How a Golfer Built a Cigar Empire

I don't have that interest in a story. I'd say if anything I could relate with probably most of the audience of just being pretty average and just deciding that you know what committing to something you know persevering through stuff and just following you know the little voices in your head that say hey this might be a good idea or you should explore this or you should do that and just going on my journey with me I guess would be kind of the biggest thing. Ty Murphy is a serial entrepreneur, marketing strategist and technology-driven business founder of Green Side Cigar Company which he launched in 2018 to bridge the golf and cigar industries. So how do you ascend your clients? How do you keep them buying more cigars? You almost gamified it. We did yeah it makes more fun. The funny story on this is we thought if we came out with better branded cigars for golf and we go straight to golf course and say sell these cigars they're cool they're gamified more guys will have more fun picking these out to play with than anything else you sell you'll sell more cigars and they probably sold a little bit more cigars but after three years of running with that message it spans the globe like a super high is cold into the eldest today apple is going to reinvent the fall it's not over until I win the living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy welcome to another episode of the living your legacy podcast for insight success I am Ray Gutierrez joining me today is something that's very close to my heart because I'm 50 Cuban and as a Cuban there is already a well-known fact that my fingers are made to roll Cuban cigars watch see Ty Murphy is going to help me get more Cuban cigars apparently no yeah if we can we gotta we gotta work with the border there uh it's okay I know people Dominicans are good too uh right on yeah yeah yeah I'm born and raised in Miami so I know I may know a couple people yeah this is a good town for cigars I'll tell you that bought some last night actually right huh well Ty Murphy welcome to Miami thank you it's good to be here welcome to insight success yeah appreciate you for having me you are literally moments before your literally moments to film your episode for legacy makers what will we learn about you um I mean I think the most important thing you'll probably learn is I think just my path to starting a business I I mean I don't have that interest in a story I'd say if anything I could relate with probably most of the audience of just being pretty average and just deciding that you know what committing to something you know persevering through stuff and just following you know the little voices in your head that say hey this might be a good idea or you should explore this or you should do that um and just going on my journey with me I guess would be kind of the biggest thing right on um when you stop and talk to yourself in your head do you naturally have a good day when you kind of like affirm that there is multiple people in your head yes because I did that this morning and so far it's been going great oh man uh and sometimes that person is very positive and sometimes that person's like what the hell are you doing yeah and I in those days are dark I mean it's like you've got everything on the line and you could you say I wasted the last four years it's like we don't know what we're doing and this is the thing that's going to kill us and then like it's amazing maybe even not even an hour or a week later whatever comes it's like you have a ultimate high and like you have a success and then that other voice goes see it's like the people on your shoulder you know see I knew what you were doing like you're smart like just listen to me so it's uh it's a challenge it's fun it's it's definitely uh so time Murphy a legion of voices yeah a lot of voices and I'm glad they're in here nobody else can hear that yeah right but uh sometimes I get out uh so cigars I know it was a terrible intro and that's the best I can do I'm sorry yeah no you're good yeah so we focus primarily on golf and cigars so the sport of golf we kind of recognize there's not a better pair than other than maybe cigars and like a rum or an old fashion right but in terms of sports golf is it right you're never gonna have a cigar playing basketball or tennis you die yet yeah yeah you can try it you can try it um and we just noticed that there was a gap there right nobody had really cemented that bond so you had the golf industry and you had the cigar industry and yeah they'd sell you know the cigars in the golf but if you're a new up and comer in the cigars and you want to have one on the course for one day you really don't have any connection to what brands are being sold in there so we try to change that Ty you're telling me that no one goes Arnold Schwarzenegger cigars golfing hmm no one put it all together I either they did and they listened to that little voice that told them not to I don't know I don't know good for you Ty Murphy for listening for all your voices and creating this yeah one of my favorite conversations that I always like to bring up is I had a a surgeon here and they're like we surgeons like to talk shit when we're like there's a body and there's we're standing here for 12 hours yeah you'd be surprised how much locker room talk is happening there yeah and this is coming from a woman yeah yeah yeah so like talk about what it's like to network on like on when you're golfing like what what's happens there yeah I mean a lot of business happens in golf I think the great thing about golf is you're committing four hours to being outside with the same four people yeah so whether you like those four people and you know them or you're just meeting somebody for the first time there is four hours to have conversations and you're really only swinging a club you know if you're good 80 times but me I'd probably be closer to 90 I look how you look at a cofee well we talked earlier a little bit about the golf game it's like you know some golf days are longer if you're not at playing very well but yeah I mean you yeah you meet all kinds of people and I'm being an entrepreneur I'm interested in their business and their story too so like you learn a lot so it's like here's something I'm not going to do in my business or here's something I should try and pivot for my business very cool yeah yeah I like how you all golfers talk to each other by just getting in the nod I'm just here going you mean a role-playing game where there's four of you you're stuck for four hours yeah that's called an RPG sir yeah yeah yeah uh so what do you all kind of like man do what's the word I want to look for do you kind of just brag now when you're out golfing you've got a more expensive cigar than someone else how do you kind of like vouch for dominance now besides your golf game yeah you're holding a cigar I mean so actually this the cigar I usually choose so I try and always do one of ours and and if I can't do one of ours because I'd like to share so I have some on hand I'll give them to somebody else to try but also like trying everybody else's scars because you always want to know how do you stack up against the rest of the market in competition but I usually go cheaper because I have half my brain on the game and I have half my brain on the cigar yes so those I usually light up on occasion if we're really celebrating something if I'm playing really well and I want to celebrate with something or if I'm just not playing well at all I just want to have a good time for sure I'll light a cigar for that but um yeah I mean cigars is kind of one of those things they they they're all handmade you know so you have to kind of sit nurture take it in there's so many different ingredients that can goes into the cigar and what experience you get and you want to take that in and then if you pair that with a drink while you're on the cigar or out the course you know that contributes to a different experience so um you have to I think with cigars have won some attention to it um and sometimes I mean like I say you know if I play golf every week I probably have a cigar as a guy that owns a cigar company maybe once a month just wow yeah I don't I don't do them that as often as I used to when we got started with it for it on yeah just because I liked when I have a cigar now I want to sit down I want to enjoy it I want to have a good conversation sure set an hour aside to myself when I'm doing cigars on the golf course sometimes now it's fun when I'm having fun and I don't really care about the score I'll do that but um I just like to I like to sit down and really taking the art of them now so you're not getting high on your own supply sir no no I try do one I'll do one but I won't uh good for you I share I'm a I'm a giver I'm a giver um talk about your branding and because it is almost kind of like a luxury brand are you positioning yourself as luxury brand we are how much of it is legitimate versus you're just making it up because most folks don't understand cigar culture sure so uh so the brand you know green side cigars is an overall brand we kind of just wanted to marry the the golf and cigar we were really caring about if it was you know pompous or anything like that we kind of want to be a little bit more down to earth um but as we came out so we have 13 different brands of cigars holy moly and they go from the lowest of the low which is our triple bogey you know the worst score you can make on the on the course it's our worst cigar I'll never smoke it that's the only time I'm going to talk bad about my own product so they're just regs yeah but you gotta hit you gotta hit a five dollar market price right so it's like all right let's five dollar cigar oh man um but then we have our nice our nice ones our birdies our albatross you know those those things we spend time and they are more golf references right scofi just make sure I got the thumbs up from cofee so you know as as the score improves the cigar improves right right on and it's not it's not a marketing gift I mean our birdies cigar uh it they age the back over five years before they roll it uh I mean it's it's four times it's more expensive for us to buy and make right on than it is our triple bogey so the prices are all of our margins are pretty much the same across each brand so as the brands go up the quality definitely and if you put them side by side and tried them in your cigar person you would absolutely know the difference so how do you how do you ascend your clients how do you keep them buying more cigars you you almost gamified it you we did yeah it's fun it makes more fun so it's a very the funny story on this is we thought if we came out with better branded cigars for golf and we go straight to golf course and say sell these cigars they're cool they're gamified more guys will have more fun picking these out to play with than anything else you sell you'll sell more cigars and they probably sold a little bit more cigars but after three years of running with that message we got some courses we we probably had you know 50 to 100 you know golf courses in sure and then we get back when we start getting some testimonials and they're like we're selling you know three five x more cigars than we did uh with the previous supplier and we're like those quotes are gold so you take those two more courses and you go you know how does how is that possible it can't be just a cool effect like what is really doing that well what we found out was we have disrupted an entire distribution chain so the way cigars get over here and make it to a golf course is they come through miami usually they're welcome they come through yeah they come through an importer the importer sells to a distributor the distributor sells to a wholesaler and then all that money gets trickled back down you know the line so it's like at each stop a little piece of margins being held and then the golf course finally buys it and they're usually only seeing 20 30 margin so what what do they have to do they want to make 40 50 margin I want to hear it so they mark it up well you also have these distribution chains who say yeah I'll sell it to wholesalers but if I could sell it to a wholesaler for 30 off why can't I just mark it on my website at 20% off and keep the same percentage as I'm keeping over there and always sell it online to a bigger audience direct to consumer so what that dot is that that undercuts the course so now the course can't sell that cigar for even at MSRP because they're always being sold online for cheaper well we're the only ones that decided to build our own cigars and because nobody would carry us we had to build our own distribution channel so we're the manufacturer and the distributor we go straight into the course with the best margins they've ever seen we don't sell online to these heavy online disc this counters so when a golfer goes in they see a cigar that they know they could order for you know 20 dollars cheaper at being marked up there their hesitant to buy that but what they see one of ours they say oh this is kind of made for me another golfer this is kind of cool they google us you know they can't get any cheaper than like I might as well try this thing and then they usually like it so our business is usually like it which is the last part of the list oh that's right they usually like it I mean we don't get too many bad comments but it's a bonus if they actually like the product at that point yeah I'm just messing with my mom they don't actually tell me that I just don't hear the bad so I figured if they're if somebody didn't like it they'd let us know sure but uh yeah we built it going straight through wholesale now um to get to the direct consumer side was a little bit more challenging tobacco companies can't advertise so social media is tough oh so the way we kind of built that side of the business uh you know our first three years we were 80% wholesale we've moved now to probably almost 55 45 direct to consumer now we're building an audience we're in these courses and people are coming to the website to buy them instead of going back to the course yeah but we'd partner with influencers so yes this happened to be paired around the right time when golf was taking off in youtube you know you have all these youtube golfers out there filming themselves and people are like man this is cool I can see golf from a different view not just the pros which seems boring I'm not hearing them talk and chatter about their shots or stuff and so um so we reach out to a couple influencers who would have an occasional cigar while they're filming and um you know say hey don't buy any more cigars we'll send you a free product you're smoking a cigar on your videos we want it to be ours right and we partner with them and grow that way and that's kind of how we we had to be you know politely worked into what they were doing versus just advertising and that's how we kind of drove our online business yeah that's that's clever it's you know you're warming up you're building that repertoire you're understanding the culture um let's talk about the culture like folks in 2025 and you're probably listening to this in 2030 just kidding um everyone's very eccentric now I would say people have developed a taste just because they have the ability to look up something they don't want without even knowing what they want so how are you how are you like distorting like their education saying look it's I'm not going to say on camera that it's great to smoke but it is a social cue I can't tell you how many people I've met at a rock club and I'm just having a cig yeah and you're just like hey dude and you're 45 minutes in you're at three cigarettes in yeah but you've made you've made friends with like the CEO of twitter yeah this other dude you're just kicking and having a cigarette doing nothing but networking casually yes there's a social aspect absolutely and it's weird because I go to the gym three four days a week you know most golfers you have to be pretty fit um but uh I mean it's weird you know my friends were always like what got you in this like you never used to smoke cigars when we knew you in high school in college and all this it's like well now I'm I'm on the golf course a lot and I'm working business deals and I'm being social with it's like it's a good time to just sit down for an hour and have a cigar and talk it's the only time it'll put me in a chair keep me off my phone engage with the cigar and engage with the person I'm sitting with so um yeah I I mean if you don't smoke cigars we don't encourage you to smoke cigars sure we don't encourage you no don't don't start but if you enjoy spending time or need something to slow you down or you want to take in the intricacies of how a cigar comes to be um I mean it's a it's a fascinating little industry it is and like when you when you encounter like cigar bars and you see this little like these boutiques these experiences of low dim lights and like the cigars behind closed glass doors like there's a whole like it's a total vibe it's just like oh man I feel like a superhero I'm like I feel like I don't belong but I do belong like they recognize me see me it's like yeah just you're in golf in that experience and you're gonna have that whisk you're a glass of wine and then you're gonna ascend to that cigar yeah and it's it's kind of weird rap because it used to be you'd always see like it'd be like a mob boss that I have a cigar you know it's like success now it's yeah it's kind of like Johnson yeah just take an hour and you're having a moment and it's weird because you know you look back to the Native Americans they were all smoking cigars over here you know because everywhere and then you go you go to this blows me away is that like you can buy a cigar for five dollars when that thing started in a seed in soil sat there for god knows how many years was plucked off then had multiple hands put it together roll it and then shipped over here like all the work that went into building that one little piece absolutely you know it's fascinating that they're not more expensive I was just gonna say it's an art form you can definitely feel the energy of the artist that created it yes the entire it's almost like it's like a it's like the to me I always think of why knows with their stories but I absolutely get it when it comes to cigar yeah it's very similar we actually we spun off another brand so we have green-side cigars we have this other company called obvious cigars so yeah the point of obvious was like well obviously there's cigars but we wanted to how do we get off the golf course and get into other locations like cigar bars where golf's not as prevalent right and what we want to do is communicate the art and the quality of the cigar so we built the labels that just tell you exactly what each layer of tobacco comes from and what kind of notes to expect and is this a strong or a mild cigar is there something sweet in there that I should look for so it's really interesting because if you've never had a cigar before and you walk in you're very dependent on the tobacconists it's steer you in the right brands the right direction because you don't know any of these brands they don't tell you what they're like and they could have some strong ones they could have some models you picked the wrong one for the first time it's you're gonna say cigars aren't for me yeah right but if you're married with the right one the right time and your profile can kind of change yeah it's a lot easier if we actually say those on the label so we have we have started that just for that reason of like hey look at the artifacts in here the soil types you know the climate it was in the tobacco how long it was aged you know what style of tobacco the notes to look for and that's when I think you if you light a cigar and you take in all those things you try to profile it yeah it's phenomenal I mean and then you mix it with a drink you know the drink will change the cigar palette so like I may love that cigar but then I'd have this whiskier this bourbon with it now it's a totally different experience and it's a beautiful thing I've had cigars in Japan and it's just like you're with a host and you're it's a whole different economy like there is a level of like I would say you're Aukers but there is a level of like you know not greater than that but when I worked at PlayStation everyone was very Japanese so you know you walk into an elevator and if you're the youngest one there you have to like order a floor sorry I'm going on a tangent here I guess what I'm trying to land on is cigars are very much a cultural thing across the globe oh yeah and it's it's I don't want to say like you know uh cigarettes got slapped because they were cool sure but cigars are kind of cool if you go to a wedding and you're like hey let's get these five guys and we'll sit out and have a cigar to celebrate right let's take it in let's talk about where we're at in life you know and how we got here and and just you know reminisce a little bit that's I've always said it's not about smoking cigars it's about the experience I'm doing when I'm smoking a cigar right on yeah it's how you seem like a pretty smart guy we're obviously here thought bubbling here and we're we're minus fasting where do you think all of this cigar talk branding this perceived notion came from oh man um I don't know I mean mine came from an experience right so like um we were playing golf one day and uh we this was six years ago and uh you know I'm married three kids got a lot of friends that are married um you don't get a typical Saturday to go out and play golf very often with your buddies so we did that day and uh we were not very good at golf because we were just kind of getting started and uh on one of the holes we all happened to birdie the same hole and so that never happened like when you're bad at golf you probably won't have the birdie for entire year right so the fact that we all suck and we all made really good on that one hole we were like let's party like let's celebrate we're all in good moods yeah so we get to the next hole and my uh one of my buddies pulls out a cigar he goes when I make birdies I celebrate with a cigar and so he cuts that open and I'm not doing cigars very often once a year you know fantasy football drafts weddings that kind of thing batch of parties um but the smell of it being outdoors I'm like man that's a perfect way to celebrate it so I'm gonna go do you got another one of those I'll celebrate with you I made a birdie too remember oh yeah and uh as I'm like I'll pay you for it he's like nope he's like this is my my only one he goes I normally carry more in here they're called my birdie stokes he's like I just I leave him in my golf bag right underneath the birdie I pull one out but this was the last one I had wow and this one was probably old and dried up and no good anyways but it's smelt good so we go on and um you know we go back to double bogey and making bad scores and I'm getting mad again with my golf game but he's still happy as a clam because that cigar's lasted him four more holes and he's still celebrating and I just remember a week later I'm like you know why did we not think or why were we not reminded to get cigars before we left out you know like if somebody in that clubhouse would have said big sign cigars like they do alcohol yeah um you know we they missed out on four maybe more cigars we would have bought for sure to take out there and reload so our thought was like well how do we how do we get that how do we get how do we change that you know and yeah sure the easy answer is you could put a sign in there somewhere or you come out the company that's golf branded it makes you think about golf and cigars more like we did right on dude yeah it's funny that you've just created an amazing brand and you're already it's product market fit to its finest uh how can people learn more about your journey like where can people find you so uh greensidecigars.com um we have a we have an about us we've got our whole story documented you can actually see pictures of the holes we were on pictures yeah we've got we document it we document it that's what you gotta do so you go on there and read our story you can read it all about our cigars um we've actually spun off a nicotine pouch company from this as well so you'll see those on there um you know that came from a request from golf courses saying hey love cigars but these nicotine things are really we're getting requests for them dang and so we're like well let's we try to partner with somebody and distribute for them but the margins weren't there and the quality and the quantity wasn't there so we're like we'll just start around with that so you can go look at nukes nukes is taking off very well as well you can find those at all of our golf courses that sell our cigars but yeah greensidecigars.com very cool right on that was quite the chat um Ty Murphy my friend uh thank you for your time and energy i'm very stoked for your interview with legacy makers with kofi uh with that this concludes yet another episode of the living year legacy podcast uh for insight success this is ty murphy and i'm ray gutierrez have a good night thank you