Fawn Weaver, CEO of whiskey brand ‘Uncle Nearest’ has topped the Forbes Richest Self-Made Women List with a whooping net worth of $480 million.
This business was kickstarted in 2017 after Weaver and her husband sold all their West Coast real estate, including their dream home in Old Agoura, California, and two Mini Coopers.
It is said that Weaver started this business after getting inspired by the story of Nathan “Nearest” Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught a young Jack Daniel the craft of distilling.
“When I went to the family I asked, ‘What is the one thing you think should happen to honor Nearest?’ They responded, “We think his name should be on a bottle,’ ” Weaver previously told, “And by then we had already created a foundation to pay for all of his descendents to go to college. That was something I was working on before I ever came to this story, just looking at taking underprivileged kids and figuring out how to get them what they need in high school so they can get the grades to get into Ivy League. So when I began working on this, I just transferred that passion. Rather than randomly focusing on kids from across the country, I said, I’ll just focus on one family. And bringing it back to the legacy of excellence that their ancestors started. It continued for a couple of generations but I believe that somewhere along the line, they forgot. They were not living up to the same ideals from the work ethic and in terms that level of excellence as Nearest and his children and his grandchildren.”