From the Marines to Making Vodka, with Noah Hampton

In this episode of the Entrepreneurship@DU Podcast, host Joshua Ross interviews Noah Hampton, a first-year student at the University of Denver, Marine Corps veteran, and co-founder of Pentilla Vodka. 

Noah shares his journey from growing up in Missouri to serving in the Marines, including his firsthand experience during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He discusses how these life-changing experiences shaped both his perspective and the mission behind Pentilla. 

The episode dives into how Noah and his co-founder are building a vodka brand that also focuses on community, adventure, and giving back to veterans. Noah reflects on lessons learned in entrepreneurship, balancing school, business, and personal life. 

Transcript:

Joshua Ross (00:02):

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the Entrepreneurship at DU podcast.

Noah Hampton (00:09):

What better place to kind of restart, reset, and recoup and really do something new and special than in the heart of Denver? My

Joshua Ross (00:18):

Guest today is Noah Hampton. Noah’s a first year student at the University of Denver. He’s a Marine Corps veteran and he’s the co-founder of Pentilla Vodka, a brand with a mission that goes far beyond spirits. Noah’s journey takes us from Missouri to the Middle East to San Diego, and now where he currently resides

Noah Hampton (00:41):

Denver. I mean, you see people that are clawing and scratching at every piece of energy and grit that they have to make it to the gate and to make it through and to get on a plane with their family and fly and go somewhere safe. Noah shares how his time in the

Joshua Ross (00:59):

Marines including being on the ground during one of the most pivotal events in modern American history. The United States withdraw from Afghanistan shaped not only who he is, but the mission behind Pentilla Vodka. Through Pinilla, Noah and his partner are building a brand that gives back to veterans and creates community. Here’s my interview with Noah Hampton. Noah, welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast.

Noah Hampton (01:29):

Seriously, thank you for the invite. It’s such a pleasure.

Joshua Ross (01:33):

So this is the first year student we’ve ever had on the podcast.

Noah Hampton (01:39):

Wow, really?

Joshua Ross (01:40):

Yeah, absolutely. So you know what, as we dive into this audience, you’re going to see why Noah’s the first person. So before we get into your entrepreneurship story, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you ended up at du.

Noah Hampton (01:54):

So I was born and raised out in small town Missouri, down lake of the Ozarks. Lived there for 18 years, beautiful spot to grow up, but there’s not a lot of growth after that point. And so I really didn’t care a whole lot about my grades in high school. So I decided to make a shift and kind of learn about life a little bit more. And so I joined the Marine Corps at age 18 and from that point I served four and a half years where I went on two different deployments, kind of stationed out in Southern California, which was just a beautiful place to kind of develop yourself. And then once we had kind of hit maybe that two year mark at serving in the Marine Corps, I had a really close buddy of mine who just had this brilliant idea to start a vodka business. And when we had just come back from our first deployment, things were a little different for everybody and we just kind of jumped on board with it. And so we rocked and all the way to deciding to launch here in Denver and it’s been an absolute blast ever since.

Joshua Ross (03:05):

Alright, so how did you end up, I understand how you ended up in Denver, but how more specifically at the University of Denver, you had the military, as you said, you talked about the vodka business, which we’re going to dive into, but you’re at the University of Denver as a first year.

Noah Hampton (03:21):

So when we were kind of looking at different areas to launch it, obviously Denver was the best, but then it was really important that we wanted to get a good education. And after being involved in the past deployments, we both kind of understood that working with our hands probably wasn’t going to be the long-term goal. So we decided to go to DU one because the business program here is just phenomenal and I’ve been blown out of the water ever since we started coming here. But then two, really it was just a perfect location. I mean, what better place to kind of restart, reset, and recoup and really do something new and special than in the heart of Denver? And so that’s kind of where we decided that DU and I decided that DU was really for me. And then when we came on a tour here, it was just blown away. I remember when it first came on here, I was like, this is Hogwarts, this is Hogwarts. And so it was just an immediate jump into it.

Joshua Ross (04:21):

Alright. So you spent four and a half years in the Marines. What was it like? What was the experience like as you said you weren’t really into school when started, how did it shape you? How did it change you?

Noah Hampton (04:34):

So being in the Marine Corps, I would describe as my biggest growth point yet. So obviously I told you I joined up when I was 18, so still very young, very eager. Went through bootcamp, came out of school, which is like your infantry training school. You learn your basics, you think you know everything, and then you get to the fleet and your world has just changed. And so you get there and we started to really train and dive into it. And we knew that we were going to be deploying to the Middle East, so we were doing a lot of evacuation drills. We were doing a lot of really just training for that specific mission. And about I would say three months into the fleet I deployed, which is super quick, usually you have two years worth of training. And so that’s a very scary experience where you have to kind of overcome that fear and just step right into it and understand that your path is being chosen for you and you got two options.

(05:44):

You can either drag your feet and you’ll make it that much longer or you can just run straight into it. And that’s the mentality I took into it. And so when we first landed in Kuwait, we spent a couple of months out there, tons of training, very hot. I remember the days where 120 to 130 degrees when you open up a stove and that bush of heat comes to your nose and it just burns. That’s every breath for three months. And so that definitely puts some thick skin on you for sure. And then we went to Saudi Arabia for a little bit, which was kind of home for a long time.

(06:28):

Definitely became a second home. And then we found out that towards the end of 2020 that we were going to be spun up to go to the Afghanistan withdraw back in Kabul, Afghanistan. And so we ended up leaving around mid August and we went out to, and we landed in Kabul, which was a thrill but also a humbling experience at the same time because when you’re training, every person is like, oh, I want to go do my job. I want to go to the Middle East. I want to do my job. But then when you get there, it changes a little bit. And so you see a lot of these people that we were helping in this evacuation really before the 26th where it’s just from totally different walks of life. I mean, you see people that are clawing and scratching at every piece of energy and grit that they have to make it to the gate and to make it through and to get on a plane with their family and fly and go somewhere safe. And that’s a humbling experience, especially when you see the difference in the way that we interact with our families and the way that families of Middle Eastern culture act with their own. And so we were all kind of caught off guard, but still definitely growing. And then on August 26th, 2021, my squad, we were up at the gate of Abbey Gate, which was kind of the main entry point for the airport H chia. And around mid-afternoon there was an IED explosion that took the lives of 13 just amazing service members.

Joshua Ross (08:27):

I remember that on the news.

Noah Hampton (08:28):

Yeah,

Joshua Ross (08:29):

You were there.

Noah Hampton (08:29):

Yeah, most of golf company was really hit by that, if I remember correctly. But my squad, we were kind of just right up there buttoned up against it with them. And most of Echo company was really kind of buttoned up there as well. So we all kind of felt that blast and you don’t think of it in the hours to come after, but it is the most life-changing experience. And we didn’t really think about that when we were originally going there where we were like, we want to do our job, we want to do it. But then coming after it, we really see the downsides of having to go into our job and really perform. And so when we come back from that, we had lost a lot of close friends and I remember it would just being dead silent for months. I mean, I told you Saudi Arabia was home when we got back before we left to Saudi Arabia. It was happy go lucky. Everybody was happy playing basketball, smoking and joking, great time. Come back and it’s just like a ghost town. There’s no movement. Nobody wants to go do anything. You don’t really talk to people.

(09:51):

And so it was kind of in that moment where I realized not only my life was going to be changed for good, but a lot of really close people around me. And it was able to kind of open my eyes a bit to seeing what exactly other service members before my generation really went through with not just Middle Eastern missions, but I mean going all the way back to Vietnam and all the way back to the World Wars Korea. And so being able to walk, I wouldn’t even say a full mile, but a quarter mile in those shoes, gave me enough perspective to realize that we needed to do something on our own to take care of not only ourselves, but also our brothers at the end of the day.

Joshua Ross (10:34):

So this is where you met your current business partner

Noah Hampton (10:37):

And

Joshua Ross (10:37):

How did that happen?

Noah Hampton (10:38):

So he was also in Echo company with me. We were both in two, one, ironically, both in the schoolhouse together. So we had known each other for a little while, but we weren’t very close. But then once we’d come back, I had found a love for the outdoors and kind of being outside and getting out and going and doing just epic adventures you could say, right? And Andrew is the exact same person. He fell in love with going golfing and really getting out and going after it. So he came up with this idea to partner up with one of our seniors that was starting a nonprofit, and that’s OAR Foundation, absolutely love what they’re doing. That’s operations, allies, refugees, and they have got some seriously cool stuff going on right now. But Andrew decided that it would be a good idea to start a vodka company.

(11:37):

Why vodka? So his great, great, great grandfather actually used to smuggle vodka. This was throughout Europe back in the prohibition days. And so his last name at the time was Pinilla. And he actually ended up getting a little bit of heat, right, fled to the us. And once he got to here to the us, he changed his last name to Matson, which is Andrew’s current last name. And so when Andrew kind of had this idea of, Hey, I want to do something, I just don’t know what it is. I think that’s kind of where the vodka developed. And when he came to me with the idea of, Hey, I want to do this vodka, I want to make this just super good, super clean, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to get back to vets through every single bottle. I was hooked immediately.

(12:27):

I was like, you got me. I’m a 21-year-old. I love it. And that’s where we eventually started really planning out how do we make this happen? Well, Denver’s a great spot. I wouldn’t mind going to Colorado. He doesn’t mind going to Colorado. Let’s do it. Okay, now where do we go to school? How do we feed ourselves for the year and a half that we’re really getting this thing launched? And we got really lucky because his dad really stepped in while we were still in the Marine Corps planning all this out, because keep in mind, we still had almost a year and a half, two years on contract. So his dad really stepped in and started helping out a lot with keeping everything up and running here in Denver until we could get out here. And so we both came out the summer of 2024, which was last summer, and we just hit the ground running, designing a new bottle, getting the old bottle up and running, figuring out what exactly we wanted to do with our product and getting it on the shelves.

Joshua Ross (13:29):

Alright, so vodka, huge space, incredibly competitive, all different levels in terms of price and all different levels in terms of brands. How do you stand out in this really crowded market and in what kind of level are you playing? Are you going against the Belvedere and the Chopin’s of the world? Are you going a little further down market to the Tito’s and Stoles? Walk me through that a little bit. Who’s the competitors and how are you different?

Noah Hampton (13:59):

We absolutely loved what other brands, like for example, red Bull we were doing at the time where it’s just they’re getting in and they’re getting after it and they’re going for it and they’re inspiring people to actually go out and do it. We wanted to be that too. And so we decided that we’re going to differentiate by really expanding ourselves into a market of outdoor adventuristic people, 25 to 45 year olds, and what better place in Denver, obviously. And so in that space it is a little difficult. It is quite difficult because you do have a lot of major competitors like Greg Goose and like Tito’s and Belvedere. But where we were really changing it up is instead of spending 18, 19, $20 on something tier, it’s okay. Or having to go all out and spend 35, $40 on something that was good. We would just cut it right in the middle. And that’s what we did. And that’s really kind of how, I wouldn’t say we created our own market, but we really created our own space and wake in that market.

Joshua Ross (15:11):

What’s surprised you a little bit about this journey in building this brand? You actually want to stand out. It’s interestingly kind of this adventure outdoor market. What’s worked.

Noah Hampton (15:21):

What we found was as we had to go out and stomp on the ground and beat the doors down and go into these store owners and say, Hey, look, we’re not going to be this crazy 2000 bottle a month seller for you, but we’re going to come in here and we’re going to do hand sales and we’re going to do tastings with you every single week, and we’re going to take care of you and we’re going to make sure that customers find out about us. And that’s what we did that really made us different from a lot of the other brands is they’ll come in and they’ll put something on the shelf once, twice a year, they’ll come do a tasting. We’re doing between four and eight tastings per person per week. So I mean, we were really pushing it pretty heavy, especially coming into the fall month. And that’s really, I think what we found was like, Hey, this is what works to get people aware about us. So that way we can drive them to the marketing plan, which is, Hey, did you also know that Pinilla supports the veterans? Hey, did you know that Pinilla gives back to veterans that are dealing with PTSD or even, Hey, you like mountain biking? That’s exactly what our brand’s about, or skiing or snowboarding or climbing or whatever you’re into.

Joshua Ross (16:41):

It’s all about the hustle. You got to get in front of the customers, you got to have ’em try it, you got to get feedback. You got to bring ’em along for the experience, really articulate the why should they pick your bottle off the shelf.

Noah Hampton (16:53):

No, that was a huge one too, is really having to convince somebody. As soon as most people kind of find out about the mission, they fall in love with the product, but you got to convince ’em to come back and you got to convince ’em to come back and buy it again and again and again, and not just go back to whatever they were buying beforehand. And I think that truthfully comes down to something that I recently learned was your own personal why has to be just in line and in place and solid to be able to convince somebody else. And so every single time after learning that I would go out and do a tasting, I would just remind myself, it’s not just me going to do a tasting to teach people about what we’re doing and to put an amazing vodka in their hand. It’s telling the story, telling the mission, telling where we came from, telling what we’re trying to do. And oh, by the way, we did it with a vodka and then people started to just eat up the why.

Joshua Ross (17:52):

I love it. So what have been some of the learnings along this entrepreneurship journey? You started at 21, you went full send, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden you’re in it. What are some of the things you didn’t think might have happened have happened?

Noah Hampton (18:08):

So to date, I can’t think of a single week that’s gone by since we started this vodka company. That one thing hasn’t just almost completely disrupted our personal, our mental of the business. And one thing I’ve learned in that is to just kind of go with the flow. And you got to eat the punches. Sometimes you got to sit there and you got to take it sometimes, but it’s how you take those punches and you stand back up and you get back into the fight. And that’s something that they taught us in the Marine Corps. You’re never out of the fight. You’re always here. You’re always here. And that’s something that I didn’t really learn very well in the Marine Corps, but coming into a business, we definitely had to always be here. Whether we wanted to wake up and not go out and do tastings or work late nights on a marketing plan or handle the lawyers, you got to stay the dedication. And I think that that’s something that really developed. But the second biggest thing that really kind of changed my own personal perspective was truthfully enjoying something and doing something because you enjoyed it.

(19:30):

And that’s something that I’m still learning is figuring out, okay, why am I here and why am I doing this and why am I still doing it? And I think for so long, what’s really drawn me back to the vodka is I love our mission. I love what we’re doing. I love the product. I love the people. That’s what led us to this point. Now, that’s a big lesson that I’ve still, again, learning is maintaining. Why am I here and do I love doing this?

Joshua Ross (19:58):

You’re a full-time student, you’re running a vodka company, you have a fiance. How do you juggle the whole thing? Oh, I don’t know how I juggle it sometimes

Noah Hampton (20:06):

And keep everyone happy. And I’m your professor.

Joshua Ross (20:09):

So

Noah Hampton (20:09):

There’s one of ’em. It’s definitely a lot of late nights, a late nights and early mornings. I find keep the future wife happy. I can do all my chores and do everything she wants me to do. But also having the humility of just, again, kind of rolling with those punches and saying, okay, you know what? Maybe I’m not going to have 15, 20, 30 minutes to scroll on YouTube and do what I want to do because someone else or something else needs my attention. And that’s been a big one. And I feel like that’s really what helps keep everything in balance, because then I can also gauge and say, well, I’ve worked so much on this today. Now it’s time to kind of focus on these other couple of areas in my life because I’ve come to understand that I’m not going to be perfect in everything, even though I will try and try and try. But that’s definitely how I keep it kind of all balanced up. But don’t get me wrong though, there’s days where it looks like the dominoes are all going to fall down and go a little bit sideways.

Joshua Ross (21:13):

Yeah, it’s a good point. But you have to set your priorities and you have to look at what are the most urgent issues and realize that there’s always tomorrow to address things and make sure you’re taking care of yourself too, your mental health and the people that are around you. I mean, it’s a tough balance. It’s easier for me to sit behind a microphone than

Noah Hampton (21:32):

To actually sometimes execute it. No, I agree. But don’t be mistaken. Always. Your assignments are number one on the plate above everything else.

Joshua Ross (21:39):

I appreciate that. Well said. So going to your crystal ball, where do you see Pentilla in the next year and what about five years down the road?

Noah Hampton (21:48):

That’s a difficult one, but in the next year, I think Pentillas got a real good shot at just really disrupting Colorado’s vodka market. I mean, we’re already finding so many people that are just dissatisfied with the local vodkas, and I think that that’s really the step that Pinilla is going to take in the next year, is we’re going to become that we are going to become the future. Big name brands that you’ve probably heard of, Breckenridge, like Red Rock, those are all huge brands that blew up Colorado based. But I think Pinilla is that already. It’s just really getting that across to everybody else is the big one. But in five years, I definitely see Pinilla outside of Colorado, hopefully by then even to maybe one of the coasts.

Joshua Ross (22:42):

So we’ll have people driving around listening to this podcast and they’re like, I want to go find this. Where do they go? Pick up a bottle of Pentilla.

Noah Hampton (22:50):

So right now, in the past, I would say eight months alone, we have grown from 30, 40 accounts to over almost 350 accounts across the Denver Metro. And so the easiest way to really find it is go to www.pentillavodka.com. We’ve got a really awesome store locator there. You just click on it, it’ll tell you which stores are the closest to you. You select the store and you get to driving.

Joshua Ross (23:20):

So I’m going to do the simple math. About five years ago you were in Missouri, right? And from there you went to San Diego, then you’re in Kuwait, then you’re in Saudi Arabia, then you’re in Afghanistan, then you’re back in San Diego, and now you’re in Denver. It’s a pretty wild ride.

Noah Hampton (23:40):

It’s a fun one. Definitely a fun one. I definitely wouldn’t have seen myself here five years ago. Ironically, I joined the military thinking I was going to do 20 years. I was going to come out 20 years and join every single bit of that in the infantry. Well, the infantry has its number, and it is, it’s not a very lightly taken job on the body. So I do kind of look back at it and I go, wow, this is kind of crazy. This has been a really crazy ride, especially because I’m 22. You know what I mean? So it is definitely surreal, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I, it’s grown me to who I am now. It’s brought me to this mental state and physical state that I’m here now, and I absolutely love it. I absolutely love where I’m at now.

Joshua Ross (24:33):

Well, Noah, thanks for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Noah Hampton (24:37):

Seriously, an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Joshua Ross (24:42):

The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in Marjorie Reed Hall on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on Twitter, X at Dure entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was engineered, edited, and produced by Sophia Holt. Huge congratulations to Sophia for graduating from the University of Denver. Although we are sad to see you go, we are excited to follow your career and remember us when you’re accepting your first Oscar.