Erik Brine - WINGLORE SPIRITS CSO and Co-Founder

Speaker A: Ideas, inspiration, innovation. This is the game changer. And now here's your host, Chickie Fitzgerald.

Speaker B: I am so excited. Today we're doing a special series with game changing CEOs and founders. And I had, uh, the opportunity recently to meet winglor Spirits and am, uh, kind of in the process of meeting their whole team. And Eric is the second one that I have talked to. And Eric, I would love for you to tell me a little bit about your backstory and then how winglord came to be. And again, I think I asked you before we got on air, did you choose the team or did the team choose you?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. And there's a long story behind that. For us. I'm actually the cso. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer. Carlos is the CEO. There are four founders and we kind of divide and conquer on the C suite roles, trying to play to all of our strengths. And that goes a little bit to your question, uh, did we choose the team or did the team choose us? And how exactly did that work for us? Uh, and it's interesting, like you've heard before, we're a company founded by four pilots, um, three Air Force background, one Marine Corps background. Myself, I'm a heavy airlift driver, C5, C17s. Tripp, ah, is a F16 pilot. Stroke is an F15 pilot. And Carlos, our, ah, one Marine Corps brother, is, ah, an F18 pilot by background and trade. Um, and it was a little bit of both, I think. To answer your question, Tripp and I have known each other for almost 30 years. We went to college together. We've known each other since before our freshman year of college. We're stationed together on our first assignment. We're stationed again 10 years later. We were in each other's weddings. We live three blocks away from each other now in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Uh, we definitely chose each other, uh, for this effort. And we had actually been started down a road of developing and creating a whiskey company when we met Carlos and Stroke, who also chose each other. Um, they were on a similar path, a little bit different, uh, as you've heard us talk about. Rob Tripp Raymond is famous in the pilot community because of his musical talents. He's a great pilot and all, but he's really great musician. And that led us to do other things like start Operation Encore, a veteran music project, the nonprofit that we run. Um, but that has made him famous in the aviation community. And that's why Carlos originally reached out to us, is he knew and understood as we have, that music is really an important part of our culture and heritage as aviators, which a lot of people don't know.

Speaker B: And we're going to come back not only to that, but we're going to come back to the giving piece of it because I believe that that is part of what makes you guys game changers. So, uh, again, so why spirits? Why, why whiskey? And now, you know, you're kind of morphing into the single malt, uh, community, which is what attracted my husband. Uh, my husband and I are both investors in Winglor, and in the spirit of full disclosure, uh, he had been a very, very longtime Scotch drinker and got me interested, uh, in learning more about Scotch and in enjoying it. But we went on the bourbon trail a couple of years ago and there was no turning back for me. I am now a bourbon girl, three, through and through. So.

Speaker A: Well, I'm glad we can support both of you. That's really what we're here for. Uh, that, and that's wonderful to hear. And it's funny like the. I have great disparity in, in, in my life and in the people that are important to me. My mother loves the American single malt and my wife loves the, the bourbon. I can't really say which one I like better. You know, you're not supposed to choose between your children. Um, I love them equally. But, uh, it is interesting how people's, you know, flavor preferences and palates really, you know, edge towards one over the other for sure. Um, so, yeah, I mean, even to get back to your question earlier, we kind of initially, you know, each of us had chosen one of those partners for the long term and then found this partnership about three years ago, uh, where it made sense for us to get together. It's a small air force, it's a small aviation community. We, we each know people who knew each other, but we don't have that longer term relationship. But we've been able to form like this incredibly tight, uh, bond and shared decision to make a run at what we think is a pretty special company.

Speaker B: Right, right. So, uh, why the name Winglor?

Speaker A: Great question, and you're not the first one to ask that. And it's really for two reasons. The first reason is, particularly in the spirits industry, it's really hard to find a good name that's not taken or trademarked or something by somebody else. And this is, this trips up people regularly, right? They get started, they have a distillery or they start a brand and they don't go through the process appropriately and own their, their name. And it ruins companies. Um, so we were. We were very deliberate about that. And Carlos, in particular, had worked on this for years. So owning that intellectual property for any business owner, regardless of what field you're in, is critical. Right. And Carlos has been especially good at that, um, and he developed this. And one of the ways it's easy to come up with a, uh. Or easier to come up with a name that's not taken is to make one up.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I don't know that you can look up winglore and, uh, get a definition in the dictionary, but it's a combination of a couple words that should tell you what it means, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's at the heart of some of what's important to us, uh, as an aviator, as a pilot, as a military pilot, um, and important to us as a company. It is the stories and the tradition and the heritage of flight. That's what we look to embrace a little bit and is important to us for our company and also what we think of, uh, as our community. And we put this in our tagline. Our tagline is toasts, roasts, and Lore. Because it's all about toasting. To give respect, to give honors, to remember, um, roasting, uh, taking the piss out of each other whenever possible, Finding ways to make things funny. We work in a job that requires incredible precision, constant attention, incredible hard work. You have to take this job incredibly seriously if you're an aviator, but it doesn't mean you have to take yourself too seriously. So we double down on that. And it's important to us that we fully, uh, take our job seriously in the whiskey business, but we never take our. Ourselves too seriously. And if you follow us on social media, that will be quite apparent to you, I think, because we try to make it fun and funny, and that's part of the community piece and heritage piece, too, is that, um, people think the coolest thing about being a pilot is flying airplanes. And it's not. The coolest thing about being a pilot is being around other pilots. Uh, because you're with a group of people that obviously, flying airplanes is super cool, but you're around other people that love what they do, that care about what they do. They care about each other. And you fly, fight, and win as a team, and that is incredibly important. So part of, again, the reason that Spirits is such a big part of our community is because, you know, you fly and fight together, and when you get home, you debrief critically of each other and you celebrate and you mourn together. Um, you do all Those things usually over, hopefully, a cold beverage because it makes everything, uh, a little bit easier.

Speaker B: Well, I have to tell you, I've been a little bit jealous of you guys because, uh, as I mentioned, I encountered you because I invested in you. And I invested in you because you were part of a platform that we were getting ready to join called netcapital. And for those who aren't aware of these kinds of platforms, it used to be that when you wanted to invest in a company, you had to have a net worth of, I believe, a quarter of a million dollars or above. And you really couldn't invest seriously. Uh, well, you could as friends and family, but as an investor, you couldn't unless you could sign a statement saying that you could afford to lose it all.

Speaker A: Accredited investor is the term. Right?

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So a few years ago, uh, there was a law passed that allowed individuals to come in and do what's called crowdfunding. And some of you may be familiar with platforms that raise money for people who are in the hospital or different things. This isn't like that or Kickstarter, people who are, you know, like launching a products company. Um, this is different in that it actually caters to both audiences. Accredited investors can invest in that capital and also individuals. And the founder and the team gets to decide what the minimum investment is. And for our investment at Solutions, it's $99, which means that literally I can ask all of my friends and family to invest at the absolute minimum. And if they can afford more, great. And then we can also, once we've got momentum, we can go out. So a part of that process for me was thought, well, before we go live, I want to see what the communication is like with investors. And so I looked at all the companies and there's some pretty cool companies on Net Capital right now, but you are by far the coolest. Right. So, uh, so I, I went in and, and I invested personally. And then I was showing my husband the platform because of course, you know, we co own the company at the end of the day. And I said, well, you know, here, let me just show you what I did with Winkler. And he said, well, I want to invest. And so he created his own account and he, we participated in, uh. I know it wasn't your first call with what you, uh, term your ambassadors, your, uh, insider group. And it was just so much fun to see the humor, see the roasting, all of the things that you've just talked about. It left me wondering how I can create that same environment with the people who are in our inner circle. So bravo, uh, for doing that. Eric talked about the different roles that the four of you play. Why don't you walk me through that? And. And what? And a lot of people I have to back up and say this. I've interviewed a lot of people who have served our country, and, uh, interestingly enough, most of them have been very young. Uh, you know, they perhaps did one long tour of duty and then left. Um, but I have been so amazed at the skills that they leave the service with. And for you guys, I mean, you have all served for a long time, and so the skill sets that you have amassed, ah, aren't just, uh, in the cockpit right there. There are a broad range of skills that you've got to really employ when you're in the cockpit, when you're planning a mission, when you're responding to leadership that maybe is great or maybe is not. Right. So tell me about the four role that the four of you play and how do you divide the work that has to be done? Because I know you each also do other things still. You're not all doing this full time for sure.

Speaker A: So, I mean, the way that we divided it initially is Carlos, uh, was going to be the chief executive officer. He owned the intellectual property. He has the most background in the spirits industry. He worked for a number of years with his uncle who owns a tequila company when he first left the service. And Carlos, incredible guy, you know, Marine enlisted guy turned officer and F18 pilot and Russian linguist, like from East LA. He's an incredible, uh, story by himself. And one of the cool things I think is, is, is all of us have had taken very different paths in our military careers to get where we are. And everybody kind of has their own interesting story, but you got to divide up some roles to your point at the beginning, uh, of a, uh, of a startup and as you, you know, start a company. So Carlos was the. Going to be the chief executive officer. He had the, the most time and availability. And he had most recently ejected from an airplane, broke his back and neck. And we didn't think he'd ever fly an airplane again. Uh, so he had the most time. Turns out he was two years later flying airplanes again, which is absolutely crazy because I'm pretty sure if he ejects again, his body will just come apart in midair. Um, but that's the crazy things that we do in this space. Stroke, uh, originally came on as the coo. Um, I came out as the chief strategy office and Tripp as the chief Marketing office. But in reality like those are just names. As you know, in a startup with a small number of people running it, it's a pickup game. Right? And I'm um, like chief toilet cleaner and dog walker as well as whatever else needs to be done. Right. That's how it works in these things. And because to your point, um, one of the ways that we make this work and put a lot of our cap, the capital that we raise and our own funds into making this successful is by us continuing to do other jobs while we start this up. Now that's a different path for a lot of startups. And some startups, um, really like you have to either have saved your money, go all in, investors will expect that you don't take a salary and you're going to live and die on this hill. We did not take that approach at all. And I think there are lots of ways you can go about and be successful in this, but I think ours is a great one. We have the ability to bring bandwidth together of uh, several experienced and I think talented folks to dedicate significant bandwidth. But find the ability to do that because we can maintain our families and lifestyles. And we're at a point in our lives where we all have kids that are either in high school or college, um, where we can't say like, yeah, we're just not going to eat and sleep on couches. We're not 27 year olds in Silicon Valley or something Right now we're at a different point in our lives obviously, but some of us have military retirements already. Um, I, I and Stroke are still serving but um, it gives us the ability to give significant bandwidth without um, having to you know, sacrifice um, you know, or financially for our families, ah, at a critical point in our lives. So it really comes down to what do we need to get done this week. We do roughly find ourselves working in those portfolios. So the capital raise, the net capital piece is kind of in my job. Jar, uh, Tripp does handle a lot of the marketing where he runs a lot of the events that we do that are music and whiskey combined in particular because that's relevant for him, uh, for sure being uh, the, the Dos Gringos guy, um, where Carlos really does still handle a lot of the intellectual property. And we have a couple other important folks on our team that we brought in early that we knew was incredibly important. Jason Myers has come on board. We uh, we call him Ebby is his call sign and, and uh, he is our CFO and he handles a lot of Those chief operating officer type jobs as well. Super detail oriented guy. Exactly what we need. And then of course we have Amanda Beckwith, uh, who is our blender, master blender and really makes the liquid magic. We call her Ninja. Um, and you know, we couldn't make what's in the bottle without her. Right. She's absolutely critical to our team as well. And then like the, the team keeps getting, keeps getting bigger in part through those brand ambassadors. Um, and I think what we've done smartly, and this is probably important for anybody starting, uh, a business is we found really strong partnerships.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Other companies that we work with and, uh, rely on, um, any company is going to have the combination of suppliers and providers or customers, and getting good ones matter. And when you don't have good ones, and we've had this problem too, is move on and get a better one.

Speaker B: Well, and the importance of distribution, and again, sales is one thing. And particularly in your world, if you have a gorgeous bott and a great label, which you guys do, I mean, I absolutely love your stuff. You know, it can jump off the shelves, but it has to get on the shelves. Right. And so distribution partnerships, uh, are absolutely critical. And then, you know, again, I don't know if you're using supplier interchangeably with that, but suppliers of, you know, getting you the raw materials that you need, uh, to turn it into the magic is of course important. Um, I want to talk just a little bit because you guys, uh, at least, least by my measurement, you guys have been pretty successful at the net capital raise. Are you at that tipping point where you're going from tapping into your network and the people who know you and trust you and would invest just because of the four of you, you know, whether it's one, two or, or all four of you together, are you at that place where you are now reaching out? Uh, and I, I don't want to say blindly because it's not a blind exercise, but targeting investors who are interested in investing in spirits. Um, are you going outside again, of your internal network?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So we probably are at a point where maybe, um, 20 to 25% are folks that are in our network. So it's a lot of folks that are outside and that might be secondary or tertiary, uh, people in our community or that have heard from others. But it is getting to that point. We're approaching about 500 investors on net capital and 680,000 from the net capital raise. We were very lucky and we did a friends and family internal raise before we started net capital and this is one of the ways we knew we were onto something is we set out to, uh, over the first few months raise $750,000 and we raised $970,000 in three weeks, um, with like minimums of $25,000 investment. And that was surprising to us. Like more money came in than we were expecting. We're like, all right, how do we deal with this? We're going to take more money, are we not? We had some people that pissed at us because we didn't ask them for money. And I was like, I didn't think you had $25,000. Like, I don't know.

Speaker B: Uh, and that's the way I feel too. And we've done something similar. Um, we have a unique method within our company of tracking people's contributions because we, unlike, well, we're, we're a software company so we don't have to deal with physical product and physical distribution. Like, but, uh, but our, our main product is travel. And you know, everybody in the world travels for some reason or another. And every company in the world sells to people who traveler travel, including spirits companies who, you know, if you do have your own distillery at some point you have uh, visitors coming in and doing tastings and you know, so we, we actually love the sector for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, loving the product of course, but it's, it's a critical sector for us at Solutions because we want to be the ones powering the tasting rooms. And when people come in, if they're gonna spend time m tasting, you know, we're pretty sure that there is gonna be some number that will over imbibe and really shouldn't be driving even if they're local. Right. So finding a hotel nearby the distillery by the winery, uh, you know, is kind of part of what we do. But uh, what I was going to ask you, uh, well, let, let's just touch on that. Uh, so do you guys have your own distillery, your own physical facility, or are you partnering on that right now?

Speaker A: We, we are partnering on that and it's one of the things that has helped to make us uh, agile and be really in this startup space. Um, as a non distilling producer, we can work with lots of different distilleries and bring in high quality product. One of the concerns some people have, and I get asked this all the time in the investment space, isn't there a whiskey bust happening now? Or like, aren't people drinking less? Isn't that a problem for you? Why are you starting a company in this space now, um, and I've got a few answers to that and I would say that historically it shows that this is actually a pretty stable place. When times are good, people drink. When times are bad, people drink more. So I was going to say I

Speaker B: didn't think that was a trend. Right.

Speaker A: Um, but there are some trends and they're more nuanced than that. And one of the things that we find and data shows this is that, that people may be drinking less overall, which is probably a good thing, but they're drinking better, which is also a good thing. So people are much more likely to have a high quality, uh, beverage without a doubt, rather than, you know, there are a lot less, you know, Bud Coors Light drinkers and people drinking like a high end custom craft ipa. Similarly, people are drinking, you know, Jim Beam and are drinking a, uh, Blanton's or uh, something that's a, a better product.

Speaker B: Well, I, you know, that is so, so, so true, Eric. And uh, so I'm, I'm a 13 time founder and you know, so I definitely have the scars on my back to prove that. And after my last startup where I raised 7 million, put in a million of our own resources, lost everything, which is a story best over a very big bottle. I remember shopping at Aldi and you know, standing in front of the wine, you know, which is two buck check at its best, right. And I just said to my husband, can we just stop drinking wine until we can afford to buy decent stuff? And that was back when we, you know, every year we went to Napa Valley. And now, you know, we haven't been in Napa Valley in probably 10 years, but we can't wait for our next trip, uh, to go visit distilleries. Um, I started to tell you and I, uh, kind of dropped my story a little bit, but my company has 87,000 hours of sweat equity. Okay, I want you to get your head around that. That's like as if we had raised 7 million in capital already. So we've, we've built the foundation for our company based on the backs of all of those contributors and we use something called slicing pie for that. It's a mechanism. Uh, there's a book about it and it allows us to keep track of every hour of contribution, no matter how small or how large, and to be able to take those people and to uh, give them multiples. So if they'll come in and do a friends and family investment of 25,000, we'll actually give them 5x the value of that for when we do finally move that over into the LLC as equity. Right. And so what we do is we say, hey, if you will do that and match your investment in net capital, right? That's what gets you the 5x multiple. So we've gotten pretty creative, uh, about our friends and family raise. But I'm so glad to hear that you had such success because I think we're going to do that next of go in and widen the circle. We did it just with our stakeholders and, uh, I didn't open it up to the friends and family, so sounds like that's my next, uh, my next move. So Eric, I want to come back and just wrap up because we're getting to the end of our, uh, recording here. Um, I want to talk a little bit about giving because one of the things that sets us apart, uh, and why I was attracted to you guys is we believe that companies that give more, make more, and not just that they write a bigger check to a charitable organization, but that they give of their time, their talents and their treasures, and that they also make it a part of who they are as a company. And so for our company, when somebody goes to visit a distillery, if they book a hotel room night, we share the revenue back with the distillery and we then donate, um, 10% to their charity of choice. And if they help veterans, we double that. So we'll do 20%. And if the company we're working with is a nonprofit, like your music nonprofit, we actually donate 25%. And if it helps veterans, we donate, we double that too. So we give 50% of our revenue. So we would love to talk, uh, later off air about working, uh, because we have an event tool that when people are coming to an event, if they want to spend the night, even if it's just a date night or let's make a weekend of it, um, we provide, uh, all of the systems that make that happen super seamlessly. Uh, I really appreciate your time today, but I'd love to hear, uh, just a little bit more about the music organization, if you don't mind wrapping up with that.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So the music organization again is Operation Encore, a veteran music project. Uh, and it's an organization started, wow, uh, 1212 years ago, uh, by Trip and I and his partner, uh, in Dos Gringos Snooze. The three of us started thinking, uh, about how we could continue to be a part of the veteran organization in some way around music. Because it was really important to us, both of them as talented musicians, me as somebody who really appreciate music. And we started looking at what makes sense. How can we be a part of this? I had just finished, uh, my master's degree, and I stood up the veteran program at Georgetown University, and I just finished handing that off. And, uh, Trippin's News had realized Dos Gringos was going to get put on ice for a while, but they wanted to stay involved and engaged. We were living in D.C. and we realized there's great programs and the VA is doing some great things. But the rhetoric and really understanding what the veteran community needs and the relationship to society was still wrong, and people were getting it wrong regularly. And we thought about, could we run concerts and benefit concerts? We don't really know enough people to do that. Could we go and teach veterans how to play music? We know plenty of people that could do that. But it looked like somebody was already starting to do that already. So we started looking to say, maybe we can help a small number of people, um, improve their, their skills and get an opportunity that they missed because of service. Right. Some of the most formative years for musicians are in those late teens and twenties when you can sleep on couches and camp out after your gig and travel to do that. Well, all these people spend some of those formative years on, um, ships deployed in the middle, in the desert, serving their country, doing other things, and they miss that opportunity. And now they're 10 years, 20 years later. They've got families, they've got different responsibilities, they need a job, they don't have the access anymore, or maybe the time and the resources. So we looked for an opportunity and said, maybe there's enough talent out there that we could find those folks and give them the opportunity maybe they missed, and maybe they want to go on in tour and this is a future job or career for them. Or maybe they got one great song in them and we'd love to hear it, and they give them an opportunity to share it. So that's where we started. Uh, and then pretty quickly, we realized that's a great way to help those small number of veterans. Um, and we do that. We bring on about four to five new veterans a year for Operation Encore. But then there's a larger, more strategic part of it that is important to us as well. And it's how can we leverage the powerful medium of music for veterans to tell their story and help bridge the civil military dividend? Because we're at a time in history where, despite there's a lot of military activity going on, it's less than 1% of the population in the United States that serves. So unlike previous generation, my grandparents generation, where everybody's brother, uncle, you know, mom, somebody served in the military. That's not the case today. And there are lots of people that don't even know a veteran and get uncomfortable or see somebody in uniform. They don't know how to dress them or what to say, so they just don't say anything. And what we really try to leverage the music to do is break down those barriers and let people, let people know that military members, veterans are just a microcosm of society. Sure, we have heroes, but we've got scourges too. We've got everything in the middle. Um, we're just your, your neighbors. Like when people leave their military service, they're your teacher, they're your banker, they're your neighbor. They're just like, uh, everybody else. And talk to them just like you would anybody else. Ask them what they did, ask them where they live, talk to them about their experience. And that's what we try to do with the music that comes out of Operation Encore is it's about telling stories. And this is where it connects so much with Wing War. It's about community, it's about stories, about sharing your personal experience. Not political, it's not overly patriotic. It's about people and how do we get people to better, better connect and be a part of the same community together and not, not segregated.

Speaker B: Well, I love that. And again, Solutions would love to be a supporter of Operation Encore. So we will talk separately about how to make that happen. Uh, I want to, I just want to thank you, Eric, first, first of all, for your service, for your team's service and uh, for sharing with me how you've been successful, uh, to date with your fundraising. Because, uh, as an entrepreneur who's going down that same path, it can be a lonely journey. Uh, and so it's very, very encouraging to talk to somebody, buddy, who is a little bit further along than we are. So I want you to just share with the, the listeners how they can invest, uh, on your Net Capital offering. So would you share that, Eric? And then how they can buy, uh, your products?

Speaker A: Absolutely, for sure. So the two websites that you want to, you want to know about are www.winglerspirits uh.com where you can go and buy any of our products. Um, and the NET Capital site, netcapital.com and search for Wing War Spirits. I think we're, we're still, currently the largest currently raising company. Ah, on the, on the platform, the minimum Investment in, in Winglore is 50 shares at $101. So like when I'm talking to friends and families, like you said, like make that minimum investment for me, that first hundred and one dollars is for me or because you believe in me, the rest is for you. Whatever you want to, you think is the right investment.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker A: Because you believe in the growth and you, because you want to be part of a team that is going to go on, uh, to raise a good amount of money and have a great uh, exit eventually you're in this to be part of the team, to be in the squadron, but you're also in it as investor to make money and we recognize that and want to support you on that journey. So uh, there's still that opportunity for us. This is an incredible, uh, part of what it is that we're growing and we think that crowdfunding um, is important to us not only because it brings in capital that's of course a piece, but more important to us is getting those people like you on the team, on the squadron to believe in what we're doing, to be a part of our community, to participate in those, those um, monthly roll calls. We call them the so to speak easy roll call, uh, that we have. But we also offer to all of those investors that, that uh, join our team, every one of them, uh, when, when they sign up and we get that information, you know, we'll, we'll send them their, their Winglore owners coin and you'll get a 10% discount for you and your close friends and family on our website in, in an enduring way because we want to say thank you for being part of the team. So uh, yeah. Winglorespirits.com and that capital.com perfect.

Speaker B: Well Eric, thank you again so much for your time this morning and we will definitely be talking again. We've been speaking with Eric Brine and Eric is the Chief Strategy Officer of winglore Spirits. And uh, you will want to check out their product and uh, I would definitely get in on the front end of investing in this company. I think it's going to be a fun ride.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Happy to have you on the team. You've been listening to the game changer ideas, Inspiration, innovation with Chicky Fitzgerald.