- 4 weeks ago
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00:00Tonight, a new guest shark joins the tank.
00:04Fawn Weaver, the founder of groundbreaking spirit brand
00:08Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey.
00:10It seems as though you have something really, really incredible.
00:13I do not believe you will fail.
00:15So, Sharks, who is ready to become a cool cat
00:17and scoop up a big deal?
00:20You have invented a great product.
00:24Grab your Cornell shot and cheers!
00:28It's disgusting.
00:29Sometimes you're going from dream to delusion.
00:32But I couldn't stand this greed.
00:34Oh, and so you made a greedier offer.
00:37Wait a second. You just spoke with so much heart.
00:39You are the American dream.
00:41Kevin, in 17 years, this is the first time
00:44someone walked out of here without even waiting
00:47to see if you're in or out.
00:56Good luck, Fawn.
00:57Thank you, Lori. I appreciate you.
01:00Yay, Fawn!
01:04First in the tank is a remedy for a painful common ailment.
01:16Hi, Sharks. My name's Christine and I'm from Lake Tahoe.
01:19I'm Erica and I'm from San Diego.
01:22And we are the co-founders of Cornell, liquid gold for your health.
01:26We're here today asking for $250,000 for 7% of our company.
01:30Wow.
01:31When I say the word cranberry, what comes to mind?
01:34I love cranberries.
01:35I do, too.
01:35UTI.
01:36That's exactly UTI.
01:38Urinary tract infections.
01:40Hey, ladies.
01:41What?
01:42UTIs are the worst.
01:44A pain you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
01:46But if you know, you know.
01:47Drinking cranberry juice prevents urinary tract infections.
01:50Cranberries are packed with an active ingredient
01:52called paranthocyanides that helps flush out bacteria.
01:55Most products on the market are either filled with sugar
01:58or don't have enough of that active ingredient
02:00to actually be effective.
02:02For comparison, the current market leaders
02:04only have 60 cranberries per serving.
02:06That's not enough to be effective.
02:08Introducing Cornell, the strongest cranberry formula
02:11on the market.
02:12Because one shot of Cornell isn't just 60 cranberries.
02:17It's 3,000 cranberries.
02:20Wow.
02:21What?
02:21Wow.
02:22Wow.
02:23Look at all these cranberries.
02:24Look at all these cranberries.
02:26Wow.
02:27Excellent visual.
02:28Very good visual.
02:30Cranberries go beyond just helping
02:31with UTI pee emergencies.
02:34It helps with gut health, glowing skin,
02:36and even muscle recovery.
02:38People are always saying, eat your greens.
02:40But now it's time to drink your reds.
02:43How do you know Cornell is the real deal?
02:45The tart face you make when you drink it.
02:47Now, which one of you wants to pucker up
02:49and take a shot on Cornell?
02:51Grab your Cornell shot and cheers.
02:54Cheers.
02:55Do we just drink it?
02:56Yeah.
02:57Take a sip.
02:59Ugh.
03:02Oh, that's a good tart face, girl.
03:03That's a great tart face.
03:04It's disgusting.
03:05It's gross.
03:06But it works, baby.
03:11Actually, it's not that bad.
03:12What am I drinking other than cranberry?
03:15Just cranberry and preservatives.
03:17We recommend one per week,
03:18but customers take it how it works for them.
03:20So not only do you have a UTI?
03:21It's preventative, so it's great for gut health.
03:24Now, if you have a UTI, what do you recommend?
03:27We recommend going to your doctor first and foremost.
03:29And if you have an active UTI,
03:31that's where antibiotics are great.
03:33However, we focus on the prevention side of things.
03:35But why can't someone like a palm
03:37just do cranberry juice,
03:39literally do the exact same thing,
03:41and they have the money to market it?
03:43What's special about this?
03:44Because you certainly can't patent it.
03:46So our cranberry blend is proprietary to us,
03:49so we extract the active ingredient.
03:51So one of these shots is equal to 60 bottles
03:53of typical cranberry juice or 10 cranberry tablets,
03:56and that's a trade secret that we own.
03:58We tested it for specific polyphenols
04:00for muscle recovery,
04:01and it is 12 times stronger than tart cherry juice.
04:03What are your sales?
04:05Our lifetime sales are 3.5 million.
04:07Whoa.
04:07And that's from when to when?
04:08So in 2021, we did 47,000,
04:12and then we went to 447,000.
04:14Whoa.
04:14And then 1.3 million.
04:16What will you do this year?
04:172 million.
04:18And what will you make on the 2 million?
04:20Well, last year,
04:21we currently have a cash run of $16,000.
04:23So last year, you lost money.
04:25Yes.
04:25How much did you lose?
04:26$16,000 a month.
04:28Why are you losing money?
04:29Wow, you lost, like, $200,000 last year.
04:32Why, yeah, why are you losing money?
04:33We're investing a lot in growth and advertising.
04:36And what are you paying in your advertising?
04:38Did you hire an agency?
04:40We do it all ourselves.
04:41We're our own influencers,
04:42so we have over 50 million views
04:44across TikTok and Instagram ourselves,
04:45and we'll never put money behind an ad
04:47unless it works first on our TikToks.
04:49But, Christina, how much did you buy
04:50in ad spend last year?
04:52We spent about $500,000 on ads last year.
04:54That's where the money's going.
04:55So you spent $500,000 to get $1.3 million, right?
04:59Correct.
05:00And your margin's what on this?
05:01So one of these to make is $2.14,
05:03but our bestseller is that four-pack.
05:05And so that four-pack is about $15.
05:07And then fully landed, we have about a 55% margin.
05:10I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around this
05:13because I don't know the difference between this
05:15or if I go into Whole Foods and I buy something
05:17that's 100% cranberry juice.
05:19So what's the elevator pitch for the value proposition on this?
05:23I think, well, for us personally,
05:24it's building the brand and educating customers is crucial,
05:27which we try to do across social media
05:28so they know that one shot is equal to 60 bottles
05:31of that organic cranberry at Whole Foods.
05:32So I'm in the beverage space.
05:34Yeah.
05:34Obviously alcohol, right?
05:36Bourbon is technically the category of Tennessee whiskey.
05:39Yeah.
05:40And I put on my label premium whiskey.
05:43I didn't explain one or the other
05:46because education is expensive.
05:50And so my concern is if you are required to explain,
05:55that just costs you a lot of money.
05:57So is there a way for this value proposition to make sense
06:02without you needing to educate the consumer?
06:04With all of our different use cases,
06:06I think that's where we can use, you know, influencers.
06:08And I think women who recurrently get UTIs come to us
06:13and they know why this is different
06:14and then they put it on their social media.
06:16But I think Fawn is right.
06:17It's going to take a lot to educate.
06:19Erica, let me ask you, this year you think you'll do about $2 million.
06:22What will you spend this year on advertising?
06:24We're now spending like $12,000 a month on ads.
06:27So you're going to grow revenue by about almost 50%
06:31and you've cut ad spend by 70%.
06:35Yeah, we just find like TikTok and Instagram are higher returning
06:38because people, if they see it's an ad, they scroll past.
06:40Whereas if they find it organically on TikTok,
06:42then they are high intent searching on Google,
06:44which we pay for like our brand for high intent terms like UTI.
06:47How many followers do you have on any of those platforms?
06:49We have 50,000 followers and we have over 100,000 email subscribers.
06:52Is that 50,000 you collectively plus the business or just the business?
06:56The business.
06:56How many do you have combined?
06:58We mostly just post through the business.
07:00Yeah, through the business.
07:00How much money did you raise to start this?
07:03So we raised 1.1 million in total.
07:051.1 million?
07:06Largely from strategic angels.
07:08I will order this because I know that it's going to make me healthier and stronger,
07:12but I want to be a user of it, not an investor of it.
07:16I'm out.
07:17I very much believe in what you're doing and where you're going.
07:20I actually don't think it tastes bad.
07:22You've raised a lot of money.
07:24You spend half a million dollars on ad spend to get to 1.3 million.
07:27But then you're switching the story and saying,
07:31we're going to go all social and we're cutting the ad spend.
07:35I don't think you've quite figured out the strategy.
07:37You're in this in-between phase.
07:39I'm out.
07:41So where I am concerned is that the two of you have not created a following.
07:47Your business has a following.
07:49And no matter what, you're never going to be able to beat the algorithms.
07:53And the algorithms will always ding businesses.
07:55So you have to figure out how to make yourselves the stars of the brand.
08:00Great point.
08:01But you still have the issue of any of the bigger guys can knock you off.
08:05And for that reason, I'm out.
08:08Christine and Erica, this is a hard one because I like your product and I like you.
08:13But your journey indicates that there's way too much work for you to figure out
08:17before you can bring in an investor.
08:19I wish you the best of luck, but I'm out.
08:23Thank you for the education.
08:24So much.
08:26Kevin out.
08:27Yes.
08:31I think the advice will take definitely from Fawn.
08:34We built an amazing brand with Cronel, but we can start building our own personal brands
08:39and really connect with the customer.
08:42Kevin, did you ever say you were out?
08:43No, I never said I was out.
08:44In 17 years, this is the first time someone walked out of here without even waiting to
08:50see if you were in or out.
08:51I wanted to let them go because I didn't want to break their hearts.
08:55I thought he was out.
08:58I was born and raised in Pasadena, California.
09:01My father was a minister.
09:03My father was a pretty strict religious dad.
09:06It was a challenge growing up in a household with a lot of rules.
09:10When I was 15, they gave a pretty typical shape-up or ship-out conversation, and I chose the
09:16ship-out.
09:17I left home at 15.
09:18I moved to the projects, and I lived with some girls that I went to school with.
09:23I needed to forge my own path in this world.
09:26I worked all these odd-end jobs.
09:28Then I actually began interning for a PR firm.
09:31At 18, I founded my first company, Few Entertainment.
09:34It was a PR and special events firm.
09:37I ran that company for a while.
09:39Then I decided I would go into hospitality, and then I started Grant Sidney, Inc., a private
09:44investment firm, and began investing in real estate and stocks and a number of other things
09:49related.
09:50In 2016, I saw a photo of Jack Daniel and an African-American sitting next to him, and it
09:56was on the cover of the New York Times, and the headline read, Jack Daniels embraces a hidden
10:01ingredient help from a slave.
10:02I looked at the photo and said, this very well may be one of the first stories of allyship.
10:08And if I was right, I wanted to be able to tell that story.
10:11I went to Lynchburg, Tennessee.
10:13I began meeting with Nears Green's descendants, with Jack Daniels' descendants, and never left.
10:17Nears Green is the first known African-American master distiller.
10:21He brought with him a process that came into America with the West Africans, taking traditional
10:26bourbon distillate and running it through sugar maple charcoal to purify it.
10:30So I ended up writing a New York Times bestselling book, buying the 313-acre property that held
10:36the original Jack Daniels distillery.
10:38I founded Uncle Nears Premium Whiskey and started Nears Green Distillery.
10:43We are the fastest growing distillery in America.
10:46We are the seventh most visited distillery in the world.
10:49We are sold in over 50,000 locations, and we are the largest black-owned spirit brand of
10:55all time.
10:56So that if anything is wrong with it, we know exactly where it came from.
11:00I wanted to be a shark because I get to share with entrepreneurs the advice I wish that I
11:06had.
11:07I've come from odds that seem insurmountable, and so I see every challenge as an opportunity.
11:14Most entrepreneurs give up because they run into the most difficult challenges of their
11:19lives.
11:19So being able to be next to them and to say, I am giving you every reason to never give
11:26up.
11:26My hope is that every young person will see me in that shark chair and know no matter where
11:31they're coming from, they can still work their way to being in that chair.
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