PCA Magazine 2022 Show Issue

36 PCA The Magazine | VOLUME 2 2022 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG space. The original cigar shop was 1,000 square feet, including the bathroom, the humidor, the lounge and the retail area. I think the first event I threwwas with Perdomo andwe had 65 people in the place at once. Cramming 65 people into a thousand square feet is not ideal. I needed the added space and knowing that I love to have a bourbon or scotchwithmy cigar, we added that component in. Really, the alcohol part was simply to pay for the real estate and the employee. Just to pay its part so it wasn’t draining the other business. And now, it’s in the black as well. — What’s your secret to getting the businesses in the black so quickly? On the cigar side, we operated very lean. We had one employee plus me and Sharon. Sharon and I both had our full-time jobs at the city when we started, but outside of that, I had one employee on payroll and we just operated lean and pushed through hard. — What’s behind the name Open Door? Being good at business, being a good tobacconist, being good at service and hospitality. If you’re a crappy tobacconist, you’re not going to garner any trust out of your clientele. Or if you treat people like crap, they’re going to go to the internet or they’re going to go to one of the other shops. We probably looked at no fewer than 120 different potential names and Open Door was just us. — Talk about your management style and philosophy. Anytime we hire somebody, we hire for culture. I don’t hire for experience. As matter of fact, in Suite Seven, the guys I’ve got working behind the bar, not one has been a bartender. The people that we hire, we hire for their ability to engage, to serve people. Service is what I do for you, and hospitality is how I make you feel. I want people who have the potential to be good at that. And, of course, we train them and the training is ongoing. We’ll bring in different companies and reps to teach all the staff how they want our staff to sell their product. Sharon and I rarely talk about “my employees.” I typically talk about our family, and we try to not just make that lip service. We try to look at a very flat organizational structure where everybody has a voice, but we all play a slightly different role. It’s not lost on them that Sharon and I are the owners but at the same time we want them to feel, when it comes to conversations or running the shop, we’re all equals. I happen to be the guy who has to call the ball at the end of the equation and say yes or no to an idea. But everybody has equal value. — What about marketing? How do you kind of connect the shop with the community? We try to stay out in front of people on social media, but our real marketing, if you want to call it that, is themore we lean into the community, themore word spreads. Inmy opinion, the only true advertising in the world is one person to one person because if you and I know each other and I have any change in your pocket at all, and I tell you about a cool place I went the other day and we ought to go there sometime. That’ll stick. My joke around here is always giveme three steps. If I can get somebody insidemy front door three steps where I have a chance to engage with them, I have a chance to win that guy over as a client and potentially a friend. — Tell me about working with Sharon. There are a lot of husband-and-wife teams out there, particularly in this industry, it seems like, but that can be a toss-up sometimes when you both have had jobs separately for years. We joke all the time. We are the exception to the rule. Most husbands and wives do not need to work together and wouldn’t enjoy it. We love working together. We’re really good, I think, at knowing our strengths and the other person’s strengths. — What ’ s the best lesson that you ’ ve learned over the past eight years running the business? I have found coming out of law enforcement that our culture in 2022 is really, really short on hospitality. We’re really good at transactions. I think we’re very good at service as a nation. But I think if you look around, we’ve gone so digital that we have really lost that truly hospitable approach to things. For us, we actually do care about the people who walk in here. I may be the only smile the guy gets all day long. And if that’s all it is, I’ll give himwhat I got. So we take care of our customers’ needs and we don’t worry about trying to sell hima $20 cigar when he’d be happiest with a $12 cigar. — What are your plans for Open Door moving forward? Do you have any growth plans? The sky is the limit, whether that’s potentially franchising, potentiallymultiple locations or whether we stay here and continue to execute in our own back yard better. The idea is to constantly grow, and that may just mean we’re going to keep getting better at doing what we do and see what kind of opportunities God brings in front of us. D O O R S W I D E O P E N Anytime we hire somebody, we hire for culture. I don ’ t hire for experience. The people we hire, we hire for their ability to engage, to serve people. Service is what I do for you, and hospitality is how I make you feel.