Kevin Hart live on TBPN

Kevin Hart and his business partner James entered the tequila category knowing it was oversaturated with celebrity brands. Their solution was not to find a better liquid or a clever marketing angle first. It was to find the right partner. They went directly to Juan Domingo Beckmann Jr. of the Beckmann family, whose company Proximo has generations of distribution infrastructure. Hart’s pitch was not about his fame. It was about his willingness to do the work—showing up at every restaurant, liquor store, and chain to shake hands and explain why his tequila existed. The bet was that pairing the agility of an independent entrepreneurial company with the muscularity of a large corporate distributor would let them move fast while scaling hard. It worked. Gran Coramino is now the fastest-growing celebrity tequila brand globally, with $200 million in retail sales and 100% year-over-year growth.

The rule: no name-slapping