Five years, 21 articles, thousands of cigars smoked, and my journey of growing the impact of retailers, through education, is both ending and beginning. It is ending for my tobacconist column in PCA The Magazine. I have not said it all, but I have said enough. It is time for new voices, ideas and stories. I know the entire PCA marketing team is engaged in growing brick-and-mortar retailers and I look forward to the fruits of their labor.
In the meantime, this fall I will be publishing my first book, titled If Jesus Smoked Cigars: 8 Lessons in Relational Leadership. This book began in 2019 as my personal journey to memorialize a professional career that spanned my time as a floor covering professional, accountant, technologist, real estate developer and cigar lounge owner. More specifically, I wanted to share a vision of my heartfelt commitment to address the following question:
“What would it look like to make relationships the focus of our business enterprises?”
Over the course of nearly three decades in my career, I have often been asked, “How did you end up in your current profession?” It is one of the toughest questions for me to answer. I never had a formal plan that dictated any one career transition or pivot. I never trained for a specific job, got licensed in a particular discipline or pursued a business that didn’t originate with a simple conversation.
The common thread of my career has been my commitment to relationships and learning on the fly. I don’t know if this type of career path is right for everyone, but it is my journey. I pursue wisdom and have found the deepest sources of that are found in conversations with those who have it! While I have a deep affinity for telling stories, I get far more out of life when I listen.
This book will not argue that vision and strategic planning, financial management, leadership, marketing, sales, operations, innovation or any other key elements of your business are invalid. In fact, I am NOT arguing at all. My heart is to have a conversation about my personal journey that has guided my professional career and may be of value to you. My heart is that you would find some practical application of the lessons I have learned and those lessons would positively impact your personal life, family, friendships and ultimately … your business.
The eight lessons I tackle, in my conversational, story-telling tone, are:
1. Culture trumps everything: Leadership is responsible for culture. Culture trumps execution. Both truths require an understanding of who we are and how we are impacting others. It really all boils down to our commitment to interpersonal relationships.
2. Relationships begin when we are open to others: It’s not when we are flawless, not when we know everything, not when we are invulnerable, but when we are willing to be visible, see others clearly and allow the interaction between us to impact us positively.
3. Authenticity trumps followers: We have been taught that influence equals impact; that reach equals relationship; and that followers equal success. And that’s wrong. The truth is that most followers are strangers who will never hire you, refer you or support you when times are tough. They’re a number on a screen, not allies in your professional journey.
4. Attention reveals opportunities: When you really think about it, in business, as in life, we don’t have a knowledge problem. We have an attention problem. Information is readily available. Signals are present. Opportunities are observable. What is lacking is the discipline to slow down enough to observe them and the courage to act on what we observe.
5. Don’t underestimate a conversation: Amazon won. The internet won the battle for accelerating the movement of information, but the war for relationships is far from over.
6. Define how you are impacting the who: A unique selling proposition is less about marketing spin and more about strategic identity. It’s the promise that you make, and deliver on, better than anyone else. When well-crafted, it centers your purpose, excites your customers and informs every decision you make.
7. Don’t mistake activity for productivity: How do you measure your performance as a business leader? There are four, core IQs required for a leader of an organization: Industry IQ, Financial IQ, Relational IQ, and Emotional IQ. I reason that an executive who understands, employs and measures performance against these will have success.
8. You don’t have to like, but you must love: When business leaders choose to make relationships a priority, it can be exhausting because we are imperfect. It is only when we choose to love people who we are positioned to grow our influence.
It seems so shallow to reduce a 70,000 page book into 385 words, but such is the constraint of this column. I principally wrote this book for myself. I can be very stubborn about facing my own shortfalls, inadequacies and frustrations. This book is a written reminder to myself that I need to pursue people, and not outcomes. That intentional focus on relationships is the central theme to my professional career. I was never the most talented, the best looking or in possession of the most resources. My primary currency is, and always will be, people. I do think this skill of relationships is something that can be learned. It is grounded in dying to the needs of oneself and placing others’ needs above our own. I don’t want to forget that, so I wrote it down for posterity.
Thank you to the PCA, the at-large cigar industry, and the countless retailers I have encountered over the past five years writing this column. It has been my pleasure.
This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 1, 2026. To receive a copy of this magazine, you must be a current PCA member. Join or renew today at premiumcigars.org/membership.