Episode 22 | Gurkha Sample Pack Stick# 2 | Espresso

Yo yo yo yo yo. And welcome back to another episode of Sticks and Stones podcast where we talk about life, love, and the Brotherhood of the Leaf cigars and cigar smoking. So I I decided to do something a little bit different. I did a podcast last night about the Girka sample pack. There's six cigars in this sample pack and I am going to smoke one a day with you guys with a different beverage. So, today I have four shots of espresso. I'm a little bit of a caffeine fanatic. And this is going to be just a potluck. This is going to be a lucky grab. So, let's see. This morning I am going to go with the Marqueza, the Gir Marquez. So, let's give it a snippy snippy. I'm going to go super fancy, super gentlemanly like this morning. And we're going to go with the cigar scissors. This is a ring gauge, so should be okay. Hello, Governor. Give that a cold draw. I can tell already this is going to be good. All right, let's torch it. Again, this is just my preference of how I do things. I roll it around the flame. Try not to get too close to the flame. Don't want to overcook this thing. Just want to get an even burn all the way around because you don't want to get a weird burn like it it burns too fast on one side and not enough on the other. I mean, sometimes with humidification, you can't really help that, but you don't want to have a shitty light. Mimic the puffing. Give it a once over. And we're off. Party on, Wayne. That's good. So, I smoked the beast last night. And I'm I'm going to say that spice-wise, this is like this is almost the same. Like you can definitely sense a bit of spice, but it's not overly spicy. Oh, I'm getting What is that? H How does it pair with the espresso? Really? Well, if you didn't if you didn't listen in or watch the podcast episode 21, I don't know much about Ga Girka cigars. I've always stayed away from them because when I first started smoking I knew that they were really strong so I stayed away. Wasn't really a big fan of Girka. So I got the sampler pack. There's six cigars in it and I don't know anything about any one of them. I haven't smoked either of them. As of right now, this is the fourth Girka cigar I've ever smoked. Let's look up the Google machine and see what it says about this particular cigar. Okay. Utilizing a soft and silky Sumatra wrapper leaf, Girka Marqueza delivers a medium body profile that includes hints of roasted nuts. That's what that was. Slight saltiness, natural tobacco crispiness, and a sweet core of flavor. This is a Somatra wrapper, Habano binder, Nicaraguan filler, and rolled in the Dominican Republic. And I would look for the Magnum. This comes in a rausto, so 5x 52, a doro 6x 54, a Bellicoso 5x 54, and a Magnum 6x60. So that's that's my jam right there. the Magnum like a salted like a salted nut flavor like reminiscent of like um a festival fair carnival kind of thing. That's what that was. Yep. Yep. So, I'm enjoying this very very much. So this is a a fresh new week to talk business a little. Um doing a lot of prospecting this week. I am focusing on monetizing my network, connecting as many people with as many people as I possibly can, creating relationships and creating business opportunities for other people in other trades and things like that. I am prospecting for listings here in the state of Texas. I'm working on some projects for friends of mine in the development space. We're looking for land or buildings that we can knock down and build various different structures on that land. I've got some construction work going on. I've got helping my family members get their logistic and transportation companies off the ground. So, pretty busy week. Now, back to this cigar. That that nuttiness is is pretty prevalent. And I am not mad. I'm not mad at all. This is a great stick. So, something that I've been thinking about in my head as you turn on social media, the news, financial news, whatever, and you see talks about all kinds of big deals happening, big transactions, you know, billions are being thrown around like like it was nothing. Compass realy purchased anywhere which it was the parent company of Cwell Banker which is where my licenses are hung to form Compass International Holdings and I think it was a multi-billion dollar deal and I was sitting there and I'm saying to myself, you know, like what would you do if you hit the lottery. If you hit the lottery and won a billion dollars, $2 billion, whatever, like what what would you do with that money? And and first and foremost, I'm going to say I think that everybody thinks this. Everybody, you know, thinks about this. I'll put money on this. I'll bet on this that whatever anybody says they do with the money, whoever does end up hitting the lottery, if you asked those people, if you took a poll of all the lottery winners since the lottery was a thing as you're going to to buy your lottery ticket, everybody has an idea of what they're going to do with that money. I guarantee, like I said, I'll put money on it. the people that actually hit the lottery. I think it's like fractions of a percent of the people that actually did what they were planning on doing with the money. I think once you see that many zeros in your bank account, you lose your [ __ ] mind. That's just my opinion. It's my own thought. Don't know that for a fact. But I'll bet you if you look at the statistics, um, most of the, first of all, I think most of those people that hit the lottery end up going broke years later. I actually did hear a story about one of the lottery winners that hit the lottery and then used that money to fund an illegal drug empire and ended up either turning himself in or going to getting caught and going to jail or whatever. That that was an interesting one. But what would I do with lottery funds? I know there's a couple buckets that I would put the money in. Obviously, you know, half of that money, 40ome percent is coming is coming right off the top going to taxes going to Uncle Sam. We're talking about lottery here in the United States. So taxes is going to come right off the top. I would say some buckets would be family, making sure my family is secure, trust funds for children and house for parents and stuff like that. Make sure that no one has to pay a bill. Again, not to say that giving somebody an easy life is the best route. uh because sometimes you know you have to have drive and you have to have a little bit of a struggle to to be a well-balanced person. I believe in my opinion I would say nonprofit would be another bucket that I would put a good chunk of money into. I I have thoughts and dreams and aspirations for the nonprofit world and what I would do for different charities and different organizations. maybe even starting one, starting a charity and putting money into that to go help people. Um, I think I forget the statistic, but in or the fact it's not it's not a statistic, it's a fact. If you read the Bible, in the Bible, I think about over 2,000 times, it talks about helping the disadvantaged. So, a big chunk of my lottery winnings would go into nonprofit. And I work with some organizations right now that work in the nonprofit space. And so, I would devote not just money, but time to that. And then I would say that I would put a big chunk in investments, which a big a big section of that investment bucket would be real estate, commercial real estate, 100%. I would diversify my portfolio. I would I'd purchase some multif family buildings. I would purchase a retail strip or two or retail center, value ad retail center. probably an office building or two. I I have thoughts about the office market that I'm sure a lot of people do not share with me, but I have my thoughts on the office asset class. So, I would diversify and have multiple asset classes in my real estate portfolio, industrial space, some warehouses. I have a good round portfolio of properties cuz look, nobody nobody can predict the future. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Everybody that was in the office space and had a ton of office buildings in their portfolio nearly lost everything in the pandemic because the office market took such a tanking that if you had all your eggs in that basket, it was a big omelette being made cuz all that eggs cracked. But I guess I mean that's a general, you know, outlook on what I would do with lottery money, but it goes a lot deeper. It's a, you know, a much longer conversation, but that's just my thought. And again, I could hit the lottery tomorrow and all of that change, you know, for good or for bad, you know. You never you never know. I also think that people who hit the lottery kind of winnings, any kind of winnings, sweep stake, whatever you want to call it, inheritance, anybody who's given or has a windfall, a financial windfall of a lot of money very quickly, I don't think that people should stop working cuz I know a lot of people quit their job, whatever. And if you are not good with managing money, you will run out of that money and then you got to go find a job again. If you are one of those people that are not good with managing money, I highly recommend going to a wealth manager. People who manage money, other people's money for a living. I have a couple of friends that actually that actually do it. Um, they're very good at what they do and they know what they're doing and they can put your money into places that will make you money. Bare minimum, you're not going to lose money. You're not going to spend it and, you know, be broke later. So, coffee is still holding up. cigar is phenomenal. Take a photo of that before I forget. I do not regret this one. That's for sure. Mhm. Good start to the day, man. So, there's a lot of stuff in the news about all kinds of random stuff. And anybody who knows me knows that I'm a conspiracy theorist. Not like the crazy type that like, you know, I need a padded room or an aluminum foil hat. Nothing like that. But I do believe that people in power want to stay in power. And in order to stay in power, they They want followers. They want people who are going to follow them blindly. You know, they do and say stuff to fool you, to dumb you down, to numb you, you know. So, it's like it's just I find it very very odd that massacres will happen and it does not make the media. It doesn't make the news. And like, you know, we're going to war with foreign countries and, you know, a missile was dropped on on a civilian hotel apparently. But then other people are saying that they're there. Uh this is this is the missile that fell on a hotel in Dubai and somebody was, you know, on social media that lives in Dubai was like, "No such thing. Never happened." Um, so there's like there's all sorts of [ __ ] going on that you don't even know what's the truth. You don't know what's a lie. You don't know what's a fake. And I think that there's a lot at hand here. Uh, I definitely think there's biblical stuff happening, but you know, it's like while all this is going on, there's like a controversy about Grock and censorship and, you know, a bunch of different things that you don't know what's you don't know what the core of the situation is. Like, how do I explain that? So, like, let's let's call them the elite. let's call them the top brass. You don't know what they're actually focused on. So, you don't know what the real the underlying truth is to everything that's happening. You know, are they trying to steer all of these AIs to one way? Are they are they trying to create Skynet? For anybody who doesn't know, check out the Terminator movies. Are they purposely trying to create Skynet? Are they trying to wage war with everyone else for an underlying reason? Are we ever going to know? Is is the truth ever going to come out? You know, the whole world was up in arms about the Epstein files. As far as I know, nothing has been done about it. I mean, they finally after the longest time released the Epstein files. I don't want to get into it. I don't want to look into it. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but from what I've heard just on social media, which you can't you can't believe anyway, but from what I've heard, it's just some ugly, evil, nasty, horrible, inhumane stuff that happened on that island and I'm sure other various places. And I I'm sure Jeffrey Epstein wasn't the only person providing all of those services for these these top brass people. So I'm sure there's multiple people around the globe that provide these places and services and parties for these people. But it was like months and months and I don't know how many months but you know everybody fighting you know release the files, release the files, release the files. the files get released and and essentially nothing was done. I mean, we found out a lot of ugly stuff about people that, you know, some people were our heroes and some people were just completely unknown but are now known. So much information was put out and nothing was done. So, was it a smoke screen? Was it a distraction or you know let's distract everybody to worry about this and not worry about this you know watch this hand while this this hand comes and cold [ __ ] you don't know I don't know um but I can safely tell you this there's a lot of [ __ ] going on guys there's a lot of [ __ ] going down there's There's a lot of scary [ __ ] going down. We're like on the brink of World War III. I don't know if it'll I don't know if it'll get to that. You know, there's all kinds of theories going on around the globe. You know, I've heard some people saying that this is this is all a a sham that this is like a scripted play that world leaders are all playing this game like a charade of, hey, you do this and then I'll do this and then, you know, we'll, you know, it's a scripted it's a scripted fight basically. It's it's like uh professional wrestling. Hey, you know, we're going to get in the ring and we're going to do this and but you're going to win and then I'm going to take home a big chunk of money. Who knows? Who the hell knows? But all I know is shit's getting real, guys. [ __ ] is getting real. You know, these world powers see it as collateral damage, but there's there's human lives being lost here, and that's you know, allied soldiers, bad guy soldiers, innocent civilians. I mean, people are dying. People are dying. People are going missing. I mean, that's, you know, the one thing I heard about these these Epstein files is that a lot of children were abducted and trafficked and all kind I mean, just ugly ugly [ __ ] essentially what's being done nothing really and it's not just here in the United States I think that you know corruption goes across the board across the globe you know so essentially you've got people like us that get up every day get out there and you know try to make a living for yourselves and make a living for your family and abide by the laws and all that good stuff. And then you've got people that literally play the system, steal money from governments, siphon money out of, and I'm not, we're talking like billions of dollars and nothing happens to them, you know, which, you know, we all have our we all have our thoughts. We all have our opinions. It is what it is, I guess. But is it right? Who knows? Who knows? I mean the long and the short of it is look when when you give your money to your government the government that you know you live in the United States you give your money to the US government the federal government you give your money to the state government whatever state you live in and every state's you know varies on their position on taxes I heard that shout out to the state of Florida when you buy a home primary residence, you no longer pay property tax in Florida. So that that's pretty cool. But regardless, when you give your hard-earned money to your governing body, you would hope that that money is going to better your life and the life that of your community, the community you live in, whether that be, you know, your neighborhood, your city, your county, your state. and the United States, you know, the federal government in itself as a whole, you know, you would think that the government takes in billions of dollars from its citizens, that those billions are going to go back into the country in which we live. You would think that that's happening, but apparently it's not. We're finding out that it's not. We're finding out that money is being siphoned and it's being funneled out going all over the world, going into people's pockets that it shouldn't be going in. And that money is being used to buy mansions and cars and going to celebrity parties and hobnobbing with all of the elites. If you and I were to do that, we'd go to [ __ ] jail. And not like jail. Not like a holding cell. We're going to federal penitentiary. Something just don't sit right with me about that. However, I digress. Little too deep. A little too hot and heavy for a morning smoke with you guys. But if I'm thinking it, there's got to be millions of other people thinking it. Regardless, the Marqueza by Girka. This is a great stick. And I got to say, the band is pretty badass, too. I mean, the artwork here is pretty crazy. for those of you that are watching on YouTube. So, highly recommend this cigar. I am going to finish this bad boy and I wish all of you a wonderful, productive, prosperous, efficient week ahead as we truck on through the year of 2026. It's crazy how we're in March. You know, we're at the tail end of the first quarter of the new year. So, be that as it may, I wish you all a wonderful week. I hope lots of production and business and happiness happened for you this week. I am going to finish the rest of this and get back to my regularly scheduled program of business and whatnot. Yeah, I think might do another episode tomorrow. Who knows? So, we might just go straight through this thing and have an episode a day to get through this sample pack. But, I think it's a good idea. I think we'll be doing more of these sample pack uh series going forward cuz I think it's a cool idea. It's also I get a benefit because I'm smoking stuff that I have not smoked before. So, we'll take it from there. Again, I wish you a wonderful week. Stay blessed, everyone. And above all else, keep it rolling, baby.