The Slow Burn: Out West

Another mile down. Another stretch of blacktop bleeding into the horizon.

Maybe I’ll make Paducah before the sun finally cracks the sky, showing its face while keeping its warmth to itself. A gust of wind shoves my SUV across the double yellow and snaps me back into my body. Hands tighten. Jaw clenches. Back in my lane.

The road is open, and I am…if I’m being honest…freaking the f out.

I’ve felt this before. Not often. But enough to recognize it. Uneasy. Anxious. Intrepid.

The first date.
The first kiss.
Dropping out of college to chase music and bad decisions in a rock-and-roll band.
Quitting the band to work for “the man.”
Asking my in-laws for permission to marry the woman I love.
Getting clean.
Leaving a sure thing for entrepreneurship.
Walking back into recovery rooms after relapse.
Buying our first home.

Every one of those moments turned into something good. But in the moment? The butterflies weren’t poetic. They were suffocating. And right now, they’re doing their best work. A panic attack feels close enough to taste. So I ask myself the question we all ask when things feel off:
Why?

What’s stirred this up? What chapter is trying to close, or open, without my permission?

Here’s the thing about me: I don’t like endings. I drag them out. I don’t finish the last chapter. I don’t watch the final episode unless I have to. Kaitlyn wants to binge. I want to savor. Stretch it. Keep the door cracked just in case. It’s like sitting on a box of cigars you can’t replace. You know, once the last one’s lit, the curtain call begins…and I hate saying goodbye to things I believe should last forever.

That’s the paradox, isn’t it? Fully embracing new stories requires ending old ones. And there it is. We’re stepping into something new.

When I first started smoking cigars, I didn’t know a damn thing. Two decades later, my days are filled with fermentation methods, leaf primings, balance, construction. Label designs. Box finishes. Distribution channels. Margin math. Standing out in a brutally competitive market while staying lean enough to survive it.

Romantic? Sometimes. Serious? Always. And yet…here we are. Designs are in. The vision has weight now. Texture. Every decision pulls the past a little farther behind us. Kaitlyn and I are turning a shared love for connection into something tangible…rolled in leaf, lit with intention.

We’re trying to build the next great American cigar brand.
Aspirational? Absolutely.
Nicaraguan craft. Texas soul.

So yeah…I’m nervous.

Nervous we’ll make the wrong call. Nervous we’ll trust the wrong people. Nervous we’ll ask the wrong questions, or worse, not know what questions to ask at all. But I’m learning something on this road.

It’s okay to be in new rooms.
It’s okay not to understand everything.
It’s okay to feel exposed.

For an Enneagram Three, an Achiever, that’s unsettling as hell. But you keep moving. That’s the part of entrepreneurship nobody glamorizes. The quiet fear. The setbacks. The long miles with nothing but doubt riding shotgun. As Steve Jobs said, perseverance is the separator. And if the rearview mirror has taught me anything, it’s this:
Kaitlyn and I are resilient motherfuckers.

This piece was supposed to be about pioneers. About brotherhood. About how Brolo isn’t really about cigars…it’s about the people who gather around them. About blending technology and craft in a way that feels honest.

But instead, I wrote the truth.

Because I’m just like you.
I hear the doubt too.

And if you’ve felt it, on the edge of a big decision, staring down a long road…then you already understand what this is really about. None of us has it all figured out. We just choose to show up, share the fire, and take the next mile together.

So I light up.
I lean in.

Out west isn’t a place…it’s a direction