Stay Tranquilo - Starting a Cigar Company and What it Means to Live an EPIC Life?

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

In this episode of the Stay Tranquilo Podcast we interview, Founder of Epic Cigars, Dean. Dean is a cigar enthusiast turned entrepreneur. From working as a police, to working real estate development in the Caribbean, to cigars, Dean has lived an "epic" life to say the least. Dean talks on a few topics: the discipline it takes to start your business the different type of cigars what to pair your cigars with main points to focus on when starting a cigar brand fitness what it means to live life epic Take a listen to the full convo and let us know what you think!      Follow us on social:     Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/staytranquilo/        LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-dunand-200077124/ Follow Epic on social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/epiccigars/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

guys welcome to another episode of the state non-kilo podcast as you can see here we're here at the absolute cigar shop here on 8th street uh right next to our famous versailles uh i'm here with dean the founder of epic cigars we thought what better place to do it than you know in one of the home bases of the cigar and it's next an iconic spot in miami versailles so um we're pumped for this conversation it's it's i think it's going to be a hell of a time um and uh Yeah, so I'll throw it to you, tell them a little bit about yourself and what you got going on. Listen, thanks. I very appreciate you having me on the show.

It's just we've only known each other a few weeks. It's great to me, but it feels like we've known each other for one. Yeah, we made a great connection, and I appreciate what you're doing and the good energy that you're putting out there. So it was obviously just a matter of time before we could get together and do this. I want to thank Andy from Absolute Cigars for hosting us here and having us use this location. Obviously, a great retail partner of ours, so we're happy to be here. Where can I start? I mean, it's a long story.

Yeah, no, but. No, we'll definitely get into the story. But, you know, just to give a little bit of context, we met through Instagram, you know, And I always like to bring that up because, you know, if you're someone that wants to start something, you don't know who you can connect with. I mean, you do these things and you don't really know where it's going to take you. And then, you know, you meet people like yourself. You know, I met the guys from Stoogis and Bogies. You know, I met the guys with the Johnny Cuba beer.

So just so many things that can just happen through there. And it is, as much as it is a powerful tool for good and bad, it's just something that you can use to network. and it used to meet so many amazing people. So, you know, that's something that I'm grateful for, and it makes you continue on that journey. But, you know, you started Epic Cigars, and, you know, here you are today, and you're still going at it.

So rewind us back to before Epic Cigars. You know, I know you said that you were in real estate, so talk about a little bit of the journey to Epic. Sure, sure. I'll go all the way back. I'm originally from the East Coast of Canada. I grew up, you know, a lot of Canadian kids playing hockey in sports, mainly hockey in the cold north in Labrador, Canada. That's where I was born and raced. Fast forward a few years, end up playing hockey for a short stint. I was in LaValle, Quebec in 88 for about a year. And then I went to the University of Brunswick after that, and then Frederick, Underbrunswick.

I did a degree in kinesiology, fast forward. I get into law enforcement, 10-year career in law enforcement on the East Coast of Canada in Frederick, New Brunswick. And then took a vacation in Turks and Caicos in 2003, went back in 2004, and I was visiting a good friend of mine at the time, and the developer that he was working for offered me an opportunity to come to Turks and Cajos and work with their real estate group. real estate group. And I, it was almost a split decision overnight. I flew back to Canada, resigned from my job, my policing job, and moved to Turson Kekos. And how old were you at that time?

27. 27, okay. Yeah. And just kind of grew from there. So we developed a real estate property there. And I started blind to the Dominican in 2007. I moved there in 2005, but in 2009 to buy. Cigars were our closings, for our real estate closings,

and about his little different factories, you know, point they were down to Aurora back then. Didn't know a lot about cigars. I was a smoker, but just more of a casual thing. And shortly after that, I developed a cigar band for the Church of Stables. It was called Church Select Cigars. They launched that in 2007 until about 2009, and then, you know, went through.

through, actually 08 went through the market crash. I ended up getting hired by a developer from Port Lauderdale and the Dominican. I got hired to have the sales of marketing for that project, so I moved to Dominican 2009. And that's when I started that. I was still sending cigars to Turks and Cajos, but I didn't really have anybody there to oversee the sales and collection.

Right, that kind of window down if you had started that life in the ER. Yeah. So I started Epic 2010 and just sort of slowly because I was full-time and real estate. But because I was living in the Dominican, I was traveling to the factory weekly, working on different blends and, you know, secured the name. And shortly after secured the trademarks. And it kind of grew.

Yeah. So that was 2010. And then in 2014, I went full-time into Epic. And now we're in, you know, in 2023. Yep. In 2019. So it went through all the ups and down. in the growth of being an entrepreneur, which we're all aware of.

Yeah. But grew the business sort of to that critical point where I needed the right partner in 2019. The company, California based company called Xandra Gregg, big distributor. They acquired Epic and they have their own 3-year brands as well. They acquired Epic. And I'm still the founder of Epic and brand manager for Natsico Brands Brand Ambassador. And we're growing. We're growing, so we're really starting to scale the business, we're increased production, increased our marketing, increased our travel, we're in 15 countries, over 1,000 retailers now.

That's amazing. And growing, so that's sort of the quick, quick, quick summary. So what does it entail to get into the cigar space, right? So obviously that influence that you had, being in the Turks and Capos, being a cigar smoker, what was it that, you know, what was that process like to get even started and starting a cigar What are the things that you may need? What's, you know, where are the some of the high level steps that someone may take if they wanted to start a cigar? You know, the funny thing about it is it just, when you're in the Dominican, you know, people in the cigar industry in the Dominican, if you show that you have a strong interest in tobacco or in the cigar industry, though, they're happy to help.

Yeah. I mean, so if you take that effort, you drive to their factory, you make an appointment, you want to sit with them, ask questions. They're basically an open book. And they're like, whatever you need you. They love to see people interested in creating things and spouse of cigars. But more than that, if you show a genuine interest in the art of cigar making, they're the road of the red carpet. And I was fortunate enough over my years and still today, to, you know, to. worked with and we've gotten great advice from some of the top of people in the industry over the years. It's been awesome and we're really, we haven't been scratched the surface, you know, almost 15 years later.

Since I really started learning and educating myself in the scar industry. And so here Epic is, right? What kind of was the rationale behind the name? Why Epic Sigur? So I had the Turks in Caicos Cigar that was called the Turks Select 1841 A little bit of a historical story around that

won't really get into that but there was some significance and so that cigar was really specific to the Turks and Caicos Islands and after I left and moved to the Dominican I said you know what I need to create a cigar something I can market internationally and I need to come up with a name

and if you follow the cigar industry at all one of the biggest challenge is securing names, domains, LLCs, trade marks. So I just started searching, and actually was late 2009, started searching. A friend of mine has a kiteboarding company called Mephykoy.

And that sort of gave me the idea, just to Google the name, FJegars.com, see if it's available. And it was, literally was one afternoon on the beach having cocktails. It was available, so I secured the domain, which was awesome. But shortly thereafter I started the process of design the logo of the labels and then the

trademark which is way more important than the dot com. Had I not done that I wouldn't be more than react today because we've had some challenge for the years we've had some challenges against the name but we've owned the trademark since 2014. No, I was that 2012. Oh God. I received a trademark. that was the best money ever spent. Yeah, the process that goes into the trademark, I mean, for anyone that doesn't know, I mean, essentially they do a giant kind of book research of, you know, names,

if there's anything similar, what space they're in. So it is kind of a tedious process, but, you know, to your point, it's essential to if you want to start anything, blocking that down and protecting yourself. And I know, I know, Andrew, you talk a lot, you know, seeing a lot of your podcasts, I'm going to talk a lot about making good business decisions and life challenges and things like that. But if I can give anybody any advice, you have an idea, you have a brand, you have anything, secure your intellectual property.

It's the utmost importance. It's more important than making that first dollar. Secure intellectual property because they can kind of invite you. I mean, when I started, kind of when I had just started this, that same advice was what the guy that I did, the beer with Juan gave me. It was like, before anything you need a trademarked out, because the moment someone sees that they're going to try to take it,

you know, and anybody that sees any resemblance of something that, you know what, I like that, and you don't have yourself protected, that's it. It doesn't matter what you've done, you know, who you've been with. It doesn't matter. They can go in there and take it and screw it out. And they can be going behind. the scenes and you don't even know and securing it while you're you know

your podcast or creating a new cigar brand or and it's not just the name you know a lot of times people will use a name like Epic as a secondary name or as a as a flavor you know you have to secure all the the not the domains but all the classifications within the use for example like in the cigar industry you have to secure name for anything from cutters, lighters, to brand, to magazines, to, I mean, you name it, and you have to show that you're actually using the name in those. Yeah, because there's, I think there's an intent to utilize the trademark, and then there's one that's already, if it's, if it's already being utilized, you can, you can get the

trademark for that as well. Cool. So, you know, to you, obviously, Epic is something that you're passionate about. It's something that you've put a lot of time and effort in. What does it mean to live an epic life? That's a loaded question. In a lot of ways, it's sort of been in my life. So it's almost fitting that I have a cigar game.

Yeah. I'm throwing up playing a hockey league in Canada. I was on a swat team in Canada. Then I get into Dominican Turks and Caicos first. I get into kite boarding, surfing, paddle boarding. I love, you know, golf. I mean, you name it. It's not a sport that I have attached.

I enjoy it. And, you know, from fast forward, Tripson Caicos, Dominican Republic, and now, you know, now to really travel the world with their brand. And for me, the cigar lifestyle as a whole is an epic lifestyle. So it's not just limited to our cigars. And unfortunately, we have that name.

And we're going to do our best to market it in the right way now and moving forward. But it's about the cigar lifestyle, living those, I was usually the hashtag epic moments. And it's epic moment could, you know, birth to a child. Could be a bachelor party with you guys. It could be the Super Bowl win. You know, so it's about celebrating those epic. And I think, to me, I think that's the word right there. It's like celebration.

There's so many epic moments that life has to offer. And those are the moments where you celebrate, you know. And whether that's with a cigar, whether that's just with friends, you know. However that is for you, you know, everyone celebrates those epic moments in a different way. So I agree with that. I think it's a moment of celebration more than anything. I love that. I'm a new cigar smoker, right, let's say, and I want to get into cigar smoke because people are always like, dude, like, you know, I don't even know what cigar to get, you know, what do I look for?

So, you know, I'm not an expert. You know, I can touch it on the surface, but, you know, what do you tell someone that is a new cigar smoker and they want to try cigar for the first time? You can I get the letter? Sure. Probably the first thing I would say is if you're going to have a cigar. I try to do it after you've had some sort of meal. It doesn't have to be a full meal. That's good.

But that would probably be the first recommendation. And then, then, you know, ask the, ask the tobacco. If you're in a cigar lounge or you have a friend else in the cigars, ask them what they would recommend. I know you only had a couple cigars. Usually start with a light wrapper, Connecticut or a vandal. But once again, with those wrappers, some of those cigars are strong. So a wrapper isn't always a day. indicative of the strength and flavor, the cigar.

So you have to be cautious and then find something you like to drink, whether it's alcohol or not on the alcohol, something you'd like to pair. Because that can give the person, presenting you the cigar a better idea on what your, what your power. Because you can have the best cigar in the world, but if it doesn't pair with what you just ate or what you're drinking, it's, you know, it's like a wine, the food that you're eating. Yeah, very similar. So, cigars are so similar to wine and tons of bearing and things like that. I smoke cigars, you know, on a regular basis, of course,

but a lot of times I'll think there's a problem with the cigar because I've had, you know, spicy food a few hours earlier or drinking an IPA. And those can really throw off the flavor and what you're tasting in the cigar. And then I would say second thing is don't inhale because... Yeah. I've seen it having too many times that people come in and just, you know, suck it all in and then the coughing up a storm and they're like, this is terrible. That's almost, that's probably the first thing.

I've seen it happen too many times. Yeah, for me, I started smoking cigars when I was, you know, 17. I don't even know how I got into it because no one in my family was really a cigar swamper. But I started smoking, you know, like how cigars, it's $2, $3,000, you can buy. bundle of them for like 25 bucks or something and that just got me in and then obviously as I got older I started realizing you know there's this ginormous human boom I mean what you know how do I go in there and you start figuring out brands that you like the type of body the type of smokes and then like to your

point like what you like to pair with so I guess for you my go-to is a whiskey what would you say whiskey or rum normally I mean I have you know we've got an epic I've got eight different cigars, cigar blends. Yeah, it would be similar to having, you know, eight different wines. Okay. And I tend to pair, I've got my, one of my, my Caroho, that I like to, I like to pair with a tequila, you know, like a sipping tequila. I'm a Maduro, I like to go to a Capa, 23, or bread wine sometimes. Really?

The Havanaugh, I can go either way, I can go beer, I can go. Yeah. Round whiskey. The project, either one we're smoking, is the, uh, San Mexican San Andreas rapper. This, I usually go to a whiskey, like a single malt or sometimes a bourbon, or even a tequila. It's got a sweet Mexican wrapper. That I have, that's a lot of it, a tequila.

Yeah, a good flavor, a good sipping tequila is fantastic, with a red cigar. Of course, yeah. Cool, cool. So, what you kind of touched something, What you kind of touched on it now with like some of the different cigars that you have. So you got, I know, the ones that I remember is kind of like your go-to for golfing is the half-furia, right? Yeah. Lighter body, easier your smoker, right? Yeah. Connecticut rapper has a San Andreas binder.

Dominican Nicodiacan ruffin fillers. It's sort of, that's a cigar that I can give to a first-time smoker or even if you haven't had a cigar all day, it's a cigar. Some nights and I'll smoke on my fat go with a single mold. It's got a lot of flavor but not lost strength. It's just one of those, yeah, it's my go-to sort of golf cigar. Yeah, that's usually what I go. After that way you gave you that type of smoke is, there's been times where you smoke like a darker cigar and

my whole 17, I go to Bend down to get the golf ball and I'm like, you know, and you're like in the 90 degree heat. Yeah, that's just, it's just not working out. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, cool. So, I touched a little bit on like, you know, a little bit about the cigars, but kind of wanted to rewind and, you know, and ask you a question because a lot of, you know, a lot of what we talk about on the show is some of the adversity that we kind of deal with. Being an entrepreneur or whether you're an athlete, right, you know, the road to or the path to success to where you, you know, you ultimately want to get to.

So throughout your journey, what have been some of those obstacles that you've kind of, to overcome and what were some of the things that you did to overcome those obstacles? I mean, originally, especially in South Florida, it's such a tough market. You know, there's so much history here with cigars that it's kind of hard to break in. So you just, I mean, you've got to have that adversity. You just have to keep knocking on doors. And when they turn you away, you just say next and next. And I did that for a period of time.

I wasn't having a lot of success in Florida like we are today. So I spent a lot of time in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and got a lot more growth. And now we're really expanded in Texas and even California. That's one of our own base in California. But the biggest thing is there's so many great cigar companies and so many boutique brands up and come. They've been around for a long time.

A lot have been around and even a lot of them are new. So there's so much competition. But the thing is, there's thousands of retail. in the U.S. and around the world. Tens of thousands. So you just kind of have to have that. When people say no,

they're not rejecting you. They're just, it could be timing. A lot of these shops are small. They don't have big budgets. So if you don't catch them on a day if you don't catch them on a day where there's a lot of money on the card or in the bank, you're not going to get the order

and if you'll get back to see them, you may not get it for another year. I think that shops were it's taken two, three years to get placed And then when you get places, we have to keep it. So I went through those challenges where we started to scale the business. And I had a great rep up in the Northeast for many years. His name was Big Grant.

And he grew that territory for us to a point where I was literally, we were struggling to keep up with the production and shipping and it was pre-selling. So those are some of the initial challenges. And then with cigars, what people don't realize is you've got, aging tobacco, you've got odds production, you've got wood, you've got to age cigars, you know, minimum 90 days on average. The average age our cigars after they're rolled for up to six months. Some in our limited editions we get to be aged for a year before we ship. So that's all money, that's sitting. And then once again, you're selling all your other four-line products,

and it's just your overhead. So you can imagine, if you think you need half of money, you need a money, you need to like, yeah, you know, just to kind of dip your toe and go up. To me, I wouldn't even dip my toe in this industry

if I wound the clock back, you know, a million dollars you can talk with a lot. Eric, Espinosis said this three once, you know, who's a good guy,

doing great things in the industry and this is great mentor for a lot of us. He's like, you know, how do you make a million dollars in the stretch? You're starting to $2 million. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. So, So you feel that if you could rewind 10, 15 years, and you knew what you knew today, you'd be like, 10? No, you know what? I'd still do it. Just maybe do it a little bit differently, focus on maybe generating some capital prior to launch. It's kind of hard, you know, I never really look back. You can never, exactly, you can never kind of be like, why if I did this?

What if I did it? It doesn't accomplish it. You learn and grow, and the key is to try not to make the mistake more than twice. Yeah. And push forward. And I'm blessed that. I think my attitude has gotten me more further in life than any amount of money. It's just you've got to have that drive to keep pushing forward, even when you can't see the light or you don't know what's around the more.

I think something that's, like, more important than anything. at the end of the day and you know for you it's that big for me it's state down to you it's like leaving a legacy behind right it's like you came on on this planning with very little chance of you know you're just being here right and it's like what did you choose to do with that you know and you chose to preach about living that addict lifestyle through cigars through content however that is but you know now you've looked down and be known as like the guy that living in epic life you know and yeah it's a story

It's a story, exactly. And everyone's going to perceive that story a little bit differently. But at least you know, you can go to your grave and say, hey, you know what? I lived my life the way I wanted to do it. I did it because I wanted to do it. And whatever came from it, that's just secondary. You know, the winds feel ten times better, obviously, you know? But at the end of the day, you did something that you wanted to do.

And no one can never take that away from it. And I believe that, you know, when I captured that name and then, like, I later got the trademark. I knew that I had something very special. It evolved. I was originally to know what it's supposed to be. Exactly. I just knew and now it's becoming all those things.

You know, the best advice I think that people is put the best version of yourself every day and not just in your job, but in your life, like literally physically take care of yourself. you know, we're in the business, in the people business, so I'm interacting with customers and clients every day. We're doing trade shows. We're doing, you know, golf events. We're going to bring yourself out there. Yeah, you've got to take care of yourself first. And I don't know who I read a lot and watch a lot.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and watch a lot. But, you know, they say, you know, work harder on yourself. Then you do your job. And it's true. You know, you see a lot of these guys burning out. you know where millions of dollars are having heart attacks and dying because you know all they did was focus on on work and winning at work and they let every other aspect of family is their life they let their physical life go to ship and you can't out earn your health that's very true everything's worth everything is worthless if you're not healthy

you know even in all aspects physically mentally if you're just not in that space where you know you're feeling good, your body functions are functioning well, everything else becomes irrelevant. There's not enough money in the world that's going to solve that problem. So I think to your point, it might be cliche, but help this well, but you can't believe that there was a book that you had told me about, I think it was a book, it's called Ready, Ready Fire Aim, right? Yeah, that's good. Can you talk a little bit about that book?

Because I thought, you know, there's things from that book that you told me that that really resonated with me when we had spoken about it? I can't remember the author, and I read it. Sometimes I didn't get in the last year, but, you know, you took, and what resonated with me from that book, I think maybe it was the audio book I listened to, not the, not the hardcover, but was, you know, we always want to get everything perfect before we start something. We want to, you know, we want to have the perfect situation before you ask that girl, you want to

be in the best shape before you're going to run a marathon. You want to do this and do that. And what resonated with this book was just start, like do, you know, just fire and then aim later. Like if you keep firing, you keep firing, eventually you're going to dial it in and you're going to get to where you want to go. Yeah. And I've been guilty of that over the years of trying to get, you know, the logo design perfect. You're trying to get, who knows what, perfect. You're hosting a cigar dinner or something. You want everything. You want the perfect wine or whiskey or the perfect group of people. And it's just, it's, you win by doing, you got to take action.

So it's literally, you know, it's ready, aim, fire. Ready fire, aim. So it's like fire, aim. It's about fire and then figuring out the aim. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what you might, you know, might hit. I mean, obviously you could turn that into a million different things. But, you know, for the sake of what we're talking about, it's like, yeah, fire because you don't know, take that chance. And I don't know if you, you sent me a video or I saw a TED Talk, but, you know, the whole thing about the just-doin mentality, right?

Where it's not about actually winning. It's not about being a champion. The champions represented, but not because they're there at that point. It's because that they took the choice and they didn't. You know, they started, they went out there, and they took that first step. And that was why that's been, you know, and that comes from Phil Knight's book, the show. Shoe Dog, but it speaks to, they wanted, when they came up with that slogan, and I can't remember who coined it for them, some marketing agency or individual, but just do it what was

meant for the masses. Like, just do something. It doesn't matter if you're 300 pounds or in the best shape or you're an entrepreneur or just move forward, get up, do something, get out, go for walk try playing golf once you know go you know get the pool and swim a lot anything whatever it is and I remember in the video it's like I think Phil Knight was having the talk is what it was right and says you know how many of you I think run right and a bunch of people raise their hand you know how many people run three times a week and then obviously a couple hands go down how many run five times a week you know and then he goes 90 represents everybody that's cheering that we're a community of people that you know where this

brand that we're gonna cheer you on just because you chose to do it and it's true you start building a community once you take action on doing something that you know that you want to do and you need that we need that community and it's a friend of mine from the Dominican Republic who always used this term actually a couple couple friends of mine but you know you're you working so hard a lot of times you don't see the fruits of your labor but it's the term they used to use is providence is moving and that means you know there's stuff behind the scenes there's you've touched people that you don't even know you've touched yeah and things are moving are conspired for you

not conspiring against you because we tend to when we're going through these struggles of business you think that everything's going against you when the thought should be, you know, people are conspiring for you. So, you may not see it, but, you know, you just got to trust that whatever's going to happen is going to happen for the betterment of yourself and essentially what you want to achieve. That's gold. So kind of before we wrap it up, you know, you touched on that, you played a lot of hockey. You know, what's your point of view on the, on the NHL right now?

I don't know if you're watching hockey regularly right now, but you know, you know, you've played a lot of it. I just got into hockey a few years ago, so. You know what, to be honest, I rarely watched. Yeah, I haven't been in a live game in years. You know, growing up in East Coast, Montreal was my team and had the short-stant-in-lawful. It's a much more physical sport than used to be guys were bigger, bigger, stronger, faster. The equipment's better. you know we're not seeing as many injuries thankfully at least that I'm seeing

and we're seeing a lot of football which you know I've been a big fan of American football for a long time it's been rough to see you know watch so hockey it's a great sport it's a great sport you know Pittsburgh's a much else than my team big fan of Pittsburgh you know Sandy Crosby is from Nova Scotia my brother there was something and Halifax low school showsh so I always follow him when I get a chance but I am I spend more time for college football I picked up hockey I want to say around the pandemic and it was kind of just by accident and started going a few games

love the environment but so tell me that like what's what's the whole deal with all the fights is it is it a little bit of like to amplify the game a little bit is there existing beef behind that like I need to just probably some beef behind these guys, but it's the one sport in professional sports where you can just get away with just throwing gas in the middle. It is sometimes momentum, but it's more, there's always been that enforcer role, that protector. If you go back to the days of Wayne Gretzky, because I was, you know, Marty McSorley, you know, Toronto had tied on me.

There's, you know, a long list. There was always one or two guys on every team that protected their superstars. And that's what's great. They sort of police themselves over the years and that still exists. today and and it's great they're not gonna you know a fighter's not gonna go on and try to pick a fight with he may rough someone up right superstar but he's not gonna fight him he's gonna wait until their enforcer comes off the bench and they're gonna go at it and uh it's almost like you know the gladiator the days of the gladiator it's it's it's controlled and and there's a lot

of respect in that aspect of hockey and i think that you know it's handled as well as can be based on what it is. Yeah, they're hosting the All-Star game here this year, so that'll be cool. So you did not know that one. Yeah, yeah, they got the jerseys out. They're actually pretty cool. They got like the palm trees.

And they, I don't know, I can't remember the last time that they did that here. So I'm excited about that. I'd love to see what that environment looks like. It's pretty, you know what I saw in 19, I think it was 94, I went to the NHL All-Star weekend in New York City. friend of mine invited me he was working for the hockey hall of fame at that time and uh i got to met gretsky met you know marty mcourly i met stan makita who's like you know old school yeah in the elevator

actually signed a one dollar bill for me uh but it was it was pretty cool and uh you know you get the highlights of all the great things and skills competitions and so uh yeah we'll have to see if we can get some tickets maybe take some of them i've definitely got to hit up some of my contacts maybe we get maybe we can get something but before we wrap up you know what are some of the things that people can look forward to for epic you know anything exciting coming up we've got a couple big releases coming out this year one release actually it's a golf cigar we're doing for for a good friend of mine Chris Denner he's Chris is one of the one of the founders or owners of Doug my company they're based at of Tampa

And he's now involved in a golf company called Big VIGG Golf. So we're actually launching special staff. We're working on this for a year with Chris. We're going to launch it in 2023, probably closer to spring. So I'm really excited about that. You're going to see a lot of golf intents for Epic. It's called the Big Stick, B-I-G-G-Stick by Epic. Special Lent specifically for them, and we're going to market it as a golf

cigar. We've got a couple other releases coming. Can't talk about yet. But we're getting pretty close with a couple of big people in the film industry. So yeah, 23 is going to be a big year for an epic. We're going to continue to build on that and want to do more with this kind of stuff as well. Definitely. So where can they find you on social media? And then at retail, I mean, pretty much you guys know for Miami standpoint. Yeah, Neptune Cigars, absolutely Cigars, we're in many retailers in South Florida. If you go to Epic Cigars Instagram, Epic Scars, Facebook, Epic Scars.com,

we can send you a link. We've got our retailer Ocater on the website as well. And we've got a lot of online partners as well as Brick and Mortar. Okay. Hit me up on Instagram. You're going to get me, and I can directly to the right place and send you a discount code,

some of our retailers. Nope. I love that. All right. Cool. Well, thanks guys. We hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a pleasure being here and doing this. I know like the moment we talked, we were like, damn, we got to do a podcast.

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. And listen, you know, stay tranquil. I love what you guys are doing. And obviously, we're epic's proud to be part of, you know, the future of your podcast and future. So we can share more. We grow For sure

All right guys Thanks for tuning in And we look forward to you You guys tune in on the next one Cheers