Great week of Puff, Sip, Chat … Repeat with Cigar Mike and all of the SOTL and BOTL from around the country to enjoy the lifestyle that is…. the Cigar and Whiskey Lifestyle!
Special Thanks to CigarMike (Episode 6 Link), Black Starline Cigars, and Konscious Cigars because the PuffChat Podcast is BACK! Look out for their episodes as soon as TODAY! We took a bit of a forced break to respect the social distancing rules but we are now back, healthy and excited to be out on the grind, covering the Cigar and Whiskey happenings in the Metro Atlanta and soon to be beyond!
Upcoming Podcast Episodes are:
- Temi Bush of Emperors Cigars
- Robin Blue of Blue Smoke ATL
- RTB Cigars
- The Brownstone ATL
- and many, many more!
Hint: We’re looking for StickMen and StickWomen to join us on the journey to report on the local cigar and whiskey happenings near you!
Send us a note at communications@stickmen.blog to inquire about how you can help!
Full Transcript of the Conversation below:
StickMan #1: Hey everyone. This is Reggie AKA StickMan #1, coming to you from the Highland Cigar Company in Downtown Atlanta.
Mike: Yes, in between
StickMan #1: So, Hey, thanks for joining Puff Chat podcast. All right. I have somebody here that’s a special guest, as always, we try to bring special guest and really kind of just kick back and chop it up over a little whiskey and a good stick. Um, so my guest today is Cigar Mike as we call him. What’s up Cigar Mike?
Mike: What’s going on brother.
StickMan #1: Thank you for joining me.
Mike: Thank you for having me man. I appreciate this.
StickMan #1: Okay. So, um, last week for those who were paying attention on Instagram and everything, last week was a crazy week. I probably didn’t get it in nearly enough. I wanted to do more, but conflicts of roles, I couldn’t do it the way I wanted it to. But last week was the Atlanta Cigar Experience.
Mike: Yes, the ACE.
StickMan #1: The ACE, Atlanta Cigar Experience, and you were the mayor. I don’t know if that’s what they call you officially, but that was, you were the mayor of Atlanta last week. I don’t know if you realized that.
Mike: I was more like the court jester. I’m more like the court jester of Atlanta.
StickMan #1: As witnessed by your service that says Cigar Mike.
StickMan #1: So that was cool, man. I wish I could have made it to more event. I only got to make it to a couple of them, but the ones I did do and it just, and even kind of the side events where people just ran into hooked up at the cigar lounge with his rounds, it was beautiful, man
Mike: It looked like you had a good time.
StickMan #1: Well, I had a great time. I wish I could have had even more time.
Mike: It’s alright, there’s always next year.
StickMan #1: There’s always next year. I want to be a bigger part of it next year. So…
Mike: That’s cool.
StickMan #1: Yeah. I can’t wait.
Mike: I tell you before, when we were in here talking, I said, come out and do whatever you want to do. I’m fine with it. I wish you would have sold t-shirts.
StickMan #1: Well, it’s funny you say…
Mike: You should have made a lot of money. You sold a few?
StickMan #1: We sold a few, if you ever boost those. Okay. But we should have sold a whole lot more, I wasn’t prepared.
Mike: Thursday, Thursday night.
StickMan #1: Thursday.
Mike: Yeah, Thursday night.
StickMan #1: Okay. We’ll talk about that.
Mike: Yeah.
StickMan #1: That was my night.
Mike: Wednesday and Thursday were like, dope, well, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Like the biggest nights that, uh….
StickMan #1: Wednesday, you sold [inaudible 02:41] so special, I think.
Mike: Because they were just kinda, I mean, I don’t, I don’t do pretentious.
StickMan #1: Okay. Neither do I, by the way.
Mike: Right. So, I just want to fund environment. And when I invite my vendors to come, I invite them because, you know, you’re a part of this culture and I know how you’re going to carry it. So, don’t just come here and spend money when you have an opportunity to make some of the money back. Because as a business, as a brand, you know, we still have a fiduciary responsibility to ourselves.
StickMan #1: Yes, we do.
Mike: But a lot of times we get so caught up in the love of, man, I love cigars, and it’s something that you want to be at any way. They’re just like, man, I’m just going to go. And I’m like, bring some stuffs, sell some stuffs, make some money. Like—
StickMan #1: You do have to eat.
Mike: You got to eat.
StickMan #1: You got to eat a little bit.
Mike: Yeah. And we drink a lot.
StickMan #1: We eat a little and drink a lot.
Mike: Right. Hip the tab involved.
StickMan #1: So now is the Atlanta Cigar Experience. Is that your baby? Is that your brainchild? That’s something that you came up with, or it’s just Atlanta cigar community in general you came up with, what’s the Genesis of that?
Mike: Well, for many years I’ve been like, I wanted to do a cigar band, a festival or something. And then, and all actuality, um, Henry, uh, from Atlanta cigar week, he came to me and he said he wanted to do this event. And when he said it out, it just went, boom. It was all laid out in my mind. I knew what I wanted to do.
StickMan #1: You knew exactly what you want to do.
Mike: I was like, yeah, hey, cool.
StickMan #1: How long ago was that.
Mike: That was 2016.
StickMan #1: Okay. So, this is like the fourth-year event.
Mike: Right. So, we did one year together and I guess you could chalk it up to creative differences. But after that first year, they want to go off in a different direction and that’s fine. And you know, and I went off and I did my own thing and I created, uh, at that time it was Cigar Experience Atlanta.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: That’s what it was for the last two years, and I decided to rebrand it this year into the ACE Atlanta Cigar Experience, you know, because it’s first things first, you’re coming to Atlanta, you’re going to get the cigars and get the experience. So that’s why I switched it up and called it ACE.
StickMan #1: People came from all over the country. I was very impressed, man. I met so many beautiful people from all over the country that loves cigar.
Mike: Most people were really bored. I don’t know what it came from. It came out of nowhere.
StickMan #1: And you know what, during these times with COVID, when we’re all supposed to be social distance and still, I didn’t expect it to be, I knew it was going to be Atlanta folks getting out, but I didn’t expect so many people to travel, that’s kudos to you, obviously. That’s a lot, a lot of respect for cigar, even though they say you still ain’t shit. That’s the respect.
Mike: So, the cigar Mike ain’t shit is usually what you’re saying on the plane on the way home. “Cigar Mike ain’t shit, oh, man.”
StickMan #1: Who was that Dude?
Mike: “I am so tired, my soul need rest.” You know, that’s usually what you’re saying on the way home. So that’s kind of where that came from.
StickMan #1: Yeah. Okay. And you had it laid out all week. I was checking out the lineup for those that don’t know, Mike publish a flyer right before the event. And it was like a week long kind of journey of some of the top cigar lounges in Atlanta that we could just kind of kick back and chill. I mean, was that easy to put together?
Mike: They’re friends of mine, I mean, it was cool. Like, uh, you know, I called BT and Biggs over at the city, but Hey man, guys, you know, want to do something on a Monday night. And they were like, you know, okay, cool. And um, you know, they were doing the motivation Monday podcast over there.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: Um, with Dre and Philip, Trey, Ron, all those guys, big shout out to them and they said, Hey man, we want to be on here. We want you on, but we want to talk about your week. Like I was wanting to be on and talk about, I wanted to hear what they was talking about. And they say interesting guy, you know what I’m saying?
StickMan #1: Yes, yes.
Mike: And they were like, nah, you know, so they, they interviewed me and they were so gracious. They did like little many segments with all of my vendors.
StickMan #1: Wow.
Mike: With everybody, the t-shirt vendors, uh, the cigar vendors, like everybody who came in and was a part of it. They did like a little mini segment with them too. So it’s just, everybody’s just been very gracious.
StickMan #1: It was probably hard to decide which Cigar lounge allows us to do it at it. There is so many—
Mike: I tell everybody.
StickMan #1: I tell our friends in Atlanta, that doesn’t live in Atlanta. This is ground zero. If you think the cigar movement is real across the country and across the world, it is. But right here, especially, I don’t know what it is, but Atlanta seems to be kind of like, ground zero, that’s the way to describe it. I think.
Mike: We just move a different way.
StickMan #1: Yeah.
Mike: You know, when people come here, it takes them a little while, because they’re like, you know, when I’m here, it’s this, and I’m here and this, I’m like, but this day, you know, we got whatever field you want. We have, you want to be buttoned up and hard body. We got that. You want to be in gym shoes, gym shorts, you know, somewhere to go after your golf game. We got that. And we got everything in between. So it’s, you know, it’s like Tuesday night was over at life and times. I mean, we had, uh, you know, we had the building, we had the parking spaces blocked off. We had, uh, LSF, uh, SIS came through Christine and dropped the trailer how with the, she got patios on the trailer and all type of stuff. But it was just a different vibe than Monday. You know, we had DJ Monday, we had a DJ Tuesday and it was like, you know, the vendors were out there. The taco man was out there. We ran the taco man out.
StickMan #1: Wait, wait, you ran them out?
Mike: We ran them out.
StickMan #1: Ran them out, do you mean you bought all his…
Mike: Everything, bought everything.
StickMan #1: So, he didn’t even, he wasn’t even expecting the love he was going to get.
Mike: The event started at 6:00, but man, we’re taking it down at 8:30.
StickMan #1: Because he had no more.
Mike: They bought everything.
StickMan #1: Damn.
Mike: They bought everything from him.
StickMan #1: That’s Atlanta showing up.
Mike: Hey Man. They bought everything from him.
StickMan #1: Oh, wow.
Mike: You know, and I mean, we had an amazing time. My boy Kenyatta DJ that night, as well as a DJ Maddo.
StickMan #1: I saw the video. I think you got on the microphone. Is that the night you got everybody a little hyped up a little bit?
Mike: I did that once or twice. Can’t exactly say when.
StickMan #1: Got everybody hyped up, man. You had everybody doing the, you know, the bouncing and everything. I loved it, man. So, you must have a little DJ in your background yourself.
Mike: No, uh I’ve uh, MC for a long time, I’ve MC in all kinds of concerts and different stuff. And you know.
StickMan #1: It’s all natural for you to get on the mic.
Mike: Oh yeah, it’s fun. It’s fun. I like to, you know, the MC like I can certainly move the crowd. So, when you can, you know, in a respectful tense, when you can say, you know, give commands, and the crowds do this, or they do this, or they put their hands up, but everybody’s having a good time. And you know, I can take the room from everybody, just sitting here, like, yeah, this is cool to…
StickMan #1: It’s all love, let’s just getting rid of it.
Mike: Yeah. Because I made a big misconception that we’re a bunch of old cats just sitting around smoking. Like we’re not the 45 to 55 year old that came before us. Like they were old.
StickMan #1: I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m in my thirties.
Mike: Man, well, I mean, we get it in how we get it in.
StickMan #1: That’s right, people don’t understand.
Mike: I mean, I had people that came in town from Monday to Monday, and was at every party, every night, you know what I’m saying? And we go, we do a pop-up, we got a couple hour break. You do a party. Leave there, go to an after party. And the next morning people call us, Cigar Mike, where are we at? what are we doing today?
StickMan #1: They were sleeping in, they were not ready to go to the next one.
Mike: Because we have the same energy level. We just don’t want to go to the places where the kids are.
StickMan #1: No, no.
Mike: We want to use our energy to something that we—
StickMan #1: It’s something like we move at a different speed. We move at a different speed from the kids.
Mike: Yeah, they, you know, I mean, the kids don’t have the energy yet. So, they did it all to about two, three o’clock in the morning, and they are (tired), you know, we lighten this day. It wasn’t [inaudible 11:23], they got another spot, Let’s go.
StickMan #1: Well, we move at a nice, slow and steady pace.
Mike: Because we learn.
StickMan #1: They go off about two, three hours and then they’re done.
Mike: They’re done.
StickMan #1: So, which night of all, and I know every night was spectacular, and I’m fortunate. Like I said, I couldn’t make them all, but which night was kind of like the night, last week. That you said that even for a Cigar Mike, I’m like, shit. I looked back at that night. That was the one.
Mike: Well, I guess, like you said, every night was special in its own way, every night. It was incredible. But I’m gonna tell you something, Sunday night at Kings.
StickMan #1: Damn it, I missed that one. That’s the one I really, I knew that might be off the chain because it was final night.
Mike: Listen, it started raining. They pulled out okay.
StickMan #1: Umbrella on one hand, sneaking the other hand and keep it, and keep it moving.
Mike: Well. And we just did, we didn’t stop.
StickMan #1: Put your stick down just to take another sip, and keep it moving.
Mike: Keep it moving, and fortunately, we were blessed. The rain passed, you know, so I mean, I had a ball, then I was on the mic more that night than any other night.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: And, uh, Sasha, she’s another MC and party host, you know, she was out there, uh, celebrating with me and she grabbed the mic and then I grabbed the mic and that was actually our first, we known each other for years, but that was our first time working together.
StickMan #1: You doing some freestyle and all that.
Mike: I mean, we just, whatever comes up and comes out, you know, just keeping the crowd engaged, you know, but it was great working with Sasha for the first time. We definitely going to do it again. We’re going to do some more stuff. Uh, hopefully in the near future. Um, Saturday night, Saturday night was amazing too. Uh, shout out to, uh, lipsticks and fingertips. She’s one of my sponsors for that. Uh, the Cigar Life guy, uh, somebody—
StickMan #1: That guy right there.
Mike: Dave, my guy, somebody that came in at the last minute, just because we wanted to set it down with Preston. My man, he owns a tailored smoke in Charlotte, in the epicenter and up in Concord. So we brought down DJ strategy from Charlotte just to do that event. Wow. And it was, it was ham, it was apeshit. They had a good time.
StickMan #1: Was that like the most crowded night too? Did everybody kind of, Hey, this is the crescendo, so we all need to be there.
Mike: Nah, man. It was just like nice. Every night we were still playing. Six out of seven nights, we were at 200 plus.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: Yeah. The only night that we weren’t was a small, I designed a small event for like 60 people and we had like 47 out of 60, and that was it, because I wanted to do something. I just wanted to throw something a little different in there for people who wanted to kind of come down a little bit, chill out for a time. And then Saturday we went right back to it. Like we started at five o’clock on Saturday. We took it from five o’clock out.
StickMan #1: We started early at Havana Cigars. We had the pre-game.
Mike: With a little pre-game pop up there. And then, uh, Sunday actually started at four o’clock. So, we rolled it out on Sunday.
StickMan #1: And that was a good day too. You got the NFL going off throughout the day.
Mike: Right. Not a good day for your falcon’s fan, but it was, you know.
StickMan #1: The last few weeks haven’t been a good for falcon’s fans.
Mike: Right, right. So again, lower your expectations.
StickMan #1: Lower your expectation. So what can people look forward to next year at ACE? Uh, is it going to be bigger and better? I mean, I’m going to knock on wood, find some wood around here to knock and say we’re going to be post COVID society hopefully.
Mike: Right.
StickMan #1: And then what happens next? I mean, we post COVID, we should just be able to go crazy. Right?
Mike: Yeah. I mean a lot of things I didn’t do, uh, we were gonna do some stuff involving, um, do some stuff with pores, some stuff with fast cars, we’ll do. Uh, okay. We also had a golf tournament plan. We had a few big things that we were going to do and we, this really, I kind of finalized everything, really, to be honest with y’all, about 10 days before, you know, and that’s when the itinerary will come out.
StickMan #1: When you stage ready [inaudible 15:55].
Mike: I knew people will come in and they just needed to know what to do.
StickMan #1: Okay, where to go, where to be, right?
Mike: Right. And the people here just wanted to know where to be, you know, and it was, you know, dealing with, you know, restrictions, and you know, how many people I can have, where I can do this. I was having to change venues. Uh, matter of fact, the last venue change was actually on Thursday, about three hours before the event, because it rained on Thursday.
StickMan #1: I remember that.
Mike: And that was supposed to be an outdoor event and we have vendors and tents and all that. Uh, shout out to the owner and staff over at parlor. Because we were going to do it over their parlor. And um, it was like, what are we going to do? I was able to call my buddies over at cigar city club. They said, man, come on, bring it over here, put out the notification. And we had great event.
WHO IS CIGAR MIKE?
StickMan #1: Still here, chopping it up on with my man Cigar Mike, we just finished talking about the Atlanta Cigar Experience, crazy week, last week, but people keep asking me and I’ll be honest, you know, lemme back off for a second. When I first started sticking and I want to tell people a little story when I first started sticking it, this was back in January of 2020. So we’re brand new brand new outfit. I started going around, hitting up a lot of cigar lounges in Atlanta, doing just what we’re doing right now, doing a little Puff, Sip, Chat. And almost every person I talked to said, have you talk to Cigar Mike yet? I go to the next lounge. Have you talked to Cigar Mike yet? I’m like, yeah, I guess I got to talk to Cigar Mike.
And then I was out at Leaf Life Lounge, was having a thing with Kelvin and we finally got a chance to meet and been chopping it up here and there ever since. So, I appreciate you spending the time with us. But I want to know, and I’m sure people out there that may be not familiar with you want to know, who is this guy that they say ain’t shit. Because I think you are some shit! And you welcome me. You put on a fantastic event last week and I guess we want to know who is Cigar Mike.
Mike: Well, Hey, I’m from here.
StickMan #1: So, you are Atlanta guy.
Mike: Yes, the Decatur, the County road and Glenwood. Yes.
StickMan #1: So, this is home for you then.
Mike: Yeah. This is definitely home. I started selling cigars about 24, 25 years ago. I was actually a restroom attendant, the guy with the, Hey, the towel and you know, sell the mints in the black and my house. Okay. And the guy,
StickMan #1: That’s what we call starting low and working your way up, man. You got to do grind in and out.
Mike: Yeah. I mean, you know, feed my family, you know? And um, so the guy who got me into it, he said, yo, if you sell cigars, like at that time you could buy like Mac noodles and parties and stuff like that, and it was 6 or $7, could sell for $20 a piece. Well, that’s all the math I needed. So, I just go in cigar sells, and basically be like, what do people smoke? They smoke this. Okay, give me five of them. Give me five of them. Give me five of them, pay for them, and leave, you know, after a point I actually started smoking cigars. And then I said, okay, well I’m only gonna keep the stuff that I smoked, that way, if I don’t sell it, I can smoke it.
StickMan #1: That’s true.
Mike: I got something to smoke and I was doing something that I guess was odd because I walked into cigar stores, then on different sides of town. Because it depends on where I’m buying, my account was. So, if I gotta be over here, I go to the cigar shop over here, this one, and I was buying 15, 20 cigars at a time, you know, three, four days out of the week, which I didn’t know at the time was an oddity because to me I’m servicing the trap.
StickMan #1: Yeah.
Mike: This is what I do. And I never hung out in cigar lounge, cigar brick and mortars. There were no lounges at the time. So, I never hung out in them because, you know, when I go to Walmart to pick up my mints and my black and mild, I don’t hang out there.
StickMan #1: That’s true.
Mike: So, you know, and my buddy, he’s feeling good, great friend of mine. I was like a brother. And I would go by and call him big poppy, down in Florida. He, uh, I would see him just in passing with speed, you know, and he said, hey man. So, you know, they put couches in here for a reason. And I said, huh? He said, sit your ass down. I was like, all right, cool. So, I was sitting and talking to him and I knew a couple of the proprietors and then meeting more people, and in doing that, they introduced me to a lot of the reps and you know, the reps would talk to me and they gave me a lot of cigars. I’m like, Hey man, listen, now I’m going to sell most of this shit. So, if you want to take it back and just leave me with like two, um, I’m cool with that. You know? And I talked to them about it, but eventually, you know, people started asking me questions about cigars and the business and you know, I started helping out shop owners and I started helping out, you know, reps, different things like that.
And I’m like, wait a minute, now am a hustler. So, I’m like, there should be some money in there somewhere. So, I go with the term tobacco consultant, and nothing came up. So, I said, well, I’d do that. So, I started my tobacco consulting business, and I’ve been throwing events since I was a kid. You know.
StickMan #1: That was second nature to you.
Mike: Yeah, I started working in nightclubs when I was 17. Like I was fully involved in working in night clubs when I was still in high school. So yeah, that was second nature. So, I was like, man, this shit will be fun to do Cigars, Scotch, and Chocolate like…
StickMan #1: Cigar, Scotch, and?
Mike: Chocolate.
StickMan #1: Chocolate, okay.
Mike: And I was like, I want to do that event. So the event consisted of three different cigars. No, I’m sorry. One Cigar, three chocolates, three different scotches. I paired them all together and I sold tickets for like 45 bucks. And I had like 42, 43 people, I was like woo.
DON’T STOP! GET IT! GET IT!
StickMan #1: The cigar scotch and chocolate kind of took off from there.
Mike: No, I mean, it was just kind of, there was a fun thing for me to do in Atlanta. I don’t know if everybody really knows about strip club culture in Atlanta, but you know, especially back in the day, strip clubs for us, it’s like I would go in and during the day, I eat the $7 stick with the potato and you know, have a couple of beers. Oh man.
StickMan #1: Oh man.
Mike: Oh yeah. And um, so they changed the management and a guy. Because I was sitting in there because I could smoke cigars and nobody would bother me, you know? And they changed the management and I got arrested. So, Patrick Dobro was, uh, became the day shift manager. But I knew him from when I worked, I did the bathrooms and I did some promotions at the gold club. So, he walked in to me and he goes, Hey, what the hell are you doing here?
I said, what are you doing here? He said, well, I’m the manager. I said, well, I’m leaving, so, you know. So, I’d see him two or three times a week. And he says, Hey man, you smoke cigars. I know you know how to promote, why don’t you do an event here. I said, okay, yeah. No, I’m serious. I said, okay, go. My birthday is coming up, I wasn’t thinking about that. And right after my birthday, which is at the end of May, he sees me up. Then he calls me in his office, he said man, what the hell are we going to do? I said, we’re doing an event. So, what are we going to call it? I said, Smoker’s retreat. He’s like, all right, what do you need?
StickMan #1: Smoker’s retreat. Right?
Mike: I said, I need this, this, this, this, this, this and this. He said, all right, well, you ain’t getting this, you ain’t getting this. I said, cool. At that event, the first event was June 29th, 2009. I had 42 people and I knew each and every one of them. And it’s basically because of my traveling, just always being around at different cigar shops. When you’re saying, Hey, listen, I’m doing this event, the last Friday of the month. It’s from like four to eight at the strip club. No cover charge, man, just come down and hang out. All right. So we’ve got five dancers, still six. All right. So just a bunch of my cigar buddies came out, we hung out, we had a great time. You know, I made a couple of bucks. It just started growing from there. And then like the first time I made like 7 to 800 bucks, I was like, Ooh, this is real.
StickMan #1: I actually can make a couple of dollars.
Mike: Take this seriously in a minute. So, a story within that story is, um, my friend Bobby, she was working with patrol tequila at the time, and they sponsored the event. So I said, you know what, I’m gonna make you guys a cigar. So, I had the guys, the PD cigars, they rolled cigars for me at the event. So, I had them infused the cigars with a little tequila.
StickMan #1: I like the story already, I loved that.
Mike: So, it was called the tequila e special, which that’s why my cigarette now it’s called Cigar Mike’s brand e special, there’s just a spin from that. But a few people had it and they were like, you should sell this cigar. And I’m like, yeah, you’re drunk, and the cigar was free. So yeah.
StickMan #1: You’re like, you can’t be serious. You don’t really want me to sell this cigar.
Mike: A buddy of mine, um, Dave Stewart, he was working over at cigars and he had one, and he was like, Mike, you’ll sell these cigars. It’s like, we’ll do an event here. And that was like my home store. I was in there almost every day. And he said, I’ll write you a check right now for a deposit for eight [inaudible 26:40]. Okay. So, I got on the phone with the manufacturers and said, okay, this is what I need. All right, cool. So we did the event and we just brought in some tequila, we had some nachos and I promoted it. That was November 9th, 2009. And we blew the doors off the place, we sold just about every single stick that night.
StickMan #1: It was kinda off and running from there.
Mike: It was off and running, but it wasn’t something that was having manufactured here. So, it was cost heavy. It was time for him. You know, I sold about a thousand sticks that month, but it wasn’t sustainable. So, I kind of laid the project down, but the Smoker’s Retreat went on for 10 years. We did, uh, we did 10 years of that.
StickMan #1: You’re no longer doing this Smoker’s Retreat?
Mike: No, no. That’s, I mean, 10 years was good. And after that, I just didn’t know what I was looking forward to, 11 years, 20 years, you know, I was like, you know, so I just kind of let the project go honestly and closed down. So, I was like, ahhh.
StickMan #1: So, is that when you kind of pivot in and say, you know, I am going to focus on building my cigar brand at that point?
Mike: Well, I had already had the cigar brand, but people didn’t know it because I was actually giving the cigar away for free periodically at that event. So, people didn’t know what it was. So, I wanted to see people’s reaction to it and people were, they were enjoying the cigar and then I was like, well, that’s my cigar. And they were like, what do you mean your cigar? Like, well, that’s my brand. I just didn’t put a band on it. And when I said that, I said it was a little too early, that’s why my band is pretty basic because then people start saying what we want it, and when are you going to ship it, when are you going to this? So, my manufacturer, Ben Rosario, from Don Kiki cigars manufacturing, we’re on the phone and he was like, look, let’s do something basic. Let’s get the band done. Let’s get it. You know, people want to order it. So that’s kind of how that occurred.
StickMan #1: Wow. So, you really, that became the kind of, took off and does that, well, let me back up, you were already kind of an influencer right now, today with the social media, we’ve got this influence, but I see you as a major, major influencer, not only you got your cigar brand, you started off promoting events, your own events, with your cigar brand, but now I see you as a cigar brand, but also a major influencer in the culture, really. Is that safe? Would you describe yourself that way?
Mike: I would.
StickMan #1: How would you describe yourself?
Mike: Um, I’m a guy who loves what I do.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: You know, I get to share information. I get to help people with their journey, whether it be just at the consumer or help people build brands, help people build out brick and mortars, you know? So…
StickMan #1: So, if I ever decide to do a cigar lounge one day, I need to talk to you.
Mike: And we’ll take it from pre-construction to grand open.
StickMan #1: Oh, I see. Call this man. Anybody thinking about doing it. Sound like a consulting business right there.
Mike: It is. I still have the consultant there. Still do that. We still do that. Actually. We’re getting ready to go and do a 2200 square foot basement in the house. Um, the gentleman wants to turn it into his own cigar lounge.
StickMan #1: I’m imagining that’s going to be tricky. Right. Because he probably doesn’t want that cigar smoke, you filter it out to the main living area.
Mike: Right. But I mean, we have all the contractors. We do, we do all of that stuff. His basement will be like any other cigar lounge when we get done with it. And then we have another project on the table now. Well, the COVID kind of put it back, but I’m building out a cigar lounge in St. Thomas for the first time.
StickMan #1: Okay.
Mike: So, and that one, I thought they just wanted my help, like okay, bringing in cigars and doing this. And they were like, Oh yeah, you gotta meet with the architects. And I was like, for what? You just put the cigars on the wall. And they were like, no dummy, like this is…
StickMan #1: This is your thing.
Mike: So, I get to, I have full autonomy. So, I’m designing it from front to back and everything that goes in it.
StickMan #1: Wow.
Mike: Yeah.
StickMan #1: So, you’re a designer, part architect, consultant.
Mike: No, I just talked to the architect.
StickMan #1: You talked to the architect. You make sure the architect knows what the hell he is doing.
Mike: Can you slide that over here? This is a slide deck to the left, and then this one over here. Yeah, I do that. I don’t, you know, I just, I just give him a visual and then they make it happen from there.
StickMan #1: So, there’s so much more to the Cigar Mike than I even realized, that’s an impressive thing, you doing your thing.
Mike: Is a little bit, let’s try to stay working, man. It’s hard out here, you know.
StickMan #1: It’s real hard. It’s real hard. Well, I hope we get to collaborate a lot in the future.
Mike: Definitely man.
StickMan #1: Stickman, you planning on sticking around.
Mike: Definitely man.
StickMan #1: No plan on going anywhere.
Mike: We’re going to Vegas. We’re going to Tampa. Come on, man.
StickMan #1: I will be there.
Mike: Hang with your boy, man.
StickMan #1: I will be offended if you don’t invite me.
Mike: Well, you got a blank invitation. So that way I can’t offend you.
StickMan #1: Okay, here we go, blank invitation, stick man. We’ll be in the house. I appreciate it, man. So, as we wrap up here, I’m gonna cut right there and I’m gonna come back and say that again.
SHOUT OUT
StickMan #1: So, as we wrap up here, um, going back to the Atlanta Cigar Experience, you know, you let it be known earlier to me when we kind of talking off camera with that, you, weren’t alone in this, this kind of, you know, with a lot of help, you pulled it together. You might’ve been the kind of the orchestrator, or the choir director. What I mean, pulling out of sleeve and letting everybody know what’s going on, but you had some help. You want to kind of give a little shout out to them.
Mike: Well, I had a lot of help, um, starting with all the venues in Atlanta. I mean, uh, with especially like Kenyatta, uh, Little Brothers, all the guys over at Paradise Island Cigars, uh, MJ and Castle, Life and Times, that whole team over there, you know, they’re always behind me in whatever I do. And they were like, look, bro, you want to do something like, we with you, we’re going to show up. We going to be there. You know, you have that, of course, cliff.
Harold and the whole Highland Cigar’s team are always with me. Uh, Brian, the Quan, all the guys over at the city. Julius, Lonzo over at Cigar City Club. Um, wow. Who else? CJ Ackbar the whole team over at fellowship, Anthony over at King, Prince at Prince lounge, you know, those are just, you know, the various lounges that I was able to access and basically like calling a friend saying, Hey brother, this is what I want to do in your spot.
You know, and being able to execute, you know, that. I had brand ambassadors. Brandy wheat owns her Cigar closet out of Chicago. Will Walts, Stoggy the goddamn beer out of Chicago.
StickMan #1: Stoggy the goddamn beer.
Mike: Stoggy the goddamn beer. We all know. I also had Dionne, the founder of the Cigar crews all over there. I’m like 14 to 15 cigar crews. Naimo from skin ship’s cigars. The wonderful treater. Elegant plume out of Charlotte. Then we had Cigar life guy, Dave been behind me the whole day, Christine from lipsticks and fingertips, she’s in there with my buddy Preston, from Taylor smoke up in Charlotte, and in Concorde. Tyson, Ty boogie, you know, Ty’s been there for me, you know, and like I said, none of this could happen, it’s a collaborative effort.
It’s a whole lot of, you know, nuts and bolts. They go into it and I was able to pull them together, but not without the support of people who believed in me and believed in the project, you know what I’m saying? They know that I put together events for cigar smokers to come and smoke. I just want us to be able to do what we do, you know, uh, GTG, the Good Time Gang, of course, from all over. They’ve been down with me from day one. I mean, those guys booked some rooms. They booked rooms months ago from Monday to Monday. They’re like, we there, you know. Kevin Watkins out of Houston, Black Cigar Aficionados, you know, he came through Cigar Royalty, Cigar Porn. My man Dan, you know, of course James Lee, you know, they were there, they had my back all night. Bella cigar pigs came down from Nashville, you know, to do her thing, Blue Smoke was here. And you know, they had my back like dude, it’s, you know, a crazy ride.
StickMan #1: Nobody does anything in life, in my opinion, has any type of success in life without a little help, or a lot of help, you got to get help somewhere.
Mike: My vendors jumped on and they was like, Mike, whatever you need, you know, Eric from, uh, Blackstar life cigars out of Chicago. Ron, RTB cigar, Spade Cigars out of Houston, they were of course involved in Atlanta cigar week and then turned around and flew back to Atlanta to rock with me. Ron Ford supported me a lot too. The Bay Royals and garden network out of San Francisco area. Cigar Rockstar was again, he was a part of it, the Atlanta Cigar Week, flew out Tuesday, party, Tuesday went back to the airport. You know, we had an amazing time. You know what I’m saying? So, shout out to Cigar Rockstar. It’s so many people like, I don’t want to forget anybody because everybody, you know, everybody has been amazing. A J Adam from the Lord Them Cigars, thought he was sneaking up on me, but I snuck up on him. You know what I’m saying? A J has always been a big supporter, even Frankie tubs out of Chicago. You know.
StickMan #1: All these people that he’s mentioning, I expect to see you on the Puff Chat podcast, got to have you on the Puff Chat podcast. This is just the beginning. We just getting started. You have been started, but we just getting started, and we want to have you on.
Mike: Oh, can’t forget. Cause he’ll kill me. Eric Esfonosa. Eric, I Love you, bro. I appreciate everything you did. Uh, Eddie Terizona at Terizona Cigars, AG cigars, uh, my man, Johnny and Ron, you know, stepped in, you know, with their product. Like I said, man, people showed me an unbelievable amount of support every night. I was just looking around like, damn, there is a lot of people here.
StickMan #1: I was impressed. I was like, this is some real shit, real shit. And it was love, man. I mean, it was, I’m not Cigar Mike, but even just me being Stick Man. People not even knowing who I am, but they said, that’s what’s so beautiful about this culture and say, come on in brother, they welcome me in, and I appreciate it.
Mike: And my man, we on Monday, he rocked the mic with me, big shout out. Uh, I asked him for a special favor and I was like, bro, would you get up here and rock this for me and he was like, I got you, Ed lover got on the mic and then rapping the light. But Ed came out like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know what I’m saying? A great guy, him, [inaudible] Patrick, Big Size to have the big field, Ferrari field, stepped in, wow. The Motivation Monday’s guys, Trey, Ron, Nate, everybody.
StickMan #1: You all listening to this, man, everybody listening to this, this is crazy.
Mike: This is, I mean
StickMan #1: The list goes on and on.
Mike: Yeah. So, another huge shout out to my buddy Rob loud, uh, Prescido Tequila, came through, they were part of Tuesday night. We also had R’N’R Cigars. Deuces Cigar brand in the building. Kevin Brown, Conscious Cigars out of Tampa, Florida, along with the, uh, Maduro Marauders, uh, they were there. Always Big Ben, Don Kiki Cigars, K by Cam Burger again, supported, uh, support is super big. I appreciate you brother. Man, like I said, it was so many people, you know, that stepped in and did, you know, just whatever they could. Oh man, the guy who crossing me out every week, Don Williams, A J Fernandez Cigars at the big old Oscar GTO Cigars. Appreciate you, buddy. Thank you for everything that you did, man. Man, I hope I didn’t forget anybody, if I did, I sincerely apologize, it’s been a lot, but thank you.
StickMan #1: This man hasn’t slept since last week, so, forgive him.
Mike: I’m good. We’re good. Guys still working on it. Still working on it.
StickMan #1: That’s right. None of us are perfect.
Mike: But if I forgot, like I said, anybody, you have my sincere apologies. Everybody was noticed. So thank you all. So yeah, it’s, you know, it’s been a real movement. It’s been a Supreme blessing. I’m glad to be able to reach so many people, you know, Alejandro from Caldwell, Caldwell’s cigars, they were in town like right before the COVID hit, him, Robert Caldwell, they were like, Mike, just tell us what we can do. Like we got your back, we’re in. I made a phone call, Hey bro, I need this on the way, Alex, from Rosa to San Diego Cigars, I called Alex, I said, bro, I need a favor. You know?
And he was like, just tell me what you need so I can send it to you. You know? So…
StickMan #1: The love was everywhere, man.
Mike: Everywhere.
StickMan #1: And the blessings, that’s awesome.
Mike: Everywhere. Also shout out to Ben, and the whole team at Davidoff, uh, Ben, the Davidoff store in Atlanta, but also that Davidoff corporate. Alberto, I appreciate you guys. I appreciate what you guys did for me. You know, we did a Davidoff for men on Friday, and they were very supportive of that. So we super appreciate that. Like I said, man, you know, I feel like, and I said this before. I feel like somebody when they win a Grammy and they’re trying to remember, like, I don’t want to forget, you know.
StickMan #1: You don’t want to leave anybody behind because so many people played an important part, you know, all coming together.
Mike: And then my mom and my daughter, like they would just call and be like, you all right? Yeah. You’ve eaten? I think so. Eat. And they would hang up because they knew I was running.
StickMan #1: They know how hard you were going.
Mike: Yeah. And ain’t me. You can’t ask for more than that, you know?
StickMan #1: No matter how old you get, you still mama’s baby. You know that.
Mike: You’re mama’s baby. And I guess, I’m my daughter’s baby too. Because she treated me like a kid. Dad, did you do that? Did you go to…
StickMan #1: Making sure Daddy sticks around.
Mike: Did you go to sleep? You need to go to sleep, Dad. You ain’t get no rest dad, you know, but I love her to death. You know what I’m saying? So, you know, I mean, thank God.
StickMan #1: That’s what this is all about.
Mike: Though, I went through some stuff, but you know.
StickMan #1: That’s what this is all about. So Hey, thank you man. I appreciate you.
Mike: Appreciate you bro.
StickMan #1: Thank you. Stick Man. I got Mike.
Mike: Stick with him.
StickMan #1: Hey, Atlanta Cigar Experience, 2021. Look out for it.
Mike: Yes, Indeed.
StickMan #1: And look out for future experience on the Stick Man blog. Subscribe to our channel on stickman.blog. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, at TheStickMenBlog, and our YouTube Channel, also TheStickMenBlog.
Mike: Oh, and before I get killed Jane, Victoria, the whole team. I appreciate you. You know what I’m saying? Play the big part and when I was able, to last week, so thank you.
StickMan #1: See you next time. Puff Sip Chat, …Repeat. Stack Man, #1. Am out. Peace.
