Alice Peterson, Founder and Executive Chair of Pinhook Bourbon
Can you tell me a little more about the business you started, Pinhook Bourbon, and what inspired you to start it?
For a long time, I would say, “I'm not an entrepreneur.” There's a book about entrepreneurship, and it talks about the fact that there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. There are visionary entrepreneurs who have an idea and must go out and pursue it. And on the other hand, there are entrepreneurs who are the “integrators”, and their job is to take the idea and think about the resources you need to get it done. And not just get done once, but to get done over and over again, to grow and scale. I'm the second kind of entrepreneur. I'm most likely not the one who's going to have the idea. I didn't have the idea for Pinhook, or start it, but I was the first employee, and the one who allowed that idea to become tangible and a real organization that could grow.
Pinhook is a story about curiosity. There were three friends (one of whom was my husband) who thought that bourbon, which is a form of alcohol that's made out of grain, would be an interesting type of alcohol to experiment with. Bourbon has just three ingredients: grain, water, and yeast. To make it, you put the mixture into a burnt wooden barrel and let it age for years and years, and it turns into this delicious, dark brown liquid. The three friends enjoyed bourbon, they liked learning about bourbon, they liked trying different kinds of bourbon. After one of the friends became an expert in all the different bourbon brands and how they tasted, the next question was, “How hard is it to make bourbon?” The primary idea behind Pinhook was answering that question. And being willing to experiment.
The core thing that makes Pinhook stand out from other brands is that each barrel is different. If you order a soda in a restaurant, you expect it to taste exactly the same every time. But with Pinhook, the idea was that the barrels for the bourbon are more like wine, which means they're influenced by the weather and humidity and the tree that barrel was made of and all these natural forces. Instead of trying to make the bourbon taste the same every time, you should try to put barrels together to make them taste the very best they can. Instead of something to be avoided, the variation is a good thing. We release our whiskey in vintages. Every year, we put the very best combination of things together. Sometimes it tastes exactly like before, but sometimes it tastes a little bit different, and we celebrate that difference and variation.
Did you always know if you wanted to be a CEO? If not, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I didn't know what being a CEO meant when I was growing up, because my dad was a professor and my mom was a social worker. I went to a liberal arts college, and all of the degrees were about subjects that you'd have in school, as opposed to careers that you'd have as a grown-up. I chose the subject that I enjoyed most, which I thought had the best teachers. For me, that was art history, but I didn't really know what I was doing with that. Eventually, I realized that art history could be a hobby—it didn't have to be my work.
I ended up getting a job at American Express, which is a big company. I had no idea what most of my job description meant. I just knew that I thought it was a place that I was going to enjoy and where I would have lots of opportunities. It was not until I got there that I learned what it meant to be in business, more specifically, what it meant to be a general manager. I was responsible for getting lots of different people with different expertise together to solve a problem or to build a product. I loved it.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is solving problems. I think one of the cool things about being an entrepreneur is that you have constraints. You don't have endless amounts of money, you don't have endless amounts of people, so you have to be creative in how you get things done. The problems that you solve are not always disaster kinds of problems, which aren't so fun, but more like, “We have this opportunity, but we don't have enough product to go after it.” Or, “We have too much of this. How can we use it for something else?” It's about how to use your resources, and I love doing that, particularly with other people.
I'm the kind of person who likes going to the office. I like being with other people. To me, the biggest benefit of work is that you get to do it with other people and you get to learn from them and, in turn, help them too. I love asking a lot of questions and learning about new things, and ultimately, I hope we can come up with ways to do things we thought were not possible.
What is the hardest part of your job?
The hardest part of my job is the uncertainty. You don't have control over all the factors. There isn't usually a track record of, “Well, we've done this a hundred times before, so we can probably expect that it'll turn out the same way.” That's exciting, but it's also frustrating because things are not completely in your control.
There are some things you have to do as an entrepreneur. One is to raise money, no matter how hard you work. It's kind of like dating. You just have to keep putting yourself out there over and over again, and you don't necessarily get better at it as you go along. You just have to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. And finally, hopefully, you'll get matched up with someone who's the right fit for you and who wants to invest in your business. You just have to stay at it. To me, that can be frustrating: When you don't have everything you need, your performance as a company is not the only thing that matters. How well you do, how smart you are, how hard you work, how much you learn from your failures…these are not the only factors that will determine what happens next or how you go forward. That's a little hard, but that's probably true about lots of jobs, not just being an entrepreneur.
Who is your favorite woman role model?
My favorite female role model is Joan Ganz Cooney, who I'm lucky enough to know. She created Sesame Street, and she’s an example of someone who's kind of between a visionary and an integrator. You might think that the person who created Sesame Street would be someone who loves children and was a preschool teacher and was maybe deeply devoted to diversity. But she wasn't someone who saw this thing out in the future and decided, the world needs that. Instead, she was solving an intellectual problem. She saw how powerful the advertising industry was in influencing what people remembered, what people bought, and essentially what people knew about the world. She thought, “Oh my gosh, we need to use this to teach kids. If advertising is this powerful, we should think about how powerful it would be as an educational tool.”
She saw the opportunity to create a TV show that would be a bunch of commercials for things like the letters of the alphabet, or numbers from 1 to 10, or what it means to be a good friend, all for kids who didn't have the luxury of going to preschool, or whose parents were too busy to teach them. Joan Ganz Cooney actually never had kids of her own. She loves babies, but I wouldn't say she necessarily adores little kids. I like the elegance of this idea in her mind. It's really being sort of an analytical, thoughtful visionary, as opposed to a “wild idea” visionary.
The second thing is that when Joan Ganz Cooney started Sesame Street, the atmosphere for women in business was very different. There were times when people said, “This will never succeed if a woman is running it. No one's going to want to support this. You have to get a male CEO.” And she said, “That may be true, but then there's going to be no Sesame Street.” She was really clear on what her value was, what role she deserved at the table, and she was totally committed to not compromising on that at a time when that wasn't easy to do. If you ask her about it today, she doesn't say, “Yes, I was quite a trailblazer.” It's just very clear and matter of fact to her. There's something very appealing about people who have that kind of resolve and quiet confidence, that they're not easily disrupted by people who question their credibility or authority.
What is some advice you have for young entrepreneurs like me looking to start a business?
My number one piece of advice would be to spend time thinking about what is important to you. Some people might want to start a business because they want to make money and save for a particular college or to go on a trip—sort of optimizing for the financial. Before the idea itself, it's important to think about what you want to get out of it. There's something exciting about the idea of starting a business, but it's hard to run that business if you don't know what you're trying to accomplish in the process. Just ask yourself the question, “Why am I feeling inclined to do this? Why is it important to me? Is this idea a good match for my goals?” I love learning from other people. I would always rather have a conversation like this one and learn from you than I would read about something.
Asking for help in whatever form you need is another piece of advice. You're never going to get anything that you don't ask for. I've had people be so generous in giving me information, even people I thought would think Pinhook was a competitor. Go out into the world and ask people to collaborate with you.