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

25:16So I would probably say effectively the right way, 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 when the events are coming back, but primarily during the pandemic, it was digital ads. It was a lot of influencer marketing. Everyone was at home, so we could just send bottles to people and they would post. But for us, we try to immerse people in the lifestyle of what we think Saint-Tropez is and what we want people to feel when they experience the product.

25:45So we take cues from from spirit brands. We think they do it best in terms of like how they activate. We don't want to operate like a wine brand. So wine dinners are cool, but like that's no that's not a lot of fun. It's fun to 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 like the dope things that are happening in the culture. we want Lafette to be there. What kind of influences did you have in your influencer marketing? Yeah, initially it was whoever. Whoever had a large follower, to be honest with you.

26:17But 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, where he interviews people with wine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He put you on or he put your product in? He put us on. He put me on. So he and I talked. He's from Baltimore. So we got connected through his manager. And yeah, yeah, we got put on through that. And then Michael Strahan talked about it. A friend of a friend got him the product. D. Nice held up a bottle doing his Instagram Live.

26:49So it was a lot of good things. Like it just started happening in a good way. So we had people reaching out. And then we were reaching out to people as well. I got to talk about it. Thanks to Spade, you're there. Yeah, yeah. A couple of things. First of all, you're the regional director. Yep. So I want to know what, you know, that role encompasses. But also, obviously, we saw that LVMH, a company that you know, has now 50 % stake of Ace of Spade. Now, the second part is, were you 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.

27:23So when I was at Dom Preon, Ace was an enemy. And when I was at Ace, Dom Preon 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 is that the young consumer had no affinity for Dom Prellon the way they did for Ace and Spades. So if you're LVMH, you have great product in Dom Prellon, that's your technical vape, but your consumer is aging out, right? And 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've been drinking Dom Prajon.

28:01So I think that's, if I had to make a hypothesis, that's what LVMH saw, the future. It wasn't right now. It's like, okay, these young guys aren't picking Dom Prajon, they pick an ace. But the experience was great. Like I said, it was super entrepreneurial, like Des that ran the whole operation over there was very much like, yo, beat the street, break 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. But when I got to Ace, some of those same doors were like, yeah, I don't know.

28:32We don't really have that crowd here. And I just like, what does that mean? You don't mean the crowd doesn't make money? Yeah, exactly. Right. So it was a lot of trying to convince some of the old guard that this was a real champagne. The bottle is gold for a reason to stand out. And it worked. So it was it was it was fun. It was fun to go back and, excuse my friend, shit on people, right? To be like, oh yeah, you was talking shit. And now, fast forward three years, that same company that you was holding in High Praise owns 50 % of that brand. Right. So, how do you feel about it now? I'm a gold bottle drinker.

29:06So, I know some of the role was marketing goals for each territory. Yeah. 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 like Cuba, Dominican Republic, etc. And duty free zone. So what are the marketing goals by territory? Like, give me an example of something that will work in Southeast, obviously United States, and then this is what we're going to do for the duty free zones. Yeah, I mean, for instance, I use Miami as an example. There was two aspects to Miami. That was the club life, for sure.

29:38You got to make sure Ace is popping and live and all those places like that but it was also how do you get in front of high network individuals and in settings that they want to be a part of watches was a big way we did a lot of watch partnership dinners and parties yachts 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 to their touch points you can't just be one of those brands like i'm gonna do it my way especially for a brand like ace like let me in ingratiate myself in your world first before we you know come in and kicking down the door so it was a lot of balancing the night club world and then catering to the super wealthy in their sort of environments, which is a hard balancing act, right?

30:18Because most people think of Ace as the club brand. So it was a lot of hurdles to overcome with convincing people otherwise. Speaking of nightclub, nobody drinks wine in a club. So they will soon. But that's, that's the day is in the US. They don't drink it. You can go to nightclubs in France and the south of France and Paris, and you'll see people drinking rosé wine at nighttime in a club. Okay. Yeah. It's a cultural thing. Like 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 put so much fuss on it, right?

30:52So you and I, we go to club. If I can't put ice cube in, if it's not cold enough, or if I have to, you know, sniff and swirl, like you can be like, yo, I'm not doing all that. I'm trying to have fun. Let me get busy. So for us, we like, let's break convention. You drink it how you want. If you want to make a rosé margarita with that and some Don Julio or tequila brand, go ahead. Tequila or wine? Yeah. we have a rose margarita which is basically you know four parts rose wine and one part tequila shake it up it's crazy okay well in america nobody's really drinking wine in the club so and i would assume that that's a big part of the revenue stream for alcohol but every alcohol tequila uh you name it champagne all of the alcohols have huge profit margins in nightclubs.

31:38Yeah, but Tito's is the number one selling back in 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 used to 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 of here, 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 you 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. By no means.

32:09All right. So what's the average client? Somebody that's 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 or even at home than you would have four or five years ago. This is true. I'm thinking about my own house. Yeah. This is true. So, how, because you said you were doing, I think a thousand different locations you have right now?

32:52Now, yeah. How do we get to that point, right? You started with one, obviously, but how do we scale so fast? I think in 2021, you the fastest growing rose? Fastest growing imported rose. In the country? Yeah. How? Yeah, I mean, listen, 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 in Miami. Let's go get in front of them. 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.

33:27So we were just creating that critical mass in those cities and out there and putting people in front of the brand and saying, yo, 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 it was a lot of pitching, a lot of selling, a 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 Hyatt Hotel group. It's a lot of those meetings. So do you have red wine? Red wine's coming.

33:56Yeah, man. So right now you have the Blanco and the Rosé. Yeah. And the red wine's coming. Red wine's coming. Out of the Blanc on the Rosé, which one is a better seller? We just launched the white wine as a thank you last year. So this is the first full year that's going to be in production. But it's different occasions, right? You have some places that don't take Rosé as serious, and they'll go for the white first. Or you have some people that are huge Sauvignon Blanc fans, 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 a bigger seller than rose overall.

34:33Rose sales are probably six to 9 % of total table wine sales in the United States, period. White wine is like 27 to 30%. So the growth potential is bigger on the white wine from a business economic standpoint than it is on a rose. Biggest piece of the pie. This man knows his wine. Knows his wine. He has his statistics. 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 were committing money to brands.

35:15How'd you go about getting them involved? Yeah, so Constellation is a drinks giant, probably the number two wine company in the world. They also distributed on 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 another one of their brands. But that conversation really came about once the announcement came out. You know, again, community is everything. People were just hitting me. And two people in particular have relationships with executives at Constellation. So that gave me, I think, a quicker intro to the system.

35:48So 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, what you're trying to accomplish. And for me, again, it was disrupting the rosé industry and the wine industry to bring more people of color into it. That was my thing from day one. This is a multi-billion dollar industry and we don't really own a lot of it. So they understood that journey. And then they also understood that, listen, you have a vision and you have a niche. You're bringing new consumers into the rosé space.

36:21So there was a lot of conversation about that and the future of the brand, but it was a long process. It was like a nine month due diligence negotiation process. They had allocated, you can correct me if I'm wrong, they said they were gonna allocate, is it a hundred million to brands? A hundred million over 10 years. Over 10 years. Over 10 years. To owners of wine companies who were African American? Spirits. Wine and spirits. People of color, their own alcoholic beverage brands, put it that way. Yeah. So what, just a nine month process. I mean, you had the percentage of, that's pretty shocking, 98 % of the people who consume Rosea looked like us.

36:55How many people were even in the running for it, or even were aware 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 that 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 weeding out process, a lot of it, right? So I don't think a lot of us understand what it takes to get to that point.

37:27What do your financials look like? What do your projections look like? Your balance sheet, your income statement, like that's a learning process in itself. So I think a lot of people have businesses, but when you get to that point, if someone's going to give you money and invest in you, like that's a whole different thing beyond is your bottle pretty and is, you know, that sort the 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 challenge is, it shouldn't be ventures in terms of investing in brands that are already doing well, it should be incubation for our community.

38:00And 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 to just 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're discontinued. So what did you really do it for us, right? So we're trying to be very strategic in looking at DMAs of how we go to market. So we don't look at a whole state.

38:37Like, for instance, in New York, we're looking at Brooklyn and then lower Manhattan. restaurants, bars, and then our community is in Brooklyn, has been supporting us since day one. When we look at somewhere like Texas, it may not be downtown Dallas Highland Park area, it may be Frisco where more of us live, you know, they have a little bit more money. So we're really breaking it down that way and doing deep dives in those areas with influencers that live in those areas, marketing campaigns in those areas, whether it be digital and you'd be surprised even radio, terrestrial radio and the markets are working as well.

39:09is part of the marketing I know like there's companies that just deliver the wine like Drizzly is a company and I know that you do is that part of the marketing plan too like we're gonna rather than having to be in the stores we'll just actually put it on a company like Drizzly and get it out to the people yeah but you're still in the distribution because the way Drizzly works is they use the stores in their area as their delivery mechanism so if you're not available and you go on Drizzly you can put in the name of the product and say sorry not available in your area but we did use the research of saying alright where's Drizzly's big markets and cross-reference against the areas we want to be in and say, we need to have a consolidation of stores there.

39:45So if someone goes on Drizzly, they can actually get it. Are there, so what are some cities like, like looking forward into the future, what are some cities or targets that you have that we're not, 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, we, we have agreements with that we rush those markets ahead of time. Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help.

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43:38Financial growth begins long before the first investment. It comes from understanding what you're building toward, what's at stake, and what success looks like for you. At Oppenheimer, we bring bold thinking guided by the full strength of our expertise to put capital to work building and protecting wealth that lasts generations. Put the power of Oppenheimer thinking to work for you. Wealth management, capital markets, investment banking. We certainly could dive deeper in L.A. We certainly could dive deeper in New York City alone. Our presence here is small, strong, but small. I mean, this is the number one selling rose market in the United States for seven months out of the year.

44:20So, you know, we definitely got to crack New York City. And you said throughout the year, so seven months out, so what months are those? Like, how does that - Usually you start planning in New York, February, March, it kicks off, September, when it starts to get October and it gets cold. When it gets cold, people aren't drinking rose anymore. In the past, they haven't, they're starting to change, but typically, no. Buyers won't even bring in a new rose in October. I wasn't even thinking that. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, you got to be here in New York to win. Then Florida for sure. Chicago's the big rosé market.

44:51So we're going to crack that. And then Texas and California. I mean, all the major markets for sure, but it's just how deep do you go inside of them? We got to stop going to places without having to.

45:03So 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 and 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 in Mykonos. We need to be in Ibiza. Everywhere all of us are going and traveling every year, you should show up and see Lafette there. Now, one of the things that I read that you do is you donate proceeds.

45:37Don't really see that too often. Is that something that you intentionally went into the business saying like i want to give back um because you know that's just part of my dna who i am yeah um where did that come about and how is that going yeah so for me again i love travel right man i love traveling i know what travel did to me it changed my life traveling around the world with moa hennessey 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 the opportunity like for me it didn't happen until I was 24, 25. But you talk to a lot of my coworkers or coworkers in corporate America, and they've been traveling since they was 12, 15, 16.

46:15They 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. It 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.

46:45But 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 going to give you$50 ,000, and then at the end of the year, say, sorry, I didn't get the sales. I can't deal with that. I mean, that's unfair. So we purposely allot 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 going to do a sparkling wine. Not a champagne because it's not producing champagne. And then mezcal is my favorite.

47:18So I'm looking at some mezcal propositions right now. First, I got to 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 thinking to myself, obviously you build a brand and we just came from Ace and we saw them give 50 % of the ownership away. Is that something that's on the board? 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. Is that the vision for your brand that we're going to build it to some point? We're going to allow equity stakeholders to come in or we're going to sell the whole thing completely?

47:49If 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 and keep more business. So for me, this is a tough business. It's 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, I assure you. We're definitely selling.

48:21When you started this, did you ever reach out? Did you get any help from the people at Ace of Spade? I never asked. Your old connection? No? I never asked. I mean, let me just, let's be honest about it. Like, what am I going to go? Jay, I'm launching a rose brand. Will you help me? Like we never really had that sort of interaction. Because you didn't have wine, right? But we never had that sort of interaction. Like that hierarchy there is like Desiree is it, right? So I certainly wasn't going to be like, yo, can you help me with the rose? You knew her? We had one a couple, one of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the boss, right?

48:53But I mean, it just wasn't, 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. So that was another reason why I didn't look at that from the outset. I wanted it to be a brand that was truly really built by an industry veteran. Do celebrity brands have less credibility in the spirit world? 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. Everybody now, who's your celebrity? like damn could you taste it first could we talk about it like 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 and a formula and sometimes it just isn't like there have been a lot of celebrity failures out there as well so let me ask you this it's a French name it has well previously I don't think it has it on these bottles but it has the location it's not for French Antrope yep wouldn't automatically expect it was owned by somebody black but you're doing interviews so obviously you're in the forefront did you ever think about not putting yourself out there because a lot of times unfortunately it's like once we realize something is black no well two things happen the white people classified as a black brand and even some black people might look at it a different way so but then on the other side you get support for being a black business, right?

50:26Like Carmelo, and he probably did that because you're from Baltimore, you're black. It's like, okay, he's black, he has a wine, why not show him love? So it's, 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. My PR team, the PR team was like adamant that I get out there and talk about myself 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 owned brand. And we deal with that to this day.

50:58So 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 rosé. I'm just like, come on, you know what I mean? Like, no, it's a luxury rosé from the South of France, from Saint-Tropez 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 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.

51:31We can go toe-to-toe with the best of them. And I never set my goals on being the number one black-owned rosé brand in the world. No, I want to be the number one rosé brand in the world, period. Yeah, I mean, so the white wine, obviously, and you said you're going into red. But I'm just trying to think now. You have the PR team. Yep. 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 grow so fast in such a short time? Right? Because we're talking maybe three to four years. Yeah. So who's 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?

52:15obviously from O 'Wett to Ace of Spades, obviously maybe with the people at the Heat. Are you looking at people like, as you're growing, like, all right, I like this person. When I start mine, I want to come back and find this person. 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. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for the most part. That's a first. But again, I take a very like outsource mentality to a lot of things, right? So there's certain projects we'll tap into the network.

52:51I 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. And you 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 the 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 with label design, Instagram captions, like it just flows around and then you have to bounce stuff off of other people that really get that real input. Not too many people cause there too many, too much feedback is bad.

53:28But that trusted in the circle through over the years. So let me ask you this, as far as the Rose and the Blanco is concerned, do you have an idea long-term vision like is in your perfect world would it be 50 50 split well now you got the red wine too is it like a 50 50 or 33 33 or is the rose always going to be the flagship product and the other ones are kind of like ancillary what's a good question um you know ideally because we started with the rose it's gonna 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.

54:14But for me personally, it's going to always be the rosé. Rosé is a champion. How much of your day does this consume? Do you have other interests outside of doing wine? Or is this wine? Because I'm listening to you talk and I'm like, he knows all the statistics for me. Pretty well versed in 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, if you go now under the window and it's going to be closed, right? So we have to focus. I have to focus.

54:49It's important to know what my competitor is doing, what's happening in the space. So I spend a good portion of my day, my girl would probably say way too much, of my day on this business. So the people that you used to work for now, your biggest competitors. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And they all watching. Like you look at LinkedIn and your Instagram stories, She's like, oh, all of them. You know what I'm saying? So I know. She's looking at my story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has there been any negative issues, feedback, or anything? You mean from previous? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, Jay's a big name.

55:23People use his name for clickbait. I don't say it, but people see Ace of Spades and then it becomes like, oh, you work for Jay-Z? I was like, I never said that. You know what I mean? So you deal with that. I haven't heard that personally, but I know that's probably a sore spot over there, 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 rose. I feel like you wanted to say something else. We're the freshest shit on the block.

56:01So there's a lot of, there's a lot of black people that are in the spirits world, but most of the time they're like brand ambassadors or influencers or like they run a marketing team. What's your advice for somebody that wants to become an entrepreneur in this 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.

56:32You're like, what the fuck? Like you learn something. like from working sales on the street, from working duty-free, from having to work. Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for work.

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1:00:08We believe in starting with your financial goals, not a formula. At Oppenheimer, we put the full strength of our longstanding expertise to work, understanding your life and your ambitions, and designing the precise strategies that build and protect your wealth with confidence across this generation and the next. Put the power of Oppenheimer thinking to work for you. Wealth Management, Capital Markets, Investment Banking. You know, with the finance team every day and going through POs and reconciliations and all that stuff like that, you do learn the business. And I think, you know, 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.

1:00:52Most 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 in every sector. So to your point, well, why I have to know the statistics, I got to know what's going on with freight. I got to know what's going on with price increases, all that sort of thing, if 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 worked with some unsexy brands before and it's benefited me now for sure.

1:01:23You said that the brand took off during the pandemic, but during the pandemic, a lot of companies had supply chain issues. Yeah. How'd you guys alleviate that? Oh, we was putting stuff on airplanes. The frank lucas of wine. Yeah, but also you got, if you think about it, states were shutting down, right? So if markets were shutting down, we were rerouting that inventory to places that were doing well. But we did run out of stock. I mean, we ran out of stock like two, three times, like sales were flying. We'd be out of stock and we got to try to get it two, three weeks out of stock. So it was a lot of outages for us as well.

1:01:55It's just how you come out of them. Good thing is that everybody was understanding that it was taking five to 10 days to get a wine bottle. I should have been there in 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 transit 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 it's a lot of people that got bad wine and booze sitting out there on those docks. It's just going to be flooded into the market here soon and we'll see.

1:02:25But actually, the pandemic might have been good for you because I figured I was in Brooklyn, the night where they was about to shut down the city. And I drove past a liquor store and I actually went to a liquor store and the owner was saying that it was the best day ever, even better than New Year's. New Year's Eve is traditionally the best day, I think, for like those local liquor stores. And he was like, that day was better than New Year's Eve. So I say I have to say, once people realized that they was gonna be locked down, they was buying alcohol. Did you see an uptick in your product? Uptick, like it was, we were up like 300 % during the pandemic.

1:03:10Literally 300%. Like it was crazy. Like the website was crashing. We were running out of stock. Stores were running out of stock. And it's sad, right? Because it was such a horrible time, but man, it was a blessing for us. Like it was a blessing. I remember seeing some Instagram posts like you want to know what your name is doing look at their garbage yeah it was like they went down the street and everybody had like seven bottles of wine that's it you had nothing else to do that was it you were just sitting home drinking wine like when are we going to be able to go back outside so you recall so what's the toughest obstacle right because you said this shit is hard and it sounds this isn't an easy thing so what's been some of the toughest obstacles that you had to that have faced during this journey of entrepreneurism in the world of spirits?

1:03:58Yeah, unfortunately, I'm still, regardless of the years of industry experience, we're still judged differently than some of our other brands, competitors, I should say. A lot of them get green lights and yeses a lot faster. And I still have to explain why, why we're better. No, we're not this. No, we're not that. So the gatekeepers in this industry, and more important than that, the three-tier system itself is the most gangsta 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 then have to then rely on that distributor and his sales force to go potentially present it to a retailer, but a retailer to carry it for you to buy.

1:04:34It'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 for them to even say, let's move yours? Yeah. Is this a 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 this gets off your shelves.

1:05:08Whereas if somebody who doesn't have that type of capital is just like, I'll move it if I want to. Yeah, that was like the, I don't know. But we, I mean, listen, they focus on right now. And the issue is that you have these large conglomerates, like a LVMH, like a Diageo, partnering with the distributor, they get all the focus and attention. And then all the other 4000 brands are thrown into one division together with 10 sales reps, that's supposed to like go out here and present like 4000 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.

1:05:47What is that? That 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 nuts. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. So before we wrap, what's your five year, 10 year plan for your company? What do you have envisioned? Yeah, we're gonna, like I said, the white wine will become a full-time SKU in 2023. We expect gangbusters for that. that will 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.

1:06:22That's for sure. In five years, there'll be 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 fledged. Yeah. Tequila vodka. Yeah. All that. So this is like the starter. Yeah. This is the start to something bigger. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean if you look at the guy behind A beyond tequila Ken Austin, he's done it now three times maybe on tequila proper whiskey and now he's a partner in Terman Why can't I do that? I can't do so you're already gone with that and with the end of mine.

1:06:58Yeah Important you had to end the mind when you started no, I thought I was gonna have this thing forever But that was a naive me not understand 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. I was like, I'm not doing that. And that's when he broke it down. Like you're being short sighted because a hundred percent of nothing is nothing, right?

1:07:3420 % 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, 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.

1:08:09I'm going to put X amount of dollars into this next Airbnb and see what happens and not have to really stress about my return. But what's it? 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 and go through banks? Is that, I feel like that might not be, is that something that banks are like, hey, yeah, let's help fund this black business? No, 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 the only 100 % black owned rosé.

1:08:46We 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 owned. So I think a lot of times in our community as well, they're like, oh, they ain't really black owned 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 a venture 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 Well, there you have it ladies and gentlemen I will be tasting this at your, where can I buy this at?

1:09:26Yeah, I think the easiest way to this point, like Drizzly going there, that's the easiest. But here in the city, you got Happy Cork, you got Parcel Wine, you got Empire Wine. If you drink at places, you can go to Soho Houses, you can go to the gathering spots in Atlanta and DC. Like, yeah, all of me, we try to be everywhere sexy. For me, bro, it's like, I'm having the product wherever I want to go. So if it's not there, then it's a problem. Shout out to the gathering spot. Is it on the website to buy? Yeah, you can go to the website and it'll take you to either, there's two ways, it'll take you to stores in your area.

1:09:55You can put in your zip code or you can just buy it through like a wine.com which we have it directly. What's the website called? www.lafeterose.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. Yeah, man. 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 as soon as I launched the wine. He was like, you black, I'm taking it. As I knew he would. Damn. Yeah, and happy Corks too. Shout out to them. They actually have another one of our alumni inside their store, our folks from Montreal, Le Creme.

1:10:29Yeah, so shout out to them. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's my guy. Yeah, yeah. Steven. Yeah, good people. Yep. Yep. Well, Troy, housekeeping items? Yeah, shout out to everybody on Patreon.com. Shout out to all of our earners on EYL University. Y 'all already 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 supporting the merch and uh shout out to to the the the front the the rosé of the party oh my black man thanks thank you guys i appreciate y 'all having me for real no no thank you guys for rocking west we'll see you next week peace peace yeah man before you sign off you tuned in for ways to help teams move faster make sharper decisions and turn scattered context into work they can use chat gpt for business can help chat gpt for business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in ChatGPT.

1:11:25This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more. Earners, what's up? Look, on Earn Your Leisure, we're all about smart money moves, and here's one that most people skip. Car insurance renews on autopilot, the rates creep up and nobody tells you. That's what Insurify fixes. In about two minutes, completely free, you can see rates from more than 120 top insurance companies. And if there's nothing better today, they keep watching and notify you when there's a better rate.

1:12:03So go to Insurify.com. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y.com. Insurify.com. You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover, and how fast a team can scale. To stay ahead, you need the tools that give you a competitive advantage, built for this new era. Welcome to Agentic Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work, compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it across your pipeline to let you move at unmatched speed and scale. With agents and automations for every job and revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock, built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents.

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