Episode 5 | Breaking In

Yo yo yo yo yo, and welcome to Sticks and Stones, the podcast where we bring serious cigar smokers and dealmakers together. So this is episode five and it's titled Breaking In. So, this episode is specifically for anybody interested in smoking cigars, starting smoking cigars, and or getting into commercial real estate. And if you're extramancy, it's doing both. So, what am I doing tonight? Uh, I think I'm going to be doing I'm going to be smoking the Grand Habano, Persian Tiger King. Um, and I'm going to be sipping on this new tequila that thanks to social media G4, I am going to be sipping on the reposado. Repisado. And thanks to the magic of TV, I already have some chilled over here. That's how I like my Tquella. Shaking the camera a little too much there. This thing onto. All right, we're going have to do this another way. Oh, we got a little float there. A little skater. Allighty tidy. Okay. So, cheers to all you there on the video on the video side, the YouTube side. Okay. So, G4. Okay. So, what's the what's the first thing you have to what do you want to know? What do you want to know when you're first starting out smoking cigars? I've been smoking cigars for quite some time now. I think I just swallowed a bug. That's awesome. Little hand sanitizer for your guts. So, I have been smoking cigars probably 20 years now, 23 years, something like that. And there's a lot of misconceptions to cigar smoking. There's a misconception of, oh, you you have to do Connecticut shade wrapper cigars. You have to do flavored cigars, infused cigars, because, you know, they're they're easier on you. It's not necessarily true. Okay. This this fine cigar, this beautiful stick right here is a Maduro and it is perfectly fine for a new cigar smoker, an inexperienced lad, if you will. Hello, chap. Hello, governor. We're going to start off with this. And yes, guys, I do have plans to build a smoke friendly podcast studio so I can a fortress of solitude where I can do my podcasts. Right now, I'm doing them in the back of my humble abode. And grab my torch. Okay, so first things first, what type of cigar should you be smoking? Now, I have some Instagram content out there, I believe. Maybe some YouTube short stuff out there about this particular subject. Some of the ones that I recommend, I recommend the My Father's Connecticut. I know you're going to call me a hypocrite. This one, the the Grand Habano Persian King, the Drew Estates Factory Smoke, and that's, you know, any one of them. the the Connecticut shade, the the Maduro. They do have a sweet one, but it's basically sugar water. That's they dip the the cap in like a sugar water. So, I wouldn't call that infused. They just call they call it a sweet. So, pick your cigar to start off with. Um Ashton does make a a Maduro and they do make a Connecticut shade for the starting fellows out there. Granted, I'll smoke that today. It's a great It's a great cigar. However, that is in the 12- $15 range depending on, you know, what cigar shop you're you're shopping at. Be well aware of that. And as you get into this field, as you get into cigar smoking, you will understand this is not a cheap sport to get into. It's not cheap whatsoever. So, there are some cigars, and if you follow any of my content, you'll see stuff throughout all of my content. You'll see sticks that are $2 a stick. You'll see sticks that are 50 plus, 100 plus per stick. So, this is not an economical sport to get into. It's a lifestyle. And if you like the lifestyle, you know, you do what you got to do. Sometimes you you skip a meal. You know what can I tell you? But you know, you have a good drink, you have a good stick, and it helps pass the time a lot a lot easier. So, here are some of the tools. Here's the good [ __ ] that you're going to need. You are going to need a torch. Now, you don't necessarily need a torch. I recommend starting out that you buy yourself a torch. I bought one today for 12 bucks. I mean, they're not super expensive. Now, you can spend thousands of dollars on a torch, but no one's saying you need to do that. Buy an economical starter torch. I highly recommend you buy at least a double jet. This, and I will show you that is what a double jet looks like. Okay, so you have two jets that are shooting out fire. Look like a little F-16 from the back. When you get into the mix and you've done this for a bit, you can get away with cedar spills where you light a cedar spill with a match and it looks cool and you know, you look like, you know, a hipster, whatever. I don't think it does anything fantastical, magical to the cigar. A lot of people believe that it does. I don't know. I haven't seen that. A lot of people believe in matches. They only light with matches. I don't subscribe to that either. Do do what's good for you. Do you do you, boo, you know? You can't do what everybody else does. Do what feels good for you. But you're going to need some sort of a light source. You're going to need some sort of an ignition source. So, big lighter, torch, matches, cedar spill, coal from your barbecue pit, I don't know, whatever. whatever you prefer, but you're going to need an ignition source. You're going to need a cutter. Okay, so some of the cutters that you can do is you can do the guillotine type where that opens up if you're all watching this video. Uh guillotine type. There's also a Vcut or cat's eye cut. So, this is going to cut the end off of the cigar near the shoulder. It's called the cap. It's what's basically capped off from the rolling factory. You need to cut that in some way in order to get to the smoky smokeoky. And then there's also a punch. Now the guillotine is what's called a straight cut. That's a straight cut. You have that Vcut or the cat's eye cut. And you have you have a punch which basically punches a hole in the end of the cigar to allow you to get to the good stuff to the honeypot. So you're going to need a cigar, of course. You're going to need an ignition source. And I don't recommend you getting a draw poker, but you could invest if you're serious about this and you think you're going to, you know, do it for a while. you can get yourself a draw poker. And what happens with that is every once in a great while, even if it's a great stick, you'll run into some problems where you have some draw problems. And draw problems basically means it's really hard for you to draw air through the cigar. So with the cigar end lit, you pull air from the outside through the cigar. That's what creates the cigar smoke. And if it's hard for you to move air through that cigar, you're going to have a really miserable time. So that draw poker is going to open up some space in order for you to move air through that thing a little bit better. All right. So, now we're going to light this bad boy. I'm going to take a sip first, but we're going to light this bad boy. And what we're going to do is just prepping you guys for what's going to happen. I'm going to toast the foot. And that's basically toasting a little bit of the of the outside. And once we toast that, I'm going to swirl it around. Sort of looking like when people cleanse people's houses with sage. I'm going to swirl it around, twirl it around, whatever you want to call that. And that's going to mimic a puffing action. So that way I can see if the cigar is going to keep a light, if it's going to keep smoke and not die on me. And then once I see that we've got a little fire going, we got a little choo choo choo choo going down the track, then I'm going to I'm going to pull in some air. I'm going to puff on it. Okay. So I'm going to light this bad boy right now. Toasting the foot. That's what this is called. Toasting the foot. I'm a little too close to those blue flames, but whatever. I'm going to roll this around in that stream of heat so that way I don't cook this sucker even though I am a little bit. Okay, now I'm going to Now I'm going to sage I'm going to sage the studio here. Oh yeah, mama. And that's all, folks. That's how it's done. So now this baby's lit. Another thing, another another device you're going to need is you're going to need a cigar ashtray. Your mama's ashtray ain't going to work because you need divots like that that can actually hold a beefy cigar. You're going to need that unless you want to hold the damn cigar in your hand the whole evening. It's not fun. I've done it, believe me. Okay, so now we're puffing on this thing. As a a breaking in rookie, a newbie to the trade, you don't want to go after sticks that are too punchy. You don't want to go after something that's what's called, and you'll learn this as you progress, you don't want something too peppery or too spicy. It's going to give you a bad experience and you're going to run away from this like your hair is on fire. It'll give you a bad experience because it's very strong. Feels like somebody punched you in the gut when you smoke it. But it's kind of like it's kind of like anything else, right? When you are first starting a sport or when you first start working out, you don't go to the gym and start lifting 1,000 [ __ ] pounds, right? You're not going to go deadlift 1,000 lbs the first day at the gym. It's the same thing. Same [ __ ] You're not going to go to the cigar shop and buy a kohiba be bake or a big bad dirty girka that you know it feels like you got kicked in a nether region when you smoke it. You're not going to do that when you're first starting out. I don't care who you are. Well, you shouldn't. I'm just telling you that right now. You shouldn't. What you should do is start on the lighter side of things. um a lighter purdomo, a lighter Ashton. Like speaking of Ashtton's, you don't want to go with like an Ashtton uh Ashton uh ES uh a VSSG or the ESG because you're going to you're going to call Ralph. I'm just telling you right now, you're going to call Ralph. Um so you want to start off with some easier smokes and then you can progress. You have to have some of the tools. You have to have an ashtray. You have to have a cutter. You have to have a torch or some sort of lighter ignition source. And then as you go through this thing, it's enjoyable, man. Or lady, sit back, relax, have a drink. I'm not saying for you to be an alcoholic, but I'm just saying have a drink, have a smoke. You had a bad day, you had a hard day. Look, this is my third cigar for today. Good days, you know, I'll have one or two. Bad days I'll have like three or five. It just it all depends. Okay. You don't want to be puffing on this [ __ ] every six seconds, right? Because then you're going to have problems with the ash and you're going to have problems with the cigar and your experience with it. So, you don't want to do that. You don't want to let it sit in the ashtray for 15 minutes without puffing on it either, you know. And and I'm not trying to say you gotta be point Dexter with this and you gotta like pull your calculator out, look at your watch, and set your iPhone for your puff alarm. You don't want to do that either. Enjoy yourself. Worst case scenario, you're going to relight the cigar, whatever. But keep a constant puff on that thing, right? Don't let it go overboard because then you're going to get like torpedoing. And don't let it sit too long because it's going to die on you. I don't I don't care what cigar it is. I don't care how good it is. I don't care what it costs. It's going to die on you if you sit there for too long. See? Like that. That's good. So, what's happening is you're pulling in nicotine from the tip of this cigar. Now, the cigars, unlike cigarettes, nothing wrong with cigarette smoking. If that's you, God bless you. Love it. Cigarettes are not for me. This is all high quality individually rolled tobacco leaves and this is from the tobacco plant in most of the tobacco plant. You know cigarettes are tobacco that didn't make it in the cigar rolling factory and they take all of that stuff and then they shred it up and they put it into a cigar. Just being real with you. That's that's how it works. So, this is high quality tobacco that has long filler in it. It's got a binder and then that final tobacco around it is the wrapper, you know. So, this is this is high quality product, but it's got a massive amount of nicotine in it. One cigar round about equals a whole pack of cigarettes. That's how much nicotine you're pulling in off this thing. It's great. I love it. But you just need to know that, right? So, you can't overdo it when you're first starting out because it's going to get you sick. And it will get you sick. And here's what it feels like. It feels like you get you get laded. You get the cold sweats. Feels like you're either going to [ __ ] your pants or throw up. Sometimes you do both. I have called Ralph multiple times. It's called nicotine poison. You're taking too much in too quickly. And that hot smoke you're pulling in, it don't help either. That is the long and the short of breaking into cigar smoking. Now, there are a lot of brands. I speak nothing but cigars on this channel and my Instagram and my YouTube and my Facebook. All I talk about is cigars. It's like one of the passions of my life. The other passion of my life is commercial real estate. So, these are the two passions of my life mashed up together. That's what this channel is all about. It's about people who are serious about commercial real estate or want to get serious about commercial real estate or are serious about cigars or want to get serious about cigars. So, that's what this this whole thing is about. It's a lifestyle, man. You know, ride the wave. Get on the road and drive and see where it takes you. You know, like stuff like that. That's what I'm saying. It's it's don't overthink it. That's what I'm saying. Don't overthink it. That's the bottom line. Do it if you like it. Try it. Not everybody likes it. You know, I meet people that are like a one cigar a year type guy or gal. There are others like me that are a daily basis smoker. And I'm good all the way around. You know, I I don't care if you're a annual guy or you're a daily guy. I love you all the same. So, that's what I'm saying about that. And I do have to say I I have tried all of the big brands. I have tried the Class Ales. I've tried the Kasa deon sipping tequila which is not cheap. It's like three $400 a bottle. I have done the Patron, the Kasa Amigos. I've done them all. This G4 [ __ ] is really good. You can't taste any additives in it. Super smooth. Highly recommend it. I mean, social media did not steer me wrong on that one. Now, for my other passion in life, commercial real estate. If you're thinking about getting into commercial real estate, I highly recommend it. Don't wait. But you're going to tell me how. Like, how do I start? Where do I get into? Like, where where do I dip my toe in, so to speak? That is a good question. And I'll tell you, I know a lot of people who started in residential. You know, they got one income producing property, a single family home, and then they got another, and then they bought another, and then here's how you start in commercial real estate. Start small. Exactly like cigar smoking. You're not going to start to tiptoe or check the temperature in the water by jumping into a,000 unit multifamily building. You're not buying an apartment complex on your first commercial real estate transaction. I mean, if you got it like that, I mean, you're you're you're royalty or whatever. Hey, God bless you. I love it. But if you are the 99% of the world, you want to start small. And what does that mean? What is starting small? Starting small is like a four family house. a house that looks a a little bigger than a normal single family house and you see doors all over the place on the outside. That's where four families in. Granted, I preface this very common in the Northeast. It is very common in New Jersey, New York, Philly. I don't know if they have them where you are, wherever you're listening in at, but you know, a four or five families, that's like that's tipping your tipping your toe in. That's checking the temperature of the water. You can also you can also get into commercial real estate by buying a two maybe three store retail building. It's it's maybe four $500,000 asking price, but it's two or three stores. four maybe or one could be one store for 175,000 200,000 whatever it is depending on your your market your area that's how you dip your toe in you could find it now it doesn't have to be retail and it doesn't have to be multif family it could be an office you know you could you could find a single standalone office one office like you know 2,000 ft square feet you could find an office condo That's a that's a whole another ball of wax. But it's a it's a small office that you have to buy into like a a condominium HOA u homeowners association for lack of a better word that but that's actually what it is. That is a way to dip your toe in. Look for your office condos. Look for your four families, your five family. Look for your small retail strip, two stores, three stores, whatever. And how do you find these properties? Well, I'm glad you asked. The number one thing that I I would recommend is go out there and find a competent, successful commercial real estate broker. Nothing against real estate residential real estate agents or realtors. Nothing against them at all. They should stay in their lane. Commercial real estate is the wild, wild west. And if you're not on a horse with a cowboy hat on, you're going to get hurt. I said it. Find yourself a competent commercial real estate broker that knows what they're doing. Ask them some questions. Do your research. See how many deals that they've done. You know, you want to know that they know the market that they know the asset class. The asset class is what type of building it is or you know is it land, is it office, is it retail, is it warehouse, is it industrial, is it multif family? Do they know that market? Do they know that asset class? So, you'd want to know that. Now, alternative to that and the why I recommend hiring a commercial real estate broker is because this is what they do on a daily basis, five to six days a week, maybe seven. They are constantly looking for property. They're constantly helping people. They have networks that they it's taken a lifetime to create that you don't have. They have a network of bankers, of trades people, of landlords that are looking to sell maybe properties offmarket. They've got pocket listings, which are off-market properties. They have a network of people that they have worked for and done numerous favors for and a whole bunch of [ __ ] for a long, long time. This is the value. This is the fire you get when you hire a good CR broker, commercial real estate broker. If you don't find a good one, it could put the worst taste in your mouth. It'd be like getting a big pile of [ __ ] That's what kind of a taste in your mouth you'd get if you hire a bad commercial real estate broker. So, do your homework. Find a good commercial real estate broker. Now, alternative to that, if you're one of those people that don't want to hire a broker, if you're one of those people that want to deal directly with the listing broker, that's the person that has the direct relationship with the owner of that property. Yeah, I live right next to an airport, so sorry about that. If you want to deal just with the person who has the listing to sell that property, then here's what you do. You go to a website called loopnet, l o p ne.com. You go to loopnet.com. It's one of the biggest in the world. And you go to kxy.com. Crexi.com. You can look for properties on those two websites. However, buyer's caution here. That person, you'll you'll find properties. You'll be able to email the the broker directly. You can call the broker directly. That broker has a fiduciary responsibility to that seller. That client of his is his principle. He owes you fairness in trade and honesty and ethical practices. That's what he owes you. But he is not a fiduciary to you unless you sign an agreement with him for he or she to be your fiduciary broker. Now, the chances are is if you're looking on one of those websites, you are not looking for a fiduciary relationship with anyone. You want to negotiate yourself. So, that's how you do it. However, they are going to be fielding offers from everybody. You You're basically on your own. You're out in the water by yourself with a bunch of sharks. Nonetheless, you go to those websites, you find what's in your market, in the cities you want to be in, and then you start calling, emailing, looking, and then you'll set up showings. So, you you go look at them. Sorry audio people, I had to take a puff on my cigar. But it also depends on what you're looking for. Are you looking for space to occupy yourself? Do you want to be an owner operator? Are you looking for a retail store for your own business? Are you looking for an investment opportunity? Are you looking for a little bit of both? Are you looking for a space that you can maybe occupy one office or or one store and then rent out the other? It all depends on what you're looking for. And depending on what you're looking for, there's going to be different criteria. There's going to be different metrics that you need to look for. Now, if you have a broker working for you, that broker can tell you everything that you're looking for, and that broker can match you up with properties that are going to be right in your lane, going to be right up your alley. If you don't have a broker, you're going to be on your own. So, if you want to know what those criteria are, if you want to know what those metrics are, DM me, get a hold of me, email me, text me, call me, whatever, and I can give you some pointers. Once you find those properties, you're going to have to see those properties. If it's an investment property, you're going to need to see a lot of paperwork. You're going to need to see a lot of information. And then once you've ascertained, once you've figured out that this is a building that I want, this is a property that I want, then you have to have a team behind you because you need to make an offer. You need to either have someone draft or review a PSA, a purchase and sale agreement. And then once everyone's agreed on the PSA, then you have to have a team behind you to go through what's called due diligence. And maybe you don't go through in commercial, you really don't do a full like inspection like a home inspection you do when you buy a house. But you may want some trades people. You may want some trades people to take a look at that property. You know, a roofer to take a look at the roof, an HVAC guy to look at the HVAC. You're not going to nine times out of ten you are not going to get a concession from an owner because something had a bad roof or something had a bad HVAC unit. But it gives you peace of mind knowing that when I buy this property, I know I'm going to have to put X amount of hundreds or thousands of dollars into this property to get it tip-top shape for me to rent or let or occupy. If you're going to be owner occupied, you're going to have to have a good title agent. You're gonna have to have an a good attorney. You're gonna have to have a good lender if you're gonna have a mortgage. And all of these people have to work together. And they have to work together well. And I'm just telling you now, if you don't have that, you're going to have an experience where you're going to say this. I never want to buy commercial real estate ever again. So, I suggest that if you're going to do this, have a good team behind you. I mean, it really behooves you. Like why would you want to have a bad team or no team? Why would you want to try to do the whole thing yourself? Well, first of all, you have to have a closing agent or or title agent, escrow agent to do a lot of the work. Like there's title search that needs to be done and all that sort of stuff. And depending on where you are, like in New Jersey, your attorney has to file the C9600, the bulk sale transfer. You know, there's there's a lot of steps. So, the other thing that I would tell you is on a on a single family residence, a single family home, you can probably I'm saying when you locate a home, when you find a home, you make an offer on a home, you can close on that home in about 30, 45 days, 60 max, when you do a commercial transaction, it could be 6 months, a year, maybe longer. So, just be aware that it's a long it's a long-term thing. It's a longhaul. You're not doing this very quickly. But I will tell you this, most people that I know do very well in commercial real estate. People who own commercial real estate do very well at it. They make a very good living. But I will also tell you this because I'm going to give you real talk. Unless it's a really big property with a lot of tenants, a lot of stores, a lot of warehouses, a lot of offices, you don't typically start really making cheddar until you have three properties under your belt. If it's retail, if retail is your thing, if that's if that's what you know, float your boat, when you have three retail tenants, three retail properties, whatever that looks like. If it's one building with three stores or if it's three buildings, one store each, it's when you have three tenants is when it really starts to get popping for you. I have a deal going on right now. 8:00 p.m. Central, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard. When you get to that 3 property mark, that's when you really start to make money. And then after that, after 3 is when it becomes generational. You will start generating money on a regular basis. And you know, I suggest that you segregate your tenants. You segregate your rents and you have a portion of them hitting you on the 1st and a portion of them hitting you on the 15th, right? Because [ __ ] happens. You can't predict anything. You don't know when stuff's going to happen. You don't know when things are going to go out, right? So you have some of your tenants paying you on the first cuz that way you get a boatload of money on the first and then you get a boatload of money in the middle of the month just in case [ __ ] goes sideways. Now you're not saying [ __ ] man I've spent all the money that I got on the first and now you know HVAC unit went out have reserves. I'm also saying that caveat, you know, prefacing that have reserves. Don't be a jackass. Take your money, put some of it, a portion of it into a savings account or however you do your your banking. Have reserves. But what I'm saying is is that you never know what could happen. And if you've got 10 properties, have five of them their rent due on the 1st and five of them due on the 15th. That way you have money coming in all month long. That's only my opinion. That's what I would do because then you can also in a perfect world, everybody pays rent on time. You know, in a really great world, tenants pay rent early, but it's not a perfect world and it's not great. So, sometimes they don't pay on time, sometimes they're late, sometimes they're a month late. And when they're a month late, that really that messes you up. So when you have two different rent schedules, you know, sometimes it mitigates for that. So you start to build your wealth when you're building properties. When you have multiple properties, that's that's when it goes generational. That's when your children's children will always be okay because mom or dad built up a portfolio of 50 or 100 properties and that's that could be thousands of rent payments a month. So you know that your children will always be okay and if you know if you don't have children your charities will always be packed down with money or somebody will always be there to take care of your animals. Whatever, whatever your thing is, whatever your thing is, that is going to be taken care of for the rest of its life, their life, whatever. It's a beautiful world, the world of commercial real estate in the world of cigar smoking, you know, that's why I like them both so much because I'm I'm into both of them. So, I I a subject matter expert, if you will. And they do go together very very well. I have a lot of clients that smoke cigars and there's no better way to end a stressful day than with a drink of your choice. Doesn't have to be alcoholic and a beautiful cigar just mellows you out. So that is my episode for Breaking In. I'm Angelo. This is Sticks and Stones. Until the next one, keep it rolling,