Episode 2 | The Deal Makers Lounge

Hello everyone. This is Sticks and Stones, the podcast where cigar lovers and dealmakers meet. So just a quick reminder, this podcast is all about cigars. It's all about cigars. So just a quick reminder, this podcast is all about cigars and it's all about commercial real estate and everything is real talk here. So, anything you get from here is not BS. It's not endorsements. It's real talk, real opinions, real recommendations. So, what am I smoking today? Well, I am smoking the coconut coffee infused cigar from Ralph's in Shy Town, good old Chicago. Um, I am not a huge fan of infused cigars. Don't get me wrong, it's there's nothing wrong with it. I'm not knocking it. um the people who like the uh tobac and the acids and all of that. It's awesome. It's awesome for you. Not my cup of tea. Um however, this one is something extra special. This is this is not the average bear. Uh this cigar is fantastic. It's got a great taste, great draw. any the the number one thing that people say when I light one of these up around them is, "Wow, that smells fantastic. Smells like coconut." If you don't like coconut, then this is not the cigar for you. Coconut coffee. So, that's what I'm smoking. And what am I drinking today? I'm drinking the Isisle of Sky blended scotch 12-year. Not a big fan of of blended scotches. Um, and I'm not a big fan. I don't usually go for like a 12 year is not usually my scotch of choice. I am a scotch drinker. That That's my jam. Um, I'm usually like, you know, 15, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 25, 30, 90. That's usually my go-to. But I went to Total Wine and More and I tried this and it was fantastic. Not a not a huge amount of bite. Not um super duper smooth. Very very surprising. Very very surprising for a 12-ear Sky. That's really good. So cigar lounges being the modern boardroom today. And I don't know how you feel about that. I don't know what you think about that, but my opinion is a lot of people are looking to get out of the of the boardroom. They're looking to get out of the office, looking to get out of the conference room. And rightfully so. I mean, I could only I can only speak for myself, but I do spend a lot of time in the office. I'm a commercial real estate broker in two different states, New Jersey and Texas. And commercial deals, you know, and commercial brokers are a bit different from from residential agents. You know, we spend a lot of time in the office. We spend a lot of time in the conference rooms, you know, we're we're there in the office in the morning. Um, and sometimes I stay in the office till super duper late at night. Um, you know, I guess it's it's just an old school mentality. Um, this is, you know, I'm speaking specifically for me. Um, I think that whenever I can get out of the office to do a deal, to finish a deal, to sign up a client, I would much rather do that at a restaurant, a swanky coffee bar, uh, of course, a cigar lounge. So I believe that the cigar lounge today is the modern boardroom. Um you know one one aspect of not doing deals in a in an office setting an office environment um is you you don't know who's listening. You don't know who's listening in. You don't know who has got ears around. So I would be a little cautious of that. Um you know specifically you talking um from the perspective of you know I'm call banker commercial. I go to the office I don't know who's in the office at that point in time and I don't know who I would want hearing everything that I've got going on and the clients that I'm entertaining the clients that I'm taking out you know the clients that I'm pitching so on and so forth. So, there's that aspect of it. When you're talking about going to a cigar bar, the majority of the time, there's nobody in that establishment that's got skin in the game that, you know, wants to or wants or cares about your conversation. And then also, there are cigar lounges. More and more are now these cigar lounges are building private conference rooms. So that way you can book a conference room and have your meeting, have your pitch, you know, close your deal, whatever. Um, I think that that is an aspect that you have to to keep in mind. Another aspect that speaking specifically for commercial real estate is commercial real estate is a lot of face to face. you know, there's not um there's not a whole lot of we don't do a lot of Zoom calls. We don't do a lot of Teams calls when we're trying to interact with the client when, you know, we're not doing showings over FaceTime or Zoom or whatever, you know, we're we're doing a lot of face-toface interaction. It's a lot of um personalization, right? So um I would say for for me personally my business is very much relationship driven. My business is relationship driven because I don't want to be a transactional broker. Now if that's you, God bless you. No problem whatsoever. I know people, I have worked with people that are very much transactional. And and what I mean by that is they're not going to answer your call after 5:00 p.m. They're not going to take you out to lunch. They're not going to have a cup of coffee with you. They're definitely not having dinner with you. They they don't necessarily, not that they don't care, but they don't have time to remember your birthday. They don't have time to remember your kids' names. You know, that's that's not their business model. Their business model is transactional. It's this is the deal. I'm here to get you a building. I'm here to sell your building, lease your building, and that's it. That's what I'm here to do. I've got so many clients. I've got so many listings. I've got so much to do that I can't do it all. So, I'm going to get in, do my job, and get out. That's it. That's a transactional, in my opinion, that is a transactional broker. There are people that are transactional. They run their business transactionally and are very successful. That is not the way that I choose to run my business. I choose to run my business as relationship driven. I want to know all those things. I want to know all those things about your family. I want to know those things about your business, how your business operates, because I can help you in a lot of different ways. I do consulting. I do advisory. I'm a commercial real estate broker. I want to build a relationship with you. I want to foster a relationship with you in that somewhere down the road, whatever your needs may be, you come to me for whatever it may be. So, if it's if it's a real estate deal, if it's a you need advice on a business that you want to buy, whatever it is, you're going to come to me first because you know, not only do I care, um, I'm invested. I've got skin in the game in this relationship. And if I can't directly help you, I have a very vast network of people. I've got service providers that can help you and can directly, you know, put their hand in and and get you where you need to go. So, that's why I choose to be relationship driven. I choose um when I started in this business, I decided to be a relationship driven broker. A lot of things can't be done over email, over phone. There's a lot of times where we're going to have to sit down. I'm going to have to get in front of you. You're going to have to be in front of me and you got to explain to me what's going on so I can I can help you out of this situation. I am in relationships with people that I have not transacted any business with 5 years later. But these are people that I go to dinner with, I have drinks with. I I know their kids' names. They know my children's names, you know, things like that. And I know that eventually when the time is right and I have something they need or something falls right into place, we are going to transact. We're going to make money together. I know that for a fact. A lot of times you may be thinking, you know, nothing's ever going to come out of this. Nothing is ever going to happen um with this. You know, it's it's just one conversation. and it's just, you know, whatever. And that's not necessarily true. Um, you know, I remember going to um a cigar lounge and I remember sitting there. It was it was COVID, so things were very very different. Um, social distancing and all that. And this was this happened to be in New Jersey. And I was sitting there, you know, having a drink, smoking a cigar. There was a football game on, and during the commercial break, there was a commercial about BMW. BMW was just unveiling their new large SUV. The guy next to me who I'd been talking to um says, "I own one of those." So I just nonchalantly said, "Oh, you you own a, you know, BMW. Do you like it?" and he said, "No, I own a couple of BMW dealerships." So, I was like, "Oh, okay, cool." That guy has become a very good friend of mine. I have brought a couple tenants to him. His him and his family own a bunch of real estate in New Jersey. decentsized portfolios, developers, they develop real estate, they develop multifamily, they develop uh retail uh properties, huge. And I would have not met that guy. I would have not known them if I had not been in a cigar lounge and if I had not been, you know, friendly and always looking to foster a relationship somewhere. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a cigar lounge and you run into somebody who's interested in real estate, wants to get into real estate, provides a service of something, a website designer, um, a marketing person, someone that you, you know, you may be in the market for a new sign company and you're smoking a cigar, chilling out, and the next thing you know, you're sitting next to a huge sign company owner, a guy who designs and installs, you know, signs all over town. I mean, you never know who you're going to run into. You never know what can come of a face- tof face conversation. And you have nothing but face tof face conversations when you're in a cigar lounge. A lot of people ask me questions about cigar etiquette. you know, do you do you smoke a cigar until it the ash, you know, is throughout the whole stick? Um, I think everything is your personal preference. I think don't be uncou. I think, um, you know, lighting someone else's cigar, not a problem. I I I wouldn't cut someone else's cigar. Um, everyone has their own preference on, you know, how they cut, straight cut, cat's eye cut or vcut, uh, punch, you know, what have you. I would let them cut their own cigar, lighting it, not a problem. Um, I think that uh gifting cigars, so I may be in a boat all on my own on this, but I think gifting a cigar is a huge advantage. I think it shows good faith. I think it shows good character. I think it shows that you're a sport. And I will tell you this, out of all the people that you run into and all the people that you talk to and you interact with in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, you buy a cigar for somebody and and I'm going to I'm going to venture to say I'm going to go out there and say, you know, not a Drew Estates Factory smoke. Not that there's anything wrong with those. I I personally smoke them. I smoke so many cigars a day that it would be impossible for me to smoke, you know, a dab it off every single day. I smoke two to five cigars a day. Pretty incredible to smoke a 25 $30 cigar five times a day, 30 days a month. So I smoke the the Drew Estates factory smoke, but it's a factory. It's a machine rolled cigar. $2.50 to three bucks a stick. Uh I would not buy one of those for someone, you know, a decently priced a good quality hand rolled cigar. You buy one of those for somebody and hand that to them, they're not going to forget you anytime soon. you know, that that shows a really good measure of good faith, good character, and that is going to get you really really far in life. You know, that's going to jumpstart your relationship with that person. Um, they're immediately going to start feeling a sense of trust with you. And that's that's mainly what's what relationships are. Relationships are just can I trust you? Um, you know, are you trustworthy? So, I think that buying someone a cigar in, you know, you know, handing someone a cigar at a lounge or whatever and saying, "Hey, you know, try this. Try this on me." Um, it shows tremendous goodwill. Um, you know, it's I can't speak highly enough about it. Uh, gifting someone a cigar, it's it'll be very much worth its weight in gold. Um, I would say don't like a don't do story is don't walk into a humidor and touch every single cigar. You know, it it's it's just not classy. It's not a good look. Um, doesn't put out a good vibe because the the oils on your skin when you touch the a bare cigar in a lot of cigars in a humidor in in a in a cigar shop, they're they're not, you know, wrapped. They're not wrapped in cellophane. They're they're bare, right? So, you're putting your oils on that natural product, that tobacco leaf, and that could deteriorate um the the the tobacco can it can destroy that cigar um if you hold it long enough and you know, whatever. So, I have seen people uh do that and I've seen cigar shop owners get very upset about that. Now, you know what I'm smoking today? I'm smoking the the coconut coffee cigar from Ralph's in Chicago. Um, I will say great stick, awesome. It's an awesome finish. It's a great draw. I've had, you know, few few problems with these. I will tell you, um, you can order these online at Ralph Cigar in Chicago. I have found that when we order small amounts, the customer service, everything is on point. When you order 10 sticks or more, it's when shipments get delayed. I've had product uh difficulties like quality control. I've had shipments come in when the cigars were like drenched and you could not smoke them. Uh it was horrible. So, I will say um smaller quantities are golden. That's key. Um when I've had issues with uh Ralphs, they really didn't take care of me. Um so, you know, just mind all of that. Uh but this week, I don't really have a pick of the week. Um I don't have a favorite cigar. I feel the same about music as well as uh drinks. I don't have a favorite of anything. I don't have a favorite song, right? I'm very I love music. Music is a huge part of my life. I don't have a favorite song. It's all about my mood. It's all about the emotion. It's all about what's going on at that moment in time. whether that's happiness, sadness, um, anger, you know, depression, uh, stress, whatever it is, I've got a I've got a cigar, I've got a drink, and I've got a song for that emotion. So, but having said that, uh, the one cigar that I'm very, very amped up to review this week is the Girka Fat Boy. Uh, I'm looking very I'm very very much looking forward to smoking that cigar. Um, I think it's going to be a great stick. I think that when I first started smoking, um, which was about 15 years ago or so, 15 16 years ago, I think that my palette was not of the bold variety. And now I do I do smoke a lot of bolder cigars, medium to bold uh or medium to full body. And I'm very excited about Girka. When I first started smoking cigars, I smoked a Girka and it was so strong and it just was not enjoyable whatsoever. Um so I'm looking forward to that. Um I'm looking forward to a lot of the 2025 stuff. I got to say the Crowned Heads, I have never smoked up until this past week anything from Crowned Heads. I didn't know the brand even existed. And I smoked two from them, Blood Medicine and La Crema. And fantastic, just fantastic sticks. Um really looking forward to dive deep into that brand cuz so far everything I've I've tried of theirs is great. So, it's commercial real estate nugget time. Networking and relationships. So, I'm going to coin a phrase here. Um, if if no one is got dibs on this, relationship equity, right? There's equity in a lot of things. Um, how much equity do you have in your house? How much equity do you have in your car? That is the time you've put in. It's the investment you've put in and and what you've earned in that investment. You know, if you've owned your house for 15 years, you have 15 years of equity. You have um half of what you mortgaged as if you've got a 30-year fixed mortgage, half of your mortgage is paid off. You have a lot of equity. You have a ton of equity in your house. You know, if you paid cash for your car, you have 100% equity in your car. Relationship equity. How much are you putting into that relationship? How much equity do you have in that business relationship? How much equity do you have in that personal relationship? You know, it's all about relationships and networking. You need to put time in. Commercial real estate and cigar smoking in the cigar world are very similar. It's it's a long-term game, right? commercial real estate, real estate in in a whole is not very liquid. The liquidity value is very very low. You're not going to jump into real estate and jump out of real estate very quickly. So, you know, when you buy real estate, you're living there for a long time or you are holding on to that commercial property and being a landlord for a very long time, 30, 40 years, maybe more. How much equity do you have invested in the relationships that you currently have or or are in? And that's professional and personal. You know, do do you are you the bare minimum payment guy or girl? You know, do you pay the very bare minimum payment each month or do you show up every month? Are you there for your friends? Are you there for your your your good business clients? You know, it's that's something that you kind of have to sit back and and check yourself. You know, are you a good friend? Are you there for people when they need you? If you're only there for when there's money involved, you're a transactional person, and that that's all fine and well, that's that's great. But the people that are always going to have business, the people that you know may be generationally wealthy, the people that always have projects going on, they're not looking for the transactional person. They're looking for the relationship person. So, how much relationship equity do you have in this? You know, just something to think about. So, some of the main takeaways of this episode would be, you know, lounges versus office settings, boardrooms. Would you rather close your deal in a lounge or would you rather close your deal at the office? You know, um, face to face, would you would you rather be face to face with someone or would you rather do everything over the phone or email? You know, that's that's kind of the the big quandry right now that office uh big office users are having issues with people bring bringing them back to the office because everybody just wants this, you know, telecommute thing going on. Um so, you know, we talked about that. And then networking, of course, anything in life, it's all about networking. It's all about who you know. It's all about the your individual network, your circle of friends, what you know, a term that everyone uses in real estate that I absolutely hate, sphere of influence. I hate that word. Um, but your circle of friends, the people that are directly connected to you, the more of those inner circles you have, the larger your network is, the more things you're able to get done a lot quicker, you know. So that that's those are all things that uh that we talked about in this episode. And then stay tuned for next episode, episode three, smoke and strategy. So thank you all for listening. Really, really appreciate it. And as my solemn promise, this podcast is only going to get bigger and better with time. So thank you all very much. Have a great day.