SB meets… Michael Chandler, Hiatus Tequila

American mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Michael Chandler speaks to us about investing in Hiatus Tequila, his thoughts on celebrity brands and his work-life balance.

Why did you invest in Hiatus?

Tequila has been my drink of choice for as long as I can remember now and I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into it, getting a greater respect for the actual process and the different flavours, looks and branding and all those different things.

I wanted to actually start my own brand and I thought about it, went down that road a little bit, but I didn’t get too far. It was gonna be a long process. A friend of mine introduced me to Hiatus and from the very first sip, I knew I wanted more of it. After buying a couple of cases, sharing it with my friends, drinking it at different get-togethers and whatnot, I reached out to my friend and said ‘hey, is there any way I can get connected with the owner, Kris DeSoto’. I did a little bit of research and then we struck up a relationship. He was a little bit resistant at first because he never wanted to become a ‘celebrity brand’ if you will.

I don’t ever want to put my name, or my energy, time, resources and reputation behind something that I don’t truly, truly believe in. I knew from the first conversation with Kris that this was a no brainer.

What makes this different to the usual celebrity partnerships?

There’s obviously the trend of celebrities, you know, people who have a platform, coming into the space. That was something that Kris saw, that kind of trickle-down effect of how the Tequila space is just getting more and more watered down and saturated with not great products, with people just putting their names on a bottle, and his goal was to make a superior product done the right way, putting huge emphasis on the process and slowing things down. Doing it the way Tequila was intended to be – so it took a little bit of work for me to get in the door and convince him.

How hands-on will you be?

Luckily for me I go into these ‘seasons’, or training camps if you will. I will be training for 12 weeks for one fight and then all of a sudden I have time off. I’ve been out for the last year and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a little tough, but it’s given me time to work on things outside of the Octagon.

I might not be so much necessarily in the day-to-day side of things – in the sales meetings and what not – but I have my special role and specific gifts that I bring to the table. I believe Kris saw that. I just drove personally on a nine-hour round trip to Indianapolis, we visited a couple of liquor stores, went to three or four different restaurants and bars in town, and met with our distributor.

We’re gonna go to Tennessee in the next couple of weeks, so I’ll be all boots on the ground getting into it. But I’m down for anything. I’m in it just as much as the founder, just as much as all the other investors and the marketing teams.

What’s your ambition with Hiatus?

For us it’s about methodically expanding the footprint. It would feel good if we were able to push a button and be available in all 50 states and then six other countries, but is that right? Is that doing a disservice to the mission behind? If you expand too quickly, it doesn’t really work out too well for you sometimes, you know.

And also, it’s about getting the agave at the exact right time and waiting for the full eight years until it is 100% ripe, not just grabbing a four- or five-year-old agave and trying to rectify it later on. We want to do the right things, day in and day out, even if the process might take longer than we want it to. There’s a rubber band effect in this short attention span world that we live in. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to burn out. We’re on a long journey. We’re not afraid of a delayed gratification process from here to being a worldwide brand.

Favourite type of Tequila?

Blanco. It gets a bad reputation – a lot of the time it’s people’s first Tequila experience, a blanco in a shot glass, they throw it back and say ‘holy cow I hate Tequila’. It’s my favourite of the three to sip on and enjoy, on the rocks or by itself. The cornerstone of every Tequila company is your blanco. Without a good blanco, it’s hard to have a good añejo.

What are your thoughts on a Tequila shake-out?

Things get saturated really quickly with possibly sub-par products or different ideas and marketing pushes. All of a sudden the Tequila drinkers will eventually say ‘wait a second, there’s a lot of things to choose from right now and I want to be romantic about the ones I like’.

Hiatus felt bigger than just the bottle. There’s a true love for the culture of where Tequila started with Hiatus. With things like profits, industrialisation and, ‘quote, unquote’, successes that people can have in the space, sometimes you can see less attention to detail. I wasn’t going to be fully on board until I went down to Mexico and visited our distillery in La Cofradía. They are so adamant about their brands that they have underneath there. They are not just trying to make a quick buck.

These days as well, people can smell through the BS pretty quickly – which is a beautiful thing. You are seeing that shift in the spirits industry where people are looking at the ethos behind why someone is doing something. Authenticity will always win in the long run. You have to have that point of differentiation.

How will you take advantage of your relationship with the UFC?

They have a different Tequila deal [with Jose Cuervo] in place right now, but talk to me in six months and we will see where we are at. I told both Dana [White, CEO of the UFC] and Hunter Campbell [chief business officer of the UFC] about it, and that I want a bite of the apple whenever the next contract negotiations come out.

The UFC notoriously does great business with big, massive brands. Life is about relationships and it’s worked out pretty well for me there because I’ve been a great employee. If you have a good reputation and people like you, things are going to work out for you, right?

I can have these conversations that a lot of fighters wouldn’t really be able to have that are on the roster, so we’ll see, I’m confident some good things can happen between Hiatus and the UFC. Definitely with the UFC fan base – we were just in Indiana and it was massive with the bottle signings.

Do you drink much yourself?

Definitely. Obviously, I drink responsibly. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. I’m alway training, always in shape, and I’m 37 years old. The reason I’ve been able to prolong this career at a high level is because I really take great care of my body. For training camps I have to stare at my shelf and salivate at the bottle of Hiatus for 12 weeks, but as soon as the fights are over I can kick back and sip on some blancos. For me the message is without those moments of rest, taking a step back, you can’t do tomorrow’s work.

It’s like the meaning behind our brand’s name – we all work so hard, we spend so much time grinding on careers and aspirations. You only get one life and working yourself to the bone isn’t always the most beneficial thing, right? Make sure you find your hiatus. It could be anywhere on the entire planet where you could shut off your work for a second, take off the pressures in life and just enjoy a phenomenal drink in the moment.