Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Dia Simms of Lobos 1707 Tequila & Mezcal Is Helping To Change Our World
Make relationships across meaningful lines of difference early and often. This is really important. If everyone you know has very similar life experiences, it will depress your ability to have empathy and restrict your knowledge base. As I got older, I understood that I needed to be intentional about making relationships with people who have different lived experiences than me.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dia Simms.
Dia Simms is Executive Chairwoman of the Board at Lobos 1707 Tequila & Mezcal, an award-winning, independent spirits brand. Simms leads the brand alongside Founder and Chief Creative Officer Diego Osorio, with early backing from LeBron James.
She is also Co-Founder of Pronghorn, a template to effectively diversify any industry, starting with the spirits industry. With a $200 million fund, Pronghorn provides sustainable investment, incubation, and recruitment, aiming to generate more than $2 billion in economic value in ten years.
Previously, Simms spent nearly fifteen years working alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs at Combs Enterprises, starting as his executive assistant. In 2017, Simms was named President of Combs Enterprises, making her the first president in the company’s thirty-year history besides Sean Combs himself. As president, she oversaw multi-billion-dollar brands in the Combs empire.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My journey was not linear. After college, I worked for the U.S. Department of Defense negotiating defense contracts and did everything from launching a small business with friends to advertising and pharmaceutical sales.
The predominance of my career prior to being Co-Founder of Pronghorn and Executive Chairwoman of Lobos 1707 Tequila and Mezcal was at Combs Enterprises working alongside Sean “Diddy Combs. I started as his executive assistant and eventually became the first president of Combs Enterprises in the company’s history other than Sean himself. Each experience was invaluable. Over the past couple of decades, I have had the opportunity to build many businesses from scratch and developed an understanding that almost all problems can be solved with the right balance of vision, methodology and measurement.
Today, as chair of Lobos 1707 Tequila and Mezcal as well as Co–Founder of Pronghorn, I love being a part of growing the spirits industry.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
Along with the other two Pronghorn Co-Founders, Dan Sanborn and Erin Harris, we were thinking of a name to call this project that was framing up to be a template on how to effectively diversify any industry. We collectively decided to start with the spirits industry and were brainstorming the right name that would encapsulate the mission.
What could represent covering a lot of ground and moving speedily?
A pronghorn is the second fastest land mammal in the world, second only to the cheetah. A cheetah will beat a pronghorn in a sprint but in a marathon, a pronghorn will win every time.
The day we decided to name this initiative Pronghorn, most people had never heard of this animal, and some thought perhaps it wasn’t the right name. On the evening that we all agreed on this name, Pronghorn was a question on Jeopardy; Dan called and told us! We felt this was quite serendipitous and a bit of a God wink to say that we were going in the right direction.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Hmmm….one funny story that wasn’t funny at the time was me and a few of my colleagues were watching our boss’ dog. The dog went missing! I felt so horrible, and we all put on our best Sherlock Holmes hats and looked for this dog in every crevice of the building and neighborhood. After a three-hour search, we found him sleeping in a storage closet. All is well that ends well but I was racked with worry and terrified that we had actually lost the dog.
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
Pronghorn was designed as a template for how to effectively diversify any industry. We are starting with the spirits industry and the Black community, but this blueprint is transferable, meaning that we are creating the roadmap for diversification of all industries and an assurance that when this model is applied, industries will reflect the consumers that they serve.
Pronghorn’s approach is to address the total ecosystem of an industry. It is heart led but math based. Our view is that the best commercial for diversity is commercial success and this mission was built as a for profit, commercially forward entity.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
Pronghorn has invested in 23 black owned brands to date and impacted over 44 entrepreneurs and founders. Pronghorn is set up to help the entire industry have better returns, retention and innovation. It is not a charity, but set up to invest in people, brands and the industry at large for meaningful returns across the board.
Our view is that requited relationships at every level are the ones that underpin true value creation.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
- Entrepreneurship is the most underutilized civil rights tool. Let’s focus on driving business ownership on main street, not just wall street.
- Shift from charity to an investment mindset in some of your dollars. A Citibank study showed that the USA lost 16.4 trillion dollars due to discrimination. Discrimination is expensive. Everyone loses when we don’t consider the opportunities to jointly grow our communities to the benefit of the country at large.
- Right size the difference between the ease of getting a student loan and the difficulty in getting a business loan.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach. A true leader understands that and respects the contributions of their team with an appetite both to learn and to teach.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started,” and why?
- Entrepreneurship is an early career option. I started a company along with friends in my mid-twenties but after a couple of years, it never occurred to me at the time to get investment and just work on building that company instead of just doing it on the side of a “real job”.
- Invest early and consistently. I didn’t have meaningful exposure to how capital markets work until I was in my mid to late twenties, if you start investing at 21, $500.00 monthly with an average annual investment return of 8%, by 65 you will have approximately 2.25 Million.
- Your health is your true wealth. The saying ‘youth is wasted on the young’ rings true; doubling down on your health when you are at peak physical fitness sets up the right foundation for a long, healthy life.
- The unlock to wealth will not be found working hard at a job for fifty years. Growing up, the message from media and education was definitely get a great job, work really hard and you can be successful. I didn’t really understand that wasn’t accurate until I worked with a successful entrepreneur in Washington DC.
- Make relationships across meaningful lines of difference early and often. This is really important. If everyone you know has very similar life experiences, it will depress your ability to have empathy and restrict your knowledge base. As I got older, I understood that I needed to be intentional about making relationships with people who have different lived experiences than me.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Pronghorn is it! This effort is bigger than just the spirits industry or just the Black community. We are building a case study that is off to a successful year one start and we expect to stand up a case study for other industries to follow. Our intent is to serve as a beacon for American industries.
10.Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? (Dia request new life lesson quote)
“There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky, and you ask, “What if I fall?” Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?
I love this quote as it reinforces the importance of taking risks and in searching for the greatest soul enrichment…..we have to be willing to step out on faith.
Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them.
MacKenzie Scott
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Pronghorn.co, LinkedIn, Instagram (@diasimms @Lobos1707)
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Dia Simms of Lobos 1707 Tequila & MezcalIs Helping To Change Our… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.