Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Pouring Profits: The Financial Journey of a Craft Distillery Founder with Sonja Kassebaum
Why is it so hard for women to talk about money- especially in industries still dominated by men?
In this episode, we sit down with Sonja, the co-owner and co-founder of North Shore Distillery. She and her husband built their business from the ground up, learning firsthand the unique challenges women face in financial and entrepreneurial spaces.
She shares her journey navigating the finances while building a company with her husband. There are hard truths about being a woman in a space where men still hold most of the power, but like she says, “ You’ll find ways to use it to your advantage when people underestimate you!” From securing funding to advocating for herself in high-stakes conversations, Sonja shares insights that every woman entrepreneur needs to hear, regardless of their industry.
Sonja learned to stand her ground. Why do we feel the need to over-prepare, over-deliver, and prove ourselves in ways men often don’t have to? Sonja’s advice to women looking to break barriers in finance and entrepreneurship is nothing short of inspirational. This conversation is for any woman who’s ever felt like she had to fight a little harder to be taken seriously- especially when it comes to money.
02:12 Women Leading the Liquor Industry
05:38 Meet Sonja Kassebaum: Co-Founder of North Shore Distillery
07:26 The Journey from Law to Distilling
08:46 Crafting Unique Spirits at North Shore
10:05 Navigating Financial Challenges
12:25 The Role of Women in a Male-Dominated Industry
24:53 Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Got a unique financial story to share? Whether it’s about crushing debt, building wealth, an unexpected windfall, or just a wild money moment, we want to hear it! Or are you a professional who helps women with money? If you’re a financial coach, attorney, CPA, or work in any area that empowers women financially, we’d love to hear from you too! Your story could inspire our community of women. Fill out our intake form here!
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Barb: [00:00:00] Maggie, it used to be back in the day when you'd see commercials for bourbon or hard liquor. What pops up for me is always like a cowboy riding in on his horse and getting off all dusty and belling up to the bar and getting a shot of liquor, right? Kind of gruff and dirty and strong liquor. And it's funny because not too long ago, who was the person that they had starting to advertise
for bourbon.
Maggie: See, and I thought they only picked her because she was a bape. But it's Mila Kunis, right?
Barb: Yeah, and it's interesting because when I teach my course around Reach, Engage, and Earn the Female Dollar, I ask that question, like, when you think of bourbon what comes up for you? And many people say men or, a kind of dark seedy bar or things like that and really the reality is more women are drinking bourbon than men these days.
Maggie: I'm not surprised. I was a big bourbon [00:01:00] drinker. That was like, definitely my drink of choice. So nothing about that surprises me there.
Barb: Same. And it's interesting that when I've done some investigation into that, the bourbon companies didn't even know that women were their biggest client until they did some research.
Maggie: Oh, crazy.
Barb: I know, they just made these grand assumptions, right? Yeah, but a lot of women are drinking bourbon.
That was my drink of choice and straight, we can't make these assumptions anymore.
Maggie: I was also talking with my brother last night who sells liquor and these things called buzz balls are flying off the shelves and they're having this big push and all this stuff and I kind of thought they were weird but I look it up and the first thing on their website is advertising how they're this women owned company, how all their products are natural, and how they have a recycling program for the containers because this weird plastic thing, which is a little inconvenient, but either way, it's a start, right? And I was like, I had no idea that this company was founded by a woman either, and I was [00:02:00] like, pretty happy then they were succeeding, that was the one going, because right on their website, and he's are you looking into it?
They're about us? I was like, no, I'm looking at their front homepage, and that's how they're leading, which I love to see and their market is. But it's interesting to see now more women getting into liquor, not just drinking it, but leading the way on the products as well.
Barb: Yeah, creating the products, and I think, a lot more women in distillery, as we well know, and women owning wineries and things like that. Liquor's gotten a lot more diverse. And it was so exciting to meet Sonja. I stumbled upon meeting her, she's right down the road from me, and she and her husband created a distillery like 20 years ago, a North Shore distillery.
And what was so interesting about that when I met her is they had no background in any of this before, but because her husband was a chemical engineer. He had some ideas around it, she was an [00:03:00] attorney, two very smart, educated people with a love for spirits. They launched it. It's so impressive.
Maggie: Yeah I'm glad we had her on because just the changing of the jobs. I just feel like lawyers, like you're just stuck in that position forever. You paid so much for all that schooling and to go follow what you love to do. Yeah, 20 years ago that was way before we see all these other distellieries and breweries popping up.
And I just think about all the tours have been on and all the machinery in those buildings and I was like, you've got to front the cost to all of these, we always think about different businesses and if you need a building or if you need to buy inventory or you need fresh food or these different things are like all the moving parts, which we don't really have any of those and that's a part that both of you and I both love.
We don't have to have all this money aside for an inventory or for a place. But to buy that for a liquor thing for, making liquor, it's an undertaking, it's a commitment and they went for it and they succeeded too.
Barb: They're doing great. What's so funny is as an [00:04:00] entrepreneur and business owner, you look at other businesses and you think, wow. For them to run that business, you think about what it takes to run businesses. And that's why entrepreneurs are so honorable, right? They work so hard and they're successful because they're passionate.
She and her husband, let's say, couple of brainiacs. Come on, let's talk about it. She was an attorney and like you said, she pivoted in a way, but she still leveraged her smarts around legal. In order to do a lot of the things that they had to do to get their business up and running.
Maggie: I know liquor has legalities, of course, but once you dive into it and try to start selling liquor and making liquor, she mentions how things need to be fireproof. You're like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. You are doing something pretty flammable, but it makes sense that you need all of that. I mean, the more you learn, the less you know, right.
Barb: Yeah, for sure. So we're excited about North Shore Distillery, especially for those of you in the North Shore of Chicago. Keep an eye out for a North Shore Distillery in [00:05:00] the liquor store. They also have a location that has happy hours and things like that right here in Libertyville. Let's get into it. Let's learn more.
Maggie: Cheers.
Gloria Steinem once said, we will never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. Barbara Provost and Maggie Nielsen are the team at purse strings that will help you navigate the ins and outs of financial independence so that you can be financially fearless. This is women in money, the shit we don't talk about.
Maggie: Sonja, we are so excited to have you on today. Before we dive into our conversation, could you just take a moment and introduce yourself to our community and share a bit about what you do.
Sonja: Absolutely. My name is Sonja Kassebaum. I am the co founder, co owner of North Shore Distillery. We're the oldest craft distillery in the state of Illinois, but we're still in the [00:06:00] world of spirits, a small company. I run it with my husband, Derek. We started it and run it together. We just celebrating 20 years in business which is yeah, super exciting.
It's amazing how much things have changed and continue to change as we go through this journey. So, I am a really hardcore cocktail nerd. I love the history of cocktails and the stories behind them and about spirits as well. There's so many wonderful things in the world of alcoholic beverages, how they came to be and why they are the way they are. The history and culture of each product is so interesting to me. And that's a big part of why I love the business that we're in and talking about that and sharing that. I'm also a lawyer by training which comes in handy 'cause it's a heavily regulated industry. We have a lot of 'compliance opportunities', I like to call them, many of them. That's just kind of what it's all about. I spend my day working on real things for our [00:07:00] business of working with our suppliers and our wholesalers and our retailers, the bars and restaurants and stores that carry our products.
We have a tasting room here where we invite people to come and learn about our products and learn about cocktails and enjoy a delicious cocktail. My world is very different than it has been from other jobs that I held before we started this. But I really try to focus on living with no regrets and feeling like I'm always moving forward.
Barb: Wow. I want to know how you make this transition from being an attorney to all of a sudden being a cocktail nerd /queen. How did you make that transition?
Sonja: I have to give credit to my husband for having the initial idea. He is an entrepreneur at heart, I think he always has had that entrepreneurial bent. When we started this, he was risk neutral to risk seeking, whereas I was risk averse. I was working in corporate America.
I started off at a large law firm in Chicago and then I was in house and over time became a half lawyer, half HR [00:08:00] person, I focused on employment and employee benefits law. But then Derek got this kernel of an idea to start a distillery. He's a chemical engineer by training, so it makes a lot of sense for him with his knowledge.
We've always been cocktail and spirits people though, and we've just always been the people who would go to the liquor store and go, 'What is that and what do you do with it? And why does this exist?' So he got an idea, and at the time I was ready to do something different and I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than see if we could make a go of this.
There was literally not one other thing I thought that I would try to do, and we thought it was too much for one person to do alone. If any two people had a shot at it, we felt like we had as good a shot as any other two people, and we'd be sorry if we didn't try. So we jumped in with both feet.
Maggie: And so do you make all kinds of spirits or just does a specific kind.
Sonja: That's part of the fun of having a still is we can make whatever we want. We make some mainstays, like vodka, we make some of the highest rated gins made in the U. S. actually. We make two styles of whiskey. We make raw aged rum. We make absinthe. We make [00:09:00] liqueurs. Sometimes we make really off the wall things.
It's something we take pride in, we call them distillers series products that we make a single batch of, and they're things no one's ever done before. The latest one we did was a spirit we called Bok Amaro, which was, it's a white Amaro with bok choy in it. It's the first time anyone's ever put cabbage in liquor as far as we know.
Well, it's made from grain anyway, right?
Most spirits are made from grain, wheat, rye, barley, corn but you could, like vodka can be made from anything that has sugar or starch in it. The weirdest vodka I ever had was made out of milk. So you can make spirits from anything, any sugar source can be turned into a distilled spirit if you really want to.
Sonja: You just have to find the yeast that likes that kind of sugar to ferment it. But yeah, there's nothing wrong with using other things that grow in a field to put them into your booze. Why not?
Barb: That is so interesting. So as you launched this, usually one person is the entrepreneur. The other one is the steady worker. But the both of you launched into entrepreneurship at the same time. So tell me about the financial [00:10:00] challenges you faced when together you, co founded the North Shore
Maggie: you would,
Sonja: Sure. Well, one of the lessons we learned early on is you're going to need a lot more money than you think you need.
Barb: Always.
Sonja: Yeah, Derek actually, this is the third company he'd started. So he initially wrote the business plan. He looked at the finances.
He looked at what's all the equipment going to cost. What, putting in a number for marketing that certainly wasn't big enough. And, just really looking at what is this going to cost? How do we turn a profit? What is that going to look like and really studying that? Before we decided to actually do it, we had to finance all the equipment, one of the challenges when we started
is we had to purchase a handmade still. We had to rent a building put in all the equipment before we could apply for the permit and we didn't know how long it would take to get the permit. Because there weren't a lot of distilleries. Now, it's a totally different process and different timeline because there are so many small distilleries but because we were so early on it was a very different landscape.
So we had a lot of savings. Derek worked on [00:11:00] it for almost a year before I quit my job. So we knew he was doing it and then it became, we are doing it. But I stayed in my job for almost a year so we could get things in place and be ready to launch. So I quit two months before we launched our first
Maggie: Yeah. I got to think that buying the still and renting the place and I've only been on tours of these places, right? So like I just see what they have and they have this bottle machine, which I guess you don't have to start with, but there's so many pieces of equipment.
And then I know like for some whiskeys and stuff, they take a couple of years. They have to sit, right? And so it's hard, I would think to project like, when is the money coming in? Because there is so much upfront cost.
Sonja: For sure, and that's why we started with what we in the liquor business, we'd call white goods or white spirits. So we started with vodka and gin cause they're like mozzarella cheese, you can sell them right after you make it. You do that to help support making the aged spirits. What some people in the industry do is they'll purchase aged spirits that someone else made and just slap a label on it or mix it with [00:12:00] theirs or whatever, but we didn't want to do that.
So we've only, our aged products are only things we've made from scratch. So we've been making them for, 18, 19 years. We started making some very early on. But we didn't start selling them until relatively recently in our timeline. We actually have bottles of them that can leave.
Barb: Wow, it's such an interesting industry. We've never talked to anyone that's had this role before. I would love for you to share a bit about what it's like to be a woman in what we presume to be a very male dominated industry and how you navigate that and what do you run up against.
Sonja: That has changed dramatically too since we started. When we first started out, it was absolutely male dominated. The fact that I didn't have a beard. And was wearing a trucker hat was a disadvantage sometimes at events. But it was funny, like the very first distilling conference we went to, which was the first year of the conference, there was a line for the men's and not a line for the women's bathroom, which was hilarious. In my former [00:13:00] life, the last company I worked for was male dominated also, it was a high tech consulting firm.
A lot of programmers, engineers really smart but male dominated as well, so I had gotten used to that of not seeing as many people who look like me. But in the liquor business at the beginning, sometimes I really felt a disadvantage that I was the extrovert of the two of us and I was the one going to all the things because I would be discounted. When I would walk into a room at a trade show, the only women there were the ones in the skimpy blouses and the short skirts who were there to draw people to the table and they didn't actually know anything about what they were selling.
They didn't actually have any substance there and so that has changed a lot. There are a lot of women now, a lot more than there were anyway. I wouldn't say that there isn't room for more, of course there is, but there are women distillers now and master distillers. There are women in a lot of different roles in the industry that I just did not see hardly at all when we started.
You get to that point, [00:14:00] right, that's true for many women. You find ways to use it to your advantage that people underestimate you, that's just what you do. 'Oh, okay, well, that's interesting, that's how you're going to handle this. Okay, well, then I'm just going to go around you and go another way to get to where I'm trying to go.'
Maggie: It doesn't matter who's in our way.
Sonja: Yeah, you'll find a way. It's just, are you going to be a help or a hindrance
Maggie: And it is so interesting because over, just in the past five years, I can see like where we live, how many more distilleries and breweries and things are popping up. So you can see it, just I could think over 20 years how much it really would have grown. Just the industry as a whole, much less just that female department of it as well.
Sonja: Yeah, when we started, there were 60 distilleries total in the United States, and there's over 3, 000 now.
Barb: Wow.
Sonja: Yeah, just in the state of Illinois, which we are not a leader, Colorado has a lot, California, both coasts. There's a lot. And then some pockets, Michigan, I think has more than we do, but there's probably 50 in Illinois now
Barb: Well, you are really a pioneer.
Sonja: We were and things have changed when we first started. People weren't sure there was a market [00:15:00] for our products. The challenge was different than it is now that it's hard to differentiate because there's so many people saying the same thing. So we're asking the consumer to discern the difference and to care.
And so it's a different that the challenge is different.
Maggie: It's always a challenge, but it's always changing.
Sonja: Yeah, for sure. Change is the only thing you can be 100 percent sure
about.
Maggie: So could you share any stories from this career where you had to make a critical financial decision and like how this really impacted your business?
Sonja: Well, thought a little bit about that. There have definitely been times where we've had to decide okay, are we digging deep and really making an investment in something that we're not sure is going to pay off?
A more recent decision that we made was coming out of the pandemic, like our sales were down. It's like, okay, what are we doing here? Are we going to borrow a little bit of money from the SBA to get us? Are we going to borrow a bigger amount to make a bigger investment and really make sure that we invest that
wisely in pushing ourselves forward. And so, but that was a [00:16:00] big decision point to decide to do that. And so we decided to go a little bit bigger and so that we're a little better prepared so we can make that longer term investment. Another time was when we moved, we were the first distillery in the state of Illinois to ever move.
There was no form, no process with the government for this. So we moved into the building that we're in now, but we had to do, multiple hundred thousands of dollars of construction here to make this space be suitable for a distillery. We had to put in fireproof walls. We had to plumb in floor drains.
Those had to be redone because they use the wrong materials and we had to redo our tasting room to make it work as a tasting room. And so that was up till then the biggest financial decision we've made of we're signing this long term lease that has all this money built into it to pay for the construction and that we're going to do all this construction.
Sonja: We're signing up for this. And are we sure that's something we really want to do and so we really, had to think it through and then model out, okay, how much is that going to cost? And how are we going to pay that? And, [00:17:00] how do we need to structure things to
be able to do it?
Maggie: And how are those results turning out for you? How do you feel about it?
Sonja: We're on year nine now of our 10 year plan. So I think we're doing
okay.
Maggie: I know it's hard and scary to commit sometimes to that because betting on yourself, betting that we're going to do it, betting that it's going to be a success. And taking that on which can be scary but you've got to invest in yourself to move it forward, right?
Sonja: Absolutely. For sure. You just can't be paralyzed by fear or by indecision to you have to make a decision. At first I really struggled with that in the early days, in the first few years, there were times I really questioned what am I doing? And is this what I should be doing?
And should I just go get a job? Because I was unsure. And so you get more comfortable with exactly like you said, that you're trusting yourself, and you're investing in yourself and trusting that you can do what needs to be done.
Barb: Yeah. It's risky. I often think, well, if I don't move forward in this way, well, I regret not making that leap, right? Because you can't be in the same place. You have to [00:18:00] continue growing and investing in your business and all of that.
Sonja: Right. Yep.
Maggie: I kind of wanted to turn to like goal setting on your business. I mean, you're on year nine out of ten on your plan. Seems like that you've been setting achieving your goals and your financial goals with North Shore Distillery. So what steps do you kind to take to plan those and be on track as a business owner and entrepreneur?
Sonja: it's something we've been working on lately is, we're making some tweaks cause things continue to change in the landscape, things are really competitive in the marketplace, the bars and restaurants that we work with, some of them are really struggling and so I understand why they're going to take the offer from the big liquor company that to sell them something really cheap rather than paying a little more for my products.
I understand why it's happening, but then we have to continue to figure out how do we respond to that and where are the opportunities for us? And so right now we're going through some real goal setting and retooling what is realistic and how are we going to achieve that and how are we working [00:19:00] toward that? We do that periodically and then Derek and I sit down at least once a quarter, look at how are we doing? Have we achieved what we thought we were working on? What has gotten in our way, where did we go off track, how do we get ourselves back,
is that the right path still? See, you got to do all those things. So we were really trying to, and have been for the last couple of years to commit to that review process because those are things that only we can do. There are lots of things that we can have other people do.
And so we're also trying to, out of the things that we don't need to do. We don't always succeed at that just because we care, it's not that other people can't do. It's just that, 'Oh, I looks like they could use some help, so I'll go help.'
Even though my time, I probably should go do this other thing that only I can do.
Barb: Yeah. So do you have a sales force and a marketing force and a distillery force? How many people make up North Shore Distillery?
Sonja: Yeah. So we have 10 people total. So it's Derek and me, we have one person who works in production. We have one person who's more [00:20:00] administrative. Then we have a bunch of people who work in our tasting room and also at outside events. So when we're doing events, we have people who are ambassadors for us that work here in our tasting room.
But also if we go to a big spirits tasting festival or we're doing a cocktail dinner with a restaurant or something like that, that they'll come to those as well. I teach classes and so they'll come to those, that kind of thing. I am one other person or the marketing department.
And now Derek's getting more involved because I think, he has a lot of things to say and to add and it's just that he's a little more introverted. So I'm trying to get him to participate more and just highlight more, talk more about some of the stuff that he does that people don't always know.
Barb: Yeah. Where do you see North Shore Distillery? What's your dream vision for it?
Sonja: We started off trying to make this be something we wanted to do until we don't want to work anymore. And that's still kind of where we're at of trying to keep it fun and engaging and interesting. That's that innovation and learning new things, exploring new things.
That's a big part of it for us. But our goal, [00:21:00] we'd like to be a little bigger than we are right now. We've shrunk a little bit from the pandemic and the last couple of years. So we're focused around that to be a little bit bigger, to have a little bigger team, be out doing a little bit more things.
But we're not trying to take over the world. We're trying to be a great local, regional brand, making quality products, continuing to innovate and keeping it interesting. We view ourselves as helping people drink better.
That's what we do. We help you drink better, not more, better.
So it's with intention and so you really know what it is and you can
savor it and enjoy it.
Maggie: I'm eager to know
what's your favorite cocktail?
Barb: Yeah, I was gonna ask that, too.
Sonja: It's hard cause I have a lot of favorites. It depends on my mood. So like Friday night, we always have a martini with our gin number six. We make it eight to one typically ratio with vermouth stirred. I don't like olives, so I have a twist. Derek has blue cheese stuffed olives.
He usually stuffs his own olives. Love this cocktail called 'The Last Word'. It's one of my all time favorites. It's a gin [00:22:00] cocktail with green chartreuse and Maraschino and lime juice. But I love a great Manhattan. Yesterday, I had this cocktail that we have on our menu right now called 'remember the way', which is a riff on a drink called 'remember the main'.
Which is itself a riff on a Manhattan. So in the wintertime, I tend to want the more spirit forward drinks, whereas in the summertime, I love putting cucumber in drinks and like cucumber and dill together or cucumber and a time or like doing something bright and refreshing in the summertime is one of my favorite things too. So I don't have a single favorite. Yeah.
Barb: So, if people were in a store, how would they know it came from your distillery? Does it say North Shore Distillery on your
Sonja: labels?
It'll say North Shore right on the front on the top. Yeah, it's one of our pandemic projects. We were the first distillery in the country actually to get FDA registered to make hand sanitizer.
Barb: Wow.
Sonja: When that was a thing. I was proud of us for doing that and doing all we could to help at a time when that's what we thought it was needed and we wrote a little guide to help all the other [00:23:00] distilleries register as well. Because I think for the combination of me being a lawyer and I was an applied math major undergrad and I did a lot of computer programming that I was trying to figure out how to make the FDA's registration system let me pass like all the different steps and I just wouldn't give up.
Maggie: There are a lot of brains under you two there. With his degrees and your degrees, like the more
you dive in, I was like, there's a lot of knowledge, the science makes sense, there are a lot of things that are hard to build a company if you don't have a team who can do those things.
Those are usually expensive things to off board or to find a chemist to do something for you. But you guys the real powerhouse. You can hire anyone to market, but to do some of those things, it's impressive.
Oh, well, thank you. That is one of the challenges that we have is that because Derek and I both are like, we're can do people like, we can figure out most things. But there are some things that we probably should pay someone to do rather than take the time to figure it out or to invest that
energy because we don't really need it that much. So that's one of the things that we try [00:24:00] to figure out, but yeah, it was good. I got myself off track, but during the pandemic, we stepped back and look at our marketing, our packaging, our branding. Are we best conveying what we're all about the way that we're decorating our packages?
Cause what's at the liquor store has changed dramatically in 20 years. So we redid all of our labels. So now they very boldly say North Shore right on the top in the front. And we consider ourselves artists and that spirit is our medium. So our labels now all have an artistic connection. So like our vodka labels all are inspired by pop art. We have a modern style gin that's in the style of a Mondrian, if you're familiar with art at all. And then our other gin that's a classic gin has an impressionist still life of a martini on it. So we tried to make a connection to the style of spirit and the style of art that it matches.
Barb: Love that. How creative. That's brilliant. Yeah, really nice. So being an entrepreneur over all these years, what are a couple of tips you would give [00:25:00] entrepreneurs as they're navigating the waterways as we all do through the ups and downs of creating a business?
Sonja: I think, on that, from a financial perspective, it's always something you have to pay attention to is cash flow when you're an entrepreneur and knowing if you get a situation like something that happens to us sometimes is one of our distributors slow pays us.
And if it's a big one, it's then that's going to interrupt us, keeping everything going. So you really just have to have somebody on your team who's paying attention to that so that you're not going to get in a bind. And if you can have resources, you can pull from if you do get into a bind. So you have a backup plan. I think that's really important so that you can keep going and cause there's going to be times and that's definitely something that happens in entrepreneurship where you're going to be right up against the line. I just know and make sure you're on the right side of it.
And then I think, if you've done this for a while to trust yourself to know what you need to do and what you can do. So you need to know what you're capable of, and you know what your industry 's going on. You [00:26:00] need to trust yourself to know that if you think this is what you need to do, then you need to do it and not hem and haw.
And like many people, I struggle with that sometimes of do I really know? It's I've been doing this a long time and I know my instincts are good. I know I'm paying attention. I know my judgment is sound. So I just need to trust and just go forward. Always go forward.
Maggie: Those are like the best two tips for entrepreneurship because you have to have the money straight and you got to keep moving forward. I figure with the liquor industry can ebb and flow of like the holiday times are probably like bigger influx, more purchases, but then there's probably like a lower and dry January, things like that.
It comes and it goes, but keeping the eye on what you have, what's coming in and what's going out is so important, because you just need to make sure all the months are connecting together.
Sonja: Right, for sure. You get to know where those lulls are and how you ride through them. Interestingly, this January wasn't as challenging as last January, which I thought dry January was getting more popular, which I think it is. And the sober curious movement and all that. But yeah, this January we were busier. [00:27:00]
Not complaining, not a complaint.
Maggie: This has been so interesting just learning about how you've jumped careers opened up, this distillery and a real male dominated field. I love really seeing following their passion, doing what they want to do, not letting that years of schooling and that investment lock you down to being a lawyer your whole life. But really being able to pivot and change and do what you do. We also love a good family business. So how is that working with your husband? Are you guys loving it?
Sonja: It's one of those things. You never know how that's going to go, right. Working with someone. For the most part, I think it works really well for us. We each have our areas of responsibility. We consult with each other a lot on where they cross over. But we also give each other some autonomy to take the lead on things.
We found a good balance and we compliment each other well. It's been really interesting because there's so many things and I noticed a lot more early on, but that I never would have known about Derek if we hadn't worked together. Because you just see a different [00:28:00] side of that person, like for he is much more introverted than me so calling someone on the phone or going to a lot of events or talking to a lot of people depletes his energy.
Whereas I get energy from it and I don't think I really would have fully understood how much that is true if we hadn't worked together because then I'd see okay, cause he did three things three days in a row, he's sick now. He just runs himself down, but whereas that would not happen to me.
And so there's just things that you learn about people that I really value and appreciate, but it's just like, we know we have complete trust. And so yeah, so far sometimes we take work home more than we should.
Maggie: But our last question we like to ask all of our guests on our show is what does financial freedom look like for you?
Sonja: I feel like it's having the resources to be able to do the things that I really want to do and that give my life meaning. So it's not that I need to have the fanciest house or the fanciest car. I need to have a reliable car that can get me from point A to point B because I don't care that much what it looks like.
[00:29:00] So that I can have the experiences I want. I love to continue to learn and to grow and to try new things. And so I want to have the resources to do that and to embrace that in my life and to have the freedom to do those kinds of things is really all I'm looking for.
Maggie: Yeah,
I love it.
Freedom.
Thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise. We're going to be sure to have North Shore Distillery, their link in the show notes, so people can check out where to buy your products. I know we have a ton of people in the Chicagoland area, so I hope they run out and come visit you or just buy your products. So yeah, thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise, and we'll talk to everyone again soon.
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