When the cigar market boomed in the 1990s, Nestor Miranda, creator of Don Lino, seemed to have caught lightning in a bottle. He had an established brand that sold so well it was on back order even though production had more than tripled in two years. But when things looked brightest, his cigar manufacturer stopped supplying him.

“Let’s do it” is Nestor Miranda’s mantra. He arrived in the U.S. at age 16 from Cuba with nothing to his name, used his natural-born savvy to build a career in sales, and eventually built a family-owned multi-million dollar cigar company around his own Don Lino brand and as the U.S. importer of La Aurora cigars. He nearly lost it all, rebuilt, and is now celebrating an anniversary that almost never happened. His biggest lesson, perhaps, is to never sit still.