Distilling the Locke + Co Journey

Episode description: In this episode of the Entrepreneurship@DU Podcast, host Joshua Ross sits down with DU alums Owen Locke and Rick Talley, co-founders of Locke + Co. Distilling. What started as a garage experiment between two lifelong friends has grown into a gold-medal-winning whiskey brand rooted in Colorado tradition. 

Owen and Rick share how their shared history—from brewing beer in high school to earning MBAs from Daniels—shaped their entrepreneurial journey. They talk through the art and science of distilling, the business challenges of whiskey’s long aging cycle, and what makes their Aspen-aged rye whiskey stand out on crowded shelves. 

The conversation also dives into their latest innovation: a zero-proof whiskey alternative called Headwater. Created to expand the circle for those who don’t drink alcohol, Headwater reflects the duo’s commitment to inclusion and connection. 

Transcript:

Joshua Ross:

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast. I had the chance to sit down with Owen Locke and Rick Talley. Armed with MBAs from the Daniels College of Business, positive feedback from friends and family. These two entrepreneurs started locking code distillery in their garage.

Rick Talley:

More and more friends and family kept asking for our jars of moonshine, rye whiskey out of the garage. And that’s kind of when we turned to each other and we’re like, should we give this a go?

Owen Locke:

And we were like, okay, we should use these MBA degrees that we got from Daniels to start a business.

Joshua Ross:

Their passion for creating craft rye whiskey and bourbon ultimately turned into solid gold success.

Owen Locke:

San Francisco World Spirits, which I think we think of as like the Oscars of whiskey. We won gold there three years in a row

Joshua Ross:

With alcohol consumption on the decline, and their customers wanted a no proof or lower proof cocktail. They went back to the start and innovated with their zero proof whiskey headwater.

Rick Talley:

So just as we started making lock and co whiskey in the garage, Owen and I started making headwater in the kitchen.

Joshua Ross:

Here’s my interview with the Owen and Rick Owen. And Rick, welcome to the podcast.

Owen Locke:

Thank you. Good to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us.

Joshua Ross:

Well, I’ve been very excited to have you two on. I’m very excited about the content and really talking about who you two are, how you got started in your product. So you both graduated from the DU MBA program. Take us back to the moment when the idea for Lock and Co was born.

Rick Talley:

It’s a great question that I can let Owen speak after I give my ideas around it, but there really wasn’t one day that tip, the scales kind of a slow buildup. Owen and I actually were born and raised here in Denver together, grew up together, went to Littleton High School together, and through all that, went through a lot of fun times lacrosse teammates. But during grad school here at Daniels, we, a friend hired us to do events for Jim Beam. So we had this home brew background that Owen started, got paid to learn about whiskey, fell in love with rye whiskey in particular, and the complexities of that spice and that grain. And so after grad school, we finished in oh nine, we switched from being home brewers in the garage to distilling and I’d say, what about three years in on three or four maybe? Yeah, three or four years in. More and more friends and family kept asking for our jars of moonshine, rye, whiskey out of the garage. And that’s kind of when we turned to each other and we’re like, should we give this a go?

Owen Locke:

Yeah, we always wanted that kind of thought and feeling of if we’d want to be 80 years old and look back and be like, oh, we should have done this. Right. And as Rick said, we were high school buddies brewing beer, Colorado natives. I figured out when I was 15, they would sell you the equipment to make beer. So it was a great way to make friends. My parents were okay with that. As I’m lucky to say, I’m a sixth generation radan. My four times great grandfather had one of the first liquor stores in downtown Denver. It was F in Holiday Street, which is roughly 15th in market. There’s actual pictures of it in the Colorado History Museum, which is pretty cool. And then on the other side of the family, grandpa made bathtub gin during prohibition on the east coast. So we started home brewing beer and my folks were like, cool, science, get the hell out of here.

15-year-old. So it was kind of in the family blood and history. And so as Rick said, we’d been brewing beer for a long time, got trained by Jim Beam, essentially got paid to learn about whiskey, and we’re like, oh, you just got to boil beer. And so we’re like, we can do that. Let’s mess around and buy this still. And as Rick said, we kind of stumbled into making whiskey and using Aspen Wood and years into it, people are like, I need 20 jars for Christmas. And we’re like, okay, we should use these MBA degrees that we got from Daniels to start a business. So that’s kind of the slow build as Rick calls it.

Joshua Ross:

I like that build. And it is noted that you were brewing beer at 15, by the way, in case the audience. I missed that. So I want to jump into that little, the distilling process a little bit. And can you walk us through this and how does that link up to brewing beer? What’s the differences? How do those work together?

Owen Locke:

Sure thing. So super similar process at the start in fermentation, you’re not using hops and you’re not using a brewer’s yeast, so you’re using a distiller’s yeast. And the big difference is you got to use a lot more grain. But essentially you’re fermenting grain, putting that into the still heating that, boiling that, so it turns into a vapor that’s going to hit the copper in our still get recon condensed and come off clear off the still, right? So essentially boiling beer, and this kind of all goes back to harvest times way back when people were harvesting food and grains at the end of the fall making beer and they’d had spoiled beer or something like that. And then they figured out, oh, we could run this and kind of pasteurize it, boil it, and use this and drink it all winter. So that’s kind of how it all started in the history of fermentation and distillation.

But you’re using a lot more grains than you would in beer essentially. If you use grains, you make 20 gallons of beer, you’ll have 20 gallons left. Whereas here, we’re taking cuts of distillate when it comes off the still. So the first part that comes off is the heads, your high level alcohols. We save that to start our campfires and things like that. Then you get into the hearts, which is the high quality alcohol that you have, and then you get into tails. Now for whiskey, you want a little bit of tails for flavor in there, but this is kind of the magic that Rick and I really loved when we distilling is when do these things change and stop as it’s a liquid, it doesn’t really tell you, you have to figure it out. So you have your distilling logs, but we got a bunch of mason jars and we put ’em under the still every two minutes. And I’d be like, Rick, I think the head stopped at Jar 12 and that’s where the hearts began. He’d be like, oh no, it’s Jar 17. So you’re kind of this magic of an artistry blending with science with your pal and your logs and everything that way. So similar at the start, and then it gets more complex down the road as you start getting into distillation.

Joshua Ross:

So why whiskey? I mean, this is an incredibly competitive space. I go to my local liquor store, apple Jack A. Little shout out for them, and they’ve got, I don’t even know how many different brands up on the shelves and behind glass doors. It’s something that you go through the process and you’ll talk about a little bit more. You put in these barrels and you don’t start even seeing a dollar one back for X number of years. So first of all, why whiskey, why liquor and why not more simple approach like gin or vodka?

Rick Talley:

It’s a great question and I think the reason why whiskey is because that’s what we love. That’s what we started making in the garage. And it may sound like a cliche, but we didn’t start making whiskey to start a distillery. We started making whiskey. We enjoyed the alchemy of turning grains into this wonderful elixir. And so we were just sharing our passion with people. Again, we were making this in the garage. More and more friends and family, as Owen shared, we’re asking for these jars for themselves or for unique gifts to give to people. And that’s when we were like, Hey, let’s use these degrees from Daniel’s, put together a business plan and get this going. So it was really just a way for us to share something that we truly enjoy making. But it is a very competitive landscape out there, and it is not less options

Owen Locke:

For sure. It’s a test of patience or a pride in patience there where you can distill vodka and sell it tomorrow somewhere, the gins out there, whereas there’s this creativity of what the base is going to be and then letting it age and seeing what it turns out to be in four or five years. So that kind of magic with the wood is just so different than from other products out there. The duration in the barrel, that contact, it just makes it so different. And again, we worked for Jim Beam, so we fell in love with kind of normal bourbons and worked over to r and so we started making rye whiskey in the garage, and that was kind of our first foyer into distilling. And I think whiskey for us was just always kind of in line with the mountain lifestyle too, sitting around the campfire, going skiing and fishing. It seemed like people had flasks of whiskey and not vodka, which makes a lot of sense for us. So that was kind of true to us in that sense.

Joshua Ross:

God, a flasks of vodka makes me kind of cr to think about it. So kind of pulling on that competitive threat or the competition within the market, how does your product stand out and walk us us through this whole use of these charred aspen wood staves and what makes you all unique in terms of, if I was trying your whiskey, your rye, what am I tasting that’s a little different?

Rick Talley:

Yeah, so I think first what makes us unique is that we only make whiskey, and that’s something that we did with our business model that allowed us to wait the three years before we released our first whiskey. And so coming out to market as being a new craft distillery in Colorado and only selling whiskey was unique. A lot of people have to make those vodkas and gins that you asked about to cashflow early on. So we went a little bit different in our formulation and our business formulation to avoid that, but going to what makes our actual juice different, so it’s actually not Aspen staves, that’s how we got started was an Aspen log out of the fire pit. So Owen’s Weiss family, they own about 30 plus acres up off Westin Pass, which Weston Pass connects Leadville over into Fairplay, and there’s this old cabin up on the property, it’s not winterized.

So we shut it down every fall. And so the fall of the first year we bought our sill in 2010, we were shutting down the cabin drinking off that garage R whiskey jar around the fire pit, and there’s tons of Aspen on the property. So the firewood was Aspen wood, and we knew from our time at Jim Beam and learning about whiskeys and bourbons that what the charred oak barrels does to whiskey and how it interacts with it and how it changes the flavor. We knew Char Asman would do something. We didn’t know what we knew to do something, so we pulled the char as oil out of that fire pit. So that’s what got us started playing with Aspen Wood.

Owen Locke:

Yeah, it was what would a wood chunk do or Bob Ross happy accident, if you will. So we drink around the fire, put that char aspen wood and a mason jar of rye whiskey, left it up at the cabin all winter on a southern facing window sill. So hot days, cool nights, got that wood to work, came back in the spring and had to sip off that jar and we’re like, wow, this is really good. I think we’re onto something. We knew it was going to do something, but it turned out spectacular. And that kind of led us into how do we cure Aspen wood to make this a viable product? We have to make that all by hand. We can’t buy that how you buy a barrel, right? So we tried to cure and season the wood for four months and eight months, and there were still kind of some bitter notes. We figured out we’d had to sand off all the bark to get out some bitter notes as well. So our current process is about 12 months to the wind, the rain, the snow and sun up in Fairplay for these little gardening platforms that the discs will sit on, the bark will crumble off, and then we sand them and charm on a Rick’s Weber grill and then they float in the whiskey.

Joshua Ross:

Owen, I want to acknowledge before we move on too far that that is the first Bob Ross reference on the podcast. So thank you. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. As you’re talking through this, I’m thinking, wow, you must have a lot of patience to test something out for three months, six months, 12 months, whatever it is, and to be wrong, and then to have to go back and test it again is really impressive. But I think that’s a lot to do with the character and what creates these different liquors that you’ve made.

Owen Locke:

Yeah, I think it’s a testament that you need to fail before you can succeed. I know a lot of home distillers and people who started up the unaged whiskey that comes off the still is called white dog and people, the first time I ran the Still, I had the best white dog in the universe. I did not. We did not. We scorched the grain and burned it. It was a totally waste of a batch first time through. So knowing that these things are going to be hard and if we really want to do this, you got to have a lot of passion for it. We talk about even in selling the whiskey, we self distributed, and maybe we’ll get into those details a little bit here, but one of the first liquor stores we went to said No. And now that liquor store’s one of our best accounts out there, if not the best. And I remember Rick and I leaving that being like, oh man, what did we just do?

Rick Talley:

I’ve never been so quiet in a car ride with Owen in my life.

Owen Locke:

Left our jobs working whiskey full time. And they’re like, yeah, I don’t think this is going to work out. So we kind of relate it a little bit back to if three people out of 10 say yes, it’s kind of like baseball, you’re an all-star or a Hall of famer. So we knew that that was going to be hard and some of our experience with Jim Beam let us know that. So I think that patience is something that we’ve always known was going to be a part of it and part of the deal. Now, it’s hard. The barrels tell you when they’re ready instead of you telling them they’re ready. So it’s difficult when you want things to go and it’s hard to plan, but our eyes were open when we started the whiskey. So I think that that patience and that alchemy, again, that’s the magic that we love, but you have to have a lot of patience out there for sure.

Joshua Ross:

Having your eyes open during this process and going into it, having your MBA and doing this out of your garage at first, were there any surprises? I mean, you’re operating also in a very highly regulated industry

Owen Locke:

For sure. I think so. Something unique, again, we started in the garage and to focus on whiskey, we decided to use other distilleries within Colorado using their excess capacity to produce. So we had partners to work with both of our rye and our bourbons to kind of help us through some of those points to navigate. So we didn’t have to learn everything all at once, and that allowed us to start small to see if this Aspen Age product would even work. So that was something that definitely helped. But there’s filtration issues, labeling problems, all sorts of things that you just have to try. You don’t know until you go. And that’s definitely still the case today, right? There’s legalities changing as we talk about our zero proof alternative that we have that’s produced in a whole different facility and a whole different set of rules to figure out and

Joshua Ross:

Learn. So as you go through this whole process and you have these incremental successes, and as an entrepreneur you got to celebrate this small wins, how do you all quantify that and look at, all right, we’re doing well. Is it distribution, brand recognition awards being on this podcast? What is it?

Rick Talley:

A little bit of all of that, right? I think first and foremost is bottle sales, seeing those numbers and those numbers are consistently going up. So that is a great metric to see for us being so small. Another one is brand recognition. When we’re out not doing anything related to the distillery and wearing a shirt and someone says, oh, I know about Lock and Co, we’re starting to hear that more and more. We are grassroots, we are bootstrapping it. We have more time than marketing dollars. And so a lot of people will ask us around, oh, are you going to be at this whiskey event or that whiskey event and you won’t see us a lot of these events because a lot of these events don’t match our value as far as our time commitment. We’re a two soon to be three person company hiring a friend of ours that grew up with us to be our director of sales.

And so when you have that few of bodies out in the market, you need to be strategic and our time is better spent sharing that story, looking people in the eyes and connecting with them versus pouring products, giving way samples and brand re-recognition that works for the strain of hands, for the Brackridge distilleries, the ones that are big enough to where they should be at these events and have that consistent presence. But we want people to walk away remembering us not walking away being like, oh, I forgot there’s one I enjoyed, but I don’t remember after four hours of tasting whiskey sort of events.

Owen Locke:

And I think that’s something we do focus on is even if it’s at a liquor store or bar and restaurant is how do we connect to people? We kind of talk about it is we want them to have a good time. This is cool, this is fun. We’re peddlers of joy and the vehicle is whiskey. And so if we can connect with them and build that relationship, we know that’s going to be a better long-term play. And that’s strategic for us. There’s a lot of companies that maybe have a product that hits the market hot and fast and goes national and then you don’t see ’em in three years. We took a look at it as like, let’s build this slowly and consist consistently, excuse me, through those relationships so that we could build Colorado out, hire more people and be in the market that way rather than a flash in a pan.

Rick Talley:

But we’re seeing other success metrics being online sales. Again, we’re not looking really expand our foothold, our market presence in states outside of Colorado per se. We’re building towards that point, but right now we’re pretty much exclusively distributed in Colorado, but you can get our 90 proof rye and our big catch bourbon through our website to 47 out of the 50 states. And we’re seeing those numbers go up too as far as people purchasing from our website. So that’s a great metric to see as far as success goes,

Owen Locke:

Another good metric is winning awards. That’s a fun one. We’re not in every competition out there or each product every year, but once you get a good gold medal on there, it’s not just your friends telling you it’s good. It’s actual judges and people with pallets that know what’s going on and other people in the industry taking samples and trying it that are peers of ours. Wow, this is really good stuff. So is

Joshua Ross:

There a big gold medal that I don’t know about?

Rick Talley:

Oh yeah, there’s several. Double gold even. Don’t be shy. Yeah,

Owen Locke:

This is your platform. I love it. I love it. So we started the company with a 90 proof rye, the Aspen Age rye whiskey. So that was the first product out, and we only had that product for about the first three or four years and then went to single barrels of rye. Our big catch bourbon has been on the market for about a year, but that 90 proof rise won a lot of goals because it was the only product we had. So the biggest ones would be Denver International Spirits Competition, and then San Francisco World Spirits, which I think we think of as the Oscars of whiskey. We won gold there three years in a row. So that one product has won a lot of gold for us. Even local festivals, things of that nature. The big Catch bourbon has only been in one competition.

That was Denver International Spirits Competition. It won gold there. Our single barrel rye won double gold at Denver International Spirits Competition. So if we submit something, we expect some sort of metal almost that’s maybe a little confident in that. But some of these other products we don’t have enough of. So some of our limited releases are just one barrel. And so if we submit that to an awards festival and we win gold and it sells out, people will be like, well, where can I buy it? And I’m like, it does not exist anymore. So we don’t want to mislead people, so we don’t submit everything, especially those limited to releases to all these competitions. But we win awards kind of everywhere we go, which is great.

Rick Talley:

We kind of struggle on that idea to submit some of these really unique single barrels to get maybe a best in show out there, which would be great for marketing. But kind of that compass, that moral compass that Daniel’s really helped instill in us is we want our metals and a recognition to be around products that people can buy and get access to.

Joshua Ross:

So you two are kind of like the Michael Phelps and Simone Biles of the whiskey industry, your words, you all compete, you’re going to walk home with something, I love it.

Owen Locke:

Famous in our own heads, famous in your own.

Joshua Ross:

Well, how do you take those awards and create recognition, create a story around it, get that out to your target market, not free marketing, but it’s an opportunity that you have credibility based on these judges that are saying, out of all these different types we’ve tasted, yours was the best.

Rick Talley:

So most of ’em, we put ’em on the bottles, which we don’t have great examples of the two in front of you, but the single barrel there has got the double gold sticker, the big catch bourbon we do, I’d say it’s pretty close to 80% of the bottles go out with the gold medal stickers that we get printed in hand apply onto all our bottles, because again, as we mentioned earlier, we’re not huge in the marketing budget area. So having thoses visuals on the bottle in the market along with shelf talkers that talk about that, and then through newsletters and social media blasts for sure, we do that. But again, our followings are not to the scope that some of these others are. So putting ’em physically on the bottle is the best way that we can highlight that and then sharing it on podcasts like this.

Joshua Ross:

Awesome. Well, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the non-alcoholic industry. I was recently with Anna Zeba, who is an alum from the University of Denver, started Hooch Boch, and she recently started a new seltzer non-alcoholic call corpse. And when I was talking to her, I was surprised she shut Hooch boots down about two weeks ago and a number of reasons. But one of the areas she talked about was the fact that alcohol sales are going down dramatically for a number of reasons, and I think we all read the articles. So you’ve created a non-alcoholic product. Talk us through why you did it, and most important, how is it different than the more regulated alcohol into the liquor industry, and what are the differences around customer perception, distribution, pricing?

Owen Locke:

Yeah, so as Rick mentioned earlier, we kind of have this moral compass, this how do we fit to lock and co. So we think as Lock and Company is like company having guests over to our home, we started making whiskey around the campfire. So we talk about the and Co and how that fits, and essentially we wanted to expand that fire ring and include more people. You’ll notice on our bottles, on our stickers, our shirts, we have a plus sign. And when we started, it was like, if you’re not drinking whiskey in the back room with a cigar and a leather chair, you’re doing it wrong. And for us, we always felt like we wanted to add people to that experience into our journey to be a part of our community. So that’s kind of the litmus test of, Hey, does this work for us? So vodka doesn’t, but our zero proof alternative does, right? We can expand that fire circle a little bit more.

Rick Talley:

It just includes more people around the campfire ring. So the reason we started working with headwater, or what we call Headwater, our zero proof alternative is just about three years ago I got sober and I, about two years ago started missing the connections that happen around whiskey. There’s something that happen around sharing a drink with people, and I’m just one of those people that can’t put alcohol in my body, but I’m an adult. I want layered robust flavored drinks that aren’t chock full of sugar. So I started exploring the markets or what the products are out there on the market, and I couldn’t find anything I liked. So just as we started making lock and co whiskey in the garage, Owen and I started making headwater in the kitchen. So what we made was something that’s an alternative to be used either in place or in conjunction with dark spirits like whiskey and rums.

So what we did, it’s a water base, and then we use the flavors we talk about in our whiskey. So you’ll see vanillas, you’ll see toffees, you’ll experience malt, you’ll experience some warmth in some black peppers. So that’s what we crafted and what we came up with was something that does really, really well as an alternative to be used in place of whiskey or for a lot of people, as you mentioned, the alcohol consumption is dropping, but they’re still wanting alcohol in their lives. And so what this does is it allows people to proof down their drinks. So instead of having a full strength Manhattan or a full strength old fashioned or rum and Coke or a Mihai, you can use our zero proof headwater to proof it down and make it a lower proof drinks.

Owen Locke:

We kind of approach it, I’m a big coffee drinker, so the coffee reference works for me is like full calf, half calf decaf. So you might start your evening with a full proof cocktail, go to a low proof and a no proof, but you always feel connected to the group. You don’t have to drink a cola a soda in between, something like that. And that’s what we’re seeing in the industry, to your point is we call it tiger stripes or Zebra stripes is you’d have a full strength beer, an na beer, a full strength beer and na beer. So you’ve had four, but only two of them have alcohol. But you still feel connected, you have people still in that community, and essentially you’re feeling cool.

Joshua Ross:

How do you articulate that story? I mean, that’s a really powerful story, but it’s one that it might be difficult to get out.

Rick Talley:

It’s a great question. So it’s similar to Lock and Co, right? We have more time than money, so it’s being out in the market. And what’s an added benefit of having a zero proof alternative is that when we’re doing tastings in liquor stores, they can only have so many tastings per year of alcoholic beverages. They have to apply through the county that they’re in to get these licenses. And so our headwater doesn’t count against that. We’ve been able to do events where we’re just pouring headwater and able to, again, look people in the eyes, share that story around what it’s about. We have on the zero proof whiskey alternative. And so that’s where we’re working on explaining that because people will see that and be like, Ooh, I don’t like whiskey. I’m not going to buy that. And we’re like, Hey, try it. If you don’t like it, let’s get you something you do enjoy, right? Life’s too short to drink stuff you don’t enjoy, but when we open that bottle, whether it be our whiskey or our headwater, that’s the magic. That’s when we can connect. And we get a lot of conversion rates through people being like, okay, I don’t like whiskey for the headwater, but I enjoy the rich, robust depth of mixing that with a ginger beer.

Joshua Ross:

Well, I’ve tried it and I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve tried it multiple ways, right? One doing half and half with a rye and then doing it just on its own. These are all whisky and groaning. So you saw have the mammoth in there and the Campari, but bringing down that alcohol level, which, so I get it. I didn’t understand it before I met you two though. So you two went to high school together, you went to graduate school together, you’ve known each other for a long time. You decided to start a company together, and most entrepreneurs that have started something with a partner, it’s like a marriage. So it worked out. And as you’ve gone down this path, it’s not all pink clouds and puffy unicorns, but it’s that opportunity to work together. How do you divide the responsibilities decision making? Walk me through it.

Rick Talley:

I don’t think we’ve ever sat down and been charted out. This is your responsibility. This is my responsibility. We naturally flow into what we do best. A lot of that is heavily interwoven. We do a lot of similar things, but we divide and conquer on some of the other things with say, spreadsheets. I start to glaze over a little bit in those, and Owen loves that sort of stuff. And so the job responsibilities have kind of naturally fallen into place. But I think the challenge that we continue to work on is continuing the communication. And that’s something that whether it be a marriage or my whiskey marriage here with Owen, it’s communication that keeps it working. And so there are times when we are butting heads, and that’s what we had asked of us when we were doing our initial capital raise, was like, you guys are friends.

How are you going to work as business partners? Well, because of our history, because of growing up together, because of our time at Daniels together, because of the international travel we did with Daniels, because of the group projects, we’ve had those moments before. We started Lock and Co where we didn’t agree, where we outright thought each other were wrong, and we were able to work through that. And so we had a basis that we just have continued to build upon through Lock and Co. But yeah, I’m not going to say it’s all been easy. No, of course not. But I wouldn’t want to be doing it with anybody else that’s sure.

Owen Locke:

Oh, that’s sweet of you, Rick. Thank you, Rick. I love this moment. We’re having, I know cheer, and I think Rick and I are very similar in a lot of things. Again, soaring with our strengths where it goes. But I think the key for Rick and I is that we like to share experiences. We like to see people’s faces light up when we do get them to try and get liquid to lips. That is exhilarating and exciting. So those small wins that we were kind of talking about before kind of puts it into perspective for us in sharing and going forward and kind of getting that higher level focus rather than the stuck in the weeds leads. We got to apply a thousand labels per hand today, right? That’s hard grinded out work. And so whenever you’re doing that, you’re going to get frustrated left and center. So I think getting that higher level of appreciation of what we’re doing and we’re doing it right, and we’ve been on the market for a while and the feedback is increasingly positive. And so all those little milestones definitely help kind of push us forward.

Joshua Ross:

So for each of you, what’s one thing you’ve learned about yourself through this entrepreneurial journey?

Rick Talley:

What I’ve learned about myself is take that pause, and that’s something that I still struggle with in my life, whether it be in locking core or not. But before sending that email, before picking up that phone and making that call before shooting off that text, before making that business decision, take that pause, take a step back, take a deep breath, and then reassess so many times that I haven’t navigated that effectively. It illustrates the importance of that because I’ll regret sending that email too quickly, or I’ll regret making that business decision too hastily. Because honestly, even though I feel in that moment, if I don’t make this decision right now, everything’s going to go wrong. It’s not, we’ll be able to navigate it. So taking that step back and taking a breath and getting away from that decision again, whether this be in your personal life or for us for Lock and Co and our business, it’s giving yourself that space to breathe before making that decision has drastically changed my life. That’s something I didn’t know before getting into this business.

Joshua Ross:

That’s amazing advice, by the way. So many nights when I had my company and even after I’ve looked at an email and said I should send it tomorrow, and every time I waited, I was happy. There was not one time that I had waited and said, God, I should have sent it the night before. But there was many, many times I sent it that night and the next day I was like, should have waited. Should have waited. Amazing how our emotional intelligence changes or our feelings change with that over

Owen Locke:

12 hours. Yeah, I guess my answer to that is I totally agree with Rick. Taking a pause and taking a step back is key, especially in those hard moments. And I think something that we do fairly well, but we do focus on, cause we’ll talk about we don’t have all the resources in the world and we got to pick events and pick things to do, and I think we choose to not undervalue fun and that’s, Hey, I got to do a tasting in Winter Park. I’m going to ski before that tasting. I’m going to go fish, I’m going to do something like that. Or, Hey, this tasting got canceled, I could rebook something, but you know what I’m not. I’m going to spend time with my family and kind of balance those things out. And it might be pulling pranks on each other when we’re at a festival or joking around while we’re bottling. This is kind of a fun industry and if you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong. And I think having fun in those moments is a key part, and that’s very important. I think that’s something I’ve learned through it is like we can build in levity to all these situations.

Joshua Ross:

I’m actually going to wrap up with one more question. It’s an advice question again. So it might be the same advice you just gave, but we have a lot of DU students and alums that listen to the podcast. If any of those out there listening are thinking about starting a business, what would you tell ’em? What advice would you give them? They’re sitting across the table from you.

Rick Talley:

Do it. Take that risk. That was something that was shared with us early on that it’s going to be scary. You’re going to have to take that leap of faith, but there’s, at least for me, has been nothing more rewarding than taking this risk. And it is risky. We live in risk every day with this company because of the challenges that we face being a small startup company. But it’s worth it. And as Owen said, we had to fail a lot of times while building the recipe. And even if this company fails, the ride has been worth it. And failure is when I say This company fails, it wouldn’t be a failure. We’ve done so much. We’ve connected with so many people, it’s taken us so many places that don’t let that risk or that uncertainty keep you from trying.

Owen Locke:

Yeah, I think that’s, to add onto that, we had a friend who gave us some advices after we got funded. He was like, congratulations, you have a ticket on the rollercoaster, right? And that rollercoaster can be one hour, one day, one week, the ups and downs, the lefts and rights. But enjoying that ride of that rollercoaster is huge for us. And I think that’s a big piece of advice. And the other one is have conversations. There’s a lot of people who would be like, Hey, my buddy owns this restaurant. Do you want to go talk to him? Yes, go talk to him. Or Hey, my friend really likes whiskey. Or Hey, this cool guy, Joshua, he’s doing some cool stuff at the Entrepreneur. Go have the conversation. You don’t know where that’s going to lead to. That’s led to some of our best accounts, our best relationships out there. Again, that three out of 10, if you have 10 conversations and three lead to something, you’re winning. You’re an all-star, you’re doing it right? So have those conversations, go out there. Don’t be afraid, even if you don’t know anything. In fact, that’s a better strategy is coming in as fresh and new and I’m learning this new industry and this people love to be experts. They love to help you. They really do. If you give them the time, they will help you. You’ll find the resources through the conversation.

Joshua Ross:

Well, that’s great advice, Owen. Rick, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for dropping a little knowledge today. I appreciate it.

Rick Talley:

Joshua,

Owen Locke:

Great

Rick Talley:

To be here.

Owen Locke:

Absolutely,

Joshua Ross:

And cheers. 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 DU entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was edited, produced and engineered by Eka Wosu. Entrepreneurship at DU is part of the Daniels College of Business.