Building a Business with Meaning | Nish Sharma's founder story

Is what you're building actually connected to who you are? And would you know if it wasn't? Nish Sharma knew. He had the banking career, the best car, the best house, four holidays a year - and a question he couldn't shake: what am I actually doing? 

The answer arrived at his grandmother's funeral. In the grief that followed, he found a 100-year-old family story nobody had ever finished: a bootlegger great-grandfather who started an alcohol enterprise with a Scottish army officer in 1940. Nish decided to finish it — in Edinburgh, with a Scottish gin and rum that carries both worlds in, and on, the bottle.

What followed was anything but straightforward. Near-bankruptcy. A wall of silence from UK retailers despite offering to pay for the shelf space himself. He survived a heart attack and put it in an email to a buyer who kept saying no. He chased one contract for five years and felt flat when it finally landed.
The private jet he always dreamed of? There's a model one on his desk. Now he drives a van.

Listen to this episode to find out:

• What he actually wrote in an email to a buyer who'd repeatedly rejected him
• How a bootlegger, a Scottish army officer, Indian passport holograms and the Gaelic word for tea ended up encoded in his bottles
• Why angel investors who demand revenue proof before investing have got it backwards
• Why his philosophy is "it has not worked, it is working just now" and what it means if you're building for the long term
• What shaking hands with seven or eight billionaires taught him about wealth, success and what you actually need

Connect with Nish:

• Rutland Square: https://www.rutlandsquarespirits.com/
• On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishantsharma08/

Chapters:

00:55 — The business, the products, the team
02:25 — "Who am I?" Assam, Punjab, Edinburgh
04:59 — Banking: paid the bills, didn't serve a purpose
07:13 — Four businesses that failed before this one
08:44 — "It has not worked, it is working now"
10:43 — What a decade in banking actually gave him
14:15 — The global palate argument
16:41 — The shelf space offer retailers turned down
18:08 — The funeral and the 100-year legacy
19:28 — "Stories live forever. Products don't."
20:03 — The bottle: passports, tartan, 1940 and 2020
23:13 — Near-bankruptcy and the angel paradox
25:14 — Why Scotch whisky is a generational business
26:36 — How tech broke investor psychology
27:07 — The bigger plan
30:57 — "Elon Musk is going to Mars. I'm just building on Earth."
31:31 — The van, the model jet, the payroll
34:53 — The one thing he'd do differently

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Thanks for listening.

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