Inside the $300 Billion Wine Industry_ How Donae Burston Launched a Black-Owned Wine Company-MP3

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is our town. A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment

1:02and fights back. I guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies and I'll dig you. Listen to our town on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What up this Jay Valentine co-host of the R&B Money Podcast alongside my brother, R&B Legend Tank. Together we've built a space for artists, executives and fans of R&B music to reminisce and tell the real stories behind the music. I have no money. I was hood famous. They think you're going to get everybody out. We lived in a project and real love came out. They hear them music and we had nothing. From Smokey Robinson to Mary J. Blige, V2K to Jill Scott. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan, this is where you belong. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Beones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, lots to say with me, Bobby Beones and Matt Castle. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of

2:05the media. Suddenly everybody online says he should start over a week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Beones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up? I'm Tony Gonzalez. And I'm October Gonzalez, but you can call me Toby. We want you to join us on our new podcast No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez. Where we get real about marriage, parenthood, sex, divorce and all the nitty gritty stuff we all think about, but just don't say out loud. You're probably just going to be some rich guy and he's going to whisk you away. Wow. This is awesome. Listen to No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Going to be a very spirited conversation. I want to build my own legacy in the wine and spirits industry. How cost-intensive was this journey? Bank account savings, credit card, all of it was maxed out. How did you get American Airlines convinced them to say, look, we need to have this inside

3:06of the arena. My name is Rose A. Cultures, it didn't take a lot. I got to talk about it. It's just big. When I was there, we were arch-enemies. It was fun to go back and, excuse my friend, shit on people. What are the marketing roles by Territory? A lot of balancing the nightclub world and then catering to the super wealthy, allowed equity stakeholders to come in over the next couple of months. I never set my goals on being the number one black-owned Rose A. Cultures brand in the world. I want to be the number one Rose A. Brand in the world. Welcome back to UOL. This is going to be a very spirited conversation. All pun intended. I did that. Yes, that's clever. I might be the first time we got my spoke to might add their own wine company. Is it? We spoke to a few people in the spirit energy, but not wine. Not at this level. We talked about the fastest growing. This is the first. Don A. Burston originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Absolutely. We'd be more stand up. You guys met, right?

4:06So actually Nicole Rustle? No, Nicole Spence. Black effect. He was like, Hey Troy, there's this guy. You have to meet. He has an amazing story. Amazing, man. He's saying it's like in the spring. I'm like Nicole, you know, we got this big event that we're doing. So we kind of like on a freeze right now for the interviews. But as soon as we're done with that, let's make it happen. And so she just kept telling me, I'm like, Hey, you got anybody? You know, just when we're done. Yeah, I got this guy down. Yeah, you got to meet him. You got to meet him. He went from Baltimore. He's a Clark grad. You got to meet him. It's a crazy. I'm like, All right, let's do it. Right. And so we finally got it on the calendar. So I'm happy that you're here. That the spirits are here as well. I'm excited to be here. It's an impressive story. Any came prepared with the right kicks. So yeah. Yeah. So let's get into this. So you have your own wine company. This is the wine right here. I'm a swimming. Look that wine company has to rotate in the block. I wrote it. And a white wine. White wine, right? Yeah. Okay. So let's rewind the story a little bit.

5:07Where did your passion for wine come into play? How did you go about actually becoming an entrepreneur in the space? Yeah. So I worked in the wine and spirits industry since 2001. Started back with Kovacier during the past the Kovacier days at the A.D. Rush, which was a Russa Simmons agency, swimming in all the street promotions in Atlanta. From there, moved over to Moe, Hennessy. At the time, it was just Moet and Hennessy as a ambassador in Atlanta. And I was doing the time when the clubs in the city was on fire when the music industry was hot down there, right? So it was like the MF days. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So it was like the closest thing to being in the music industry without being in it. Because listen, we've been throwing all the parties, the liquor companies were sponsoring all the parties. And I just fell in love with like that lifestyle. Like it was business, but it was still a lot of fun. So I did that, then moved to Miami with them. And when I got to Miami, it was when the champagne world took over. So it was like, I worked on Cleco, I worked on Moet, I worked on Don Pernion. And I was like, oh, this is the move. This is my lane. I was up there and then did a stint at Ace of Spades for three years.

6:11Might have heard Latin America, yeah, he might have heard that. Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast United States, and duty free. And I was just like, yo, I could just do this working over there with that guy and that team. It was so entrepreneurial and it was so breaking the convention of the wine and spirits industry that it motivated me to want to do my own thing. And then just being in a chance and counter and to start the France and meeting the owner of a winery and talking shop with them and say, yo, we should do something. And that was a genesis of it all. That was like a fast forward version. Yeah. Because I was like, this place in South of France, yeah, central pay. Right. Oh, this guy, yeah, Sean Carter. Right. So I mean, how did you even get, I mean, you obviously you said in early 2001, you start, yeah, and you're working with Russell Simmons and his brand, but how did you get to, because it's not even LVMH at the time, right? No, it was all right. It was the agency for Moet, Hindusti, called US concept. So who introduced you to them? How'd you get on board with them? Yeah. So I mean, I literally, the job with Russell Simmons, it sounds glamorous at D rush was literally me handing out a drink tickets in the club. Like I was like the promotional guy. Yes.

7:11That's the thing. And then that grew into me managing the promotional models underneath me. And I had to be working for, I was doing like six jobs at that time. I was like working an internship at Hitco. Music publishing, working with a local events company called Steps. So I was just in the mix trying to figure out how I was going to get on. And I met a young lady who was the regional marketing person for Hindusti Konyak. She was like, I like you. You know, I want to give you an opportunity. And that's how that job came about. So like what happens when you're in that space, the club knows what type of night is going to be. Yep. Right. They'll say like, Hey, we got our unleash of coming. Yep. We're going to need this many cases. That's. Yeah. So like you're doing that. How old is this like three nights of the week? Like is this full time what you're doing? Yeah. At that point it was full time in the clubs in Atlanta. That time every night of the week was something to do, right? That was for Monday. That was Tuesday. So the only night we probably really had off was like a Wednesday or say. So it was six days a week in the streets at the clubs, but it was a rotation. It was the same ones every week. It was all about repetition to get in front of people.

8:13But yeah, it was intense. Yeah. Is it commission base? No, it was a salary. Okay. Yeah, it was a salary. Okay. Yeah. So all right. So what sparked you to go from there to actually saying, I'm going to get up and running and have my own brand? Listen, we all have had jobs where you felt like you could do things better, right? So that inspiration from being in a place that was super entrepreneurial, but it still wasn't mine, right? And you get reminded of that every now and no matter how hard you work. So I was like, you know, I want to do my own thing. I want to build my own legacy in the wine and spirits industry. And this opportunity was that. So what was the first step that you did to start the company? Yeah. So the business, I had to look at what the business proposition was, right? So knowing I had worked on Moette and Moette Necktoi, Rose, was the number one selling Rosé champagne in the world. And that consumer was 98% black and Hispanic. And then knowing that the leading Rosé still wine brand of time was whisper angel. And there were no real contingency of black consumers drinking that up.

9:14The decorulations like, listen, I can take 10% of the sparkling Rosé consumer and 10% of the still Rosé consumer and bring them together. Then I have a business proposition. So Rosé 98% of Rosé wine drinkers are black. Moette Necktoi and pure Rosé. They wanted a clear bottle. Moette Rosé. But the Moette Rosé, my favorite. But that's what I'm going to say. That's what I mean. We drink it. That's champagne, no. That's champagne, right? So when I think of Rosé, I think it's champagne. This is wine. This is wine. So Rosé in general is just a variety, right? It just means, you know, it's made from red wine grapes rather than be still a sparkling. It's a different process of making it. It's sugar doze-sized, that's aging and barrels and stuff for the sparkling. And then for the still, it's pretty much just made without any oxidation to give you the bubbles. So only black people drink Rosé. Moette Rosé. I mean, listen, it's the, yeah. Why is that? Because it's red. No, it was the marketing. I mean, that was... It was marketed in the club. In the club, right? The red, I'm a beyond for you.

10:14The red was a great, it comes red. Yeah, it comes red. The thick thing about it was red in a clear bottle. But before that, most Rosé's were in a darker bottle. Because it lights up. And they put the light underneath it. You see it, it was a show. And you couldn't see what's in the bottle. Exactly. So what's the mark... So this is a... What's the market share? Like, how much money does that represent? You could say 100% is done by black people, let's just say. If it's 98%. How much money does Rosé... Rosé... Moette Rosé made. I would probably say it's the third biggest value generator inside of Moette, Hennesse, USA. Because it's really a US-based brand as well. So it'll be like Hennessey is number one. Hennessey number one, probably a tie between... And this is when I was there, a private tie between Moette and Cleco. And then Moette and Peril were the regular sparkling end. And that would be number three. Not that white stuff. Not that white stuff. That white stuff. That white stuff. That white stuff. It's a huge business proposition. And that was from a nightclub. That's just pretty much from a nightclub. I mean, it was a culture... Well, in the beginning, it was nightclub culture. Yeah.

11:15So it was primarily sold only in nightclubs. But now retail as well. Yeah. I mean, retail. I'm glad you said that. Because I was reading 2011, perfect time to be in Miami. Oh, yeah. LeBron has now said he's coming. Crazy. And so how did you get the arena? So it was American Airlines. I know it's like FTX now. Yes. How did you get American Airlines convinced them to say, like, we need to have this inside of the arena. Because that wasn't something that you saw anywhere. No, it wasn't. And the first conversation was really about the championship celebration. So we was already in like... We went in. That time we were like, let's prepare. And there was a rule that apparently Pat didn't let anybody talk about if they won. So that conversation quickly changed until, let's talk about, well, what we can do to bring like more of a social aspect to the basketball games. Because in Miami doing that time, you went to the games because like, that was the club. Like, did you mean, why was she game? No, I was inside high. So, you know, we wanted to see what could we do to promote at that time, Moette and the White Bottle, Moette Ice, to kind of all tie it in.

12:15So we convinced them that we should do sales and then we did a champion at the bar first. And they were like, all right, it's cool. This is going well. We like this. They like the vibe. Then we did some brandy cups. And then, actually, we had our own pop-up bar in the concourse. And it was outselling every other bar in their arena. So, you know, then we just decided, let's make this a official partnership. And once they won that year, it was game over. So as far as the wine, where do you get the grape? So, all right, the process of making wine is that there's grapes and they crush the grapes, right? Yeah. And they have to let it sit for a long time. Anywhere from three to four months. They're agent. Maserate. Let it all come together in jail. Not so much age. Agent is usually a year or two year process. We don't get it. So, it's a little quicker than that. All right. You have your own farm or you just outsource it to like... So, we have a winery partner. So, there's a vineyard in the South of France and Central Pay that we work with exclusively. They produce their own label, primarily in France. And then we work with them to get a style of wine that we wanted for Lafette. Today, they make gallons of wine.

13:17Yeah, but in the Nayship it to you. Yeah. Is this proprietary to you? This taste? Well, everything in white wine making typically is blending process, right? And it changes every year because some years harvest is better than others. It's a very volatile industry. So, you try to get a style of wine and then you try to make that style every year, but it's never going to be exactly the same. It's impossible unless you're making it in a factory. So, what makes wine? So, like, I'm not a wine connoisseur, but like Le Brun, do you know what I mean? They have like wine sellers and it's like, somebody's worth like a $50,000. Like, what makes wine high class, what makes some wine better than other wines? Like, how do you gauge that? So, France is heavily regulated in how they classify their vineyards and winery in Terroir. So, when you go to like Burgundy and Bordeaux, those are like premium, some of them are premium wineries, small production, like how long do they age? How do they taste after the age? So, all of that sort of thing adds into what puts the value to wine and scarcity.

14:19I mean, it's a commodity. So, if you have a great vintage and they only produce the thousand bottles, 10 years from now, those thousand bottles can be worth 10,000 dollars a bottle per se. So, Central Bay comes up in a story. Yeah. Did you know that going in or is it like as you're traveling during the other brands, you're starting to see your learning from where they're going and now? So, how does Central Bay come into the mix? I've had that line and I need a girl, right? Ever been to Central Bay. So, I literally took that as the reason to go there from my birthday, right? Yeah. Like, never been I'm going. But when you go and doing that era, that's when puffing all of them with every summer through the energy again was crazy, which was just like, y'all, this is the best place on earth. So, whenever I had the chance to get back to France or Paris for work, I would be lying my way back down the South and it just became like my place. So, I fell in love with the place and then part of that lifestyle in that place is Rosé wine. Right. So, all right. So, you get the contract to get the wine from France.

15:22And then you put it in your bottles. Yep. No, it's all about everything's bottle, or product. You label it for you and all that. Everything. All right. So, where you selling it and stores are? Yeah, I mean, right now, we're up to about a thousand points of distribution. But when you first started, when I first started, literally four hotels in Miami. Four. You just hand in hand, like, there's going to be everybody I have relationships with from years in the industry and say, yo, I got this Rosé and the good ones were like, all right, we like you, we don't give it a shot. It don't sell, that's not you, but we'll give it a shot. Did you tell them it was yours? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. So, how'd you get it to sell? I mean, my name is Rosé Cultures, it didn't take a lot, right? It was just like your end. And the chance with it? Yeah, you and the WWE Hotel. And just go. I mean, one thing we did do that other people weren't doing is because we were produced in central pay, as we put that, you know, how they list wine, they would say Lafette Rosé, central pay. So most people that were in and out of the W and the satire hotels and Miami had been a central pay. So that was something that automatically there are. They resonated with that. Resonated with that. Absolutely. It tasted the culture. Yeah. So Lafette, nice name.

16:23I know what it means. It's way out. Why you landed on that? Yeah. So Lafette, do Rosé to four former name means the Rosé party. And so for us, the tagline, it's a party and everyone's invited because typically in wine in general has been very exclusive and not inclusive. So we wanted to create a brand that was definitely bringing everyone into it, right? Black, white, Chinese, gay, straight, whatever it didn't matter. It was just like, yo, we like Rosé. So it's more of a lifestyle play than it is a wine play. Like we could have gone with the typical, you know, blah, blah, blah, shit, to a bit of ne'er, you know, whatever. Like that didn't resonate with any of us. We wanted a name that would definitely pop and then we could, you know, bring to life. Yeah. So this is the entrepreneurial journey, right? And one of the things that people, you hear in their stories is that, you know, I spent my last to get this off the ground. Yeah. What was that like for you? Like how cost intensive was this journey from obviously being in central pay to having tastings, to having finally figure out the bottling. And I guess at the beginning of the marketing of it, that I mean, that's one of the strongholds.

17:24Yeah, how cash intensive was it for you? Everything. So to that point, I took my last, I emptied out 401k's, I dipped into pension funds, bank accounts, savings, credit cards, all of it was maxed out to make this dream happen. Because you have to pay for it, regardless of your soul or not. Like you basically put your order in for wine now and you'll get it in March. So it wasn't something I could like pick up inside, like next month, like I need to get 5,000 bottles. They were like, no, you want 5,000, you need to pay for all of it now. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here.

18:26It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies your soul about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America. Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is high nears and apple etchum. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there, is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town

19:27becomes the site of a social experiment. God need mental rule, great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test to. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-Cast of Tampa is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be an everything shower. It can be putting your phone on, do not disturb. But sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff. And understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s podcast. And each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to

20:30money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter-life crisis, which is depicted as the collapse, the quarter-life reinvention is the expansion and the growth of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you. So this self-care September, don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, lots to say, with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends, they're mostly match friends, who are current or former NFL players. Some of the biggest names in music and entertainment. And then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great, Taikman Jones. After the game, the whole national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you out of, come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness, where Bobby and I

21:32give each other real life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp, and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over a week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say, with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, I'm Mike Am. And I'm Trevor Sikama. And together, we host the NFL Fantasy Football Show. Fantasy season is upon us. Are you ready to dominate your league? Because if you aren't locked in with us on the NFL Fantasy Football Show, you're already playing from behind. Every episode, we're going to dive into the biggest fantasy headlines. Injury updates that you'll need before kickoff. The best starts and sits across every position. And matchups, you can exploit to destroy your leaguemates. We're talking sleepers, breakout stars, and the guys you cannot afford to bench. From rookies on the rise to longtime star still at it,

22:35we cover it all. Whether you're a first-time player or a grizzled, vetch, chasing another championship, we give you the advantage and the confidence you need to make every move count. Weekly analysis, hot takes, and unique insider knowledge all in one place. Does fantasy dominance sound appealing to you? Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Show on the IHAR radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So you say you're in a thousand stores now? Thousand stores now. So how'd you get into stores? How did you scale that? Yeah, I mean, let's say the pandemic was a blessing for us as a brand because that's the point that everybody slowed down and they started to watch and they, you know, break short injustice movements and George Floyd and everyone started wanting to support Black brands. And at that moment, we just took off. The brand took off and we put, you know, the pedal to the metal and kept going. So that got the attention of the retailers and, you know, these big corporations that wanted to support Black owned and minority owned brands and they gave us the foot in the door. A lot of that has started to go away

23:35but we were able to maintain our sales and volume to stay there when these initiatives start to, you know, dwindle down a little bit. What does some of the, of course, associated with, obviously creating a luxury line of wine, right? Like, obviously you said if I want 5,000 bottles, I got to pay for that. But those 5,000 bottles have to be stored somewhere, right? So they have to be transported. So like, what does some of those costs that, most people don't even think of that associated with this business? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost again, the goods that cost the goods sold, the bottle of glass, the court, the label, the paper, the wine itself, then there's getting it from France on a container to the United States. Then there's the custom import fees, duty taxes, you got to pay once it lands, then there's the storage at whatever warehouse you select. Then if you don't have a big distributor, because it's a three tier system, which means we basically can't sell direct to consumers, we have to sell to a distributor, that distributed themselves to a retailer, that retailer themselves to the consumer. And everybody takes that cut along the way, you got to figure out how to then convince them to buy it.

24:37But if they not buy in the product, just paying those storage fees along the way, and some of them may say you pay for trucking or shipping to get it to us. So then that's another cost on top of it. So that, I mean, that's a lot of people taking money. So that's why the bottles cost so much. Yeah, well I mean, listen, everybody wants typically 25% to 30% minimum along the way. Well, profit margin. Profit margin. So like how much would it cost to start an operation like this? Woo, the right way. I mean, when we officially launched in 2019, it was a million dollars in inventory alone. And that was without the market. And that's not market anything. No, that was just the inventory and getting it here and all that stuff. So I would probably say effectively the right way of a million and a half, two million. And that's playing small. What about marketing? So how, what kind of marketing do you do? Now we're doing all digital. We're starting to come out of that now to experience 20 events that come back. But primarily going to pandemic, it was digital ads.

25:38There was a lot of influence on marketing. Everyone was at home, so we could just send bottles of people. And they were posts. But for us, we try to immerse people in the lifestyle of what we think Santa Prey is and what we want people to feel when they experience the product. So we take cues from spirit brands. We think they do it best in terms of how they activate. We don't want to operate like a wine brand. So wine dinners are cool, but that's not a lot of fun. It's fun in some people, but we want to immerse you in it. So it's going to be parties. It's going to be festivals. It's going to be F1. It's going to be all those things that are really a part of the dope things that are happening in the culture. We want the fact to be there. What kind of influences did you send like having your influence on marketing? Yeah, initially it was, it was whoever. Like whoever had a large following to be honest with you. But it was also people that were posting wine or champagne brands. And then we got lucky with people like Mello. He put us on his show during the pandemic. He has a podcast. He had a YouTube series called What's In Your Glass? Oh, wait, oh, where he like interviews people who do want. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:38He puts you on here to put your product in. He put us on. He put me on. So I hear and I talk. He's from Baltimore. So we got connected through his manager. And yeah, yeah, we got put on through that. And then Microstray Hand talked about it. A friend of a friend got him the product. D-Nice, how to put bottle doing his Instagram live. So it was a lot of good things. I could just start it happening in a good way. So we had people reaching out and then we were reaching out to people as well. Yeah. I got to talk about it. Ace of Spear, you're there. Yeah, yeah. Couple of things. First of all, you're the regional director. Yep. I want to know what that role encompasses. But also obviously we saw that LVMH, a company that you know. Yeah. Has now 50% state of Ace of Spear. Now, the second part is where you're there at that point or did you help, I guess, kind of facilitate the relationship with two to two brands? No, I mean, when I was there, we were arch enemies. So when I was at Don Praian, Ace was an enemy. And when I was at Ace, Don Praian was an enemy. So there was no playing in the sandbox whatsoever. Yeah. But what we did see, what I saw once I got to Ace

27:41is that the young consumer had no affinity for Don Praian the way they did for Ace and Spear. So if you're LVMH, you have great product in Don Praian, that's your tactical vape, but your consumer is aging out, right? Ace was grabbing that young rich consumer around the world. Like, India, Asia, Dubai, like they were going to Ace in the club where their parents might have been drinking Don Praian. So I think that's if I had to make a hypothesis, that's where LVMH saw the future. It wasn't right now. It's like, okay, these young guys aren't picking Don Praian and picking Ace. But the experience was great. Like I said, it was super entrepreneurial, like, Des, they ran the whole operation over there. It was very much like, yo, Beach Street, great convention, break the rules, how do we get this done? And that was kind of like our directive. But it was a lot of work because for me coming from the LVMH side at the time, it was easy to get in the door, right? And then I think that's the reason why I think Ace, some of those same doors were like, yeah, I don't know, we don't really have that crowd here. And I just was like, what was that mean?

28:42You don't think the crowd doesn't make money? Yeah, exactly, right? So there was a lot of trying to convince some of the old guard that this was a real champagne. The bottle is gold for reason to stand out. So it was fun. It was fun to go back and, excuse my friend, shit on people. Right? They'd be like, oh yeah, you was talking shit. And now now, fast forward three years, holding in how it prays, almost 50% of their brain. Right. So, how do you feel about it now? I'm a gold bottle drinker. So I know some of the role was marketing goals for each territory, which is interesting, right? So you had, what were the areas that you were responsible for? So Southeast United States, Latin America being more of Cuba, Dominican Republic, et cetera, and duty-free zone. So what are the marketing goals by territory? Give me an example of something that will work in Southeast obviously in the United States. And then, this is what we're going to do for the duty-free zones. Yeah, I mean, for instance, if I use Miami as example, there was two aspects to Miami that was the club life.

29:43For sure, you got to make sure ACE is popping and live and all those places like that. But there was also, how do you get in front of a hot network of individuals and settings that they want to be a part of? Watches was a big way. We did a lot of watch partnership, dinners and parties. Yots and boat shows was another way. So you have to really, when you get to the high net worth individual marketing, you got to go today at touchpoints. You can't just be one of those brands, like, I'm a dual my way, especially for a brand like ACE. Let me ingratiate myself and your world first before we come in and kick it down the door. So it was a lot of balancing the night club world and then catering to the super wealthy and their sort of environments, which is a hard balancing act, because most people think of ACE as the club brand. So it was a lot of hurdles overcome with convincing people otherwise. Speaking of night club, nobody drinks wine in a club. So they will soon. But that's the day has come. In the US, they don't drink it. You can go to night clubs in France and South of France and Paris and you'll see people drink a rosé wine at night time.

30:44Any club? Okay. It's a cultural thing. Wine has a lot, a long way to go here in the States in terms of marketing. And that's primarily because the gatekeepers for wine, the Psalms and all that have pushed so much fuss on it, right? So you and I, we go to club, if I can't put ice cube in it, if it's not cold enough or if I have to sniff and swirl, like, yeah, I'm not doing all that. I'm trying to have fun. Let me get busy. So for us, let's break convention. You drink it how you want. If you weren't going to make a rosé margarita with that and some Don Julio or a tequila brand, go ahead. So tequila, wine? Yeah. So we have a rosé margarita, which is basically four parts rosé wine and one part tequila. Shake it up. It's crazy. Okay. Well, in America, nobody's really drinking wine in a club. So, and I would assume that that's a big part of the revenue stream for alcohol, but every alcohol, tequila, you name it. Champagne, all of the alcohols have huge profit margins in nightclubs. Yeah, but Tito's is the number one selling back

31:44in the world and probably 10% of their business in nightclubs. A lot of people drink Tito's in clubs. Now they do. But when I'm to ice work on Belvedere too, you couldn't pay a nightclub owner to serve Tito's because for them, it was like, get that cheap shit out there, whatever, you know what I mean? But now you look at Tito's sales, what is it, three million cases a year, maybe four? I can guarantee 90% of that is coming from retail or bars, not excluding clubs, you know what I mean? So you're saying you don't need clubs to survive? I don't mean so. But who, all right. So what's the average client? Somebody has just having wine at dinner? So for rosé, no. So typically rosé has been more outdoorsy, brunchy, warm weather spots. We're now starting to see the shift as we push for like ski season, you know, operate ski sort of things like that. And then just every day, like you're starting to see more people drink wine at dinner or even at home than you would have four or five years ago. This is true.

32:45Yeah, I think about my own house. Yeah. That's true. This is true. So, man, how, how, because you said you were doing, I think a thousand, different locations, you have right now? Now, I don't really get to that point, right? You started with one, obviously, but how do we scale so fast? I think in 2021, you the, the fastest growing rosé? Fastest growing in ported rosé. In the country. Yeah. How? Yeah, I mean, listen, we, again, like I said, when the momentum hit for us, like we were on the phones, we were presenting to the buyers from, you know, these big chain stores, you know, hotels and resorts and Miami, let's go get in front of them. We like, look at all the momentum we have, because you know, again, Miami, Texas, well, I say Florida, Texas, and maybe one of us, they were the only places open post pandemic that everyone was rushing to. So we were just creating that critical mass in those cities and out there and putting people in front of the brands and you know, look at all this press, look at our gram, look who was holding this up, you know, all that sort of thing that gets people to even say yes. So there was a lot of pitching, a lot of selling,

33:45a lot of selling, not in a sense of beating the street, but a lot of selling in terms of presenting to decision makers to get these national distribution deals, like a one hotel, an addition hotel, a high at hotel group. So a lot of those meetings. So you have Red Wine? Red Wine's coming. Yeah, man. So right now you have the Blanco and the Rose, yeah, and the Red Wine's coming. Red Wine's coming. How did the Blanco and Rose, which one is a better seller? Oh, we just launched a white wine as a thank you last year. So this is the first four years it's going to be in production. But it's different occasions, right? You have some places that don't take, you know, Rose as serious and they'll go for the white first. Or you have some people that are huge, sub-yong-blanc bands, they'll go for the white first. So if you look at the Rose category, I mean, the wine category in general, white wine is by far bigger seller than Rose overall. Rose sales are probably 6 to 9% of total table wine sales in the United States period. White wine is like 27 to 30%.

34:46So the growth potential was bigger on the white wine from a business economic standpoint than it is on the Rose. Bigger, bigger, pizza to pie. Spain knows his wine. It knows his wine. Yeah, this is, you said the pandemic, obviously escalated and elevated the brand. May 2021, I know you were one of the first to take a payment from Constellation Brands. Can you explain who Constellation Brands is? And why did they choose you to invest in? Obviously, we know with the pandemic and obviously social unrest that happened, companies will commit in money to brands. How'd you go about getting them involved? Yeah, so Constellation is drinks giant, probably the number two wine company in the world. They also distribute in own Corona beer in the United States, but also some of your favorite brands, like Kim Crawford. Have you ever heard of that? Prisoner Wine is none of their brands. But that conversation really came about, once the announcement came out, you know, again, the community is everything. People were just hitting me. And two people in particular have relationships

35:47with executives at Constellation. So that gave me, I think, a quicker intro to the system. So when we sat down and talked, it was all about, what do you see for the brand? What do you think it's going to be in three to five years? It was never an immediate thing. It was like, we want to understand your vision, which are trying to accomplish. And for me, again, it was disrupting the Rose industry and the wine industry to bring more people of color into it. That was my thing from day one. Like, how do this is a multi-billion dollar industry? And we don't really own a lot of it. So they understood their journey, and then they also understood that, like, listen, you have a vision and you have a niche, like you're bringing new consumers into the Rose A space. So there was a lot of conversation about that in the future of the brand, but it was a long process. It was like a nine month due diligence and negotiation process. They had allocated, correct me if I'm wrong, they said they were going to allocate, is it a hundred million to brands? A hundred million over 10 years. Over 10 years to owners of wine companies who were African-American? Spirits.

36:47Spirits, wine and spirits. People of color, their own alcoholic beverage brands, put it that way. Yeah. So just a nine month process. How many, I mean, you had the percentage of, that's pretty shocking. 98% of the people who consume Rose A looked like us. Yeah. How many people were even in the running for even where, where, that this was actually taking place and they could have taken advantage of it? Well, that's a good question. I'm not even sure about that. I'm not even sure. But listen, I think the hard part for all these companies that announce venture opportunities is are we ready as a people to own the business, right? I don't necessarily think I was ready when I started the conversation. I had great advisors that got me ready throughout the process. But due diligence is a weed now process, a lot of it, right? So I don't think a lot of us understand what it takes to get to that point. What do your financials look like? What do your projections look like? Your balance, your income statements? Like that's a learning process in itself. So I think a lot of people have businesses, but when you get to that point and someone's gonna give you money and invest in you, like that's a whole different thing beyond is your bottle pretty.

37:48And it's, you know, that's sort of thing, right? So I think that's been the challenge for a lot of these companies why you haven't seen so many announcements because for me, it's not really, I think the challenges, it shouldn't be ventures in terms of investing in brands that are already doing well. It should be incubation for our community. And I think that's where it's kind of misguided and should be redirected. So what's your plans on scaling? Like how do you take it to the next level? Is it through influencer marketing? Is it through just, you know, hitting the pavement? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways, right? The thing for us is we are being very cautious of scaling too fast, right? Because we can go get 4,000 more doors tomorrow. But if the product's not pulling out the door, then you discontinued. So what did you really do it for us, right? So we're trying to be very strategic and looking at DMAs of how we go to market. So we don't look at a whole state. Like for instance, in New York, we're looking at Brooklyn and then Lower Manhattan, restaurants, bars and then our community has been supporting us

38:50since day one. When we look at somewhere like Texas, it may not be downtown Dallas, Highland Park area, it may be Frisco. We're more of us live, you know, have a little bit more money. So we're really breaking it down that way and doing deep dives in those areas with influences that live in those areas, marketing campaigns in those areas, whether it be digital and you'd be surprised even radio to rest your radio and the market so working as well. It's part of the marketing campaign. I know like there's companies that just deliver the one. Like Drizley is a company, and I know that you, is that part of the marketing plan too? Like we're going to rather than have into being a store, we'll just actually put it on a company like Drizley and get it out to the people. Yeah, but you're still in a distribution because the way Drizley works is they use the stores in their areas, their delivery mechanism. So if you're not available and you go in Drizley, you can put in a name of the product and say, sorry, not available in your area. But we did use the research of saying, all right, where Drizley's big markets and cross-referencing against the areas we want to be in and say we need to have a consolidation of stores there.

39:50So if someone goes on Drizley, they can actually get it. So what are some cities like looking forward into the future? What are some cities or targets that you have that you're not in right now? I mean, we're in 34 markets, but are we really in them? No, so we have pockets, a lot of it based upon some of the hotel chains that we have agreement with that we rush those markets ahead of time. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive

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43:53From rookies on the rise, the long time star still at it, we cover it all. Whether you're a first-time player or a grizzled vet chasing another championship, we give you the advantage and the confidence you need to make every move count. Weekly analysis, hot takes, and unique insider knowledge all in one place. Does fantasy dominance sound appealing to you? Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Show on the IHAR radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, lots to say with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends and mostly match friends who are current or former NFL players. Some of the biggest names in music and entertainment, and then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great, Pac-Man Jones. After the game to hold national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you, Adam, come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness, where Bobby and I give each other real life situations

44:57and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over a week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We certainly could dive deeper in LA. We certainly could dive deeper in New York City alone. Like, our presence here is small, strong, but small. I mean, this is the number one selling Rosé Market in the United States for seven months out of the year. So, you know, we definitely got to crack New York City. Well, interesting throughout the year. So seven months out. So, what months are those? Like, how does that happen? Usually, you start planning in New York February, March, it kicks off September, when it starts to act over and it gets cold. When it gets cold in people aren't drinking Rosé anymore. In the past, they haven't. They're starting to change, but typically, no. Buyers won't even bring in a new Rosé in October. I won't even think in that. Yeah, okay.

45:57So, you know, you got to be here in New York to win then Florida for sure. Chicago's the big Rosé Market. So, we're going to crack that and then Texas and Calibar. I mean, all the major markets for sure, but it's just how deep do you go inside of them? We gotta stop going to places without having to. So, what about overseas? Yeah, so we, again, through partnerships with hotels, we have a national partnership, global partnership with Soho House. So, the white wine will be in all the Soho houses here in the United States and in the UK, in rest of the world. We are sold at our winery in a couple spots in France, but next year we're going to go deep. Because, again, if you're talking about lifestyle and what we want to be a part of, we need to be a mecanos, we need to be an abiza. Everywhere all of us are going and traveling every year, you should show up and see LaFette there. Hmm. Now, one of the things that I read that you do is, you donate proceeds. Yeah. Don't really see that too often. Yeah. Is that something that you potentially went into the business saying like, I want to give back

46:58because, you know, that's just part of my DNA who I am. Yeah. What did that come about and how's that going? Yeah. So, for me, again, I love travel, right? I love traveling. I know what travel did to me change my life, traveling around the world with Moa Hennessy and post-college and all that stuff. So, I knew I wanted to give that same opportunity to kids earlier and kids that may never have that opportunity. Like for me, it didn't happen to. I was 24, 25. But you talked to a lot of my coworkers or coworkers in corporate America, they've been traveling since they was 12, 15, 16. They have a circuit they go through every summer with their friends. And I wanted to give our kids, our community that experience. So, there's an organization called All Abroad and they actually take underserved kids from Atlanta and now Baltimore on trips in high school. They just came back from Kenya, there was about 10 kids. And we want to expand that because the more we can expose our kids beyond their neighborhood, block city, state, we just all become better people and it makes them better business people. Better students, better doctors, lawyers, whatever. Because now they have a global perspective on how things work.

47:58But it's hard. I mean, listen, you have to commit to actually giving money from sales, whether you're getting those sales or not. I can't tell that organization. I'm gonna give you at the $100,000. And then the end of the year say, sorry, I didn't get the sales, I can't do it. I mean, that's unfair. So we purposely a lot money that has to go to those organizations because we believe in them so much. What about expanding outside of wine? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I'm probably gonna do a sparkling wine, not a champagne, because it's not a production champagne. And the mess cow is my favorite. So I'm looking at some mess cow propositions right now. First, I gotta get this to the point where there's an exit and then we'll roll to the next one. That's great. You said exit and I was staying to myself. Obviously, you build a brand and we just came from eighths and we saw them give the center of the ownership boy. Is that something that's on the board? Like as soon as we build this brand to a certain point, because a lot of times we create businesses, a lot of people create them to sell them at some point. Yeah. Is that the vision for your brand that we're gonna build it to at some point? We're gonna allow equity stakeholders to come in

49:00or we're gonna sell the whole thing completely. I mean, if the number's right, you can get the whole thing. But certainly, I think the mistake a lot of us making certainly our older parents, whatever, when they had business, they held them to them forever and they don't really think about the exit. But we can create generational wealth with a sale. Then we can all go do something else and flip it in more business. So for me, this is a tough business. This is tough as hell. So if I can exit healthy, get some money and then go flip that into some other things, why not? But yeah, we're selling. To answer your question, you're sure. Yeah. We're definitely selling. When you started this, did you ever reach out? Did you get any help from the people at Ace of Speed? Or... I never asked. You're all connected. No, no, no, no. Let me just, let's be honest about like, when am I gonna go J? I'm launching a Rose A brand, will you help me? We never really had that sort of interaction. We never had that sort of interaction. That hierarchy there is like Desiree is it, right? So I certainly wasn't gonna be like, yo, can you help me with the Rose A? You knew her?

50:01We had one of the couples one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, the boss, right? But, I mean, it was just one of those things where I wanted to do it on my own without that because I also didn't want it to be a celebrity brand. Right? So that was another reason why I didn't look at that from the outset. I wanted this to be a brand that was truly really built by industry, better. And... Do celebrity brands have less credibility in the like spirit world? Like, are they looked at as like, oh, this is not credible because a celebrity owns it? No, but I think that's become the cookie cutter approach like everybody now that who's a celebrity? You're like, damn, you didn't, you tasted it first, you're talking about it. Yeah. I think I'm back in the sense. Yeah, and then a lot of them don't work. I think, you know, we all see the successes and think like it's a recipe in a formula and sometimes it just isn't like the, they've been a lot of celebrity failures out there as well. So let me ask you that is a, is a French name that has, well, previously, I don't think it has on these bottles,

51:01but it has the location, for a French Central pay. Yep. When automatically expected with owned boss somebody, black, but you're doing interviews, so obviously you're in the forefront. Yep. Do you ever think, did you ever think about not putting yourself out there? Because a lot of time, unfortunately, it's like once we realize something is black, I mean, right. It's not all two things happen. So white people classified as black brand, and even some black people might look at it a different way. Yeah. So, but then on the other side, you could put, you get support, putting a black business, right? Like Carmelo and he probably did that because you're from Baltimore, you're black. It's like, okay, he's black, he has a one, why not show him love? So it can go either way, but I can see how, you know, being labeled as like a black business, a black brand, can be harmful. Yeah. So in the beginning, no, I did not, in my PR team, the PR team was like, adamant that I get out there and talk about

52:02myself being the owner and founder, because I had no interest. I wanted the product to live on itself for that very reason. I didn't want it to be stigmatized as like a black on brand. And we deal with that to this day, because so I tell everybody, yes, it's owned by a black person, but it's not only for black people, and I have to say that because everyone's like, black Rose, I'm just like, come on, you know what I mean? No, it's a luxury Rose from the South of France, from Sanctuary Paid, that's owned by a black man. So you totally get that. I think the challenging part was to make sure that it did look and feel luxury, right? Because you could say you're a high-end luxury wine. So for us, it was important that all everything about it felt like the competitive set. So you can never say, oh, but that's less than, there's nothing less than about this product. We can go toe to toe with the best of them. And I never set my goals on being the number one black on Rose brand in the world. No, I want to be the number one Rose brand in the world. Period. Yeah, I mean, so the white one, obviously, and you said you're going into red, I'm just trying to think now, like,

53:03you're putting, you have the PR team, right? We obviously know you're the owner. Who's coming up with the ideas for expansion? Who's a part of the team that has helped this Rose so fast in such a short time, right? Because we're talking maybe three to four years. Yeah. So who are the people that are around you that have helped you get here in a sense of, did you create relationships as you've grown from brand, obviously from O'Wet to Ace of Spade, obviously, maybe with the people that he, are you looking at people like, as you're growing, I like this person, when I start mine, I want to come back and find this word. How did you build a team who was the team? Yes, when I built, so the team is still only four of us, which is crazy. We do a lot of, and that's the internal sales. The whole team is almost here? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, put it most part. It's the first. But again, I take a very like outsourced mentality to a lot of things, right? So there's certain projects will tap into the network.

54:04I know this person was good at X when I worked on this brand. This person was good at X when I worked on that brand. You would tap into them for those specific areas. The last thing we wanted to do was to be so heavy on salaries that we didn't have cash flow to do what we needed to do. To move. So for every reason, we didn't hire a lot of people. But yeah, we definitely tap into those networks. Like there's group chats of everything that happens. Some label design, Instagram captions, like it just flows around. And you have to bounce stuff off of other people that really get that real input. Not too many people, because there's too much feedback. It's bad. But that trusted in a circle through over the years, yeah. So, let me ask you this. As far as the rosé and the blancos concerned, do you have an idea long-term vision? Like, in your perfect world would it be 50, 50 split? Well, you know, you got the red one too. Is it like a 50, 50 or 33, 33?

55:04Or is the rosé always going to be the flagship product and the other ones are kind of like ancillary? What's the question? You know, ideally, because we started with the rosé, it should always be our flagship. But based upon the share market that white wine and red wine has, you would think that they will overtake the rosé someday. But for me personally, it's going to always be rosé. Rosé is a champion. Yeah. How much of your data is this consumed? Right? Because do you have other interests outside of doing wine? Or is this wine is because I'm listening to you talk. And I'm like, you know, it's all the statistics for you. Well, versus this, does this consume most of your day? Or do you have other interests in investing or something else? I mean, for now, this is day in, day out. And that's because we're at this inflection point where you got to give you go now on a window and it's going to be close, right? So we have to focus. I have to focus as important to know what my competitors are doing, what's happening in the space.

56:05So I spend a good portion of my day. My girl probably say way too much of my day on its business. Yeah. She used to work for it now. Yeah, biggest competitors. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And they all watch it. Like you look at LinkedIn and your Instagram story, she's like, oh, all of them. You never say it's not a joke. She's looking at my story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Have it has to be any negative issues, feedback or anything? You mean from previous? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, Jay's a big name. People use his name for clickbait. I don't say it, but people see Asus Bayes and then it becomes like, oh, you work with Jay-Z? I was like, I never said that. You know what I mean? Like, I've- So you deal with that. I haven't heard that personally, but I know that's probably a source bottle with it, right? And then for the previous company, you know, they never think. They never thought that I could leave and do something like this. So and we're growing and we're nipping at their heels and we are the younger cooler, great tasting rosé.

57:07You're like, you want to say something? Yeah. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. You don't know. Yeah. But there's a lot of black people that are in the spirit's world. Most of the time they're like brand ambassadors or influencers or like they run the marketing team, everything. We should advice for some way that it wants to become an entrepreneur in space, but doesn't really know how to go about it, but might be passionate or might be in the business already. I mean, listen, I did rotations, whatever job and brand, for the most part, they wanted me to take in that business at the time. I was at those companies. You do it because you learn so much. Even at the time, it feels like hell. You're like, what the fuck? Like you learned something like from working sales on the street, from working duty free, from having to work. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Beniero. And I travel by myself because it's a rare space

58:09where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area.

59:09The first thing you see when it pops up is high nears and apple etch. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there, is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule! Great! And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bulls! They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test to. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-Cast of Tampa is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk, it can be an everything shower, it can be putting your phone on, do not disturb. But sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff.

1:00:12And understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the Psychology of your 20s podcast. And each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter-life crisis which is depicted as the collapse, the quarter-life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you. So this self-care September, don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01:25Hey buddy, yeah, you out of... come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness. Where Bobby and I give each other real-life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to Lost to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, I'm Mike Am. And I'm Trevor Sikama and together we host the NFL Fantasy Football Show. Fantasy season is upon us. Are you ready to dominate your league? Because if you aren't locked in with us on the NFL Fantasy Football Show, you're already playing from behind. Every episode we're going to dive into the biggest fantasy headlines. Injury updates that you'll need before kickoff. The best starts and sits across every position. And matchups you can exploit to destroy your leaguemates.

1:02:26You know, we're talking sleepers, breakout stars, and the guys you cannot afford to bench. From rookies on the rise, the long time stars still at it, we cover it all. Whether you're a first-time player or a grizzled vet chasing another championship, we give you the advantage and the confidence you need to make every move count. Weekly analysis, hot takes, and unique insider knowledge all in one place. Does fantasy dominance sound appealing to you? Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Show on the IHAR Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the finance team every day and going through POs and reconciliation and all that stuff like that, you do learn the business and I think in order for us to start heading these major corporations as we all will in years to come, we got to start knowing every aspect of the business. Most CEOs, even if they're not doing it daily, if they sit in front of that board, they better be able to take those darts and understand what's happening every sector. So to your point where why I have to notice statistics, I got to know what's going on, what's freight, I got to know what's going on with price increases, all that sort of thing.

1:03:29If the brand is going to be successful, so I tell everybody in the industry, start as an ambassador, but take the jobs and the brands that don't sound sexy because you'll learn something. I've worked with some unsexy brands before and it's benefitted me now. For sure. You said that the brand took off during the pandemic, but during the pandemic a lot of companies had supply chain issues. How did you guys alleviate that? Oh, we was putting stuff on airplanes. The phrase was the one. Yeah, but also if you think about it, states were shutting down. So if markets were shutting down, we were rerouting that inventory to places that were doing well. But we did run our stock, we ran our stock like two, three times, like sales were flying, we'd be out of stock and we got to try to get it, be two, three weeks out of stock. So it was a lot of outages for us as well. It's just how you come out of them. Good thing is that everybody was understanding that it was taking five to ten days to get a wine bottle. I should have been there two, three, but we got through it. But it's still tough to this day. I mean, containers that are leaving France four weeks, transit time is six weeks,

1:04:31transit time, then it gets to the port. It's sitting there for another two weeks. Luckily, we have the refrigeration units and everything in place to keep the wine good, but there's a lot of people that got bad wine and booze sitting out there on those docs. It's just going to be flooded into the market here soon. And we'll see. But actually, the pandemic might have been good for you because I don't forget I was in Brooklyn. The night when it was about to shut down the city and I drove past a liquor store. I actually went to a liquor store and owner was saying that it was the best day ever, even better than New Year's Eve. It's traditionally the best day I think for those local liquor stores. And he was like, that day was better than New Year's Eve. Yeah. So I said I had to say, once people realized that they was going to be locked down, they was buying alcohol. Crazy. Did you see an uptick in your product? Uptick. We were up like 300% doing a pandemic, but literally 300%.

1:05:33It was crazy. The website was crashing. We were running out of stock, stores were running out of stock. And it's sad because it was such a horrible time, but man, it was a blessing for us. It was a blessing. I remember seeing them Instagram posts, you want to know what your name was doing? Look at their garbage. They went down the street and everybody had seven bottles of wine. That's it. You ain't got to do. That was it. You were just sitting home doing wine. When are we going to be able to go back out? So you were cool. What's the toughest obstacle? You said this is hard. This isn't an easy thing. So what's been some of the toughest obstacles that you had to have faced during this journey of entrepreneurism in the world of spirits? Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm still, regards to the years of industry experience, we're still judged differently than some of the brands. Competitors, I should say. A lot of them get green lights and yes, there's a lot faster. And I still have to explain why we're better. No, we're not this. No, we're not that. So the gatekeepers

1:06:35in this industry and more pointed at the three tier system itself is the most gangster, shit out here, right? Because as I explained to you, I can't sell my product directly to any consumer. I have to sell it to a distributor. I didn't have to then rely on that distributor and his sales force to go potentially presented to a retailer, but a retailer to carry it for you to buy. It's a broken system. Like how to look at beauty brands. You look at most fashion brands. They can go straight from the warehouse, their website to a consumer. We don't control any of that. So I'm at the mercy of these five or six big distributor families to present my brand in order for consumers to buy it. Like that's a problem. Yeah. So what's the incentive incentive for them to even say, let's move yours. Yeah. Like is this the situation where like I could come in, I might have more capital than you like, Hey, listen, distributor, whatever their name is. Yo, here's a million under the table. Make sure to just get yourself to yourselves. Whereas somebody who doesn't have the type of capital is like, I'm moving it if I want to. Yeah. That was the like the, I don't know.

1:07:40But we, I mean, listen, they focus on right now on the issues that you have these large conglomerates, like a LBMH, like a DIGO partner with the distributor. They get all the focus and intention. And then all the other 4,000 brands that thrown it to one division together with 10 sales reps that supposedly like go out here and present like 4,000 brands. So that's why it's incumbent upon us to like build the brand heat to hope that's the part that retailers are keep asking, I mean, consumers are keep asking the retailers. Yo, you got this brand. What's that? They're retailer then called a distributor. But the three tier system is broken. Like it's the most anti competitive thing I've ever seen in my life. Like it's, it's nuts. Yeah, you have a ladies and gentlemen. What, so before we wrap, what's your five year 10 year plan for your company? What do you have envisioned? Yeah, we're going to, like I said, the white one become a full time skew in 2023. We expect game buses for that. We'll continue to develop and penetrate other markets for the Rose. The red wine will come in three years. We will be the number one selling Rose wine brand in United States of America. That's for sure. In five years, they'll

1:08:45be an exit. And then you'll see the other spirits and wine brands come behind it. I will build a wine and spirits company after this. Another one. Another one. A full full full full. Yeah, Tequila, vodka, without yellow. So this is like the starter. Yeah. This is the starter to something bigger. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the guy behind Abyont Tequila, Ken Austin, he's done it now three times. Abyont Tequila, proper whiskey, and now he's a partner in Termana. What, why can't I do that? Why can't I do that? So you're already going with that and with the end of March. Yeah. Important. Do you had to end of mine when you started? No, I thought I was my headers thing forever. But that was a naive me. Not understanding. When did you when did you start to think about that? The conversations with Constellation. I have a great advisor, Robbie Robinson from pendulum. And probably the first conversation, he's like, you know, there's probably going to be some conversations around them acquiring you whole out throughout this. That's like, I'm not doing it.

1:09:47And that's when he broke it down. Like you're being shortsighted because 100% of nothing is nothing. Right? 20% of what they could potentially do for you could be life changing for generations to come. That's a fact. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the value of selling a company in a lot of times, people don't fully appreciate that. Yeah. But, you know, Elon Musk. Yeah. So PayPal. And started SpaceX first, actually. And then he started Tesla. Yeah. And you know, he made a couple hundred million for the first company. But now he's worth a couple hundred billion. Exactly. You just got to have capital. We don't have liquid capital available. A lot of times in our communities. Like, I want that money to go out there and be able to take a risk. I'm going to put X amount of dollars into this next Airbnb and see what happens. And I have to really stress about my return. But what's the, I mean, funding is obviously an issue. Is that I mean, did you have to go through like that process of actually trying to acquire funding

1:10:47and go through banks? Because I feel like that might not be is that something that banks are like, hey, yeah, let's help fund this black business. I mean, going to banks was never an option. I knew they were going to say no, right? There was no track record. The sales wasn't enough. We didn't have enough of our own capital invested, which is why, you know, when we started, we were there only 100% black on Rose. And we no longer can use that tagline. But that's for a good reason because when Constellation invested, they took a percentage of the business. So we're not solely black on. So I think a lot of times in our community as well, they're like, oh, they're really black on. But like if you understand what it takes to scale and build a business, there's not enough of us to go to to go get the amount of money that's needed a lot of time to fund adventure like this. So yeah, I took money on, but I'm okay with that. But I think you need to have that conversation more about like funding and what it means. Oh, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I will be tasting this at your where can I buy this time? Yeah, I think the easiest way to its point like

1:11:49drizzly going at that's the easiest, but here in the city, you got happy court, you got parcel wine, you got empire wine. If you drink it, it places you can go to Soho houses, you can go to the gathering spots in Atlanta and DC. Like yeah, all of them, we try to be everywhere sexy. For me, bro, it's like I'm having the product where I want to go. So if it's not there, then it's a problem. Now to the gathering spots. Is it on a website? Yeah, you're going to website and it'll take you to either there's two ways to take you to stores in your area. You can put in your zip code or you can just buy it through like a wine.com, which we have a direct one. What's the website called? www.refetroze.com L-A-F-E-T-E-R-O-S-E.com. Yeah, I was just going to say our brother Ryan Wilson at the gathering spot. We will be down there shortly. Yeah. And so we will definitely have to make sure that this is on every table. I mean, Ryan's a good brother. I went to him since I lost a wine. He was like, you black, I'm taking it. Happy court to shout them. They actually have another one of our alumni inside this store. I folks from Montreal, the Creme. Yeah, so shout out to them. Yeah.

1:12:51Oh yeah, yeah. That's my guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Stephen. Yeah. Yeah, good good people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Troy, how's it keeping on? Yeah, shout out to everybody on patreon.com. Shout out to all of our earners on EYL University. Yeah, you know, that's the number one place if you're looking to learn anything in the world of entrepreneurship, business, finance, and investing. We have it all. So shout out to all y'all. Shout out to everybody that's important to merge. And shout out to the just the front, the rosy of the party. Oh my god. That's that you guys are pretty jolly for me. Thank you guys for our comments. We'll see you next week. Peace. Peace. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. Option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity

1:13:52for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is our town. A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. I guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbilly's now, did you? Listen to our town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up this J Valentine co-host of the R&B money podcast alongside my brother, R&B legend, Tank. Together we've built a space for artists, executives, and fans of R&B music to reminisce and tell the real stories behind the music. I have no money. I was hood famous. They think you're gonna get everybody out. We lived in a project and real love

1:14:55came out. They hear them music and we had nothing. From Smokey Robinson to Mary J. Blige, B2K to Geel Scott. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan, this is where you belong. Listen to R&B money from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday. On our podcast, lots to say with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out the practice to the next day and we're firming this up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up? I'm Tony Gonzalez. And I'm October Gonzalez. But you can call me Toby. We want you to join us on our new podcast No Say Forwards with October and Tony Gonzalez. We get real about marriage, parenthood, sex, divorce, and all the nitty gritty stuff we all think about, but just

1:15:58don't say out loud. He's probably just going to be from rich guy and he's going to whisk you away. Listen to No Say Forwards with October and Tony Gonzalez on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.