Lessons Learned: Taylor Steele

“I’m just in L.A. getting fingerprinted,” Taylor Steele told me during our pre-interview small talk. 

“Why?” I asked. 

“We’re opening distribution in Colorado,” he said. “ Every time you open up a new state for alcohol, you need to do a background check and get fingerprinted.”

I’d heard about Taylor’s new tequila company, Solento, but didn’t understand why he’d be getting fingerprinted. It didn’t seem like a task for an ambassador / investor. Did Mick Fanning get fingerprinted for Balter? Did Taylor Knox get fingerprinted for St. Archer? 

“So how is it that job falls on you?” I asked. 

“Oh,” he said. “because I’m the founder.”

Yes, the man who brought us the modern surf film, the Momentum Generation and feel-good beer commercials is now the founder of a tequila brand. He’s not an ambassador. He’s not the face of the brand. And, although he admits there are some very recognizable people invested in Solento, he doesn’t share their names. 

“We don’t have ambassadors,” he said. “We want people to fall in love with the product, and what we stand for.”

Of course, it’s a winding road to arrive at Taylor Steele 2020, one that began in Encinitas a few decades back. Kelly Slater was there, at the dinner table, singing. Maybe that’s a good place to start. —Taylor Paul

SINGING
TAYLOR STEELE: I was still living at home while making Momentum through Focus, so everybody would come to town during the summer and stay at my house — Benji, Ross and their friends — a lot of people I still hang out with now.  My parents were just getting bombarded with new people at the dinner table all the time, and my mom’s pretty outgoing and so one night we had a new guest she said, sorta joking, “Hey, whenever you’re new to the dinner table, you have to sing a song.”

And so he’s like “Really?” And we all just went along with it. I think he sang happy birthday or something, super awkwardly, to a silent dinner table. And we laughed so hard, like crying. So then it became a thing, and everyone who had to sing a song before would enforce the rule. Most people did happy birthday or some basic nursery rhyme, but some people would sing, like, Baby Got Back. I think Kelly did some Jimmy Buffet or something, but I can’t remember. It really made my parents close with everybody that came in because they’d all have a good laugh, and it wasn’t just awkward silence at the breakfast table the next morning.

FILMS
When I made Momentum I looked for distributors and they were charging over 50 percent to sell my movies. I was over that. So I basically built my own distribution company [Poor Specimen] and we did the backend of the business as well. 

Momentum came out in ‘92 on VHS. I was 19. I finished the movie and loaded my truck with as many VHS’s as I could and drove up to Santa Cruz. I’d find the surf shops in the Yellow Pages and call them from a pay phone and get their addresses, then drive to the shops and sell the movies myself. They would buy one to six movies and then would just reorder by phone and we’d ship them out. As that grew, I built a team of like three people to do phone calls and visit the shops. This is to roughly 600 surf shops across America. 

I finished the movie and loaded my truck with as many VHS’s as I could and drove up to Santa Cruz.

We would premiere the movies around Thanksgiving and sell all of the units by January 10, and the whole lifespan of the movie would pretty much be done. 

Adding skits to the movies was a reaction to how cool everybody was getting, sort of on their high horses, and a way to keep us in check, like, surfing’s still fun. Let’s make fun of ourselves a bit. Then on a personal side, I wanted to improve my filmmaking skills, ‘cause I knew that I wanted to do more than surf movies in the future.

Momentum was the one that started my career and gave me that opportunity to do what I do now, even. So that one’s special, but I felt like I was just lucky to be in the room and capture the performance, but didn’t really add much to it. Whereas down the line with films like Sipping Jetstreams or even Loose Change, where I had to incorporate some filmmaking skills, those are ones I’m proud of.

In those early years I basically learned production, distribution and marketing, which translates to a lot of other things. When the DVD world turned into BitTorrents and YouTube videos, I transitioned into making commercials for big brands like Corona, Pacifico, Apple, HP, Samsung…

TRAVELING
When my ex-partner and I were about to have our first child, my travel schedule was nine months on the road, sort of a vagabond lifestyle, similar to a lot of pro surfers. We looked around and thought, this isn’t fair for the child. So we decided to break down the different stages of our life, find those natural transitions, and pick the best places for the whole family to live that met all of our needs.

We chose Bali for the first six years. I knew I was still going to be traveling, it’s cheap, the food is healthy, there’s help with the kids. But the final selling point was how the Balinese treat children. They feel like the younger the child, the closer they are to God. It’s so comforting to have that sort of energy with your kids. But then as kids get older and they live an almost wealthy lifestyle, they become aware that they’re sort of in charge of their nannies. Like if the child says, “go get me this,” they’d go get it. And that’s not what you want. You want them to be respectful of their elders. 

For the next stage of life we went to a place where they could run around and ride their bikes to school and just sort of have a free lifestyle. So we chose Byron Bay for first grade through sixth grade. It’s really safe and friendly, there are hills and beaches and empty zones. And in that part of your life you tend to have one group of friends, before you create new ones in your teenage years.

Then for seventh grade through high school, we wanted them to know what the real world’s like, and for them to have a challenge and experience some creative stimuli, so we decided to go to New York, spending most of our time in Brooklyn and Montauk.

Now my oldest daughter wants to surf, so we’re based in California now. 

The benefit of living in different places every six years is that it’s long enough to make lifelong friends. The downside is you don’t get to see those people as much as you want. I haven’t been to Bali in a long time, and I miss those guys.

It makes the kids really adaptable. You know, there are different strengths for each. One is really social and has a huge group of friends that follow her around, and the other is more like me, a bit more shy and reserved. She’s able just to adapt to situations and entertain herself without having a lot of outward stimuli, she can just sort of adjust to situations. The COVID situation we’re all under now is like a sort of equivalent of moving to a new place. It’s a complete change of lifestyle. 

TEQUILA
When I started going down the road of tequila, I went to Mexico and spent a month visiting 30 different distilleries learning the process, and really getting a fast education by visiting each one and having them sell their strengths. It was a crash course in tequila.

When I started going down the road of tequila, I went to Mexico and spent a month visiting 30 different distilleries and learning the process.

The biggest surprise for me was learning that tequila is more like a wine than any other spirit because the harvest itself takes on how the weather was over the lifespan of the agave. So the flavor notes are slightly different each year.

There’s a lot of negatives surrounding alcohol — there’s drunk driving, violence, ego, bravado and all that. Whereas I love the idea of communities and building memories, so for me it was asking, how can we take something I love — sipping tequila and my experiences with it — and make that a positive? I use Patagonia as a role model for things like packaging and the process, but then I thought about what I needed and brought some of those ethos into it all. 

Our tequila is organic. Our packaging is recycled bottles and plant based inks, and just the whole process is centered around sustainability. The fields where the agave grows are organic. No pesticides. And the farmers are taken care of. It’s a small, three-generation tequila family that does it. And then we have a dollar give-back program to support and promote organic farming for the communities and farmers in the area Solento is made.

I identify more as an artist than an entrepreneur. But I’m trying to bring some of the art into business.  

We always imagined Solento being something that you experienced with your friends to create a future memory, more intimate than a big party. Like, you and your close friends are going to catch up and share a story. So yeah, I wanted to go deeper than the surface where it’s all about Instagram photos. It’s more about having a real moment with yourself or your loved ones

Twenty years ago I did things to be included, or liked, or to be a part of something. There are insecurities about who you are and how you fit into a space. Now, intention is important to me. Why am I doing things? What is the real goal behind it? Really understanding that and making sure it’s positive.