Steve Saka from Dunbarton Tobacco Origin Series Episode 9
Episode Summary
Steve Saka of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust sits down with Mike and Mike for a long-form origin-story interview in a sweltering Cigar Hustler back room. Saka explains he has no degree at all — he enlisted in the Navy at 17 as an electronics "twidget," married at 19, and later ran his own control systems engineering firm before selling it in 1992. He got seriously into cigars around 1988-89, traveling on his own dime to Dominican and Honduran factories long before cigar tourism existed, and connecting with other "uber geeks" via AOL, Usenet and his non-profit site CigarNexus.com. His first real factory visit was Villazon in Cofradia, Honduras, where master cigar maker Estelo Padrón — brother of Jose Orlando Padrón — oversaw Punch and Hoyo de Monterrey production.
The turning point came when JR Cigar owner Lou Rothman asked Saka to write a cigar book; the meeting devolved into an argument about hot dogs, muscle cars and Red Sox-Yankees, and ended with a two-year consulting offer. Saka details what he learned running JR's e-commerce division and developing brands during the era when JR touched roughly 60% of all cigars sold in the U.S. After Altadis acquired JR, Jonathan Drew recruited him with a sweat-equity partnership, and Saka served as president of Drew Estate from 2005 to 2013, leading creative on Liga Privada, Undercrown, Chateau Real and the early Herrera Esteli work before leaving for family reasons, selling his shares and sitting out a two-year non-compete that led to Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust.
Along the way Saka digs into real tobacco craft — why the central rib actually belongs in a properly bunched cigar (flavor, nicotine and structural support for the ash), why frog-stripping is a compromise, and how much published cigar "fact" is simply parroted misinformation. He also tells vivid stories about 1990s Nicaragua: unpaved Pan-American highway, trucks dragged uphill by front loaders, $10 traffic bribes, a rooster invading his hotel room in Estelí, and how dramatically the country has developed since.
In the rapid-fire closing, Saka picks Winston Churchill as his dream cigar companion, shares his uncle's marriage advice, and names what actually lives in his humidor: My Father/Don Pepin Garcia Blue Label Cedros, Tatuaje Black Petit Lancero, Padrón 1926 No. 1 and No. 35 Maduro, Arturo Fuente Don Carlos, RoMa Craft Intemperance, plus Cuban Punch Punch, H. Upmann Sir Winston and Ramon Allones Specially Selected. He closes by breaking down the Mi Querida they're smoking — its Connecticut broadleaf profile, its production at NACSA with Raul Disla, and the cheeky Nicaraguan meaning behind the name.
In This Episode
- 01No degree, Navy electronics and a control systems firmSaka enlisted at 17, married at 19, and built and sold an engineering company before ever working in cigars.
- 02Becoming an uber cigar geek in the pre-internet eraHow AOL dial-up, Usenet newsgroups and self-funded factory visits turned Saka into arguably the first cigar blogger.
- 03First factory: Villazon and the other Padrón brotherSaka's first real factory visit was Villazon in Cofradia, Honduras, where Estelo Padrón — Jose Orlando Padrón's estranged brother — made Punch and Hoyo de Monterrey.
- 04The hot dog argument that landed him at JR CigarA book meeting with Lou Rothman derailed into hot dogs, muscle cars and baseball, and ended with Saka becoming executive consultant to the world's largest cigar retailer.
- 05Stems, central ribs and cigar misinformationWhy the central rib belongs in a properly made cigar, how it holds the ash and carries flavor, and why most printed cigar 'facts' get parroted rather than verified.
- 06Drew Estate 2005–2013 and the exitJonathan Drew's sweat-equity offer, leading creative on Liga Privada and Undercrown, and why family life prompted Saka to sell his shares and sit out a non-compete.
- 07Nicaragua then and nowUnpaved highways, $10 police shakedowns, a rooster in his Estelí hotel room, and how the country became Central America's safest and a serious cigar hub.
- 08What's actually in Saka's humidorBeyond his own blends, Saka names Padrón 1926, Don Carlos, Tatuaje Black Petit Lancero, RoMa Craft Intemperance and a few remaining Habanos favorites.
- 09Mi Querida and the meaning behind the nameThe broadleaf blend made at NACSA with Raul Disla, its medium-full earthy profile, and the risqué Nicaraguan slang that nearly scandalized the packaging crew.
Brands & Cigars Discussed
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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. Hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling.
Every day I'm, every day I'm, every day I'm. Oh, love. Hi, I'm Mike. And I'm Mike also.
This is a Cigar Hustlers podcast. Should we say it in unison? It sounds a little... I like that.
Do you like it? Okay, we'll keep that in. It's very nice. We have a very special guest today.
One Mr. Steve Saka of Dunbart & Tobacco. How are you, Steve? I'm good, Mike and Mike.
How are you guys doing? We're like, I'll keep it easy for everybody. We didn't get onto the phonetic spelling of my last name yet, either. Yeah, actually, you know, I kind of asked your brother, and he told me I basically should just learn how to say stomp on cabbage.
Step on cabbage. Step on cabbage, yes, but that isn't correct, right? It's got to be a little bit... That's about as close as us normal people can get to.
It's close enough. I mean, step on cabbage is the actual... Step on cabbage. There you go.
Step on cabbage. Uh-huh. Not bad. The bad part is, I won't remember.
You know, it's weird because, you know, I always thought I was just a complete idiot because, you know, I spent the last... Over 30 years, I've spent a lot of time in Latin America, Central America, and my Spanish is awful, and it's always been awful, and I've tried to learn multiple times, and finally I've come to the realization that I'm partially tone deaf. No shit. I never ever thought about it, but it's actually a problem for me, and it's been a problem forever.
How does that affect you though? You know, it's the inflections. Yeah, and see, it flashes. I don't hear the nuances.
And it kind of makes sense because I'm not a big music buff guy. Right. So having music in the background is kind of like, eh, I could take it, I could leave it, because I don't think I'm getting the full audio experience when I listen to music. So there's a couple of special things going on with this particular podcast.
One is we've never really got to sit down and bullshit on a one-on-one level, which we just kind of started to do the past couple hours, which is really nice. And the other special thing about this podcast is both ACs are broken at Cigar Hustler. It is hot as hell. And I'm 350 pounds, and I'm in central Florida, and I got sweat dripping off my...
Oh, he's from up north, this is terribly hot. So, you know, this may or may not be a faster podcast than normal, but... Okay, thank you for coming in, Steve, it was nice seeing you. But this is, you know...
Ice cream now! Turn the fans back on. This is, it is what it is, right? So, our podcast is more about, obviously, the origin of the people in the cigar industry, so we wanted to kind of start off with you and what you did prior to, and you have an engineering degree, is that correct?
Can I ask one ground rule first? Yeah, absolutely. I'm a little bit salty language-wise. Is that permissible or not?
That's fucking good to know, because I'm terrible. Which is kind of where the origin begins. I didn't have an engineering degree. I actually have no degree, I'm completely uneducated.
I enlisted in the service when I was 17. I was actually in the Navy, and then my wife and I got married at 19 and we were pregnant literally like 10 months later, and ever since that point I've just been working. No shit. Yeah, I've never had the, I always say that eventually someday I'm going to retire, I'm going to go to school and like get a degree in like western philosophy or something that's totally useless, but entertaining, you know, but yeah.
Maybe music, get a degree in music. But I was a twidget, yeah, there you go. I was a twidget in the Navy, which basically means I dealt with electronics. And when I got out, I ended up going to work for a company that did control systems engineering.
And the idea of what control systems was, or is, is basically it's all the computer systems that run a factory environment, you got a plant, you know, these pumps and motors and conveyors or whatever it is, and it's the computers that control the plant's operations. And from that, I was there in a very short period of time, and then I ended up actually opening my own control systems engineering firm because I was a moron and thought I could do it better. No shit. And I ended up hiring engineers, but I was never actually an engineer myself.
Wow, that's pretty crazy, man. I didn't know that. No, I didn't. I saw somewhere that you-- Let me say, it's very, very boring.
Really? It was tragically boring. It really was. And it was a feast and famine kind of scenario, because when the economy's good, people are building factories and plants.
Right, right. And making huge infrastructure investments. And when the economy isn't good, you're starving. You're starving, yeah.
And so it's like anything, I mean, it's essentially a contractor's business, and you need big jobs in order to support it, and I had that company until, I ended up selling it at the end of '92, I got very lucky, and I sold the company, and I didn't become like rich, rich, but I came kind of like retirement okay, and I didn't work for a full eight years after that, just raised the kids, and I started smoking cigars when I was in the Navy. But I really got into cigars probably right around '88, '89. And I was like one of the, like, I don't want to say original, because there were others, but because you had the original, but you know, you didn't have a way to interconnect. So in other words, I was an uber cigar geek, but I was literally the only uber cigar geek that I knew, because you didn't have the social media and the internet where you could actually, you know, So I was the crazy guy at the cigar store that wanted to know everything, this is before the magazine, before the boom, and I started traveling on my own dime, primarily to the Dominican and Honduras, to actually visit cigar factories, and at that time nobody was doing that, so I was like, you know, hey there's this crazy fat gringo outside, he wants to come in, you know, do we like, why is he here, you know, and it's like, you know, so it was literally, so I started, And I started spending a lot of money on my cigar addiction, you know, my hobby.
Your hobby. It was what it was. com, the dial-up mode over there, right? And then I started connecting with other, you know, cigar smokers.
And then it kind of transitioned to Usenet newsgroups, which at the time was kind of like, it was kind of like, oh, it's kiddie porn. And, you know, niche, geeky groups. They still exist. They still exist.
They still exist. And we, you know, because it was kind of a little bit, it was really a little subversive. It was a little underground. It was difficult to use.
You know, it wasn't something that was easy to get into. And at that point, I started connecting with even more cigar geeks. Because, you know, there'd be one guy in Los Angeles that was as geeky as you. Right.
You know what I mean? And what ended up happening is... I found this neat article from the Steve Saka guys. It takes me an hour to download.
Yeah, absolutely. So, what was the first factory that you visited? What would have been the very first factory I ever went to? Yeah, if you can remember.
Yeah, let me think about this. I mean, I think the very first factory I ever went to was Villazan. And Villazan was in Cofredilla, Honduras. It's just east of San Pedro Sulu.
And the reason why I went there first was the master cigar maker that... It was a guy, well, the owner was Frankie Inesa. And the master cigar maker that was there day in day out, his name was Estella Padron. And Estella Padron, actually, people that listen to this podcast are really familiar with him.
He was the brother, no, they are, they just don't know they are. He was the brother of Jose Orlando Padron, of Padron Cigar fame. No shit. And Estella Padron was his brother, who used to also be at Padron Cigars, but they had had a falling out.
No kidding. In like the late '60s that ended up, the one brother went the one way, so the cigars that Estella was responsible for were Punch and Hoya de Monterey's, and I've always been a bit of a Connecticut broadleaf whore, dark Maduro cigars, and that factory was probably the one that was the most premier in making that style of cigar, so that would have been the very, that was like the very first one I intentionally went to. Wow. You know?
That's pretty crazy. Intentionally? Well, no, you'd go to these little fabricators, these little chichesses, you know. It's the late 80s.
Yeah. Early 90s. Things are a little easier to get around. There were people making cigars in little factories in New Jersey still.
There was a little guy operating in Connecticut. But it was the first, like, real cigar factory that I went to where there were hundreds of workers. Now, so you wrote a paper on black tobacco. I wrote that, well, before that I was writing just stuff on the internet.
I mean, if you go to the way back time machine, you can literally find thousands of things that I wrote in ASC. And then what ended up happening is I ended up, I was spending so much money on cigars and cigar-related travel, and I had a friend, John Chunko, who was doing the same. com, which is now long defunct. We actually ran it as a non-profit company.
It was basically a tax avoidance scheme. We were taking our cigar expenses and writing them off to the company, is what we were doing, and we never had any intention on it becoming a profitable endeavor, and as a result from that, it ended up leading to where I ended up knowing pretty much everybody. Because it was during the boom, and everybody was in the cigar business trying to make money off the cigar business, and I was just this uber geek consumer that really just loves cigars, and I really wanted to visit and learn as much as I possibly could, and I was using this content for the website. I didn't know it at the time, but I probably was the original blogger, but this is a full 15 years before the term blogger had even been coined as far as I knew.
R. R. Cigar was the by far number one cigar retailer in the country. In fact, in some form or capacity, he made money off about 60% of all the cigars sold in the United States.
Wow, that's pretty crazy. It was crazy. I mean, a total market lock. In fact, between mass market and handmade premiums, they were buying and selling over a million cigars every single day.
Wow. Wow. So, now, you said that, when we were talking earlier outside, that you got into the cigar industry over a conversation of, like, hot dogs. Yeah, well, what it was, was Lou, I'm not the brightest guy in the room, But I've always been -- You are right now.
Well, I wasn't going to say it, but I've always been like uber inquisitive, and I've always never been ashamed. One of the things about our business is everyone's always peacocking. Right. They're always trying to pretend they know more than what they actually know.
Okay, and the reason why is because the consumers expect that out of you. Right, exactly. They want you to be an expert. True.
And one of the things that, and as you get older, we all realize, as we get older, we realize how little we actually do know. Right. You know, and, but I've always been the guy that was really uber inquisitive and not afraid to ask a lot of questions to the point where it was like really annoying to the people that I'd ask questions of. And also at the same time, I've always been pretty good with writing.
Right. And I wouldn't say I'm an author, but I have a general conversational style in the way I write. And, As a result of that, I started to write so much online that Lou Rothman contacted me about writing a book about cigars and tobacco. Because the thing with most of the books that have been published, there's so much in them that is factually incorrect.
You know what I mean? And the thing is, the reason why is because the people that write the books don't actually ever do the jobs. They literally visit someplace for two or three days, they ask some questions, they put together, but it's not the same as the guy that day in, day out, he works in a factory, day in, day out, he grows tobacco, that's his life, right, there's no book you can go to, like if you're interested in bright tobaccos, which are the tobaccos that they use to make cigarettes, there's literally, you can buy the encyclopedia, the chemistry of tobacco, and it's literally 500 pages that tell you everything there is possible to know about bright tobacco, right. Well, in that book, in The Chemistry of Tobacco, there's a three page appendix that was written by one dude in Nicaragua of his opinion of how to grow black tobacco, you know what I mean, there's no one common text that you can go to, so what you have is everything's kind of word of mouth, and so most of the books, and even the magazine articles that consumers have read now, I'll grant you, they've gotten much better over the years, but most, a lot of it's not factually true, it's inaccurate.
It's kind of true, but not exactly true, and what ends up happening is one thing will get published, and then it gets parroted every time another article gets written, or every time, they're always referencing back, so it kind of becomes fact, like, one of the common things that consumers have been told for so many years is that there's no stems in their cigars, that's a very big deal, but the reality is, first off, the stem is actually what goes from the butt of the blade to the stalk of the plant. That's what we consider a stem. Right. That part that starts from the butt of the blade up to the tip of the blade, that's the central rib.
Right. Okay, but that's what the consumer thinks of as a stem. In a properly made cigar, there's a stem, one of these central ribs, and every single piece of long filler tobacco, there should be one of those central ribs. We frog strip that tobacco, we pull out about a half to a third of it off the back end, and those ribs actually serve two primary purposes.
One, they're the highest concentration of nicotine and flavor in the tobacco. So by taking them out, you're actually stealing flavor out of the cigar. And the second thing, too, is those ribs are what provides the structural integrity to hold the ash on the cigar. And I'm not talking about the Instagram ash where you get the three-inch, four-inch ash and you take the great photo.
But for a cigar to smoke properly, it needs to be able to hold on to at least three-quarters of an inch of an ash solidly because that ash serves as an insulator for the cherry to make sure that you're getting a nice, even heating To allow all the tobaccos to burn simultaneously, because when a cigar doesn't burn correctly, it's not just an aesthetic issue, it doesn't taste right, because you're not smoking all the ingredients in the way the Ligador, the blender intended you to smoke them, so those ribs that are in those leaves, they kind of work like rebarb, okay, they actually serve to provide the structural support for the ash, but nothing that's ever been written has ever said that to a consumer. " Right, right. " Well, no. The reason why it now smokes is because you basically created an air channel.
The cigar was improperly bunched and you basically did a workaround by pulling that out. Now, what you don't want to have happen, and the reason why we frog strip it is, we don't want that half to third to end up in the consumer's mouth because it's very annoying to have it in your mouth. The other thing that you have to worry about is in addition to being the highest concentration of flavor in the nicotines, it's also the highest in concentration of oil. So occasionally what ends up happening is that stem, that rib, will actually light like a fuse and it'll cause a serious tunneling on you.
And the further back you go on the blade, the thicker it is and the higher the likelihood is. So it's always a compromise from our end, how much of it do we strip out and how much do we keep. But ultimately, you want that to be there, and this is the reason why Lou approached me about writing a book, he's like, yeah, I think you should write a book, because, you know, nobody, you have no commercial axe to grind, you're not actually in the business, you know all the factories, you know, we've spent the last umpteen years wasting your dollars and time. Yeah, but you need perspective, because there's no, you've got an investment in how this comes out.
It's a consumer's perspective. And so I went to talk to him about doing this book that he wanted to do. And look, I don't know, writing a book about cigars and tobacco, you might as well just light money ablaze. Nobody's buying this book.
R. Alternatives and get this really crappy book by Steve Saka. And so I went to talk to him about writing this book, and we talked about the book for five or six minutes. And then we got into this big argument over what the best brand of hot dog is.
For some reason, this crazy guy thinks Nathan's are the best hot dogs on the planet. I mean, it's just his New York-centric viewpoint coming through, but that's just absolute nonsense. Vienna Beef's better, Boar's Head's better, there's a ton of better hot dogs. And then that kind of led into a discussion of the best muscle cars from the late '60s.
And because I'm from the New England area, it just devolved into a Bo Sox-Yankees discussion. " We'll have hot dogs and muscle cars and we'll hang out. He's like, "You like all this cigar shit? " He's like, "You know, I'm the world's largest cigar retailer.
You know, you're a cigar guy. " You know what I mean? " There's this grand illusion that the cigar business is, you know, all hot girls and fancy cars and, you know, watches and fancy. It really isn't.
It's a grinded-out, penny-by-penny business. It's a working man's business. It really is. The number of people that actually do well in our industry, they do well because they put in 30 years of hard work.
It's not what people think it is. " I go, "Well, I don't do anything. " I go to crappy countries and sorts of guys. " And I said, "Well, let me tell you how consulting works, Lou.
" If you hire a guy for a fair number, nobody cares. If you charge three to four times more than what's fair, well, you've got to listen to this guy because we're paying him. It's crazy. It's crazy.
" So that was my actual very first job in the cigar business was I was the executive consultant to Lou Rothman, the owner of JR Cigars. Oh, how about that? And I have to tell you, in all honesty, I should have paid him, because I was an uber geek consumer, and I knew a lot about tobacco through osmosis, and a lot about cigar factories through osmosis, but actually understanding the cigar business, I was clueless. And here you have the guy who's making money off 60% of every cigar smoked in the United States, and now I'm directly working for him.
He's my only boss in the company, it wasn't like I went four levels down, so the truth was, I don't think he looked at it as him mentoring me, but just being around somebody like that, just hearing their thoughts, you know what I mean, the amount that you learn from just being exposed to the way they think and what their experiences of, it was absolutely incredible, and like I said, I really should have been paying him, I really should have. This is like the American gangster story with Denzel Washington, being the chauffeur driver, learning all the techniques. Not nearly as attractive, but still. At least he didn't pay you in hot dogs.
Same concept. So I was there until Altidus bought the company, and I stayed for a little while longer, I had a non-compete, and when I was at JR, I did a whole bunch of different things. I ran their e-commerce division, they were losing money, and because I had come from a technical background, I was the logical candidate, and I also was involved in coming up with deals and writing catalog copy and visiting the factory when we were working on the Monte Cristo Afrique or the La Sepsion or the genuine Cuban counterfeit because we were coming up with crazy brands all the time. And the other thing too that was really good about being in a business like that, every month, you know, you would have simultaneously 30 to 40 different consumer deals going, and you would really start to learn what floated certain consumers' boats.
" We were literally doing 30 to 50 things simultaneously at all times. Right, right. So the amount of information that you were getting was just tremendous, just, you know, and because there's difference, not all consumers are the same. Right, everybody's there.
When floats one boat doesn't float another boat, so that was also incredibly educational. But Altidus bought the company, and I didn't really see a future for me with Altidus. It was just much more corporate environment. Right.
And so I ended up deciding to leave, and I was in a two-year non-compete, if I remember right. R. He actually made one of the worst cigars ever. It was Majorga Coffee Infused.
He literally shipped, they were like twigs in a tin. They were completely unsmokable. They were so bad. Yeah, they were awful.
But we had done business with him, and he approached me about, you know, would you be interested to come into Drew Estate? " not really and uh and he was like well you know what if i made you president i'm like yeah but you're president of nothing you know so what does that really mean and he goes well what if i make you president and i make you a vested partner with no money in oh that that rings some bells right that that that's a pretty good deal corporate shares corporate shares for no cash in you know a I was in a sweat equity position and I became president of Drew Estate in 2005 and you know at the time Drew Estate was already established but it was a real small company I primarily only made infused style cigars none of which I smoked and from there you know as a team we ended up doing an okay job and I was with Drew Estate from 2005 through 2013 and I ultimately ended up deciding to leave there for a myriad of reasons. But the biggest one was my wife really disliked living in South Florida. Yeah.
We moved six times in the first six years. Oh, wow. All within South Florida? Yeah, all there.
Well, because that's where the corporate headquarters were. Right, right. And at that point, I was also the person that was in charge of the factory. So I was spending a lot of time in Nicaragua because, you know, when I left the company, we were at about 1,600 employees.
So it's like any company like that. It's an 80-an-hour-a-week job. It's just what it is and you know and literally the 68 hour weeks were uncommonly rare you had far more 100 hour weeks than you had 70 hour weeks it was just the way it was and she's like I'm done with this I'm moving back home to New Hampshire and when you get tired of playing around I'll be there I'll be there and I tried for 18 months to bounce between factory operations in Nicaragua my corporate responsibilities in Miami and then you know my I met my wife in New Hampshire, and in the end, my wife was getting the short end of the stick, and I just, you know, to her credit, she didn't complain, she was probably happy I was gone, but I started to wear on me, and I finally just went in one day and said, "Guys, I love you," and this is the point where the company's doing well, because, I mean, look, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy constantly, because that's one of the things about our business, the more successful you are, the bigger the buildings you have to get, the more tobacco you have to buy, the more workers you have to have, so you're all, you know, real estate's exploding, and this is great. It's great, but at the same time, it comes with a lot more, it requires a lot more cash to feed the beast.
Right. " And they were kind of pissed at me at first, but in the end, they were my friends, and they understood. It wasn't like I came in and said, "Guys, you've got to pay me three times as much money to stay. " I was coming in asking for nothing.
" It's too much personally. And I've tried for the last 18 months and it's just not working. So I ended up leaving. And then we got to the point where they wanted me to sign, it was when the attorneys got involved and it all got messed up.
They basically wanted me, because I had created, I had been the primary creative on all the brands from 2005 through 2013. Obviously John contributed a lot too, but I was really kind of the lead guy, and particularly on all the traditional stuff. You know, Liga Privada, Chateau Real, Undercrown, even those first, the beginning things with Willie and Herrera, Esteli, so they wanted me to sign over my rights to those things. And my attitude was, why would I do that?
I'm a vested partner in the company. As far as I'm concerned, I own X percent of all of these things. I said, you guys want me to do this, I'm okay with it, but just buy my shares. And that's ultimately what ended up happening.
They ended up buying my shares out, and as part of that, I agreed to sign the non-disclosures, sign the non-compete, sign the non-solicitation. Right. And I had to basically sit in the wings for two years. But even when I left, there was no illusions I was going to get back into the cigar business somehow.
Right. Because it's what I love. Right. And I'm going to be a hand model.
I mean, there's no future, right? So they even knew that from day one, but I didn't have any grand aspirations. You know, at JR, we had 1,500 plus employees. At Drew, we had 1,600 plus employees.
And, you know, and I've been in, at the first company, I sold the engineering, the Colonel of Engineering, so I've been bought out three times. Right. Which is nice. Which is nice, yeah.
And so I really, my desires now are not the same as what my desires were 15, 20 years ago. Right, right, exactly. I mean, so, and I waited, I worked out my, I sat out my non-compete, and there were certain things I was allowed to do and certain things I wasn't allowed to do, I've done certain things I wasn't allowed to do during the two-year period. I was allowed to work on new products, but to do them discreetly.
I was allowed to secure materials, again, discreetly. You're not allowed to promote any of it. Right, but not promote it, not make a deal out of it. And then when the two years ended, I ended up launching this little family-owned company called Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust.
And my wife is my partner in it, and my oldest son works with me. We're really genuinely just a little podunkey, small, family-owned and operated company. The only thing that I have some advantage on is that I just have a wealth of experience from having worked at the largest cigar retailer in the world, and then having had the benefit of being with Drew Estate from basically the near-infantile to, you know, when it got to be a really successful company, being a, you know, component of that success, and it helps. It also hurts you, too.
Right. Because sometimes I think when you're a small, young business, you wouldn't start it, you wouldn't get into it if you really knew how bad it was really going to be. Right. So you make a lot of decisions and then you just figure stuff out.
So in some weird ways, my experience also hurts me because it makes me a little bit more cautious about what I do, what I don't do. You know if you do this, that might happen. Yeah, you know the risks better. Right, right.
You're aware of the pitfalls, which you think would be an advantage, but it also makes you a bit more apprehensive, a little bit more cautious, a little bit more conservative, but at the same time, it also gives me the ability to make what I think is a genuinely exceptional cigar. Right. Not that other people can't, but I have a little bit of an inside track to that. Yeah.
I have the ability to actually genuinely buy tobacco, sort and select tobacco. I have the ability to actually manage the factory operations. I understand how the distribution cycles work, and I understand I'm really good at production planning, and so some things, you know, there's an advantage to it, but there's other things that are a disadvantage also. Right.
Well, I heard a, you know, it's funny, I heard a funny story a few years back when I was hanging out with Jesse. I don't remember all the details of it, and I hope that you do, but there was a time that you were driving down the Panamerica, and you got pulled over, And obviously you didn't speak a lick of Spanish, but you were translating and the cop wanted your driver's license and you didn't want to give him your driver's license. There was a period, look, in Nicaragua, they stopped this because tourism has grown so much, but there was a stretch where pretty much if you were white and you were in a vehicle, you were getting pulled over. And basically the way it works in Nicaragua is when you get any sort of traffic violation, they take your license.
And when you give them your license, you're then supposed to go to the station, and then you pay the fine to get your license back. But in almost all scenarios, you can pay the fine on the spot, which as an American is very awkward, because you feel like, is he setting me up that I'm now going to be bribing the cop, so I now end up in handcuffs. But you quickly realize that this is how it works, because at that point, the cops were getting paid anything. And typically, the way these tickets would work out is they would cost you $10 on average.
Right. And the really greedy cop, he would bang you for $20. Right. And what ended up happening is I got pulled over at one and the guy wanted $50.
Oh, shit. And $50 was just, come on. Come on. This is five tickets.
I mean, you're right. You're shaking me down. I'm shaking me down. This is ridiculous.
And so I'm getting into the guy and I got to the point where I'm really arguing and yelling at him. Right. And, of course, you know, these cops aren't like a cop by themselves in a car. It's like three cops, four cops together and they flag you down.
And he would drag you down. Everybody wanted $10. So I'm having this argument with a guy and it got to the point where I'm just not giving him 50 bucks because that's just being greedy. You know what I mean?
Take your $20, Bob, and go the fuck away. It's okay to be on the take, but we just don't want just too big a taste. I mean, this is just wrong. So I'm like getting into this.
So I finally get to the point where I'm just telling him, you know, I'm sticking my hands up the window and I'm saying, "Arrest me! Handcuff me! " Yeah, you know what I'm about to give you, you know? It got to the point where it was so embarrassing for him that his other cop buddies started laughing so much And he finally just gave up, and he's like, just go, man, you're embarrassing me, you're shaming me in front of my cop buddies, you know?
Fantastic, yeah. He'd probably go to the car and go, watch this, I get 50 from this guy. It was the same thing, like, at the border, it's much more controlled now, but originally, the border crossing from Honduras to Nicaragua, legitimately what it should have been, a vehicle, two people, it should have been $27 across the border, but it was never $27. It was $31 this time, it was $32 that time, it was $34.
" I know all those words. You're being ridiculous. A little bit of abuse is understandable. You're in a third world country, you're broke, you're trying to feed your family.
We get it. That's fine, but come on, you're going to charge more than double. You're not calling out sick for the next three weeks. It's kind of interesting because, like, I obviously don't have as much experience as you do down in Esteli, but I've been going for a few years.
And, I mean, this last time that I went, the economy is definitely up, and it's totally different. It's crazy. The first time I went, there was absolutely no pavement, and it wasn't, it was like 1993, it was right after the free election of Chamora. Right.
And there was literally, the first little town north of Managua is called Tipitapa, and it's about 10 kilometers north. Esteli is about 150 kilometers from Managua. That entire road from Tippy Tapa, the last 140 odd kilometers, was unpaved. There was no pavement.
When I first went to Esteli, there were barely any cars. There were no stoplights, no pavement, no motorcycles. Most of the women were still wearing skirts. It was literally like it was out of another time.
It was so different. And now, literally, I'm in Esteli and I'm bitching about the traffic. The traffic is so bad that it's ridiculous. You feel like you're in South Florida.
It's been good for the economy there, but a lot of it has to do with the paving. Because it used to be, because you have a lot of hills, you know, small mountains, hills, whatever you want to call it. So like for, you know, the Pan-American was the main, it's the main artery through all of Latin America. So the 18-wheelers would have to go on this road, but because none of it was paved, they could not make it up to these hills.
So every 18-foot tractor trailer, or every 18-wheel tractor trailer, they would actually have to chain to a front loader, They would drag it up the hill. So this hill that would take literally five minutes to drive up used to take like 35 minutes for them to haul each truck one by one up the hill. And during the dry season, the drive now takes about two hours and 15 minutes. During the dry season, it used to take four to 4:15, and during the rainy season, it used to sometimes take seven, seven and a half hours to go from Managua to Esteli.
I mean, the amount of development that's happened in Esteli is stunning. I mean, the first hotel I stayed in, there was only one hotel. It had two rooms. My room had a door that was like a castle door.
It was like literally like six inches thick. And the lock was a tier of timber that you picked up and you went on the door. But at the same time, it had a giant picture window with no glass and no bars and no screen. So you have this massive, unbelievable door, and then you have this giant window that even my fat ass can hop in and out of, right?
And at this point, the gun collection had not happened up in the North Country. Right. Okay, so it's just in all these third world countries. People just like to shoot the guns up in the air in the middle of the night because it's entertaining.
So it's the first time I'm in Nestle. It's '93. I got this crazy castle-like door, which has to be a reason for this type of security. But I got this giant open window that literally, you know, a Sasquatch can come through.
And the whole night it's, so it's gunfire the entire night. And so I couldn't fall asleep. I'm laying on top of this hard rock. It's literally like a sacrificial tabla.
Okay, it's so hard. I'm dressed in my jeans and my boots because I'm like, I've got to run. I've got to be ready to fall. Finally, like around, I don't know, 4 in the morning, I finally drift off to sleep.
Next thing I know, there's somebody in my room, screaming at me at the top of their lungs, like over me, like yelling at me. So I do that whole, you know, drunken wake up where you're swinging your arms around how it's left or right crazy because I got to punch, I got to steal it. Turned out that this frickin' rooster had flitted into my room through the window and that was caught in my room running around crowing at four in the frickin' morning. Dude, it was such a different world just 25 years ago, where that country has come in the last two decades plus is phenomenal, and now it's the safest country in all of Central America to go to, it actually has the lowest violent crime rate, and it's not just a little lower, it's like eight times lower than Costa Rica.
No kidding, wow. I mean, it's still the second poorest country in the hemisphere. Haiti's poorer than Nicaragua, but the standard of living has so tremendously increased over the last 25 years that it's, I mean, the tourism's booming now. Even though the government is, you know, Sandinista, sometimes the rhetoric is a little rough, but the actual policies aren't.
It's actually very pro-capitalism, pro-business, and it's actually a really good country to do business out of. And they're really good people to work with. The work ethic of Nicaraguan people are amazing. The other thing, too, that's amazing is the ingenuity level.
I mean, literally, here's some barbed wire, here's a piece of used chewing gum and some duct tape, and they build a boiler out of it. I mean, it's just, it really is unreal, the things that you can get accomplished in that country that we couldn't even touch here. Right. It was crazy to me to have 3G in certain spots.
Oh. Well, that's part of, you know what, part of that is, you actually have better or better cell service in some of those countries because they were so third world that they never put in the infrastructure for landlines. Right. So they never had regular phones.
They made the jump initially into mobile. So mobile was really the first phone systems that got installed. So you actually have pretty decent mobile services in a lot of places. Yeah, that's pretty crazy for me, man.
I couldn't believe it, you know. Normally you jump from factory to factory and say, "Hey, what's your Wi-Fi? " But now you don't really have to do that, you know, first world problems. We got a couple of random questions that we like to ask everybody.
Boxers. Boxers? No. Damn it.
Alright, go to question two. Question two. Alright, here we go. What one person, living or dead, would you like to have a cigar with?
Oh, that's easy. Winston Churchill. There you go. He's got to be number one on everyone's list, isn't he?
No, we've gotten a pretty mixed review. We've gotten quite the array of answers here. Yeah. Really?
How could you not pick Winnie? Yeah, that's true. I mean, darkest hour. For sure.
Savior of the free world. And the guy who had good scotch and smokes? Come on, that's a no-brainer. Only the best, right?
Only the best. Only the best. All right, question two. Best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
I had an uncle who said, be very careful about the woman who you marry because she will either be 90% of your joy or 90% of your misery. No shit. And then you still married at 19. So was that quote said before or after you got married?
It was said before, but it's kind of weird. And it's kind of, you know, when you get married at such a young age, it's obviously a crapshoot, and it works one of two ways. You either grow apart, or you grow up together. In the case of Sidney and I, we grew up together, and it worked out really well, but it could have, obviously, at that age, because you're not who you are at the age of 19.
Exactly. So, but yeah, I think that 90% joy or misery, I think that's true for a lot of people. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I mean, you know, to think about your story and how you were so young when you got married, I'm married and with with so young and then having a kid it's like two kids before we were 21 right that definitely changes your your entire perspective they're all fast yeah well I mean you know people are under the illusion that they just for some reason just think you were always rich or you were wealthier well often that just wasn't the case I mean we were we were we were we were getting government checks to survive right we got married we were getting the women infants and children's checks I I literally was earning six hundred and seventy eight dollars a month and raising a family of four on six Right.
I mean, we were broke, broke, broke. And what's nice about it is, it also makes you appreciative of things later on. Right. And it also, what's really good about it is, it's always made, my father was an immigrant from Turkey.
Her family, her father was a blue-collar foundry worker in eastern Pennsylvania. I mean, we never starved as kids. Both of us had really hard-working fathers, but they had to work really hard for the money. - Right.
- But, you know, you basically got two new pairs of shoes every year. They weren't fancy, but you got a new pair of sneakers and a new pair of shoes. - Right. - I mean, but, I mean, it was Hamburger Helper, and it was, we never went out to a restaurant as a family.
- Yeah. - That type of money. - I've never heard of. - Yeah, like, you know, if it was your 16th birthday, the family didn't go out to dinner, they would just take you out to dinner.
- They couldn't afford to take the whole family to dinner. - Everybody just didn't get to go. - And they're still sweating that payment, right? - Yeah, I mean, it's, so, you know, both of us grew up In a very frugal, hardworking environment, and that's paid a lot of dividends for us.
Right, because you're on the same page with a lot of stuff. Yeah, it makes a big, big difference. Absolutely. Alright, the final question, what's your favorite cigar?
Oh, that's... I'm biased. Of course my favorite cigars are my cigars. Okay, so...
Let me extend to this. When you talk to a guy that either makes cigars or has cigars specifically made for him, It only makes sense that they're going to be his favorite cigars because they're getting made what they ultimately like, you know what I mean? It's kind of a loaded question, right? And that's usually what we anticipate the answer to be, you know, the cigar that I make, right?
But then we ask, what's the cigar that you don't make that's your favorite? Ah, well that's, yeah, you know, look, I'm always interested. I'm going to say this is where I get a little bit off track. Right.
There are a lot of really good cigars that I don't like because I don't like the maker. Or I don't like the factory, or I don't like the business, and I'm a consumer that votes with my wallet, so I don't want to support somebody that I personally don't feel an affinity for, for whatever reason, the thing that's really important to me is that whoever it is, is that it's authentic. So in other words, you know, like I like the way Pete Johnson over the years has always handled the position of I'm a cigar designer, you know, this is the work of Pepin, this is the work of Jaime, this is now, honestly, Pete knows a lot about cigars and tobacco, he's learned this over the years, but he never postured himself in a way that felt fake to me, you know what I mean? So to me that makes a big difference, so I mean, for me, you know, I like the cigars coming out of that factory, I like the cigars that come out of Aroma Craft, I like the cigars that, you know, I like some of the cigars that Nicholas has been making with his new company, Foundation.
You know, I like, I like the smaller, I like the smaller brands that are more connected rather than the big, consolidated, commercial-style companies. Because what's happened over the years is those big companies used to be all family-owned and operated. Or even if they were bigger companies, the people that were in charge of them were actually shareholders in the company. And what's happened over the recent last 20 years or so is that really the people that are in charge of them are all suits, they really don't have the same level of interest, and they basically are C-suite guys, and that's what their gig is, so they may be the president of this company today, but they're looking to be what they're going to be the president of next.
The guy that's the exec VP is looking at where am I going to become a president, and that may be in digital publishing, it may be in the liquor industry, it may be, but they're not really cigar cigar guys, so for me, it's really important that it be a real cigar guy, or a real tobacco guy, and I'm not even saying that he has to be a guy that knows how to run a factory, or knows how to sit down and teach somebody how to a bunch of cigar, but he's just really genuinely passionate about it. For me, that connectivity is really important in what I choose to smoke and what I choose not to smoke. Okay, so that was a fantastic, diplomatic answer, but I'm not going to let you off the hook that easy. So, at this current point in time, obviously tomorrow you could have a different opinion and smoke something totally different.
Let me tell you some things I keep in my humor all the time. Okay. I really like the Pepin Garcia. It's one of the least popular ones.
It's the Blue Label. It's a Lonsdale that comes with a cedar wrapper on it. Okay. Okay.
And I think it's just called the Cedros. I really like that. Something that I have in my humidor right now all the time is I have Tatuaje Blacks. Again, kind of in that Lonsdale format.
I think he calls it his, I think he calls it like something Lancero or something, but it's not really a Lancero. Well, he makes a Petit Lancero. Petit Lancero, that's the one. Something else that I keep in the humidor all the time, I still keep Padrón number 1's, and it's weird, 1926 number 1's, which is the largest size in the Maduro, and I also like the number 35, which is the smallest size, so I like the very largest size on the spectrum, and I like the smallest size on the spectrum.
Something that's always in my humidor, again, not a very sexy brand anymore for a lot of consumers, but I still think the Arturo Fuente, Don Carlos is just one of the best balance. Just elegant, refined cigars. That's always in my humidor. I always keep, like at Aromacraft, my favorite Aromacraft are Intemperance.
I smoke Intemperance. It's the one that I really, really enjoy. So I smoke quite a few. Those are always in the humidor.
So there is quite a variety of other things I smoke. I will admit, easily 95. And I also still smoke Habanos. I went through a period where I only smoked Habanos for about six or seven years, and that was all I smoked.
It was all I smoked. And it was really more so because I really liked stronger cigars. And back in the early mid-90s, there weren't a lot of strong cigars in the marketplace. Aparagas was considered a strong cigar.
Okay. And today on a 10-point scale, Aparagas is like a three. Yeah. So back then, a Habanos, Aparagas, Lusitania, or a Bolivar Belicoso Fino were genuinely strong cigars.
Now, Nicaraguan tobaccos have so outpaced that octane level that now most Cuban cigars, I would call most Cuban cigars, The only ones that really have any sort of like oomph are some of the limited edition releases, but for the most part, so I don't smoke as much Habanos, but I still, Punch Punch is still in my rotation, and H. Upman Sir Winnie is still in my rotation, you know, Ramon Aione, Specially Select is still in my rotation, but I might smoke two a week of those cigars, and I smoke a lot of cigars, I'm smoking, a quick day I'm smoking six, most days I'm smoking nine. I smoke a lot of cigars so you know but and then a lot of other cigars I'm smoking is you're always smoking cigars for work you're smoking new things that you're working on and you're smoking different inventories of tobacco to see how similar they are to what you were using previously and you're just kind of always you know quality control because you know you know I like anybody else there's certain sizes in Sober Mesa, Cervantes Fino and Short Churchill in my opinion are the two best. I don't smoke a lot of the Torpedo Tiempo's, so I have to bring myself to go out of the way to say, okay, let me smoke some of these Torpedo Tiempo's, you know, to make sure that everything is smoking the way it should be.
You know, like one of the most popular sizes in Mi Querida is Pequeño Pequeño. It's a 4x44. It's my least favorite one, personally. I would much rather smoke the Gordita, which is a 4x48.
So, yesterday, I smoked the Bacano Bacano, because it wouldn't be my normal rotation, I'd rather smoke the Gordita, or the Ancho Largo, which is a more standard Toro size, Totos Las Diaz is a bit of a struggle for me, because Totos Las Diaz is a lot of nicotine, and because of how I smoke, I'm smoking, and then when I finish that cigar, I smoke another cigar right away, so I like cigars that are strong enough that I find them satisfying, but I don't like for them to be overwhelming, because Because I'm moving to my next cigar. You're moving to something next. So like, if I smoke like a Neanderthal from Skip or a Double Lajero Chisel from Lito Gomez, I think both are exceptional cigars that I enjoy immensely, but I can't just instantly light my next cigar. Right.
So it doesn't fit my normal smoking pattern to smoke those two cigars even though I find them to be exceptional. It's only a certain moment where I'll smoke them. And it's even the same thing with, you know, when I was smoking. And I still smoke a lot of Liga Privadas, you know, because, you know, I smoked Liga Privada almost exclusively for many of the years when I was at Drew State, but when I left the company, I left with, I don't know, 7,000 or 8,000 Liga Privadas.
That's a pretty big number. Yeah, well, look, I was smoking, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10 a day. That's like four days of cigarette. It really was my personal cigar for many years, and, but, so I'm still smoking from the inventory that was, Right.
I don't smoke any of the new ones, and the reason I don't smoke any of the new ones is because consumers are always asking me what's my opinion, and I don't want to have an opinion. " I just intentionally just go out, because the thing is, they should be as good, if not better. That should be what's happening, because the key people are still in the factory to do the day-in, day-out work. They outwork.
Consumers, whether they are or they aren't, there's a perception by some that they are not. I don't know whether that's a fair perception or not a fair perception. But at the same time, I also know I'm probably not a fair judge. You'd think I'd be the fairest judge, but I'm also human.
So I have a certain element of bias where I'm going to just naturally think that they were better back before. And I have to be cognizant of that. I mean, I'm human like anybody else. And so I just intentionally decided, because I was so closely associated with the brand, that I was just simply not going to smoke any of the new production.
Now, will I smoke All Out Kings? Will I smoke the new Undercrown Sun Grown? The things that they come out with, I had absolutely nothing to do with. Absolutely, I'll smoke those as any other consumer would.
But I still smoke a lot of oligas. The bad part for me, though, is because all of mine are so well-aged, they don't have the oomph that I desire out of them. Out of a cigar now. You know, I mean, they're beautiful, they smell great, those cigars were impeccably made, but they don't give me the same kind of sensation, so I find myself today, to get that broadleaf sensation that I like, I find myself smoking the Mi Querida.
It kind of serves as my personal replacement for that but you know it's I try what's weird about it is everyone would think that us in the business would be more familiar with all the cigars but the reality is this the cigar consumers are actually way more in touch with all the different products and brands that are in the marketplace because I mean everyone thinks that you're paying attention to what everybody's doing the reality is you're kind of caught up in your own little circle it's impossible there's too many. There's so much, that actually in a lot of ways, that's one of the reasons why when I go to a store, it's the same thing that happened with you today, Mike, I'm saying, Mike, you pick it out for me, you know what I mean, you know your brand the best, you know, you have some idea of what I like to smoke, you choose the one you think I ought to smoke, which is the one you think is going to be the best representation, and as a result, he gave me a very good cigar, you know what I mean, and I enjoy it immensely. Had I gone in there and just taken a random stab at it, I may not have been as lucky. I do get a lot of advice for consumers and I do pay attention, you know, I'm on social media, if I see something that's getting a lot of buzz, well, that piques my interest, you know, I go out of my way like, you know what, let me try one of those, let me see what that's all about.
That's pretty funny because I actually do a similar concept with reps or brokers that walk in, so if they come in and say, you know, what do you want to smoke, I always say, you know, well, you got one shot at this, so give me the best cigar that you think you have in your humidor. The cigar that you think I'm going to enjoy the most. Right. If not, if you give me something that's going to be, you know, lackluster, I'll probably pass on the entire thing.
So, I mean, that's pretty intelligent. Well, we sort of skidwarves in a minute, but what are we smoking today? Oh, that's true. We didn't talk about that.
This is very good. It's the first time I've had one. What are we smoking, Steve? This is actually the Mi Querida.
Mi Querida? Yeah. " It has multiple different meanings. You know, cigars are my mistress.
It's such a big part of my life. If another brand that I'm well known for was my wife, then this could be considered my mistress. It has a little bit of a dirty profile, so I like my mistress a little dirty. I always call it my side bitch.
Well, actually, in Nicaragua, it does have a little bit of a different meaning. It translates literally to my lover, my dear, but it's normally meant to refer to you as my mistress. In Nicaragua, there's nine women to every man in the country of Nicaragua, so it's very common because of the war. I'm moving.
It's a combination of the war, the fact that men die younger because it's a country where you have to work really hard for your money, and then also illegal immigration to other countries. So the combination of the three, there's just far less men. So it's a very common practice, it's common practice in most Latin cultures, but even more so in Nicaragua, that a guy will have a mistress, okay, and not only will he have a mistress, the wife will know that he has a mistress, and everyone will know that he has a mistress, so in Nicaragua what happens is, the wife kind of has like approval, disapproval of who the mistress can be, because she doesn't want the mistress to bring shame to the family. I'm not saying that they hang out for family dinners together, but it's kind of like the wife's like, okay, he's going to have a mistress.
Everyone's going to know who his mistress is, so I want the mistress to be not some tramp. So in Nicaragua, the Mi Querida is actually the girl that neither the wife nor the mistress would approve of is who the Mi Querida is. Yeah, so it actually has a little bit of an undertone. It's actually kind of funny because when I first was proposing the name, because in most factories, 7% of the employees are women in most handmade cigar factories.
And all the people in packaging, they're all women. And when they first got it, they saw it like, really? We're putting this on a cigar? It's like you're putting the word slut on a cigar.
He does know that, right? Crazy gringo. Calm down. It doesn't have the same connotation every place as it has here in Esteli.
Right. Yeah. Awesome. Connecticut Broadleaf, I would describe it medium to full, probably like a 7 out of a 10 point scale, it's that traditional earthy, it's really, it's the same style, this is my daily style of cigar.
It's very smooth, very good. Well, part of it is I like it to be, again, I don't like cigars that bite me. Occasionally I do, but I don't typically, I like cigars that, enough flavor to satisfy, but at the same time I move on. You know, over time to the next cigar, so, but, I don't know, I always tell people that, you know, cigars are very personal.
And this, you're making this out of Noxa, right? Yeah, this is made out of Noxa, with a Raul Diesla, so, it's arguably, I will say it's the best cigar they make in the factory, and they'll tell you the same thing, actually. It's one of the, it's the best cigar they probably have ever made at that particular factory. That's awesome.
That's very good. Would you like to tell people how to get a hold of you? Yes. Social medias, emails?
Yeah, I'm easy. It's just Steve Saka, S-A-K-A. You just can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram. And Steve Saka's your Instagram?
It's actually just Steve Saka, really boring. Yeah, he was easy to find. Okay. Really boring.
You can Google me. Yeah? Do you know who I am? Do you know?
Look me up, bitch. Right? No doubt. No doubt.
Well, that pretty much concludes it, right? Yeah, that's it. That's everything we have. Well, Steve, you know.
We appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much for coming. Well, look at this. This is actually the coolest room in the building.
Yeah, it actually panned out. The AC kind of kicked back on. Yeah, it's pretty comfortable. Everything must have thawed out.
Yeah, absolutely. It was like a master plan. It was. Your poor wife's out there just sweating terribly.
You had no idea that you were going to come on to the podcast today, and I appreciate you being so gracious and coming on. Dude, it's free advertising. Are you kidding me? Right?
Exposure is exposure. I'll give you the 100 bucks after the show's off. All right, that's it, man. That's it.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Oh, yeah.
We appreciate any feedback you can give us. So please write us on Facebook on our Facebook group or email us or anything on the reviews. Do me a favor. Write Sock of Socks.
If you can put Sock of Socks, that way we know exactly what episode that you're referring to. Also, if you like what we're doing, please tell your friends about it so that they can listen as well. And then that's it. And then that's it.
And that's it. All right, 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. Everybody get hustlin'. Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
Show Notes
Origin Series keeps going as we have Steve Saka sit down today with us with no prior knowledge of being on the podcast. He came in to the shop to discuss business and we jumped at the chance to talk to this industry giant! Listen in as we find out how Hotdogs and fast cars led him to his love of cigars!
You can follow us on IG @cigarhutlerspodcast or go to our fan page on Facebook at A Cigar Hustlers Podcast. Leave us your thoughts and comments as well as suggest a possible guest you would like to hear us have on the show!
You Can follow Mike Szczepankiewicz on IG @Cigarhustler or Mike Palmer @Floridacigarclub_mike.
Thanks for Listening!!