? Did you create systems to train him with, or you talk about him figuring some things out over the first few months? I mean, did you mentor him or did you kind of allow were you like, here, I created this schedule for you, here's where you're gonna go, go. And then come back and report to me. Like, how did that how does that process?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Because that would have been the first time you've hired a salesperson. Yeah, first, first sales rep. I would like to believe I mentored him. Uh I I think he would agree with that. Uh great guy was also retired Marine. Certainly that wasn't a prerequisite, but it was nice to have that common background. But he retired, you know, almost over 15 years ago now, and he spent that time from retirement in that 15 years. He was he was a sales reponder for all various different companies, largely, I think, in like DOD contracting type sales. But he understood a sales cycle. He understood inherently relationship building and rapport building, filling a need of a customer, right? Like I didn't have to teach him sales. When I say it took him a couple months to kind of figure things out, that was just because selling spirits in the state is so specific, meaning, how do we go after those restaurants and bars? How do we go after general managers at the ABC store? I have beer reps here at our bar. When a beer rep comes in and they say, Here's our new beer, and we sample it and we say, Great, I'll take it, that sales rep leaves with a purchase order. And that sales rep likely gets a commission and they go back and get paid, and then they deliver the beer. That's not how it works with spirits. We go into a bar and we do a tasting, and whether or not they're just being polite, generally they all say they love our stuff. And then it's like, okay, great, when are you gonna order? I always do my orderings on Tuesday, I'll order you next week. Awesome. We'll give it a couple weeks, we'll follow up and say, hey, did did you get our bottles in? Oh, I forgot to order. And that's not because they don't want us. That's just because, again, business owners are busy. Managers are busy, they just forgot to do it most of the time. And so we found that, you know, it really does take six or seven touch points at any one place before we're actually gonna see our bottles on their shelves. Um so it's that follow-up. And again, our his name's Cedric, great dude. He understands that that's what it's gonna take. So he has a great system in place for the follow-up. So I don't know that I mentored him from a sales perspective because he brought so much experience to it, but learning kind of the there's some laws and regul regulations that kind of dictate how we do that, I would say yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Did you fig did you know the six or seven touchpoint mark before he came on, or was he kind of like, did he sort of figure that out based on maybe he had to do that in another sales job?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

No, I th I think um I got that advice from another sales rep. Um and when I was kind of the number one sales rep and only sales rep, and then I found it to be true. Um, like, yeah, it really does take that follow up because you'll leave a tasting, you'll feel great. It's like, okay, well, let me go back and again you have rapport building, right? You don't want to be a pain in the butt with them. You don't want to call them every day, do you order us? You order us. But giving it enough time, doing the follow-up, being present, stopping in, checking in on them, seeing how it's going, like, okay, yeah, then then you're gonna be front of mind when they go to do that order.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Uh we I mean we have to do that every day with follow-up at lead. Like I can have somebody physically fill out a Facebook ad because they want help losing weight, getting stronger, gaining confidence, or they want help with balance and strength. Sure. Something like that. And then I can immediately reach out within five minutes and they'll be like, I didn't feel that. Who are you? I'm like, you you just a minute ago. And I'm I mean, and I'm I'm a person texting automated. But I understand the lead follow-ups and how much work that can take. And it's really interesting to hear that how you have to nurture that relationship, even because I'm sure you have to nurture that relationship ongoing too.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's we try to be active partners both with the ABC stores and the bars and restaurants with helping them sell. It does no good for me if they order and then it sits on their shelf and collects dust, just like it does no good for them. And so we try to partner with them. So when we're partnering, like Brunswick County, I mentioned, we're committing to helping them sell bottles by doing those in-store customer-facing tastings. So they place an order, we've fulfilled that order, and now we've scheduled in-store tastings to make sure that it's going to help their sell-through rates. They make the money, and then hopefully they put in another order. And so it helps our sell-through rates. And so that's what we're trying to foster. Same thing with the bars, right? We can do customer-facing tastings at a bar, which we've done on occasion. What I what I when I'm meeting with bar managers, I tell them pretty much up front, especially if they liked us, by the end of that meeting, I'm I'm letting them know that the biggest win for us is when and if we can end up by name on their menu. So as an example, you know, instead of saying Tito's vodka in this particular cocktail, can we get listed hidden ships vodka? You can bring in whatever you want, whatever works for your bar, but the biggest win for us is getting named on your menu, understanding that they're not gonna reprint a menu every week. It may take till the next season when they're getting ready to do that menu reprint. Now we've established a relationship, they've already ordered us. It's like, okay, now can we get it by name listed on the menu? Because then I know we're not gonna collect dust. They're going through and selling the cocktails, making money, and then, you know, ordering more.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

I'm curious, has a restaurant owner ever or a bar manager ever said, Well, I can get you on the menu sooner if you can satisfy X, Y, and Z. Is that is that a thing? And that's I mean, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

No, I don't know that I've seen that. I I think that, you know, how we incentivize because we can't really do like case cost discounts, other states you can. So I can't really say, you know, order 11, get the 12th free. But we can support them, like I said, with the with the tastings. So we'll come, we provide those samples for your customers, creates an event maybe for that night. My only stipulation is by then they they have us at the bar, and that night they feature us certainly in a cocktail, right? So if someone tries the bourbon in a tasting, I can let them know, hey, you can go get a bourbon cocktail at the bar tonight. And then I guess the only other way is like through some swag if they have the the tin tacker signs up on their wall because it fits their atmosphere, then certainly we'll give them one of those or some you know, bar coasters, whatever it may be. I think that's a way for us to support them.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

And you started, you talked about Pender, Anslo, and a hammer, and now you're 14 countins. Yeah. Boards, but yes. Boards, yeah, because it's 100 counters. You said how many boards? 140 boards. So 140 boards. Have you thought have you given any thought at all to what that looks like? I mean, you're already all almost kind of there, I'm thinking with 14 boards. What does that like at scale? 140 boards. Like let's say you hit 140 boards. How many boards can a sales rep handle?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Well, I think Yeah, I think we would expand right now his title as director of sales. We do have a brand ambassador, so that's not a sales rep per se. That's someone that represents our brand up in the Wake County Raleigh area. Former ABC store employee that kind of wanted to make a transition. He was already working up in Wake for the last 10 plus years, so he was very familiar. And so he approached us and said, Hey, you know, is there anything I can do? And so we kind of came up with this role for him as a brand ambassador. And so he's there doing store tastings in that market. He's also hitting those restaurants and bars to set up those tastings to try to get them to order. So as we think about scaling across the state, yes, we would increase like the director of sales, Cedric, that role will grow with sales reps that report directly to him. To backtrack.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Let's say let's go back to like when you just opened.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

And I don't know, maybe it's a month, maybe it's let's say like a when what do you remember what month? So we opened like September 29th, essentially October 1st of 23. I'm assuming because we're in Surf City, the summer is a the busiest time. Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned I thought we went really, really fast during construction, and we did. When I did my initial kind of timeline, I was trying to hit summer opening of that summer of 23. Yeah. Obviously with some delays in construction, it didn't happen. Turned out, you know, hindsight being what it is, that was a blessing in disguise. Because I think if we would have opened May 1st, we would have gotten so slammed uh that maybe it would have hurt our reputation, at least initially. Yeah. Potentially. Whereas, you know, the season kind of dies off here. You know, end of September, middle October up for Surf City. And so it was almost perfect timing for us to launch because we still had a great grand opening. We still had a lot of support from day one, but it was manageable enough for us to learn lessons and implement them and try to adjust very, very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

That yeah, that's what I'm curious about. So as a business owner, right? Like and and and teamed up with your wife. What was the or maybe tell me about the first moment where maybe you assuming this happened, maybe it didn't, like you went to bed at night and you were a little unsure about revenue or about business or things had slowed down, like you know, the newness wore off a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Well, I'll try to address that, but something I'll mention just because I thought of it here was, you know, when we opened, I spent so we finished construction technically September 1st. I then had a month. I spent the first two weeks of September in production, so we were distilling. And then the last two weeks of September hiring staff, hiring and training staff. But I didn't have a bar manager because I that was my role then, right? So like the month of October of 23, like I was here constantly. I opened every day, I closed every day. Um and just what I thought of was when we closed every single night, it takes about an hour to clean up and just get things set back up. That's pretty standard any bar or restaurant you work at. But I was there every night and we held like a small huddle with all the staff, and we talked about all right, what went well, what didn't go well, what can we do better the next day. And so certainly that first month, we did we held that meeting every single night. Um and so I think that was important just in terms of what you were talking about. In terms of the revenue, I mean it's um a thing. Um this is an equity-intensive industry to be in. Uh as we've grown uh and we try to scale, so have our bills, right? So, you know, I I mentioned that we source bourbon, you know, I got eight barrels coming in soon, but that's a $25,000 check I gotta write. We get, you know, maybe I I tend to order about $3,000 bottles at a time, that's a $10,000 check we gotta write. It's like we the bar is profitable and we make a little money each day, and then I write these massive checks. And so, like any business cash is king, ours happens to be particularly equity intense. And so that pressure is still, you know, prevalent today. I think, I hope, as when we hit those distribution goals that uh that that eases a little bit. Certainly that's what I'm hoping for as we as we sit here today. At having a second location and clocking and pouring all the money into opening it. For sure. So, you know, that that's kind of you know, the the summer are great months for us. This particular time of year, we're we're sitting here in February. You know, January, no matter what we do, is gonna be slow. February still is is slow. Yeah, it does. It's definitely more prevalent. It is more of a trend. You know, we do offer non-alcoholic cocktails that we try to appeal to people and say, even if you do in dry January, you can still come out and enjoy some time with your friends. I think it, you know, frankly, dry January has an impact. I really think it has more to do with just being a new year. Maybe people are getting those credit card bills from all the Christmas presents they bought, and they say, all right, we got to tighten up this month and we're gonna go out less. And I think that's the common. And then of course, you know, we don't have that tourist influx for Surf City, right? So no matter what we do, January and February, it's gonna be a little bit slower. It starts to pick up around March. And so the again, the challenge when it comes to, you know, I'm writing big checks right now in anticipation of what March, April, and May are gonna bring to make sure that we have the spirits ready to go and ready to sell uh to bring in that revenue months down the road.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Have you so it's interesting that you say January and February. I want to say you're probably the second or probably the second or business owner I've spoken to who talks about how revenue is different in January and February. And I say that because it's also it's different in the gym business, what a group training, personal training business as well. And it could be because people just spend a lot of money in December on everything. It's interesting in our business because we get there's a significant amount of interest, but as far as like taking action on that interest, it's significantly harder to get people in the door just to meet and talk about how we can help get healthier. But that time, January, February is it's almost like we have to plan ahead for that, even in our business.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Yeah, I mean that first year, so we again October of 23 we opened. We had a great you know, fall. The newness of us in October, we had a great month, November was great. By December, we start to see uh an increase in bottle sales for gifts. Yeah. And so our merchandise room does very, very well. December, typically what we see is maybe the bar slows down a little bit, but revenue kind of stays the same because it's you know supplemented by bottle sales. But then and then we happen to host a pretty popular New Year's Eve party. So we close out December 31st really solid after a solid month. And then it's one January. Yeah. And it's faster femin, feast or famine, right? And so that that's definitely the time where in that that first year, January of 24, I thought I was prepared. Uh, I was not. It was emotional uh just to be looking at it and looking at the bills that we had to pay and how do we plan. I was slightly more prepared for it last year and and and again this year, I hope that we're even better prepared for it. And part of that is just having a little bit more revenue, a little bit more, you know, kind of cash reserve for working capital.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yeah, I could imagine that being an experience to go through. Oh, yeah. And and people who haven't been through it won't understand it necessarily. Maybe if you got somebody who worked who has a job and they are really struggling to make ends meet or something and they're worried about their mortgage, but it's like when you got a business, it's like and you're looking, you know these big bills are coming, or you know the lease is coming up, your rent's got short because we're, you know, stuff like that. All those things that cut into your expenses are coming, you've got to consider things that might even be months down the road.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Yeah. And especially, you know, with with and again, because we source bourbon, I kind of have a luxury of not having to forecast four or five years out. We're kind of in that four-month forecast period, when I need to buy to do our internal two-month period so that we can dump the barrels in time to get them bottled in time to have ready to sell. But the spirits industry, particularly with bourbon and whiskey that ages, like they're forecasting, they're trying to forecast demand four or five years from now. And so that that's even more challenging than than what it is I face, but uh it still has challenges here.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

So do you have enough data?

SPEAKER_01 42:38

You said it's been almost two years? A little over two years, yeah. Over two years. Do you feel like you have enough data and or it's an experience, I guess, to to prep for those slower times now? Like, I mean, you kind of you kind of alluded to that, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah. I I think, I mean, fortunately for me, I can say we've never been at risk of missing payroll, so that's great. Really, it's been more about a decision of I would want to order this right now, but let's wait a few weeks, something like that. And that has bit me a few times where, you know, as a result of delaying a certain purchase, we didn't have a certain product maybe a couple months down the road. So we we do try to limit that now, certainly. But it it does happen. And for me this year, kind of the theme. Last year we we we focused on some product development. We came out with uh a new product called Marine Raider Rye, which is a rye whiskey. Very, very popular. That took a big effort to actually bring to market. Harder than just I could have developed a hidden ship's rye whiskey, it would have been pretty straightforward. But we wanted to do this in in honor of Marine Special Operations Command. And so there were some extra licensing agreements, some extra legal hurdles that we had to figure out before I could bring that to market. So that was a big effort last year. We also launched 50 milliliter, the airplane size bottles. That was a big Goal for us. And then the third thing that we worked on last year was what we call direct to consumer sales. So I sell through the ABC system in North Carolina, but we can sell to customers in 45 states where we ship it directly to their door. So that was kind of product development for last year. That was the theme. This year, the theme is how do we scale smartly? So scaling smartly is my theme. To give you an example of that, we recently had an issue with our supply chain on our bottles, which hadn't been an issue for the first couple of years we were open. But we had some supply chain issues that we're still struggling with. But what that's prompted is really two things. One, I got a larger storage space that we can now receive more bottles at once. So instead of, because we have this space, I have a shed in the back. At the time I had another 10 by 10 storage unit down the road just for some surplus. That has now been transformed into a 45 foot-long, it's technically an RV storage unit. So we have that, and that's going to allow me to bring in more bottles at once. It's also prompting us to sign a contract to have a custom bottle made this year. So we'll be transitioning bottles. And that was lessons learned from saying, what do you mean you don't have bottles? You I projected the bottles I needed. You told me you'd have them for me. And now I'm putting in my purchase order, you're telling me none are available.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Because other people use the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Yeah, it yeah, exactly. It's they they can use it if they want it. So now we're working uh with a company that'll be totally custom to us. Uh we'll have the intellectual property on it so no one else can use it. Uh but again, scaling, right? So I used to buy three pallets at a time, about 10 grand. Uh now I have to commit to 21 pallets at a time, what they call a container, and that's a $45,000 commitment. And so how do I scale smartly? I have the space for it now, that's a win. And now, you know, we'll figure out the money. What's nice about paying that bill up front is obviously, you know, for the next six months after that, I don't have any more bottling expense, right? Yeah. That's what we're doing. Yeah. Um well, maybe even yeah, I mean, we want to increase, right? So Cedric is out there selling. I I told him, like, you keep selling, we'll figure it out. Good problems to have. But first two years, uh, we did about 12,000 bottles a year. Uh this past year in 2025, we were at about 15,000 bottles. So this container of 21,000 bottles in theory lasts a little over a year. Okay. Uh, maybe a year and a year and a quarter, something like that. But um, if we can increase our sales through the ABC system, then then yeah, then then that 21,000 bottles should be about a year. And then we'll scale from there. Two or three of them a year. That's ideally where we kind of grow into.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Ranya, I can't think of a good term right now. Is it ever okay, distribution? We've got bars and restaurants, and we have ABC stores. And then you just mentioned essentially, I would have kind of called it drop shipping, but like direct to consumer. Like you can ship to consumers. Yeah. 45 states. Um, do we almost have to look at this as like three or four bar and maybe maybe retail, but like three or four separate businesses? Yeah. It's different marketing plan.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Different marketing, different strategy, right? So, you know, I sell bottles to the bar that supports all the cocktails that we sell. But the way the state considers it is it moves from this distillery area and then I sell it to myself, right? And so I have reporting and taxes and all that stuff that's due for it. And then I sell bottles to my merchandise room, and then we sell those full bottles to customers that come in here. We sell the bottles to the ABC system, so that's that stream of revenue from that. And then we have the what we call, again, direct-to-consumer stream of revenue. And so they are different. Now, we don't we don't have a ton of revenue coming in through that channel. Some of that is a deliberate decision on my part because to really increase sales there, we'd have to significantly increase, say, our advertising budget for that specifically. Most of the sales that we see through that are largely organic. And I look at it as more of a service offering to our customers. So, specific to being a tourist destination, we have a lot of visitors over the summer. Maybe they flew in, they don't want to fly home with a bottle. We can offer them when they're maybe buying a t-shirt. Hey, just so you know, you can order right here on this QR code and the bottles will be waiting for you when you get home. So that's a service offering, more so than driving a significant source of revenue right now. I like that we're positioned in that space. Of course, e-commerce in general is only increasing. So we're positioned. We have a great partnership with that company that does all the fulfillment. We're just not driving it. Our focus is in-state sales distribution to the ABC system. I think that's smart. Are you to focus on the one, the main thing, the main thing, the main thing? And certainly it is. I mean, and to add a fifth just for down the road, I again going back to my business plan, this is what I said, and it's still true today. We won't look for traditional out-of-state distribution, meaning it's available in another state's liquor store till about year five. And I think that's still true today, being two and a half years in, that there's an awful lot of spirits that we can sell in this state. And we need to get that foothold, learn those lessons, build the framework, know that we can scale to that level before we would look to commit to any kind of out-of-state distribution deal. Aaron Powell I think that's wise. I mean, that's how it should be done.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Because I would assume the revenue can be strong just being in the Yeah, we certainly hope so.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

And and based on our increase from three boards to thirteen or fourteen boards, we we've seen that uh already kind of start to, you know, you know, get some of the the fruit of that labor coming in.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Aaron Powell Do you have a goal per quarter on how many more boards per quarter, or is it a slower ad?

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Last year I set a goal and and I'm big on goal setting. I think you are too. Uh my wife and I do a goals retreat every year and we map out. Yeah. So we did it again this year. So going back to last year, I set a goal of there's 140 boards. I wanted to be in 35 of them by the end of 2025, which would would have represented 25% of the state.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

I thought, let's put that mark on. And as it turned out again, most of the year I I wasn't able to be as good a sales rep as I wanted to be because I'm also doing everything else in the business, right? Um not everything else, but I I have to kind of keep eyes on overall the business. And so didn't hit that mark. That's okay. Uh I think we were probably by the end of 2025, you know, maybe like eight or nine boards, something like that. So not not terrible, and it wasn't terrible to go after and pursue getting 25%. Yeah. So this year, I didn't really set a specific goal. It has more to do with having Cedric on the team, knowing that he's out there focused on this daily, doing all those follow-ups, and we've, you know, we've already seen a significant increase in distribution sales. So I I didn't set a number per se. Uh I have a number of overall, like I said, by October of this year, our 36th month in business mark, that the sales from distribution should at least equal what the bar does, is doing. And I obviously have solid data on what the bar does for the last two years. And so what I've always said is if we can get to that point, then again, I can sleep better at night. How many does that take, though? I don't have a number in terms of uh many ABC stores. It's more about revenue, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:36

On sales in a given area, yeah. That could vary probably. It varies, yeah. Okay. So as the founder, do you foresee, like let's, I mean, as you scale, like are you Let me backtrack. How much do you are you in-house now, like here?

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Pretty often. I spend almost I don't have a set schedule, which is one of the things I loved. Firing, you know, retiring from the Marine Corps, which was very regimented, and I actually did well in that environment. But one of the things I look forward to a lot when I was still in and thinking about retirement was I wanted to to own my schedule. I wanted the the freedom of schedule to control it myself, right? Yeah, and I I love it now. And so, you know, I'm I'm here, you know, five, six days a week. At some point throughout the day, some days are long days when we're distilling. We bottled most of the yesterday, almost all day. So I'm here for all of that. So I'm here often. I try not to be here in the evenings as much anymore. Again, you talk about building a team. I mentioned Cedric, but really from day one, the current bar manager, she was a day one hire. She grew into the role of being the manager, and she pretty much handles everything on the front of house. So I have to think very little about what occurs in the bar now.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

And it allows me to focus externally, right? Yeah. Uh one of the things I've picked up from various business mentors or heard it somewhere was the more you work in your business, the less you can work on your business. And so I've had to kind of balance that of I need to be working on the business, thinking externally, thinking how we're going to grow some of that's marketing, advertising, whatever, thinking about scaling smartly or figuring out those bottle supply chains. Understanding that we are still a small business. Yes, I do lots of work in it, but I I try to have the right team around us to fill those other roles.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

Do you ever see yourself scaling out completely? Maybe not a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah. I would say right. Yeah. Um I don't think I'll ever be an absentee owner. There's nothing wrong with that. I just don't think that's our model. You get to choose things about it. Going back to my business plan that I wrote, I thought it was solid, but I probably could have been criticized in that plan for not having an exit strategy. Two plus years in, I still don't have an exit strategy. Uh right now I'm kind of thinking, you know, what do we look like eight years from now? So our 10-year mark? And what opportunity could that present itself in terms of, you know, does it have enough brand equity to sell at that point? Or is there some situation where I sell percentages of it and maybe sit more of in a uh board role or something like that? Where, you know, maybe I I have a part in profit sharing but am less active in the day-to-day operations. I think that is all becomes possible. But we have a lot of work to do between now and then to even create those opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

This seems like the kind of business you could do that with.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

I think so. I mean, yeah, there's there are some spirit companies that set off from day one with an exit strategy. And they typically, though, like I have multiple spirits, faking gin, rum, and bourbon, rye whiskey, right? Usually what you'll see in the spirits industry is someone will create a specific brand in a specific one spirit. Maybe they're gonna do gin, and they'll try to build that with the intention of being bought out with one of the three or four big players in the industry. And that works. You know, Ryan Reynolds' aviation gin was around before he bought into the company. There's celebrity endorsements, certainly helps, but it doesn't always work. There's other examples where it didn't work very well. Ryan Reynolds with Aviation, that was a great example. He was actively building that brand, and then they were able to sell it to one of the big three or four players that are in the industry and had a massive payout at the end of all that. And so I don't think that that's my business model per se. I think what we can do is build it over the next eight years as a functioning distillery that offers multiple spirits. And then what I would like to do, what I envision, is selling it to someone that wants to scale it to a level that I'm not willing or wanting to scale it to, right? So if I can make this, you know, certainly regional brand recognition, and I can sell to someone that has enthusiasm and ambition to make it a national brand, you know, that would be the perfect situation for me eight years from now. So that's kind of how I think about it. Is that how you started out thinking is No, no, like I said, I truly, I mean, I didn't have an exit strategy. I, you know, all I ever said was, I don't want to run it when I'm 70. I know I knew that for short. But beyond that, no, I I would say kind of this this 10-year horizon has kind of developed over the last two years.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

It's interesting how first it's great to have control over it, but it's interesting how much visions change and how much you don't know about what you don't know. Like when you first start and even just as you go through business, just how things change, right? Like you you're you can be so passionate about something, especially when you first open it. And then to think like, well, maybe I can sell this to somebody else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

And the right person came along. And I think entrepreneurs will inherently understand that. Whereas those that look at what you and I do and they just think it's too risky, right? They they may never understand it. But for me, it was prepare as much as I can, study as much as I can, know as much as I can while knowing that I'll never know it all. And that's a tough thing to do. So, you know, I had people asking me certain specific questions while we were in construction, while we first opened about, you know, things that I didn't think mattered. If I would have tried to wait to figure it all out, you'll never do it. You'll never take the action, right? You you can't know it all. That doesn't mean don't do your due diligence. That means prepare. So part of me doing that graduate program was preparation to know as much as I could. Doing the Moonshine University was preparation to know as much as I could. And then understanding that you'll never know it all. So if you wait to have all the answers, you won't take any action. And I would say that was for me probably another lesson that I learned from the Marine Corps. You know, early on in my career, I had a hard time with this concept of making decisions based on 70% of the information. Because I'm probably more naturally, you know, I kind of want more information. And so the Marine Corps taught me, hey, you know what? You'll never get all the information. Make the best decision possible that you can with 70%. And so I think that lesson carried over to running this business.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

That's a valuable lesson.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

I've never heard it put in percentages like that, but that really makes sense. Yeah. I think early on I heard the term imperfect action is always better than no action. Yeah. And people who haven't owned a business or been in a leadership role or like been responsible for other people or something bigger than themselves, maybe they they don't understand. Like they can put they they may even criticize from the outside. Sure. You did this, but you didn't do this quite right. You didn't do this quite right, or maybe you have a staff member trying to give you feedback, and feedback's valuable, sure. But there's always things that certain people don't understand. And it's like, no, but but we got it out there, we got it started, and we'll tweak the process and we'll make it better.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Yeah, there's a really great passage called Man in the Arena by Teddy Roosevelt. And I I have a I have a copy of it in my office and I read it pretty often, but but essentially it's easy to criticize. It's much harder to be the man in the arena. Uh or or to we'll update it and be more politically correct, just to be that person in the arena, right? So taking those risks, making the best decisions that you can at the time, knowing that it's imperfect, right? So we're we're not gonna do nothing. Like I said before, if you wait for it to be perfect, you'll you'll never do it because it won't ever be perfect. And even going back to when we wrote that big check and made the decision to go after it, you know, sooner than we had thought. It was okay, here's the information we have. I got criticized even back in 2022 about, oh, the market's shifting. Now's not the right time to be opening any business, let alone spirits. It's like, well, if you wait for it to be perfect, you know, it's it's never gonna be. I wonder is a market shift. I mean, you we we talked briefly about, you know, non-alcoholic cocktails, and that is uh a growing trend in the industry. Oh, like alcoholic sales. Yeah, core correlating with that is a general decline in spirit sales nationally and internationally, globally. Beer and wine have had significantly bigger decreases than the spirits industry has, but overall there's still been a decline in sales. Well, that's true, but we're a craft distillery. Yeah. There is plenty of room for us still to grow, even with a national trending decline in sales, right? And so to craft than they are nationally.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:22

Yeah, and I I agree. We go so it's like, what do you have that's local? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Whether it's beer, whether it's spirits that's yeah, I I would say the numbers, you know, the numbers do show that. There's a genuine interest by the consumer to know the story and connect to the brand.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

And that's why we wanted to be transparent with storytelling, you know, from from day one. We got our corn in North Carolina, and here's why. There's some distilleries that maybe shy away from the from being overly open with the fact that they source spirits. We've never shied away from that. We're we're proud to partner with Southern Distilling. Yeah. We think they're a great company to partner with. They make a great base bourbon, and then we take it and we make it unique through our secondary aging, and we think we make it better. In fact, that particular spirit was called best bourbon under eight years old at a Berlin spirit show last year. And so, you know, market differation, whatever, bringing something unique to the market, right? And so uh yeah, I think that was.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Nobody else has done this. Locally, I mean, but I don't I don't think there's maybe something open in like Onslow County or I don't I don't remember if I heard something like a distillery open. Locally, I mean you absolutely jumped into as an entrepreneur, if you can find a problem to solve, usually you can be successful at least for a little while. And you definitely jumped into a market in this area that was completely underserved or not served at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

Yeah, I think from a distillery standpoint, right? Yeah, certainly from a distillery. There's um, you know, we're in Pender County, we're the only distillery still. We were the first, and now we're only in Pender County. Uh there's certain pros and cons to being first. Uh you know, one you have to figure it out, people don't know, you know, can we even have right, yeah. So we had to be the first, kind of break that ground, and and now the benefit of being first is even if another distillery pops up, I think it's good to be first. And and you know, the the area is growing, maybe it supports another distillery, that would be okay. We'll always have that distinction of of being the first. So I think that's a good thing. So yeah. That helps a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:31

It's I've had there's been plenty of gyms that have come and come and gone. Sure. Most have actually stayed pretty well in the like Hampstead area, and I've been through it. There's an F 45 that's gonna be opening up. We've always had at least one CrossFit a quarter mile from us. Sure. One way or at one point it was both sides. Yeah, I remember. Um, years ago. But it's uh I don't know, just adjust your marketing plan. You gotta do what you gotta do for sure. And more on ads or do what you gotta do. Um sometimes I've found that it actually helps business over time. Yeah. I mean yeah, I mean you have to decide. I don't love it. I'm very competitive, but I still love to get to know other business owners and stuff. I've I've found that it never it's helped us more than it's hurt us.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Yeah, I mean in in your business and again having been a member, like you do a great job of building that community, building those relationships. You know, obviously you want to attract new potential customers, but you know, customer retention also, right? And so for sure. Um yeah, building those relationships over time, helping people see those results. Absolutely. So it's correlation.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:40

Track here, like the difference, or can you even track like returning visitors versus new visitors? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Yeah, I mean we get data through through our point of sale system. I would say the general trend is um it's actually pretty even for us. Some months are greater than others, obviously, but on an annual basis. I haven't pulled, you know, the full two and a half years at one data, but even like annual reviews were generally uh, you know, about sixty percent uh new, forty percent returning, something like that. Aaron Powell I would assume that's probably typical for a beach area. Aaron Powell Yeah, because this summer obviously we're trying to attract as many of those visiting tourists as we can, but you have a limited opportunity to let them if they're here for a week, you know, we have to kind of let them know we're here on their day one so that a few days later they come in. I think one of the things that's benefited over time is that now we are a little bit more well-known in general amongst the community. So they're recommending other people to come see us as an attraction. And and we've tried some marketing techniques of, you know, we have, you know, fridge magnets, you know, in in the rental properties, several you know, that's one way, several hundred magnets that are out there in rentals. And so if if they rent a place and they see us on their fridge, then then maybe they'll come see us.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:57

Yeah, I could see that, especially as a local place. Right. If you want to go somewhere local. So I got two more questions because I didn't realize we're already like over and out. Have you you mentioned mentors? Have you had any early on, or even even now, did you have anybody who sat down with you and was like, Andy, this is exciting? I I see your passion, like I think you're gonna be successful. Here's all of the the the terrible things that you're gonna deal with, or here's why I would say this this is a really tough business to be in.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

No, and I'll try to answer that in two ways. Number one, I wouldn't say I guess he's been a mentor in some extent, although I pay him. Uh I had a fantastic consultant. Uh so and you pay for coaching sometimes and you pay for mentoring, and that's okay. Fantastic consultant. Uh, when I went to Moonshine U, that curriculum has uh a base set of instructors that are on staff, but then they have other outside instructors that are essentially consultants come in and teach certain portions. So one of my lessons learned from doing the course was I A consultant. So we got back, like we did with all things. Can I find a consultant in North Carolina? Uh, and sure enough, found one. Uh, there's a very popular distillery down in Wilmington called End of Days. I've gotten to know that owner pretty well. It's a it's a fantastic establishment, and they're doing great as they go into their sixth year or something like that. But when they first opened, I was at their grand opening and he was their master distiller for their grand opening. Worked with them with that company for the first two years, decided to leave it and start his own distillery consulting company. And now he's got clients all over the country, all over the world. But when I was looking for consultants, I went to his website. He had some photos of him being an end of days. And so when I had my phone call, I mentioned that with him. And of course, that's when we realized that I hadn't meet, I hadn't met him at that grand opening, which was a very, very cool connection. But I realized from day one that I needed, I had him on retainer. You know, again, talk about forming a team, or, you know, there's a saying of, you know, try never to be the smartest person in the room. Uh and I have certain skill sets that I think I bring to the table, but I understand that that I can't be an expert. I don't want to be an expert in all those areas. And so, you know, I told him what my vision was. I want to be able to make fakagin, rum, and bourbon. He said, buy this equipment. Right. And so I've paid him, he's he's helped save me 10x because I didn't have to waste money and learn those harder lessons and make those mistakes. He consults now with companies that maybe didn't bring him, bring someone like him in early, and he has to go in and just say, best thing you could do now is scrap this equipment and buy new stuff, right? And that's a very costly mistake. So I didn't I had the benefit of not having those types of mistakes because I had a great consultant. So industry specific, I would say, you know, that's what I had for that. Outside of that, you know, you talk about mentors. I've had some great mentors that I've never met in person because I've read their books. And so I've I've been committed to lifelong learning for the last 15 plus years of my life and spent many, many years, again, while I was still in the Marine Corps, you know, what we would generally just call personal development. But how do I get myself better? How do I become the best version of myself? And a lot of that's through through reading some of these great books that are available. So I spent years and years and years doing that. That's how I ended up teaching a goal seminar, was I I had worked through so many other goal systems, and then I started to piece together my own system, did that for a number of years, and it was again actually Amy that was like, Oh, you should offer this to other people. I was like, okay, well, we can we can do that. And so that's just but that came after a decade plus of of development.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:43

What's your what's a book you'd recommend to somebody who won't know about this?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:45

Yeah, I mean maybe in general, maybe somebody who has a similar entrepreneurial mindset. I always go back and and it's it's a harder read, so that's why I'm hesitant. But there's there's just a classic personal development book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. That one, if you've never been exposed to any of those kinds of ideas, I think it's a great place to start. And it's stood the test of time, probably written in the mid-80s at this point, but it it's still incredibly valuable. Nothing else which you'll learn is you have more to learn. So that may put you on a path of reading some other books. Um, you know, there's there's guys like John Maxwell and Darren Hardy that I've read in all of those books, and I think those are all incredibly impactful for becoming the best version of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:30

What's one tip you would give somebody who, a new entrepreneur who's trying to break into any business or wants potentially wants to open a business, or even if it's a couple of tips rolling in them?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:39

Yeah, I think um I mean we we kind of hit upon it earlier um in terms of do the work, work really, really hard to learn as much as you can, and then balance that with understanding that you'll never know it all. And don't let that fear overtake or cause inaction, right? So so take that action. I think the other kind of philosophy that I developed, and I developed this philosophy in that lead up of getting to grand opening. There were multiple days. So I mentioned that we signed a lease and that we had to work on getting funding. In that six-month period, I was pretty sure on any given day the whole thing was gonna fall apart. Um and I developed this thought that you have to have a like a imagine a bottomless well, an endless well of belief that you'll figure it out. There can be no bottom. As soon as you think you've hit the bottom of that well, you'll figure out that no, you it keeps going further. You need more belief to figure it out, right? And so that concept I think correlates to that first point of working really hard, but understanding that you'll never know it all. But take action. And so understand that you have to develop this bottomless well of belief in yourself that you'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:52

Great advice. I think that's why you're an entrepreneur. Everything a mentor of mine one time told me everything, not everything, but he's just the term I got for him was it's figure out.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:02

And that having I love the analogy of a bottomless well, like it's it's gonna keep going. There's gonna be things you have to figure out. You're not gonna know. I learned new things every year as a business owner of almost 13 years now. It's wild. And there's other people who I still learn a lot from other people. Sure. Maybe have you been in as long as I have. Yeah. Yeah, it's been impactful. Well, and I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:24

Yeah, we went a little over, but this was awesome, man. I appreciate you being in here. Yeah, right on. Hit subscribe, turn on notifications, and stay locked in. Brotherhood is more than business. It's about leading from the front, leveling up in every domain, and becoming the CEO of your own life. Step up, execute, and we'll see you in the next one.