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The Playbook With David Meltzer

Building a Brand People Want to Belong To

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Careers, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.91.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with Dan and Andrew Olson, the entrepreneurial minds behind Hook Hand Rum. We talk about why great taste alone is never enough, and how community, storytelling, and experience drive modern brands forward. Dan and Andrew explain their direct-to-consumer approach, the Original Crew membership model, and why building loyalty before scale changes everything. We also get into premium spirits, smart distribution, data driven marketing, and how adventure plays a role in creating lifelong brand advocates. This conversation breaks down what it really takes to build something people want to belong to, not just buy.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Entrepreneurs the Playbook. I'm David Meltzer and super excited to have the dynamic dual of

0:06.0

rum. That's Dan and Andrew Olson. They are the co-founders of hook and hand rum with a unique

0:12.4

business model for today's community of rum appreciators. Welcome to the playbook, the Olson twins.

0:21.1

What's up, boys?

0:22.0

Ah, how's it going?

0:23.2

Good.

0:24.0

Phenomenal would be an understatement.

0:25.7

I'm a huge rum fan and have been for years.

0:28.6

And I have personally tasted your rum, which was exquisite to say the least.

0:36.1

But it wasn't really the taste of the rum because I've tasted

0:39.5

really good beverages of all types. And if they don't have the right business model, if they don't

0:46.7

have the right marketing, if they don't have the right distribution, I don't care how great something

0:52.7

tastes. It's like a good idea.

0:54.4

There's a million of them.

0:56.4

If we can't get it to market and we can't build a community and brand around it,

1:00.2

it is never going to succeed.

1:03.2

The exact opposite, I believe that even if your room was not tasty as it is,

1:08.0

that it still would be successful because of the business model and the community that

1:12.0

you're building. I'm a big fan of how that works. Let everybody know what your business model is

1:18.5

with hook and hand rum. I'll take that one. So what we are is we're kind of creating an experience

1:25.1

brand. And so it really is, we are a rum manufacturer,

1:30.1

but we want to be able to kind of bridge that gap and be able to have a real true connection

...

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