We recently connected with Devon Trevathan and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Devon, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

Happiness in this position is an interesting idea to consider.

I want to say up top that, broadly, yes, I am extremely happy to be doing what I do. I own a nomadic distilling company, and practically that means I get to travel the world, rent out space in some incredible distillery, and make a spirit there using ingredients from the region. It is literally a dream come true! I recognize that, and there are certainly times that I stop myself to think, “Wow, I can’t believe that this is the life I get to lead.”

That being said, being a business owner is tough. Real tough.

A couple of weeks ago, I got sick and was relegated to the couch for two days straight. I couldn’t keep down anything more than Gatorade, so all I did for those two days was binge Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning. I found myself watching this fictionalized representation of doctors during their internship and feeling somewhat jealous: these people were living such a structured lifestyle. I envied that, even when they were on a shift for 48 hours straight, barely having slept and nearly delirious with exhaustion. They spent their whole lives in one place, a hospital; they didn’t have to wonder where they were going to get lunch that day; they didn’t even have to think about what they were going to wear in the morning!

The reality of business ownership is that it’s a messy, complicated journey, and few people get a roadmap. You are out there on your own, fighting for your business every day, finding some new, uncharted path forward. It’s exhausting! Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. Your nerves are frayed, you’re constantly depleted, and sometimes all you want is the rigid structure of a traditional job, but that’s not why you became an entrepreneur.

As my sickness passed, and I watched a few more episodes, I quickly realized what I already knew: No matter how tempting other professional experiences may seem on the outside, there is nothing I would rather do than duke it out for my business on the daily. I enjoy this journey, even though I don’t know where I’m headed, and while happiness is a hard thing to hold onto, there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t realize how fortunate I am to have my business.

Devon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Devon Trevathan, I am the cofounder, co-owner, and operator of Liba Spirits, one of the world’s only nomadic distilling companies. I started working in the distilling industry nearly a decade ago when I was 21 years old; before that, I’d worked in hospitality as a server and bartender, and I’d also lived abroad in two different countries. I believe very much in the power of hospitality, that getting together with friends for a drink or some food is so much more than what we consume, and I also am a complete nerd about the science and preservative powers of distillation.

My business partner Colton Weinstein and I make spirits by traveling to destinations around the world, renting a distillery, and using regional ingredients while we distill. We are distillers with the freedom to wander, earned over many years studying our craft. We have traveled to a 350-year old farm distillery in the Austrian Alps to make 1643 Alpine gin, we have lived in the heart of New Orleans and distilled a completely unique botanical rum called Lafcadio, and we have stretched across continents to make a Nashville aperitivo we call Terrativo, inspired by the Italian rite but crafted from Tennessee tradition. No one else in the market does quite what we do. It’s pretty hard for distillers to bend genres and push the bounds of categorization in this business because every operation tends to be a large investment, and I am so proud that we found a way to do so while still remaining sustainable. And I can’t wait to see where we go next!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

People always comment on our passion when they meet either me or my business partner. We work in the distilled spirits business, so I’m sure you know there are plenty of folks who have sold spirits even when they didn’t know a damn thing about how they’re made. As much as we all like to glorify and market the spirits category, at the end of the day these are products that result from a complex scientific process. We know more today about the distillation of spirits than we ever have, but it’s also impossible to divorce this industry from the history of human civilization and the rituals of food and beverage. The people at Liba Spirits are true nerds for what they do, they are obsessives about distillation and they go out of their way to complicate a process that could have been much easier so that they can stand proudly behind the spirits they make. I hope, when people talk about us, it’s something along those lines, but at the very least I am happy to be told regularly that my passion is evident to anyone who speaks to me. I think that reputation precedes us and has opened many doors for us, connecting us with similarly impassioned individuals, and that’s what this business is all about.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The year before my business partner and I officially sold everything we owned to go and distill our first spirit in the Austrian Alps, kicking off what we were sure would be a world tour of distillation, I came back from a work trip to LA with a terrible cold. I thought that I would get better here in Nashville, but the cold I had spiraled, turning into a truly wicked sinus infection and deafening tinnitus. I had that infection, and the tinnitus it caused, for eight months straight, during which time I saw every doctor I could, but I was just a poor writer and part-time server, I didn’t have great health insurance. That didn’t stop me, and eventually, after nearly 11 months straight of advocating for myself when medical professionals told me that I was experiencing premature hearing loss and there was nothing they could do for my tinnitus, I was able to get an x-ray which showed that I had a bone spur growing off a deviated septum, completely blocking one side of my sinuses and making recovery impossible. I went into surgery to remove the bone spur, but recovery was a long process, and I’m still not back to the way I was before, and I never will be.

All that happened as I was building up a company from nothing with one business partner when both of us were also working other jobs. When we finally were abroad, finishing the first distillation of our gin, and the daily anxiety of my medical experience was at an all-time low, the world threw me the ultimate curveball: medical and bodily anxiety you say? How about I add a global pandemic to the mix? We had to rush back to the US, take refuge in upstate New York with family, and I spent the next six months like everyone else: sick with worry, wondering if I would be okay and if the business I had sacrificed everything for would survive.

Two and a half years later, I’m still here, and so is my business. I still have sinus issues, and running the business is still hard in a completely different post-pandemic world; we are all wearing our scars. But we’re here, and we’ll keep on going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://libaspirits.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devlovesbev/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devon-trevathan-27b59890/