- And good evening.

You've got More Than Money, you've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial adviser.

For the next half an hour, I'm all yours.

We're here to serve.

The term More Than Money was invented exactly for that purpose, we talk about all things connected to the financial world, of course, investments, income taxes, estate planning, lots of interesting topics that you suggest to us with your e-mails.

And often we talk to some pretty interesting folks that are engaged in business, how they got into the business, what kind of business it is.

Are they going to go to jail because of their business?

Those kinds of questions that you're really interested in.

And I think this evening you're going to get some really cool insights into a very, very special business, one that I've been fascinated to learn about.

I think you will be as well.

But before we get started, if you're a loyal viewer of More Than Money - and now we have exposure, gosh, coast to coast and north and south - we want to welcome our viewers in Southern California.

That's fantastic.

San Diego way.

Thank you for sharing part of your time with us.

If you have a question, wherever you might be, send it right to me, send it to Gene@askMTM.com, G-E-N-E @askMTM.com.

My entire team stands at the ready to serve you.

We can't answer every single question on a future show.

We simply don't have enough hours in the day.

But we answer every single question directly to you.

Now, I know it's the holiday time of the year and there's lots of concerns out there about supply chain disruptions.

There are things that supply chains don't affect and that's caring about people.

That's a phone call that's been unexpected.

Maybe it's a Zoom call or FaceTime.

Maybe it's just that interaction that, gosh, you've been putting off a little bit and maybe now's the right time.

Maybe it's an experience or maybe you just skip the whole supply chain and go directly to the source.

And particularly if it's American made, that's something that you might want to pay attention to.

So as I introduce my guests this evening, I think you might get an idea or two that might be appropriate for your holiday season, in addition to just being very, very grateful about the great opportunity we have, living in a great country at a great time.

So be grateful, but also welcome to our More Than Money stage, Christine Riggleman.

- Hi.

- And her daughter Abby.

- Hello.

- So welcome.

- Thank you for having us.

- Are you nervous?

- Huh?

No, I'm good.

- Excellent.

Excellent.

And we know Abby's not nervous.

She's an old pro.

- Oh, yeah.

She's a pro.

- Or a young pro.

- Because that makes me... - No!

- I'm normally more behind the camera, so... - Oh, so you might have a little, there might be.

We'll take care of that.

My job is to make sure everything goes smoothly.

So I make you look great and you guys are already holding up your end of the bargain really, really well.

Silverback Distillery.

- Yes.

- Fascinating name.

- Thank you.

- The word distillery for a lot of folks is relatively new.

They know that there are spirits out there, but they've generally been found on shelves and having been trucked here from far, far distances.

And that's not the case with Silverback.

Tell us a little bit about Silverback.

- So Silverback... We started from we, went to a family trip to Scotland and we only went to one distillery, but I fell in love.

My family was in the tasting room already doing a tasting and I was with the tour guide going, what does that equipment do?

What is that pump for?

What does that machine do?

And it wouldn't leave me.

And so I sat my family down and told them what I wanted to do, that I knew I wanted to create something for customers.

It's important to me to make people happy.

That's what makes me tick.

I love seeing a customer drink something or eat something that I've created.

It makes me really happy, seeing their reaction.

And so we started Silverback Distillery and all of our daughters were in college or high school and they said, OK, we're all in, you know, what can we do?

And I thought it was just going to be me with them just like visiting me occasionally.

But everybody sort of jumped in and we haven't really looked back.

- Well, that's exciting stuff.

- It is.

It is.

- Abby, give us a sense... Distilling can produce a pretty wide range of products.

What types of products really would somebody find at Silverback?

- So when we first opened, we only had vodka and gin because whiskey takes time to age.

So being a new distillery, we didn't have that time yet.

So we started with vodka and gin and my mom submitted the gin to the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, where it won a double gold, which is the highest honor you could get.

And that was our first, like, six months... - I'd only been distilling less than six months.

- And obviously, you're a huge gin fan.

- No, no.

- She doesn't like gin!

- Are you kidding?

- No.

That's why I created our Strange Monkey gin, because I wanted to create something that even non gin drinkers could drink and 99.9% of the time so far, it has won people over.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

Well, as a gin drinker, not today, but as a gin drinker in general, I'm fascinated.

I'll have to give that a go.

So we've got gin and vodka to start.

But now where has it gone?

- Now we're a year into having the distillery open and we had a rye whiskey that my mom let some customers taste.

And they're like, this is amazing.

And we're like, we think it's a little too young to release.

It was only 13 months old.

So my mom decided, you know what?

Let's give the people what they want, and we will release our rye whiskey.

So we called it Lucky 13 Rye, because it was only 13 months old.

So after our rye, we released a honey rye whiskey that is made with real honey, which you won't find on the market.

- No chemicals, no flavoring, no coloring.

We don't roll that way.

- Honey.

- Real honey.

- And other products don't have real honey?

- No, they have, most of them have chemicals.

They might have a tiny bit, like a couple of drops, but not... - It's artificial honey flavoring.

- Yes.

- You guys do the real deal.

- We do the real thing because, and that's one of the great things about being a small craft distillery is we're not just mass-producing.

And if we were, the honey takes, it's a really labor intensive process.

So being a craft distillery, we're able to take that time and care and make a true honey whiskey.

- You folks have an interesting business model.

- We're in the mountains of Pennsylvania, we're in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

- Yeah.

- How did that come about?

- So my husband and I are born and bred Virginians, he was in the military.

So our children were born in three different states.

And so we've lived all over the country.

And when he was done with the military, we had been in Pennsylvania.

His last base was National Security Agency, and we had been in Pennsylvania for ten years.

Half of our family, when they originally came over to the States, half went to Virginia, half Pennsylvania.

But his family as well, which is funny.

And so we have roots in both states.

And when he said, you know, where do you want to go?

And I said, well, we had lived in Pennsylvania for a while, so let's try Virginia.

And so we settled there.

But the antiquated laws that Virginia has for distilleries, we said, OK, Pennsylvania is a commonwealth and also a controlled state, but they are very forward thinking with our business for a distillery.

So we said our first expansion was Pennsylvania.

And we came back and expanded here.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

And you have essentially two separate distilleries, two separate organizations.

Cultures... - It's... yeah.

It's one same organization umbrella, I'm controlling both.

- We have a very interesting... We call it a split production model.

So we're not making all of our products in one location and then different products at another location.

We're making a lot of them in Virginia and then we do all the bottling in Pennsylvania and we have a smaller still there.

So our products touch both locations.

So we're doing hands-on in both of them.

- And the words still kind of suggest to, especially the kin I grew up with, a little something out in the backwoods that maybe... - That would have been a lot easier.

But it's, apparently it's the proper terminology for, that's what you use to distill products.

- Yes.

- And apparently your nickname is connected in there somehow.

- Yeah, Hooch Mama.

- Hooch Mama.

- Because hooch is also liquor.

And so I'm a mama and all my girls work for me and I sort of tend to mama all my employees.

So they call me Hooch Mama.

It was either that or Gin Master.

So... - Now Hooch Mama.

- Yeah.

And your one daughter is... - Baby Hooch.

- Baby Hooch.

And your husband's Silverback.

- He is.

- And then there's a daughter that claims to be way too cool to have a nickname.

At least that's what's on the website.

Did I get that right?

- Yes, you did.

We had a little fun with our bios on the website.

- I noticed that.

It would seem that you have a little fun with everything that you're doing.

- We try to, very much so, because it is all of our family.

And I've even had Abby's husband work for us for a while.

He was one of my distillers, he was an operations manager in Pennsylvania.

So we like to have a very serious side of what we're doing and all the procedures and protocols, but we want everybody to come to work happy and not sitting there going, I can't go in today.

So we try to make it fun.

We have like a field day when we can where we have teams and you compete against each other and do like walk the plank, and it's really just like a little tiny 2x4 on the ground or we do barrel rolling and stuff like that.

So we try to break up the intensity that we have.

- So you take your products really seriously.

- Yes.

- You don't take yourselves very seriously.

- That's a good way to put it.

- My husband... My husband has taught us that, you know, a lot of...

There's a lot of seriousness in life, but you still have to be able to laugh at yourself.

- Without a doubt.

- Yeah.

- Is it true, I'm hopeful I got this right, that your husband Denver... - Yes.

- Silverback.

- Yes.

- Apparently, thank you, daughters.

- Yeah.

- I have three daughters.

I get it.

- Yeah.

He went gray really early.

- Of course!

He has three daughters!

That was enough to do it right there.

He is a congressman?

- He's a former congressman.

- Former congressman.

- Yes.

Yes.

He is not right now.

Right now he is serving on January 6th committee.

He is the senior technical advisor.

So, but he was a former congressman for...representing Virginia.

- Southwest of Charlottesville?

Charlottesville was his district, as well as representing 730,000 people in DC.

- Wow.

Wow.

- It was a big job.

- Such a beautiful area.

And I've been there many, many times and folks just love it down there.

So you guys are really getting the best of a lot of worlds.

But before I get too far along, you were roughly what...

I apologize, roughly what age when you were in Scotland going, "I should do this"?

- Oh, gosh.

It was... Um...

I was 42.

- 2012.

- Yeah, so I was 42.

- So at a time when a lot of women are saying my kids are almost grown, kind of kick them out of the house, I think I'll join a garden club, you go, "I'm going to go behind the scenes..." - That sounds lovely right now!

- Well, some days.

Some days.

Was there something in your background that led you to that?

Was this just karma?

This was just God's good graces that brought you to a still in the backwoods of Scotland?

- I love your choice of words.

Basically with my husband being active duty military, we didn't have the benefit of our families being able to afford our college.

So we were both trying to go to college.

And then once he got in the military, they kept shipping him off and it was like an hour notice, two hours' notice, and he'd have to be gone.

We never knew how long he'd be gone, what country.

And so I stopped going to school so that I could help put him through school.

And then when more of the children started coming along, with him being gone so much, it was very difficult for me to try to work outside of that.

And we're 2,000 miles away, a thousand miles away from family.

So, you know, I know my kids needed that support structure of at least one of us home.

So I put all of my career on hold.

I had been studying business.

I had worked on a contract supporting the Space Shuttle Freedom back before they came.

And I was just a little peon on it, but I would just listen to the engineers and be fascinated with it.

And so I loved creating things.

And I'd always love to give gifts to people.

And I knew that I wanted to produce something.

And then when the opportunity came, I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

It just, everything clicked into place.

So...I was opposite.

So I was able to stay home with the kids, so I think they were sick of me.

But then they all came to work for me.

- And we weren't that surprised when she... Well, OK. We were a little surprised when she said she wanted to open a distillery, but throughout, you know, growing up, she always wanted to open a business.

Business was really important to her.

She had... She would show us all of these drawings of business ideas.

- Notebooks.

- Yeah.

Notebooks of, you know, she'd draw the front of the business.

And so we knew that she loved business and she was an incredible cook and baker.

So she actually even won state fair competitions with her baking.

So she was incredible.

Always been an incredible creator.

So the distillery part, we were a little bit surprised, but when we asked her about it, she was like, it's kind of just like baking, you know, it's grains and water.

And I can I can learn how to use the equipment, but it's the flavor and the taste, like, I got that down.

- I cook hooch now.

- Nice.

Well, clearly, your mom's head around business, not so much on the whole biological thing when the kids came along, like she was surprised.

"Another baby!

No idea how that happened."

Yeah.

Family businesses can be challenging.

So what's it like being in the business and being the daughter of Hooch Mama?

- OK, cut!

Definitely family businesses have their challenges because it can be... it can be difficult.

When you're going on a vacation, you can't not talk about business.

We try not to.

We try not to.

- It's really hard.

- We also, we go to a new place and our family thinks, oh, this would be a really cool business to start, in a completely random... - "Let's look at properties!"

- It's like a pastime.

So it's kind of a fun thing for our family to do.

But it's on one hand, especially, I have a family now.

I had a daughter last year.

And working for my family is amazing, too, because I get, you know, my mom understands things.

If I need to take a take a day off then I have a little bit of flexibility with my work.

So there's some great pros there.

And she typically listens to me when I want to do stuff with the business.

So that's always... - Let's not get too far along without giving your daughter her due.

What's your daughter's name?

- Her name is Isla.

- Isla.

And she's a year old.

- Mm-hmm.

- Is she sleeping through the night?

- Sometimes.

- Sometimes!

- She's teething.

- You look very well rested.

- She's teething.

- That's fantastic.

- Caffeine is great.

- What's your number one challenge working with Mom?

Number one challenge working with my mom.

Hmm.

That is a great question.

- It's OK.

It's OK.

Number one challenge.

- I know one.

- Yeah?

You have a good one?

- Getting... Getting time when you need me to focus, when people don't come in and interrupt me all the time.

- Oh, yeah.

But I feel like that's just more like specific to the way that you work, you just... She's very good at multitasking.

And I'm a kind of person that, I do a lot of creative things, design, I do our label design and all sorts of things, so I like to focus, get into the creative flow.

And she's very much like a CEO, I think that's part of it.

She's like, oh, this, that, this, that, this, that, and so sometimes it's hard to focus when she wants a million things.

- Equal opportunity.

What's the most challenging thing about working with your daughter?

- Daughter or daughters?

- Daughters!

No, plural.

Take Abby off the hook a little bit.

- I absolutely, like, I'm so proud of them and I'm so grateful that they are a part of the journey with me.

But I think sometimes it's hard for them to see me as CEO occasionally, because I'm always family first and the company comes second.

So sometimes, you know, I give a little more time off maybe than I should with some of my daughters.

That daughter will know what I'm talking about.

But other than that, I mean, honestly, it's just making sure that we all can mesh with the same objective, you know, because we all have different roles.

So sometimes we each have to prioritize what we're doing and sometimes that's hard because we each have so much on our shoulders.

- You're describing what every business is faced with, what every business is challenged by.

And the personalities involved are all a little different cos you have three daughters and they're all exactly the same and you deal with them...?

No, of course not.

- And I expect a lot.

I do.

- I was thinking about your question more and that's actually, I think, more of the better, better answer to your question about the most challenging, the most challenging thing, which I really think is feeling like it's like, am I doing enough for the family business?

Because sometimes maybe I need a break or I try to put in so much, but it's like, am I doing, am I doing enough?

So... - Is there ever a day when you get to the end of your day and you go, I'm finished?

- No.

- Never?

- No.

- It doesn't exist?

When people say, "You were off, your day was off," I have four phone calls and I had to send out like 20 e-mails.

But yes, I technically wasn't here.

- You weren't there.

You sure weren't off.

- Yeah.

- And the process of, as a family, traveling, seeing new businesses, hey, that might be kind of cool, hey, we might be able to incorporate that.

One of the guidance... guidances?

He tried to say... ..that a lot of career counselors give is find something you're passionate about.

Well, if you're passionate about it, it doesn't stop at 5pm.

Especially not if you're selling hooch.

- Yeah.

- Oh, my goodness.

- Because people bring us stuff all the time.

Hey, try this product.

Try this product.

And so, you know, or hey, are you going to be at the distillery at 5:30, you know, and I was there at 6am.

"Sure."

So, you know, you don't want to say no because people are excited because they tried to find you all these unique items and cool products out there.

- Our audience is enjoying the opportunity to meet Abby.

Your other two daughters are also involved in the business.

One of your daughters, if I've got it correct, Master Distiller.

So I'm the Master Distiller and also she is as well.

I promoted her recently - six, eight months ago - to Master Distiller as well.

She has her master's degree in fermentation, distillation from Heriot-Watt in Scotland.

She's also a professor in the States in Virginia at PVCC community college, and she's also an international tutor.

So I felt that she deserved the title as well.

And most, most distilleries only ever have one Master Distiller.

But we've never done anything according to convention.

Obviously, females in a male dominated industry.

So we... She deserved the title.

And that way she's going to be a part of doing protocols with me, which are, you know, developing new products.

The recipes, all that has been on me and I wanted to share that with her and get her take on things with that.

So we like to say I'm the craft and she's the science.

- Now, interesting you use the word craft, it's almost like you're psychic, but most wives are, which is spooky.

You too, you're a wife.

The word craft is used a lot.

Craft beer, craft distiller, craft wine making, craft a lot.

What makes... What really does make your distillery a craft distillery versus mass production?

- So one is our licensing.

So you have to produce under a certain amount of product every year.

And then also most of the bigger, like Jim Beam, all of them, Wild Turkey, they are owned by a large, you know, large conglomerate.

- Conglomerate.

- Yes.

So we are very much family run and we produce a smaller amount of product.

So that's a good distinction of... - Very good.

Obviously more attention to detail, because if you're doing it in small batches and something's not quite right, you go, out it goes.

- Yeah.

- If you're a large "we gotta to produce 80 truckloads by Thursday" and it's off a little, off it goes.

- Right.

So Lauren and I are the only mother-daughter master distilling duo in the world.

We did a lot of research, but we didn't find any other master distiller duos, mother daughter.

And she's the youngest in the country right now.

But we are one of the only distilleries, craft distilleries that are literally hands-on.

We don't have electronic equipment, computers.

When you go into a lot of the mass distilleries, which, great for them, great for them, I love all their equipment, but we literally do it by hand.

We make all the cuts by hand when I feel that it's ready to make the cuts.

And Lauren now as well and our other distillers and apprentices are learning, and our operations team, that distills with us, and it's all by hand.

We have no computers running it.

So I don't know any other distillery, you know, at the level that we're producing that is doing that.

But I feel that it's so important at this stage.

I might have to eventually get to that.

But right now I have my hand in every part of it.

So... - Well, folks that are viewing this evening, lots are seeing it locally.

So, so Silverback in East Stroudsburg, that easy to find Silverback in in Virginia.

Easy to find.

Do you sell... Are you allowed to sell by internet?

- Yes.

Yes.

Both locations we're allowed to sell bottles.

We do tastings.

We do tours.

- So this is American made, in America, products are American?

- Yes, yes.

Yes.

- So it kind of fits... Checks all the boxes for me.

And supply chain issues not really applying here.

- Oh, yes, they do apply to us.

- They do apply.

- Oh, goodness.

- Yes, very much so.

Every aspect of everything that we're doing.

That could be a whole another segment.

We've struggled with bottles.

Our bottling manufacturer mostly did craft distilleries, but the big boys, a lot of them got their product overseas in shipping containers and couldn't.

So they had precedence over us.

So we had a hard time with corks, materials for labels, corrugated boxes.

We still are struggling with all of that.

- Even t-shirts to sell merchandise, glasses to sell our drinks and to sell to our customers as well.

- So should we be telling everybody listening, bring your own glasses, bring your own bottles?

- We wish.

- We can't do that either!

- We're working on that.

- It was just a thought.

- We're working on it.

- That's a good idea.

Christine, in a minute or so, if you were to give advice to a woman that was starting her own business, what one or two things would you advise her to either do or think before she starts her own business?

- We had thought we had done our due diligence for the business that we were doing distilled spirits, in Virginia, and there was laws that were very archaic and antiquated that has crippled our business in Virginia, and that's why we expanded to Pennsylvania.

We have to give, when we first started, 54% of every bottle we sold to the state of Virginia.

But that's why... We've been working on laws.

That's how my husband got in Congress, is we fight laws.

The girls have all gone with us to state assembly trying to fight laws, get better laws on the books.

But also, you know, we expanded to Pennsylvania because they had better laws.

So do your due diligence.

- Do your due diligence.

- And search deeper, go to businesses that have the same business that you're trying to do.

Talk to them, ask them.

It doesn't hurt to ask.

- And in a similar vein, what advice would you give to a family member going into a business before they made that commitment?

- You mean like in my situation, whose family is starting a business?

- Sure.

Advice I would give is still put...

Invest, invest in yourself, invest... Like, I did my degree.

My family supported that, which is great.

But make sure that you have skills yourself.

Make sure you find a focus that you really enjoy and that excites you about the business so that you never know what's going to happen.

Maybe you sell your business, maybe you want to go a different direction, but making sure that you still have the skills that you need to, you know, have a career is a really great, great thing to do.

- Two great pieces of advice.

Christine, Abby, thank you so much.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Fantastic.

As I turn to our audience, if you didn't enjoy that, you probably fell asleep.

That's on you.

It's the holiday season.

I get that.

Or maybe you were trying some of the Monkey gin.

I'm just guessing.

If you are interested in pursuing our relationship, coming back with us on More Than Money and you've got questions, send them to me, Gene@askMTM.com.

If you have a suggestion for a guest that you think would bring an American story to our stage that you would enjoy, make sure you send that to me as well, Gene@askMTM.com.

It is an absolute pleasure to spend part of my evening with you.

I hope you picked up a couple of ideas.

If you're thinking about starting a business, male, female, doesn't matter, mom, dad, kids included, make sure that you do your due diligence.

Make sure you focus on yourself as well.

Thank you for spending part of your evening with us and we'll make sure that we see you next time right back here on More Than Money.