Jeffrey Groover Cigar Broker/Philantropist/Superhero Episode 5

Episode Summary

Episode 5 of A Cigar Hustler's Podcast features Jeffrey Groover, an independent cigar broker covering Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, and a longtime friend of the shop. Groover opens by explaining the difference between an in-house cigar rep (who represents a single manufacturer) and a broker (who works for himself and juggles multiple brands and multiple "bosses"). He walks through his unlikely path into cigars: a decade in health and life insurance in Sunrise, Florida — managing 125 employees and four downlines — before fellow broker Scott Weeks talked him into taking a call about an open Florida territory with San Lotano/AJ Fernandez. Four days after that first phone call he was on a plane to the Las Vegas trade show for a "working interview," selling AJ Fernandez lines back when the brand was still largely unknown outside of Diesel and Man O' War catalog buyers.

Groover then tells the story of getting let go for refusing a management promotion, and how in roughly five hours on a Friday night he went from one line, to zero, to three — effectively swapping portfolios with the rep who replaced him. He details his current book of business (Espinosa, Kristoff, Leaf by Oscar, HR/La Aurora's Guillermo León-era products he reps, Tommy Bahama accessories), the pros and cons of brokering (freedom versus being first on the chopping block when a line goes in-house), and how he decides which brands to take on — relationships, timing, who's actually making the cigar, and how much room is left in the bag. He candidly admits passing on Leaf by Oscar when his friend John Demharder first pitched it, then picking it up years later and opening nine accounts with nothing but a price sheet and a photo. Eric Espinosa, Scott Weeks and Demharder are named as his mentors, with Espinosa's advice being the through-line: lose a line, keep showing up, and two more companies will call.

The back half of the episode moves off cigars entirely. Groover talks about balancing a road-warrior sales job with being the dad who shows up to every field trip, the neighborhood food drive he and his wife have run for over a decade in Boynton Beach, volunteering with The Soup Kitchen and Lot 365 to feed the homeless of Palm Beach County on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, and why he insists his son serve trays and then sit and eat with the people they're feeding. He also recounts cashing in his 15th-anniversary trip to Marco Island to fund a Hurricane Harvey relief run to Houston — a project that snowballed through a Palm Beach Post story into roughly $15,000 in donations, a Penske box truck routed to New Orleans, and days of hauling supplies in and animals out before Hurricane Irma sent him home.

The episode closes with the show's three standard questions: Groover would smoke with Winston Churchill, his best advice is "you have one mouth and two ears for a reason," and his favorite cigar is the Costa Rican De Cruzer 512 series from Santana Diaz — a value-priced, medium-bodied smoke in the smaller ring gauges he prefers.

In This Episode

1. 01
   In-house rep vs. independent broker
   Groover explains how brokers work for themselves representing several manufacturers, versus in-house reps tied to one company.
2. 02
   From insurance agent to cigar sales
   Ten years in health and life insurance and a nudge from broker Scott Weeks led to a Florida territory opening with San Lotano/AJ Fernandez.
3. 03
   The four-day 'working interview' in Las Vegas
   Calling in sick on a Friday and flying to the trade show to sell AJ Fernandez before anyone outside the catalog world knew the name.
4. 04
   Fired for success, rebuilt in five hours
   Turning down a management promotion cost him his job — and that same night he picked up three new lines from the rep who replaced him.
5. 05
   How a broker chooses which brands to carry
   Relationships, timing, who's actually making the cigar, and the hard math of a full portfolio — including the Leaf by Oscar line he initially turned down.
6. 06
   Mentors and staying power in a high-turnover job
   Eric Espinosa, Scott Weeks and John Demharder shaped his approach: manage personalities, keep showing up, and you're only as good as your last sale.
7. 07
   Family, field trips and feeding the homeless
   A neighborhood food drive, The Soup Kitchen in Boynton Beach, and Lot 365's Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve meals for Palm Beach County's homeless.
8. 08
   Hurricane Harvey relief run and a Penske box truck
   Trading an anniversary vacation for a $15,000 donation-funded supply run to Houston, plus rescuing displaced dogs and cats.
9. 09
   Three questions: Churchill, two ears, and the De Cruzer 512
   Groover's dream smoking partner, his favorite piece of advice, and why Santana Diaz's Costa Rican De Cruzer 512 series suits his palate.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

Linked items are in our shop. Mentions without a link aren’t currently stocked or couldn’t be matched with confidence.

Transcript

Every day I'm hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling. Every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling. Welcome to a Cigar Hustlers Podcast, where we take a closer look at the people of the cigar industry, with your host, Mike and Mike. Hustle and hustle, hustle and hustle and hustle.

Every day I'm, every day I'm, every day I'm. Oh, love. Hi, I'm Mike. And I'm Mike also.

And this is a Cigar Hustlers podcast. We are here today with a very special dear friend of mine. a. Jerry Gruber.

How are you, sir? Wow, better before the introduction. How are you? Doing pretty good, doing pretty good.

Jeff is a broker for the southeast region of the United States. He's been a pretty good friend of ours for, I don't know now. It's been a business seven years. You've been, okay, so, yeah, I guess.

As long as the shop's been open. Yeah, just about, just about. So, if you could start, why don't you tell the three listeners exactly what a broker is? Hi to all three of you out there listening, appreciate you being with us today.

So a broker, I'll give you an example, there are two types of cigar reps in this business, in-house, which means you work typically just one organization, which I was a part of in the beginning of my cigar career for the first couple years, and then became a broker thereafter, where basically I work for myself, represent several different brands, that just means I have several different bosses that I have to try and keep happy. That's nice. Yeah, it's a good business, really good business, great people out there. Okay, so before you got into the cigar industry, what did you do?

I was actually an insurance agent. Started, again, as an insurance broker, went to work for a group of people above me that I made a wealth of money for, but with that, you know... Seems to be a trend. Yeah, hey.

You have to work for me soon. No problem. Make me money. What type of insurance did you do?

I did a lot of health and life. We did Aetna, United, Humana. We didn't do any Blue Cross. We did Fidelity, life insurance, a lot of different policies.

So oddly enough, what I do now with cigars in regards to insurance, similar and different, meaning you worked for yourself. You worked as hard as you absolutely wanted to being on the phone. Ultimately, I managed to group people and trained them to be on the phone. But you basically work in your office every day as hard as you absolutely want to work, and you learn to juggle multiple products.

And that is very similar to what I do today. So, you start off as an insurance guy. How in the hell do you find yourself into the cigar industry? So, good family, friend, friend of a friend, my wife's very good childhood friend she grew up with, met another broker from another territory, we didn't know at the time, by the name of Scotty, Scotty Weeks, if you're one of the three people out there listening, what's going on, buddy.

But his family, very well cemented in the cigar and accessories industry in the Southeast, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, all those states, West Virginia. Actually, I think his grandfather, Buddy Weeks, had the original Zippo contract in the United States for the Southeast back in the '40s. So they've been in business a long time, and Scott inherited their route in lines, and, you know, I met him because of my wife, and what ultimately became my buddy Scott's wife, my wife's very good friend, Miss Kelly, if you're one of the other three listeners out there. Hello, Miss Kelly.

Well, you know, it's two of the three, it seems, that they're listening. " He said, look, man, you're great at what you do, you know, he learned a little bit about my business, but he knew that I was not getting paid my worth, and I was really making a lot of people a lot of money above me, and he's like, you know, he knew I was a slave to four walls, you know, I was very good at what I did, so that's why I was sought after in the insurance business. But with that, Scotty, I get a phone call one day, it's a Tuesday, I'll never forget, I'm at the office, and Scott calls me up, he goes, hey, man, I know I'm putting the cart before the horse, and we've talked about this many a time, but I got wind that there's a spot becoming available for a Florida broker for a company by the name of San Latino, aka AJ Fernandez, and that was on a Tuesday. " So I did.

I took the call on a Tuesday and the owner, the distribution owner at the time, said, hey, can you do me a favor? You know, we talked on the phone for a few minutes. He said, can you break away for a lunch interview Thursday? Two more days.

Can you come and meet me? And his office was in Sunrise, very much where my office was in Sunrise in Florida. I said, sure. So I broke away for an hour and we sat down.

We had a cigar and we talked for a little bit. " I said, "Hang on. I just talked to you Tuesday. Today is Thursday.

" He said, "Yeah. I have a wife. " And I really had to kind of think through that one. So, I grabbed my, put my big boy pants on, had a conversation with my wife.

I said, "You know what? " And I called in sick that Friday and took a few days off. I had plenty of time built up because I never take off work. J.

Fernandez, who's become a huge organization at the time I started with them. Unfortunately, no one really knew, unless you were like an internet blogger, or a CI guy, or one of these, you know, they had Diesel, they had Man O' War, all these lines that are not in retail shops, no one really knew the name. And fortunately, I was able to make some very big sales very quickly, and people took to me, I came home. " I didn't know where I was going or what I was supposed to do, and uh...

So you started off as their in-house guy? I started out as their in-house guy. Okay, and eventually you decided to break away? Well, it wasn't truly my decision.

I guess, well... Mutual? Yeah. So, the way it panned out, you know, they give you a performance contract, so to speak.

I was, year one, I was in year two numbers. Year one and a half, I was in my year three numbers, and my paycheck kind of started to ramp up pretty good. And it freaked them out a little bit. They knew my history, being a manager of an insurance agency.

I had 125 employees, four down lines, I hired, fired, trained, and just showed growing up. They told men and women how to show up to work and bust their ass to make themselves money, which ultimately make the, you know, company that I work for money. So they wanted me to go and do the same thing for the rest of the San Latino team. They wanted me to fly to Texas and train that guy and go to California and train that guy and go to New England and train that guy and ride with him.

And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to manage people anymore. I'd done that for 10 years. I just really wanted to worry about myself.

And that's when they gave me an ultimatum. They said, "Hey, we're going to force you to make a decision because we're replacing you as the in-house rep. So you're either going to go up in management, and again, they offered me a pretty contract, or we're firing you. I was like, oh great, so now I'm doing so well that you're forced to get rid of me.

Right, making too much money. It wasn't even that it was that crazy amount of money, I didn't think, but they gave me a month to really think about it. The owner of the company flew back to Nicaragua, well not AJ, AJ's partner at the time, to be clear to the three listeners out there, in case AJ's the third guy. We get it, there's three listeners.

We get it. For fuck's sake, stop fucking nailing it, we have three listeners. And they're all friends of his, of course. All right, Jesus.

Well, I hear what you guys are saying, so the three of us count, maybe they're six, you know? Maybe this is a three. There's more listeners than that, but we just wanted to lie to you, okay? We wanted you to feel totally comfortable that there's nobody listening, nobody paying attention.

Just having fun with it. So, ultimately, they gave me an ultimatum, a decision, and when they came back from Nicaragua, you know, it was a conversation. Hey, are you, you know, in or are you out? " And that was on a Friday.

There was a multi-vendor event due that day at six o'clock at night. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. " I'm officially unemployed. I'm officially unemployed.

" That's an hour and 45 minutes ago, time travel, you know, and I've only talked to my wife, so this is kind of strange. How do you know my wife? " He was the guy that was actually replacing me. So, now, he, He was an independent, oddly enough, he worked for three organizations at the time as an independent.

So that night, all three of those companies, my phone, thank goodness, rang off the hook, and I ended up with those same three lines. So it looked like, all by chance, we more or less did a swap. Like a trade. Yeah, and it wasn't planned that way, so I went from one line to zero lines to three lines in the course of about five hours.

That Monday morning, my phone kept ringing, and I built a portfolio for myself. That's pretty crazy. It's been a fun ride, for sure. So who are you currently carrying now?

, this is your buddy, Jerry Grouper, the one that would only get that reference earlier. Besides that, I have my great buddy, Mr. Eric Espinosa. I have Kristoff, Mr.

Glenn Case. I have the guys at Leaf and Oscar. I do Tommy Baham accessories. That's about it.

I got a couple more. Sorry, we had somebody trying to walk in. We've all lost our train of thought. Yeah, yeah, that's okay.

As we watch him tiptoe through the office. So, I know that being a broker is very difficult in this industry. Not easy. Yeah, there are obviously a lot of pros and cons.

Obviously, you have your own freedom, which is awesome. However, the counterpart to that is, even if you fail, let's say that the product doesn't do well and the marketing isn't behind it, you don't have the support group from the company itself, unfortunately your head's on the chopping block, is that correct? Sure, I'm the guy on the front line. Now, the other side of that coin is, let's say the product does really, really well, at that point they could also force, get rid of you and force somebody in house, that's true too, no?

Absolutely. So, go ahead, you got it. My good buddies, like, again, Scott, who was a broker before me, Erik Espinosa, a broker in the same territory that I'm in now, before me, you know, I have to look up to the guys who've been there and done that, so to speak, before I ever did. " Right.

And that's ultimately, you know, thank God, knock on wood, somewhere around here. That's the way it's worked. Right. So, how do you decide, let's say, you know, Sleptic Incorporated approaches you with, you know, some cigars, how do you decide to carry them or not to carry them?

" Well, let's just be clear. Slapdick, they have amazing cigars. I don't I don't work with them. Super limited.

I mean, look, there's a lot that goes into picking up a brand. Sometimes it's relationships. Right. Sometimes it's knowing the back end of where the other working pieces came from and/or who's actually making the cigar.

You know, the hype behind it, so to speak, you know, what's available at the right time and what you have, you know, in your portfolio. You know, sometimes the book of business is so tight you can't, you know, take the next upcoming latest and greatest. You know, I've turned a few down along the way where I'm, you know, you second guess and say, damn, I should have picked that line up, you know, or you pick one up and you're like, you just, you do the best for each of your manufacturers. You know, it's like saying, which is your favorite kid, right?

Hey, you have a couple of kids, right? Yeah. Which one's your favorite one? Yes.

The answer is yes. Exactly my point. I try to treat them all fair and equal. Of course.

You know, because ultimately that's how I make my money, that's how I make the money. But I'm not letting you off the hook here, I mean, at the end of the day, like, I understand that some of them have ran away and, you know, and they've been really, really good, but what made you decide to pass on them at the moment? Was there something about the company, maybe? Was there, I don't know, I mean, because I think that there's a, there's definitely a thought process there that you're not really elaborating on entirely, right?

I mean, it's hard. There's a certain magic to it. I mean, I don't know if I can put into words what makes you take a particular product. You know, I can only give examples.

You know, a buddy of mine, John, again, he's been in the business, broker like myself up in the mid-Atlantic area. I think he's been in the business 26 years now. He's done a phenomenal job for himself and his family and his retailers and manufacturers. You know, he called me with a new line out of the blue, this is maybe three years or so ago, a lot of people out there, all 300 of you listening, called The Leaf, Leaf by Oscar, and he, it's, if you don't know the brand, a guy by the name of Jim Robinson owns a couple retail shops up in Pittsburgh, John is his rep for other brands, Jim has a house blend called The Leaf, and inquired, or you know, asked John to start carrying the line.

line John started doing well with it well John's my buddy he's gonna look out for me and calls me up and says hey pretty popular product up here it's ramping up pretty quick you need to take a look the phone call actually said have you ever heard of the leaf I'm thinking it's like one of these brotherhood of the leaf a blogger group or something I'm like no dude he goes no no it's a line it's it's I'm doing really well with it you know you should take a look at it John man I'm busy I apologize I don't have time to pick up something else in my portfolio and so I turned And I turned it down. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. I turned the line down, not knowing much about it at the time, and it was fairly new.

You know, it might have been, again, three, four years ago, something like that. Well, in the beginning, it was a mistake. I shouldn't have passed on the line. I didn't know exactly what it was.

You don't know what's going to get hot or be up and coming, new and trendy. Thank goodness for me, it worked itself out to where they tried a couple brokers in between. It didn't work for them. I happened to lose a line at an event on a Saturday.

That went in-house. " I happened to be back on the road in Naples. I said, literally, it was just that point, I was like, "Fine, yes, I will take it. Just send me a price sheet, mail some samples to my house.

" I mean, at that point, I still didn't have a lot of knowledge of the product. Right. I would show my retailers a picture and a price sheet and, okay, sure, send it to me. I think I opened nine accounts that week with a picture and a price sheet.

By the time I made it home working a full week and that following Monday, my original account that I opened the Monday before, seven days before, was reordering and doubling their order. They were slapped out of cigars and, wow, you know, I can't imagine when I actually get samples in my hand. So, you know, I was fortunate to get a product at the right time when a couple other brokers didn't work out for, you know, the organization. And again, losing a line at the right time, which gave me the availability to pick up something new.

Gotcha. So you have to be very chameleon-like and keep your ear to the ground. And you have to be relentless and never give up on having you as a broker, and then you eventually gave in, is pretty much what you're saying. Yeah, I just keep working, that's it.

You know, I think, listen, I don't do anything special that anybody else in this business can't do for themselves, and it's just putting the key in the ignition or pushing the start button, I guess, these days, and showing up at accounts. You know, half the business is just being in their faces. Well, that kind of answers my next question that I was going to ask you is, obviously there's a significant turnover of brokers in the industry, how do you manage to stay above the majority of brokers? And before you answer that question, I just want to give people a little bit more of a background, in my opinion, Jeff is probably the best, if not one of the best brokers in this region, he's very thorough, he stays on top of all of his products, he takes really good care of all of his customers, myself included.

So, with that being said, how the hell do you do it with such a bigger territory than most people have? Again, you know, maybe it's my, I don't, I guess I could say work experience and/or training. Remember, I dealt with 125 employees in just our brokerage firm in Sunrise. We had four down lines.

When I tell you I hired, I fired, I trained, I built manuals, videos on telling people what to say, how to do it, when to do it, And dealing with each of their personalities. Each person is individually different. And that's the same thing with my retailers. That's the same thing with my manufacturers.

So managing all types of personalities and all types of level of business and/or work ethic, you know, just, I think, allows me to kind of do what I do. You know, you're always your toughest critic, so I always look at it as I'm only as good as my last sale. So as soon as I'm done, I got to go sell more. That's true.

Well said. Getting back to before, you mentioned that when you were having issues with, you didn't know how to answer questions as far as, you'd get dropped, and then I'm sure that there were times where you were down in the dumps, especially walking into an event on a Saturday, and then realizing that come Sunday morning you were out of that job. You said that before that Espinosa kind of gave you, "Hey, listen, don't worry about it, bro. " Don't worry about it, bro.

Obviously, there'll be more coming. If one drops, two will pick up. So, I'm assuming that he was kind of a mentor to you in sales. Absolutely, 100%.

I rely on Eric quite a bit. Okay. So, is there any other mentors, or is it? Scott Weeks, my buddy John Demharder.

I mean, those three in the business, I talk to quite often. And, you know, I try to learn from the guys who've been in the business, you know, a good 20 years before myself. Right. And I take what, you know, they have to say to heart, I put my own twist on it, and, you know, keep working.

And you think that that may have added to your success? Absolutely. Always look at the, you know, people who've been there before you and take their advice. Right.

That's the one thing I could, you know. All right, so now I'm going to get into some ridiculous questions. Nah, no worries. Normally, you have extremely high hair.

And it's usually quite interesting. It's a little tamer to it. Yeah, as of right now, it's a little bit down. It looks like I don't know what happened.

Is it because it's the end of the day? Your hair's tired? It's been up all day? Yeah, yeah, it's sleeping.

I mean, usually I crush up like a Vagra and put some gel in there and, you know, my hair just is on point all the time. Yeah, absolutely. I've just tried something new. It was, oddly enough, it was my wife.

I think one morning I woke up and maybe fell asleep with my head wet and the pillow on it. " So this is standard now? Maybe, hey, the spikes could come back. I mean, I really like the spikes, you know.

I'm a big fan, I don't know if you've noticed. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You've got a good head of hair on you. So, Viagra and some gels is how you've got to, okay, that's good, that's good.

What the hell do you do in your spare time? What spare time? I don't know, I've got a list here, there's a couple of things that you've done. A couple of things that you do do.

Oh, look, you know, you want to know what's a really funny scenario, and I didn't realize until my wife brought it to me. You know, when I'm working, I'm working. And when I'm home, I try to be home. Granted, my phone is always on.

And my wife, you know, kind of gets on me a little bit. She's like, "You're always on your phone. " I'm like, "Yeah, I'm working. " You know?

Right. And thank God I have the little baby computer in my hand with the GPS, because I give all the credit to the guys and gals in front of me who had a roll of quarters and an atlas. I don't know how they got any work done. So thank God for technology.

But, you know, I'm fortunate that when I take off, you know, I try to take off and make the best of my time, like at my son's school, you know, there are field trips and, you know, if I can work, you know, nine days in a row to make sure that I'm off on a Tuesday to go to Billy Beru Swamp Safari, then, you know what, I'm going to be the guy that's at Billy Beru Swamp Safari down in wherever it is in some, almost the Keys, I think. That's a real place, Billy Beru's Swamp Safari? Yeah, I think that really happened. " And she's like, oh, your husband has a job.

She said, yeah, he's a salesman on the road. She goes, oh, my God, he's the dad that's like at all the events and on all the field trips. I thought he was like a stay at home dad and you worked. You know, she really had no idea that I actually had a job.

And she goes, you don't really see any of the other dads. It's always moms. And there's a dad sprinkled in here or there. But your husband's consistently the guy that's always, you know, doing all these activities.

So I want to be as much of my kid's life as I can being a traveling salesman where I'm gone quite a bit, you know, it's a hard, it's a fine balance and I don't always get it right, but I, you know, try my best. So, I have a note here that says that you feed the homeless, feed the homeless? Yeah, it's something that we started in our neighborhood, I've lived in Boynton, my town home now, 13 years, although we might be moving, oh God. So different scenario, but yes, we started a food drive in our neighborhood, it's probably going on 12 years now, maybe the first year after we moved in, to where, you know, we want to build a sense of community, we have a great neighborhood, we do 4th of July parties, we do Super Bowl parties, we, you know, have a ball drop for New Year's Eve, you know, I literally take my wife's medicine ball, wrap it in aluminum foil and Christmas lights and wire it up about 30, 40 feet over the ground, and we count down and the ball drops.

You know, so we try to build a sense of community, but at the same time, you got to learn to give back and help out people that, you know, need help. I think everyone should be worth their weight in gold and work as hard as they possibly can, but sometimes you're down on your luck and you have to recognize that and, you know, I feel that if you give out, you get it back tenfold, you know, and I just, so for many years, we ran a charity food drive in our neighborhood that we would take these supplies and drop them off to homeless shelters, well, then it grew from there and we started donating our time every Thanksgiving morning and going to, We went to a place called The Soup Kitchen in Boynton Beach and, you know, actually preparing meals that we'd get there about four o'clock in the morning, work, you know, half the day, and then we'd sit and eat and with, with everyone. Well, as our children, my son and other children, they started getting older, we started realizing, you know, they need to be a part of this and learn about life. You know, look, life's not handed to you on a silver platter.

Everyone has their phones and their iPads and, you know, it's, that's, you know, not the way I want my son to view the world. And it hit me one day when, you know, I had to leave for work the next morning. I'd been home over the weekend. And he's like, oh, Dad, you're leaving in the morning?

I said, yes, and I've got to go to work. You know, I'll be gone three days out of town this week. I'll be home Thursday and Friday and work locally. And he's like, but you were just on the road.

And the dog just happened to be walking by. And I said, well, you see the dog? And he goes, yeah. I go, well, the dog eats food.

It costs money. And I said, the dog goes to the vet. It costs money. I'm like, you're staring at the TV, the electricity, the cable bill, the AC pumping through the vents.

" And he, you know, he kind of got it, but that's when I realized, you know what, I need my son to understand the value of not only helping others, but at the same time the value of a dollar. There are people on Thanksgiving Day that don't get to go home to their house and have dinner with their families. They are lucky to get back in a car or sit in a box and not have any food until someone else shows up to give it to them. So we joined another group called Lot 365 and we go out every Thanksgiving morning and Christmas Eve morning and we feed the homeless of Palm Beach.

A young lady by the name of Erin started all of that many years ago. I mean, this young lady, she's a saint, she literally goes every weekend, whether she has money or not, any donations, she'll make little bagged peanut butter and jellies and just give them out. So, unfortunately, her mother got sick, she had to move up to Tennessee to take care of her, and the reins were handed to my wife and ultimately me, so now we have taken the reins to, you know, set up. And the great thing is, all of our friends and family have all been more than willing to step in and help prepare meals and set up and break down and, you know, just, you know, paying it forward, so to speak.

That's really cool, man, and that's awesome that you're teaching your son how to do all that. Oh yeah, all the kids are the ones behind the trays serving the homeless, and then when they're done, we have them sit down with them. Of course, an adult sits down with them as well. We have lunch with everybody, you know, one big family.

I didn't know that about you, you know, and I feel like I know a lot about you, so the fact that I didn't know that's pretty impressive. Yeah, because he doesn't want, it's not a public thing. Right, he doesn't really brag about it or anything. You just do it out of the kindness of your heart, which is awesome.

Which is awesome. Well, that's one of the reasons on Facebook, I stopped the thing where you can automatically be tagged, or it picks up your face. I'm like, I didn't even know how to do that, and my wife showed me so. There's a lot of things, you know, I just, things you talk about, things you don't talk about.

Somebody wants to know, I'm happy to tell you anything, but it's not to be put in, you know. Not to be put on a podcast? There's only three people that know now, so. I'm sure we lost a listener already, probably down to two.

So, now, pre-Hurricane Irma, you did something for Texas, I believe, and now that was on Facebook a little bit, because you were trying to raise a little bit of money or supplies, right? Right. So, the way that that all worked out, again, remember, I cover Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Shreveport, Louisiana, and Lake Charles are stone-throw away from Texas, and, you know, look, us in Florida, we have a lot of hurricanes that unfortunately come and hit us. I was already due to be in that territory Thursday after the hurricane hit, it's true I was due to be in the territory and I thought through it my wife's a huge animal activist and you know the thing that just kept sticking in my mind was and it started as a very small project and just kind of grew like a wildfire out of you know more more than I could have ever expected but I said you know what babe why don't I go there a couple days early we actually had a vacation planned for the two of us over that weekend.

And it was Memorial Day, Labor Day, one of those days, whenever the hurricane came, we were supposed to take our anniversary trip to Marco Island. We had a... The dolphins? What?

Was that with the dolphins? Oh, no, no, no, you're talking about my birthday, we usually go down. Wow. So, yeah, because of the hurricane, I lost another vacation.

Right. Last year, I lost two vacations because of hurricanes, but one I cashed in willingly, so to speak. If you can't see, I'm shaking my head in my own disgust. So, we had a weekend booked at Marco Island for my wife and I's 15 year anniversary, and it was subsequently supposed to be that weekend, and I said to my wife, I said, you know, I go to Mississippi and Louisiana on Thursday, I'm gone Thursday to Thursday, I have some events, that and the other, I said, but that hurricane came, I said, there's gonna be a lot of dogs and cats probably with no home at this point in the Houston area, I said, you know, just like Katrina, I said, what if I rent, you know, a I have an open truck, and we get some cages, and I try to get some dogs and cats.

I'm not bringing any more freaking animals home. Understand that right now, sweetheart. She laughed. She understood.

I said, but you find where I can drop them off, and I'll drop them off. You know, and she said, I said, but really financially, you know, we can't do both. I said, we can allot the money that we are spending on our hotel in Marco Island, and we use that money to fund this little project that I'm doing. My wife looked me dead in the face.

She goes, I'll call and cancel right now. " And I said, "Okay, so let me try to get as many supplies instead of just going in and taking dogs out. " Well, it just grew like wildfire in literally a couple of days in the way that it happened. is we were sitting with family members uh at bonefish having brunch and it was all over tv the horrible uh hurricane in houston and my wife of course in front of everyone says oh jeff's gonna go and help bring back dogs and cats and help out and people were like oh my god you know so people started trying to offer me money and i'm like i don't i don't want your money like that's not what this is about so we got home and i said thank you of course but i went home and my wife goes you're thinking about this completely wrong i said what do you mean she goes you have the right idea but I said, please elaborate.

She goes, why wouldn't you take the money? Use the money to help others. The more resources you have, the more good you can do. I was like, damn, she's right.

So I'm like, okay. She goes, let me put a little Facebook post together for friends and family and see if people want to donate. And overnight there was like 500 bucks an account. Next morning there was a thousand bucks.

Well, then I'm traveling still in the panhandle for work and I get my wife calls and said, hey, young lady by the name of Alex is going to call you from the Palm Beach Post. She's got questions for you. Can you answer the phone? In like five minutes, as I'm sitting in front of an account in the rain, I'm like, okay, yes, please just have her call now.

So she said, look, I just, your story came across my desk and I would like to run a story on you. I really didn't feel like a story needed to be done. She goes, but she convinced me at the end, kind of like my wife. She goes, but I can help you raise more money and the more money you have, the more good you can do.

I'm like, why does everyone keep saying this? So in about four and a half days, I had $10,000 to my disposal. Another kid out of Philly, a guy that I met by the name of Kyle, just a good-hearted American guy that just wanted to help out as well, he was in between jobs and he read my story and he goes, "We should link up. " I'm thinking, "Is this guy like a Dexter or something?

Has he got a hit list? Man on a mission, let me kill him. " But no, he was actually a friend of a friend and we checked him out on Facebook and we talked to other people who actually kind of knew him. So, he did the same thing that I did.

He raised $5,000 himself in a few days. So, between he and I, we had $15,000. You know, we couldn't get a box truck to save our lives. My mother, out of the blue, she's like, "Look, you don't need a pickup truck or a minivan.

" So, she called the owner of Penske Trucks. I mean, literally spoke to Mr. Penske. They routed a truck down to us to New Orleans.

We flew in and just went on the craziest shopping spree of my life for four days. and delivered as many supplies as we could back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And unfortunately, I then had to hop on a plane, fly home because Irma hit us. I'm like, God, I can't handle another hurricane right now.

So, yeah, and Irma was the one, unfortunately, that really hurt the keys. And that's how I lost my birthdays in December 21st. So I lost that vacation too. I'm like, I keep losing vacations because of hurricanes.

But a lot of people lost a lot more than just a vacation. So it was good to be able to help out. And, you know, look, if one person can learn in the world, you know, and the reason I posted as many things I probably would not have posted, people were really starting to ask questions, they're like, well, are you personally taking this money to buy supplies, or are you giving it to this, you know, like Red Cross, or whoever it might be? They want it to be legit.

In my house, we loved your post. We were sitting there waiting for the next Jeff Groover show to come on Facebook. Thank you very much. To see what he was doing.

But it was just really to show people that we were out there trying to do, you know, as much good as we could, so. Very nice. Yeah. So, you're also a pilot?

No, no, no, no. That picture was taken incorrectly. The person flying, well, didn't really want a whole lot of love. He was actually checking the plane, the person that knew how to fly.

So, again, trying to be the best rep or broker that you can be, you know, we traveled through a territory and there was a big event coming up, which we had not, the manufacturer was Caldwell, Caldwell Cigars, had not planned on being technically a part of the event. " From traveling all week, I'll have a day at the house, now I gotta convince my wife that I really need to be back in the Tampa market on a Sunday to do an event, and I said, now I gotta wake up early and drive all the way down to Miami just to hook up with you, and he goes, now, just fly up to the Palm Beach Airport and pick you up, and then we'll fly over. I'm like, how do I say no to that? So, it was awesome.

It took about 55 minutes, where normally it takes me four hours in traffic and I'm cursing under my breath, but it was really cool to sit in a plane and relax and fly over and work the event. And then fly home and watch the sunset, so it was pretty awesome. That is pretty cool. Yeah, so thank you, Hernando, if you're the fourth listener, whatever number we're on.

So essentially we need to get you a plane or a jet or something so that you can kind of expedite these trips. Listen, that's the one thing I always say, if I had a car that drove itself, although I know that those are coming to the market quicker, then maybe I'll take like Generation 7 or 8 after they've all wrecked in one another. Yeah, I don't want to do Gen 1. Nah, nah, I'm not that guy, I don't know.

Or a plane or a helicopter would be awesome. Yeah. So speaking of cars, what kind of car do you have? Toyota RAV4.

Okay, so I think it was a RAV4. If not, it was something else. I believe it was a Toyota though. Could you tell the listeners how you actually beat a Corvette in a race with a Toyota?

So there's a Kano and there's sport mode. And believe it or not, that little four-cylinder's got some giddy-up, you know, but no, it was actually kind of, it was your brother's Corvette, which is beautiful, that thing's got, you know, plenty of giddy-up and plenty of horsepower, but just toying around, I think I got lucky once, he got stuck at a red light, I caught it when it was green, so it's easy to pass somebody when they're sitting at a dead stop and you're already in motion. Oh, so that's your story, okay. Yeah, we'll go with that.

That's fine, fair enough, fair enough. All right, so we got three questions that we like to ask every... Each of the three listeners has a question, they're call-ins? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're all call-ins.

And listener one. So we have three questions that we like to ask every person that comes on the show. Okay, great. And I think it's good he's not one of the listeners, now he hasn't heard the questions.

Yeah. Are you gonna listen to yourself after this? Because then we'd have four. Yes.

We just put up Matt Hunt and he told me he listened on the way to the show today. Oh, nice. I'm sorry, I was on the phone, I was busy, I was working. Okay.

The first question. Question one. What do we got? What one person, living or dead, would you like to have a cigar with?

Oh, wow. So, Jeff isn't a super aggressive smoker like the rest of us in the industry. He probably smokes a couple cigars a week, I'd say. That's perfect.

Is that fair? Yeah, I don't smoke up the profits. Yeah, that's a true story, man. When you're a broker, every penny counts.

It's not like you're smoking your own product. That's right. That is actually a really wonderful question. Who would I like to smoke a cigar with?

I don't know. Maybe Winston Churchill? I mean, he's got his face on a few high-end bands. I mean, there must have been something to it every time you saw the guy.

He had a cigar in hand. So that guy, again, I look up to my elders and he must know something I don't know. So I'd like to just sit back and big man upstairs gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. So I'd like to listen to see what that guy had to say.

I feel like we read the same books or at least listen to the same things. Go ahead. All right. Second question.

Best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? Best piece of advice. Well, kind of one of the taglines I use quite a bit, I actually just said it. You know, there's an old saying, you have one mouth and two ears for a reason.

You know, you're supposed to listen more than you talk. And if you sit back long enough, people will give you the information that you need to be able to, you know, be their friend Or, you know, find out what's wrong with them and help console them and or sell them a product, you know, so I truly try to use that on a daily basis and listen more than I speak. Very nice. Okay, the next question I think is going to be exceptionally hard for Mr.

Groover. What's your favorite cigar? Hmm, I'll see. I get that question quite often.

You know, in each of my lines, there are particular blends and particular sizes. I'm personally like a smaller ring gauge than a bigger ring gauge, but I get it. 50. You know, I'm not doing that big price comparison, so to speak.

But with that, I worked with them briefly. Great organization. A guy by the name of Santana Diaz has a line called De Crozier. They have a line, the 512 series, little black cans.

They retail $6, $7, $8, $9, a little Costa Rican product, the phenomenal cigars, you know, most of the sizes are very much what I like, nice medium bodied with a ton of flavor, and that is perfect for my palate, so I really do like the De Croce 512 series. He answered that question better than he thought. Yeah, very quick also. Caught you off guard, he certainly did.

It's a phenomenal cigar, phenomenal cigar. I like how you give the price and everything. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's very nice.

Well, I think that covers everything, right? That's the final question, yeah. Jeff, thank you very much for coming on the show. We love you, and we appreciate you always putting up with us, and whenever we need anything, you're always there for us.

Hey man, you're the master of boutique cigars. We get down in the same light, Mikey FCC. I mean, that's a big deal, and so I respect what you guys do. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, man. Thanks for coming in. That's it. Alright, gang, that's it.

Show's over. Time to put out that cigar and get back to work. Ain't nobody gonna do it for you. I'm doing it for you.

Everybody get hustlin'.

Show Notes

Origin Series...Jeff sits down with us an explains how his humble beginnings in the Insurance Game has lead him to be one of the most sought after Brokers in the Cigar Industry!!