#220 - Relationships Are the Business: 8 Lessons from "If Jesus Smoked Cigars"

0:00 Focus on building culture, not your business. So be transparent and get to that place of real authentic health. And then you're gonna find that a lot of those those other issues, they're gonna slide away. All right, you all. A welcome back for another episode. I know you want to hear less of me and more of these great guests. And so we started to get to know each other and become friends.

0:41 And I just interrupted him and said, No, stop. This is going to be great. So ~ sometimes we do an intro at the beginning, sometimes middle, sometimes end, sometimes never get to it. But I'm going to give an intro in the beginning to give context on the special guest we have today. And so then you understand everything about this human being. Everything's gonna come out of their mouth, all their experiences, whether it's fun. Whether it's boring, whether I'm kidding. It's gonna be awesome. So today's guest is Joshua Evarts. And you need to learn how to spell it if you're gonna search him online. We'll talk about that. ~ but he's an entrepreneur, business owner, and author of the new book, If Jesus Smoked Cigars, The Eight Lessons in Relational Leadership.

1:23 Joshua also spent 25 years in business and the last decade as the owner of the Vault Cigar Lounge in Idaho, and I believe Meridian, Idaho. Where he's built a business around something most companies say they value, but don't always understand relationships. And his belief is that relationships aren't just a nice part of doing business, they can be one of your biggest competitive advantages. So today we're gonna talk about trust, leadership, sales, relationships, building community, and what it really takes to create a business that people actually want to be a part of. Joshua, welcome to the show, man. Mark, first of all, thank you so much for having me on here. I know you probably have a ~ a plethora of folks who want to come on here and be on here. So the fact that you choose me means a lot.

2:06 Thank you. He's humble. You're welcome, but that was unnecessary. So where where do you think, instead of the old age question of where did it still start and tell your story, but if we go back to when you remember, since this is an entrepreneurial podcast and we're just gonna take it wherever it goes, but when did you become an entrepreneur? I will tell you, I was six years old. I wrote about it actually in the book. My ~ parents owned a floor covering business. So I started laying carpet ~ since the time that I could jump in my dad's truck and go with him. But this specific trip, it's it's vivid in my memory. We were laying carpet in a movie theater in Central California.

2:48 And my job was to effectively stay out of my father's way, and he had given me The very specific instructions of pick up scraps and stay out of my way. So as he's laying carpet, you know, he's trimming carpet and there's leftover pieces. And my business relationship with my father is I would get a penny for every scrap that I picked up. The moment I knew I was an entrepreneur is I had snuck into my dad's toolbox and got what they call a banana knife. It was a big curved knife, and proceeded to cut. pieces of carpet into smaller pieces so I could maximize my return on investment. So lo and behold, after two days and we had to work at night because the movie theater was open during the day.

3:32 But at the end of the second day, when I counted up all my scraps, and my dad came to me and said, Hey, so how many, how many scraps? What what am I into you for? And I had four hundred and ninety eight scraps. And my dad looked at me and he's like, you have worked so hard this weekend. I'm going to round that up to 500 and I got a five dollar bill. And right there, like I thought I got over on the old man. I'm like, look, he he had no idea that I'd gotten a knife and risked cutting off my fingers. ~ but but that that was really the moment that I knew that boy, there was there was something in me that could go and be creative and try to create wealth. So what we're learning is this is the question we have to ask. Are future entrepreneurs also criminals? Joshua. Yeah, they could they Could very well be. ~ yeah, that's that's that's certainly ~ certainly something to explore.

4:20 So you went the good way. Yeah. Yeah. That Absolutely. that six year old boy, would we call that problem solving, curiosity, creativeness? I think I think it's a little bit of all of it. I think it's a little bit of ~ you know, there was not always scraps to pick up. So a lot of it was I want to be productive, I want to be doing something, and the only thing I could really do was grab a knife and cut into smaller pieces. So there's certainly something ~ unsettled in me when there's nothing going on. So so I think one of the key things for entrepreneurs to keep in mind is there is always something you can be doing to make your business better, right? And so or or to improve your bottom line.

5:01 So in those margins, and I think that's something that is caught and not taught. So as leaders of an organization, if you're out there always looking to make your business better and make improvements, your staff, your customers, your vendors are gonna see that. And, you know, when the tide rises, all boats float and I think that the whole organization gets more healthy. Hmm. So why there's you're so much more than cigars. And we'll talk about that today. But why cigars? Yeah, so the cigar journey actually started on rivers in Idaho. So ~ I was a big whitewater rafting fan and a group of guys that I went with ~ all enjoyed like craft beers and cigars and so kind of got introduced to it and what I realized that it was less about the cigars and more about the community. Like it was it was something special, like the the cigars would set the tone on the side of the river, you know, looking up at the stars and Hell's Canyon and Snake on the Snake River.

6:00 So that's that's where it kind of began. And then when I ~ started doing work for the Department of Defense, ~ made two deployments into Iraq in seven and eight. And cigar smoking was a big, big part of military culture. So I think that I was familiar with cigars, but then really got passionate as I was around a bunch of like minded individuals in a non permissive environment, you know, where we were very doing a very tough job. And I think what became clear to me is cigars were much more than connection. ~ it was almost like a refuge. Like it was a place to calm everything down and be still and and and make the engagements about people and just happen to be over a cigar.

6:42 So where'd Jesus come into this? Yeah, so I mean I was I was born and raised in a in a Christian home. And I think that ~ one of the things that we dispel very early on in the book, the Pope publisher asked the question, why why the title, right? If you smoke cigars. And so I have to spend the first section of the first chapter laying out the case that it's actually not possible for Jesus to have ever smoked a cigar. That that wasn't the point that I was trying to make. The point that I was trying to make is what would it look like if we took that relational model that really began with Jesus as kind of the author of relationships? What if we took that model where it was all about people? Because 2,000 years ago, there was no internet, social media, podcasts, anything like that.

7:26 And yet this individual had such a relational impact on the world that we still talk about him today. So it was important to look at it and say, okay, so so what can I take from from from his model of of leadership? What can I look at in my 25, 30 years of professional development, whether that was software, real estate development, or the cigar lounge, the common thread was just people and and how I interacted with people and having better relationships than my competitors. And that's really kind of where the the the title came to be. And it was cheeky, right? People would see it on a shelf and go, man, what what what in the world? My mom hates the title by the way. I just want to be really clear.

8:07 Sorry mom. ~ she's convinced that I'm blasphemer and and ~ so You're doing the devil's work by writing the book. Yeah, yeah. Really, really and she hasn't read the book. So so at some point I'm hoping that she reads the book and and is able to take some some some truth out of it. So what do you think? ~ can you take without us understanding the context of all your experience, even before the cigar lounge and you you talked about deployments in Iraq, but do you think you can take this, the metaphor of the relationship piece from the stories of Jesus, your experience of smoking cigars on the Snake River, your experiences in a whole nother realm on the cigar culture in the military on the deployment.

8:54 Do you think we can just take that and put it together in a nucleus? And does that approach apply everywhere? Like let's have this conversation on what our theory is. If it are there restrictions to it, would it not apply? Is there some realm in business and entrepreneurship or some place in personal society it doesn't belong, or does it work everywhere? My personal experience, my personal opinion is it applies everywhere. So there are three very real truths for business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, parents, because we all lead somewhere, right? We we all have a leadership function somewhere in our life. We might not have defined it as leadership and it might not be business leadership, but we are certainly leading somewhere.

9:37 And these three truths are this. I think that people work and do business with people. that they like. That's kind of, you know, where it starts. I think people stay loyal to people that they trust. And I think that they will evangelize. And that's really where we're trying to get. I think people will evangelize for people that make them feel loved. And so and I think that's universal. I think that that is where we're at. That's the message that that I take when I'm coaching, when I'm lecturing. If we can get to that level where people are willing to evangelize for us, for our business, for our basketball teams, for our classrooms, that that we have connected on a level that is just so important and it's universal.

10:20 Do you think that listen, love's a great word? Yeah. And when you really feel it might be the ultimate word in society. And we all have I think we all have a different, we're carrying a different dictionary though, of the definition of that word. Yeah. But do you think that's too broad that people will evangelize when they feel loved? Do it does it have to go that far that they feel loved? Or is that maybe the ultimate goal to make them feel that way? Because because won't they evangelize before feeling loved? Well, I think what I think absolutely, I think they will evangelize before that. but I think that you make a great point, which is we've got to really define love. So the eighth lesson actually in the book is you don't have to like people, but you are required to love them.

11:02 And so if I'm gonna make that statement, if I'm gonna say that that is a rule of relational leadership, then I had to define love. And the best definition that I could find, and it's the only time that I actually put any of the Bible in the book, is the, you know, verses out of First Corinthians. You know, where we talk about love being patient, kind, long suffering. And so we go through those thirteen attributes of love, but we apply them to business. Right. Like the book is not ~ you know, some kind of theological dissertation on on on Jesus as the author of relationships. ~ but it was appropriate to provide a definition of what I think love is, regardless of your faith construct, and then be able to walk through how do we how do we apply that in a business setting.

11:45 How do you think we take I I just love what you said about your faith construct. And so I grew up in a similar way that you did. People that know me personally, they know the evolution of what that is now on being so independent thinking on so many levels. But that I don't try to impose my thoughts or beliefs on anybody. Just live the life that you think is best. And if it's evident enough that it's a good life and you're impacting people, maybe other people will follow and do the same thing. That's kind of the that's kind of the approach. How yeah. Go ahead. No, no, no, please. Go ahead. ~ I want you to Go ahead and go with you or go on, because I want to talk about the construct because there's think about what you were going to say, but what's happening now in 2026 for me is that there's now an because we have such access to information.

12:27 So I'm 47. When I was growing up, we didn't have the internet. We might have had, you had, you had brilliance of minds of people you had access to. Yeah. And and books and dictionaries. There were so many people that didn't have access to a bunch of different. opposing ways of living a life, opinions, beliefs that we have now. And we're now presented in this world. Anything that you fundamentally believe, there are plenty of people to show up, not just in religion, that show up and believe something that they're proposing that's completely different. I I will say that I think you're you're you're describing the very ~ in a very clear way why the timing of this book I think is so important. I think there are three things that happened in I'm just a few years older than you, but in our lifetime we've had three huge, huge things happen that have disrupted our ability to relate to people.

13:28 Number one is technology. You share about it. the fact that we've got the internet and email and the and the speed at which information moves and the fact that I get to FaceTime my grandson, like which, you know, when my wife and I, my wife have thirty-two years, when we were dating, we lived nine hundred miles apart and we had to write letters to each other, right? That like you know, I had to go to a post office and buy a stamp. ~ so so we've had this technology, social media, ~ which has blurred what relationships look like. Right, we've can we've confused influence with authenticity. And so that's the first thing that happened. The second thing that happened is in 2020, we had a worldwide pandemic. And regardless of how you feel about responses or should the world have shut down or anything, that it did. We started wearing masks, we started standing six feet apart, businesses were closing, and so related and we sent our workforce home, right? The whole work from home model kind of exploded.

14:24 And kids home and kids home. Kids, right? So my my youngest son was deeply impacted by that. ~ so you know, in his very early 20, 21 years old, was living in a world where he had no connection. ~ and then the third thing that's happened in the last couple of years has been this proliferation of AI, where now we're in relationships, but we're in relationships with agents. We're in relationships with large language models and and we're having to navigate what that looks like. And again, the lines have gotten even a little bit more blurred. Like, can we trust what we see? Can we trust what we're hearing? Can we trust a response that comes back ~ to the questions that we ask? So all of these things have confused relationships at their core.

15:07 And I I think that's why it's important to r as a leader, as an entrepreneur, to understand those things. And I'm not I made most of my wealth in technology. So I'm not an anti-technology guy. But if technology is ~ i if it's not an enabler for creating more connection, connection with your employees, connection with your customers, connection with your vendors, then I think you have to really consider how you're employing it. So, what's the instruction that we should give? I'm going to give an example in my past 24 hours. So I just downloaded a brand new app from one of the largest tech companies. They're really making a push. So it's not chat, it's not Gronk. It's not, it's a it's one that's making a big push, a brand new one. And I know somebody that works in that company at the high levels that's selling their AI.

15:55 And they sent me a link to download the app. I had heard about it weeks ago. So I downloaded I downloaded the app and it gave me a billion tokens. Because of the the the referral code or whatever. So then it said you have twenty uses. So then I sent it to twenty of my people and they're like, Did you get hacked? What are you sending me? But I sent it to them. But I what I want to talk about is here, that actually created connection because if you look at the text messages that I sent them when they were asking if it was really me and why, and I started using it and how it could be used and saying thank you and you're welcome at how it probably meant for them that they were one of my top twenty. So As you said that, what I know in my brain is I can take all this technology and use it to further relationships because what it can give back to me, I don't know if AI in its current form, because it's been around for decades.

16:46 People just had no talk. Yes. Yep. And so in this current form that all of us are utilizing it now and going to it for answers and to solve problems, in the current form that we're using it, I know. That I can u utilize it to highlight relationships because it can give me back some of my time through efficiency that I can so, but I don't get buried in it. So if I showed you the exchange I had with 20 people and right before this podcast, in between the last one, a guy from Texas who's a a friend, business associate, called me and we talked about it. And he said, Tell me about using it. What do you think? So what's the instruction that people should have?

17:31 about furthering relationships with this new technology. Yeah, I think with anything I I love the word moderation, right? ~ I think that in any aspect of our life we can get we can get sideways and we can get focused on the wrong things. And so so utilizing something like AI, ~ or technology in general, right? I think is a great point. Social media is a a great point. I as a again, as a grandfather, I love sharing the only thing I share on social media is pictures of me and my grandsons. And whether we're golfing, whether we're playing at the park, you know, dressing up in in in teenage mutant ninja turtle costumes and running around the house. ~ I I'll I'll share those pictures and and what I'm what I'm looking for is I'm not looking for the followers.

18:21 I'm not looking for the clicks or the hard emoji or anything like that. ~ What I what I love is when I have people that follow me that then reach out to me and go, Man, I love seeing those pictures of of you and the grandsons and and then that is when I will engage and connect with them, right? So I've used technology to further relationship, authentic relationship, not how many people can I get to follow me 'cause my grandsons are cute or or how many how many shares, likes, ~ Whatever. And I think that is the message I give to people is when you're employing technology, I love the idea of of of saving time. There's some AI agents that I have working ~ on my network appliances ~ that are just str simply streamlining a lot of my research that I do for books.

19:07 ~ not to write anything, but like if I'm ~ I'm always talking about historic characters. ~ I was actually going to be a history teacher and a basketball coach when I started in college. So I've always been fascinated with history, but I love the obscure. The problem with writing the history of obscure characters is that you've got to dig deep. There's a lot of work to be done there. So a lot of times I'll I'll put an agent on it to go out there and like, I need you to dig deeper on this and then validate and and and get that information to me. So back to the book on relationships. Yeah. I think you're making an argument without me fully reading it now, right? I I had the cliff notes.

19:47 I dug in a little bit. I think I understand the premise without knowing all the chapters. But if the argument is is that relationships and I'm putting words in your mouth. Sure. Relationships are actually the business. Yeah. ~ what's something that you found or you believe about relationships that sounds good, but it's actually not true? I think that one of the things and I apologize to all the leaders and and entrepreneurs that are listening right now, I think one of the fallacies of of relationship as it relates to leaders and entrepreneurs is that the leaders and entrepreneurs have it all figured out. One of the things that I do when I'm coaching leaders is ~ the idea of being transparent and honest with with your organization.

20:35 ~ I think as leaders, we tend to not do that because we don't want to show weakness or insecurities or we you know, we don't want to expose any of that to our organization. And and I'm not suggesting that we dump or or or air dirty laundry, but when we are I I believe business is tough, I believe relationships are tough. So as we're navigating things that are difficult, and if markets are in fact efficient and we have got to improve our efficiency to capitalize and grow wealth, then then then there's going to be struggles. So being willing to share those struggles. And I always tell organizations this, ~ focus on building culture, not your business.

21:15 Because a healthy culture ~ in a in a business is going to attract, guess what, healthy employees, healthy, healthy customers, healthy vendor relationships. And so, so, so be transparent and get to that place of real authentic health. And then you're going to find that a lot of those those other issues, especially interpersonal ones or they're they're just gonna they're gonna slide away. Is transparency the health indicator or is it deeper, or is the health deeper? I I I think it's I think I think transparency is one aspect of of health, but I but I do think that it does get deeper, right? I think that, you know, with transparency you also have to add things like ~ cooperation, right? So I've seen a lot of leaders that they will be transparent, ~ and then they will solicit and get some feedback, but they then will take that and hoard that information and not be cooperative with that information, right?

22:13 or to give praise. Like a as a leader, I tend I tended to check my ego and at the door, like like I was very, very quick to praise people in the organization, regardless of where they were, for the good work and the value that they were adding to the organization. Because that created loyalty. Like people just wouldn't leave. They'd be like, man, even though I was a you know in my software company, this is a tech support agent that took care of a really, really difficult engagement and a tough problem. I want to go I want to go celebrate that person, even though they're not one of the highly compensated people, because that made that the it was genuine. Like they did do something really important and we were able to advance as an organization because of it.

22:57 So you built the business, the cigar business. Yeah. You built the business on a product that's called cigars. Yeah. But I suspect that the cigar isn't really the product. What what are people what are people paying you for? Yeah, you nailed it. So so first of all, let's let's talk about the cigar business. I'd never intended to open a cigar lounge. ~ I was doing restoration of historic buildings in our downtown. One of the buildings happened to be a bank building that was built in nineteen five, small, fifteen hundred square foot, that this the city had deemed that it was unsafe and they were looking at tearing the building down. And I was historic preservation commissioner.

23:38 I went to the city, I said, We can't tear down Beautiful old things. We got to bring them back to life. So my wife and I found the owner. We were able to buy the building and we spent ~ almost a year restoring this 120-year-old building. In the midst of doing that, ~ my wife and I both smoke cigars. We love scotch. We love great wines. So when we got it done for for a year and a half, it was our living room. So our home, which is like a block away, was built in 1913, and there's no living room in our in our home. It's just an old, old person house. And so we used the the what what we called the vault as just our living room and the windows were frosted so people couldn't look in 'cause early on we'd be in there enjoying a cigar, a bottle of wine, and people, you know, put their faces up to the window, What business is it? And we'd say, None of your business and so we made the mistake though of inviting our mayor at the time and her husband to come have cigars and a bottle of wine with us one night and And Mayor Tammy went full mare mode on me and she said, Josh, you really need to open a cigar lounge.

24:40 And I'm Mayor, I don't really like people. I'm like, how's that gonna work out for me? And she's like, It's gonna work out because it's gonna be a great economic driver and and your down your downtown is gonna be better for it. And so we got bullied into it. But I told my wife, I said, If we're gonna do this, and at this point all of our kids had left home and we were at a place where we were looking at the next twenty years and what could we do together? ~ she didn't get to to join me in my work with the military. She was a registered nurse, so I didn't really get to participate. So we thought this is something that we could do together, but it has to be intentional. So our mission statement, to get back to your question, the mission statement of the vault was to provide a premium cigar experience where the primary currency we exchange is relationship. It was just about people.

25:26 How can we build an environment where people feel better when they leave than when they come in? ~ you know, the Common denominator of a cigar lounge is that we're lighting our money on fire, one cigar at a time. And so, so that people can do that anywhere. ~ Amazon won. So all these cigars that I'm selling, you can get cheaper online with free shipping. So that couldn't be my unique selling proposition. So my unique selling proposition had to be the relationships that we engaged in in a very intentional way in our lounge. So did y did you then run for the next mayor? No, no. They ~ I I was asked to, ~ but but then it looked like a job.

26:06 And ~ the other thing I found out is that City Hall had an anti smoking provision that ~ that ~ I I actually met with a city attorney and I asked him, I said, I know that we've got a smoking ban in City Hall. ~ but is there any enforcement associated? Can you like look at the law and and and Bill went and looked at the law and he's like, Yeah, he's like, It's on the books that you can't smoke in City Hall, but there's No enforcement or fine or, you know, it's not it's not really labeled what they said nobody's ever challenged that. And so what I what I told the city leadership is I'm better as a servant to my community as opposed to leading it. Except if we go to war. So we have a neighboring community, Cuna, that's just south of us by about twelve miles. And so what I've told everybody is if Cuna, Idaho, ever invades Meridian, Idaho, I'd be a great wartime mayor, a real Churchillian figure.

26:54 sitting in City Hall marshalling resources to defend ourselves. So You're definitely an author. You are a fiction author. ~ so you built You built this around relationships. That's the entire premise of the book, the conversation, the cigar lounge. ~ have you added more locations than the first one? Yeah. So while we're being transparent and sharing failures, ~ we had ~ we had a group in a neighboring city, ~ called Eagle, again, like fifteen minutes away. And this group said, We really want to have a Vault Cigar Lounge in Eagle.

27:36 You know, would you be willing to support that? And and what I told him is I said, I I am I I'm not I'm not interested in running it. However, I'll give you the playbook. Like at this point, I was writing the tobacconist column for the Premium Cigar Association magazine once a quarter. I was traveling around helping other cigar lounges get open and and training them in how to build culture and and organize themselves for success. And so I agreed to do it. I said, I'll I'll lend you the name. I don't want any ownership. I said, but I'll lend you the name. I'll train all your tobacconists, I'll train your staff. ~ and we will do all the acquisition of your cigars. Cause I think one of the things that's a little bit misunderstood about the cigar industry is ~ we are in the greatest period of cigar making in the history of cigar making.

28:24 there are so many options coming out of the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, just unbelievable products. But navigating ~ value and navigating, you know, how what are your unique offerings? given the challenge of like online cigar sales, which is probably eighty-five percent of the market, ~ how how do you how do you organize your humidor? So we did all the buying for them as well. ~ that lounge actually closed two years after we opened it. And and it closed because the senior partner that had put together the whole concept had embezzled about $1.4 million out of the lounge over so it wasn't a case of the the the lounge wasn't a success.

29:07 It was a wild success, so successful that this guy was able to steal all this money and ~ and not pay back the original folks. So but my wife and I both contributed, ~ or we contributed money towards getting it open with a, you know, a a a a loan to get that money paid back and n ~ all of us were out. ~ and so again it speaks to why relationships matter. I wish I had taken a little bit more of my own advice and really done the due diligence to understand who I was partnering with. before we open that up and so now I'm strictly focused on helping others achieve achieve their their goals. We we helped two other shops in Idaho open up ~ in the last twelve months and that's what I'm excited about is helping others achieve their their goals and dreams and aspirations.

29:54 So your middle name now is altruism. Here we go, you all. ~ So is there anything in hindsight, because we all can play Monday morning quarterback in our lives and relationships? If you would have dug deeper, would you have found things? Can you honestly play a Monday morning quarterback? Because sometimes people are like, Yeah, I told you so. But I think if we're really honest, we're like, okay, in that situation, if I would have had this more information, would I have still made a different decision versus now? Is there something that we all could learn that you learned from it? Is it more of a microscope? Is it more time digging deeper? Or sometimes people just aren't who they say they are? Or or they change.

30:37 Yeah, or they change life circumstance, right? Like, you know, could be something, you know, some some big significant event. What I would say, ~ as a as a general comment to entrepreneurs and people starting businesses, ~ people overlook two things I think when they're when they're starting companies. Number one, I think they overlook the actual legal framework of their organization. Right. Because as an entrepreneur, it's like, look, I'm hanging a shingle. I got a few dollars. I just gotta I gotta start working. Right. And the very first company that I built when I was in college that I ended up selling back to my partners, ~ we we that's that's what we did.

31:18 I mean, we were all, you know, nineteen, twenty, twenty one years old, and we just decided we want to start a company and we ended up having a lot of success. but we didn't paper, we we didn't provide the light right legal structure. And so when that when that change of control event happened and I I sold out to my partners, it was very, very difficult. Like we didn't have the right documents. We didn't have the right operating agreements that we needed to have in order to navigate that. ~ and certainly we didn't put any of those in place when we did this second cigar lounge that failed here in the valley either. So so number one is is legal structure and having the right guiding documents that memorialize what the deal is. Like like what are we working towards? Where are everybody's responsibilities?

31:59 So that's number one. The number two is an org chart. And I know it sounds really campy and it and it feels very like, you know, Harvard business school or or Sign siload and you know. Yeah. All that stuff. But what I will tell you, especially having worked with the military, is what that what that ~ org chart provides is lines of communication. How do how do we work up and down that organization and how do we communicate? How do we lead? where do responsibilities lie? And I have seen more pain in organizations that that actually don't have a chart. They're flat, right? They'll have a a single entrepreneur and and he's got, you know, fifteen to twenty people that all knock on his door, right? And and I've never wanted to be that kind of a leader.

32:47 I've always wanted to push ~ decision making and authorities. Like I felt like as a CEO, my job was to put the organization in position to have success. And so for me to do that means I've got to I've got to mobilize everybody who works for me and I've got to push that decision making as deep into the organization as I can while providing guardrails. Right. Like I don't want you driving off the road. So here here's here's the road that you're going to drive on. But I'm gonna empower you you got the keys to the car, you got fuel in the in the in the tank, and I need you to go out and do these things and and I wanna make sure that that you get to where I need you to be. So in that same form, ~ in this world of entrepreneurism and people being entrepreneurial and wanting to start businesses and not knowing what we're getting into before we start them, I don't think many of us really, really know. Not the full context, but What when we all start the cigar shop for you, even being an author, it's an entrepreneur, me doing real estate things, podcasts, real estate development.

33:58 Do you think that we all set out to be something similar? And I'm gonna use these adjectives, to be great, to be e to be elite, to have an incredible, awesome experience. Like, do you think we all because I'm gonna have a follow up question with that? Do you think we all quietly, even if we don't know what we're doing, do you think the vast majority of us go into it wanting and thinking the same thing or no? No, I think for everybody it's a little bit different. ~ I I have, and I'm not just saying this, I have never had a goal of necessarily being great at one particular thing or or money. ~ that's never been a a motivation for me.

34:43 I love solving problems. ~ in in in both my software business and in my real estate, you know, redevelopment business. I was solving very, very tough problems. Like for me, it was the challenge of ~ you know, the first company we were developing tools for law enforcement in the military for as they were getting, guess what, computers and phones in their squad cars on their person. Like we had to build technology that met them where they were at. So it was really ~ a journey of understanding what does it look like to be a law enforcement officer on the side of the road at two AM? investigating an automobile accident. So what how do I provide drawing tools?

35:25 How do I provide reconstruction tools? How do I provide data capture tools that make that job easy? Because no policeman ever got into uniform with a gun so that they could be on the side of the road working an automobile accident. So so th this was something that was a a necessary but it wasn't why they got into it. So my motivation's always been to solve tough problems. As I've gotten older And specifically with the cigar lounge, it was connection. It was how do how do I how do I create community that's authentic and that's relational, that that that I can take all these experiences that I've had and I can breathe them into an organization where I can see kind of an exponential return. So when I see ~ entrepreneurs, you know, even even handy men, stuff like that that are coming into my cigar lounge, I'm always very, very active with being curious and inquisitive and making sure that I'm making myself available.

36:23 Like that's my gift to them is is being able to provide them. Here's some of the lessons and the lumps that I've taken and encourage them along the way. So if we all have different ideas when we start. Yeah. Maybe different desires, different goals. But if we all knew what we were getting into, it they better be pinned down to something real. Yes. So the question is, could somebody achieve their goals? Becoming an entrepreneur if they're not particularly likable. think it's very, very tough. ~ the my mentor, kind of my CEO mentor, ~ he was ~ actually the CEO of the defense contractor that bought my software company in 2009.

37:12 ~ he shared a story with me that was shared to him by his father. And his father was in construction and then Ken served ~ as a Navy bomb tech ~ master chief And then started a counterterrorism company kind of post-9-11. And so, so two very, very different industries. But but what Ken told me was the wisdom he got from his father was that there were three secrets to business success, but that you only had to get two of them right. And I was like, Ken, like hit me. I I I gotta hear these. And he's like, number one, people like you. He's like, number two, people like you. And number three, that you have a good product and service.

37:54 He's like, the reality is if people like you, then business is hard and you're going to be able to overcome missteps, ~ missed deadlines, mistakes because people want to work with you. He's like, but if you have the best product or the best service and you're just simply unlikable, it's very, very difficult. Like you just have to execute at such a perfect level because you've you've you've not treated this whole idea of relationship. ~ and like ability with the gravitas that it really deserves. So then just to counterpoint to all the people listening saying, but what the books we've written, and and to point out like a a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk.

38:37 I have massive, right? You've probably I've read the Walter Huddings. I've re- We've read them, right? We've read them. Neither one of them are particularly likable. However, I think this is probably in line with your argument. They're just elite. Yeah. Both of them were just elite performers, thinkers. There's something about their DNA. So then we shouldn't say, well, see. There's an example. You don't have to be likable. And it's like, hey, we're probably talking about one in a hundred million or one in ten million of a human being that for some reason the combination of their talents just wins in spite of all the things that's not going to work for the vast majority of us. I agree. And I th and I think with those two names, ~ Jobs and Musk, you're you're talking about two of the most innovative brains that have existed in the last hundred years.

39:28 I mean, they were thinking thoughts and are or are in Musk's case still thinking thoughts that just d like I consider myself a pretty high IQ individual and I'm not even having the kind of thoughts or trying to solve the kind of problems that Elon Musk is trying to solve. So I think those are the exceptions. I think most businesses and and the example is consider the 10 businesses that you're frequenting on a regular basis in your community. Why are you there? Like I guarantee you, if you really think carefully about it, it's not because they have the most innovative product. It's because you got introduced to them or you had an experience there that was positive. And there is some relational element, whether, you know, like my plumber, ~ Who works on all my commercial buildings?

40:15 ~ he's originally from New Zealand. He's a Kiwi. He just relentlessly returns calls to me. Like, doesn't matter what time that I've got a leak in a building or or a water issue, or I had a sewer line that actually broke and I had, you know, unpleasantness gurgling up on a patio. ~ he relentlessly answers his phone immediately with his great accent. Josh, how can I help you today? You know, what what do you need? And so I'll never he's not the cheapest. But I know that he's always gonna answer my call. He's gonna be super delightful and do it with a smile, even when he's dealing with some of the most horrible things you'd have to deal with. And so I think we can look at those those those businesses and I think that is the normal ~ experience that we have is there's something relational there as opposed to, you just have to have a big brain and a big idea and that overcomes everything.

41:05 I I think those are the exceptions. All right. So we're checking the likability box and saying you're going to be substantially better off if you develop the ability to be likable, even if naturally maybe you weren't. If you develop that and you work on that, you're going to have a higher chance to succeed and get what you want in life, make impacts, like your day. What do we do though with also work ethic, with commitment? With discipline. What do what do we do with those then? So as we talk about building culture, like one of the mentors, one of the books that I read ~ when I was in high school was John Wooden's book.

41:49 So John Wooden, coach at the UCLA Bruins, ~ he had his pyramid of success. ~ so I was studying that, you know, as a as a high school basketball player. ~ because here's a guy that won eleven NC two A championships, which is just unmatched. Like you're never going to see that again. And Coach Wooden was a culture warrior. And if you look at his pyramid of success, there's five blocks at the bottom. Three of them are relational. ~ so, you know, they're touching on topics like friendship. I think it's friendship, loyalty, and cooperation. So very relational kind of topics. But the book ends of it, I think are what you're speaking to, which is one is industriousness, you know, your ability to you've got to work hard.

42:33 Like at the end of the day, worthwhile results ~ come from hard work and planning. Like that has to be there. The other bookend is enthusiasm. And I tell people this all the time. If you do not have a passion for the industry that you're in and the work that you're doing, go find something you are passionate about because it is very, very unlikely that you're going to invest the time, the energy into the relationships and the growth if you're not passionate about the subject matter. So so I I think that speaks to, you know, you're very, very right. I and And relationships and that whole skill set of likability, you can learn to be better at that. And I know some people that don't feel like they're naturally likable.

43:14 Like, like, you know, I get this from you, Mark. You you you oo likability, I oose likability. So Josh, well, of course it's easy for you to talk about this. What I encourage people to do is start with the one. Like, like I'll ask people, like, what's the one relationship that you have right now, whether it's a customer, you know, vendor, employee. that's not good today. Go talk to that person. Go try to heal one relationship. And and and you're gonna mess up, right? If you're not naturally likable, you're gonna trade paint. It's gonna be a little bit awkward. But what I would encourage you to do is start by listening. You know, the like when we create margin for others to speak to us, that's the first step in kind of getting healthy.

43:58 And then we need to be considerate. We need to do things like cooperate and and But when people are feeling heard and pee and you're taking time out of your day to fix that one relationship, that becomes contagious. And and I and I tell people like, keep doing that. Like, so one fixing one relationship is also going to breathe into their life that you took time and that's a contagious thing. And they're going to go do that with one person. So you do that enough, you're going to find yourself in a culture, which is what we should be focused on of mutual respect. and and hard work and the things that create a healthy organization. When'd you come to we we talked about or or you shared about the six year old Joshua and yeah whether he's an entrepreneur or a criminal, I don't know. I don't know which one, taking that money from dad.

44:49 sorry. Like I I knew he read the book, he read the story, but I I think he knew what I was doing. Well Yes. Yeah, he probably did. ~ so where did the philos the relationship philosophy, where'd that come from that you intentionally apply it now? I don't I'm i'm I'm I'm assuming that you weren't already that and you realize like all this works, or did you? Yeah. no, I would say it was with my software company. So so prior to that the technology that I was building was very ~ impersonal. Like like it was we were building ~ back end ticketing solutions for the similar to like a ticket master concept, but this is in, you know, the mid nineties before the internet was really even prevalent. I remember the pitch that I made ~ to the ticketing organization about, you know, being able to sell tickets to a concert online and the owners of that ticketing company actually and is one local to Idaho called Selectacy, but they had said, Well Josh, they're like, how how would people pay for the tickets if they buy the ticket online? I said, they'll use their credit card.

45:55 And I remember vividly, they're like, no. They're like, nobody'll ever put their credit card number online. They'll never the and I said, you're just wrong. I said, I think human nature is naturally a little bit lazy and we will look for ways to make our life easy. And and If I have to if I have the choice between showing up at a grocery store where you do your on sale for the Garth Brooks concert and it's February in Idaho and I'm freezing, but I've got to be there at four AM because the tickets go on sale at eight AM, or I could be at home in my pajamas at seven fifty nine with my credit card ready to click and buy the ticket. I think they'll do that. And so we had success because we took the risk and we built that ticketing engine.

46:38 And we just charged and we we didn't get paid for it. So we just charged a a ticket fee for anything that got transacted. And within six months, we we had done very, very well and sold the technology back to the the the entity. And so, ~ but it was very interpersonal. When I started my work with law enforcement, I think one of the very common threads between law enforcement and the military is just relationships. There's a natural distrust, right? Because of the work that law enforcement and the military has to do. that I think they come into all relationships with skepticism. And so it was really where I I home this message of ~ number one, I'm not imposing technology on them.

47:19 Like my job is not to go ~ solve problems. My job is to understand what their troubles are and then look to bring solutions to them. So I think that's the the I think I really have our law enforcement and our military community to thank. for helping me really understand relationships and how to engage with a customer. And then by the time we got to a cigar lounge it was it was running downhill. Like it was just a natural extension of what we'd built ~ during those early years. So then you write this book. Were you the same person after you were finished writing the book than you were when you started?

48:02 No. ~ I started the book in 2019. So at at that point, ~ the cigar lounge had been open two years. I had been writing my entire professional career, but mostly for trade publications. ~ so in every business that I did, I always wrote articles and submitted them. That was one of my marketing strategies. Get get published in different trade journals, trade magazines, things of that nature, but never found a topic that I was really interested in doing the hard work of 60,000 words. Like that's just for anybody who's written a book, I applaud you because it's very, very hard. it's hard to to build those threads, to do the research, to write. It's very hard to be edited.

48:44 ~ so when we went through the editing process this last spring to have people be critical ~ of how you tell your story ~ is is a little bit tough. ~ but in in doing all that starting in 2019, ~ in 2020, I got cancer the middle of the summer. So I got primary pancreatic lymphoma. ~ and so the book book went away. Like, you know, at this point I'm in a battle. ~ I'm in chemotherapy and my infusions are eight and a half hours ~ in the drip chair and I had to do this all alone. So even though my wife was a registered nurse, this is COVID. So the only patients could be in the hospital, only patients could be in the infusion centers for chemotherapy.

49:26 So I was by myself having to kind of journey through this this thing called cancer, not knowing, you know, ~ you know, whether I was going to make it or not. And so when when I finished up ~ kind of that journey, which, you know, the chemotherapy was, you know, a half a year and then probably a full year after that of ~ the the specific cocktail that I got ~ attacked all your ~ soft tissue in your body. So by my third infusion, I couldn't really walk anymore. Like I had a cane and I would fall regularly and so so my body just had to get healthy again. And so I think that ~ when I dove back into the book to finish it, I just had a I there was a sense of urgency that if I was this passionate about the message, I I I needed to pour everything I have into it.

50:19 And and the book is not it's not as much for others as it was for me. I was writing to myself like these are the lessons that I learned and I don't want to forget And and I certainly don't want my children, I don't want my grandchildren to not be able to read these words. And so you'll you'll see even in the writing style, it's very conversational. it's very much a transparent walk in in in my journey. And so yeah, I was very, very different in publishing the book than when I first started it. And I think it's a better product for it. I don't I don't think the I don't think the book would have carried the amount of weight that it does had I not gone on my own personal journey. What do you think ~ now, 'cause we can listen to these books too at times.

51:03 All right. Don't know if you did audible or not. Don't know if you've done that, but but What do you think is best about the experience? There's so many books now. What's best about the experience for the reader actually reading books? Like what what do you think we get from it? And here's why I asked the question. In an idealistic world, the person that you were from going through cancer, fighting the battle, if the book and the experience for the reader is much better because you went through that and how to live a better life and these approaches and who should who who you should be, in an idealistic world, every single person who reads it applies it.

51:53 That doesn't happen. So are they still just entertainment? What should we do with these? If that's the case, what I just said, what should what should we do better? I think we all should be taking inventory of our time. So so one of the things that my wife and I started doing I wanna say it's been two, three years ago, is we stopped bringing our phone to meals. whether that was a meal at home or when we'd go out to eat. ~ we wanted to make sure, even after being married thirty-two years, we want to be intentional about that time together. Like when we're sitting there at a meal.

52:36 I'm I'm engaging with her and and man, would I love to see a sports score? Would I l you know love to be able to, you know, take the phone call from the grandsons? Like absolutely. But but in that moment of time, we wanna we wanna set that aside for for the two of us. And I think that in society right now, we have allowed too many distractions into our life. And and and the reason I say that is I see it in my cigar lounge every day. and even though I example it, like we don't allow cell phones for our staff or for my wife and I when we're in there because we want to be in community. We want to be having conversations. But I will tell you, seventy-five percent of the people that come into the lounge, they buy their cigar, they buy their old fashioned, they sit there on their phone and we have to have charging cables for their phone because they're they're they're just burning up their entire life death scrolling.

53:28 And I'm sure there's some productive things going on. It might be a business deal, it might be a, you know, a a text exchange with a child or a coworker. But it's a lot of death scrolling. And I can look around at the screens and it's a video game and it's Candy Crush and it's, you know, whatever, TikTok videos. And I think that we need to be I think the tactile, the that whether you audio book, Or whether you read a book, I happen to use a Kindle because my eyes aren't so great anymore. So I like being able to increase that font size and have a backlit screen. But but taking time out of our day to get wisdom, like I didn't have all the answers. I was just very curious. And so when I went into, like even into the cigar business, I went and sought out people that had done that in other markets that I knew.

54:17 And I went and met with them and sat down with them or or would schedule a phone call or a video call. to get wisdom from them. And so I think that when we look at a book, first of all, you're right. Nobody's gonna read this book and go apply everything because it's not their journey. It's my journey. And so my hope and my encouragement and certainly a lot of the feedback that I've gotten in the last, you know, forty five days since we launched the book is that people are taking one thing. You know, of those eight lessons, there's one of them. that resonates and they go, man, I want to do this different. I want to do this different in my life. I want to do this different in my business. And and that's my hope is that somebody would take that one nugget, take, take the time, create the discipline to, to read that book and then, and then look for that, look for that one thing. And and I always write real practical ways to do this.

55:07 So in a chapter about building culture, I give you four or five things at the end of that chapter and how you can improve the culture in your organization. Just start there. Right. And and I think you'll benefit. Mm-hmm. I don't know who it was, if it was Peter Thiel, if it was Larry Ellison, if it was Mark Andreessen, one of these tech guys. I don't know who, but they talk, maybe it was Ellison. They talk about you, if you're going to start a business or you're going to buy a business, you want one that has a big moat around it. One that can't be penetrated, one that people can't come steal your market share. I mean, it's hard to do, right? It's hard to create something with a big moat around it. Or unless maybe it's not, but it feels hard to me. When does community become a genuine competitive moat?

55:50 So maybe it's not the business that the moat's around, maybe it's the way the business is run. Yeah, I think ~ I think the the moat, ~ which is a great concept. I th there's lots of books that have been written. I but Blue Ocean Strategy is one that comes to mind where you got this whole idea of red ocean, blue ocean and being where, you know, everybody else isn't and having some, you know, some some blue ocean to operate in. I think relationships are the discriminator for a lot of a lot of businesses. So when we started the cigar lounge, ~ Because in my first company, the technology company, where we were doing work with law enforcement and the military, we had a discriminating technology.

56:31 Nobody had built a ~ you know, a a a vector-based diagramming tool for reconstructing automobile accidents, crime scenes, domestic violence, bombings. So we had something that was unique. So we had the moat. In the cigar lounge, there's no moat. There's no barrier to entry. Most cigar lounge owners in the United States are hobbyists, right? They had a career doing something, let's say law enforcement. And when they retired at fifty five, they still had time and they like smoking cigars. So why not open a cigar lounge? So they're not, they're not professional business owners. Like they they they own a business, but it's a hobby for them. And so so there's no barrier to entry.

57:12 And so in that world, the moat does become the relationship. So we were the first like real premium cigar lounge in the in the jet Greater Boise area, of which Meridian's part of. So it exists in what's called the Treasure Valley. So we have a little over a million people that that live in this large valley in numerous cities. but we were the first one that had like a full bar and a walk-in humidor and a lounge area for you to sit and smoke in. Since then, we now have six lounges that are in our valley, right? We've had a lot of growth ~ over the last, you know, seven or eight years. ~ people leaving California, Washington, Oregon, whether they're political refugees, equity refugees ~ that have come to Idaho and relocated here.

58:00 And so there's more lounges, but but the reason that we maintain our status in the Valley is we focus on people and and and relationships and we make sure that that that's the moat. That's the thing that we protect. ~ and that's what we hear pretty consistently from people that come and visit is man, we just we just We can't even describe it. We just feel like we're a part of a family here that we've we've been taken care of. Hm. What ~ Don't like to ask people what you would do different because it's such a cliche question. Because what I always tell people is even folks that would get a divorce, what I share with them is I'm like, but you wouldn't give back to kids, would you? Right? And so I look at business the same way.

58:48 You wouldn't be where you're at now having whatever conversation with the person saying, What would you do different if you hadn't made some mistakes, worn, grown, become the human, be in the situation you are now? But I don't think the right question is what would you do different? What would you have done better? I think that going through this so so prior to cancer, so we had opened up a lounge in twenty seventeen, it got cancer in twenty twenty. ~ prior to that, I I was the face of the cigar lounge. ~ so I wanted to lead it, I wanted to establish the culture, and what I learned going through cancer and what I would do differently from day one having gone through that is I would have been developing my replacement.

59:35 And I would have been very invested in building culture and not building something that required me to be there. Because what we found in those first couple of years is when I was there, people liked hanging around me. I was a natural storyteller. I really did love people, even though that didn't fill me up. Like as an introvert, like I I don't like sitting around with a bunch of people. That's not that's not what does it for me. But I felt like that was my act of service to my customers. In going through cancer, I realized that. If I'm gonna build an organization around me, then it requires me to be there. And I could have very easily punched my ticket and not been there. So we've been very, very intentional since then about hiring general managers and and forcing our general manager to consider his secession plan and and how is he investing in the next people and pushing that culture as deep as we can into our staff. And so that would be the thing I would do different is I would have started that doing day one and not relied on cancer to to force my hand.

1:00:37 Awesome conversation. I'm gonna keep this guy talking forever, but boise he needs him back or meridian. ~ so give the plug on if Jesus smoked cigars, because what I don't know is in the chapter is since he couldn't, because there weren't cigars, what was the equivalent then and did he? Yeah, he broke bread. I mean, honestly, the like if you if you read the New Testament, what you see a consistent thread of is meals. and I talk about it all the time with my friends. Like, I love breaking bread with people, and I think that's what he did. So the the common denominator there was food and gathering and bringing people around and having really, really great conversations. And we see that in the parables that he told.

1:01:19 Like he was a storyteller. ~ so that's what he did. So the plug though, ~ if Jesus smoked cigars Eight lessons in relational leadership. ~ we wanted to make it easy. So if you go to www.ifjesus.com, everything that you need is there. So all the links to social media. You want to buy a hardcover version of the book, if you want links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, like the the book's available everywhere, and we provide links to all that on the webpage. ~ and also some bio information about me. So if there's ~ workshops, ~ training, coaching, things that you're interested in. We provide a lot of information out there in regards to that and ~ some direct ways to get a hold of me. because I feel like in whatever the number one cause of death is birth. So, you know, I I'm I'm gonna wear off this mortal coil.

1:02:09 And in the meantime, I wanna try to impact as many lives as I can ~ in a positive way. So so great ways to get a hold of me on the website as well. right, you all, we love that Joshua Evarts joined us, beard and all. you're kind. Okay. Thanks for having me, Mark. Thank you for the conversation. It was really good.