September 26, 2022 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Fawn Weaver grew up the daughter of Motown Record royalty, Frank Wilson, but her parentage is only the beginning. From growing up, moving out young, and starting several business, she's learned lessons about equality, fitting in, fear, and much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habibe and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot com.
Your stories are some of our favorites. And today Robbie
(00:33):
brings us the story of Fawn Weaver. Here's Fawn to
tell us her story. It's time to make a change.
My father was one of the original Motown hit makers.
There are always Motown folks in the house. Everywhere you
(00:57):
would turn. There were gold and platinum records, and and
billboard that now distracts the top you know, one hundred
or top two hundred hits. They used to track producers
in the nation and who had the most hits. And
I remember looking at one of the placards one day
and going, hey, my dad was the number two producer
in the nation. But the irony is is that even
(01:21):
though we always had these people around, we were not
a part of it. The year that I was born,
nineteen seventy six, my father decided not to sign another
contract with Barry Gordy's and Motown, not for any reason
that you might hear out there in regard to Barry's
(01:42):
contracts and three sixty deals and all the rest that stuff.
My father was one of a very few number of
those in the very very beginning that may always maintained
his masters. It truly was just he felt as though
he had been called to ministry and away from the
music business. So if you can imagine that the year
(02:06):
that I was born, my mother and father had this
massive home on the top of the hill and Hollywood Hills,
and all the celebrities would come to their home. He'd
throw these huge parties and all the rest of that,
and then he decides, I am going to not sign
another contract. I've been called by God. God will make
(02:27):
a way for everything. Well, meanwhile, he doesn't have money
coming in. So you have two people who decided, all right,
God called us, We're going to leave all the money
that we have been making. But we still have all
these bills, we still have this lifestyle, we still have
these fancy cars, and so they it was an interesting
(02:51):
time because if you can imagine the amount of stress
that they were then under, because you've got all these bills,
you have all these people that are looking at you
as being this wealthy family, but meanwhile, you don't really
have gas for your car. And they had this store
at the bottom of the hill called I think it
was called the Country Mark. They had a grocery tab
(03:14):
there where they would get all their groceries and you know,
put it in the book and then they would pay
at the end of the month and keep going. And
so they did that for several months after this transition,
and finally the store owner said to my dad one day, hey, Frank,
I've noticed you've not paid your bill in a while.
And so my parents had to figure out, all right,
(03:34):
we feel like we've been called by God to minister
to the people that are in the industry where we
used to be, but we don't have the money to
pay for basic necessities. And this was the life I
was born into. And so they sold their home in
Hollywood Hills they moved to Pasadena and so we grew
(03:55):
up in this beautiful home where people thought we had
all this money, but then we didn't really have furniture,
and we didn't have sort of basic stuff. And I
remember learning for the first time that we actually technically,
on paper, had money. Because we were we would go
to school every day, we have like these terrible lunches
(04:15):
with you know, nothing good. And I wanted to get
food like all the other kids, and they had like
these lunch cards where they got all of the best
foods every day. And so I went back to my
mom and I said, hey, you know the kids, they
get these great lunches. We have these terrible lunches. If
we don't have money, can I just get those lunches?
And my mom said, we can't because we make too
(04:38):
much money for those. And I was like, what are
you talking about. We don't have any money. So that
that was that was my upbringing of absolute confusion. Really,
I look back at that and it formed every aspect
of how I live, of how I do business, of
my marriage, of every part of it. Because I require
(05:00):
quality from every person, no matter your background, no matter
your race, no matter how much money you come from
or have. Everybody is equal, and that is how I
treat everyone. There is no delineation for me. And I
think the more I live, the more I realize that
that's a gift. Because a lot of people count themselves out,
(05:20):
meaning they will not go for the job where they
won't start the business, or they won't bet on themselves
because they have these fears that I simply do not have.
It was an odd situation to be in where people
on the outside are looking at us and are like, yeah,
those Wilsons have a lot of money, but inside we're
(05:43):
doing flips and cartweels in this massive size living room
because there's really nothing in it but a piano and
a you know, and a plug in TV. It's funny
because I am utterly unimpressed with people in general, including myself,
and I think that's because of the way that I
(06:05):
grew up, like I don't. I have been in the
room with sitting presidents of the United States and I
call them by their first name, and my husband, he's
a babe. You're supposed to call them President so and so.
But I'm not wired that way because I grew up
with Uncle Stephen and Uncle Smoky. I did not. I
(06:25):
didn't grow up in such a way where I saw
people on levels. Everybody to me was equal, And my
father had this amazing gift of treating the president the
same exact way as he treated a janitor, and so
I have taken that with me, and so I don't
show any more respect for a person that is at
(06:46):
the top than I do, that's at the bottom, which
very much so confuses people at the top. I think,
I'm sure it does. And you're listening to Vaughn Weaver,
her dad, Frank Wilson, impresario at Motown Records, and just
suddenly drops the hammer and says, we're living for God
and so much for the material world. We'll figure it
(07:06):
all out. But it gave her a tremendous sense that
she had nothing to fear. And my goodness, it's the
greatest gift you can give a kid. It's to take
away irrational fear. It's a disease, actually, fear. It can
paralyze all of us. And what a gift a dad
could give a daughter to treat presidents and janitors the same.
More of this remarkable voice Fawn Weaver's story on Our
(07:27):
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(08:09):
And we're back with our American Stories and with the
story of Fawn Weaver. Her father had left the music
industry after having a successful producing career at Motown Records,
so that he and his wife could go into ministry.
Fawn was thrown into the confusion because her family appeared
to have money, but of course really didn't. However, the
(08:30):
lessons she learned, particularly about equality, they stick with her
to this day. We returned to Fawn to hear about
what it's like to be the kid of a minister.
I tease my parents, my father when he was alive,
but I'd still tease my mother that we were their
pastor's guinea pigs and so so pretty much because they
(08:55):
came from being in the entertainment industry with wild parties
and sex and drugs and roll and all the rest
of that stuff. And then you come into this Southern
Baptist type of situation, like out of all of the
denominations to choose, they chose Southern Baptist. I absolutely would
not listen to anybody the unless unless you could actually
(09:18):
make the argument to me as to why what you
are saying is correct, or why what you are saying
I should do. I would not do it. And so
I had authoritative parents who said, well, you should do
it because I said to do angle. Yeah, so that's
not going to work for me. I'm going to need
you to tell me the thinking behind why you're telling
me to do what you're doing. So, needless to say,
I bumped heads with my parents more than a little bit,
(09:42):
and it really came to a head when I was
fifteen years old and I left home. And I left
home and I moved in with some folks that were
in the projects, an area in Watt's called Jordan Downs.
So there are sort of two projects projects. One was
home of the Grape Street Crips, which is where I was,
(10:04):
and then across the way was Knickerson Gardens, home of
the Bounty Hunter Bloods. And so I, at fifteen years old,
move into this environment not really knowing anything about it,
only knowing that these kids at high school they had
parents that let them do whatever they wanted. And I
wanted freedom, and I wanted to make my own decision.
(10:26):
So I moved into the hood and realized very quickly
Number one, the hood has a lot of cockroaches that
I had never seen those before. But the second thing
was I realized very quickly how I did not fit in.
And I did not fit in for a couple of reasons,
one of which my grandmother is from Germany. My grandfather
(10:49):
was fighting in World War Two and he was stationed
in Germany. My grandmother is a blonde hair, blue eye
woman growing up under Hitler's regime who does not see
things the way that Hitler saw them, obviously, because she
fell in love with my grandfather. She couldn't speak English,
he couldn't speak German, and the entire time they were alive,
(11:12):
neither one of them could explain how in the world
they got together when neither one spoke the other's language,
and so they got married. They had my mother and
my mother's very fair skins as a result of that relationship.
So then I am not fair skinned, but I've got
bright green eyes and light colored hair. And so when
(11:33):
I moved into Jordan Downs, I didn't realize I looked different,
but I was at a concert at in the Projects
one day and literally the guy from stage, he's rapping
and I'm enjoying, and he looks me dead in the
eyes with all these people around, and he says, we
have a half breed in the house. I didn't even
know what a half breed was. And I'm looking around
(11:56):
and everyone's looking at me. And it was a very
pivotal moment from because I realized, Okay, I don't I
don't fit in, and I did not realize I didn't
fit in. So I'm in an environment where I'm surrounded
by African Americans, but realized they didn't see me as
fully African American, and that was an interesting lesson. So
(12:18):
I go from there, and I go and I stay
with another person who I had met through school, similar situation,
and then she had an abusive boyfriend who came over
with a knife one day. So that didn't work out,
and so I moved at the age of seventeen, almost
(12:40):
about to be eighteen, and to a home called Children
of the Night. But I didn't fit in there either,
because Children of the Night is specifically a homeless shelter
for people who were prostitutes, and people have been trafficked
and things of that nature. And so I'm in this
environment because it's the only place that had a bed
for me. And rather than go back home where I
(13:03):
would go toe to toe with my parents, I really
wanted to set out on a life of my own.
So I made that decision. But Children of the Night,
when you turn eighteen, you must move, and so as
soon as I turned eighteen, I moved to a place
called Covenant House, which is an amazing organization for kids
(13:24):
who are eighteen and older who find themselves homeless for
whatever reason. There's no judgment, so we're all in this location,
Covenant House, and they had a program where it's set
up where you go out every day and you look
for a job, and you come back and if you
get a job, they hold your money for you, basically
in a savings account to allow you to say for
(13:46):
your own place, which I absolutely loved. There were two
things that I discovered while being at Covenant House. Number One,
the current theme of I didn't fit in and I
did not seem to be the same as the people
around me. And I learned that on my first day
of being there, we all had to go out and
look for jobs and so we all went out, we
(14:07):
looked for jobs. We came back and we sat around
this sort of campfire, and this, I mean, this isn't
a small organization. This is over one hundred kids that
are or eighteen too, i'd say early twenties. We're all
sitting around at least one hundred of us, and everyone
is talking about their challenges of getting a job that
day and how they weren't able to get a job
(14:28):
that day. And I literally sat silent. And the reason
I sat silent as I went out to get a
job and I came back with four And the second
thing that I discovered is in my relationship with money.
I didn't care about it other than to have the
ability to have to be able to be free, and
to have my own place and things of that nature.
(14:48):
So I saved up money very quickly and was able
to move out because every day I went to multiple
jobs and I saved my money and I went out.
I was able to get my own place and to
begin and living my own life. But that was my
road through my teenage years, through my teenage years, and
(15:10):
then I started my own company after saving money and
working multiple jobs rather than going and working for someone else.
I realized, so far, I've not been like everyone else.
I've been a leader in every single situation I've been
in since I was a kid. I think this is
(15:32):
the way I'm wired. And so I started a PR
and special events firm, and not surprising because of the
circles that I was in that when I did special
events there was usually some type of celebrity involved in it,
and so in that regard, I definitely had a headstart
in that. I also my office was actually my father's
(15:57):
office in Pasadena. He wasn't using it and it just
sort of a vacant office. I said, hey, I'm going
to start a business. You're not using this office, I
can I take it over from my own company, and
so that is what I did, and that's how I began.
I was quite young, and like most young people, you
(16:18):
don't know what you're doing, and so you're going to
fail a few times before you actually get it right.
In that instance, I hired I think I think I
had ten people working for me before I was like twenty.
Just absolutely absurd. And so I've I've learned how to
do things better, to say the least, leaving home so
(16:38):
early and having to really fend for myself. It gave
me a I think it underscored the confidence that I
already had. And I don't think that that would have
happened if I had gone the normal route of staying
at home until I was eighteen or seventeen and going
to college and four years in college and going that path.
(17:00):
I don't think that the way that I look at life,
my optimism in looking at everything and saying, no matter
how difficult things are, they can absolutely get better, and
they will get better. And I know this because I've
been there, and so having that background I think allows
me to be My husband refers to me, or when
(17:22):
he's describing to me eat to other people, he'll refer
to me as unflappable. And I think that that comes
from that upbringing and everything that I saw once I
left home. And you've been listening to Fawn Weaver and
unflappable indeed my goodness to leave home at that age
(17:43):
and to experience what she experienced and to do it well,
just to do it. When we come back more on
this remarkable story, Fawn Weaver's story here on our American Story,
(18:08):
and we're back with the conclusion of Fawn Weaver's story
here on our American Stories. He was born to Motown Royalty,
left home at an early age, realized she was different,
and not just different, but like didn't fit in anywhere.
By the age of twenty, having forged an identity of
her own, she decided to own her own company. And
(18:31):
that's so impressive, meeting payroll at the age of twenty
and has been an investor and business owner ever since.
Here she is to tell us about her career. I
think that failure is an incredible teacher. Now, don't get
me wrong, I think success is a better teacher. However,
(18:55):
I do believe that there are certain lessons that those
who fail. Early on on my phone, the very first
picture that is on there if you open up my
album says fail Harder. And I have this true belief
that if you wake up every single day and you
give every day you're all and you are not afraid
(19:17):
to fail, what you're able to achieve is remarkable. And
I wake up and folks will look at the way
that I do things and think that I am fearless,
which is not true. That's not accurate. I am not fearless.
I simply do not allow fear to dictate what I
do and do not do. Every morning when I wake up,
(19:39):
I am very clear about why I am here and
to have that purpose driven life is one of the
greatest gifts I think any of us are given if
we really lean into that. So for me, I would
say the failure of my first company, the failure of
my second company, the failure of my third company, and
(20:01):
I never stopped trying until I found the space that
worked for me. The irony of it all is every
single thing that I did that I failed in is
what I am using now. It is what has allowed
for my company now and the way that I do things,
for us to grow so quickly, for us to be
(20:22):
the fastest growing independent American whiskey brand in US history
does not just happen. That is literally everything that I
learned from every failure is now working altogether to create success.
And I think that that's the way that it works.
(20:42):
The PR and special events business, well, the beauty is
is that every business, every brand that I've ever invested in,
that I've ever run strategy for I use PR as
the number one way to talk about the brand. I
will not sell something I do not absolutely believe in
(21:06):
and so the ability to share the story behind a
brand is something that I honed back then and it
is something that I rely on now. My second company
was called City of David and it was a Christian
clothing company, and it was really me putting my heart
(21:27):
on my wear. It was one of those things where
I had an idea and it was a great idea,
but I did not put together a plan to roll
it out. I put together a plan to basically do
the product line, but I didn't put together the plan
to roll it out. And it's very similar to my
(21:48):
PR and special events firm is I knew how to
do it. I knew what I was doing, but I
didn't put together a plan to actually succeed and to
know what could the overhead be that I could afford.
Verse is taking on ten employees right out the gate.
And so with each of these things, it's not that
the idea would not have been a successful idea. It's
(22:08):
that I did not take the time to put together
all of the pieces that would have been required to succeed.
My third was an investment in a fine dining restaurant.
Everything was clicking on all cylinders on that particular one.
But what I discovered on that one and on another
(22:32):
investment that I have made, is you can't really invest
in a product or a type or you have to
invest in the person. And if the person, if that
founder that you're investing in, is not one hundred percent ready,
then the business will fail. And after years of backing
(22:54):
other people, it was time for a change, whether Fawn
wanted it or not. On a vacation that was meant
to be a step away from work, Fawn came across
the story of Nathan Nearest Green, the former slave who
was the first black master distiller in the US and
the first master distiller of his close friend, a man
named Jack Daniels. And since discovering Uncle Near's story, She's
(23:16):
begun a book, secured movie rights, started the fastest growing
and most awarded New American whiskey brand in United States history,
and much more. But I have always intentionally had my
name in the background, not in the background, like non existent.
And the one thing that the Uncle Near's team they
(23:37):
laugh at it, it's a constant conversation, is me trying
to get to the background. Again. This is a brand
that when I founded it, the second person I hired
was a spokesperson. I was never ever, ever wanting to
be in the forefront. When we send out the press releases,
(23:57):
no one would speak to the spokesperson. Everyone wanted to
talk to the founder. So it thrust me into a
space that I never really wanted to be in, and
I actually still don't want to be in it. One
of the things that I discovered early on in this process,
because initially I had put so much weight to the
(24:18):
book and the movie in thinking that's the way it
needed to be told, that was what was important. And
then I went with Nearest's family to go see Hidden Figures.
It was absolutely phenomenal. We sat there, we cried, we laughed,
we cheered, we jeered, we did all of that. And
then when we left out, we were in the lobby
of the theater and I remember telling Nearest's descendants, I said,
(24:42):
this is how the movie has to be. And so
we leave and we're so excited. And I actually secured
the agents, the same agency who repped both the book
for Hidden Figures and put together the deal for the film. However,
a couple of months after, I remember trying to remember
(25:03):
the name of the people that Octavia Spencer, Taraji p Henson,
and Janelle Monet played. Those were the three stars, and
I absolutely could not remember the name of the people
who they were playing. So you have an entire film
(25:24):
that swept the world and everybody was learning about these
three women, and it was just an incredible film, and
yet I couldn't name any of the people who the
stars played. The challenge with entertainment at this time, in
this day and age is it's replaced very easily. So
(25:49):
what is the story of today. A couple of years
from now, nobody's going to remember who that person was.
It's going to be replaced with other entertainment. And what
we realized is the reason why Jack Daniel, Jim Beam,
Johnny Walker, the reason why we're still talking about all
of those guys as we're still drinking from bottles with
their names on it. That's where we shifted and we
(26:10):
began to pivot from the book and the movie having
as great of a significance. We're still going to do it,
but it is obviously this has kind of taken a
little bit of attention. But what we realized very early
on is the legacy of Nearest Green would not live
in a book or a movie. It will be there,
but that's not where it will live. When we're looking
(26:30):
at people still knowing and talking about him and his
legacy two hundred years from now. The only way it
could happen is if his bottle is sitting right next
to Jim, Johnny and Jack. And you've been listening to
Fawn Weaver's story. What a remarkable voice, What a distinctive journey,
not fitting in, cutting out on her own, failing, learning
(26:51):
from that failure, and applying it all to a big
move in her life, from the Hollywood Hills of Los
Angeles to a place called Lynchburg, ten See, where she
started a whiskey company, and my goodness, Uncle Nearest, Premium
Whiskey upon Weaver's story, a remarkable story, an American dream
(27:12):
lived beautifully here on our American stories
This is Lee Habibe and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot com.
Your stories are some of our favorites. And today Robbie
(00:33):
brings us the story of Fawn Weaver. Here's Fawn to
tell us her story. It's time to make a change.
My father was one of the original Motown hit makers.
There are always Motown folks in the house. Everywhere you
(00:57):
would turn. There were gold and platinum records, and and
billboard that now distracts the top you know, one hundred
or top two hundred hits. They used to track producers
in the nation and who had the most hits. And
I remember looking at one of the placards one day
and going, hey, my dad was the number two producer
in the nation. But the irony is is that even
(01:21):
though we always had these people around, we were not
a part of it. The year that I was born,
nineteen seventy six, my father decided not to sign another
contract with Barry Gordy's and Motown, not for any reason
that you might hear out there in regard to Barry's
(01:42):
contracts and three sixty deals and all the rest that stuff.
My father was one of a very few number of
those in the very very beginning that may always maintained
his masters. It truly was just he felt as though
he had been called to ministry and away from the
music business. So if you can imagine that the year
(02:06):
that I was born, my mother and father had this
massive home on the top of the hill and Hollywood Hills,
and all the celebrities would come to their home. He'd
throw these huge parties and all the rest of that,
and then he decides, I am going to not sign
another contract. I've been called by God. God will make
(02:27):
a way for everything. Well, meanwhile, he doesn't have money
coming in. So you have two people who decided, all right,
God called us, We're going to leave all the money
that we have been making. But we still have all
these bills, we still have this lifestyle, we still have
these fancy cars, and so they it was an interesting
(02:51):
time because if you can imagine the amount of stress
that they were then under, because you've got all these bills,
you have all these people that are looking at you
as being this wealthy family, but meanwhile, you don't really
have gas for your car. And they had this store
at the bottom of the hill called I think it
was called the Country Mark. They had a grocery tab
(03:14):
there where they would get all their groceries and you know,
put it in the book and then they would pay
at the end of the month and keep going. And
so they did that for several months after this transition,
and finally the store owner said to my dad one day, hey, Frank,
I've noticed you've not paid your bill in a while.
And so my parents had to figure out, all right,
(03:34):
we feel like we've been called by God to minister
to the people that are in the industry where we
used to be, but we don't have the money to
pay for basic necessities. And this was the life I
was born into. And so they sold their home in
Hollywood Hills they moved to Pasadena and so we grew
(03:55):
up in this beautiful home where people thought we had
all this money, but then we didn't really have furniture,
and we didn't have sort of basic stuff. And I
remember learning for the first time that we actually technically,
on paper, had money. Because we were we would go
to school every day, we have like these terrible lunches
(04:15):
with you know, nothing good. And I wanted to get
food like all the other kids, and they had like
these lunch cards where they got all of the best
foods every day. And so I went back to my
mom and I said, hey, you know the kids, they
get these great lunches. We have these terrible lunches. If
we don't have money, can I just get those lunches?
And my mom said, we can't because we make too
(04:38):
much money for those. And I was like, what are
you talking about. We don't have any money. So that
that was that was my upbringing of absolute confusion. Really,
I look back at that and it formed every aspect
of how I live, of how I do business, of
my marriage, of every part of it. Because I require
(05:00):
quality from every person, no matter your background, no matter
your race, no matter how much money you come from
or have. Everybody is equal, and that is how I
treat everyone. There is no delineation for me. And I
think the more I live, the more I realize that
that's a gift. Because a lot of people count themselves out,
(05:20):
meaning they will not go for the job where they
won't start the business, or they won't bet on themselves
because they have these fears that I simply do not have.
It was an odd situation to be in where people
on the outside are looking at us and are like, yeah,
those Wilsons have a lot of money, but inside we're
(05:43):
doing flips and cartweels in this massive size living room
because there's really nothing in it but a piano and
a you know, and a plug in TV. It's funny
because I am utterly unimpressed with people in general, including myself,
and I think that's because of the way that I
(06:05):
grew up, like I don't. I have been in the
room with sitting presidents of the United States and I
call them by their first name, and my husband, he's
a babe. You're supposed to call them President so and so.
But I'm not wired that way because I grew up
with Uncle Stephen and Uncle Smoky. I did not. I
(06:25):
didn't grow up in such a way where I saw
people on levels. Everybody to me was equal, And my
father had this amazing gift of treating the president the
same exact way as he treated a janitor, and so
I have taken that with me, and so I don't
show any more respect for a person that is at
(06:46):
the top than I do, that's at the bottom, which
very much so confuses people at the top. I think,
I'm sure it does. And you're listening to Vaughn Weaver,
her dad, Frank Wilson, impresario at Motown Records, and just
suddenly drops the hammer and says, we're living for God
and so much for the material world. We'll figure it
(07:06):
all out. But it gave her a tremendous sense that
she had nothing to fear. And my goodness, it's the
greatest gift you can give a kid. It's to take
away irrational fear. It's a disease, actually, fear. It can
paralyze all of us. And what a gift a dad
could give a daughter to treat presidents and janitors the same.
More of this remarkable voice Fawn Weaver's story on Our
(07:27):
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(08:09):
And we're back with our American Stories and with the
story of Fawn Weaver. Her father had left the music
industry after having a successful producing career at Motown Records,
so that he and his wife could go into ministry.
Fawn was thrown into the confusion because her family appeared
to have money, but of course really didn't. However, the
(08:30):
lessons she learned, particularly about equality, they stick with her
to this day. We returned to Fawn to hear about
what it's like to be the kid of a minister.
I tease my parents, my father when he was alive,
but I'd still tease my mother that we were their
pastor's guinea pigs and so so pretty much because they
(08:55):
came from being in the entertainment industry with wild parties
and sex and drugs and roll and all the rest
of that stuff. And then you come into this Southern
Baptist type of situation, like out of all of the
denominations to choose, they chose Southern Baptist. I absolutely would
not listen to anybody the unless unless you could actually
(09:18):
make the argument to me as to why what you
are saying is correct, or why what you are saying
I should do. I would not do it. And so
I had authoritative parents who said, well, you should do
it because I said to do angle. Yeah, so that's
not going to work for me. I'm going to need
you to tell me the thinking behind why you're telling
me to do what you're doing. So, needless to say,
I bumped heads with my parents more than a little bit,
(09:42):
and it really came to a head when I was
fifteen years old and I left home. And I left
home and I moved in with some folks that were
in the projects, an area in Watt's called Jordan Downs.
So there are sort of two projects projects. One was
home of the Grape Street Crips, which is where I was,
(10:04):
and then across the way was Knickerson Gardens, home of
the Bounty Hunter Bloods. And so I, at fifteen years old,
move into this environment not really knowing anything about it,
only knowing that these kids at high school they had
parents that let them do whatever they wanted. And I
wanted freedom, and I wanted to make my own decision.
(10:26):
So I moved into the hood and realized very quickly
Number one, the hood has a lot of cockroaches that
I had never seen those before. But the second thing
was I realized very quickly how I did not fit in.
And I did not fit in for a couple of reasons,
one of which my grandmother is from Germany. My grandfather
(10:49):
was fighting in World War Two and he was stationed
in Germany. My grandmother is a blonde hair, blue eye
woman growing up under Hitler's regime who does not see
things the way that Hitler saw them, obviously, because she
fell in love with my grandfather. She couldn't speak English,
he couldn't speak German, and the entire time they were alive,
(11:12):
neither one of them could explain how in the world
they got together when neither one spoke the other's language,
and so they got married. They had my mother and
my mother's very fair skins as a result of that relationship.
So then I am not fair skinned, but I've got
bright green eyes and light colored hair. And so when
(11:33):
I moved into Jordan Downs, I didn't realize I looked different,
but I was at a concert at in the Projects
one day and literally the guy from stage, he's rapping
and I'm enjoying, and he looks me dead in the
eyes with all these people around, and he says, we
have a half breed in the house. I didn't even
know what a half breed was. And I'm looking around
(11:56):
and everyone's looking at me. And it was a very
pivotal moment from because I realized, Okay, I don't I
don't fit in, and I did not realize I didn't
fit in. So I'm in an environment where I'm surrounded
by African Americans, but realized they didn't see me as
fully African American, and that was an interesting lesson. So
(12:18):
I go from there, and I go and I stay
with another person who I had met through school, similar situation,
and then she had an abusive boyfriend who came over
with a knife one day. So that didn't work out,
and so I moved at the age of seventeen, almost
(12:40):
about to be eighteen, and to a home called Children
of the Night. But I didn't fit in there either,
because Children of the Night is specifically a homeless shelter
for people who were prostitutes, and people have been trafficked
and things of that nature. And so I'm in this
environment because it's the only place that had a bed
for me. And rather than go back home where I
(13:03):
would go toe to toe with my parents, I really
wanted to set out on a life of my own.
So I made that decision. But Children of the Night,
when you turn eighteen, you must move, and so as
soon as I turned eighteen, I moved to a place
called Covenant House, which is an amazing organization for kids
(13:24):
who are eighteen and older who find themselves homeless for
whatever reason. There's no judgment, so we're all in this location,
Covenant House, and they had a program where it's set
up where you go out every day and you look
for a job, and you come back and if you
get a job, they hold your money for you, basically
in a savings account to allow you to say for
(13:46):
your own place, which I absolutely loved. There were two
things that I discovered while being at Covenant House. Number One,
the current theme of I didn't fit in and I
did not seem to be the same as the people
around me. And I learned that on my first day
of being there, we all had to go out and
look for jobs and so we all went out, we
(14:07):
looked for jobs. We came back and we sat around
this sort of campfire, and this, I mean, this isn't
a small organization. This is over one hundred kids that
are or eighteen too, i'd say early twenties. We're all
sitting around at least one hundred of us, and everyone
is talking about their challenges of getting a job that
day and how they weren't able to get a job
(14:28):
that day. And I literally sat silent. And the reason
I sat silent as I went out to get a
job and I came back with four And the second
thing that I discovered is in my relationship with money.
I didn't care about it other than to have the
ability to have to be able to be free, and
to have my own place and things of that nature.
(14:48):
So I saved up money very quickly and was able
to move out because every day I went to multiple
jobs and I saved my money and I went out.
I was able to get my own place and to
begin and living my own life. But that was my
road through my teenage years, through my teenage years, and
(15:10):
then I started my own company after saving money and
working multiple jobs rather than going and working for someone else.
I realized, so far, I've not been like everyone else.
I've been a leader in every single situation I've been
in since I was a kid. I think this is
(15:32):
the way I'm wired. And so I started a PR
and special events firm, and not surprising because of the
circles that I was in that when I did special
events there was usually some type of celebrity involved in it,
and so in that regard, I definitely had a headstart
in that. I also my office was actually my father's
(15:57):
office in Pasadena. He wasn't using it and it just
sort of a vacant office. I said, hey, I'm going
to start a business. You're not using this office, I
can I take it over from my own company, and
so that is what I did, and that's how I began.
I was quite young, and like most young people, you
(16:18):
don't know what you're doing, and so you're going to
fail a few times before you actually get it right.
In that instance, I hired I think I think I
had ten people working for me before I was like twenty.
Just absolutely absurd. And so I've I've learned how to
do things better, to say the least, leaving home so
(16:38):
early and having to really fend for myself. It gave
me a I think it underscored the confidence that I
already had. And I don't think that that would have
happened if I had gone the normal route of staying
at home until I was eighteen or seventeen and going
to college and four years in college and going that path.
(17:00):
I don't think that the way that I look at life,
my optimism in looking at everything and saying, no matter
how difficult things are, they can absolutely get better, and
they will get better. And I know this because I've
been there, and so having that background I think allows
me to be My husband refers to me, or when
(17:22):
he's describing to me eat to other people, he'll refer
to me as unflappable. And I think that that comes
from that upbringing and everything that I saw once I
left home. And you've been listening to Fawn Weaver and
unflappable indeed my goodness to leave home at that age
(17:43):
and to experience what she experienced and to do it well,
just to do it. When we come back more on
this remarkable story, Fawn Weaver's story here on our American Story,
(18:08):
and we're back with the conclusion of Fawn Weaver's story
here on our American Stories. He was born to Motown Royalty,
left home at an early age, realized she was different,
and not just different, but like didn't fit in anywhere.
By the age of twenty, having forged an identity of
her own, she decided to own her own company. And
(18:31):
that's so impressive, meeting payroll at the age of twenty
and has been an investor and business owner ever since.
Here she is to tell us about her career. I
think that failure is an incredible teacher. Now, don't get
me wrong, I think success is a better teacher. However,
(18:55):
I do believe that there are certain lessons that those
who fail. Early on on my phone, the very first
picture that is on there if you open up my
album says fail Harder. And I have this true belief
that if you wake up every single day and you
give every day you're all and you are not afraid
(19:17):
to fail, what you're able to achieve is remarkable. And
I wake up and folks will look at the way
that I do things and think that I am fearless,
which is not true. That's not accurate. I am not fearless.
I simply do not allow fear to dictate what I
do and do not do. Every morning when I wake up,
(19:39):
I am very clear about why I am here and
to have that purpose driven life is one of the
greatest gifts I think any of us are given if
we really lean into that. So for me, I would
say the failure of my first company, the failure of
my second company, the failure of my third company, and
(20:01):
I never stopped trying until I found the space that
worked for me. The irony of it all is every
single thing that I did that I failed in is
what I am using now. It is what has allowed
for my company now and the way that I do things,
for us to grow so quickly, for us to be
(20:22):
the fastest growing independent American whiskey brand in US history
does not just happen. That is literally everything that I
learned from every failure is now working altogether to create success.
And I think that that's the way that it works.
(20:42):
The PR and special events business, well, the beauty is
is that every business, every brand that I've ever invested in,
that I've ever run strategy for I use PR as
the number one way to talk about the brand. I
will not sell something I do not absolutely believe in
(21:06):
and so the ability to share the story behind a
brand is something that I honed back then and it
is something that I rely on now. My second company
was called City of David and it was a Christian
clothing company, and it was really me putting my heart
(21:27):
on my wear. It was one of those things where
I had an idea and it was a great idea,
but I did not put together a plan to roll
it out. I put together a plan to basically do
the product line, but I didn't put together the plan
to roll it out. And it's very similar to my
(21:48):
PR and special events firm is I knew how to
do it. I knew what I was doing, but I
didn't put together a plan to actually succeed and to
know what could the overhead be that I could afford.
Verse is taking on ten employees right out the gate.
And so with each of these things, it's not that
the idea would not have been a successful idea. It's
(22:08):
that I did not take the time to put together
all of the pieces that would have been required to succeed.
My third was an investment in a fine dining restaurant.
Everything was clicking on all cylinders on that particular one.
But what I discovered on that one and on another
(22:32):
investment that I have made, is you can't really invest
in a product or a type or you have to
invest in the person. And if the person, if that
founder that you're investing in, is not one hundred percent ready,
then the business will fail. And after years of backing
(22:54):
other people, it was time for a change, whether Fawn
wanted it or not. On a vacation that was meant
to be a step away from work, Fawn came across
the story of Nathan Nearest Green, the former slave who
was the first black master distiller in the US and
the first master distiller of his close friend, a man
named Jack Daniels. And since discovering Uncle Near's story, She's
(23:16):
begun a book, secured movie rights, started the fastest growing
and most awarded New American whiskey brand in United States history,
and much more. But I have always intentionally had my
name in the background, not in the background, like non existent.
And the one thing that the Uncle Near's team they
(23:37):
laugh at it, it's a constant conversation, is me trying
to get to the background. Again. This is a brand
that when I founded it, the second person I hired
was a spokesperson. I was never ever, ever wanting to
be in the forefront. When we send out the press releases,
(23:57):
no one would speak to the spokesperson. Everyone wanted to
talk to the founder. So it thrust me into a
space that I never really wanted to be in, and
I actually still don't want to be in it. One
of the things that I discovered early on in this process,
because initially I had put so much weight to the
(24:18):
book and the movie in thinking that's the way it
needed to be told, that was what was important. And
then I went with Nearest's family to go see Hidden Figures.
It was absolutely phenomenal. We sat there, we cried, we laughed,
we cheered, we jeered, we did all of that. And
then when we left out, we were in the lobby
of the theater and I remember telling Nearest's descendants, I said,
(24:42):
this is how the movie has to be. And so
we leave and we're so excited. And I actually secured
the agents, the same agency who repped both the book
for Hidden Figures and put together the deal for the film. However,
a couple of months after, I remember trying to remember
(25:03):
the name of the people that Octavia Spencer, Taraji p Henson,
and Janelle Monet played. Those were the three stars, and
I absolutely could not remember the name of the people
who they were playing. So you have an entire film
(25:24):
that swept the world and everybody was learning about these
three women, and it was just an incredible film, and
yet I couldn't name any of the people who the
stars played. The challenge with entertainment at this time, in
this day and age is it's replaced very easily. So
(25:49):
what is the story of today. A couple of years
from now, nobody's going to remember who that person was.
It's going to be replaced with other entertainment. And what
we realized is the reason why Jack Daniel, Jim Beam,
Johnny Walker, the reason why we're still talking about all
of those guys as we're still drinking from bottles with
their names on it. That's where we shifted and we
(26:10):
began to pivot from the book and the movie having
as great of a significance. We're still going to do it,
but it is obviously this has kind of taken a
little bit of attention. But what we realized very early
on is the legacy of Nearest Green would not live
in a book or a movie. It will be there,
but that's not where it will live. When we're looking
(26:30):
at people still knowing and talking about him and his
legacy two hundred years from now. The only way it
could happen is if his bottle is sitting right next
to Jim, Johnny and Jack. And you've been listening to
Fawn Weaver's story. What a remarkable voice, What a distinctive journey,
not fitting in, cutting out on her own, failing, learning
(26:51):
from that failure, and applying it all to a big
move in her life, from the Hollywood Hills of Los
Angeles to a place called Lynchburg, ten See, where she
started a whiskey company, and my goodness, Uncle Nearest, Premium
Whiskey upon Weaver's story, a remarkable story, an American dream
(27:12):
lived beautifully here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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