He Turned $300/mo Into $3,750,000/mo From GARDENING

0:00:01 – All right, what’s happening everyone?
0:00:04 Today’s podcast is with Kevin Espiritu.
0:00:07 So Kevin has this company called Epic Gardening.
0:00:09 Epic Gardening started as a blog
0:00:12 where Kevin would just blog about his hobby as a gardener.
0:00:14 He started it in 2016.
0:00:16 And in this podcast, he’s gonna tell us the revenue
0:00:19 for every year that he’s been doing it.
0:00:20 But this year, they’re gonna do something
0:00:23 like $45 million a year in revenue.
0:00:25 And Kevin walks through how they got traffic,
0:00:26 how he’s built the company,
0:00:29 how he bought other companies to make Epic Gardening
0:00:30 a big business.
0:00:31 It’s incredibly fascinating.
0:00:33 He’s super transparent with all the numbers.
0:00:35 So he goes through deal by deal,
0:00:36 all the companies that they bought,
0:00:38 how much they paid for it, how they found the company,
0:00:40 how they found other companies that they didn’t end up buying
0:00:41 and why they didn’t buy it.
0:00:43 It’s a really fascinating story.
0:00:45 This guy is really, really cool.
0:00:47 I think in about five years,
0:00:49 this guy is gonna be a really, really big deal.
0:00:50 He’s already a pretty big deal.
0:00:52 But I think in five years,
0:00:53 he’s gonna be like Chip and Joanna.
0:00:55 You guys have to listen to this podcast.
0:00:56 He’s a really fascinating guy.
0:00:57 Let me know what you think.
0:00:59 All right, check it out.
0:01:00 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:01:03 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:01:06 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:01:07 ♪ On the road, let’s travel never ♪
0:01:11 – Dude, so it’s finally nice to talk to you.
0:01:12 I didn’t know who you were.
0:01:16 And then on the podcast, Sean told your story.
0:01:19 And I’m like, “Oh, I recognize this guy from everywhere.”
0:01:21 And I didn’t realize how big of a business that you’d built.
0:01:23 So congratulations, that’s insane, right?
0:01:26 – Yeah, yeah, it’s been a crazy ride.
0:01:27 It’s been a crazy ride.
0:01:28 – I just watched one of your YouTube videos
0:01:30 where one of your videos had just gotten,
0:01:33 I think you’ve had 70 million views.
0:01:36 And it’s just like you kneeling on a,
0:01:38 like a little kneeling device
0:01:40 so you can garden on your knees more easily.
0:01:43 And you’re like, “I’ve been getting noticed in the streets
0:01:45 because of the silly kneeling video.”
0:01:47 – Yeah, that video might haunt me.
0:01:50 I think it’s the most viral thing I’ve ever made.
0:01:52 It’s a short form video.
0:01:54 So I’d seen this little kneeling device.
0:01:57 It was like a Instagram reel of a German trade show.
0:01:59 And it was just this little kneeling device
0:02:00 where you kind of pop down.
0:02:02 I think it’s made for brick layers.
0:02:03 So I saw it and I was like,
0:02:05 you know what, I kind of want to try it out just to see.
0:02:07 And so I had my team grab one.
0:02:10 There was like one in San Diego where I live.
0:02:12 And I made that piece of content in like,
0:02:15 maybe 10 minutes maximum.
0:02:17 And then edited it up, tossed it out,
0:02:18 put it on, I think, TikTok first.
0:02:19 And it just started ripping.
0:02:22 So I was like, okay, I know this thing, it has some legs.
0:02:24 So then I threw it on Instagram and Facebook
0:02:25 and then threw it on YouTube.
0:02:27 I think it’s like 150 million views across the platform.
0:02:30 And the whole logic of doing it was,
0:02:33 let me put this product in front of our gardening audience
0:02:34 and see if they like it.
0:02:37 So then we can either hit up the manufacturer
0:02:39 and carry it on our store,
0:02:41 or we can maybe make some modifications to it
0:02:43 that make it a little better suited for gardening.
0:02:46 And then it’s basically just market validation, right?
0:02:48 By the time we went that viral,
0:02:50 we hit up the manufacturer, which is a German company.
0:02:52 And they’re like, we would love to sell you some,
0:02:55 but our entire stock in America is gone.
0:02:57 So every distributor we already have has sold out,
0:02:59 so we can’t get it to you.
0:03:02 – How much missed revenue was that?
0:03:03 – I have no idea.
0:03:04 – What’s your guess?
0:03:06 Over or under 10 million?
0:03:08 – Oh, it’s got to, I think it’s under, for sure.
0:03:11 ‘Cause I think these things are like 50 bucks maybe.
0:03:13 I don’t know how many we would have sold,
0:03:16 but I don’t think there was some crazy supply in the US.
0:03:17 But yeah, it was kind of a bummer.
0:03:19 So the only thing I’ve ever gotten out of it
0:03:22 is just being memed to death about it.
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0:04:00 – Dude, so you, the reason you’re sort of interesting to me
0:04:03 is did you start with like an internet marketing background?
0:04:05 Cause I know that you were interested in search
0:04:05 and SEO and stuff.
0:04:07 Was it like to be an agency?
0:04:10 And then, I mean, were you even into gardening
0:04:11 and plants and all that stuff?
0:04:14 Or were you like, I’m the plant daddy now
0:04:15 because I’ve got this website.
0:04:17 And so like, which came first?
0:04:20 – What came first was, yeah, I guess,
0:04:22 I guess designing websites did come first
0:04:24 cause I came out of college with an accounting degree,
0:04:27 but I played online poker to pay for school.
0:04:29 And so that kind of like put me off the path
0:04:31 of wanting to be an accountant right out of the gate.
0:04:32 – And you were making money.
0:04:35 – Yeah, I made like 200, $250,000
0:04:36 probably playing poker in college.
0:04:38 So I used that to pay for school
0:04:40 and then I had some money to like sit on.
0:04:41 – Was it all online?
0:04:42 – Yeah, it was all online.
0:04:45 I hated playing in person because it’s so slow.
0:04:46 Cause when you’re playing online,
0:04:48 you’re playing faster,
0:04:49 but you’re also playing like more tables.
0:04:51 – What makes a good online poker player?
0:04:53 Because I would think I don’t play poker really.
0:04:55 I’ve only played like 10 or 20 times.
0:04:57 It’s just like, it seems like reading body language
0:05:00 and things like that is part of the game.
0:05:01 But what makes a good online player?
0:05:02 Just straight math?
0:05:05 – Straight math is a big part of it.
0:05:08 So like understanding probability theory
0:05:10 and understanding the types of hands
0:05:11 that someone could or couldn’t have
0:05:13 in a particular situation.
0:05:14 But you’re kind of right.
0:05:17 Like eventually when you play enough online poker,
0:05:19 it gets down to the point where you know
0:05:20 the people’s screen names you’re playing with
0:05:22 and you probably have played with these people
0:05:24 like over days, weeks or months,
0:05:26 depending on how often they play.
0:05:28 And you can even get down to the point where,
0:05:29 you know, in this particular position,
0:05:31 like I’m sitting on the button,
0:05:33 they’re sitting in this position
0:05:36 and they wait three seconds longer than they normally do.
0:05:38 And it’s this person’s screen name.
0:05:39 A lot of the times you can develop
0:05:41 some sort of weird sixth sense and you know,
0:05:44 you’re like, I’m like nearly sure that’s a bluff
0:05:44 and you’ll call them.
0:05:48 – And you made $250,000 over four years doing that.
0:05:48 – Something like that.
0:05:49 I didn’t track it super well.
0:05:51 It was like $250,000.
0:05:52 – That’s insane.
0:05:53 That is insane.
0:05:54 – Yeah, yeah.
0:05:55 So it threw me off the path of wanting
0:05:57 to be an accountant for sure.
0:05:59 And then when I got out of school,
0:06:02 I played poker for like six more months or something
0:06:04 and then quit, but I had nothing to do.
0:06:06 So I started playing video games
0:06:09 and then I was designing websites to just pay some bills.
0:06:11 And then I got into the marketing thing
0:06:13 because I was like, well, once you sell a website,
0:06:16 it’s sold so you make your $1,500 for two grand
0:06:18 or whatever the hell I was charging at that time.
0:06:20 So then I got into SEO stuff
0:06:23 and I built the gardening blog at the same time
0:06:24 ’cause I was getting into gardening.
0:06:26 I was doing it with my brother over a summer.
0:06:29 But I was like, I need like a digital business card.
0:06:30 Like I need a little calling card.
0:06:32 So I built the gardening blog as a way to show
0:06:34 the website design clients like,
0:06:35 hey, look, look what I can build.
0:06:37 – What year was that?
0:06:39 – That would have been 2013.
0:06:41 – Dude, I think in the same year,
0:06:42 I did the same thing as you.
0:06:44 Were you reading like Smart Passive Income?
0:06:46 – Yeah, yeah.
0:06:49 – Okay, so Pat, for those young listeners,
0:06:51 I think you and I were on the young side
0:06:53 probably at the time of his blog.
0:06:56 I think you and I are the same age, I’m 34.
0:06:57 – Yeah, 36.
0:06:59 – And Smart Passive Income was like,
0:07:01 this guy Pat Flynn, he’s still quite popular.
0:07:03 He’s one of the early bloggers
0:07:05 of like making money on the internet.
0:07:07 And he had a, what did he do?
0:07:10 He did like a, he wrote like a blog in an e-book
0:07:13 on how to like get your building like green
0:07:15 or lead certified or something like that.
0:07:16 And he was making money doing it.
0:07:20 And he would display all of his income and revenue online,
0:07:22 which at the time was like insane.
0:07:25 And then he did like a food truck,
0:07:28 a food truck, like a book on how to create a food truck
0:07:29 or something like that.
0:07:31 And he like was like, I’m gonna rank high on search
0:07:32 and I’m gonna blog throughout the way.
0:07:34 So you guys can see how I did do it.
0:07:38 I read that and I created a poison ivy,
0:07:42 like how to treat poison ivy website at the same time.
0:07:44 And it was making like $1,000 a day.
0:07:47 And I was like copying everything he was doing.
0:07:48 And I have a feeling that you were reading
0:07:50 that same blog at the same time.
0:07:54 – I have an even more cringe story around that time.
0:07:56 So I was reading Pat like crazy.
0:07:57 – You just call me cringe.
0:08:00 – I mean, we all, that first site that you make,
0:08:01 it’s always kind of weird.
0:08:02 Like, come on, poison ivy site.
0:08:04 – Yeah, it’s so stupid.
0:08:05 – I have one worse than that for sure.
0:08:08 So Pat to me was like a God back in the day
0:08:10 ’cause he’s a half Filipino, half white guy
0:08:12 living in San Diego, building businesses.
0:08:13 – Are you half Filipino?
0:08:14 – I’m half Filipino, half white.
0:08:17 And we’ve become good friends now, which is awesome.
0:08:20 But when I read it, I was like, okay, cool.
0:08:21 I see the blueprint.
0:08:24 Pat’s got this like green certification thing.
0:08:26 And so my choice was to,
0:08:30 I created a website called CocoButterCream.org.
0:08:31 And so I go CocoButterCream.org
0:08:34 and I start reviewing every CocoButter Cream
0:08:35 that’s on Amazon.
0:08:39 And I was using an alias and like, come on.
0:08:41 Like I was like early 20s, I was doing some dumb stuff.
0:08:45 And I was Susie Michaels, a mother of two
0:08:47 who was like reviewing how
0:08:49 all these different CocoButters worked on me.
0:08:52 And then I, you know, who can do Amazon affiliates?
0:08:54 And I remember it took me like a month,
0:08:56 I made like two bucks on that site.
0:08:58 And I was like, oh my God, I made money
0:09:01 in a way that’s not like someone just paying me, you know?
0:09:02 And it kind of blew my mind.
0:09:04 Like the whole saying,
0:09:05 like everyone remembers your first dollar in the internet.
0:09:08 I wish it wasn’t CocoButterCream, but.
0:09:10 – And then, and that’s when you got
0:09:11 into like internet marketing,
0:09:14 but then you do like a Kendrick Lamar website too.
0:09:16 – Yeah, that was, that was a,
0:09:17 man, that was probably like a couple of years later.
0:09:19 So the story on that one is my cousin,
0:09:21 I was living with my cousin at the time.
0:09:22 He was like a biomechanical engineer.
0:09:25 And I’m over here doing all this weird stuff on the internet,
0:09:26 like building sites and stuff.
0:09:28 And he’s kind of getting intrigued by it.
0:09:29 And a friend hits me up and he was like,
0:09:32 hey, I have all these blogs that I need to sell.
0:09:33 I just need some money.
0:09:37 I have Kendrick Lamar, Rita Ora, Schoolboy Q,
0:09:39 like all these sort of up and coming artists.
0:09:42 And this would have been like 2014, I think,
0:09:43 because you want to buy one.
0:09:45 And I go, I’m kind of doing my own thing,
0:09:48 but maybe I’ll have my cousin buy it and we’ll do it together.
0:09:51 So my cousin, Johnny actually puts up the money for it.
0:09:53 And I think I had like 10% equity
0:09:55 in this Kendrick Lamar website.
0:09:57 And we start like scouring the internet.
0:09:59 And we actually become like the biggest source
0:10:01 of Kendrick Lamar news on the internet
0:10:05 before he drops his first album, Good Kid Matt City.
0:10:06 And so no one really knows Kendrick,
0:10:08 like only super fans know him.
0:10:10 And there was a point where like,
0:10:12 I think Kendrick’s manager, even called my cousin,
0:10:13 was like, I like, we really appreciate
0:10:14 what you’re doing for Kendrick.
0:10:17 Like you’re putting his name out there, da, da, da, da.
0:10:20 And the way we monetize that is we were just selling shirts,
0:10:22 just like print on demand shirts.
0:10:25 I think we probably made like 30 or 40 grand doing that.
0:10:27 And then after the album dropped and he blew up,
0:10:29 all of a sudden he like trademarked his name
0:10:30 and we had to shut the site down and stuff.
0:10:34 But that was another like weirdo internet thing that we did.
0:10:35 – What was the main thing though?
0:10:38 Was it the gardening, like gardening websites the whole time?
0:10:43 – No, the gardening thing didn’t really start until for real.
0:10:44 Like it was a hobby that I love doing.
0:10:48 And I’ve done it every year of my life since 2013.
0:10:52 But it was just like a hobby blog until 2016
0:10:54 when I went full time on it.
0:10:56 – And hobby blog in that you were actually like
0:10:58 into gardening and you’re like,
0:11:00 I’m just gonna create content around.
0:11:03 But did you see any numbers where you’re like,
0:11:08 this could be a big company or was it your straight joy?
0:11:10 – No, no, I mean, it was a mix, right?
0:11:11 Like I was gardening for fun.
0:11:14 And then I would just document whatever I was doing
0:11:16 and like make a YouTube video or make a blog post.
0:11:17 And I would try to monetize it.
0:11:18 Like I’d make some ad revenue
0:11:20 or I’d make some affiliate revenue.
0:11:24 But I never thought it could be huge.
0:11:26 Like I remember talking to friends
0:11:28 that were all kind of doing the same thing at the time.
0:11:29 I was like, man, if this thing could just make
0:11:31 two grand a month or if it could make five grand a month,
0:11:32 like that’d be amazing.
0:11:34 Then I wouldn’t have to go get a job.
0:11:37 ‘Cause I think my mind didn’t understand the scale
0:11:41 that any business could really become at that point in time.
0:11:42 So yeah, it took a while for me
0:11:44 to realize the potential of it.
0:11:48 – And then you kind of like had this,
0:11:51 it’s not like a cliche to most people,
0:11:54 but for the media world, it’s like a cliche at this point.
0:11:56 But at the time when you were doing it,
0:11:57 it was like content and commerce
0:11:59 was actually like a pretty innovative idea,
0:12:02 which is I’m gonna build this huge blog
0:12:04 and instead of just making money on advertising,
0:12:07 I’m going to sell my own products.
0:12:09 Which is like, it sounds silly
0:12:11 that I’m calling that innovative,
0:12:14 but like when you were getting going, that was a thing.
0:12:15 I mean, I had a blog and I was like,
0:12:17 I don’t think that you can like sell your own products.
0:12:19 I’d rather just stick to like what I know,
0:12:21 which is content and ads.
0:12:23 And I was like totally against selling stuff,
0:12:26 but you made the right decision for sure.
0:12:28 That’s a significantly better business.
0:12:30 – It’s a way better business.
0:12:33 And yeah, the brief story on that is 2016,
0:12:35 I go full-time on Epic Gardening.
0:12:37 I was at Scribe Media or Book in a Box,
0:12:39 it was called before that, it was like second employee there.
0:12:41 So I quit that, go full-time on Epic.
0:12:43 It was just a blog and YouTube channel.
0:12:45 – Did you have any revenue when you quit?
0:12:47 – Yeah, I was making $450 a month.
0:12:49 I have this spread sheet of like what it was making
0:12:50 at the time.
0:12:53 So at that time, I actually thought I was going to farm.
0:12:56 Like legit farm in people’s front yards
0:12:59 and like aggregate all their square footage
0:13:01 and like sell that produce to restaurants
0:13:02 and stuff like that.
0:13:05 – Right, I mean, that sounds like really hard.
0:13:06 – Yeah, it’s a really hard way
0:13:09 to make a small-ish amount of money,
0:13:10 which there’s people that do it
0:13:12 and I actually respect it a lot, but-
0:13:13 – It’s cool.
0:13:13 – It’s cool, yeah.
0:13:16 It’s just not scale.
0:13:18 So I go, okay, how about I just make this blog,
0:13:19 make a couple grand a month?
0:13:20 ‘Cause it was making $450.
0:13:23 So if I can make $450, I could probably make $2.
0:13:25 If I can make two, I could make five.
0:13:26 And so I started growing it.
0:13:31 And I think that year, the blog made 17 grand total,
0:13:33 about six months of the year.
0:13:37 And then the next year, it was 72,000 revenue.
0:13:38 And this is all media.
0:13:40 ‘Cause I haven’t done any product yet, right?
0:13:43 2018, it was 225.
0:13:46 And then 2019 is where I had that realization
0:13:48 that you mentioned where I was like,
0:13:51 wait, why am I just making money from ads
0:13:52 and like brand sponsorships?
0:13:53 Like what do the brands want from you?
0:13:56 When they do a brand deal, they want access to your audience.
0:13:58 Well, I have complete access to my own audience.
0:14:00 So why don’t I just be the brand selling
0:14:02 to my own audience?
0:14:05 And so what I did is I realized like,
0:14:09 whatever piece of content I put out is basically a search
0:14:12 for validating demand for whatever’s in that content.
0:14:14 And so in all these photos I’m putting out,
0:14:17 ’cause at this point I’m gardening in Hillcrest, San Diego
0:14:20 in like a very small front yard in a pretty urban part
0:14:22 of downtown San Diego.
0:14:24 And so I’m like filming my content there.
0:14:25 I have these little raised beds in the front yard,
0:14:27 which is just a way to grow plants
0:14:28 and they’re made out of metal.
0:14:30 And every time I took a photo of these,
0:14:31 everyone’s like, what are those?
0:14:32 What are those things in the photo?
0:14:33 Like, where’d you get those?
0:14:35 So I was like, I actually don’t know.
0:14:36 Like a brand just sent these to me
0:14:38 and I put them in the front yard.
0:14:40 And so I started emailing this company,
0:14:41 they’re from Australia.
0:14:46 I emailed them like maybe once or twice a quarter
0:14:48 for like a year saying like, hey, can I get these?
0:14:52 Can I just like somehow get these to America and sell them?
0:14:53 And they’re like, no, no,
0:14:54 we already have someone we’re working with,
0:14:55 like we don’t need to do that.
0:14:58 And then the beginning of 2019, they emailed back
0:15:00 and said like, hey, are you still interested
0:15:01 in carrying our products?
0:15:05 We like a distributor just isn’t working with us anymore.
0:15:06 I’m like, yeah, sure, let’s do it.
0:15:09 And I think I probably had like 70, 80 grand
0:15:11 in the business bank account at that point in time.
0:15:14 – All right, so it’s like, it’s like promising.
0:15:16 You’re not rolling in it yet, but it’s media.
0:15:17 So it’s mostly profit.
0:15:18 – Yeah, it’s mostly profit.
0:15:21 And it’s a small business with nearly zero employees.
0:15:24 So to me, I’m like, I’m making like a,
0:15:26 like a mid-level doctor’s salary
0:15:27 out of this business now, you know?
0:15:30 So I’m chilling, I’m gardening, I’m liking my life.
0:15:33 So I hit these guys up and they’re like, yeah, sure,
0:15:33 like here’s how it works.
0:15:34 And I’m like, holy shit,
0:15:37 I don’t know how buying product works
0:15:38 ’cause I’m used to media.
0:15:41 And so much like like the sort of cringe early days,
0:15:45 the way I tried to do it was sort of new.
0:15:48 Like I was like, okay, how do I buy the product?
0:15:49 And they’re like, well, you have to pay us, you know,
0:15:51 here’s all these different like shipping terms.
0:15:54 So I bought a 20 foot container of these raised beds
0:15:58 for I think $35,000, which was like half the money
0:15:59 that I had.
0:16:03 And I go, okay, well, what happens when they get to America?
0:16:04 Like what am I supposed to do?
0:16:06 Like, well, you got to receive it at the port
0:16:08 and then that container has to like go somewhere
0:16:09 and then you have to unpack it
0:16:11 and then you have to ship it.
0:16:13 And I’m like, okay, cool, like thanks for that information.
0:16:17 So what I tried to do is I tried to rent
0:16:20 a storage facility out of a Costco.
0:16:22 And like just one of the ones that you like go to
0:16:24 if you’re going to move for a year, you know?
0:16:25 And you put all your furniture in there.
0:16:26 So I tried to do that.
0:16:28 And I was like trying to figure out how to get it
0:16:30 for the port to the storage facility.
0:16:31 And then I was trying to look up like, well,
0:16:33 how do you get internet in the storage facility
0:16:36 so you can, so I can print the labels.
0:16:37 – Oh, and you were going to literally mail
0:16:39 these things out yourself.
0:16:41 – ‘Cause I didn’t know anything about commerce.
0:16:44 So I didn’t know you could like send it to a 3PL
0:16:45 or you could send to a warehouse.
0:16:48 – How many like units of stuff did you have?
0:16:51 – I think it was 550 beds at that time.
0:16:54 – Okay, so like that’s a ton.
0:16:55 But it’s like, all right,
0:16:58 I’m just going to go to the post office four times a week
0:16:59 and I’ll just, I’ll figure it out.
0:17:00 I mean, that’s a lot of work,
0:17:03 but I guess it’s kind of reasonable.
0:17:03 – I thought it was reasonable.
0:17:05 And the reason why I was trying to do it like that
0:17:08 is because when I ordered it
0:17:10 and they packed the container in Australia,
0:17:12 I was like, okay, cool guys, like to my audience.
0:17:14 I was like, hey, you guys asked where these things were from.
0:17:16 I figured it out.
0:17:18 I put up a really crappy Shopify store
0:17:19 and I was like, here they are.
0:17:22 And then I sold them out in like four or five days
0:17:24 while they were still getting to America.
0:17:27 So I knew it was working, right?
0:17:29 And so then what I did is I used that money
0:17:31 to buy another container and then that was on the way
0:17:32 and then that sold out.
0:17:33 And then I was like, oh my God,
0:17:35 like I think there’s something really going on here.
0:17:37 – So what was your revenue in ’19,
0:17:39 the year you started selling stuff?
0:17:43 – So ’19 was like $5.50 and half of it was the product.
0:17:47 So in the year one, like immediately half was product.
0:17:48 So I was like, oh my God,
0:17:50 I think what I’ve been building this whole time
0:17:54 is the top of a business and not the bottom of it.
0:17:55 Like I thought media was the whole thing.
0:17:56 I was like, oh, actually media is right here
0:17:58 and it monetizes, but the bottom is actually
0:18:01 where the business lies.
0:18:03 – The weird, innovative idea.
0:18:06 I remember, so like my friend Nathan Barry
0:18:10 has this awesome blog post called like billion dollar blogs.
0:18:13 And it’s like basically the story of a handful of people
0:18:15 who started out blogging and then built companies
0:18:16 around the blogs.
0:18:20 And the most famous example is probably Glossier.
0:18:21 I think that’s what it’s called Glossier.
0:18:24 It’s the women’s makeup brand that started
0:18:27 as Emily Weiss, I think her name is.
0:18:28 She had like a fashion blog.
0:18:31 And then she was like, oh, this selling stuff
0:18:33 is way better than selling ads.
0:18:34 And it became a billion dollar company.
0:18:37 And he has a few more examples of that.
0:18:40 And that’s when I first read about that idea,
0:18:42 but I still thought this is way too intimidating
0:18:44 and like too challenging.
0:18:45 And particularly for me at the time,
0:18:47 I ran a business website and I was like,
0:18:49 I can’t, what am I gonna possibly sell?
0:18:51 – Yeah, like what product?
0:18:53 – Yeah, so like it didn’t really make sense for me,
0:18:54 but even still I was like, this is too intimidating,
0:18:57 but you were living it and doing it, which is pretty cool.
0:18:59 – Yeah, I mean, frankly, like it was quite intimidating
0:19:02 to me, but I just was too either dumb or smart
0:19:06 to like realize that and just went ahead and did it.
0:19:07 But anyways, like to wrap that up,
0:19:09 like I ended up talking to a friend of mine
0:19:10 who was in commerce and he’s like,
0:19:12 what the hell are you doing dude?
0:19:15 Just get like a 3PL and get a freight forwarder
0:19:19 and send the container to there, hook the Shopify to there
0:19:20 and then they’ll ship it all out for you.
0:19:22 And that’s what I ended up doing.
0:19:24 And so that, that was kind of the genesis
0:19:26 of selling products at Epic Gardening.
0:19:28 – And didn’t you grow that to like 7 million in revenue
0:19:30 with like four people?
0:19:32 – Yeah, so yeah, I mean,
0:19:35 I think 2020 would have been 2.8 in revenue.
0:19:38 So almost a 6Xing year on year.
0:19:42 And then 2021 was 7.3, 7.4 or so.
0:19:44 And most of it was product at that point in time.
0:19:46 And that would have been on a team of me,
0:19:48 my garden assistant, my actual assistant,
0:19:51 a video editor and a writer.
0:19:52 And that was it, that’s all we had.
0:19:55 – On 7.3 in revenue, what could your profit be?
0:20:01 – Oh man, it was probably like 50% or something like that.
0:20:03 – So you’re rolling in it.
0:20:04 – Yeah, yeah.
0:20:06 Well, ’cause the thing about it is,
0:20:08 if you run it like that,
0:20:10 and it was with $0 or paid spent, right?
0:20:13 And so I have no acquisition cost.
0:20:16 My acquisition cost is equal to my media,
0:20:18 ’cause that’s the only way I was getting the word out,
0:20:21 but my media is not a cost, it’s a profit driver.
0:20:23 And so it’s that term negative-cac,
0:20:25 like I had negative-cac on the business.
0:20:26 – Why raise money then?
0:20:29 I know you raised, I think, $17 million, why?
0:20:32 ‘Cause the cool thing about bootstrapping a company
0:20:34 is you could do whatever the hell you want.
0:20:35 And there’s freedom in that.
0:20:39 And that’s, frankly, my favorite part about business
0:20:41 is the freedom of you’re creating your own empire,
0:20:42 you could do whatever the hell you want.
0:20:43 If you wanna grow it, you can.
0:20:45 If you don’t wanna grow it, you don’t have to.
0:20:48 You get all the money, you don’t have to answer to anyone.
0:20:49 I assume at this point you own,
0:20:51 you still own 100% of the company.
0:20:54 At least if I’m you, I’m not giving equity to my employees
0:20:57 because it’s like, I’ve been doing this by myself
0:21:00 for a long time, I’d rather just pay you a high salary.
0:21:03 Why even take $17 million?
0:21:06 – Yeah, I wrestled with it for a long time.
0:21:09 Like maybe that deal took like six months to close,
0:21:10 I would say.
0:21:12 And at least for the Turner Group,
0:21:14 it’s not some massive deal for them.
0:21:16 Like that’s not a ton of money for them.
0:21:17 It was huge amount for me.
0:21:20 Though the logic ended up being,
0:21:23 I was like, do I know what I’m gonna do
0:21:24 in the next couple of years?
0:21:26 Like do I understand the complexity
0:21:27 of the business I had built?
0:21:30 ‘Cause that’s a really lean team to be at 7.3
0:21:32 with like a commerce business shipping product.
0:21:35 – Yeah, there’s like a bunch of redundancy issues.
0:21:38 Like at that round, like anything north of 5 million,
0:21:39 it’s like, all right, we’ve got something here.
0:21:41 We’ve got a seed of something working here.
0:21:43 It potentially could be huge.
0:21:44 Like I should have some,
0:21:47 I should actually like shift to being a proper CEO.
0:21:50 And like with being a proper CEO is like
0:21:53 hiring extra employees, even if like, you know, like
0:21:56 at that point it’s like, with the size that you were,
0:21:58 everyone was working 110%.
0:22:00 And at that point it’s you kind of like,
0:22:03 almost purposely become a slightly more inefficient
0:22:04 because you’re like,
0:22:06 if I get 70% of effort from 10 people,
0:22:08 that’s better than 110% effort of five people
0:22:10 and I’ll have some redundancy
0:22:12 so people can like chill a little bit
0:22:13 or someone gets sick or quits.
0:22:16 Like there’s actually like some proper CEO work
0:22:18 you have to do at that stage, I would think.
0:22:19 – Oh yeah, oh yeah, totally.
0:22:21 I mean, and the operational side,
0:22:22 like the hiring, et cetera side,
0:22:24 like I had no clue because I was on a team
0:22:26 of me and four contractors.
0:22:29 Like I didn’t, I didn’t really have hiring experience.
0:22:31 And then on the commerce side,
0:22:34 it’s not like we got to 7.3 selling like an online course
0:22:36 which would be a lot simpler to fulfill.
0:22:38 Like there’s, there’s inventory planning.
0:22:40 There’s like sales tax nexus that you hid
0:22:42 in all these different states that you have to file for.
0:22:44 So there was a lot of complexity.
0:22:46 I was like staring down the barrel of that I,
0:22:48 I knew that I didn’t know about.
0:22:49 I was at least smart enough to know,
0:22:51 I didn’t know what was coming.
0:22:54 And then frankly, like that was just a crazy period
0:22:55 in the market.
0:22:58 Like 2021 was probably still the last best time
0:22:59 to do any kind of raising.
0:23:02 And then at the same time, I was like,
0:23:04 look, I’m already ahead in my space.
0:23:08 Like no one, no creator in gardening is doing what I’m doing.
0:23:11 And so why don’t I just make sure that I stay ahead
0:23:14 and partner with people who actually understand
0:23:17 how these media to commerce businesses are built.
0:23:19 And that’s what ended up making me do the deal.
0:23:20 – Were you able to take any money off the table
0:23:23 or did the 17 go straight to the balance sheet?
0:23:25 – I was able to take some off, which was great.
0:23:27 – Yeah, that’s like life changing, right?
0:23:28 – Yeah, it was, it was life changing.
0:23:32 And then like I had bought a warehouse to start fulfilling
0:23:34 ’cause eventually like I moved off the 3PL.
0:23:35 I was like, you know what?
0:23:37 I’m paying these guys like 30, 40 K a month
0:23:38 in fulfillment fees.
0:23:40 Why don’t I just like start a separate company
0:23:43 by a warehouse and then become my own tenant
0:23:45 and then like build equity in the real estate side.
0:23:48 And so when we raised, I actually didn’t,
0:23:49 that warehouse didn’t go with it.
0:23:51 And so I had the warehouse too.
0:23:53 So like the way the whole personal financial math worked out,
0:23:56 I was like, the way I live, I’m good now.
0:23:59 And I can just like fully focus on trying to win this space.
0:24:01 So that was another part of it.
0:24:02 – You have a family?
0:24:04 – Yeah, I have a girlfriend.
0:24:07 Yeah, and then a lot of my family lives in San Diego.
0:24:09 – What’s it feel like to be,
0:24:11 I don’t know if you were single at the time or not,
0:24:13 but what’s it feel like to be a young guy
0:24:14 and you’re like, I’m good.
0:24:17 I’m good for potentially forever.
0:24:20 – Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of underwhelming, I guess.
0:24:22 I don’t know, was it like that for you?
0:24:25 I don’t know, for me, I’d already made quite a bit of money
0:24:29 running up through 2021, just sort of solo.
0:24:32 And so it was a huge change, but it wasn’t,
0:24:33 it wasn’t like, you know,
0:24:36 one million to $200 million net worth or something like that.
0:24:39 Like the way I live, I just don’t,
0:24:41 I just don’t need it, I guess.
0:24:45 And so all I did was eliminate worry about like,
0:24:46 I don’t know what if something medical goes wrong
0:24:48 or I couldn’t even figure out
0:24:50 if I wanted to buy anything for a while.
0:24:53 Like I didn’t buy anything like fancy to celebrate or whatever.
0:24:56 – Not having money is, the period of my life
0:25:00 where I didn’t have as money was more stressful
0:25:03 than the period of my life where I did have breathing room.
0:25:05 – That I completely agree with.
0:25:08 That, I always think like it mitigates all your downsides,
0:25:10 but it doesn’t, at least I haven’t found
0:25:14 that it makes you some massively happier person.
0:25:17 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:25:21 But you remember that study where it was like $70,000 a year?
0:25:22 – Right.
0:25:23 – That’s bullshit.
0:25:24 That is absolute bullshit.
0:25:25 – That I agree is bullshit.
0:25:26 That I agree.
0:25:27 – Why do you agree that that’s bullshit?
0:25:30 – Okay, so first of all, I think inflation adjusted,
0:25:32 isn’t it like 160K now or something like that?
0:25:35 – Yeah, even I think that numbers might be bullshit too.
0:25:39 160 grand in one of the top five cities,
0:25:40 shockingly, doesn’t go very far.
0:25:41 – Doesn’t go far.
0:25:44 Yeah, I think that’s bullshit because the things,
0:25:47 let’s say you’re making like 200 a year,
0:25:49 you can get, like you can have someone come
0:25:51 and clean the house, or you can have like meal support
0:25:55 or these sorts of things that help you free your time up
0:25:58 from things you like genuinely don’t like to do.
0:25:59 There’s things like I love to do
0:26:00 that of course I could pay for.
0:26:04 Like I obviously I grow my own food and I like cook meals
0:26:05 and bake my own bread and stuff like that.
0:26:07 I don’t have to do that.
0:26:10 But like I don’t clean my house anymore, right?
0:26:13 And so like things like that, I think gives me,
0:26:14 I don’t know if like positive joy would be the way
0:26:15 I would phrase it though.
0:26:18 It’s just like I don’t have to do an annoying thing
0:26:19 is the way I think about it.
0:26:21 – Yeah, it’s like, you remember that book,
0:26:23 like the five languages of love and it’s like,
0:26:25 oh, your girlfriend’s like an active service woman.
0:26:28 So like if I do something nice for her, she’ll feel loved.
0:26:30 There’s like the five languages of love,
0:26:33 but for money where it’s like, for me, it’s not nice things,
0:26:35 but for some people it could be they love cars.
0:26:37 For me, it’s the same thing where I’ve got a cleaner
0:26:40 who comes often and I just like genuinely feel happier
0:26:43 not having to do my laundry and clean.
0:26:45 And so in those like small things,
0:26:47 which frankly aren’t expensive,
0:26:50 it definitely makes you happier.
0:26:52 Like those little small things.
0:26:54 – I learned that all from Rameet.
0:26:55 – Same.
0:26:58 – I learned that all from Rameet is just,
0:27:00 he has like a surgical team on every single part
0:27:03 of his life that he hates to do.
0:27:04 And I was like, you know what?
0:27:05 That’s actually pretty smart.
0:27:06 And so.
0:27:07 – And he spends big on stuff.
0:27:09 I was with Rameet on Saturday.
0:27:11 He like always asked these like crazy questions
0:27:13 where sometimes I’m just wanting to chill and have fun.
0:27:16 And he’s like, Sam, let me ask you a question.
0:27:18 What’s your rich life?
0:27:21 And I’m like, I don’t know, man.
0:27:23 Like let’s just drink our coffee.
0:27:24 He’s like, no, no, no, tell me your rich life.
0:27:27 And I’m like, okay, it’s not stuff.
0:27:28 It’s services.
0:27:31 He goes, what would happen if you 10 extra spending
0:27:32 on your services?
0:27:33 – I was having a coffee with him.
0:27:36 We had the same conversation with his accent.
0:27:40 He goes, he goes, how big would your staff be
0:27:43 if it could be as big as you wanted it to be for your house?
0:27:44 And I was like, I don’t know.
0:27:46 Like I got to have like a cleaner
0:27:49 and maybe like a cook every so often or something.
0:27:51 He’s like, oh man, like what kind of cook?
0:27:52 You know, he gets into the details.
0:27:53 – He gets into the details.
0:27:53 He loves it.
0:27:54 He loves it.
0:27:56 And when he asks those questions, frankly,
0:27:59 it does make me start thinking, A, like maybe I should do
0:28:01 this and B, like am I thinking too small?
0:28:05 Like if I love something, why don’t I like get 10x more
0:28:06 of that thing?
0:28:09 And so it is like cool to think about it.
0:28:11 He does do a good job with that of like make,
0:28:14 of like pressuring me to think beyond like how I’m thinking.
0:28:19 And Ramit’s stuff has actually been life changing for me.
0:28:20 – Same.
0:28:21 – How big is the business now?
0:28:22 Can you say?
0:28:23 – Yeah, yeah.
0:28:28 We’re about 90 ish people and we’re hoping to hit somewhere
0:28:30 like 40, 45 million this year in revenue.
0:28:31 – That’s insane, right?
0:28:34 Did you ever think that, and are you doing it profitably
0:28:36 still now that even though you’ve raised money?
0:28:37 – Yeah, we’re profitable.
0:28:38 We’re profitable.
0:28:41 The first year after I think we were not
0:28:44 because we hired quite a bit ahead of growth
0:28:45 because we were like way under hired
0:28:47 with me and four contractors.
0:28:50 And then this year we are.
0:28:52 – You think, how big do you think it’s gonna get
0:28:54 in like five years?
0:28:56 – I mean, I think it’s like a foregone conclusion
0:28:59 to get above 100 million because we have,
0:29:01 we’ve made a couple of acquisitions.
0:29:03 We made two small ones and one large one
0:29:05 and even just sort of growing those,
0:29:08 I think has a shot at getting us past 100.
0:29:10 I don’t know how much bigger than that.
0:29:14 – Why acquire something instead of building it on your own?
0:29:15 – It’s really just speed.
0:29:18 And if you have the competency internally to do it.
0:29:20 – I mean, you studied accounting,
0:29:22 but did you know anything about acquiring a company
0:29:24 or did churn and kind of hold your hand?
0:29:28 – So the big acquisition where we bought the seed company,
0:29:30 that was churn and led a lot of the diligence on that
0:29:32 ’cause it’s like way too complex a 30 year old business.
0:29:36 Like there’s no way I could do the diligence on that.
0:29:38 But the two small acquisitions, I led those
0:29:41 and they sort of just helped with the legalities
0:29:43 of getting it all done.
0:29:46 So the very first one was a seed tray.
0:29:48 So like when you’re gardening,
0:29:50 you usually start seeds in like a little tray.
0:29:53 And a lot of these trays are made out of pretty flimsy plastic
0:29:55 and they’re just like throw away things.
0:29:57 And so a friend of mine who was in the space
0:30:00 on the media side of gardening, he was like an educator,
0:30:02 he was developing these trays and he hit me up
0:30:04 and he was like, “Hey, can I come down to the house
0:30:06 and just show you this new tray that I made
0:30:07 to start seeds in?”
0:30:09 And this was early 2021.
0:30:12 I was like, “Yeah, sure, come on down.”
0:30:13 He comes down, he shows me this tray
0:30:16 and it’s like this very super sturdy durable tray
0:30:20 to start seeds in, which solves like some of the problems
0:30:21 of them being flimsy.
0:30:23 Then he had like cut all these little slits in it
0:30:24 and there’s like a big hole in the bottom,
0:30:26 which if you’re a gardener, you know, it’s like,
0:30:28 that makes it easier to like pop the seed out
0:30:29 and put it out in the garden.
0:30:32 So I hold the tray and the second I hold it,
0:30:34 ’cause I’ve been gardening for like eight years now,
0:30:36 I’m like, “Holy shit, this is like the best seed starting
0:30:37 tray I’ve ever seen in my life.”
0:30:39 Like for sure.
0:30:40 And he’s like, “You can stand on it if you want to.”
0:30:42 So I like, I’m like 220 pounds.
0:30:44 So I stand on it with one foot, it doesn’t budge.
0:30:47 And I’m like, “Okay, like that thing’s durable.”
0:30:48 And so I go, “Well, what do you want to do?
0:30:50 Like I think this is a cool product.
0:30:53 Do you want to like, I can put it on my Shopify store
0:30:55 and like see if the audience wants it?”
0:30:56 And he’s like, “Yeah, sure, what do you think?
0:30:58 Like we’ll just split the profits 50/50,
0:31:02 you have the audience, I have the product and let’s go.”
0:31:04 So I started teasing it in like Instagram
0:31:07 or YouTube videos and it’s an injection molded product.
0:31:09 So we can only make so many in a day.
0:31:12 You have to like press the mold and like accumulate inventory.
0:31:15 So we built up like maybe a week or two of inventory
0:31:17 or what we thought was.
0:31:18 And then I just put an Instagram reel out and I was like,
0:31:21 “Hey, this is the coolest tray I’ve ever seen
0:31:23 and there’s a link in my bio to go grab it.”
0:31:25 And we sold it out like Shopify has this live analytics
0:31:26 you can look at. – It’s awesome.
0:31:28 It’s like, it’s like– – It’s so cool.
0:31:30 – Just the biggest dopamine rush
0:31:31 when you start seeing that coming in.
0:31:34 – So I remember I was screen recording
0:31:37 just to see, just to kind of flex and record the live screen.
0:31:39 And we sold out like a couple of weeks inventory
0:31:40 like 25 seconds.
0:31:42 – How much revenue was that?
0:31:44 – It was like 25 or 30 grand, I think.
0:31:47 So now that’s an entire line of products we own.
0:31:48 It’s on our shop.
0:31:51 It’s called our Epic Trayline.
0:31:53 So if you go to our shop and you go to seed starting supplies
0:31:55 you’ll see all the trays there.
0:31:58 So over the next like, over the next like three, four weeks
0:32:01 we just like built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out.
0:32:03 Built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out.
0:32:04 And we were just splitting the profits.
0:32:06 And then I go to him and I was like,
0:32:09 hey, look, not only is this working like really well,
0:32:12 better than I thought, but there’s definitely more trays
0:32:13 that we could make.
0:32:15 There’s like different form factors and different ideas
0:32:16 and like little domes you could put on top
0:32:19 to keep humidity in or whatever.
0:32:21 And I was like, but I can’t make them
0:32:22 ’cause that’s what you do.
0:32:26 And I’m like 95% of your sales.
0:32:29 So what if you just joined Epic?
0:32:30 You know, we raised some money.
0:32:32 I was like, you could be our product lead.
0:32:35 Well, I can’t really buy the business based on revenue
0:32:38 ’cause that is, we are your revenue, right?
0:32:41 And so how do we structure a deal?
0:32:42 And so the deal we came up with
0:32:44 without getting into like crazy specifics is
0:32:47 we basically paid him for all of the assets
0:32:49 like the molds themselves
0:32:51 and the research and development time
0:32:53 and a premium on that gave him some equity
0:32:56 and hired him as our product lead.
0:32:58 And then we’ve built that line out to like,
0:33:02 I think like 12 or 15 SKUs going D2C
0:33:05 and wholesale now and it’s like,
0:33:08 I think we’re like up seven X probably
0:33:10 on the acquisition price as far as like revenue
0:33:11 after the fact.
0:33:13 So, and that wasn’t like a big acquisition.
0:33:14 It was sub 500,000.
0:33:19 So to me, I’m like, that’s why you would buy
0:33:20 because I- – Yeah.
0:33:22 And that’s a great deal for everyone involved.
0:33:23 – Yeah, exactly.
0:33:25 It was a total win-win.
0:33:27 – What are the other two?
0:33:29 – So the second biggest one we did
0:33:31 was actually a media acquisition.
0:33:32 So that was a blog.
0:33:36 So a friend of mine from like the old SEO days
0:33:38 had built a gardening blog
0:33:41 and we were hiring for a director of editorial
0:33:42 like just someone to run our blog.
0:33:43 And our blog was doing well,
0:33:47 like maybe like eight, 10 million sessions a year.
0:33:49 And that was monetizing off of display ads
0:33:50 but then hopefully like people will go through
0:33:52 and like buy some stuff on our store too.
0:33:54 – All from search or mostly from search?
0:33:55 – Yeah, it was like mostly search.
0:33:57 I was like 80% search.
0:34:00 And so this guy emails me and he’s like,
0:34:03 hey, look, I saw that, that head of editorial position.
0:34:05 I’m working in SEO right now,
0:34:08 but I’ve also been building a gardening blog on the side.
0:34:11 It was called allaboutgardening.com
0:34:13 which is now redirecting to Epic Gardening.
0:34:15 And he’s like, I’d like the job,
0:34:16 like I’d like to put my hat in the ring for the job
0:34:20 but I kind of have like a competing blog.
0:34:24 So to me, I go, look, you’ve built that blog really fast,
0:34:26 way faster than we’re currently building ours,
0:34:29 but you kind of can’t work for us and run that blog.
0:34:33 So what if we bought your blog and hired you to run our blog?
0:34:35 And he goes, okay.
0:34:38 And so what we did is we bought the blog
0:34:41 and we migrated his blog into our blog,
0:34:44 which was like, call them both like 10 million sessions a year,
0:34:45 something like that.
0:34:47 So you’d think like 10 plus 10 is 20,
0:34:51 but our blog from an SEO perspective was like super strong.
0:34:55 So by migrating his into ours, our blog went to like,
0:34:58 we probably got like a 20, 30% premium on the traffic.
0:35:01 So like 10 plus 10 equals 25, right?
0:35:05 So then you monetizing better off of the display ads there,
0:35:09 but then we also just made more from the ads themselves.
0:35:13 And so effectively the acquisition financed itself
0:35:16 by the increased revenue of like month one.
0:35:18 So that was another like sort of weird acquisition.
0:35:22 – What did you, can you say, was that more or less than 500?
0:35:25 – It was, yeah, it was in between 500 and a million.
0:35:26 And the way we structured that one
0:35:29 is we paid some upfront and some over a period of time,
0:35:31 job plus equity.
0:35:32 So it was- – And this was post,
0:35:33 this was post churnin’.
0:35:35 – This was post churnin’, yeah.
0:35:37 So the way that one has ended up working out
0:35:40 is we have a awesome leader running our blog
0:35:42 at a higher level than ours was before.
0:35:44 Our traffic has over doubled
0:35:47 and we’re monetizing at over double the rate on the traffic.
0:35:50 So you know, like YouTube RPMs, right?
0:35:51 It’s the same with blogs.
0:35:55 Like our blog RPM doubled after doing the acquisition.
0:35:58 And so basically we just created like a cash flow
0:36:00 that finances the thing that we bought
0:36:01 that created the cash flow.
0:36:03 – Did you read a book about this?
0:36:05 I mean, how did you learn about acquisitions like this?
0:36:06 I mean, that’s a pretty good one.
0:36:07 – I just thought, I don’t know.
0:36:08 I just thought about it.
0:36:09 I was like, if I do that,
0:36:11 I feel like all these things will happen.
0:36:13 And then they did.
0:36:14 I don’t know.
0:36:16 Like my old- – You’re like,
0:36:17 you’re like, look, I don’t make up the rules.
0:36:19 I just think them up and write them down.
0:36:20 – Yeah. – I don’t know.
0:36:21 I just, I-
0:36:22 (laughing)
0:36:23 – Well, you know how I just-
0:36:26 – People say like, there needs to be one like core reason
0:36:28 to do something, like an acquisition
0:36:30 or a business move or whatever.
0:36:31 I agree with that.
0:36:35 But to me, the way I mentally underwrote both of those things
0:36:37 is I was like, well, the core reason is pretty obvious.
0:36:39 Like, I don’t have a product, now I do.
0:36:42 Or like, I don’t have the traffic and a leader, now I do.
0:36:43 But then I just go,
0:36:46 how many other ways could this benefit us?
0:36:48 And how many other ways could it hurt us?
0:36:50 And if the ways it could benefit us
0:36:51 outweigh the ways it could hurt us,
0:36:54 I go like, I feel like it’ll just work then.
0:36:57 And this probably holds true for like acquisitions
0:37:00 that are smaller where it’s maybe a less efficient market
0:37:01 or something like that.
0:37:02 I don’t know how it would work
0:37:04 if you have some sort of big, big deal.
0:37:06 – What was the third one?
0:37:08 ‘Cause you’re two for two, you’re two for two now.
0:37:09 That sounds pretty good.
0:37:10 – Those ones worked, those ones have worked out.
0:37:11 Yeah, yeah.
0:37:15 So the third one was almost like kind of a condition
0:37:17 of doing the turn and deal in the first place.
0:37:18 ‘Cause they’re like, look, like this is,
0:37:20 this is not a big amount of money for us,
0:37:23 but we wanna do some follow on
0:37:26 and see if we can like purchase
0:37:27 a really awesome company in the space
0:37:29 and help power up Epic Gardening.
0:37:30 I was like, okay, cool, that sounds good.
0:37:33 – Which is I think what they did with like Meat Eater
0:37:35 and a few others where they buy,
0:37:39 like they buy the, or they invest in the media company
0:37:40 and then immediately they’re like,
0:37:44 let’s go acquire a company to sell to the audience.
0:37:45 – Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:37:47 And so we were looking, man,
0:37:48 we looked at so many different companies,
0:37:51 like maybe 150, 160 different companies in the space.
0:37:55 I was like out at a fruit tree farm in Missouri
0:37:57 at one point in time.
0:37:59 – When you say look at 150,
0:38:03 does that mean just like put like ideas on paper
0:38:06 or does that mean actually contacting 150 people?
0:38:08 – Oh, it means contacting more than 150.
0:38:11 It means like talking or like looking at a deck
0:38:15 or inspecting in some way, somewhere around 150.
0:38:16 Something like that.
0:38:18 – I mean, that’s a shit ton of work.
0:38:21 – Yeah, this is why having them has been helpful
0:38:22 or having an investor on your side has been helpful
0:38:25 ’cause like I’m out here running the business
0:38:27 and I might mention a company and they’ll diligence
0:38:28 and say like, yeah, this makes sense.
0:38:29 This doesn’t make sense.
0:38:32 – And then they’ll cold email them or cold call them
0:38:34 and be like, hey, it’s who we are.
0:38:35 I know this is out of the blue,
0:38:37 but would this ever entertain you?
0:38:39 And then if they say yes and like,
0:38:40 look, why don’t you like put together
0:38:43 some high level numbers and then send something over
0:38:45 and then we can talk about it with our team
0:38:47 and then you get some type of like DocSend
0:38:51 or PowerPoint or you get something and you’re like,
0:38:53 yay or nay, like it could go to the next step.
0:38:55 Let’s actually have a real discussion about this.
0:38:57 Is that how the diligence looks like?
0:38:58 – Pretty much, yeah.
0:38:59 Yeah, pretty much.
0:39:02 I remember we were looking at like the top 600
0:39:04 gardening apps at one point in time.
0:39:08 And so we, I got like a sheet from one of the people
0:39:10 on the investment team and they were like,
0:39:12 yeah, here are like the seven we think make any sense
0:39:14 whatsoever and here’s like the 593
0:39:16 that don’t make any sense at all.
0:39:18 – So these guys are doing a lot of the work then.
0:39:21 They’re helping you, they’re pulling their weight.
0:39:23 – I think so, yeah, absolutely.
0:39:26 So anyway, so the seed company,
0:39:29 this is like the big acquisition.
0:39:31 This was a company that without me knowing it,
0:39:33 it was the first pack of seeds I had ever grown
0:39:34 when I first started gardening.
0:39:36 So I went into some random nursery with my brother
0:39:39 and just picked up like a beautiful packet of seeds,
0:39:41 just cucumber seeds and lo and behold,
0:39:44 turns out to be the seed company we end up buying
0:39:46 in the story I’m about to share.
0:39:47 So we go out to Colorado,
0:39:49 it’s this company called Botanical Interests
0:39:51 and they’re really well known for having
0:39:52 high germination rates.
0:39:54 So the seeds sprout really well when you buy them,
0:39:57 but also the packet is just beautifully designed.
0:39:58 – What are they growing?
0:39:59 You know, I’m a new,
0:40:01 but I’m a total new when it comes to this stuff.
0:40:03 What are they, what’s the output?
0:40:06 – There’s six, I think we talk about 650 varieties
0:40:07 of vegetables, flowers and herbs.
0:40:09 So pretty much anything under the sun.
0:40:11 Anything that you would like reasonably want to grow,
0:40:14 we have it and it’s a husband and wife.
0:40:16 They’ve been running it for like 28 years.
0:40:17 They were married,
0:40:20 I think they had divorced like a few years prior to that
0:40:23 and they were sort of ready to hand the business off
0:40:25 to whoever wants to run it next.
0:40:27 But it’s like one of those like quote,
0:40:30 boring businesses that people talk about all the time,
0:40:31 who’s actually going to be able to buy it?
0:40:33 And the seed business is actually fairly complex.
0:40:35 There’s a lot that goes into it
0:40:36 that you have to understand.
0:40:40 And so we go out there, I meet the guy, the husband,
0:40:41 and he’s like, “Hey, can I grab a selfie?”
0:40:43 Like, actually I have a friend
0:40:45 who’s like a big fan of your YouTube.
0:40:47 It’d be amazing if I could show her that we met
0:40:49 and immediately I’m like, okay,
0:40:52 maybe I’ve got a little edge in this process.
0:40:54 Like maybe I’m going to be able to get this company.
0:40:55 – Or you can go either way.
0:40:58 It could be like you have an edge or shit.
0:41:00 They know that we have money behind us
0:41:01 or something like that.
0:41:03 – Could be that too, yeah, could be that too.
0:41:05 But we go through the whole,
0:41:06 like the diligence happens,
0:41:08 we go on a tour of the place
0:41:09 where we’re talking through pricing
0:41:10 and all this sort of stuff.
0:41:12 And so I told my investors, I was like,
0:41:14 they gave me all this swag, they gave me like a hat.
0:41:16 So I go, I’m just going to wear this hat
0:41:18 in every piece of content we make
0:41:21 until we either win or don’t win this deal.
0:41:23 Because I know the guy watches it, right?
0:41:26 And I know like probably his team watches it too.
0:41:28 So for the next, like this was maybe May,
0:41:30 for the next six months, which is a great time,
0:41:32 like May, that’s spring through summer.
0:41:34 I’m cranking YouTube videos out.
0:41:36 I’m cranking Instagram reels out, short form,
0:41:41 whatever hats on 24/7, every single piece of content.
0:41:44 And we go through the bidding process, we win the deal.
0:41:46 We were not the highest bid by like quite a bit,
0:41:49 I would say, a material amount for the sellers
0:41:52 to like not have in their pocket if they went with us.
0:41:54 And we go out to celebrate and I go,
0:41:56 hey, you know, I really appreciate you guys.
0:41:59 Like it’s truly an honor to be able to carry
0:42:00 on the legacy of this company.
0:42:02 Like this is the first seed packet I ever grew.
0:42:04 And I’m just being very gracious
0:42:05 ’cause I did feel that way.
0:42:09 And he goes, you don’t know how much wearing that hat helped.
0:42:12 And I go, I knew it.
0:42:13 – You got him.
0:42:15 – Yeah, I got him, not in like a malicious way,
0:42:16 just like- – Sure, sure, sure.
0:42:18 – I’m using the angle that I have,
0:42:21 which is my- – Everyone won, everyone won.
0:42:23 – Did you, what were some of the red flags
0:42:27 and I guess green flags or whatever it is for that deal,
0:42:28 along with a few other deals
0:42:31 when you’re looking through the financials and the business?
0:42:34 – So the seed companies, red flags,
0:42:36 are basically that it is a seed company.
0:42:39 Like that’s just a hard, it’s a difficult business.
0:42:39 Like there’s a ton- – Why?
0:42:41 ‘Cause there’s so many different SKUs.
0:42:43 – Tons of different SKUs.
0:42:46 There’s, you have to do like a non-GMO certification.
0:42:47 You have to do germination testing.
0:42:50 You have to do pesticide and herbicide testing.
0:42:54 You’re physically purchasing or contracting a grower
0:42:59 to grow seeds that you then receive, test, repack, et cetera.
0:43:01 And so there’s just like a lot of,
0:43:03 it’s not like you’re selling like a rug
0:43:04 or something like that.
0:43:05 And you can just buy rugs from China
0:43:08 and then sell the rugs to other people in America.
0:43:10 So that was complex.
0:43:12 But the part that I think was really green about it
0:43:14 is it was far and away one of the best brands in the space.
0:43:17 Like I loved it for 10 years.
0:43:21 And on top of that, they were mostly a wholesale business
0:43:23 and the online business they sort of hadn’t done
0:43:24 a whole lot with.
0:43:26 And I was like, okay, well we’re definitely
0:43:28 an online first company, media and product.
0:43:31 So why don’t we just plug those two together?
0:43:34 And I think the first year after we did the deal,
0:43:36 the online part of the business for the seed company
0:43:39 was up like 70, 60 or 70% year over year
0:43:40 without really doing much.
0:43:42 Like all we did was move it to Shopify
0:43:43 and tell people we own the company now
0:43:45 and that’s pretty much it.
0:43:47 – What payback cycle are you looking for?
0:43:51 And what type of multiple do businesses like this sell for?
0:43:53 – Man, I don’t remember offhand the multiple,
0:43:57 but I wanna say it was probably six to eight X,
0:43:58 somewhere like that.
0:43:59 Income.
0:44:00 – Yeah, I think so.
0:44:04 – And how long until you could pay back the acquisition?
0:44:05 – That’s a good question.
0:44:10 I don’t know, maybe hopefully like, hopefully like.
0:44:13 – So I mean, I think that’s pretty fast.
0:44:16 – Yeah, it’s like, I would say like five, hopefully.
0:44:19 – Yeah, I mean, more, I mean, if they only sell
0:44:22 for five to seven times, I would think that you’d actually
0:44:25 grow it or get that money back significantly faster,
0:44:29 I would think because of kind of the audience that you have.
0:44:30 – The audience, and then like just the opportunity
0:44:34 ’cause we’re carried in, I would say 4,500 stores
0:44:35 around the country.
0:44:37 And so to me, I’m like, well, it’s just seeds
0:44:39 that are carried, like just our seed brands there
0:44:41 ’cause they were a seed company,
0:44:43 but we’re making these trays that I told you about,
0:44:44 we’re making these other new products.
0:44:46 Now we have a distribution network.
0:44:49 So why don’t we tell all those retailers,
0:44:50 hey, look, we’re like making better product
0:44:52 that your customers will want,
0:44:54 just stock our product in your store.
0:44:57 And so that was another like big lever, I think.
0:44:58 We’re still testing it out and trying to prove
0:45:01 if that’s right or not, but we’re like, yeah,
0:45:03 why wouldn’t we just offer a ton of our products now
0:45:06 to wholesale in a network that we couldn’t have built?
0:45:09 – Have you ever been to Chip and Jo-Ann’s like,
0:45:12 – Oh yeah, yeah. – Waco, like, they’re like,
0:45:14 – I did a show for them in 2020.
0:45:16 – Like you were on their show?
0:45:20 – I filmed a show for Magnolia back then.
0:45:23 – They have, it’s basically like Disneyland
0:45:25 for like four-year-old white chicks.
0:45:28 It’s like, you could like buy anything in the world
0:45:30 that you’re like for your home or living room.
0:45:33 I went to it once and like my mother-in-law
0:45:36 and her sisters like wanted to go and like take pictures
0:45:38 of like, they just wanted to like anything
0:45:40 with Chip and Jo-Ann’s name on it,
0:45:42 they just wanted to see it.
0:45:44 And I was like doing math around like how,
0:45:46 I mean, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like a campus.
0:45:51 And so they’ve got like food and many, many different stores.
0:45:52 And I was doing math and I’m like,
0:45:54 these guys are going to be billionaires.
0:45:56 Like this is going to be the greatest thing ever.
0:45:59 And that’s going to happen to you
0:46:01 because you’ve got the same shtick where
0:46:06 you’re in a good niche of, I imagine it’s mostly women
0:46:08 and they probably have, they probably spend a lot
0:46:10 or just for the hobby, they spend a lot,
0:46:14 but B, you got the charisma, you got the look.
0:46:17 Like it’s going to happen.
0:46:21 Do you get crazy like stalker messages
0:46:23 or like fans who are obsessed with you?
0:46:25 – It’s definitely happened.
0:46:26 Yeah, it’s definitely happened.
0:46:29 – People make fun of me on this podcast all the time.
0:46:30 Everyone thinks I’m gay because they’re like,
0:46:32 I comment on like a man all the time,
0:46:35 but you know, I’m not embarrassed to say
0:46:36 you’re a charismatic, good looking dude.
0:46:38 I imagine you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of fans.
0:46:40 – Back as you dude.
0:46:42 So everyone thinks I’m gay too, actually.
0:46:45 Just because I’m like, just cause I’m a guy,
0:46:47 I think it’s cause I’m a younger guy in gardening
0:46:50 and gardening is seen as a more feminine hobby.
0:46:52 People just think I’m a gay guy,
0:46:55 which is just, it’s just an interesting phenomenon
0:46:57 to experience on the internet all the time.
0:47:02 But yeah, no, I mean, I would say it happens for sure.
0:47:04 I’ve done the whole like delete all your info
0:47:07 from the internet process, but it’s kind of hard.
0:47:08 – It’s never good enough.
0:47:09 It’s never good enough.
0:47:12 – Well, especially when you film at your home, right?
0:47:14 Like my set is my outdoors.
0:47:17 And so I can’t like not show the street, et cetera.
0:47:18 Cause it’s just in the shot.
0:47:20 There’s nothing I could really do about it.
0:47:22 – Dude, I’ve had times where like I took a picture of my house
0:47:24 and I didn’t think you could see it.
0:47:25 And then like the next couple of days,
0:47:28 I’ll get gifts sent to my home.
0:47:30 And like people will find it on like street view.
0:47:31 And I’m like, oh shit.
0:47:33 And like, I’m not a famous person.
0:47:37 I’m a mildly popular person in a small subset of the internet.
0:47:39 And so I can’t imagine if you’re like real famous
0:47:40 or if I’m like you and my videos
0:47:43 get millions and millions and millions of views.
0:47:45 – Yeah, I mean, look, it hasn’t been as bad
0:47:48 as I think like legitimate celebrity type people,
0:47:49 but I’ve definitely had like,
0:47:52 I had an experience earlier this year where this woman,
0:47:53 we’re all in the backyard
0:47:55 cause that’s where we film most of the time.
0:47:57 But there’s a garden in the front yard too.
0:47:59 And I have security cameras on now
0:48:00 that record like locally to my house.
0:48:03 So I can pull up footage of whatever I want.
0:48:06 And this woman like comes up the front door, knocks on it,
0:48:09 says you who, and then like looks in the house
0:48:12 and then goes out into the front gate, walks, opens it,
0:48:14 like kind of messes around with some plants,
0:48:16 tries to walk around the backyard.
0:48:17 And my assistant was in the backyard.
0:48:19 She’s like coming around the back to the front.
0:48:21 So they kind of like butted heads.
0:48:22 And my assistant just freaked out.
0:48:23 She’s like, who is this woman?
0:48:26 And this woman saw nothing wrong with what she was doing.
0:48:27 She was like, oh yeah, I just wanted to see
0:48:30 if you guys were filming, like wanted to come say hi.
0:48:32 And we’re like, we don’t know who you are.
0:48:34 And she like, there’s nothing we could have said to her
0:48:35 that would have made her understand her behavior
0:48:38 was like completely out of the norm.
0:48:39 And so every so often,
0:48:41 it’s like the law of large numbers, man.
0:48:43 Like if you have an audience of many millions,
0:48:48 all you need is 0.01% and that’s still like 14 people,
0:48:50 you know, that’ll come mess with you.
0:48:52 – All right, if you’re listening to this pod,
0:48:54 I already know something about you.
0:48:57 You, my friend, are nosy.
0:48:59 You wanna know the numbers behind all of these things
0:49:01 that we’re talking about, how much money people make,
0:49:04 how much money people spend, how much money businesses make.
0:49:07 You wanna know all of this, people’s net worth, all of it.
0:49:09 Well, I’ve got good news for you.
0:49:12 So my company Hampton, we’re a private community for CEOs.
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0:49:43 Now, back to the pod.
0:49:47 – You were telling Ari before about something
0:49:48 that I wanted to ask you about.
0:49:51 And this is something that I’ve been crazy interested in.
0:49:53 It’s a business I don’t really know much about
0:49:54 other than listening to like two or three podcasts
0:49:56 and reading a couple articles.
0:50:01 But the licensing of fruits or vegetables
0:50:02 or different types of seeds.
0:50:06 So I was reading about the history of honeycrisp apples.
0:50:10 And I believe it was started in either,
0:50:13 I think it was Minnesota, like University of Minnesota.
0:50:16 What they did was I think they like took two plants
0:50:18 and they bred them.
0:50:19 However, that people even do that.
0:50:20 I don’t even know how you do that.
0:50:23 But it took like many decades
0:50:25 because I guess it takes a year to get a new plant
0:50:27 or I guess it takes like 10 years to get an apple tree
0:50:29 in the first place or five years, something like that.
0:50:31 And then you screw up a bunch.
0:50:33 And then so it ultimately will take many years,
0:50:35 sometimes decades to get like a good apple.
0:50:37 And then they come up with a really cute name
0:50:38 like honeycrisp or like,
0:50:40 I think I had one the other day
0:50:43 that was called like a cotton candy apple.
0:50:46 Like you like brand it with some like cute name.
0:50:50 And then you license it out to other farmers.
0:50:52 And then you build this massive business
0:50:56 that has this moat that will take 30 years to disrupt.
0:50:57 Is that how it works?
0:50:59 Am I, do I have that right?
0:51:00 – That’s pretty much right.
0:51:01 That’s pretty much right.
0:51:04 So we’re going to go into like garden or territory
0:51:06 for a sack just so I can explain how it works.
0:51:10 So when you’re making a new tree, it’s really difficult.
0:51:11 Like you mentioned, like actually
0:51:13 when you’re making new varieties of most plants,
0:51:18 it’s super painful to get the variety that you actually want.
0:51:20 Like I met a guy at a farm once,
0:51:23 he’d been working on a potato for like 20 years.
0:51:26 – And what was his goal outcome for that potato?
0:51:28 – So the goal outcome, potatoes are grown
0:51:29 from what are called seed potatoes,
0:51:31 which is basically just a potato that you throw
0:51:32 on the ground.
0:51:33 So you don’t plant like a little seed,
0:51:35 you just throw a potato on the ground.
0:51:37 So this guy was trying to make a potato
0:51:39 that you could grow from an actual potato seed.
0:51:41 Cause when a potato is in the ground,
0:51:43 it throws like leaves up
0:51:45 and it actually makes a potato flower,
0:51:47 which produces a potato berry
0:51:48 and that berry has seeds in it.
0:51:50 And if you plant those seeds,
0:51:52 the problem is that you don’t get the potato
0:51:53 that you planted.
0:51:54 You get something different.
0:51:56 – And so his outcome was like a more efficient way
0:51:57 for a farmer.
0:51:59 It wasn’t necessarily a certain taste.
0:52:00 – Yeah, it was, it wasn’t,
0:52:02 I mean, it definitely was a taste, but you’re right.
0:52:05 Like the idea was instead of buying a ton of potatoes
0:52:07 and planting them by hand,
0:52:08 you could just plant a bunch of seeds.
0:52:10 That took him 20 years, right?
0:52:12 – Did he get his, did he do it?
0:52:13 – He got it, yeah.
0:52:14 It’s called the Clancy potato.
0:52:16 We actually sell it on our, our store.
0:52:17 It’s an awesome potato.
0:52:18 – Did he get wealthy from it?
0:52:18 – I hope so.
0:52:20 I didn’t ask, but I hope so.
0:52:22 I think he did it under a seed company.
0:52:24 So probably they got wealthy, I’m not sure.
0:52:26 But either way, he’s an interesting guy.
0:52:28 So with fruit trees though,
0:52:30 it’s kind of the same thing where like,
0:52:34 you have to, you have to keep developing tons
0:52:36 and tons of trees and then figure out, let’s say,
0:52:40 okay, this is the apple out of the hundreds that I grew out
0:52:42 that I actually like.
0:52:44 It’s, that’s my next honeycrisp, right?
0:52:47 And what you then do is you, you have to graft.
0:52:49 You have to take a piece of that tree
0:52:52 and put it on what’s called the rootstock of, of an apple.
0:52:55 So like the roots and below,
0:52:57 ’cause you can’t use the seed of that
0:52:58 ’cause it’ll be a different apple
0:52:59 and it will take a long time.
0:53:02 So let’s say you get this magical new honeycrisp.
0:53:05 What you do is you take a bunch of those,
0:53:06 those little branches off
0:53:08 and you put them on other apple rootstock
0:53:09 and then grow those out.
0:53:12 And then those are genetic clones of that new honeycrisp.
0:53:14 And then you do that again and then you do that again.
0:53:15 And so that’s how-
0:53:17 – And is each time one year
0:53:19 or how long does it take to grow a tree?
0:53:21 – It’s probably like,
0:53:23 it would really depend on the type of fruit,
0:53:26 but it’s probably, I’ll say this,
0:53:29 it’ll shorten from growing from seed by like 70, 80%.
0:53:31 It’s like way faster than growing it from seed.
0:53:34 Not only that, you have to do it that way
0:53:36 ’cause you won’t get the same genetic apple.
0:53:39 And so what guys like the honeycrisp guy you mentioned
0:53:41 or there’s a guy named Floyd Zager
0:53:44 who’s sort of known as like the godfather of stone fruit,
0:53:46 which is like peaches, nectarines,
0:53:48 all those types of trees.
0:53:51 What they do is they have tens of thousands, I think,
0:53:54 of trees that they’re cross pollinating,
0:53:57 growing out, grafting, tasting, testing.
0:54:01 And then when maybe 0.1% of those actually become a variety,
0:54:03 they now have a patent on that
0:54:05 ’cause they’ve developed that what’s called a cultivar.
0:54:07 They have that cultivar.
0:54:08 And then they can license that out
0:54:10 for other people that put into production.
0:54:11 They take like a licensing fee on all those.
0:54:13 So you’re right, like once they actually create
0:54:17 the next honeycrisp or the next like killer peach,
0:54:19 they can make a cash flow off of that thing
0:54:20 for like, who knows how long
0:54:22 until the next one comes around.
0:54:23 – I’m looking at this guy Floyd.
0:54:25 So he’s 94 years old.
0:54:27 It looks like he’s still doing it.
0:54:29 – I think he passed away like a couple of years ago,
0:54:31 but he’s like a total legend in the space.
0:54:32 – Oh yeah, you’re right.
0:54:34 He passed away, but it looked like based off the photos
0:54:36 up until like when he passed away,
0:54:40 it looks like he was still planting or involved.
0:54:42 Did he build a big,
0:54:45 his name of his company was Zager’s Genetics.
0:54:45 Is that right?
0:54:46 – Yeah, Zager’s Genetics.
0:54:50 And then what there’s a nursery called Dave Wilson Nursery,
0:54:52 which I think they sell the most fruit trees in the US.
0:54:56 They use a lot of Zager’s stuff.
0:54:58 So they’ll be the people who grow out
0:55:02 a lot of Floyd Zager’s actual trees.
0:55:03 So it’s a crazy model because you’re right,
0:55:05 like good luck competing.
0:55:08 You have to spend like 20 years to even get started.
0:55:09 – Does it make, does it make,
0:55:10 is it like a good business
0:55:12 or is it something that looks awesome?
0:55:15 But day to day, it’s quite challenging.
0:55:17 – I mean, I don’t think it’s the easiest business.
0:55:18 You have to know a lot about plant botany
0:55:19 and genetics and all that.
0:55:21 But like the people who like this type of stuff,
0:55:23 like there’s nothing you could pay them
0:55:24 to make them stop doing it.
0:55:27 So they might as well have a business based on it, you know?
0:55:29 – Yeah, my parents are in the agriculture industry.
0:55:34 So my father, his first business was a fruit stand on the,
0:55:35 he started as a stock boy
0:55:38 in like the produce section of a grocery store.
0:55:40 Then he opened up a fruit stand
0:55:43 and then he created a produce brokerage,
0:55:46 which is like a, basically you have relationships
0:55:50 with farmers in Idaho or Bakersfield, California,
0:55:53 and you buy, let’s say, $500,000 of onions,
0:55:55 and then you go and find a trucker to pick it up,
0:55:59 and then you sell that $500,000 of onions to Walmart
0:56:04 for $500,000, $50,000, and you make like 10 grand of profit
0:56:08 or something like that off organizing that deal.
0:56:10 And you have to sell, at this point,
0:56:13 he’s sold over $100 million of onions
0:56:15 over the course of 20 years,
0:56:18 but the margins are like 3%.
0:56:22 Or like, you know, it’ll be basically him by himself
0:56:25 selling 20 million a year worth of produce,
0:56:26 and like you make, I don’t know what you make,
0:56:29 but like $300,000 a year, so good living,
0:56:32 but like you’ve got to sell a shit ton of product
0:56:35 in order because the margins are so small.
0:56:39 And so I’ve grown up talking to some of these farmers,
0:56:43 and it’s more of a vocation than anything
0:56:44 because it’s just what they know.
0:56:47 It’s, you know, they’ve been born and raised doing that,
0:56:51 and it’s like, I am a farmer no matter what.
0:56:54 And it’s not like maybe traditional businesses
0:56:56 where it’s like, I see an opportunity, I’m gonna do this.
0:56:59 It’s like, no, this is just what I was bred to be.
0:57:01 – That’s what I’ve noticed in our space
0:57:04 ’cause there’s a lot of like smaller product companies
0:57:06 or small seed companies, et cetera.
0:57:09 Like no one’s, no one’s trying to get super rich doing it.
0:57:12 Like even me, like back in the earlier days,
0:57:15 I was like, I just, I’m very happy
0:57:17 making that 250 that I made, gross revenue,
0:57:19 and pulling out whatever I made.
0:57:22 It just so happened that I also like business,
0:57:24 and so they combined really well.
0:57:27 – Can I, well, we’ll wrap up here in a second,
0:57:30 but look, I wanna ask you a quick question about diet.
0:57:33 I’m a little, I recently moved to a new place
0:57:35 just mostly because it was across the street
0:57:38 from a farmer’s market, and I’ve been obsessed
0:57:41 with the idea of buying produce and meat
0:57:44 that only comes within like a 20 or 50 mile radius
0:57:49 of where I am, because like even if you buy food
0:57:51 at Whole Foods, I still think like Whole Foods
0:57:54 is supposed to be like some type of standard,
0:57:56 which I don’t think it is the standard anymore,
0:57:57 but for a long time it was like,
0:57:59 that was the standard of healthy eating.
0:58:02 But I still feel crappy after I eat that
0:58:04 because I don’t, you know, like,
0:58:06 I don’t even know what organic actually means,
0:58:09 and I don’t actually bind to the height necessarily
0:58:12 that that makes, that is the right way to do things.
0:58:15 Are you eating all of your own food
0:58:17 and do you think that makes you feel different
0:58:20 than grocery store food?
0:58:22 – I think, I think for sure it does
0:58:26 because I don’t know that I believe,
0:58:27 you know that book, Blue Zones,
0:58:28 remember that one that came out?
0:58:30 It’s like kind of long. – Dude, I think that,
0:58:32 that book is awesome, but I think it’s bullshit.
0:58:34 – I think a good part of it is bullshit, yeah.
0:58:35 – You know why it’s bullshit?
0:58:37 So here, well, I’ll tell the audience,
0:58:38 I did a little research on it.
0:58:40 It’s like, what they all have in common
0:58:44 is that like in Osaka, Japan,
0:58:47 or like they lie about their age.
0:58:50 And so like they notice that like, wow, this,
0:58:52 in this town, there’s a shit ton of people
0:58:54 born on January 1st, like what’s going on?
0:58:56 And it turns out a lot of them lie about their age.
0:58:58 I guess so they get Social Security
0:59:00 at a certain time or something like that.
0:59:01 – Oh, wow.
0:59:04 – And so there was a lot, like the,
0:59:07 although maybe there was some bit of truth in there,
0:59:10 the commonality between the five Blue Zones
0:59:13 is that they have a huge amount of like age fraud.
0:59:15 – I also saw something about,
0:59:17 can you imagine like lying to be older?
0:59:18 I saw something about like,
0:59:20 it also maps to when we started
0:59:22 accurately tracking birth certificates,
0:59:25 like a lot of these people are old enough
0:59:27 that they’re from before when we did that.
0:59:29 And so how can you really know how old they are?
0:59:30 The thing I do think is-
0:59:33 – And that’s the nicer way to put it when I maybe said.
0:59:34 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:59:37 Well, I think the thing that is somewhat true there is like,
0:59:39 it does seem to just make logical sense
0:59:43 that the fresher food you eat, the better off you’ll be.
0:59:44 And so to me, I go, well,
0:59:46 it doesn’t get fresher than out of my own backyard, right?
0:59:49 Like we just had a amazing carrot salad we made yesterday.
0:59:50 I’ve even grown my own wheat
0:59:52 to make my own sourdough bread,
0:59:53 which is definitely extreme.
0:59:55 Like I don’t think that’s practical.
0:59:58 But yeah, I mean, I think you do feel better.
1:00:01 And I think the next best thing to growing your own food
1:00:03 would be going to like a farmer’s market.
1:00:05 As long as you know, like the farmer
1:00:07 is actually growing things the way that they say they are.
1:00:09 ‘Cause now there’s like farmer’s market fraud.
1:00:10 ‘Cause down here in San Diego,
1:00:14 people will drive up from Mexico with like monocropped food
1:00:16 and just pretend like it’s a farmer’s market.
1:00:18 – What questions do I have to ask them?
1:00:21 – You would have to ask like, well, where is your farm?
1:00:22 Which they could definitely-
1:00:23 – Show me pictures.
1:00:25 – Yeah, yeah, they should have pictures of it.
1:00:29 And you could ask like, you know, do you spray
1:00:30 pesticide herbicide, fungicide?
1:00:32 If so, like which ones?
1:00:34 You don’t even have to know what their answers mean,
1:00:36 but if they can’t fire the answers off quickly,
1:00:37 that’s your signal
1:00:40 that they kind of don’t know what they’re talking about.
1:00:42 – What do you do for meat?
1:00:45 – Meat, I tend to just buy at,
1:00:46 I’ll go to like a Whole Foods
1:00:48 or there’s like a local fish market
1:00:50 called Point Loba Seafoods down here in San Diego,
1:00:52 I’ll try to go to.
1:00:54 And sometimes, so I’m trying to get like some friends
1:00:57 to do that like quarter cow thing with me.
1:00:57 – Yeah, me too.
1:00:58 – But so far, no one’s down.
1:01:01 So if you’re out there, all are on me.
1:01:03 – I’ve been trying to do that as well.
1:01:05 You need like a huge garage fridge,
1:01:07 which is how you know you made it
1:01:10 by having a garage fridge to like store all this meat.
1:01:11 But I’ve been doing it too.
1:01:16 Have you seen, it’s called, it’s called Coop,
1:01:17 but if you Google like Coop.
1:01:18 – Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:21 We shot them on our podcast, the smart farm.
1:01:22 Yeah.
1:01:23 – Yeah, AJ’s a good buddy of mine.
1:01:24 AJ’s awesome.
1:01:25 What’s his URL?
1:01:27 I want to give him a shout out.
1:01:28 – Coop.farm.
1:01:29 – Coop.farm.
1:01:33 So Coop is like, it’s like the tagline that I saw
1:01:36 in an article was like, it’s like the Tesla for a chicken coop.
1:01:38 And it’s like, so Coop.farm.
1:01:40 It’s like a smart chicken coop.
1:01:42 And it looks pretty cool.
1:01:43 I think I might get one.
1:01:47 I think it’d be awesome to have your own chickens,
1:01:49 ’cause that’s like a pretty low maintenance way
1:01:52 to just kind of get into the habit or get in the hobby.
1:01:55 The other thing that I’ve done for years is beekeeping.
1:02:00 So I’ve raised my own bees in order to get honey,
1:02:01 which is like an awesome hobby.
1:02:02 And beekeeping is a cool thing
1:02:07 because it requires like not much maintenance at all.
1:02:09 And from a business perspective,
1:02:12 you remember that flow hive or whatever
1:02:15 that went viral on Kickstarter and it raised like $20 million.
1:02:19 I do think that beekeeping, like the supplies
1:02:22 could actually be a legitimately good business.
1:02:24 And you can create like,
1:02:26 you can create like a lifestyle brand around it
1:02:29 because the content to around that
1:02:31 is like inherently quite viral.
1:02:34 Like I used to create these like just videos of me
1:02:38 like scraping off the honey or the, what’s it called?
1:02:40 The honey comb?
1:02:41 – The honey from the comb, yeah.
1:02:44 – Yeah, like scraping the comb off of my,
1:02:47 my trays or whatever that’s in the hive.
1:02:49 I don’t actually know anything about it,
1:02:50 even though I’ve had bees for years,
1:02:52 but like that’s how little you have to know about this
1:02:54 in order to like successfully do it.
1:02:56 Like I would like scrape off the comb
1:02:57 and like make these awesome videos
1:02:59 and then just like give it to my friends
1:03:02 and they loved it and it was like such a fun hobby.
1:03:04 And so I’m really big on that.
1:03:06 – Named, I think her name is like Texas Bee Works.
1:03:08 I don’t know if you’ve seen her stuff on the internet,
1:03:11 but she has this like very soft pleasing voice
1:03:13 and she’ll be like, there’ll be music
1:03:16 and there’ll be some crazy scenario where there’s a hive
1:03:18 and she’s like called out and she goes,
1:03:21 I’ve been called out to take this hive out of a manhole.
1:03:24 – Dude, she has a 1.6 million subs on YouTube.
1:03:25 – Oh yeah, yeah, she’s huge.
1:03:28 And so I always look cause I know what I did with Epic
1:03:30 and I look at all these other people and I go like,
1:03:32 don’t you realize like you could have a thriving
1:03:35 beekeeping like goods company.
1:03:38 But then, you know, the sort of paradox
1:03:40 of the whole creator world is that most creators
1:03:41 just don’t want to do that.
1:03:43 And that’s why they don’t do it.
1:03:44 – Dude, she was on Joe Rogan.
1:03:46 I’m looking at it now, Erica Thompson.
1:03:47 She was on Joe Rogan.
1:03:50 She goes, I did my first podcast.
1:03:51 And it’s-
1:03:51 – It’s Joe Rogan.
1:03:52 – It’s Joe Rogan.
1:03:54 She goes, I did my first podcast.
1:03:55 Link is in the bio.
1:03:57 Thank you so much, Joe Rogan and team.
1:04:00 This was such a wonderful experience for me and my bees.
1:04:01 – Damn, that’s a flex right there.
1:04:02 That’s a flex.
1:04:03 – Awesome.
1:04:04 This is a gem.
1:04:07 This woman, she’s got it.
1:04:10 Yeah, man, beekeeping is an interesting hobby.
1:04:11 You should try it out.
1:04:12 Like it requires no work.
1:04:14 And I’m pretty sure it makes your plants way better.
1:04:16 I noticed that whenever I get bees,
1:04:19 you start seeing like all different types of flowers
1:04:20 in the backyard.
1:04:22 – That’s the last thing I haven’t done.
1:04:24 Like I’ve got the chickens.
1:04:25 I’ve got all the pond.
1:04:26 You know, I don’t have bees yet.
1:04:28 So I might have to get some bees.
1:04:29 – Dude, it costs like $200 to start.
1:04:33 Like my hives are from Amazon for 200 bucks.
1:04:35 And then you go on Craigslist and you find
1:04:37 like a bee delivery person.
1:04:39 The lady that I used was this like beautiful,
1:04:41 like Eastern European woman.
1:04:43 She shows up in her Lexus.
1:04:45 She pops out with a hive.
1:04:46 She’s not wearing any mask.
1:04:48 She’s got like a fancy watch on
1:04:50 and like beautiful blonde hair and nice clothes.
1:04:53 And she just goes like, you know, I’ve got your bees.
1:04:55 And I was like, yes, man, please come put them over here.
1:04:59 And I paid her $200 for the bees and the $200 for the hive
1:05:00 that I got on Amazon.
1:05:01 And that’s all, that’s all I needed.
1:05:04 – Do you still have them right now?
1:05:06 – I recently moved, but up until recently, yeah,
1:05:09 I had them on the, I had them in San Francisco
1:05:11 and I had them in Texas, but in San Francisco,
1:05:13 I had them at my small little house.
1:05:16 I had a backyard and then I also had them on the roof
1:05:18 of my office in downtown San Francisco.
1:05:21 And I had about 10,000 bees and you wouldn’t even,
1:05:24 you could, your hive could be like 30 feet away
1:05:25 and you wouldn’t even know that it’s there.
1:05:27 It’s like a pretty self-contained thing.
1:05:28 It’s like an awesome hobby.
1:05:29 – I’ve got a spot for my hive.
1:05:31 Then I have the perfect spot in my backyard for my hive.
1:05:33 – Yeah. And like, I think I like,
1:05:36 I don’t even know what I’m talking about and I have them.
1:05:38 And like I got, I got stung.
1:05:39 I’ve been stung like twice.
1:05:41 Like it’s not like that big of a deal.
1:05:43 Like it’s like people think it’s a very intimidating
1:05:46 unapproachable hobby, but I got into it
1:05:48 because I like made a list of like, I was like,
1:05:51 I need a hobby that doesn’t require a ton of work.
1:05:53 I can’t cost a ton of money
1:05:54 because if it costs a ton of money,
1:05:55 I’m going to break rule number three,
1:05:58 which is I can’t turn it into a business to make money.
1:06:01 And so like, I like, and I was like, what’s a good hobby?
1:06:03 And then I saw a bird speed documentary
1:06:04 and I was like, that’s a good hobby.
1:06:05 Let’s do it. – There you go.
1:06:07 – So it’s, and AJ’s a buddy of mine
1:06:11 and he got me into beekeeping as well.
1:06:12 – Yeah. Yeah.
1:06:13 I’m excited to see how that coup,
1:06:14 that smart coup business does.
1:06:16 It’s a really cool design.
1:06:18 – Well, thanks for doing this, dude.
1:06:18 You’re the man.
1:06:24 You’re going to be fun to watch over the next like five years.
1:06:26 This is going to be a very exciting journey.
1:06:29 I am, we take pride on having people on
1:06:32 before they like write the beginning of their like takeoff.
1:06:35 And even though you, you’re already incredibly successful,
1:06:36 I have a feeling that this is still going to be early
1:06:37 in your journey.
1:06:38 And, and we’re going to brag
1:06:41 about having you on early in your career.
1:06:41 – That’s awesome, dude.
1:06:42 Well, thanks for having me.
1:06:43 I appreciate it.
1:06:45 – All right, that’s the pod.
1:06:46 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:06:49 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:06:52 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:06:54 ♪ On a road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:06:56 ♪ Life ♪
1:07:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]