Get ready to be captivated by an inspiring, entrepreneurial tale as we explore the extraordinary journey of Dante Henson, co-founder of the Balti Award-winning Los Hermanos Tequila. A journey that began as a passion for tequila, cultivated during a global pandemic, and blossomed into an award-winning brand, Dante's story is nothing short of remarkable. He shares the genesis of Los Hermanos, the challenges faced, and the enduring spirit that brought this dream to fruition.
In a world where black-owned liquor brands are few and far between, Dante shines a light on this often overlooked narrative. We delve into why there's a scarcity of black-owned brands within this industry and discuss what spurred the recent surge in their popularity. Offering a masterclass on tequila tasting, Dante introduces us to the unique attributes of Los Hermanos that set it apart from others - from its smooth finish to the essence captured in its name, 'the brothers'.
Peppered with candid insights on marriage, success, and the pressures of social media, Dante pulls back the curtain on his life beyond tequila. He shares thought-provoking perspectives on success, and his experiences of interviewing famous personalities. In addition, Dante reveals valuable advice for brands seeking sponsorships, outlining the importance of return on investment and the role of a brand ambassador. With Los Hermanos Tequila receiving high praise and rapidly gaining traction, Dante's journey is one that is bound to inspire. Get ready to be enlightened, entertained, and perhaps, even motivated to start your own venture.
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Get ready to be captivated by an inspiring, entrepreneurial tale as we explore the extraordinary journey of Dante Henson, co-founder of the Balti Award-winning Los Hermanos Tequila. A journey that began as a passion for tequila, cultivated during a global pandemic, and blossomed into an award-winning brand, Dante's story is nothing short of remarkable. He shares the genesis of Los Hermanos, the challenges faced, and the enduring spirit that brought this dream to fruition.
In a world where black-owned liquor brands are few and far between, Dante shines a light on this often overlooked narrative. We delve into why there's a scarcity of black-owned brands within this industry and discuss what spurred the recent surge in their popularity. Offering a masterclass on tequila tasting, Dante introduces us to the unique attributes of Los Hermanos that set it apart from others - from its smooth finish to the essence captured in its name, 'the brothers'.
Peppered with candid insights on marriage, success, and the pressures of social media, Dante pulls back the curtain on his life beyond tequila. He shares thought-provoking perspectives on success, and his experiences of interviewing famous personalities. In addition, Dante reveals valuable advice for brands seeking sponsorships, outlining the importance of return on investment and the role of a brand ambassador. With Los Hermanos Tequila receiving high praise and rapidly gaining traction, Dante's journey is one that is bound to inspire. Get ready to be enlightened, entertained, and perhaps, even motivated to start your own venture.
“If you are a dope person looking to hop on VIB3Z or know someone really dope people send them our way!”
follow us on all social media
YouTube: VIB3Zpodcast
TikTok & instagram @vib3zpodcast
Hi everybody. It's Bubbles here and I'm located at a Rundle Mills Mall and this is my beautiful kiosk, so I'm going to show you guys something really special. So this cashmere body oil is one of my best selling oils. Of all of my products. It's made up of a whole bowl of coconut oil, vitamin E, so the most natural ingredients. Look at that. It absorbs into the skin so good and it smells amazing. Follow me on Instagram at Bubbles Galore Me, tiktok at BubblesGaloreMe as well, and on my website at BubblesGaloreM3.com. See you guys soon. So I need one people to have my cell phone number. You can't do this number, but it's good. So we had an opportunity to Google for you and he really didn't like going back before, so he was going to cell phone about some people and it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's amazing. I love this tequila. Thank you, that's all you can have at the moment. I'm going to go get some of these.
Speaker 3:I'm going to go get some of these. I'm going to go get some of these. I'm going to go get some of these.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go get some of these. I'm going to go get some of these. Look at that.
Speaker 3:This is Bob's man. I'm trying to be a brand ambassador for Los say the name Los Shamanos, 1978. The smoothest tequila in the DMV. The Hold on, hold on. Aye, ain't nobody, it ain't nobody. The smoothest tequila in the DMV area. I'm trying to meet Bob. I'm going to push this. All the celebrities you know I am Just tell this man go ahead and do his thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It may work somehow, but we can start being a brand that best. If you do like sponsorship or something you know you got the table, put it here on the table.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's gonna be an episode for the ball. We just, we just Welcome back to another episode of the Vibes podcast. Man, y'all wasn't here for the 45 minutes of me and him. Just talk. But man, I got somebody special. If you are in the DMV area, nigeria, we're gonna get to you. We got somebody that's been pushing liquor like nobody else has pushed liquor before. So I'm not gonna say his name, not because I don't know it, but I'm gonna let him introduce himself. Go ahead, bro.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you for having me. I'm Dante Henson, the CEO, co-founder of Balti Award winning Los Hermanos Tequila, oh yeah yeah, now, when we before.
Speaker 3:y'all know this right when we started this, he told me that he does not brag about his tequila, but when I'm cameras roll now, it's multi award winning tequila.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you gotta let the people know. You know people are. People automatically know that it what it is, but you know, they know, they try, they like it.
Speaker 3:But your brand has came across my table multiple times and when I hear people let's, the show is if it's a black person, black group or whatever. I wanna try it. I wanna know what this is, because I wanna give you the shine and your product has shined all over DMV. So what made you start this Cause? There's not a lot of black people. That's in tequila specifically.
Speaker 2:Right, I'll tell people all the time the catalyst for starting this was my wife. My wife was drinking tequila long before I knew the difference between Blancos Represados and Nehos. This was her thing. And it was like during the pandemic, when the lockdown started. You know my brother, he had a lot of time, so he would come to the house here, bring a bottle of tequila, cause he knew that's my wife, like he, like you know. So we would just sit around drinking, you know, sharing good times and different stories.
Speaker 2:And after a while, you know, once we kind of learned a little bit about tequila. We're excited to share what we knew and we found out that people couldn't reciprocate. At that time we got one or two responses from people. You know people over a certain age was like tequila had a bad experience back in college, you know, like I'm good, it's definitely one of them, right. Or other people you know, especially here, like they people just knew 1800, jose Cuervo, you know the big brands, and this is before people were on the Costa Meals and so we're like no, no, no, listen, there's a lot of great tequila's, try this, try this brand, go get this.
Speaker 2:And my brother, like, really took that and ran with it and he became like a unofficial brand ambassador with a lot of these companies and I watched my brother out here pushing these products and it just you know the couple of weeks. I was like hold on, bro, like how many cases you sold for these people? Like you ain't got a t-shirt or nothing. Like we could start our own brand and we probably could do something. And it was like just that simple ideas. You know what gave us the impetus to do this, did you mean?
Speaker 3:it? When you said this, we could start our own brand, or do you was like we could just do our own thing. Did you really like oh, I was just something you were passionate about actually doing?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. I'm serious. Like so one thing about me is I'm always going to look and see if it's a possibility, if it's a possibility to do something, you know, like why not? Like we've seen enough people who had good ideas and let it go die because they never followed up. Like you seen people who were so much talented in different industries that she was like man, if they would have to work at the stick with it, they could be great and never fulfill that. So you know, whenever I have a place to create a lane or to do something that I can do, I'm going to do it. Like you know, if it's big, if it's small, fails. Whatever I did it, the doing is more important than the end result.
Speaker 3:So when y'all, when you brought this idea to your brother, I always wanted to know when y'all brought this idea, how did y'all start, Like when you told your brother this, did y'all know where to go? How did the labels anything like? How did the grassroots get to where it's at now?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But I told my brother, you know, because one we were sitting around enjoying the skills at the time he like thought I was crazy, right. And I was like listen, you're doing the work, so like you're doing half of the work. If people are doing it, then we can figure it out. And so, you know, he was like OK, he kind of brushed me off. He was like OK, bro, that's what you want to do.
Speaker 2:Then I went to you and then, you know, I was like all right, and I sat on it for like a day or two just to see if it was in that moment that was something or it was really. But the thought wasn't leaving me. So I was like you know what, let me go do some homework and let's see if this thing is really obtainable, and then, of course, whether you start, if you get any out of it. You got a question. You go to Google, right, you just go to Google. You go and say, let me go find out. And I started Googling stuff and getting a little pieces of information and now, thankfully, we were in the middle of the pandemic, so everybody was home. So now when I'm cold calling people, people would give me 30, 40 minutes an hour of their time. Just explain it to me the industry or whatever their expertise was in this industry. So that's how I got an idea of where to even go, where to start.
Speaker 3:Were you an introvert or extrovert?
Speaker 2:I was introvert, I was emailing. The hell out of everybody. I was like you was cold, calling people that you know cold. Now, I wasn't really cold calling.
Speaker 2:So what happened was I was emailing people, I would email people to help, but some people would call me back, you know, 8 o'clock at night. I'm thinking I'll send this email. It's a business. Nobody's going to get it until the next day or two, you know. But I wanted to get my thoughts out and it wasn't uncommon that people would call me back 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock at night, and I'm like, oh OK, you know. Well, if you're calling me, go jump on it. And that's how it just started, that way.
Speaker 3:So you said that that's where it started. When people say they like tequila, right, and you said the pandemic, I want to say pandemic tequila that was popping was Cosmigos Jose Cuervo, which is always out there, but it was the big one was Cosmigos. So when people say I want to start a tequila company or I want to get into the liquor business itself, you actually went down to Mexico and put in the footwork. What does that? What is the cost to this?
Speaker 2:I mean the cost. Everybody's journey is going to be different, right? So it depends on how long you're going to stay in Mexico, how much territory you're looking to buy or, honestly, with most people in our shoes, how much money can you get your hands on from the start and you just kind of backfill it in you work in there from.
Speaker 1:There.
Speaker 2:But to go to Mexico. I think the fight is the most expensive part of the trip. Once you get there, the hotel is cheap, the food is cheap, transportation everything is crazy cheap. So it's easy to get around and get what you need when you're there, but it's just that playing cost might be like $700 per person round trip.
Speaker 3:You're not getting in this business for cheap. That's what I'm here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean now when you, that's just against you there. But you know it's a lot of things you got to factor into. Like, before you get to a product one, you have to get your company structured Right. So you have to form your LLC or your escrow C-Corp, whatever. However you're going to structure your company, you can't skip steps. You got to have an attorney Like listen rock and lawyer ain't going to get it.
Speaker 3:Legal Zoom ain't going to get it, but that's where people go first.
Speaker 2:I understand they're doing a lot of advertising and it's low-hanging fruit. So it makes sense. That's where people are going to go, but any entrepreneur that's been in business for a good while, that's the stuff to tell you. You're going to spend a lot of money going back to an attorney to get done the redo, everything that you'd pay for from Rock and Zoom, I mean.
Speaker 3:Rock and Law is illegal from the start.
Speaker 2:Right. So get your accountant, get your bookkeeper from the start. Once you get your business and your team squared away, then go find your product and get your product going, because if you try to go skip steps and try to go get your product first and then you try to backfill all of this, you're going to spend way more time, way more money and everything is going to be taken away from the market and promotion you could be doing with your product, because now you've got these other things going on that you need to take care of.
Speaker 3:When you were going through all of this right, what was one of your hardest bumps?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, the hardest one was the weight.
Speaker 3:Weight on what the product the product.
Speaker 2:So I think we founded Distillery in June of 2020. We were talking to them and they told us that because people weren't traveling during the pandemic, they would ship us their house to kill, to use as the baseline. And we said, ok, you know, because my wife was like, absolutely, you're not flying right now. Like people, are down.
Speaker 3:Oh that's, that's big pandemic too.
Speaker 2:Now yeah, this is June 2020. Right, so she was absolutely not. So, you know. I said, OK, fine, so I asked the Distillery to ship it to me and it took like three weeks to get the first samples. And I was just like you know what, no in the world, we would be here forever to try to go back through different iterations. And so I told my brother, OK, we got to go.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, we just kind of like you know, all right, we got to get our hands around, we have to go and we had to figure this out. November 2020, you know, we took the trip. We went down there for four days and it was like, ok, you know we're excited, we're in Mexico, this is cracking. You know, everything is beautiful and lovely. We get done. Those four days we got our first images of our bottles. You know we got the samples. You know the taste. Like we're excited we come home. It took nine months before we got our first shipment. Get the fuck man. Nine months. And at this time I had no patience. So I'm literally Shout out to my brother because my brother is the one who kept me in this business because after like six months, I'm getting ready to get on the phone and say like, look, y'all can keep that shit. Give me my money back Now. I go do something else. Like this is absurd.
Speaker 3:But they tell you it was going to take nine months, not at all?
Speaker 2:Not at all. And I'm not sure that they knew. Because in in Mexico when you get a tequila you have to get approved by the Tequila Regulation Council, which is back with down there. It's called CRT. You know the Council of the Regulation Tequila, but we call it the Tequila Regulation Council, so one. You have to send your contract with the distillery to them for approval. Once they approve it, they'll send an inspector from there to your distillery. They want to see where in the distillery is your barrels. They want to see your barrels with your name on it, actually prove that that's yours.
Speaker 2:And it takes a process and even once you get that final, once you get that first approval and the distillery begins production, the CRT still has to send somebody out to check that first batch before it goes out. So like we had no idea of any of this process, you know we're just checking in. You know every so often, like what's going on? What's going on? And after a while, like you know, the frustration is building because people here are like where is that? Where are you to kill, like that, and so. But yeah, it's a process.
Speaker 3:In that meantime it was long, nine months what we are focusing on, um.
Speaker 2:We were just focusing on just trying to learn the business right and, honestly, I wish I would have took that free time and really dove in more than what I did, because I've never had that much free time since. All right, so that was a missed opportunity on my part. But yeah, I mean just okay, you know again, while we're waiting, let's go get our team together, let's go find an accountant, let's go find a bookie room attorney, all right, let's go find somebody who can do websites and let's start getting to stand together. Let's one for me learn social media, because I only had Facebook and Twitter back then. It's like people know how old you are, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll be 45 in November, so that means you started learning this when you was in your early 40s Instagram and everything like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, had no idea, but never. Actually I was not interested in Instagram Like because, from what I've seen from outside, like you just look at pictures of videos and I was like I like Twitter because Twitter gave me information and that's what I like to be able to talk to journalists or see stories, but long before hit the news, you know what's going on.
Speaker 2:So you kind of be plugged in. So I was like I like Twitter and that's where I was. But once we kind of got into business, all right, well, and you got to show this business right and it's like Twitter's good for that, but it's not the platform for that.
Speaker 3:So when you was going through all of that man and it did matter of fact, no, we want backtrack here. There are not a lot of black people, that's not say celebrities, just bare bones, grass foot black people in liquor. And I have always said we have, you'll tell you from Maryland we have a lot of liquor stores, but there are not a lot of liquor brands for black from black people. Why do you think that is I?
Speaker 2:mean okay. So on one point, I think there is just a exposure right, Because a lot of us wasn't exposed to this industry, right, A lot of us don't get into it, but since the pandemic it might be like 200 black owned brands out there, which is still a really a pin drop compared to the insurance as a whole, but there's a lot of us coming right Like there is a lot more than people would actually know, and I think people who can capture that, these people really stuck it in notoriety because it's interesting journey. So in the beginning, when we started, we well, not we, I'm just saying I only knew of two black owned brands that wasn't celebrities One was the Tequila, one was the Faka. And then it became a thing where I think after Joyce Floyd, that people started recognizing black owned brands. Oh, it jumped up.
Speaker 2:It jumped up crazy and then it turned to the end of last year, early this year, that people are actually seeking out black owned brands now right, so we went from not knowing about this thing.
Speaker 3:That's what we were looking for.
Speaker 2:To now. That's just what people are coming for. Like, it's interesting to see the market move. But yeah, like I mean any category that you want you can find multiple black people there now.
Speaker 3:So, with that, do you get excited about your accomplishments? Though, as you say, there were there a pin drop of black owned liquor companies. Y'all, even though y'all haven't been in a game so long, y'all I can confidently say, after doing my research, y'all are actually dominating the market here, this DMV area. Y'all dominating it and y'all didn't. Y'all weren't the first black people to come into it. So what do you think even separates you for the beat a new cat on the block and say I got it. Now, that's me Right.
Speaker 2:So what do you think, joshua? First question no, I don't really celebrate the accomplishments. Yeah, I think it's too early. I mean, you know, again you see a lot of things happen. Brands blow up and kind of fizzle out after a year. So you'd be like we're having two.
Speaker 2:So so that was hot last year, right? So I never want to put us in that category. So you know, again, we stay diligent about staying working. But honestly, I think the thing that kind of separates us from these other brands is two things. One is the story. Right, like people see an hour story, because we documented our journey from long before we had a product, when it was, when we just had an idea we were letting people know, you know we got an idea.
Speaker 2:This is what we're going to do. So there was a lot of people who've been able to take this journey with us. And then you know, like that authenticity resonates with a lot of people and a lot of people see that and people are like, oh really, Well, let me check this out, See what people are excited about. And two, you know, the best part is we got some really dope tequila, Like that's point blank Pump your chest out, man, you got what.
Speaker 2:We asked some really dope tequila Like and I don't say this a lot, but I tell people do you know where it's like? You'll never find another rapistado like ours which separates y'all.
Speaker 3:Um matter of fact, this your bottle, this his brand. I've never tasted it. I've only heard of reviews from friends and family that said this tequila. Once you taste it, oh, it's going to give you what you're looking for. So, since this is your baby, I'm going to let you open it up. I'm going to let you open it up.
Speaker 2:I want to see that Gotcha, so got the blog on house today.
Speaker 3:Thank, God it's there. Thank you, I appreciate you. I'm a Blanco guy. I appreciate you. Oh, good, good.
Speaker 2:Because, you know, everybody has their preference Some people like bloggers, some people like the rapos. Let's see.
Speaker 3:This is my first live impression of this tequila, so let's see. Matter of fact, you was a tequila drinker, right? So I want you to put me on game. How do you suppose to drink tequila?
Speaker 2:So the first thing you should do with tequila anything knows the smell of it. When you smell it, it should smell good, right, like if you smelled it and it smelled like gasoline, you probably ain't going to drink. It's probably going to taste like gasoline, right? So that's the first thing. Okay, all right. But once you know you kind of get a smell for it, then you take a small sip and you roll it around your mouth because you'll feel a little tingling in it. It activates your taste buds, so you swallow it and you exhale. Now, when you take your next sip, now you'll actually get to taste all of the tequila.
Speaker 3:Bravo, bravo, bravo. Yeah, I think too, you exhale what separates us.
Speaker 2:Bravo, you'd be hard pressed to find another tequila that smooth.
Speaker 3:Bravo, listen, listen, listen. My tequila of choice, by its smoothness, was Don Julio, and I have tasted many brands and I, like, I just don't get that Don Julio smooth. This, though, this smooth as hell. I can see here in talk, you get the immediate. If you are a fan of tequila, you can smell the agave. You get that tequila, but it's not a harsh tequila.
Speaker 2:And that's where we get people, because people always expect them to get that bite at the end.
Speaker 3:I was looking for it.
Speaker 2:Right. So when you're first tasting it you get the sweetness from the agave, then you get the little white peppercorns on your taste buds. When you wait for that bite but it never comes, it just got that nice, smooth finish and people are like oh, I didn't expect that. I thought it would be a little bit more harsh for a Blanco.
Speaker 3:I was like nah, this man, listen, I would like to ask you this, right? You just recently, and he told me this. Now this man told you he lets his product talk for itself. You had an event, right, and I'm going to let you even say it. You was down Morgan State recently. Go ahead, go ahead, I'm out the frame now. Go ahead, what you doing down Morgan, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we went to the event, shout out to Raven Anthony Parker for inviting us in, but we sponsored the event that they were hosting. We earned your leisure podcast. So it was us and another brand that sponsored the whole VIP, where everyone they had a lot of big names from the city they didn't get to come. People was there to try and to kill and it was like, oh, what is this? What is this? Am I carrying this at my restaurant? Like people called in, people like, yeah, like two guys from here, like I, probably some of the smoothest kill you've ever had. So you know, again, it's interesting. But now we're getting to a place where it's not getting unusual to kind of get these calls from these big corporations, these big companies, these bigger brands. It's like, oh, they want to come, we want you to come be a part of what we're doing. And it was like, again, it works before.
Speaker 3:So you were saying that you are your circle as a primarily your wife and your brother, with everything happening right. What was the last time you got excited, where you got starstruck, like I can't, I can't believe we hear offer nine months of hiatus? A random idea in the pandemic. Now you you not even technically, you built an idea from your own mind and now you have one of the smoothest, tastiest tequila's right now on this coast. When do you feel that like? And I see I noticed something with you. He said he was with another, you know another brand or whatever. He ain't tell you the brand. If he wanted to tell you, that's on him. But to even be mentioned with that brand.
Speaker 3:I can't sit here and comfortably say you're a small business, you're not and you have changed it within a couple years. You're not just a tequila company Like oh, we just started tequila company. You are the tequila company now that you can put your names next to the Hennesseys, next to the Belvedere's, when people can recognize your brain, when people go to liquor stores there's a lot of liquor tequila they never heard of in their life they go to what they know. You are now in that conversation of oh yeah, I know you now you have the familiar Adelie, whatever he got me drinking. You have the culture now and what you were saying earlier, but there have not been a lot of black people and I'm gonna give it to you Not been a lot of black people in tequila. You are making it possible for black people that have an idea, because everybody gonna start with. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. You made it possible and you didn't tell me your valuation, but you do know you're the brand now.
Speaker 2:right, you know what? It's interesting because we were really fortunate to see a lot of success very early on, and so it's like, when you think about it like this so the way I know how jazzy it is when you're a rookie you first get drafted in a league, right, you're like, wow, I'm in a league, you're seeing people who you watch and you're right there, right, but you're in it and most of the time you don't really appreciate what it was until you're four, five, six years in.
Speaker 2:You got that veteran experience, like for now, for a brand that people never heard of two years ago. You go to a liquor store now, right, Because if anybody knows anything about retail, it's about adjacencies, when they appealing you next to you. Go to a liquor store now. It's not uncommon for us. We're right next to costumers, we're right next to eight, one, eight, two, three or deli on right.
Speaker 2:Like that's what we're getting placed right next to right, these super huge brands with these super big backers, that we are just two guys who came out here and really made something right. So now, when you see you're kind of getting that kind of placement in people's restaurants or I mean that restaurant well, it happens in restaurants too right. Like in liquor stores you sit and again, you know for us being fortunate a less than a year in, you know we got a sponsorship.
Speaker 3:Now we're sponsoring the Chesapeake Employees Insurance Arena, where the official skill of the arena this and you wanna see him tell the people that you feel like you're a little black business.
Speaker 2:He's shit little about this, man, I mean again it's. You know, my philosophy is it's too many times where we see people achieve a certain level of success and people kind of trip out off of that and lose their work ethic and stay humble like listen, all the Mac ladies is gonna come.
Speaker 2:All that you know, patterned badness. That's great, thank you knowledge. But we got work to do right. Until we get to a place where we are affecting the market share of Cosmigos right, we affecting the market share of Jose Cuervo and Don Julio. Then I'm like I'm on my grind. But once we start getting these people where you know we're starting knocking off some of their market share, okay, then I feel there's room for a commercial, there's room for me to cheer.
Speaker 3:I'm not gonna have to put my chest out, right? Yeah, you might not be aware there was, if anybody's aware of, don, what was it? Diddy Brand, oh, what's the name? Deleon? Deleon dropped Diddy right and Diddy's big thing was he felt as though I guess he did his research or whatever that they were only pumping his liquor in predominantly rough black neighborhoods. They weren't in the upscale, I guess white Caucasian suburbs neighborhoods, and I guess he was saying because they labeled him as a black brand. Do you feel as though, with your situation being two black men, y'all very forefront, they know who you are, you are attached to this brand that you're gonna get labeled as oh you, yeah, it's tequila, but the black tequila. Like, how do y'all separate that Not to be the black tequila?
Speaker 2:Right. So one thing I wanna really speak on this situation right Like I don't know all the details of Right Diddy's situation with it was with Diageo, but my feeling was this Brother.
Speaker 3:You ain't about to just say that. So I was saying the name wrong this whole time. No, diageo's name.
Speaker 2:Diageo's the owner of-. Oh, okay, all right, deleon. Deleon was the brand, but in Paul's case, you as the owner of the brand or that sort of brand like that's when your company to go push your product.
Speaker 2:You can't go back to Diageo and be mad. Diageo didn't push your product, they didn't pitch you here. That's not Diageo's job, that's your job as that brand owner. You gotta go out there and get these placements right Like. You have to have your team to go do that. So if you're relying on them, you're leaving it up to them. Then you kinda get placed where you get placed and if you don't like it again, you can take the route he took or you can go back to get your own team. He says look, we need to be placing here, right. So that's one part of it. The other part is, I understand he feels some kind of way about costumigos, right Right, but at the same time people gonna drink what they wanna drink. So if you're a tequila, it's not what costumigos is. You can't be mad, cause the culture is choosing costumigos over you. Don't go back and blame them. Right Like. It is what it is. Man Like, again, when you had Sriracha, he wasn't crying about nobody else getting the market share, cause Sriracha's everywhere right Like, no.
Speaker 2:So you know, I felt that part as a brand owner. Like some of that falls on you. Yeah, some of it Right. But so at the same time with us again, we people see us. You know what it is, who we are right. If you ever look at the website, you look at the socials, you see who we are. So we don't run away from who we are right. That's we're able to lie brothers and bottom, but that's what it is. But the tequila is universally liked. I don't care if you're middle school teacher out in Garrett County, I don't care if you're, you know, a seasonal worker out in Ocean City. Tequila is tequila, tequila is tequila.
Speaker 2:People love tequila and as a category as a whole, tequila is the fastest growing category across any spirits brand, right. So again, that means the market is dead.
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Speaker 2:People are looking for it, so people don't care if you're black, your way, or you're Russian. If your tequila's good people are gonna come Now hold on now.
Speaker 3:Hold on now. What you saying? Do you think it can be in a puff case? Or definitely in your case? You've been a black business owner. You've been a black man. You have the culture you have with the henna seeds. Everybody want the culture Henna seeds, as big as it is, because of the culture and that's just calling what it is Black culture, the hip hop culture. So do you feel like you're benefiting off of that? Because black people will support black people.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Don't. Let me get a misconstrued we're only successful because of black women. Like when we out and we're doing Tastings, 90% of people show up as black women.
Speaker 2:I seen that they're buying bottles right when we out and we had events from the early on, but it was just word of mouth and it was just friends and family. It was the black women who was showing up Like that's why we're successful and again, they've been our biggest supporters. They remain our biggest supporters and our biggest customers. Like, no hands down. And the distinction that I was trying to make was that even if we were a black woman, if we had a secure, that was just meant we are not going to get the same response from others.
Speaker 2:You're going to get that spark, but then it's dying. Right, people are going to come support you because of black, but if it's not good over just average, they ain't coming back. They're going to be like all right, cool, I support, I bought a bottle, but again, we all working for our money, right? So if you're spending $30, $40 on a bottle, you want to feel like you made a good investment with your money, right, like you don't want to be like you donated you charity. You know to support somebody else's brand.
Speaker 1:Like nah.
Speaker 2:So I think, too, you know like it's that quality, that you know one. Yes, people are excited about us because we're black, but I think a large part of it is that they're excited because it's something that's really good and it's good and it's good. So when it's good, you feel good about supporting that, you feel good about telling your friends, you know, your brother, your sister, have you tried this? You got to go, try this.
Speaker 2:You're excited, it's going to make me excited, Right, and so, again, that's what we really focused on. When we sat down after the distillery and we were telling what we wanted, we was like you know our friends and family are going to be the first customers and you know us with the culture. Your friends and family is also going to be the first one to tell you if it ain't right.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, that criticism.
Speaker 2:Oh. So when we were sitting there, you know we had to make sure that we had something that we felt good putting our name on that. If we took this trip and we went all the way down in the middle of the pandemic, we came back with something Like it got to be good, it got to move, because we can't come back with something that was just average right.
Speaker 2:Like no, people weren't going to go for that. And so you know again, you know it was the perfect time and that the people at the distillery you know they really, really laid it out for us and you know, gave us the culture behind it. And you know, we sat down, you know, that day, and really went through the iterations until we found what we thought was something that we wanted to put our name on. How did you come up with the name? Yeah, so, honestly, los Almanos means the brothers in Spanish.
Speaker 2:When we were sitting down trying to figure out a name that we wanted to go with this company, I was trying to find a name that captured that familiar vibe, because that's what we were doing, right, that's how we even got the inspiration to do this. Well, we were sitting down and I think you know what Cosmigos was already taking, right, the house of friends that was taking Jose Crevo already had the familiar locked up. So it was like, okay, I need some kind of familiar name to kind of capture this experience. And Los Almanos means the brothers. But it wasn't just about him and I, it was about brotherhood and sisterhood in general, that bigger picture, that shared experience. So that's what the name. That's what was behind the name.
Speaker 3:How much you charge for these bottles.
Speaker 2:It varies from retail to retail, but the Blanco's usually about 41, the Repo's about 45, 46. How do you come with these prices? So that's not me. So what happens is we sell it to the distributor at a wholesale price. The distributor sells the wholesale, he marks it up and sells it to the retailer.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:So he might get like a 30% margin on what we sell to him, for he sells for retail. Retail is gonna market up about 50% before the retail customer gets it. So it's a lot of hands that touches this thing and a lot of markup have long before you know, long after we've sold it.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna ask you this how long you been married? 21 years. You been married 21 years. You told me early you weren't in the Navy, right? You had this business for about four to five years. Now, what's coming first, your wife or the business?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm always come first oh that's different.
Speaker 3:That's easy. That's different, Listen. So you had to make a choice right now For the business. You had to sell it to your brother or your wife and it'd be unhappy which one would you go with?
Speaker 2:I'm always gonna choose wife. Listen, my family always come first.
Speaker 3:There's nothing more important in life than family.
Speaker 2:Like you know, unfortunately the situation was that in the Navy when I came to my last year, the Navy like I wasn't ready to go. I was having a good sound, but it was a situation where the Navy kind of picked me in a position that you know you gotta choose a Navy, you gotta choose your family, that's the military life All right.
Speaker 2:Well, this is an easy situation for me. You know I left and people remember I left in 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis. So you know, my career council was like are you crazy? Do you see what's happening out there? Are you crazy? Hey, I mean, you know they give me a lot of options and I'm never gonna pick something over my family. So you know, I was like I'll better myself, I'll get out there and figure it out. And so every time, it's always gonna be ticketing your family when we were talking about this.
Speaker 3:A lot of people, in fact me, and you were talking about it. Would you ever sell your brand?
Speaker 2:I would be totally lying to you if I said there was never going to be a number Like that's just ridiculous. Right, there's way too much money, there's way too much money. But I don't have a number in mind now, Like we're way too early on to even entertain you know, some kind of numbers, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Who knows, right Like somebody might come with a number that right make you sit down and says, oh, you need to talk about this. So you know, I'm not going to close the door to that possibility, but I don't have a number now.
Speaker 3:Brett, if you sold this business, whoever bought it in the product diminished?
Speaker 2:You would hate to see it right Like something that you put all of your time, effort and labor into to grow, and you would see it. But at the same time we have examples. We've seen it right Like you were just talking about the culture.
Speaker 2:We've seen Sean John come out of nowhere and be that hot brand and then, you know, pop sold it for a bunch of money and then it kind of went down. It was the same thing with Rockaway, right Like Rockaway was hot, everybody wanted it, and then no, they sold it and then it kind of went down.
Speaker 2:So there's examples that we had we've seen before. But you know you always hate to be that person in that boat to see that's your brand and so you know you always have a spot for it. But once you sell it I mean that's the thing you have to understand when you sell it, right, you don't own, fully own that anymore. So you know you don't have a lot of control, but you always want to see what you created do well, always, so you have a liquor in your house, of course, of course.
Speaker 2:How does that work, bro? So I mean, all right, as we've talked about before, there's a lot of black owned beer experience. So everywhere I go, you know, if there's a brand that I don't have in my bar, I'm gonna buy it. Right, even if it's something that I might not personally drink. Like I will buy the cognac. I don't drink cognac, but there's a black owned cognac. I'm gonna get that because when other people come to my house, they might like cognac.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me just pour you some. I can't do the cognac.
Speaker 2:They got that bite yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the.
Speaker 1:Thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know the eat your zone.
Speaker 3:Some people might like the bite. This lady right here. She liked the bite. I can't do the bite, so I need to know because I have always wanted to talk to you for the time that we've been setting this up Right now, right, always ask my guest this right, it's too part of now. If you could go back to your younger self, right and tell him, when 15, 14, about his self in the future, what would you say to him?
Speaker 2:I will go back to myself. Stop doubting yourself Like. You are just as smart as anybody out there is not smarter than most of the people you're going to be around. Don't doubt yourself Like. Believe in what you think you can do and go and lean into it.
Speaker 2:I think because, for me that's always been a thing that always kind of played a background to watch people. And then you know you kind of make it moves but never really fully leaned into things until you know, well, under my 30s. So I think like who knows God where I'd have been if I would have started early. You know, really believe it in myself and you know what I could do. Would you change something?
Speaker 3:Oh, I've changed a lot. Now say, if you could change I think you're thinking about right now, but you wouldn't have this tequila company Would you still change it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would it be? I'm one. I'm always a person who likes new experiences. So, even though this is great and we're like, sure, let's go back and, you know, change it and let's see where it goes. Right, because we're sitting here and you're like, man, you have this tequila company. That's great, that's here, that's just nice. You're right. But if I could go back to my 15 year old self, who's to say I wouldn't be in? Somebody like them, zuckerberg by now, right, and where was the kill is great and is doing well, and I'm thankful for that. I might have been a multi damn being there by then.
Speaker 1:Right, like you don't know, but if you don't give yourself that opportunity to go do that right, you will never be.
Speaker 2:So I'm always like, all right, there's opportunity for some, like let's try, let's see what happens. What about something? You've been drunk. God you know what. The funny part is, last Friday actually. Okay, now, surprisingly, I went to Mad Cal. Down a little shout out to Mad Cal, I'm able to business partner mine and we, you know, had a few drinks, not even a lot, it was just two. But by the time we're ready to go, I was like you're not telling me you drunk off two drinks. Listen, you ordered to kill a company One. I don't know what these dudes had in their drinks down there at Mad Cal. Because I definitely felt some kind of way. When I left this thing I was like, oh, like what's going on? Like you know, I don't normally two drinks, really, you know I'm okay, but I ain't really done no kind of way. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but the boys put that margarita tonight, but they took me down.
Speaker 2:I was supposed to go off Saturday. I was like man, I'm staying home, I ain't even go out, like I don't even want to say where I was supposed to go. But it was a nice event that I was supposed to be a part of Go see Saturday. I couldn't do it. I was like I'm beat. I was just. I just had to kick back, so Okay.
Speaker 3:Now you thought she was going to come here and it was going to be about tequila. Absolutely not. Now I'm one of you. You've been married for 20 years.
Speaker 2:21 years 21. Kids Two kids 20. And 13.
Speaker 3:How do you manage keeping your marriage happy?
Speaker 2:As I said earlier, it's picture family first, like do jobs, businesses, whatever. All these things come and go Right, like me and my wife been together for 21 years and I think like would allow us to be here for this long is like we always try to put each other first Right and you know again. You know your home, your wife, you know again traveling back and forth all these things. We always keep the communication good, always check in there with each other, take each other's temperature see how you're feeling and all these different things.
Speaker 2:But you know again, you kind of get into a balance with your partner. So, that's just you know. We just try to work on always trying to keep each other first in front of my.
Speaker 3:Do you think because you said you were in your 40s, do you think now how you view marriage, how you treat your own marriage, is kind of dying off with the younger generation now Because you had your? If you're 40, then I mean your parents were pretty much in there. They got born in the 60s or where in there, so you had a real traditional type of situation. Do you feel like us now and the younger generation are looking at marriage as more of a burden now, Like why? Why do I need to marry you? I could just be your man or whatever. We could take trips, own properties, build businesses, Sex are a real thing and now that people, the value of marriage is just going down now.
Speaker 2:So I don't necessarily know that it is right, like I just seen a friend of mine, you know, just get married right, like, and so I mean the culture is definitely there where a lot of these I don't even want to call them kids now, I feel like I'm that old to be called kids, right, but a lot of these younger adults are. You know, they're younger adults, so you can't expect them to be 21, 22, be like, all right, ready to jump into a marriage with somebody. Right, like you got to give them that leeway, right, and it's like us people, you know, 40-something plus you, looking at people as 20 something. You're like this is different, they ain't like we're and it's not different. The technology is different, the world is different. They came up different. Yeah, they're coming up different. But did you still have to give them that leeway to grow up? Because the funniest thing that somebody ever told me was when I was in the Navy.
Speaker 2:We were early in the 20s and it was a lady who came in like a little after us. She was in her 30s. You know we used to joke all the time about her being old and she was like. You know, she was like you laugh like you say that she was like, but you don't even know who you are until you're 30, right, and I laughed and I thought this lady was crazy. Right, because I'm 20, something like I know I am no. When you find out when you grow up, like yeah, who you were at 30, generally he's not the same person you were in your 20s. If you are, it's a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's another conversation. If you're the same person.
Speaker 3:Nothing changed Nothing. I would say I'm on that same trajectory as you were saying, because when you get older you start to actually define yourself and realize who you. Because you got to grow up. You're going to still have that kid phase, but hopefully you're going to get to a point to where you're going to come into your adult self. And I feel like a lot of people now, especially the young generation, I'm still in it for another two weeks.
Speaker 3:I feel like now I don't know how it was with a I'm the youngest person in this goddamn room. I don't know how it is now, but now with us, it feels like we have so much pressure to be successful. Now it is. If you get to 30, now where I'm at, and you haven't done anything, it is a problem because now we don't go year by year. We're looking 10 years Damn, I'm about to be 40. I have to put everything into it now. So, with you getting older, what do you say to people that's looking now that maybe didn't go to college, didn't have the financial backing and now they're older and they're feeling like I really am not successful?
Speaker 2:And I think it's a social media age that we grow up in that people see all these things online and God I hope people realize. Probably about 80% of what you see online is phony. Even you see images of people like these things are phony filtered. This is not real, and so this is a conversation that I'm having with my son right now, who's just turned 20, right, I mean just turned 21 in October. He's feeling like so much pressure on him that he has accomplished this, and I'm like dude you're only 20.
Speaker 2:It was just in high school a year ago. Give yourself that time to grow. You don't even really know what you want to do in life yet. Take some time to go travel, go do some things. You'll figure this out. But you have to give yourself that leeway. You can't feel like because the whole world's online and they are showing this and people are saying this and they're saying they're doing these things that you have to feel this pressure to live up to some imaginary standards. It's not real life. Most of the people you see, even people who went to college, most of the time, the time they get out of college they go, start working. They realize they're really like what they went to college for.
Speaker 1:All the time, and then they're changing careers Right Like that happens.
Speaker 2:And it's like again just give yourself that time, Let yourself experience some things. Once you kind of get a little bit of experience behind you, you can kind of make your mind up about what you like, what you don't like, and that'll help you get some direction on what you want to do with your life.
Speaker 3:You've been around famous people. You've been around millionaires. You've been around people. I'll tell people. Right, like you were saying about the social media thing, when these cameras go off and there's no Instagram, you talk to these people and you maybe grave a little rapport with them. Oh, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I've been interviewed people that have hundreds of thousands of followers. Right, if you go, look, they're funny, the engagement is good. Met one guy he's telling me how he's homeless, how he was hooked on drugs still currently and I was like but that's not what you portray online. He was like that shit is fake. I said what I was like so all this, all these things I'm seeing, he's like nah, bro, that is a facade. And for kids now you're looking at kids that are millionaires. So, yeah, their life is going to look different, but they also have problems that you they're not going to go online, hopefully, and get to crying and everything like that.
Speaker 3:They get sad too. You just get rich people problems yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, there is no life without problems, right, like everybody has something that you kind of have to deal with or something that comes up and you go through it. But the majority of the people that I've met, regardless of what kind of station life they are in, they spend all their time legally. They don't spend all that. Not the successful people I know. They don't spend all that time out there on social media scroll or on vacation trips Like they're working, like they're working and that's what got them successful. And because a lot of us I can't include myself in this thing, but a lot of successful people are like first generation successful.
Speaker 3:Oh, so you're not first generation successful.
Speaker 2:I ain't successful yet we're getting there, but I ain't coming myself as successful.
Speaker 3:yet that means you have a mark before you label that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's your?
Speaker 3:mark.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't know and and everything looks different and it's different from you. Know what I wear five, six years ago? Then maybe.
Speaker 3:But man, you are you are different from where you were five years ago.
Speaker 2:Don't get these people. I still got a day job. I'm still a job. I'm saying car have five years ago, like I'm still out here making these deliveries myself. Sometimes I'm still pop pulling up to Vince myself to work these things like yeah. So I put in that word yeah so it ain't like I got in this thing and money's just rolling in. I'm, you know, I'm just living my life on Instagram and you know people I work for me like no, that's not, that's not how this industry works, if that's other thing, if you want to get into this business, understand that it's two things.
Speaker 2:This business is a marathon. It's not a sprint like the money comes with this night's gonna be. It takes a long time to build up money up, hmm, to build these things. That, where you're kind of, can really reap these benefits, mm-hmm and to it is very cash intensive in the front end, so it is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 3:So if somebody Sees this right and they say you know what, I'm gonna go out and try this a bomb ass tequila I'm gonna say that this bomb ass tequila, right. And they say you know what? I want to work with these guys. I want to be a sponsor, I want to do something with these guys. How do they make that happen? What is your criteria? What making it happen?
Speaker 2:I mean first thing, I saw people you know reach out, whether you know you just do the website it's. Do you know? Dm us on social and what I can't be specific enough about people is picture. Asked it in the beginning, right, Like some people want to reach out and then say you know 23 message and then they want to get to what they want for, like Hello, right, yeah, yeah, he was just out the blue.
Speaker 2:Hey, where can I get you to kill? Like, where are you? How I'm supposed to know where you are? But whatever, to ask if you want to partner with us, you know, again, Send us a deck. I think that's the easiest thing to help very far. Vet, you know some of these people because you know you'll get people says hey, I'm having a birthday party at my house. Can you guys come pull up? Like yeah, that's not man, that's not how that really works.
Speaker 3:You're like the kid to kill, you can pull up. I don't know we.
Speaker 2:One lady, I think was sometime last year. She was like hey, I'm gonna, I'm written a party bus. You know this thing. Can you guys come and do a tasting on our party bus? I'm like, what like?
Speaker 3:no, I'm Would have the money's money's there. You have morals wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not necessarily more than supposed to with your Legal abilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're talking never gonna put the company in a position, you know, to be legally liable for something, because I'm so, so short-term game. He kind of jumped out there into you know people. You just say it randomly, just jumping out there. I don't know how's the events like that, like you find stuff in all kind of way in situations so like no, no, no, that's not how that works and legally you can't just stop. You know, pull up anywhere, pull up, poor up anyway, like so they're all legal requirements of where you can't operate and can't operate. So again, that's part of it which goes into the criteria of what events we can do and what we can do.
Speaker 2:So and again, people, you know some people who are more, have more experience, and you know long professionals. They'll reach out. You know their contact information. Here's a whole deck. You know, here's what we look at, here's what we're trying to do, here's what we can offer. You know, here's the ask, like that's important to you know. Then you kind of wait a situation. Does the ask make sense for you know what they're offering.
Speaker 3:Are you when you do these interviews, right? You know you didn't even tell them. You run the social media when you people listen. This brother right here. If you DM him, there's a 99% chance it's going to you and you're gonna see it first, right? So when you get these messages, do you run it through a team of people first? You run through your brother first, like how does this work? How do you vet these people out?
Speaker 2:Um, so luckily now I have a wonderful assistant who's helped me. You know, go through the social media, but you know when it comes in, you know the first thing we look at is who's sending, and so you know you view that person profile. See again, do you have 20 followers? You got 125,000 followers. Oh brother, what happened to the small?
Speaker 3:people.
Speaker 2:now we talking business, right, I mean it all plays into it because, all right. So, to give you a scenario, if you send us a message, you got 20 followers, right, not to say that you have to have me, but you have 25. You says, hey, I'm throwing this event, we like, I like for you to sponsor my event, you know, can you give us 10 cases that are? It's probably how likely that we're gonna have to turn that down because you, having that kind of following Doesn't really support the ass that you're giving social media. Right, and I mean not just that, but again, you know, we're looking at your website. Now there are people who had, who came to us, who's had 60,000 followers on social media. We go to their website and their website is down. Yeah, that's a red flag, right, like, if you're a company, especially Websites, always be worth. Now, there are things happen where it might go down.
Speaker 2:Make this oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but right like if you're out here looking for sponsorships, people are gonna come check your website, like, because, again, we know people buy followers on social media, happens, so right. But again, if you're a company and you're reaching out to us asking for a sponsorship, your domain shouldn't be Yahoo or Gmail, like it's just there's your independent person. Okay, then maybe you know again, all right, we'll see, or you might be you know again, all right, we'll see, or you might be. You know, independent perk, that's working with a company. Okay, all these things you know kind of goes into play that you you're making your evaluation on. But like it has to make sense. I mean, it's like any other thing. It has to make sense Because there is non-stop flow of people always asking you to sponsor something somewhere.
Speaker 2:And again, you know, again, when we look at these things, man on our team, where is the event? Right, like, we've Been fortunate enough to be seen from people all across the country. So you know we're getting requested. You know, sponsor events in North Carolina, south Carolina, like, we don't have distribution there, so that's easy. No, like, so that's all pass. Because, again, for us to spend all this money to travel, go, do these events and donate product For people who will never get together who'll never be able to go buy it, like there's no all no ROI on that, so it's like generally first of all, I've been in this game for a little bit.
Speaker 3:All right, tell you if I, if I'm on it, return of Investments is a very important thing because when you we're just speaking, people see you on social media. They don't know the overhead that I got to expand. Am I getting money on the back end of this to cover that overhead? Because if I don't really like you, I got to spend five grand I'm only getting 500 back. No, no, absolutely not. But I was just thinking about something because I looked at your pages. Now, how the hell do you get these awards?
Speaker 2:So there's uh competitions, that happens all year long and basically you know you pay your entry fee and you submit your products and you know the judges they'll do some most, some do blind tasting and they rank yours against the other interests. You know the other people who entries it in. You come out where you come out and we've been, you know, very fortunate that you know it's only been growing, growing out. You know we've, I think the first year this block O has won a silver Um the new york world of wine spirits competition.
Speaker 3:Something again. You've seen the name. If you like these wines, when you go on these liquor stores, you gonna see that label that's on that bottle. Listen, san Antonio's. You've seen this label. So I know you, you real humble, but I know your shit is where it's at right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean overall. Like, Since we started august 21, this block O has won what five awards and the repositor has won six. And so last year in the sipper wars, which is the biggest international competition, we want to double go for the Block O and gold for the repositor. So like, yeah, like it's not just us telling you that it's good. Like he said, there's numbers, these facts these are statistics.
Speaker 3:This is the best tequila that is on the market. How do you get your? How do you get your distribution in different states, though?
Speaker 2:Now that part is that's that's the hard part that most brands have. So. So with the distribution contract, you have to sell your product, you and your product, to a distributor.
Speaker 2:Why should this distributor take their time and investment in investing your brand to go push your brand, so one you know if you're looking for distribution out of a state that you're in, you know you generally want to have boots on the ground, so you want to have a brand ambassador or somebody out there to go and push your product. You want to have in stores a point of sale merchandise. You know Whether it's the shop talkers or case cards or posters, whatever you got to have something to help your distributor Go push your product. And they want to know you know, do you have a marketing budget? You know, are you working with any influencers, like, what can you do to help sell them?
Speaker 3:What's the difference with people that don't know the difference between somebody that is a brand ambassador and somebody that is a sponsor?
Speaker 2:sure, so Brand ambassadors, you just have two functions. Brand ambassador is somebody who will show up at events for you, like they might work the table, you know, point up samples and things like that. Or you know, you give some of these Partnerships we get with online functions. They will promote your brand online. That's one brand ambassador. The other brand ambassador is the actual boots on the ground.
Speaker 3:I ain't saying I try to be a brand ambassador. I got, I got planes go. I got planes.
Speaker 2:I got planes. I ain't. But the other brand ambassador, which I think is the more Vital one for a small business, this is the person that's going to go out there and go knock on doors for you. This is that person who's?
Speaker 2:the most vital person who's going to go out there, especially in a market that you're not in, that's going to go to these different liquor stores.
Speaker 2:Go pitch your brand, because a distributor if you're fortunate enough to get distribution, a distributor has a portfolio. So if you have tequila, they might have two or three tequila and so when that sales rep goes out, they have a portfolio to pitch and you're ran. Especially if you're smaller, you might get five or ten minutes of that person's time in that store to try to get your product in, whereas that brand ambassador works for you, is dedicated to you and your product. That's really going to go out there and give that store 20, 30 minutes Of selling your product and they're going to go follow up with that store and when the store wants you to come in to do tations, your brand ambassador that person who's out there on the weekends pouring up you know, pouring samples and tell people how great your product is. So that's what a brand ambassador does. Sponsorships are literally you donating product or money, and sometimes people ask for both. Yeah, for events, don't they?
Speaker 1:Don't they.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know I mean all everything has this part. But I think, as again when we're talking about the business in general, you have to manage, Manage these things because again, you'll go out of business trying to sponsor every event or you give them away free, looking for every person that comes to show it up. Who so you? You know they're going to get you out in front of people. You'll go out of business long before you ever even get started.
Speaker 1:So you know you kind of got to judge.
Speaker 2:You know your partnerships and your sponsorships. What makes sense?
Speaker 3:Okay, well, listen, I told you and as I do everybody else who comes here, I Run polls, I get information from people, and this girl named Kelly Asked me this question to ask you. When she asked it, I was like damn you sure? And she was like, yeah, that's really what I want to know. So I'm gonna ask you before we get out of here. Kelly wants to know if this was your last conversation. The world will hear from you.
Speaker 2:What would you want them to know about you, about me or about the brand you me, um, I would want people to know that I'm always gonna be a humble guy, regardless of whatever accomplishments I did. So I just want to give people a little bit of my background. I was a guy from here in Maryland, you know, went to high school, went to the Navy for nine years multiple awards, multiple ribbons, like in my service, came home, went back to school, got my bachelor's, got my master's, you know, got a decent job and a decent career before I got into this business. But I don't have a brag about I went to school or that. You know I was a highly decorated veteran, like because all those things are in the past, right. So you know, like it's no point of laying around that I'm always looking forward. So I'm always just going to be that humble guy.
Speaker 3:Are your kids proud of you? I hope so.
Speaker 2:These kids these days are different, right, like you know, but I work to make sure that you know they could always be proud to say that's my dad, you know that I've done something worthwhile for them to be proud of. So I'm hoping In your mind, do you think you have? I know my daughter for sure.
Speaker 3:My daughter loves me oh you have a daughter, I have a daughter. Yeah, oh, the daughters hit different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a type of wife. I tell her I'm a girl dad, she gets mad because, like your son, you got a son too.
Speaker 3:I was like, yeah, I got a son, but he be all right.
Speaker 2:He's girl, he's different, right? Yeah, so that's the. He hit like 13.
Speaker 3:He was kind of like all right, I'm cool, that's when they start to branch off and do their own thing Right. I'm girls, though my daughter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my daughter's always, that's my roadie, everywhere I go Same. So I'm like, yeah, man, I lost my daughter, especially now watching you tell her before she's she's just turned into a teenager. So before she's out with her friends all the time Before she turned into a teenager. Right yeah, these are precious years that we got together, so always out with my baby.
Speaker 3:Oh, listen man you have given me an amazing interview. I listen. This man is so about his business. He sent me a Google invitation. I never get Google invitations.
Speaker 1:I was like you want to do what he was like, yeah, I'm gonna like you in.
Speaker 3:I said okay, but you are so about your business and I would just like to say thank you for coming on the show, thank you for talking about your brand, thank you for letting me even know how tequila works, because I always want to know. How do people get into killing you? Let me know today. There's an upfront cost. This is not a cheap man's game. To get it, I mean it can be, but your product is going to be dog shit. Do you help your competitors before we get out of here? Um?
Speaker 3:or you did that, business man like, nah, I can't do that.
Speaker 2:So depends on who you're looking at as competitors, because the people who are in the same land as I met I don't look at as competitors. I see it's more community. To me, the competitors are Jose Cuervo, don Julio, 1800s. Those are competitors. All these other black owned brands. That's where I am Like. This is community. We trade ideas, we share resources. Right, because, again, we're not looking sideways, we're looking up, you're looking up and y'all both side by side, going up Right.
Speaker 3:Well, listen, I would like to say thank you. Tell people where they can find you, this amazing tequila. You want to see him all around the state because he pushes this product heavily. Go ahead, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can find us online at www. Tequilaloztermanoscom. You can find us on Instagram at lowtermanos tequila. We're on Facebook as well, so we're out there.
Speaker 3:They are doing their rounds and you were saying something really important earlier. I might not have the biggest following if you're starting to kill a goddamn bracelets, but if your product, which you have stated, can speak for itself, it does not matter how many followers you have. Once you got to air the voice, the eye of the people, they're going to come, and you guys have been a testament to that for me. Even finding out to me tasting this, learning how to drink it, this is going to be my tequila of choice. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm humbled.
Speaker 3:This is my tequila of choice. Now Y'all know what I'm saying. So listen, this has been another lovely, lovely episode. Man, check out this tequila. It's going to change your life. If you go to one of these blind testings, you ain't going to know what tastes good, but when you taste it you're going to know. Say the name, brother Los Termanos 1978. Y'all know what that means. So listen, check us out. On the next episode of Vibes' Park, this has been another lovely episode and we're going to be back with the next one. Thank you so much, brother.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me yeah, oh, you're not done.