 If you had one marketing dollar to spend, where would you spend it? One dollar wouldn't get me anything. Maurice Tabeli, co-founder of Ha Ha Tequila. Are you ready to answer some questions? Absolutely. What inspired you to create Tequila? I drink Tequila, so looking at the back bar, we noticed that all the other products out there were land, and the actual category just seemed like it was ripe for disruption. Who came up with the name Ha Ha, and what other names were you considering? My brother Elliott came up with the name Ha Ha, and we were considering other Spanish words that we would convert to English to try to figure out something fun and interesting. What was the runner-up name to Ha Ha? You're going to laugh, but it was Despacito. Pink God, it didn't work out because that would have sucked. The reason it didn't work out is because the name was actually trademarked by a vineyard in California. Who did your branding? Emmett Shine, Alex Brands, Matthew Hasen of Gin Lane. What was your brief to them? A brief was that we wanted to create something that was disruptive and refreshing to the Tequila category. How much of the brand comes from you versus Gin Lane? I would say it's 75 us and 25% them getting what we told them we wanted. Did you see silly as a whitespace? My opinion is that the liquor category is like old and grandeur, and it was ripe for something that was catering to millennials and something that didn't take itself too seriously. So we kind of tapped that void. Would you have created Ha Ha without having the Fuck Jerry platform? Probably not. Is Ha Ha Tequila a fastball for the Fuck Jerry audience? It is definitely one degree of separation away from what Fuck Jerry's all about. I think Elliott's Game Company, what do you mean is more one-to-one? I would say this is a little bit small degree of separation from what his core category of humor is, but definitely there's a lot of synergies between the two. If you had to sum up the tone, feel, what would it be? Lighthearted, free-spirited, approachable, and fun. What's your social media strategy? Create things that are making fun of ourselves. Every other brand tries to become sophisticated and convincing that they're the best. In the top, we just say we don't know what we're doing. We're trying to make it the key to the brand, and people appreciate it. When did you have your breakout moment? You know, from the outside, it may look as if we are ripping, but for me, every day feels like a grind, so I don't have that Ha Ha moment where we broke out. It's still, we're continuing to grind every single day. What's your biggest business challenge at the moment? Marketing. We're trying to figure out where to spend our finite resources in the liquor industry. It's not a direct-to-consumer category. There's a three-tier system involved, so gauging your return on your marketing expenses is pretty much, it's not impossible, but it's very difficult because you're not the one making the sale. If you had one marketing dollar to spend, where would you spend it? One dollar wouldn't get me anything. What part of your brand still needs work? The brand, I think, is in a great place right now. What was the hardest thing you had to learn on the job? Being up against Diageo, Constellation, Pernod Ricard, et cetera. These brands spend a ton of money and cause accounts to take their product because of all this money, and we're fighting it with very little. What's been some of your creative workarounds because you can't go dollar for dollar? The differentiation is the key. We got a hold of another brand's deck. They're trying to raise capital for a new startup, Tequila, and in their Venn diagram, they had a section for brands effectively communicating to millennials. And ha-ha was the only one in that box. So I think when I read that, it was flattering, and it also was a reassurance that we're doing what we set out to do. Did you have any reservations going into a non-DTC business because, fuck Jerry, so good for DTC? Honestly, we learned it too late. We knew about the three-tier system, but we didn't really see how it was gonna play out in real life. The disconnect between us and the purchaser is, it's not just one tier. We got our importer, and then our distributor, then the retailer. Scraping data is almost impossible. We do have small insights in various markets, but we learned that after we launched. And once we launched, it was no turning back. So here we are. What's one place you'd love to see the brand that it isn't yet? Stadiums. I wanna see people drinking our products when they're watching their favorite sports team and watching their favorite band. Which brands do you look up to? The Gin Lane brands, like Hymns, Smile the Red Club, which is one public. Did you expect to be where you are given how famous fuck Jerry is? Pre-launch. I said if we hit the numbers that we're at now, I would be extremely pleased. And now that we exceeded those numbers, I'm actually dissatisfied. Who do you consider your competition? I think we're dabbling in somewhere in between brands like Casamigos and then like Espelon, which Espelon's a tier lower than Ha Ha, and I would say Casamigos is a tier higher in terms of price point. We're situated right in the middle. So that's where we positioned ourselves strategically. Did you draw inspiration from the fat Jewish and his liquor brand? Maybe subconsciously. I think he did a great job with that, his bold branding and things like that really stood out on social media. You know, we never said it. We wanna do something like the fat Jew. It might've come out in some way, shape or form organically just because he was, his launch was before ours. What makes you special? I think I have a good way of looking at things very quickly and making a calculation on a fly. What do you hate about yourself? I think sometimes I put too much of a heavy load on myself and I become overwhelmed and anxious. Who do you look up to? I think anyone who has a team who's respecting and loving them and wanting to impress their leaders I think is who I look up to. What does a Sunday look like for you? Couple hours in the gym, couple hours of my kid, indoor, outdoor, maybe some tennis. Are you lucky? I definitely think I'm lucky. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way. You know, if you look from an outside perspective and see everything that I've accomplished I would say that by world standards even just living in the city is a lucky thing. Who is a person you'd love to have coffee with or tequila with, dead or alive? Eric Clapton. How much money did you initially raise? Three million dollars. What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far? Keep your expenses low, your overhead. What piece of advice do you live by? Don't sweat the small stuff. How much of Ha Ha's success now is contingent upon fuck Jerry? Very little. Ha Ha's independent. It has nothing to do with fuck Jerry, pretty much. I mean, he's definitely fueling our marketing but without fuck Jerry our brand will continue to grow. If someone said I want to be you what would be the first thing you tell him to do? Change your mind. If you could have one magical power, what would it be? Flying. How much of where you are right now is something you'd always visualized? I would never visualize this. Do you practice what you preach? I try to, but I don't always. Sometimes I say things and I preach things just try to convince myself and doing them. If you could start all over again what would you do differently? Nothing. What's your indicator of I've made it? When you see random people ordering your product and it starts to become a household name. What's the hardest part about working with your brother? It's not hard, it's actually a pleasure. How has the market placed change since you launched? It hasn't really, it's only a year old. I think that we change it because we introduce something fresh and I think something like ha ha is unprecedented. What's after tequila? Is ha ha a platform brand? It could be. I think so many things that are related to the agave ingredient, like people use agave to sweeten their coffee or I think definitely a mezcal which is also made from agave is an obvious line extension for us. But it's really become a lifestyle brand and I see so many different ways this brand could start to grow into other categories. So far it's tequila and we're sticking with it but we'll see what happens. Maurice Tavelli, co-founder of Ha Ha Tequila. Thanks for coming on and answering some questions. It was a pleasure. I'm Ian Wishinggrat and we'll see you next time on I'm With The Brand.