Encore - The Master Blender with Jamie Hunt

Liz Tinkham (00:18):
Hi, this is Liz Tinkham, and welcome to Third Act, a podcast about people embracing the third act of their lives with a new sense of purpose and direction. The third act begins when your script ends, but your show’s just not finished. Hello and welcome to the Third Act Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Jamie Hunt, the master blender. Jamie is the founder of Fast Penny Spirits, an Italian Amaro company based in Seattle. She’s one of very few women in the spirits business, but who found early inspiration from her Sicilian grandparents. Jamie’s longer career is actually as a digital advertising and marketing specialist, founding a company and leading digital strategy for a large systems integrator, and is a partner at Ernst and Young. So Jamie, welcome to Third Act. We’re thrilled to have you as the master blender here.

Jamie Hunt (01:12):
Thank you, Liz. I’m thrilled to be here as well.

Liz Tinkham (01:16):
So I love how I … Well, I had met you a while ago, but I had lost track of you. And so the way you came to this podcast was, your wonderful husband wrote me a note after maybe seeing a post on LinkedIn about the podcast, and said you’d be a terrific guest. And having talked to you since, I think you’re going to be, so what a wonderful guy.

Jamie Hunt (01:39):
Yeah. Thank you. I didn’t know he did that either.

Liz Tinkham (01:43):
It was a seminal birthday for you too, as well. So anyway, happy post-birthday. And again, we’re really excited. So you now are a master blending for Amaro, an Italian … Would we call it a spirit or a wine?

Jamie Hunt (01:58):
It is a liqueur.

Liz Tinkham (01:59):
A liqueur.

Jamie Hunt (01:59):
Yep.

Liz Tinkham (02:01):
Okay. And we’re going to get to that in a minute. And as a matter of fact, you and I might share a drink as we go through this. But before we get into your third act as the master blender, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Where’d you go to school? How’d you get into digital advertising and marketing?

Jamie Hunt (02:17):
Sure, yeah. So I went to school at the University of Washington.

Liz Tinkham (02:21):
Oh, go Huskies.

Jamie Hunt (02:22):
Yeah. I double-majored in political science and social science. I thought I really wanted to become a lawyer. And so I did my homework. I interviewed a bunch of lawyers and decided that wasn’t the path for me. The ones I identified with were no longer in law.

Liz Tinkham (02:46):
Sounds like my husband. He’s a lawyer, and all of his friends are no longer lawyers as well. He’s no longer a lawyer.

Jamie Hunt (02:52):
So I ended up taking an internship in a marketing department at an insurance company, and really enjoyed that experience, and got my first taste of digital there, where we were doing something crazy back then. We were putting insurance online for the first time, so you could subscribe, and you can change your benefits, and so forth, online. And that was a new thing.

Liz Tinkham (03:20):
That’s really interesting because insurance, in my experience, insurance has always lagged in going digital, so good for that company. Was this in the ’90s, sort of early ’90s, mid ’90s?

Jamie Hunt (03:31):
It was in the ’90s, yeah. It was late ’90s when that was happening.

Liz Tinkham (03:36):
And then you go on to work or found a company. Tell us more about that.

Jamie Hunt (03:40):
I did. I got there through, and this where I kind of got the digital marketing bug, is I started at a startup, a marketing startup called Quick Marketing. And then I could see the looming dot com bust that was about to happen, and got recruited to a creative agency, where I really loved the opportunity to solve business problems and connect customers with brands in a very creative way. And so I caught that bug, and I decided I’d go do my own design and creative company, and so I did that for a couple of years.

Liz Tinkham (04:25):
What company was that?

Jamie Hunt (04:26):
It was called Blue Siren Design.

Liz Tinkham (04:28):
Blue Siren… And how many? Was it you and several people, or just you? How did that-

Jamie Hunt (04:34):
We ended up with about 10 people in the end. The funny thing is my next move came because I was helping a friend look for a job. There was this creative agency or digital agency called Ascentium at the time. I sent a note to them, and they instead wanted me to come in for an interview.

Liz Tinkham (05:03):
How’d your friend feel about that?

Jamie Hunt (05:05):
She took it really well. I was a little nervous about it.

Liz Tinkham (05:07):
Are you still friends?

Jamie Hunt (05:09):
We are still friends.

Liz Tinkham (05:11):
Good, good. Oh, boy.

Jamie Hunt (05:12):
Yeah. So I absolutely was not going to take the job, Liz. It was not what I wanted to do. I was on my own. This is what I wanted to do. And then it just became too irresistible. And I decided to close the Blue Siren Design and join Ascentium.

Liz Tinkham (05:32):
And the type of work you did at Ascentium, again, more digital.

Jamie Hunt (05:36):
More digital work, yep.

Liz Tinkham (05:39):
I assume a growing field at that point.

Jamie Hunt (05:42):
Absolutely. And I worked a lot with a variety of brands, but one that I tended to work the most with was Microsoft, who was right in our backyard.

Liz Tinkham (05:55):
Now did you meet your husband there? Or tell us a little bit about meeting your wonderful husband, Jason.

Jamie Hunt (06:02):
I did, yeah. I became a partner, and then later a managing partner. And I had to sign my name on a guarantee for purchasing the company that Jason was from. And so I met him through that. We were both managing partners at Ascentium, yeah, and connected that way.

Liz Tinkham (06:26):
And that company then gets sold to Avanade, which is a services company jointly owned between Accenture and Microsoft, that does Microsoft services. So when was that? Tell us a little bit about that transition.

Jamie Hunt (06:41):
Boy, what year was that? I can’t even remember the years. They’re all blurring together. But what I decided to do, so Avanade bought our technical side, not the agency side, and I was on the agency side, and my husband was on the technical side. And so I decided to take that opportunity to take a year off and go to culinary school. Also, we had a house renovation project, so I figured I could do both because I didn’t want to get bored on my year off.

Liz Tinkham (07:10):
Now culinary school, was that where your love of flavors, mixes, started to come together?

Jamie Hunt (07:18):
Well, it would have been. However, then I found out I was pregnant, and so going to culinary school wasn’t the best idea when you couldn’t stand the smell of food for a while.

Liz Tinkham (07:33):
I can imagine.

Jamie Hunt (07:34):
So I didn’t go at that time, but I later took the opportunity to go to the CIA in Napa and do a week long bootcamp, which was super wonderful. I really enjoyed that.

Liz Tinkham (07:47):
What’s the CIA? Just for our listeners.

Jamie Hunt (07:50):
Culinary institute of America.

Liz Tinkham (07:53):
And was that cooking and wine tasting, or just cooking?

Jamie Hunt (07:57):
We did a lot of tasting of wine as well as cooking. But it was an intensive cooking class, and there were about 20 or so of us from all walks of life, and we just got an introduction to what it’s like to be a chef.

Liz Tinkham (08:15):
Now I know you’ve mentioned that your grandparents are Italian, and that throughout the course of your life, they kind of fostered a love for tastes and flavors. Tell us more about that. Were you drinking spirits early, or how did that work?

Jamie Hunt (08:32):
Absolutely. Coming from an Italian family, there’s no age limit on when you can sip wine or liqueurs. And so my grandparents, and later my parents, all made liqueurs, and my grandparents made wine. But it was all for home consumption and for friends and family. And so I grew up with those flavors and really, really loved especially the bittersweet flavors as I grew older. And so I used to go to Italy and seek out different Amaro because Amaro is very regional, and so it’s really fun to taste the flavors of the region that you’re in through this beautiful liquid.

Liz Tinkham (09:15):
And what is Amaro?

Jamie Hunt (09:18):
Literally, Amaro means bitter in Italian, and it’s a bittersweet liqueur. It’s made with a variety of botanicals, roots and herbs and fruits. There’s oftentimes a lot of citrus peel that’s involved.

Liz Tinkham (09:38):
I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but the Americano that you have is absolutely delicious, but we’ll come back to that. So you’re pregnant, you didn’t smell, I can imagine, because I remember cheese really turning me off when I was pregnant. But you end up at CIA, then but you do go back to digital. Was it back to Ernst and Young?

Jamie Hunt (09:58):
Yeah. So I went to Avanade first, and I built out the experience design team, first in North America, and then globally. And then I started adding more capability and built out the first digital teams in Avanade. And I got to do that with a variety of partners, including my husband.

Liz Tinkham (10:22):
Okay. Interesting.

Jamie Hunt (10:25):
Yeah. So with that experience, we had to think about where our careers were going within the company. And so I ended up taking a global role and started our digital advisory practice, and so built out all the offerings and all the capabilities and so forth.

Liz Tinkham (10:45):
You and Jason were kind of still both at Avanade trucking away. And eventually, you make the decision to leave. How did you make that decision?

Jamie Hunt (10:55):
We just noticed that we just kept bumping into each other at Avanade. We had a similar career trajectory, and so we thought, “One of us should just go and do something somewhere else,” and so I took the opportunity to take off and find my next adventure, which ended up being EY. And I was excited about EY because they were a little further behind in digital. And so I thought, “Here, I can make a huge impact with all that I’ve known, all that I learned from my time throughout the years,” and to do that for a big four was really exciting.

Liz Tinkham (11:39):
Somewhere in there, you’re in the background, you’re creating spirits, and the side hustle of Fast Penny Spirits starts. When did all that kind of start? Because you were still working full-time when you launched the business. Correct?

Jamie Hunt (11:56):
Correct. Yeah. So one night, as the story goes, one night, my husband and I were having an Amaro after a meal over at Rob Roy in Seattle.

Liz Tinkham (12:10):
In Seattle, right.

Jamie Hunt (12:11):
And we were wondering, we were talking to the bartender asking about more American-made Amaro. We really hadn’t seen a whole lot of it. And so he gave us a taste of a couple of American-made ones, and they were pretty good. But they weren’t the same as what I was used to, which was more of that complex Italian-style of Amaro. And so a little bug got in my head and I thought, “That could be a really cool business to get into. I love it anyway. There’s a place in the market. I should start an Amaro distillery.”

Liz Tinkham (12:52):
Oh, Jamie. I love to shop. I’ve been in clothing stores and thought, “Boy, there’s a missing piece here,” but I’ve never taken it upon myself to launch something, particularly a spirits company, which frankly, there are very few women in. Right?

Jamie Hunt (13:05):
Yeah.

Liz Tinkham (13:05):
I mean, very few. And so how do you get it going? I mean, how does it work to get a spirits company going? In case some of our listeners … And I know people, I have friends who are interested in doing this, so I think they’ll be fascinated by this.

Jamie Hunt (13:18):
Yeah. I had no idea what the first step was to be honest. But what I did start with was my business plan and opening, getting my license to do business. And I was working on recipe development. And what I did was I went to the Seattle Made event, and that’s where I met a bunch of people that knew more than me on what to do. And I met my lawyer, Brian DeFoe. And he was fantastic. He knew so many people. He knew so much about what I was needing to go through. And he really connected me to a lot of people who I then peppered with tons of questions.

Liz Tinkham (14:04):
Is the recipe made at this point? Have you made a bottle of it yet? Or where are you at in the creation process?

Jamie Hunt (14:10):
I’m still in the development process, just trying to figure out how to create a complex and balanced Amaro using both regional flavors and global flavors. And so that took me over two years to create. And luckily through that lawyer, I met someone that would become my co-founder, Holly.

Liz Tinkham (14:33):
Okay. What had she been doing? And why was she a good co-founder for you?

Jamie Hunt (14:39):
So she had co-founded Captive Spirits, who makes Big Gin. And her and I just started a conversation. We would meet every couple months, have a drink. I would ask her a ton of questions and then try to get her to join me. And she finally left. Their company was sold to Hood River Distilling. She left Hood River and we still kept meeting, and I still kept trying to get her to come join me. And finally, the opportunity came and she said yes. And it was just what we needed to really get going quicker.

Liz Tinkham (15:19):
And so when did you make the decision to make this your full-time gig and not just your side hustle?

Jamie Hunt (15:26):
It really happened during the pandemic-

Liz Tinkham (15:29):
Really? Okay, so this year.

Jamie Hunt (15:31):
Yeah. I knew I wanted to at some point, but I still kept thinking I’d do it as a side hustle and just keep working my digital job.

Liz Tinkham (15:39):
So you’re a partner at Ernst and Young. And you have how many children?

Jamie Hunt (15:43):
I have two.

Liz Tinkham (15:44):
Two children, who are presumably home schooling because there’s no school in Seattle.

Jamie Hunt (15:49):
Yes.

Liz Tinkham (15:50):
And your husband’s working, and you’re running this side hustle business. And you’re thinking you’re going to keep all that going.

Jamie Hunt (15:56):
Yeah, crazily enough.

Liz Tinkham (15:58):
That’s amazing. That’s so amazing. All right. So you get to the pandemic and say again, so lightning struck. You decided to-

Jamie Hunt (16:09):
Yeah. I decided to leave EY and go full-time at Fast Penny. We were just getting ready to do our first launch in July. And I made this decision in March. I think the one thing, the pandemic has many, many problems, but one thing it does do is it really made it clear what was important. And kind of the fact that I needed to follow my passion, and really put myself into it.

Liz Tinkham (16:42):
When you did that, what were your biggest fears of leaving your 20-plus year digital career?

Jamie Hunt (16:51):
Oh, my goodness. Will we be successful? Will people buy our product? By then, we had figured out the recipe, so at least I had that to go on. But we hadn’t sold one bottle yet.

Liz Tinkham (17:07):
Oh, golly. Okay.

Jamie Hunt (17:08):
And we were pivoting because originally we were thinking we would go through distribution, through the distribution channels. And that was kind of dried up because many of the distributors don’t want to take on new brands during the pandemic. So we had to pivot to a direct to consumer, a shipper, so we had to pivot fast.

Liz Tinkham (17:32):
And Holly, what were her thoughts? Was she like, “Jamie, you can continue working, or come full time”? I mean, how much of an influence was she in making the decision?

Jamie Hunt (17:42):
She was so supportive. She was fine. She understood if I needed to continue working or wanted to continue working at EY. Or if I came there, she was happy when I decided to come there because she is the only person that was full-time doing all this work. And I felt bad because I could help on lunches and weekends and late nights and things like that, so it really threw her schedule out of whack a little bit because that was the time when I had time to meet.

Liz Tinkham (18:21):
So let’s talk a little bit about the name. And you have a beautiful website, and I’ve read all of it. And you mentioned that you might’ve been interested in perhaps your act two and a half as a burlesque dancer. Can you tell us about that?

Jamie Hunt (18:36):
Yeah. So this is kind of a funny story. Some friends and us were sitting at DeLille Wine Bar in Kirkland.

Liz Tinkham (18:46):
Is this you and Jason?

Jamie Hunt (18:47):
Jason and I, yep. And we were having wine, and my friend says to me, “Hey, I just signed up for this burlesque class. You should go.” And of course, Jason and the others were like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should go.” And here, I was like, “Oh, yeah, like an exercise class. That sounds great.” And so I signed up while still at the wine bar, and I went there and found out it was really for creating professional burlesque dancers. And I decided to go for it. It seemed really scary, and I kind of like to do scary things. And so I was like, “I’m going to push myself and do this.” And I’m so glad I did because it ended up being such an empowering experience and so wonderful. I never thought I would want to be on stage, Liz. I never thought I’d want to perform on stage, and I loved it, absolutely loved it.

Liz Tinkham (19:48):
So you did class and they had you do a performance?

Jamie Hunt (19:53):
Yeah, so I did a series of performances. And then I joined, the person who talked me into the class, we joined as a duet team. And my stage name was Velochayvonperla. And hers was Saunteenbejoo. And when we would act together, or perform together, we would call ourselves Fast Penny. And so when we were batting around ideas for the company that I was going to start, a big part of Fast Penny Spirits is empowering women. And I felt so empowered in that experience that it just became a natural decision for me.

Liz Tinkham (20:34):
Are you still performing?

Jamie Hunt (20:37):
I am not. I have no time.

Liz Tinkham (20:42):
So your burlesque career is on hold at this point. I just have to ask. What kind of sparkly outfit did you wear?

Jamie Hunt (20:49):
Oh, my God. I wore so many, so many crystals. I mean, we became masters at gluing crystals onto everything.

Liz Tinkham (20:59):
Bedazzlers extraordinaire.

Jamie Hunt (21:01):
Absolutely.

Liz Tinkham (21:02):
We might have to do a whole episode on that because I’ve never met anybody that did burlesque dancing, but I’m sure it was great exercise.

Jamie Hunt (21:08):
Oh, fantastic exercise. Yeah, it takes a lot of time. So having a side hustle, having a new company, having all of that, it just ended up with no time for burlesque.

Liz Tinkham (21:21):
Well, I love what you said about your company empowering women. And I know you give back 10%, 3% to the community. So talk about what you’re planning to do in terms of giving back.

Jamie Hunt (21:32):
Yeah. So we’ve built into our model a 3% bottle revenue give back, much to a lot of advice not to do that right now.

Liz Tinkham (21:42):
Because of you’re just starting and you need to balance profitability, et cetera.

Jamie Hunt (21:47):
Absolutely. But my thing was I started this partially because I could do this. This is what I wanted to do, and if I don’t build it into the model, I’m afraid it just won’t get there. And so our company takes losses every month because we’re a startup, but that’s just a really important thing, is to give back to our community and to give back to nonprofits that empower women.

Liz Tinkham (22:14):
Who have you given money to so far? Because you are out in stores now, selling, so I assume you’ve been able to make some donations.

Jamie Hunt (22:20):
We have. Yeah. So in July, we donated to Black Girl Ventures. And then in our August, September, October, went to Emerge Washington. And Emerge Washington helps elect women into office, political office. And now our November, December is Jubilee Women’s Center. And so we’re excited to be able to write that check in January to them to support them.

Liz Tinkham (22:47):
That is just so terrific. I love that fact that you built it into the model from the beginning, that it’s that important, because then it will just grow. It’s kind of like I think Salesforce has done some of the same thing in their models as well.

Jamie Hunt (23:02):
There’s a few other things that we do. This month, we decided 10% bottle revenue give back to the Independent Restaurant Coalition. And that’s because our restaurants and bars are hurting, and so we want to be able to support them however we can. We do other things to support the community too, so we also host pop ups so people have another place to do business and need some more exposure to do business with us. And so that’s been really wonderful, just kind of building out that community.

Liz Tinkham (23:38):
And when you talk to your, I assume it’s angel investors/friends and family, about putting money into Fast Penny, how do you explain that part of it to them?

Jamie Hunt (23:53):
I tell them there’s no question we’re doing this, and so you have to be supportive of the give back because we’re always going to have it. And we’ll give back in other ways whenever we can. And not only do our investors support it, I mean, they’re really, really excited about it.

Liz Tinkham (24:13):
That’s great to hear.

Jamie Hunt (24:16):
And we want to get it together so we can give more.

Liz Tinkham (24:21):
We talked a little bit about the lack of women in spirits in the industry. Why is that? And what’s it like being a woman in the spirits industry?

Jamie Hunt (24:30):
So it’s interesting, if you look historically, women, much like chefs, women were the distillers, the cider makers, the brewers, and such, in our history. And then once the Industrial Revolution hit and it became more big business, men took over. And I see the distilling business kind of a lot aligned to what’s happening in the restaurant business with the chefs, and more women chefs getting into a place of notoriety and getting more of that support. I think that’s happening in the distilling industry as well. There are lots of wonderful groups out there that support women in distilling. And my experience, yes, it’s male dominated. That can make it tough at times. But my experience has been one of a lot of support. I can pretty much call up, and I do, I call up different distillers and ask them a variety of questions. We’re looking at a forklift right now, and so I called a distillery. They don’t know me from anyone. And I called them up and said, “How do you like your forklift?”

Liz Tinkham (25:50):
I love that. That’s a little bit different than digital advertising.

Jamie Hunt (25:53):
Yeah, definitely.

Liz Tinkham (25:55):
So as you think about … So now your work, life balance, everything is completely changed. So this third act, and who knows, you may have four of five acts. How do you look at your life differently in terms of family, time off, work, life balance? I mean, you were balancing a huge amount before, but it seems to me you’re as busy, if not busier.

Jamie Hunt (26:18):
Absolutely. I have to remind myself. I’ve been so programmed for over 25 years of get up at 6:30 in the morning, get online, get to work. And so I have to remember that I don’t necessarily have to go that route because what happens is I get inspired to do things at different times of the day. That’s always been true, but now I think I should be able to do that work at that time of the day, rather than thinking, feeling guilty because I’m not doing it at 8:00 in the morning.

Liz Tinkham (26:55):
So you’re thinking the paradigm of the hours of the day has changed entirely.

Jamie Hunt (27:00):
Yes. Yeah. I’m trying to think that way because it should be. It should be that way, in my opinion, being in this business. There’s certain hours that you’d need to be around, but there’s others that you don’t. And quite frankly, as you said, I’m working seven days a week. The way that I choose to spend my time, making time for family, making time for fun things, I do that too. That’s a really important piece.

Liz Tinkham (27:38):
So your business kicked off, you launched this year. You’re in several different store locations doing D-to-C as well, direct to consumer. Where’s your business heading? Where do you see it in a couple years?

Jamie Hunt (27:52):
Oh, gosh. Really want to make our mark on America and get our liquid out to as many people as possible. But we’re focused right now on the West Coast, so we just sold some of our first bottles to Oregon.

Liz Tinkham (28:08):
Great.

Jamie Hunt (28:09):
And we just signed with a distributor in California.

Liz Tinkham (28:14):
So if people want to find out how to buy Fast Penny Spirits, and the Amaro is Americano, is that correct?

Jamie Hunt (28:22):
Yeah. It’s Americano, and Americano Bianca is our light version, our white version.

Liz Tinkham (28:30):
And you can go to fastpennyspirits.com. And there’s a location tab up there to look at it. Also, I can’t say enough about your website. It’s absolutely stunning. The visuals are gorgeous. There’s a lot of other information on there about some of the pop ups and groups that you’re supporting, so I encourage our listeners to take a look at it. And we’ll definitely put it in the show notes. But I always love to finish with, I like to think I’m not done yet, which is probably why I’m doing this podcast. And so what aren’t you done with?

Jamie Hunt (29:00):
I’m not done with making an impact on the world.

Liz Tinkham (29:03):
Oh, wow. Say more.

Jamie Hunt (29:05):
Yeah. So whatever way it is, whether it’s through doing our givebacks and things with Fast Penny, whether it’s mentoring women or others, that’s a really important part of who I am. And I feel like I’m never going to be done with that.

Liz Tinkham (29:23):
That’s wonderful. Well, Jamie, thanks so much for joining us on Third Act. As I said, you can find the store locations and more information about the Amaro on fastpennyspirits.com. Jamie and I are going to take a pause here and have a couple drinks. And we look to have you back in a couple years after this is nationwide. Thanks, Jamie.

Jamie Hunt (29:41):
Thank you, Liz.

Liz Tinkham (29:46):
Thanks for joining me today to listen to the Third Act Podcast. You can find show notes, guest bios, and more at thirdactpodcast.com. If you enjoyed our show today, please subscribe and write a review on your favorite podcast platform. I’m your host, Liz Tinkham. I’ll be back next week with another guest who’s found new meaning and fulfillment in the third act of their life.