Legacy Poured into Every Glass - Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez is the Founder of Fincasa Whiskey.  Fincasa is a heritage blend of Rye Whiskey finished in Origin Rum Barrels to share the stories of our ancestors. Rooted in tradition and inspired by his family’s history in Puerto Rican Agriculture, Fincasa's Rum Barrel Finished Rye Whiskey highlights the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Summary:

When Michael Martinez took the brave step from military service to whiskey entrepreneurship, he poured his Puerto Rican heritage into every bottle of Fincasa Whiskey. Our latest episode takes you through the riveting narrative of this trailblazer, whose second-generation roots and family's agricultural legacy in Puerto Rico weave a rich tapestry behind the brand's rum barrel-finished rye whiskey. Michael's story is brimming with the essence of Latin American and Caribbean tradition, and his passion for celebrating culture through spirits is both infectious and inspiring.

As Michael recounts his collegiate days and brotherhood in a fraternity, you'll feel the warm embrace of the Latino community that shaped his identity and fueled his aspirations. The camaraderie and mentorship he found among his peers provided a springboard for ambition, teaching him valuable lessons in resilience and the significance of 'your people.' Michael also opens up about the challenges he faced in funding his education, revealing how military service offered unexpected pathways and a drill sergeant's advice that would change the course of his life.

Wrapping up the conversation, we explore the craft behind Fincasa Whiskey and how Michael's entrepreneurial journey is marred with obstacles, from navigating the legalities of starting a whiskey company to partnering with distilleries for his signature rum barrel finish. Yet, through perseverance and strategic collaborations, Michael's vision came to life, capturing the essence of his ancestry with every sip. Join us as we toast to Michael Martinez's tale of culture, identity, and the relentless pursuit of a dream that honors a rich past while crafting a distinctly flavorful future.

Transcript

Raul Lopez: 0:04

This is Raul Lopez and you're listening to how Do you Save Success in Spanglish. The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt this journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in Spanglish what's good, mi gente. Welcome back to how Do you Say Success in Spanglish. It's your boy, raul. Thanks for joining me today. Our guest is Michael Martinez. How's it going, michael? What's going on, brother? How you doing Good man? Thank you so much for being here. Just to kind of give everybody a little background on Michael. Michael Martinez is the founder of Fincasa Whiskey. Fincasa is a heritage blend of rye whiskey finished in origin rum barrels to share the stories of our ancestors, Rooted in tradition and inspired by his family's history in Puerto Rican agriculture. Fincasa's rum barrel finished rye whiskey highlights the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean. Pincasso's Rum Barrel Finnish Rye Whiskey highlights the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Michael Martinez: 1:09

How's it going, michael? Thank you so much for being here. Man, yeah, thank you for having me. I know we were just kind of talking a little bit earlier that this has been months in the making. I know when you first started this whole journey, I reached out to you and tried to connect and, as life is, we just got really busy. I got super busy with the business, you got super busy with the podcast, which has been going great. So I'm glad we're finally able to do this and we're here knocking it out.

Raul Lopez: 1:39

Yeah, exactly, man, it's been. I think you're one of the first people to hit me up the moment I posted up like my first few episodes and I was like, oh, this is going to be awesome, and then we just never got there. So I mean that's life right, it's always like that, but I do appreciate it, man. So I guess, to start off, let the world know you who is Michael Martinez.

Michael Martinez: 1:58

Yeah, so I am a I would guess second generation Puerto Rican from Long Island, new York. My family, my father, was born in Puerto Rico. I was born in Puerto Rico and then quickly moved back to New York. My mother's from New York, but she's Puerto Rican and she couldn't deal with just living in El Campo of Puerto Rico, so we had to move back to New York right. I grew up in Long Island, new York, Went to school there, hofstra University alumni, joined the Army, you know still serving in the military, the Army Reserves, work as a civilian in the Army and currently today, you know, started a passion project of mine of a whiskey business which is fincasa um, and that's kind of like, I would say, the spark notes of my life. If I, if I, if I went individually, each year by year, we'd be here forever so, yeah, I got you.

Raul Lopez: 2:56

No, no, but I appreciate it, man, and and like you said, you were born in puerto rico and then you came out here, but you said you, your mom, didn't like living in El Campo. You know? Can you explain what El Campo is?

Michael Martinez: 3:08

Yeah. So for those that know, el Campo is just like, kind of like, it's like the stick. So for us in America it's anything where there's almost nothing there, where maybe nine out of 10 times your bathroom is an outhouse, um, you don't have hot water, um, and you're cooking maybe, you know, if you're lucky you have an electric stove, or if not, you're cooking with just fire, um, so in Puerto Rico there's plenty of regions that, um, we would consider El Campo or, you know, in different parts of Latin America, where it's just, um, it's just kind of like the, the woods, it's, the farmland, it's. It's just kind of like the woods, the farmland, it's it's. You know, you're, you're not near, you're not near a city at all. Your closest neighbor could be, you know, maybe five minutes away, maybe 30 minutes away, and sometimes it takes a long windy road to get to where you're going.

Michael Martinez: 4:01

And my mother, you know, growing up in New York, that was quite the adjustment, going from suburbs to to kind of the mountain life of Puerto Rico, and it just was not her flavor. And so after I was born, you know, they moved back to to to New York and that's where I grew up in Long Island.

Raul Lopez: 4:19

Nice, yeah. As someone who married a New Yorkian and moved into suburban wooded area of Houston, texas for a few years, I totally know that shocker. You know when she'd look in the backyard and it's just dark in this woods. Who did you send me to and why are there so many bugs? It's like, yeah, but you talk about living in a campo, and I think one of the things you mentioned on your website too as well is that your family has a history of Puerto Rican agriculture. Is that why they were living in that?

Michael Martinez: 4:47

compound.

Michael Martinez: 4:49

Yeah, it's kind of you know now the land or where the area where the farm was, it's just a whole bunch of houses where it's just different.

Michael Martinez: 4:58

You know family members, you know it's kind of like one of those evolutionary things where it's like okay, after a while you go from farmland to sectioning off pieces of the land to give to family members so they could build houses. And the family farms you know were mainly in the mountain areas of Guayama and Patias in Puerto Rico, so that's like the southeast portion of Puerto Rico, just on the other side of the mountain from San Juan. And you know they had those farms from the early 1900s. You know we could I could date it back as late or as early as like the late 1800s. Before that it's just, you know, census stuff wasn't really popular, but we were able to identify exactly what the farms were, what they had, what they were producing, how many acres was it. So it's really cool to know that our family's history was rooted in that agriculture and supporting Puerto Rico and slowly has evolved to where we're able to live on the land that that kind of gave back to us.

Raul Lopez: 6:07

Right, so, and how long did you live in Puerto Rico?

Michael Martinez: 6:12

Oh man, I must've been, I must've been a baby barely yeah, barely barely a year. You know a true New Yorican here. But but you know, I, I go back frequently, frequently. I go back more often now um, especially with the business, because you know, it's just nice to visit um, and it should be. It's a beautiful place to be, especially outside the san juan area, um, it's, it's really cool to check out the mountain areas and, you know, find a hibato, or you know, go out in the campo and just see what life is like out there yeah, it's um, I think for a lot of latinos, we it's a big part of our lives when we go back to our home country sometimes, or we go visit family, like I had my uncles too, who owned a chocolate a little, a little farm in.

Raul Lopez: 6:58

You know acres of mango trees and all these other farming and stuff like that we'd spend the day and it's just like an outhouse with a hole and they're cooking everything with wood fire and you're just spending the day no electricity, no internet, no nothing, and it's just a whole different world. So I think it impacts a lot of us and so obviously maybe not not much of a big impact from you moving to New York from that point you know when you.

Michael Martinez: 7:26

But what was, was? What was life in new york for you guys? Yeah, we just kind of grew up, um, really in the suburbs, um, which if you're familiar with long island, it's probably um by train, maybe about anywhere between 30 minutes, you know, as far out east, up to an hour and a half east of of the city. Um know, depending on traffic, it could be anywhere from an hour to two hours to get to the city. So it's a lot more. It's not as city-like where there's just like, apartment buildings and a whole bunch of train systems. It's very suburban, you know. There's a whole bunch of streets, houses, neighbors, right next to you. So it was really cool to, I guess, experience that part of Long Island and that part of New York.

Michael Martinez: 8:14

And I think it was also interesting is because, like, the town I grew up in was fairly diverse in terms of minorities between white, black and Latino, and as I grew older, that Latino influence just continued to come in to the school and throughout my childhood. So as I got older, it almost felt like I was exposed to more Latino ethnicities and nationalities and got to understand. You know, there's there's a culture outside of just being Puerto Rican Because, you know, you know, my frame of reference growing up was, as you know, a five year old was hey, the only thing that exists is a Puerto Rican Right. And it wasn't until I got older that, you know, I would learn that there's other nationalities across Latin America and Caribbean.

Raul Lopez: 9:10

Yeah, I mean I'm not one to shy away from it, but I grew up very not liking being Latino for a long time and I was very into black culture more than anything growing up and it wasn't, I think, until I got to college and actually joining once again for think, until I got to college and actually joining once again for transparency, or one of my fraternity brothers, you know, joining our frat where I ended up kind of getting more involved in learning about my culture and really embracing it or whatever. So you know you talk about embracing the different culture. How has that impacted your life and how has that changed you?

Michael Martinez: 9:42

Yeah, I think, I think it's just kind of, you know, being a Latino, like it. It it's different, right, it's I. I don't want to, like you know, sit here and, and you know, compare um, but it is a different culture, um, but it's it, it's, it's. It's a lot of fun, it's something I, like, I grew up with, right, I grew up listening to um merengengue at the house, or bachata, or salsa, you know, going to different part, like family parties, and just experiencing that. So it was a big part of my childhood. And then, growing up, and, you know, being surrounded by other Latinos, it just felt very familiar to me and like, I said, like, like, probably in my elementary school it was probably me and like one other kid that was that ended up being Dominican. I thought he was Puerto Rican also, but he's Dominican, right, you know, it was just us.

Michael Martinez: 10:38

And then it was, you know, black people and white people and you know I fell into the crowd of black people and then, growing up, I was like, oh, there's like a.

Michael Martinez: 10:45

And you know, I fell into the crowd of black people and then, growing up, I was like, oh, there's like a whole entire, you know, world of Latino people out there and it was, you know, I embraced it, you know, middle school and, into high school, joined, you know the different Spanish clubs that we had, and then it eventually evolved into, like going to college and joined the fraternity. So it was something that, you know, I felt very familiar with and I would guess I kind of use it as almost like oh hey, these are my people, right, like if, no matter where I go, I know I could always navigate to these group of Latinos and there's always, like these inside jokes, that that you would have and that you just understood being a Latino, versus, like you know, if you were hanging out with your, uh, your white friends or your African-American friends. It's just like there's certain nuances that they didn't understand of my family style and I didn't understand of theirs, um, but but working or being with Latinos, like you just got, you just understood it, you got it.

Raul Lopez: 11:46

Yeah, it's like there's so many different cultures, countries and backgrounds and from everywhere, but there's still a very common thread amongst all of us that you know you go. You go to one bird, you go to one quinceanera, you go to one party. You know it might be slight differences, but you still get the same vibe, you still get the same love. Yeah, yeah, it's great. And so you talked about, uh, college. I'm talking a little about um, what is it hoffman?

Michael Martinez: 12:08

yeah, hoffstra university. So, um, I went to hoffstra university, uh, as my undergrad was in political science, um, I was pursuing uh minors in history and uh, economics and I think I was like a credit short and I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to worry about that. So I never I never graduated with a minor, but I got my degree. That's all that matters. And while I was in at Hofstra University, I pledged a Zeta chapter, filed off of a fraternity, and it was a really cool experience and I really enjoyed being a part of a brotherhood of, you know, of men that we had goals for ourselves, right, it wasn't just like we're here to party, here to be being a common goals, and we all had different goals and it was almost like we would push each other to make sure that we've made our goals and we, we held each other accountable.

Michael Martinez: 13:15

So growing up or experiencing that in college really allowed me to kind of, you know, become an adult and have expectations for myself and kind of hold myself accountable. And it also exposed me to, you know, when you're in a frat, you have to do events, you have to do certain things to kind of maintain the status of activity. So it required us, it required me to like kind of branch out and figure out things like all right, well, we're running a banquet this year. What do we have to do? Um, you know, event management, um, organizational structure, uh, understanding, okay, hey, we gotta gotta identify new interests, we gotta recruit. You know, there's all these nuances that that you don't really realize until until you look at it years later.

Michael Martinez: 14:01

Like the joining the fraternity and the brotherhood allowed you to kind of have a stepping stone in in in business culture and setting expectations for yourself. Um, so I think it really prepared me for for life after college, um, but then also allowed me to have this network of those, those, um, latino men that you know I still talk to today and you know, we, we talk all the time about, like hey, what are we, what are our goals for this year, what are our expectations? And if one of us is not meeting that kind of standard or expectations that we have of ourselves, like we hold each other accountable, like, hey, dude, like last year was not your year, let's, let's figure it out.

Michael Martinez: 14:43

Like what do you like? What do we have to do to to kind of get you going again Like what's what's going on, Is everything okay and it's a support system right.

Michael Martinez: 14:52

It's a wonderful support system. I still, you know, we invite each other to to our kids' birthday parties, baby showers, weddings we have all these events. We do retreats every you know, every few years that we have the opportunity to. So it's been a great opportunity to experience that within the Brotherhood, but outside of just the Brotherhood. For college I was in ROTC. I had joined the Army after college and primarily in the Army Reserves. Hoss University is kind of like just a school in Long Island, nothing crazy. So yeah, that's kind of my college life, I guess.

Raul Lopez: 15:36

Well, I mean, you bring up a good point and it's very interesting. I mean, not that this is a recruitment video, but just being involved with like-minded individuals. And it's kind of why I wanted to create this podcast too, where it's like I want to get our voices and have people realize that there are other people with like-minded stuff that go through stuff and get success and, you know, put it in motivated, hopefully, encourage each other. You know your story, my story, anybody's story, can help encourage us to move forward and I story my story, anybody's story can help encourage us to move forward.

Raul Lopez: 16:13

And I think it's really important for us because you go, you do go into college feeling like a small brown face in a white, in a white wave and, uh, you're alone, you don't feel like other people can relate. And when you do meet that group of people whether it's through a fraternity, a sorority or a student group or something like that, that puts you around with other people like yourself that are motivated, that are looking to do stuff and then graduate, and they continue to stay motivated and continue to help each other out. You know it's what they call all ship rise with the tide kind of deal.

Michael Martinez: 16:37

Yeah, yep, yep, all the all ships rise with the tide and you know I've heard that phrase plenty of times in different aspects of my life. But it really is like I view my college experience as being very fortunate. I understand, you know, and recognize that my experience is probably not the same as everyone else's and I think I'm very fortunate to have been able to be surrounded by professional organization where we have goals and we have expectations of ourselves and and I think the bonus is that you know, we're predominantly Latino and and we could, we, we see each other in our own faces, right. So it's really cool to be able to experience that and as part of you know, as, just like this podcast, like, how do you say success in Spanglish? It's that that's part of it, right Surrounding yourselves with a group of Latino, latina, you know, men and women that where we all have a goal of being successful.

Raul Lopez: 17:39

Exactly, and so you talk about during the army. Did you know you were going to join the army while you were in college, or was it kind of like maybe?

Michael Martinez: 17:47

Yeah, so this is a. This is a funny story, you know. Well I think it's comical to me, but so so I had joined the army after my my sophomore year of college because I just I couldn't pay for school. Sophomore year of college, because I just I couldn't pay for school, you know, it got to the point of where my loans were, were getting denied and I did not have an opportunity Like I didn't have it elsewhere to go. You know, my first two years I took out the whatever loans they were going to give me, between federal loans and and private loans, which, you know, those private loans sucked. They still suck.

Raul Lopez: 18:25

by the way, 20 years later, they still suck.

Michael Martinez: 18:30

So I was kind of like at a crossroads of like, well, what am I going to do? Because completing college was important, right, it was a thing that I had to. That was kind of like an expectation of me and I was like, all right, well, I got to finish it. I'm already two years in deep. I'm already in this much debt. Like, if I don't seek to finish this, I I've almost like did this for nothing.

Michael Martinez: 18:57

Um, so I've always saw those commercials like, hey, join the army, we'll pay for school. And I was that guy. I was like, well, you know what I'm going to do, it, let's go ahead. I had zero issues with the military or during the military. I never considered it and I was like, yeah, maybe this would be a cool opportunity for me to have my school get paid for, while also maybe have opportunities to travel. That'll be really cool to like, you know, just kind of travel and see the world. Um, so I had enlisted first into the army, um and to, to.

Michael Martinez: 19:33

For those that are unfamiliar with how the army works, it's almost like there's a separation between enlisted soldiers and then officers. Um, and pretty much the way I explain it, enlisted soldiers are like the workers right, they are out there, they're the worker bees, they're doing everything to make sure everything runs. The officers they're like the supervisors and managers and planners right, they're creating plans and supervising the worker bees. So you know, both sides have their purpose. Most people that join the military are enlisted. You don't need a college degree to enlist, but there is a secondary route where you can go to school, earn your degree and then become an officer, or you can, if you already have your degree, you, go into the military as an officer. That route exists. And how I could get, you know the school paid for I just immediately walked into recruiter's office and I said, hey, you know, I got to pay for school. What do I have to do? And he's like all right, we'll take this test and sign here, and that's. That's essentially like what I did, right, I just signed my. I was like all right, cool, like like, let's do it. So I had enlisted.

Michael Martinez: 21:06

And then when I was in boot camp, um, you know, I was talking to one of my drill sergeants and he kind of just pulled me over his side. He's like hey, hey, listen, man, I, I know you went to, you're going to college and and you ended up here. He's like why, why the hell are you here? Why didn't you do like rltc or something? I was like what's rltc? I was like he's like like right, dear, dear, uh, deer, in the headlights moment, I'm just like what are you talking about, man? And then he explained to me he's like all right, this is where RLTC is. Um, this is how it works. They pay for you to go to school, they pay for your school, they give you a stipend, um, for your books. And he just broke everything down to me. So I was like all right, so so I need to figure out how do I, after I leave here, go to do that? Right?

Michael Martinez: 21:46

So I put all my effort into researching it after I finished boot camp, because I went to a secondary school, which is advanced individual training, which is like where you kind of train for your job. So I get there, I do my research, I contact so my school that I was going to, hofstra University, has an ROTC department. I reached out to them. I said, hey, this is my situation. They said, all right, once you're done, come, come here and we'll figure out what we can do for you.

Michael Martinez: 22:15

Literally the day I get back to New York. Like, I get off the plane, I see my family. The very next morning I go straight to the ROTC department with like, like, and in the military they hand you, like, these thick folders with all of your admin data, like everything every paperwork that they have for you is in this thick folder. So I take that thick folder, I bring it to the ROTC department, I put it on their desk. I'm like, what can you guys do for me? And luckily, like you know, I was able to. I was, I was given the opportunity to, you know, um, they gave me a scholarship, um, for the rest of my school, and including that scholarship were stipends, and then at the end of it I would, you know, commission into the Army Reserves. And then, you know, that was that day where I had joined and went to boot camp was 14 years ago. So so it's, you know, I I kind of viewed it again.

Michael Martinez: 23:14

I was very fortunate in, in that, someone that was kind of looking out for me and was like, hey, here's a route that you could take, here's the opportunity. And I took advantage of that opportunity. I was able to pay for half of my school through the army scholarship and it worked out really great. But for those people that you know, if you're listening to this video and you're looking to enlist, do your research, because it's not an automatic. We'll pay for your school. There's very specific schools that they pay for and specific routes that you have to go through to have school paid for. So my again, my ignorance kind of led me into this weird, you know, windy path to get school paid for, and that's ultimately why I joined joined the army. But you know I don't I don't regret it. It led me into a career within the army and I'm very, very grateful and thankful for for having going through that the the long way around.

Raul Lopez: 24:14

Yeah, I mean's um, you don't know what, you don't know kind of deal. Yeah, um, for a lot of us, you know, I think we'd end up in a situation where it's like, oh shit, I gotta pay for this. You know, either before or even like after I mean, when I, when I graduated too, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna have to lose some weight because I might have to try to join the military to help pay for my school. Getting a job, even a decent paying job in the early 2000s, was hard with the recession and everything, I think we've all kind of been there like, oh shit, how am I going to pay for this? This is a lot more expensive than I thought it was going to be. I'm glad it worked out for you. You did mention that you had kind of a career in the military. Is that what you started doing once you graduated?

Michael Martinez: 25:00

Yeah, so after I had graduated, I ended up getting connected with someone that their mother was a vice president of a government contracting company, and so after our military school that's how I met this person they're like hey, if you want to work for the company you know, you give my mother your resumes, and that's one of those, again, one of those lessons about it's about who you know not what you know.

Michael Martinez: 25:29

sometimes so again I was very thankful that I was able to be connected with someone that again was looking out for me and was like hey, here's an opportunity. You know I take that opportunity and I kind of just run with it, so that kind of got my foot into into the government. And then you know all the way in today that that was almost 10 years ago and up until today I'm a civilian for the Department of the Army just doing admin stuff. So you know it was grateful to have that opportunity, but to also like seize that opportunity and kind of make sure, hey, like I want to stick around this because it lent out to a really good career it led out to to a really good career, nice.

Raul Lopez: 26:19

And so I think we've all kind of been in a situation where we're sitting with our buddies having a beer, having a drink, and we're like, oh shit, we should open a bar, we should, we should start a brewery, so so. So when did that all start turning for you? When did these conversations start happening for you?

Michael Martinez: 26:30

Yeah, so the whole whiskey thing, um, I kind of tell people it's my quarter life crisis, right, where I, you know, at the point of which I kind of had the idea I was like about eight years into my career as a civilian and, and you know, sometimes it just feels stagnant.

Michael Martinez: 26:50

It's like all right, well, you know what's what's really next. I'm coming to the office every single day and do what I have to do. Come home, I'm not not complaining that, you know it's, it's a bad lifestyle, but sometimes I think the expectation or expectations I have for myself is like all right, well, I gotta I have to go do something and and do it to the fullest, and and where is my reward at the end of it? Right, where, what is? You know? Um, how do I find personal joy or personal ambition in what I'm doing? And you know not saying that, um, my job supporting the army does not give me personal joy, but sometimes there's, there's no ambition in it. Um, it's a, it's an office job, um, and and the moment that I really had the idea of like a whiskey um is when I heard one of my co-workers kind of like, oh hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go retire in puerto rico and he's just like some random dude. He, his wife, is puerto rican, but he's not puerto rican. And then, just for me, I was just like what do you mean? You're just gonna? You have zero ties to Puerto Rico, right, like you're just gonna go there, like that. That makes no like to me. At that time, it made no sense. I was like you're, you're crazy. Um, and then that's when it kind of like clicked in my head like you know well, what am I doing to to, to get back to Puerto Rico, or to give back to to Puerto Rico and our culture? You know, I'm just sitting here in this mundane job and and it's like, well, what, what am I? What are you doing? You know, looking at myself in the mirror, like what are you doing? So then, so then I started thinking like, well, what, what could I do? And then that's where I just start having like these random ideas, crazy ideas.

Michael Martinez: 28:36

And at that time I had just built a bar in my basement. Um, so, so, like, literally, I'm just like staring at the wall. I'm like, well, what if you just do whiskey, right, like, is that, even if? Like, is that? Like, is that even a thing is? Is there? Does puerto rican whiskey exist? Does, does? Does a Puerto Rican whiskey brand even exist? Right?

Michael Martinez: 28:57

I started asking myself these questions and I'm just like all right, well, you know, if it doesn't exist, how do I, how do I make it happen? So, so then I just kind of spiraled in into this, like like thought of, or question to myself of, like all right, well, how, how does puerto rican whiskey, or why doesn't exist? Right, because we know about rum, plenty of puerto rican rums. So it was just like all right, well, why isn't there a whiskey company? All right, and just asked, learning that you know, it's probably five times as much to to make whiskey in puerto rico than it is rum and, by the way, rum gets certain tax incentives because it's, it's an agricultural product of puerto rico. So, like there's, there's a disadvantage already. And, and you know, um, drinking, drinking or making whiskey in puerto rico, uh, at a business perspective, does not really make sense.

Michael Martinez: 29:53

Um, and then again with the question of of, I was just like all right, and I kept focusing on whiskey, because I'm like we, as Latinos, we're whiskey drinkers, right, we drink our Johnny Walker, we drink our Buchanans, right, we drink Dewar's. Right, it's everywhere. But again, I kept coming. Some of these questions I kept coming back on is like, well, what are we doing for ourselves? Like, why isn't there a whiskey company that represents us and represents our culture, our heritage? There's these whiskey brands that are selling to our people, advertising to, you know, latin America and the Caribbean, but they're not really telling our stories, they're not reflective of our lifestyle, other than that we drink whiskey and they provide it to us, right?

Michael Martinez: 30:44

So then I kind of was like all right, well, if I'm going to do this whiskey thing, I have to really understand and learn about whiskey. So then I went on this whole entire rabbit hole for like an entire year and thankfully, that year that I went to, this rabbit hole of learning about whiskey was the pandemic, so it's a good time to start learning. So so I literally was just buying like different types of whiskey bottles and just learning everything about the process, from from the very beginning of of selecting your grain that you can use for whiskey, all the way up to distilling, to the barrel aging, to maturation, barrel finishing, like every aspect that you could possibly learn. I just put myself to you know, to learn about it and to really understand it and, at the same time, you know, going back to that question of like, well, what are you doing about?

Michael Martinez: 31:37

You know, for Puerto Rico, it's like, all right, well, how can I tie this to our culture, how can I tie this to our heritage and family history? What could it be? What, what, what am I, what is my end state? What is my goal for this whiskey brand? Not just to be, have representation, but, you know, to tell, tell the stories of our culture and our heritage through the bottle. You know, have it be representative of someone where you could pick up the bottle and say, hey, yeah, I could see myself in this bottle or I could see myself in the pictures or the cocktails that we make. Right, there's some sort of representation there.

Michael Martinez: 32:25

So, you know, had the question started drilling down, learning about everything, and then just kind of took that deep dive into it and just, you know, said all right, well, we're going to throw the dart at the wall and hopefully it sticks. And you know, I'm very thankful that. You know we. We started first starting bottling in October. Our first batch and our first batch netted us around 800 bottles. We have we have less than 300 bottles left available. So it's been a very great, you know, first few months and now we're starting to look at bottling our next few batches and it's just kind of this whole repetitive process of buying more whiskey, putting them in rum barrels and then and then waiting for them to to finish for about six months to a year, and then bottling and then kind of repeating that process over and over again right, yeah, and it's funny you mentioned that because I was actually one of my questions.

Raul Lopez: 33:13

Like you know, growing up you'd go to the parties and you know the the old men come out and that johnny walker red comes out and you know they open it and they get. You just walk in and all the men are holding their little johnny walker. And is whiskey such a big part of the like latino culture? Uh, and we don't get involved. I mean, granted, you know history of whiskey, you know it's very dominated up there in europe, but you know, yeah, why not? You know, and I think that's a very important question. I'm glad you know um it. It was a question. You're asking something that's motivated you because you know, I, I agree, I think there is opportunity there for for us, um, to kind of get involved. So, um, and so can I explain what does Fincaza mean?

Michael Martinez: 33:55

Yeah, so Fincaza. We just took two words, smashed it together Finca meaning farm and casa meaning house. Right, it's our farmhouse, or you know where a home is. You know home is where the heart is, but it's also like where our farmland is and agriculture. And the name Fincasa really came about when I started this whole process of understanding about whiskey and what I want to give back.

Michael Martinez: 34:24

There's also like a moment of self-reflection of like who am I? Right, I know I'm Puerto Rican, but I know my parents, I know my grandparents. But like, like, what else? Right, and I feel like. I feel like us, as Latinos, we do a really bad job of passing on the stories of our, of our prior generations, right, like, sometimes, like our family members just don't even want to talk about it, right, it's just like, oh, like I came here for my country, I woke, I worked so hard for you and this is where we are today. Be thankful, right, but we don't talk about what happened in between, right? So I kind of wanted to do that for myself. I was like all right, well, let me understand my culture or my heritage a little better. I did the whole DNA ancestry thing and what was cool about ancestry was you're able to build a little better. I did the whole DNA ancestry thing and what was cool about ancestry was, like you're able to like build a family tree and because Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth of the United States, there's a lot of documents up until like around like 1880 is like that time frame of reference where we still have a lot of documents and censuses that we could just find online and it's pre-translated. So I was able to like really build out my family tree.

Michael Martinez: 35:46

On certain aspects, like going all the way back to Spain and then other aspects, just kind of just seeing this, this mixture, just like, of indigenous people and Spanish people and just like kind of like just the jibaros in Puerto Rico, just like starting these families and having these farmlands and so like that's where I kind of really understood like oh, like my family came from farming in Puerto Rico, like we have all these documents and this, this, that that say, hey, this is the farmland, this is the exact area in Guayama or Patias, right, and this is exactly what they had. They had corn, they had sugar cane coffee, you know, they had cows, they had mango trees, like all of these different aspects of like when you go back to like when I go back to Puerto Rico, or when you go back to like, when I go back to Puerto Rico, or when you go back to your country, you know, you experience that, you experience the fresh coffee, you experience you know fresh mangoes, you experience all these things. So for me, it was like I that's when I started really feeling connected and saying, oh, okay, this is what my family's about, this is what that heritage and history is about.

Michael Martinez: 36:53

So in creating a whiskey brand, you know, I wanted to make sure that not only did it represent me, but it represented all other Latinos in the Caribbean, latin America, and I felt like agriculture and farming is a cornerstone of what we do, and whether it's back in your home country, where you know your family owns farms, or you come, you're coming over into America to work on farms, right, we? This is kind of like a cornerstone pillar of our identity and taking those fresh ingredients from the farm and putting it and cooking it with, you know, in our foods. So I wanted to make sure that that, that story and and that branding, is what represented our, our, our company of Fincasa again, finca and house and so. So that's kind of where Fincasa came from and a lot of the design elements on the bottle itself is that story of my family having farms in Puerto Rico. The back part of the label is a replica of the agricultural census that we were able to find and we were able to put all the information about the whiskeys on there and we're able to put you know all the information about the whiskeys on there and we're also able to kind of pay homage to my great-grandfather's farm and put his farm number that he had on the census, so that number's back on the back label. Then on the front side of the label we have like just like this picture of a drawn well, of a drawing of mountains and like a farmland and a house.

Michael Martinez: 38:41

Because for me, like I know most people, when they talk about Puerto Rico they think about the beaches and and like, like all the fun, but like there's this whole amazing culture in the mountains of Puerto Rico. That if, if you know, whenever you go, I always, I always emphasize to people that, talking about visiting Puerto Rico, I'm like, oh, you have to go to, you know, guavate to get Lechon, you have to go to Casa Vieja in the mountains, and and just look over the, the through the window and just see the Valley of the mountain range, like there's such a rich culture that exists in the mountains. And that's part of the story I wanted to tell and emphasize is like like hey, there's still people today in puerto rico farming and, you know, giving coffee, making coffee, coffee companies there. That still exists and um, I want to emphasize that on the bottle. And then we also have um elements of like cigars and tobacco. Uh, so on the front label we have a replica of like a cigar box label. That's on the front. And then on the top of the cork there's a cigar ring right.

Michael Martinez: 39:47

And my grandmother, when she was a little girl, she grew up on her father's cigar or, I guess, tobacco farm, so it would be my great grandfather's farm, and she used to sell the tobacco leaves into the warehouse when she was a little girl to dry. So the tobacco leaves would dry and then her father would would either roll cigars or sell the tobacco leaves to other farmers. And my, my great grandfather, he smokes a cigar every day of his life until he was 92 years old. And I remember, yeah, and I remember, you know, and and if you talk to puerto ricans like they, they can have, they have the same sentiment of this type of like. This story is that like.

Michael Martinez: 40:28

I remember being a little boy and walking into his house and then you just all you smell cigar smoke. You just smell it and um, and you know, when I went to Puerto Rico last October, um, I just went around with the bottle and just was talking to people and you could see in their faces like that they felt connected to the bottle. And when I talked to Latinos, it's like they feel they, they feel that sentiment and they're like, yeah, you know, I remember my family that had a farm in my country and and or, you know, oh yeah, I remember when my grand, my grandfather, he used to smoke cigars and I remember that smell and and it just, it's just like, it's just that nostalgia feeling of like old school. You know, there's, there's, we're just hanging out having a drink and that's why, like we, that's why it's fincasa and it's representing our culture and heritage and that's why we always emphasize culture, heritage and family right, it represents that for for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Raul Lopez: 41:34

And it's funny because my wife, my wife's also Puerto Rican and when she talks about she's from Juncos. When she talks about Puerto Rico, she doesn't talk about the beach, she talks about the mountains and the farming and the agriculture. She gets pissed off at how much it's changed. She's like they used to be all farm. They have all these buildings and all these stores. She misses it. I think agriculture has a big part in, especially in puerto rico. Um, and I've been to. We went to puerto rico, um, in november too. So my first time going there, we went to the mountains. We in the mountains, we went to the rainforest. It's such a beautiful place, man, so I'm glad you, you know you're putting that, putting that love in in in your business. So, um, but obviously starting a whiskey company isn't easy, um, starting any company isn't easy. What?

Raul Lopez: 42:22

were some of the challenges in starting a whiskey company yeah, um, I I think to to so there.

Michael Martinez: 42:29

So there's a few, I would say, chapters of challenges right um so.

Michael Martinez: 42:36

So one chapter of challenges that I experienced was just getting my foot into the door. Right it's. Where do you even start? Right, a lot of whiskey brands or whiskey companies are developed through prior people that have like prior members. Like it's, it's a thing that's yeah, it's a thing that's passed down. It's like, oh, okay, I learned how to distill from my great, my grandfather and and my father and and we used to do moonshine, and that's why I'm making a whiskey today. Right, it's, it's usually passed down. Or you just pay someone a lot of money to consult for you.

Michael Martinez: 43:17

They find a distillery, you have a whiskey right, which I had. Neither I did not have anyone to teach me how to make whiskey or I didn't have enough money to pay someone to be a consultant for me. And, um, no one's out here giving free chicken away. Right, it's everything. Everything has a cost, um, so I really had to figure out a lot of things by myself. Um, I had enrolled into a distilled spirits business certificate through the University of Louisville and a lot of that kind of taught me some of the business aspects of what I would have to deal with in terms of the legal side of whiskey, because it's a whole different world.

Raul Lopez: 44:10

It's not just like you can't, classes you could take to learn how to get into it. That's awesome.

Michael Martinez: 44:15

Absolutely. Classes you could take to learn how to get into that, that's awesome, absolutely. Yeah, there's a few classes and and there's a few um universities as well as companies that that you pay and they kind of teach you um. So so I I self-enrolled in some of those opportunities in those classes, uh, just to learn. And and you know, there's one thing about starting a business right, like any, you can start a business. There's certain rules.

Michael Martinez: 44:39

It's a whole nother world in whiskey, like because it's a controlled substance, like, not not controlled substance, but like because, like, you have to be, you know, 21 or older to buy it. You can't just sell it from your house. Like, there's all of these different nuances and laws. And then, oh, by the way, each state that you deal with has a different way of how they operate. Right, some states have control. You know where the state owns the liquor store, other states it's kind of a free market. So you're always kind of having to navigate yourself through all of these legal differences amongst the different states.

Michael Martinez: 45:16

So I self-enrolled, I got connected. I also got connected with a friend of mine that owns an importing company where he imported mezcal and soto from Mexico. So I kind of helped him doing some operational stuff and you know I'm very thankful for him allowing me to kind of like almost like a paid internship kind of thing and because it gave me the opportunity to really learn about those legal nuances, about, you know, how do you import, how do you warehouse, where do you warehouse, the type of how to submit for certain applications, how to process a purchase order through distributor, how to find a distributor right, there's all these like little tiny steps. Most people just walk into the liquor store and pick up a bottle. But you don't, you don't like, you don't really understand how much work or paperwork requires for you to just walk into that one store just to pick up the bottle.

Michael Martinez: 46:15

You had to apply for licenses. You had to. You know your each label has to go through through a review process where the government has to approve your label before you could sell it. You know, and that's not even speaking on the portions of um, getting my whiskey to miami, florida, where we do our barrel, finishing, getting the rum barrels and doing all that like that's a whole nother piece of coordination that I have to take responsibility of before it even gets to your hands or in the door. So that first challenge or chapter of challenges is really the legal and the nuances and the compliance part of starting a whiskey brand or whiskey company.

Michael Martinez: 47:04

The second chapter that I would like I want to highlight is Puerto Rico government, puerto Rican government. Is Puerto Rico government, puerto Rican government? Again, my ignorance kind of leaves me to these windy roads where I've taken the long road instead of the short road and kind of going back to that question where I had like, what am I doing for Puerto Rico? I was like, all right, well, my first idea and concept is to have a whiskey brand in Puerto Rico. I'm going to bottle in Puerto Rico. I'm going to send barrels down there. I'm going to send barrels down there. I'm going to do it all in Puerto Rico and I I I opened up. You know, I got a business license in Puerto Rico, I got my my business bank account in Puerto Rico and then I started the process and it was just it. It was it's not impossible, it's just the way that the Puerto Rican government works. It's very different than governments in the US, where you almost have to be there full time in Puerto Rico to actually make it happen, because you have to go in person to La Hacienda and talk to the tax representative. You have to go to your local pueblo's government to get this certificate of business. They have to do an inspection of the location of the business, which was my late grandmother's house, right, it's just like. I'm like like I'm just putting an address on onto the application. You're like okay, well, what, when can we visit the site? And do you have parking spaces? I'm like parking spaces, what do you mean? I need to have parking space, right? So it's all these like layers of of bureaucracy that I was just unfamiliar with and and it was time consuming. Um, I didn't have. You know, I don't have the luxury of just going to Puerto Rico and staying there for a few months to figure it out. Um, so I had to.

Michael Martinez: 49:04

I knew at that moment, like you know, after this is like my third or fourth time within a year going to Puerto Rico trying to just trying to get these like small steps moving forward, um, you know, I take one, I take one step forward, and then it felt like I was taking three steps back, um, and, and a lot of it is just, that's just how they do business there, right, it's a different. So my expectations were completely different and I had to really make that decision of like, well, at this moment I cannot, cannot open a barrel house or distillery in Puerto Rico. That's going to have to wait, but I need to make the moves now to make sure that I could still launch a whiskey brand. So then I had pivoted to finding a what we call a co-packer in the US, and a co-packer is someone that kind of handles everything for you. Where you send them the barrels, they'll do the aging. It's usually like you're partnering with a distillery, so they'll take care of everything. You put your label on it and then, once it leaves the distillery, you're responsible for making sure the sales happen, making sure it goes to a warehouse that has the proper licensing to house the alcohol. So you're responsible for that. So I was fortunate enough that a distillery in Miami, florida, big Cypress Distillery, which is also a Latino-owned distillery they make rum, they do some barrel blends for whiskey. They have an amazing gin he was very willing to help me make my goal of, like all right, having this.

Michael Martinez: 50:44

You know he heard my story. He's like, hey, you have a really unique product idea. Like I'm willing to help you out. Like let's figure out, like you know what we have to do, just tell me when you want to send barrels here and what rum barrels you want to take care of. And you know, you know, and the transaction is that I pay him for for housing, I pay him for bottling, so each bottle there's a cost for him to bottle, per bottle and any labor that he's taking care of. He's taking care of it and I'm paying him for it. And it really helped me out because now I didn't have to go out and find my own warehouse or get my own equipment or do all these other licensing things where it would have been more difficult for me because I didn't have that capital to do that. So I was very fortunate of Big Cypress Distillery for helping me out with that and that's where we bottle and we do our barrel aging for the rum barrel finish.

Raul Lopez: 51:47

Nice.

Raul Lopez: 51:47

Yeah, I think it was December and I met someone who gets their their their beer canned in a similar fashion where you know they came up with the recipe or they came with the thing and then they reached out to an actual brewery that brews it and cans it for them and you know, like that. So I was like that's pretty awesome and I think it gives an opportunity for the small guy to, you know, get their foot in the door before you know that bearish entry can be really difficult, especially with the amount of whiskeys and liquors that are out there. So, yeah, I'm glad that's something that you were able to find. It's unfortunate you had to find it the hard way, as usual.

Michael Martinez: 52:29

I like to take these long windy roads to just to get from one point to another.

Raul Lopez: 52:34

No, yeah, yeah. So is that a Puerto Rican thing? I don't know, I think it is no, but that's awesome, man. Well, you know what's it called? One of the other questions I had, too, because you were talking about it, was very interesting to me because it was kind of one of the reasons I started this podcast was I? I got into this book, um, shoe dogs and um, it's about the guy who started, uh nike, you know and um one of the big parts that really it's supposed to be.

Raul Lopez: 53:04

It's really influential. It's really good.

Raul Lopez: 53:05

Uh, underdog story about a company, um, but the early stages of it is a guy and um when he when he finally decides he's ready to do something and he decides to do a shoe, a shoe company. You know, it's his father, who was had connections with someone who had connections in Japan, who had connections with a shoe factory. That was able to get him that starting conversation. So you know, imagine, imagine tomorrow you want to start a shoe company and you already have someone who knows someone, that gets you in that door and I'm like that's not us, that's not me.

Raul Lopez: 53:40

My dad's a truck driver, we're undocumented immigrants. You know what I mean? Like I can't go to my dad and say I want to start this company and he's like, yeah, I got a connection in Europe to do that. So sometimes we have to do it at the Harvard, we have to be the trailblazers, and so presenting your story hopefully can help someone else. Know, take some time and research Puerto Rico before you start deciding to start a company out there or something like that. And so is there for coming up with your recipes and coming to think is it you having to do a lot of experimenting on which barrels to use whiskey or how it gets distilled?

Michael Martinez: 54:12

which barrel to use with whiskey or how it gets distilled. Yeah, so when thinking about this idea or concept, I understood there are certain limitations that I would never be able to overcome, one being distilling fresh what we call new make right, unaged whiskey, barreling it and waiting four or five years before I could actually use it in a product. Right, that's that, you know. One, I don't have the time and resources to do that. And and two, um, that's an investment of you spending a lot of money that you're not going to see a return on for another five or six years. And, by the way, you can't just do it that one year because you have to have continuous product. You have to do it every year after that and you have to always be able to, like you're forward, projecting your future potential business sales off of nothing. Right, there's nothing to say, okay, hey, well, this year I'm going to lay down 100 barrels. Next year I'm going to do 200, because I know my whiskey will be great and I'm going to sell that much volume, and the next year. There's a real risk with whiskey that once you hit that mark, it tastes like shit, and it's a realization where you have to be willing to take that risk. So so I think a lot of people in the whiskey industry there's there's certain risks that some people aren't willing to take, like myself I'm I'm just like not going to sit here and, and you know, pretend that like I'm going to be able to, on my first time around, make the world's greatest whiskey and do all this cool stuff. So, knowing that limitation, I wanted to take a specific route in how I was going to enter the market, and the route I wanted to take was buying what we call sourced whiskey. So there's a few companies out there that they produce hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of gallons of whiskey and they age it per year. And there's a whole business model behind doing this. And then, once it's around, once it's aged, you sell it to people like myself that want to buy it. So there's plenty of whiskey brands out there on the shelves that that like myself, where we do not own a distillery Um, I personally have zero plans to ever own a distillery Um I want to take high quality uh whiskey product and then put my own spin on it, which is doing the rum barrel finish. So I purchase, you know, the quality rye whiskey.

Michael Martinez: 56:57

So when we're talking about whiskey, there's a whole bunch of different categories that exist, right, there's single malt, there's bourbon, there's rye whiskey, and those categories are the type of grain or the predominant grain that is used to make that whiskey. So a lot of single malts you use malted barley, bourbon is predominantly corn and then rye whiskey is predominantly using the rye grain. So what rye does? It lends a, has more green and earthy notes, but it also has this unique spice. So if you ever have like rye bread, like there's this kind of like, there's like subtle hints of spice inside of that, that rye bread that you have, and it's the same with the rye whiskey. So the rye whiskey has this unique spice to it and but but you know, it just doesn't stop there. It's like all right, well, how do I take this, this rye whiskey, and put my own spin on it, while also paying homage to my culture in Puerto Rico and the heritage right, always going back to that cornerstone? We have a rich rum history in Puerto Rico.

Michael Martinez: 58:19

So the concept was okay, we're going to take rye whiskey and then we're going to take rum barrels. We're going to take the whiskey liquid, put them in old rum barrels and it's going to impart the sweetness from the rum, but not to a point where it's overpowering right? You're not mixing rum into whiskey, you're getting these subtle nuances of the rum infused into the rye whiskey and so that's where it's kind of like okay, this is what we're going to do, this is going to be our process. So we take that we buy high-quality rye whiskey, we send it down to Miami, florida, we work with different barrel brokers to give us the different rum barrels that are available on the market and we're being very selective on which barrels we're purchasing and then we're sending them down to Miami so the rye whiskey could finish. And there's a few things I want to highlight about this One we do this in Miami because the climate in Miami is the closest to the Caribbean that you can get to, where it's high heat, high humidity, that you can get to where it's high heat, high humidity, and that affects, that has an effect on the barrel and the whiskey that's aging in the rum barrels.

Michael Martinez: 59:39

And we wanted to make sure we had that effect of high heat, high humidity when we're doing our aging process, when we select our rum barrels. So we are considered a small batch whiskey, we only barrel. We only bottle four barrels at a time and with those four barrels I know earlier we had talked about origin rum barrels, so so origin rum barrels is kind of like a term that that we're, that our company, or my company has coined as being um us using rum barrels from one specific country. So each batch is going to highlight a rum from only one country. The first batch, we highlighted Barbados rum barrels. Later this year we're going to have a Puerto Rican rum barrel batch, another Barbados rum barrel batch and then a local Miami rum barrel batch, and the idea and concept is that each of our countries, from Puerto Rico to Barbados, jamaica, el Salvador, venezuela, like all of our countries that have these rum producers, they do it differently. We have a different climate, right. Jamaican rum is very funky. Puerto Rican rum is very sweet, right? So how can we represent those countries?

Michael Martinez: 1:01:03

Through our whiskey and our rum barrel finish process and by highlighting only one country's rum barrels per batch, our consumers are able to see and recognize the differences between the rums, because when you taste it in our Risky, you're going to see oh okay, hey, this one is a little more funky or this one's a little more.

Michael Martinez: 1:01:26

You know, I get a lot more banana notes from this rum distillery, right, and it's a very unique process to have and it's a really cool thing to do is like, once you start collecting these bottles, right, you have your Barbados batch, puerto Rican batch, and then hopefully we could collaborate with more countries You'll have all of these different batches and then you could kind of sip on it and say, oh, okay, I could tell this one is completely different than that one. Like it's just like wine, right, you're comparing the different, the different grapes, grape regions. We're comparing the different rum regions through our rye whiskey and we just kind of want to tell those like that's the story we want to tell with our. Like, when you're sipping our whiskey, it's like, okay, hey, what is the barbados? You know, rum barrel finish tastes like what does the puerto rican one taste like?

Raul Lopez: 1:02:19

um, so it's always highlighting our origin rum barrels, um, through that process nice and and um, if you're the puerto rican, one does not have a little do-rag on the top is it even.

Michael Martinez: 1:02:33

Yeah, we're gonna. I've been, I've been playing around with the idea of, like, what, what, what are we gonna do? Well, one of the one of one of the things we're definitely gonna do is, um, so, on the uh, um, the bottle itself and I have a bottle here, I probably can't see it that well um is, there's a stamp here. This stamp always changes per batch, so if it's a Barbados barrel, if it's a Puerto Rican barrel, it that's the Barbados one. That's my fate, right, right. So it gives you the opportunity to kind of see the a long, enduring. You know, this is a passion project. It's this long, enduring goal of, like, working with these different Caribbean and Latin American countries and highlighting their rum. Right, I explain to people that you know I'm not a whiskey maker, I'm more of a curator. I'm getting high quality rye whiskey and high quality rum and I'm doing this unique finishing process and presenting it to you as the consumer.

Raul Lopez: 1:04:04

That's awesome man, and for people who are listening on the podcast, you're going to have to go on to YouTube to see what he was talking about or check out our, our, our Instagram or Facebook, whatever.

Michael Martinez: 1:04:17

I'm not yet on TikTok because I think I've I'm past the age group that uses TikTok.

Raul Lopez: 1:04:24

Don't sell yourself short, bro. Don't sell yourself short. Well, I mean, that's awesome man, and so you know. One of the things I do like to ask you know, when we get to near the end of our interviews, is you know if you could go back and give yourself some piece of advice to the younger version of yourself? What's something you'd tell yourself?

Michael Martinez: 1:04:39

Yeah, I think the one piece of advice I would give myself is success looks different for each person. Um, you know, I, I think for the longest, you know, growing up, I I've had this concept of, of, of to be successful is to be rich. You know, especially in today's world where you kind of can't always believe what's on the internet, but there's a lot of things happening on the internet you fall into this weird hole of like man, I'm not even successful yet compared to these, like 19 year old kids that have Lamborghini, that have Lamborghinis, right, it's like what, like how are, like, it's just like you're, you're just perplexed, but like, but I think.

Michael Martinez: 1:05:40

I think really emphasizing that success comes in in different, you know, ways. It doesn't you don't have to have the nice car house, you know, be a multimillionaire to be successful in your own right. You, you can be a small craft, producer of, or a painter, or you know, whatever it is that that you found purpose in is is success in its own right, but that people, people search decades to find right and it's not a race. It's not a race to be successful because, again, like it, you know, it can take years for you to find that success. So that's that wisdom that I would impart on the younger version of myself is that success is different for every person and it's not a race.

Raul Lopez: 1:06:35

Yeah, and that's the highlight of my show. You know it's, everybody's success is different, and so I guess, to kind of finish up, like, how do you say success and failure? What does success mean to you?

Michael Martinez: 1:06:47

Yeah, so.

Michael Martinez: 1:06:47

So success for me is is having the opportunity to give back to the culture that really created me and molded me to who I am today and making sure that, you know, our future generations remember and understand and know that our culture and heritage is everything and know that our culture and heritage is everything and I'm hoping to do that with Fincasa is sharing those stories and making sure that our younger generations don't forget that. You know we used to live in El Campo and we used to. You know we used to cook with wood and you know there's beauty and nostalgia. You know there there's there's beauty and nostalgia. So so, really, you know, even today, you know, with the little that I'm doing and and have the opportunity to share with Fincasa, I feel like I've succeeded to to, even if I change one person's life, to say, hey, like you know, I've recognized my own culture because I found this bottle and and I heard your story and and it allowed me to to recognize my own story. Um, that that's, that's how I would, you know, say success in Spanglish.

Raul Lopez: 1:08:03

Nice man, awesome man. Well, uh, I really appreciate you uh coming on the show today, and so tell me uh, how can people learn more about you and Fincasa?

Michael Martinez: 1:08:12

Yeah, so feel free to reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook. Just look up Fincasa Whiskey. You can visit our website at wwwfincasawiskeycom. Check our Instagram if you're looking for purchasing bottles online. We ship to over 40 states. I'll be pushing out coupon codes here and there, so continue to follow us. If you're in Puerto Rico, we just landed a big distributor out there, so we're gonna be in a lot of the liquor stores out there. We have a pretty good presence in Washington DC area. Just continue to follow us, stay up to date and you'll find your Fincasa bottle soon. Nice.

Raul Lopez: 1:08:55

Awesome man. Well, I really appreciate it and I wish you all the best. To us, man and I'm hoping to get to see some of that creeping up in different stores around here. I don't go to liquor stores anymore, but you know I'll make sure to let people know to look out.

Michael Martinez: 1:09:07

So thank you, brother, I appreciate it and I'm glad after a few months we were able to do this?

Raul Lopez: 1:09:12

Yeah, I know Right. So yeah, let's not wait too long to do it again. So thanks.

Michael Martinez: 1:09:16

All right, brother, I appreciate it.

Raul Lopez: 1:09:17

Yeah, take care. All right and so well if everyone else. Thanks so much for tuning in. I really appreciate you, as always, and I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue to learn how to say success in Spanglish Essence Bangles.