# Fawn Weaver: Scaling Through Authenticity and Love

**Podcast:** Masters of Scale
**Published:** 2026-01-29

## Transcript

One of the biggest scaling breakthroughs founders have is realizing they don't have to do it all.
That's where Upwork comes in.
It's a one-stop shop to find trusted freelance talent across IT, web dev, design, marketing, and more.
And with Upwork Business Plus, you get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork.
You'll get a curated short list of expert talent sent to your inbox in hours so you can delegate with confidence and focus on growing your business.
If you want to scale smarter, not harder, post a job today and hire tomorrow at Upwork.
Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit.
Go to Upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before January 31st, 2026.
Again, that's Upwork.com/slash SAVE.
Terms apply.
Every year, product teams make the same promise.
This is the year we get clear on our priorities.
But how do you decide which ideas to prioritize?
Jira Product Discovery is built to help you decide with confidence.
It gives teams a single place to capture insights, prioritize the highest impact ideas, and share living roadmaps stakeholders can rally around.
And because it's built on JIRA, what gets prioritized becomes what gets built, with end-to-end visibility from discovery to delivery folks, Jeff Berman here.
Try Jira Product Discovery free at atlassian.com/slash scale.
Build the brilliant CNN host and entrepreneur, my friend Van Jones, join us at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit to lead some of the most spirited and inspired and engaging conversations we've had on our stage.
In the episode we're sharing today, Van speaks with Fawn Weaver, who is an absolute force of nature.
She's the founder of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey.
After blitz scaling one of the fastest growing spirit brands in history and becoming the first black woman ever to build a billion dollar spirits business from the ground up.
Fawn talks with Van about why her focus is not just on building a company, but building an extraordinary life.
Starting this brand literally from scratch based on a story that nobody knew.
We'll get to that.
Yeah.
But those of us who are massive fans, we would know you better if we knew what.
I have up no walls.
I love that.
I love that.
Well, you know, I want to for some people may not know this story.
How many people here have heard of Jack Daniels?
Okay.
Uh, how many people know that he stole all his stuff?
You better quit that.
And we should not have raised our hand.
That is absolutely not true.
Okay.
So so so tell tell us the story of Uncle Nearest just so they just so they know.
So to be clear, since Van decided to go back to the original story.
In 2016, in June of 2016, there was an article in the New York Times, and it was a photo of Jack Daniel sitting with an African American man with seated to the right of him.
The reason why that was important is it was circa 1904.
And the photo was Jack Daniel and his leadership team.
At that time, any African American in a photo would be seen on the peripheral if they were allowed in the photo at all at all.
At all.
And in this photo, you had the African American man to the immediate right.
And once you actually look at the full photo, that is not cropped, what you will discover is Jack Daniel is off-center.
The center position was given to the African American man.
So the question becomes why would Jack step out of the center position of the photo and give it to an African American man?
And you have to look at yourself here in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
You've got a photographer who undoubtedly has never seen this before.
Understand this.
And so I'm looking at this.
The world came to the conclusion because the headline was Jack Daniels Embraces a Hidden Ingredient, helped from a Slave.
The entire world very quickly determined Jack Daniel was a slave owner, stole the recipe, hid the slave.
I looked at the photo and said, if you want to hide an enslaved man or his children, what you don't do is put them as the center of a phone grab.
And so I looked at this and came to a conclusion pretty quickly that it was very possible that Jack Daniel was our first business ally.
And if that was the true story, then I knew to be able to share that with America who has an underbelly of race we haven't dealt with, that is what the entire world knows our underbelly is race.
You poke us there, and we will react every single time.
And so I knew that if I was going to inject an African American into the story of Jack Daniel Distillery, who we now know Nears Green is Jack's first master distiller.
He was the only known master distiller for distillery for number seven.
For those of you who do not know, old number seven was actually Jack's original distillery number.
And Near's Green is the only known master distiller of that distillery.
The reason why I love talking with you and learning from you, most people would say that's interesting.
Right.
They wouldn't say that's the key to a billion dollar brand.
I didn't say that either.
I said this is gonna be one hell of a book and one hell of a movie.
So the book, Love and Whiskey, tells the story of how this all unfolded.
I didn't show up in Lynchburg for a whiskey.
I showed up in Lynchburg because I knew it would be a brilliant book that could then be turned into a movie.
So even when I showed up there, I was already a New York Times bestselling author.
Right.
This would be my third book.
And I had no doubt that it would be an amazing story if what I believed to be true was true.
If this was a story in which Jack Daniel stole the recipe from an African American man or an enslaved man, I wouldn't have been interested in that story.
Because we have so many of those.
What drew me to this story was the allyship.
The love.
Was the love, the honor, the respect.
The most famous American whiskey maker of all time moving out of the center position.
So when America tried, at some point, someone here would attempt to wipe out the legacy of Nearest Green, which they tried in 1978, which is why no one of this generation knew the story.
When Jack was alive, when his descendants ran the distillery, all the way to the last one passed away in 78.
Nearest Green and his boys George and Eli were always a part of the story of Jack Daniel.
The reason that people are here and people are so fascinated by you is that from the beginning, this is an unlikely story.
And for some reason, you've been able to break the playbook.
You have not done a single thing in the playbook.
You even said that you don't care about the PL as much as you care about the love.
Talk about how someone like yourself can't, and you got people here who are trying to build companies, they may have a story written on their heart that their advisor told them, Oh, don't say that.
Yeah.
Don't lead with that.
Yeah.
Here's a cookie cutter for this, here's the way you do that.
You've broken all those rules and you've broken through.
Just talk about that as a founder.
I think the key is this isn't a new blueprint.
You can go back to Carnegie, you could go back to Rockefeller.
You there's certain elements and every American Titan that you can find in this story.
What I think a lot of people do, and I think it's a big mistake at the current moment.
I have so many people come to me and say, Will you mentor me?
And every time I say, No, but I'll send you a list of books.
Because I believe it's a crutch.
We're looking for someone to guide us, but the reality is everyone still living is still looking to be guided in some area.
So if you are incredibly successful in business, but your marriage was garbage and your kids didn't like you by the time you died, I don't want you to mentor me.
Right?
Oh, and so and so what I have done throughout 30, listen, is it?
This is about to get real?
What I have done throughout my 30 years of entrepreneurship is I have read most books on most Titans, and I can tell you what they did.
So when I'm looking at any situation that comes up in my company, I don't care how difficult and challenging and crazy it looks to the outside world, I assure you I've already seen this playbook before.
I saw it with Reginald Lewis when he leveraged everything for Beatrice.
The first black billionaire.
The first black billionaire when he leveraged everything for Beatrice.
He does a whole PR move to have the elephant lead the people across the bridge.
Do you know how brilliant that is at the PR move?
But let me tell you who was one of the most brilliant PR people in the history of American business.
Jack Daniel.
Okay.
And so when I am looking at what I am doing, I don't look at anything that I am doing as unique.
You could call out any element of my business, and I can point you to who it is that I am following in that regard.
But here's the key to doing it this way.
And listen, for all of you all who are looking for mentors, go for it.
Just make sure their personal life is together.
Because if their personal life ain't together, you don't want that one.
Still ahead, more from Van Jones' conversation with Fawn Weaver.
This is Mike Nicholas, Capital One Business Customer and co-founder of AnsetUncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York.
And he's telling us how they started a product line.
We already had a space in the community.
The food was an extension of our lifestyle and our values.
So we know we wanted to create something that was an offshoot to that.
Our pepper sauce.
That's my grandmother's recipe.
That's like a liquid gold, right?
If someone was to approach us and ask us, what do we do?
We provide flavor.
Growing a product line is no small investment, but Mike and his wife and co-founder Nicole were able to manage with the help of their Capital One Business Card.
Working with Capital One Business, we're able to leverage our limits and utilize those points, making sure we can continue the scale at the speed that we needed to go.
To learn more, go to Capital One.com slash business cards.
Welcome back to Masters of Scale.
You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel.
And be sure to check out the link in our show notes to subscribe to our newsletter.
When I am looking at the blueprints that I am following, I could probably point to 20 different ones that are certain elements, none of them in the spirit business.
Gotcha.
Because no one, no person of color or woman had ever succeeded before me in the spirit business.
So I can't follow your advice.
That's right.
That's right.
I can't follow what you did.
But what I can do is I can look to someone who started with nothing.
That's the thing.
And then I can watch what they did.
And then after they did, I don't know whether or not their family liked them, and then I can decide what elements.
Y'all, I'm I'm serious about this.
I I don't want to just have a great business.
Why is that so important to you?
Because look, I I have a bunch of questions to hear about business, and you're talking about family.
Listen, I've been married 22 years to my favorite person in the world.
My favorite person.
It's important to me because I think that people give up so much of themselves to build.
Yes.
But we weren't placed on earth to build.
We were placed on earth to love.
And if the building supersedes the love, you are gonna walk around empty.
And that's why I show up as me and not a rep of myself.
I can do that because I am so loved.
I don't care about what anybody in here thinks.
Not that y'all aren't important.
You just ain't as important as my husband's words.
Yeah.
I'm really speechless.
That's what Jeffrey said when he interviewed me.
I do this for a living.
I'm really speechless.
But let's talk about this now because let's be honest.
We have a bunch of people who are building companies who are building businesses, and that's how they think they're going to make a difference.
That's how they're going to vindicate having been bullied and pushed around and given wedgies on the playground.
That's how they're going to show everybody who laughed at them.
And it has become a singular pursuit.
Yeah.
And in the world of technology, that means that we are gonna wind up with the world possibly with an awful lot of data and very little wisdom.
Yes.
And we're already now running companies that are data smart and people stupid.
Yes.
And it has to do with a hole in the heart of these founders.
Too often.
Too often.
And yet I can imagine somebody saying, Well, listen, easy for you to say you had another career before you became a builder.
You have this broad basis of understanding all these stories if you've ingested in your own personal LLM, and you're now with a billion dollar company.
But I'm 23 years old or 32 years old, and I'm trying, and and I don't have nobody that loves me like that.
And if I spend time trying to find that love, I'm gonna miss my moment.
What do you say to that person?
I wasn't trying to find love.
Love found me.
Okay.
I started my first company at 18.
Okay.
So when my husband found me, I was already building.
Okay.
But what I was is I was open.
Right?
And so for so many people in the building, they begin to close themselves off because they are so concerned.
For those of you who do not know, if you buy any alcohol, it's essentially for the most part, seven spirit conglomerates, right?
Six really, and then you know, tossing Tito's because he's bigger than all of them, even though he has one bottle of vodka flavored vodka, right?
And so, but that is 90%, more than 90% of the volume of alcohol in this country is run by a very small group of people.
Then you have this little black girl with all the freaking confidence in the world who walks in here and says, I don't know what I'm doing, but I will figure it out.
And by the time I'm done, I will be sitting right beside each of you.
And I'll be running as much through here as you are.
But let me explain the reason I'm able to do this.
Is because I don't care what arrows they throw my way, I won't let it close me.
I remain open.
And that's a tough thing because people are so afraid of being hurt.
People are so afraid of other people seeing your failure.
I said this not too long ago, and people really question this on social media, but I'm pretty sure I got the data to back this up.
People believe that they have a fear of failure.
And it's the reason why a lot of people never launch, or a lot of people refuse to scale.
They'll stay at a certain level because they're like, if I go to the next level and I fail, so they'll just stay stuck and they believe that their fear is failure.
But I don't believe that is what the fear is.
Because if you try something and it doesn't work, but you were the only person who knew you tried it and it didn't work.
Do you care?
It's not really a fear of failure.
It's a fear of public embarrassment of people knowing that you failed.
In that shame button.
I don't care.
You don't care.
Because if I fail, I'll build it again.
It's of no consequence to me.
Well, look.
It's so interesting, you know, sitting here with somebody who is free.
Yeah.
You don't get that a lot, do you?
I don't.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't.
You're free.
Yeah.
And I think that that's something that we don't talk about enough.
I got I work with Prince for six years.
He was free.
Yes.
He had some painkiller addiction he picked up late in life and it killed him.
But he was free.
Yeah.
And I have not met anybody who felt as free as Prince felt until I'm sitting here with you.
Wow.
It is really.
I wish you could be up here.
It is a remarkable physical experience to be with somebody who is not guarding anything and who's not managing a bunch of ego or fear or presentation and who's just flowing.
None of these questions gonna get answered so I'm sorry, August.
Let me tell you something.
It's so funny because when my company is going through anything publicly, anything challenging, and people will check in with me, right?
And they'll text and like, are you good?
And what I'll do is I'll send them a screenshot of my stress levels on aura.
Do y'all have an aura ring?
So I live between restored and engaged.
And so after this, I will go, I'll look at my aura ring at the end of the day, and I assure you I'm gonna still be between restored, relaxed, and engaged while sitting here leading up to here when I leave out of here.
And I believe it is because I show up as me.
Yes, you do.
I don't have a fear of public embarrassment.
Yeah.
And you have to, by the way, be embarrassed publicly a few times to know whether or not that statement is true.
Yeah.
Well I I know nothing about that, but go ahead.
But I I do believe that a lot of people, when we're talking about master of scale, a lot of people choose not to scale because they're afraid of failure on the next level.
And the reality is, is any person who has built anything extraordinary, any extraordinary business, especially in America, they always did it on risk.
They always did it not knowing what happened on the next level.
Listen, I agree with you on that, but I just want to say something to you because anybody could say that part.
Take risk.
But what you've revealed here is there's a secret power that we don't talk about.
Yeah.
Which is the power of love.
Yes.
Self-love.
Yes.
And then being open to love from others.
Everybody may not find their 22-year love of life, but you said something about being open.
Yeah.
This is a tough game.
You get a lot of no's.
You get a lot of rejection.
You get a lot of people who you're trying to tell them what your dream is.
Yeah.
And they're just blinking at you.
Yeah.
And you got to go to the restroom and get your face right.
Well, see, I don't.
And that's what I want you to close on is somehow they need to add in these business books and add in all these courses everybody's spent all his money on.
Yes.
A chapter about love and staying open.
Talk about the not just the fact of it, but what does it give you?
What does it unlock for you to have this secret weapon of love for self and others in your business?
Yeah.
So I don't separate business from personal.
Okay.
I have no separation.
I am who I am at all times.
I don't care if I have on no makeup and I'm in sweats and I'm at home or if I'm here with you, this is the same as if you were at my house.
Now, if you were at my house, I'd have on no makeup and I'd have on sweats.
But the exchange would be the same.
It is no, it is no different for me.
But because of that, anyone who knows me knows I lead with my faith.
So the reason why when people say no, or when people, if their heart is turned away, if I am looking for something and they choose not to invest, or whatever the case may be, I don't look at it as being that person.
And I'll explain what I mean.
When Moses was leading the people of Israel out of Egypt, we've all seen all the plagues that happened to Pharaoh because he kept saying no, right?
This is the part that people miss, and I live with this in front of me.
Is every single time Moses said let my people go, Pharaoh said yes.
And he let the Israelites go.
The next sentence in the Bible, every single time, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the Israelites go.
So whenever someone says no to me, I assume it's God, not that person.
So I can remain open because that person was only speaking on behalf of the direction God wanted me to go in.
So I'm okay with every no.
Fawn.
I've been into Oprah, I've been with I've been able to Jay-Z.
This was unbelievable.
Thanks again to Fawn Weaver and Van Jones for joining us.
This conversation was recorded live on stage at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco at the Masters of Scale Summit.
The budget was around one and a half million dollars.
It was a black tie event.
There was a jazz band playing in a cigar bar and a bourbon bar.
That's Natasha Miller, Capital One Business Customer and CEO of Entire Productions, a corporate event management company.
And she's telling us how she had to float a large contract for nine months.
It was really hard since we were carrying that 1.5 million, most of which passed through to pay for the venue in all the vendors and all the food and beverage.
It's this waterfall effect.
Thankfully, we were able to handle that with the Capital One credit cards, which have a 2% cash back on everything.
For Natasha, it wasn't just the financial support from Capital One Business, but the personal investment as well.
I had incredible support from my personal banker Callie.
I knew that at any point I was in trouble that I can call her, which I've never had before in a bank ever.
With the help of Callie and her Capital One Business Card, Natasha was able to stretch every dollar in order to bring this monumental event to life.
To learn more, go to Capital One.com slash businesscards.
Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pugh.
Original music by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Letal Molad.
Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter.
And please make sure to check out our YouTube channel.