005 | Building demand: how to educate about the occasion and the category vs. only the brand | Part 3/3 of the Interview with Ilias Mastrogiannis from the Distillery Nation Podcast (Seattle, WA, USA)

Let's shift a little bit of focus, Chris, and talk a little bit about the power of the email list. I think you're a proponent of it. You know? I I as I said, you know, you have the the newsletter that I subscribed. I think I found your book a couple months ago, and I love the newsletters coming out.

What is the power of email to you, and should distilleries, small or big, leverage it? What are your thoughts?

That's also another interesting one. I mean, I I put newsletters on par with podcasts. Mhmm. Let's say, it's a little bit easier to do. I mean, depending what type of person you are.

I mean, if you're a writer or or or a video person or an audio person. But I put them on the same level in the sense that those channels for me are to build trust. So you build reach with something like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you want to, like all the social media, but then you don't go in detail. So if you look at my posts on LinkedIn, they are I mean, I make them like a tweet, so two eighty characters kind of thing. And then if you want to deep dive, you read the newsletter because I don't want to steal too much of your time, honestly.

You know, like you are flipping through stuff on LinkedIn or Twitter, you know, I'm going to give you some hints. And then if you want to deep dive into that topic, you go down and then you understand really what I mean. You know? And it's probably the same concept as your podcast. You know, it's like, this is the moment where I really understand how you think as a person and as a distiller and as a business person.

So in my view, I think that's great. Like that would be great to find the time to do that. And I always look at it as because a lot of people told me, I've been writing for two years now every day. And people say, oh, how do you find time to do that? And it's just like mean, it's just like having lunch.

You know? You find the time to do it if you want to. You just deprioritize something else, and you prioritize this one. And like we are finding time now to do it. Exactly.

Exactly. You know, it's just like a matter of of doing that. And that bill, it's again, it's a long term thing. You know? When I started the newsletter, I had 20 people.

Mhmm. And I still wrote it. It's not that I said, oh, I'm gonna write it in one month when I have 50 because, sorry, 20 guys, I'm not gonna send it to you today because you're only 20 and I I need 50 to be worth it. You know? So it's this kind of thing, again, because, you know, you go really broad with these kind of things, with, know, newsletter and so on.

And it's again like build the category. So close the loop, and sorry if I'm taking a bit of a route, but it's if you're going to do a newsletter to just like talk about your whiskey and how cool you are, then don't do it. You know? If you're going to do a newsletter about building the category and building, you know, I'm I'm new to bourbon. I'm new to American whiskey.

I don't know what rye means. You know? Teach me something. Educate me on it, and then I will I will be committed to you because you were always the person that Mhmm. Helped me out in this.

Yeah. It goes back to that me me when you when you sell on on prem. Right? The stop talk stop talking. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the me, but I think you you gotta figure out how do you up up a little bit the level to talk about the broader category.

Exactly. You said, maybe educate your consumers what brandy or whiskey or gin and the different variations perhaps, and kind of maybe pick a topic a week and do a deep dive on that.

Yeah. And and, I mean, let let me give you an example, like a real life example. When I was working for a brand, like when when I was working for Pilsen and Urquil here in And the way I would sell Pilsen and Urquil to bar owners would be, you've got a standard lager, and then you've got IPAs and craft beers because they're cool. But what you're missing is something in between. So it's a hoppy pilsner.

It's a balanced, hoppy, but like on low ABV, that because IPA people are going to drink one or two and they're going to be stuffed and they won't order food maybe because they're so full, you know? You need something that is a good accompaniment with food, It's hoppy enough that it's satisfying rather than a standard lager that is more blunt. But until now, I haven't mentioned any brands. And it's like, you need something like this. And by the way, let me introduce you.

Know, ones that I hooked you on the thinking of, actually, I need a beer like that. Okay, which beer is like that? And then now I got it. Mhmm. Now I have my beer for you.

You know? But but if I come with, hey. Hi. I'm from Pilsen Ruckel, and I'm here to sell you a beer. And sorry.

We've got already a lot of beers here. Thanks. See you tomorrow.

Yeah. By the way, it's a great beer. It's one of my favorite lagers too. So that's a that's that's a great one. So that's a plug there.

But that that's a great point too. It's like you gotta you gotta uplevel a little bit and, yeah, bring that theme and what the restaurant is trying to do, which as you said, if if they have

It's nice.

A list of IPAs, you you can make room for another one. So what's your

head mix? You are a vegan place. You want to have, like, you are a sushi restaurant. You have light meal. You have fish.

You have a know, what are you trying to do? And also the other tip I would give is like, study the back bar. Study their range. Because that range is already it's basically like, it's almost like they gave you their email password, you know? Interesting.

You know, you can understand so much from a bar menu and a back bar about the owner that you can already read through the things. It's like, this is a rum guy. This is a whiskey lady, this is like, you know, like you can already see, like if it's a sushi restaurant and you've got like five scotch, then it's like, this person is into scotch, you know? Like there's no other reason why you should have five scotch in a sushi restaurant Mhmm. Apart from that.

Or maybe the people that go there love scotch or whatever. No? I I like to study.

Study the menu.

Study. Like, do homework. Homework. That's the that's the that's the thing.

I love it. I love it. Okay. In the in the recent newsletter, you called out, you know, cut what's not essential for your brand. Example, the the 33 botanicals in your gin.

You know? Can can you expand a little bit of that and offer you advice? How do we best balance that with the brand identity? Kind of that message that the differentiator. You know?

Instead of being gray, maybe those 33 botanicals is what's puts us a little bit above. How do you how do you find the balance between those That's key points to the brand discussion when you talk to on prem or anybody else?

Yeah. You got me on that one. Like, I think that's the that was the one I was writing. Said, like, okay. Like, the the distillers are gonna are gonna are gonna hate me for what I said.

No. I what what what I mean by that is that there is a tendency as a distiller or a brewer to create liquids that you like rather than liquids that are for the markets. And then everybody can play the card that's like, oh, but I'm not for everyone, you know, I'm a niche product and I want to be super hoppy and I want to be super smoky and I want to be those kind of things. But there must be a reason for that, because I cannot just buy a whiskey that is super pitted just because the distiller loves peat. You know?

And all of his friends love peat. So they all told him in the echo chamber, that's a great product. Let's do it. And especially in whiskey, this is more important because, I mean, you are aging. So it's going to be three, five, ten years before you hit something that maybe was trendy today, but in ten years time, it's not going to be trendy anymore.

So what I mean by that is that like, build the like when I wrote that one, I was specifically talking about value chain especially. And I said like, you know, build the value chain from the glass up to the distillery rather than from the distillery down to the glass. Because otherwise, then your whiskey is gonna end up in $50 per drum just because, you know, the wood was expensive and, you know, and the peat was expensive and everything was expensive. And back to the gin, you know, the botanicals, like, you may be using some crazy botanicals that just because you loved them when you were going into the fields in Britain, you loved, but nobody else cared about. Nobody has that, you know, connection to it.

So unless it's a botanical that you can justify when I'm sipping the gin or when I'm drinking the gin and tonic or when I'm eating some food with it, and then it's like, oh, can you smell, can you taste that flavor? Oh, yes. Okay. Now that's a botanical that you should keep. But then if it's a botanical that gets destroyed in distillation or infusion among the other 30, you know, maybe you don't need 33.

You need 18. And then that would gonna that's gonna cut your cogs down massively, and then you can fight with, you know, another gene that that you that you are targeting.

Yeah. And I think to to be fair with the with the article, you know, I picked that specific one, but you were talking really about the COGS. Right? The overall COGS because it goes back to that the third pill pillar that we talked about, the the affordability and the margins for the on premise. If if you have the same Washington product, all the same, but one is a little bit cheaper, probably the the bar owner will go for the little bit cheaper because they can mark it up a little bit more and then more money in their So it's Exactly.

It's that fine balance of making sure that your cogs at the glass level, makes sense. And that's really but I think that's that's a good overall aspect because you gotta think about the botanical bill because that could get out of hand and expensive. Yeah. The glass and the label.

The packaging. The so on. I mean, I see beautiful bottles with crazy corks, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, but I can't get rid of that cork because that's part of the USP. And I was like, but there's no USP in a cork. I mean, there's like, USP should be in your product, in the liquid and in the brand that you have created, not in the cork.

Mhmm. Because I'm not buying the bottle for the cork. Interesting. And I'm not buying the bottle for the for the bottle. It could be, but sometimes it's a little bit misleading because this brand I mean, I come from branding agency background.

And like, sometimes it's a designer who created the bottle that spoke to the owner of a brand that is not even a distiller. And then all of a sudden, like all those costs come from, you know, left and right. And then it's like, yeah. But now we've got the the the mold of the bottle. Now we got it.

So that's how much it costs.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a great point. Chris, I'll ask you, quote, unquote, the distiller round.

But this is a common thing that I do for pretty much everybody in

the podcast.

A little bit of five rapid questions to get a little bit inside of who you are with the business marketing view instead of the distiller round. But the

Same thoughts. Gonna be interesting.

Yeah. So with that in mind, what do you think is your biggest strength as a marketer slash business owner from from your insight?

That would be that I study, you know, I do a lot of homework. That's probably the thing. When I don't understand something, I try to learn about it, if it's worth it. Otherwise, if it's not worth it, I can just skip it. But I think that's important to the second point that I would say, is that I'm not afraid of changing my mind if I'm proven wrong.

And on many things that I say today and today to you, if you spoke to me eighteen months ago, you'd probably find something online that I say something against what I'm saying today. But today is the real version of it because it's the it's the elevated version of myself eighteen months ago. That that would be the that would be the thing.

I like that. With that, what do you think is the biggest weakness? Oh,

I knew that was coming. Weakness would be, yeah, that I I don't always walk the talk. You know? Like, when I when I when I do my own business, I sometimes I'm I'm I'm thinking like, I'm advising people on something, then I'm advising on consistency, but then sometimes I find myself non consistent. So that's my internal struggle that I'm trying to overcome, you know, to really be consistent in life.

For example, even like small things like LinkedIn posts, building demand. Well, a real example, like I'm planning to launch a podcast as well, and I still haven't done it. I just bought the mic. Yeah. I haven't found the time.

So I'm I'm preaching I'm preaching that, but I'm I'm now focusing on emails and newsletters first.

That's that's awesome. Yeah. No. That's a that's a good I think it gives you a good understanding of what you need to work on. And I think as you if you are aware, it usually it might take a little bit of time, but you you always get there.

So that's at least my my view. What is the one thing that has you excited right now? Maybe the podcast. Would

That would actually actually be the podcast and the the the connection between the podcast and the and the the newsletter. You know, I'm I'm I'm I've just switched to a paid premium newsletter on my newsletter newsletter and because I want to get it better and better. And and this is exciting because I'm I'm I'm getting traction with the newsletter now, and and I'm very excited in writing. You know, at the moment, I really do the you know, you get in on Saturday afternoon and actually on Saturday morning, I'm I'm here typing in this office. So it's very handmade Absolutely.

As a process.

Absolutely. Is your favorite drink? I'm a seasonal drinker, so kinda depends on the on the weather. I I switch up my drinks. What are you currently drinking?

That's cool. Oh, okay. So, like, my go to would be a Negroni.

Uh-huh.

But but I like to to change it a little bit. Like, so I sometimes I do the the boulevardier. Mhmm. Sometimes I do the Negroni Mezcal. So I like to I like to change.

So the base is always the same. You know, the bitter and the vermouth, the sweet vermouth, they they always stay. And then based on the season, probably, yeah, the gin is probably like more a summer thing for me. Or also the Americano. So the, you know, the lighter version of

the With that, the gin. Yeah.

I put the soda in and that's an easy, easier way through the night. Awesome. Yeah. Absolutely. This would be the thing.

I love it. Good combinations. What is the one thing you wish you could have done sooner?

Well, that could actually be one of those channels, like the email and the podcast or even starting earlier on LinkedIn. That would have been, you know, when LinkedIn was less crowded than today. Mhmm. You know, probably, like, I would have got much more traction than but then again, I I needed that time to iterate my thinking to really get sharper and sharper in in writing. So but I would recommend it to anybody, like, to to really write on LinkedIn and and also Twitter because those are I know you're active on it.

So it's

A little bit. I'm trying to. But, yeah, there's there's too too much, to be honest, between, you know, the podcast and because I'm I'm I'm one. It's I do all the scheduling, pretty much everything in between. So it's

I can imagine. I

As you said, it's very manual.

Same challenge. I have

the same challenge.

Yes. Yes. It's very manual.

I'm with you. Okay. What is the best advice you ever received?

That would probably be to really, like, niche down. Mhmm. So what I mean by that is to to really go into one thing, like the the there is a there is an American guy that I'm is a bit of a mentor for me, Justin Welch. He's outside of the industry. He's very active on LinkedIn.

He talks about the niche of one. So like, what's your unique niche? It's not only the niche, but it's like, what is unique to you? And only you can know that. And only by writing, and writing literally every day you can understand that.

You know, I'm not a writer at heart. It's just like that, you know, you just, you know, by writing every day then you get better at it. And so really niching down because then only by going down then you can expand from within. And to give you an example, like my business has improved a lot when I stop talking about, for example, retail, stop talking about other stuff. I only talk about on trade, working with wholesalers.

I know many other things, and I could advise you on many other things, but I don't want to do that. Yes. Other people can do it better than me. I do what I'm good at. And by being so niched, then I get phone calls because I am one of the few people that can do that.

Yes. Yeah. So and and so it's it's counterintuitive in a way because then it's like, especially as a consultant or adviser, you are Oh,

I'm missing I'm missing on this. I'm missing on that opportunity.

Exactly. And then, oh, but what about, it's probably the same with you. No? It's like, oh, but what about, like, the

For for us, it's the it's a new recipe. Oh, I gotta make this product. I gotta make this product.

Have a rye in the Man,

this this shiny object is is a real thing with with distillers.

I can imagine.

It's a constant struggle for sure. Okay. If you were to start all over again, what would you change? Maybe niche down a little bit earlier or something else?

Yes. Yeah.

That would be it. Yeah.

I I that would be it. Yeah. I would I would go, like which which is funny, by the way, because that this was the idea that I had at the beginning when I set up my own company. And then it took me three years to go back to it. Yeah.

Which is, you know, it makes you feel like really like, what have I done for three years? But it was a process that probably I would have felt for three years, would have felt I'm missing out. And now I'm consciously, you know, convinced that this is the way.

Got it. That's excellent. What is one personal habit that you believe contributes to your success?

This is like probably, like, they consist like, the system that I've built. And on this one, I need to to thank again Justin Welch for it. Like the like a matrix system that really allows me to really be very fast in shooting content out. And so on on that one, I must say I I became good in in consistency in that in that terms.

Yeah. Love it. I love books, Chris. Any books that you can recommend to Distillery Nation? And it could be anything, things that you reread, things that you gift more often.

Mhmm. And, yeah, anything that you recommend.

So then I would I would say probably, like, two. So one one book is a is a is an industry thing. It's called Spiritual Journey. I don't know if you read that.

I have not.

It's by Jared Brown, I think it's called, and Anastasia Miller. So it's a history of cocktails and how they started, but in a very history kind of way. So like about hotels in New York that created that cocktail and what was there before and they sold the hotel, who bought it, and all these kind of things. There's two books on that. And then another one which is not really related, but it's called Empire.

It's by Neil Ferguson. And I recommend that one because it made me look at the world from a different perspective. It's basically like how the British Empire started and how all the nations basically like came up to be what they are. So US, Australia, especially the Commonwealth nations. You know, how the telegraph started, how the railways were built, and so on.

And so it's a bit of an infrastructure of the world that we see today. It makes you understand things a little bit better of, you know, when when we experience them.

I love it. I love it. Chris, this this has been phenomenal. What is one piece of parting guidance and the best way to connect with you and Winning With Drinks?

So well, winningwithdrinks.com. That's the that's the website and the newsletter. You can subscribe there. And then on LinkedIn, of course, ChrisMaffeiro. And on all the other social media, mafiedrinks.

And you'll find me pretty much everywhere on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and everywhere. Absolutely. That is the way. Absolutely.

I will link all the social Twitter, LinkedIn, the newsletter, because I think everybody should be subscribing. Chris, this has been phenomenal. I think you dropped a lot of gold nuggets today, so I think a lot of people will find value. Thank you so much, and I hope we chat again very soon.

Thank you. Thank you, Elias. That was that was really good fun, and thanks for having me.

Hey, Distillery Nation. If you like what you heard today, please visit distillerynation.com to view all of today's show notes plus any of the previous ones also don't forget to follow us on Instagram Facebook or Twitter GreekDistillery thank you for listening and have a great day