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

All right, what's happening, everyone? Today's podcast is with Kevin Espiritu. So Kevin has this company called Epic Gardening. Epic Gardening started as a blog where Kevin would just blog about his hobby as a gardener. He started it in 2016. And in this podcast, he's gonna tell us the revenue for every year that he's been doing it. But this year they're gonna do something like forty-five million dollars a year in revenue. And Kevin walks through how they got traffic, how he's built the company, how he bought other companies to make Epic Gardening a big business. It's incredibly fascinating. He's super transparent with all the numbers. So he goes through deal by deal all the companies that they bought, how much they paid for it, how they found the company. how they found other companies that they didn't end up buying and why they didn't buy it. It's a really fascinating story. This guy's really, really cool. I think in about five years, this guy's gonna be a really, really big deal. He's already a pretty big deal, but I think in five years, he's gonna be like Chipid Joanna. You guys have to listen to this podcast. He's a really fascinating guy. Let me know what you think. All right, check it out. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

Dude, so it's finally nice to talk to you. You uh I didn't know who you were, and then on the podcast uh Sean like told your story. And I'm like, Oh, I recognize this guy from everywhere. And I didn't realize how big of a business that you'd built. So congratulations. That's insane, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's been a it's been a crazy ride. It's been a crazy ride. I just watched one of your YouTube videos where one of your videos had just gotten I I think you said seventy million views. And it's just like you kneeling On uh

Like a little mealing like d device so you can guard in on your knees more easily and you're like I've been getting notice in the streets because of the silly kneeling video. Yeah. That video might haunt me. I I think it's the most viral thing I've ever made. It's a short form video.

So I'd seen this little kneeling device. It was like a Instagram reel of a German trade show. And it was just this little nailing device where you kinda pop down. I think it's made for brick layers. So I saw it and I was like, you know what, I kinda wanna try it out just to see. And so I I had my team grab one. There was like one in San Diego where I live.

And I made that piece of content in like Maybe maybe ten minutes maximum. Uh and and then edited it up, tossed it out, put it on I think TikTok first, and it just started ripping. So I I was like, Okay, I know this thing, it has some legs. So then I threw it on Instagram and Facebook and then threw it on YouTube. I think it's at like 150 million views across the platform. And the whole logic of doing it was

Let me put this product in front of our gardening audience and see if they like it. So then we can either hit up the manufacturer and carry it on our store. Or we can maybe make some modifications to it that make it a little better suited for gardening. And then

That it's basically just market validation, right? By by the time we went that viral we hit up the manufacturer, which is a German company, and they're like We would love to sell you some, but our entire stock in America is gone. So every distributor we already have has sold out. So we can't we can't get it to you. How much uh rev missed revenue was that? I have no idea. Yeah.

Over or under ten million. Oh, it's got I think it's under, for sure.'Cause I think these things are like Fifth maybe. I don't know how many we would have sold. But I don't think there was some crazy supply in the US. Uh but yeah, it's kinda it was kind of a bummer. So the my only the only thing I've ever gotten out of it is just being memed to

to death about it. Dude, so you the reason you're sort of interesting to me is did you start with like an internet marketing background? Cause I know that you're interested in search and SEO and stuff. Was it like to be an agency and then I mean, were you even into gardening and plants and all that stuff, or did you or were you like I'm the plant daddy now because I've got this website and so like which came first? What came first was Yeah, I guess I guess designing websites did come first, because I came out of college with an accounting degree, but I played online poker to pay for school.

And so that kinda like put me off the path of wanting to be an accountant right out of the gate. And you are making money. Yeah, I made like Two hundred, two hundred fifty thousand dollars probably playing poker in college. So I I used that to pay for school and then I had some money to like sit on.

Was it all online? Yeah, it was all online. I hated playing in person. I because it's so slow. Faster But you're also playing like more tables. What makes a good online poker player, because I would think I don't play poker really. I've only played like ten or twenty times. It's just like it seems like reading body language and things like that is part of the game, but what makes a good online player just straight math?

Straight math. Is a big part of it. So like understanding probability theory and understanding the types of hands that someone could or couldn't have in a particular situation. Uh, but you're you're kinda right. Like eventually when you play enough online poker

It gets down to the point where you know the people's screen names you're playing with. And you probably have played with these people like over days, weeks, or months, depending on how often they play. And you can even get down to the point where You know, in this particular position, like I'm sitting on the button, they're sitting in this position. And they

They wait three seconds longer than they normally do, and it's this person's screen name. A lot of the times you can develop some sort of weird sixth sense and you don't you're like I'm uh I'm like nearly sure that's a bluff and you'll call them. And you made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars over four years doing that? Yeah, so something like that. I didn't track it super well. It was like two hundred, two hundred fifty thousand. That's insane. That is insane. Yeah. Yeah. So it threw me off the path of wanting to be an accountant.

For sure. Uh and then when I Got out of school, I play poker for like six more months or something. And then quit, but I had nothing to to do. So I started playing video games and then I was designing websites

To just pay some bills. And then I got into the marketing thing because I was like, Well, once you sell a website. It's sold. So you make your fifteen hundred bucks or two grand or whatever the hell I was charging at that time. Uh so then I got into SEO stuff and I built the gardening blog at the same time.

'Cause I was getting into gardening. I was doing it with my brother over a summer. But I was like, I need a I need like a digital business card. Like I need a little calling card. So I built the gardening blog. as a way to show the website design clients like hey look Look what I can build.

What year was that? That would have been twenty thirteen. Dude, I think in the same year I did the same thing as you. Were you reading like smart passive income? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Pat for those uh young listeners I think you and I were on the young side probably at the time of his blog. I I think you and I are the same age. I'm thirty four.

Yeah, thirty six. And uh smart passive income was like one this guy Pat Flynn, he's still quite popular. He's one of the early bloggers of like making money on the internet. And he had a What did he do? He did like a he wrote like a blog and an ebook on how to like get your building like green or lead certified or something like that. And he was making money doing it. And he would display all of his income and revenue online, which at the time was like insane. And then he uh did like a food truck.

a food tr like a book on how to create a food truck or something like that. And he like was like I'm gonna rank high on search and I'm gonna blog throughout the way so you guys can see how I d do it. I read that And I created a poise Poison Ivy. Like how to treat poison ivy website. at the same time and it was making like a thousand dollars a day.

And I was like copying everything he was doing. And I have a feeling that you were reading that same blog at the same time. I have a even more cringe story aro around that time. So I was reading Pad like crazy. You call me cringe. I mean we all that that first sight that you make, it's always kinda weird. Like come on, a poison site. Yeah, but I have one worse than that, for sure. So Pat to me was like a god back in the day,'cause he's a half Filipino, half white guy living in San Diego.

building businesses. Are you half Filipino? I'm half Filipino halfway, and we've become good friends now, which is awesome. Um but When I read it, I was like, Okay, cool. I see the blueprint. Pat's got this like green certification thing. And so my choice was to I created a a website called Coco Butter Cream dot org. And so I go cocoa butter cream.gore and I start reviewing every cocoa butter cream that's on Amazon. And I was

Using an alias and like Come on, like I was like early twenties, I was doing some dumb stuff. And I I was Susie Michaels a mother of two who was like reviewing how all these different cocoa butters worked on me. Uh and and then I you know, you hook into Amazon affiliates and I remember it took me like a month. I made like two bucks on that site.

And I was like, Oh my God, I made money in a way that's not like someone just paying me. You know? Uh, and it kinda blew my mind. Like every the the whole saying, like everyone remembers your first dollar in the internet. I wish it wasn't Cocobter cream, but

And then and and that's when you got into like internet marketing, but didn't you do like a Kendrick Lamar website too? Yeah, that was that was uh Man, that was probably like a couple of years later. So the story on that one is my cousin. I was living with my cousin at the time. like a biomechanical engineer and I'm over here doing all this weird stuff on the internet, like building sites and stuff. And he's kinda getting intrigued by it and a friend hits me up and he was like, Hey

I have all these blogs that I need to sell. I just need some money. I have Kendrick Lamar Rita Ora, School Boy Q, like all these sort of up and coming artists, and this would have been like twenty five Fourteen, I think. goes, you wanna buy one and I go, I I'm kinda doing my own thing, but maybe I'll have my cousin buy it and

We'll do it together. So my cousin Johnny actually puts up the money for it and I think I had like ten percent equity in this Kendrick Lamar website. And we start like scouring the internet, and we actually become like the biggest source of Kendrick Lamar news on the internet before he drops his first album, Good Kid Mad City. And so no one really knows Kendrick, like only super fans know him.

And there was a point where like I think Kendrick's manager even called my cousin was like we really appreciate what you're doing for Kendrick, like you're putting it his name out there, dah da da da. And the way we monetized that is we were just selling shirts. Just like print on demand shirts. I think we probably made like thirty or forty grand doing that. And then after the album dropped and he blew up, all of a sudden he like trademarked his name and we had to shut the site down and stuff. But

That was another like weirdo. Internet thing that we did. What was the main thing though? Was it the gardening Like gardening websites the whole time. No, the the gardening thing

Didn't really start until For real. Like it was a hobby that I love doing and I've I've done it every Every year of my life since twenty thirteen. Um but it was just like a A hobby blog until twenty sixteen.

Uh when I went full time on it. And hobby blog and that you were actually like into gardening and you're like, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna create content around but did you see any numbers where you're like Uh this could be a big Company.

Or Was it straight? Joy. No, I mean it was a mix, right? Like I was gardening for fun and then I would just document whatever Whatever I was doing and like make a YouTube video or make a blog post.

And I would try to monetize it, like I'd make some ad revenue or I'd make some affiliate revenue. But I never thought it could be Huge. Like I remember talking to friends That were all kind of doing the same thing at the time. And I was like, man, if this thing could just make two grand a month, or if it could make five grand a month, like that'd be amazing. Then I wouldn't have to go get a job. Uh,'cause I think my mind didn't understand.

Any any business could really become at that point in time. So yeah, it took it took a while for me to realize the potential of it. And then You you kind of like had this

the it's a it's a it's not like a cliche to most people, but for the media world, it's like a cliche at this point. But at the time when you're doing it, it was like content and commerce was actually like a pretty innovative idea, which is I'm gonna build this huge blog and instead of just making money on advertising, I'm going to sell my own products, which is like It sounds silly that that that I'm calling that innovative, but Like when you were getting going, that was a thing. I mean, I had a blog and I was like, I don't think that you can like sell your own products. I'd rather just stick to like what I know, which is content and ads.

And I was like totally against selling stuff, but You made the right decision for sure. That's a significantly better business. It's a it's a way better business and Yeah, the the brief story on that is twenty sixteen I I go full time on epic gardening. I was uh at Scribe Media or Book in a Box it was called before that. It was like a second employee there. So I quit that.

Go full time with Epic. It was just a blog and YouTube channel. Did you have any revenue when you quit? Yeah, I was making four hundred and fifty dollars a month. I have this spreadsheet of like what it was making at the time. So at that time I actually thought I was going to

farm like l legit farm in people's front yards and uh like aggregate all their square footage and like sell that produce to restaurants and stuff like that. Right. I mean that sounds like really hard. Yeah, it's it's a really hard way to make a smallish amount of money. Which there's people that do it and I actually respect it a lot, but it's cool. It's cool. Yeah. It's just not scale.

Uh so so I go, Okay, how about I just make this blog make couple grand a month'cause it was making four fifty. So if I can make four fifty, I could probably make two. If I can make two, I could make five. And so I started growing it. And I think that year the blog Mm.

Seventeen grand total. Uh about six months of the year. Uh And then the next year It was

Seventy two thousand revenue. And this is all media'cause I haven't done any product yet, right? Twenty eighteen it was two hundred and twenty five. And then twenty nineteen is where I had that realization that you mentioned where I was like

Wait, why am I just Making money from ads and like brand sponsorships. Like what do the brands want from you when they do a brand deal? They want access to your audience. Why have complete access to my own audience, so why don't I just be the brand selling to my own?

My own audience. Uh, and so what I did is I realize like well every piece of content I put out is basically a search for validating demand for whatever's in that content. And so

In all these photos I'm putting out, because I'm I'm at this point I'm gardening in Hillcrest San Diego in like a very small front yard in in a pretty urban part of downtown San Diego. And so I'm like filming my content there. I have these little raised beds in the front yard, which is just a way to grow plants and they're made out of metal. And every time I took a photo of these, everyone's like, What are those? What what are those things in the photo? Like, where'd you get those? So I was like, I actually don't know. Like a brand just sent these to me and I put them in the front yard. And so I started emailing this company. They're from Australia. I emailed them like

Maybe once or twice. A quarter. For like a year, saying like hey Can I get these? Can I just like somehow get these to America? And sell them?

And they're like, No, no, we already we already have someone we're working with, like we don't need to do that. And then the beginning of twenty nineteen, they emailed back and said, like, hey, are you are you still interested in in carrying our products? We like a distributor just isn't working with us anymore. I'm like, Yeah, sure, let's do it. I think I probably had like Seventy, eighty grand in the business bank account at that point in time. All right. So it's like

It's like promising. You're not rolling in it yet, but it's media. So it's mostly profit. Yeah, it's mostly profit and it's a small business with with nearly zero employees. So to me, I'm like I'm making like a Like a mid level doctor's salary out of this business now, you know? So I'm I'm chilling. I'm I'm gardening. I'm liking my life.

Uh So I hit these guys up and they're like, Yeah, sure, like here's how it works and I'm like, Holy shit, I don't know how buying product works. 'Cause I'm I'm used to media and so Much like like the sort of cringe early days, the way I tried to do it was Sort of.

Sort of noob. A guy I was like, Okay, how do I buy the product? And like, Well, you have to pay us, you know, here's all these different like shipping terms. So I bought a twenty foot container of these raised beds for I think thirty five thousand dollars, which was like half the money that I had. Uh.

And I go Okay, well, what what h what happens when they get to America? Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, well, you got to receive it at the port, and then you that container has to like go somewhere, and then you have to unpack it, and then you have to ship it. I'm like, okay, cool, like thanks for that information. So what I tried to do is I tried to rent A uh storage facility out of a Costco.

And like just w one of the ones that you like go to if you're gonna move for a year, you know, and you put all your furniture in there. So I try to do that. And I was like trying to figure out how to get it for the port to the storage facility. And then I was trying to look up like how well how do you get internet in the storage facility so you can So I can print the labels.

Oh, and you were gonna literally mail these things out yourself. Cause I didn't know anything about commerce. I didn't know you could like send it to a 3PL. Or you can send your warehouse. How many like units? W of stuff did you have? I think it was five hundred and fifty beds.

At that point. That's a ton. But it's like alright, I'm just gonna go to the post office four times a week and I'll just I'll figure it out. I mean that's a lot of work, but I guess it's kind of reasonable. I th I thought it was reasonable and the reason why I was trying to do it like that is because

When I When I ordered it. And they packed the container in Australia. I was like, Okay, cool, guys. Like to my audience, I was like, Hey, you guys asked where these things were from. I figured it out. I put up a really crappy Shopify store.

And I was like, Here they are. And then I sold them out in like Four or five days. Oh no. So I knew I I knew it was working, right?

And so then what I did is I used that money to buy another container and then that was on the way and then that sold out. And then I was like oh my God, like I think there's something really going on here. So what was your revenue in nineteen the year you started selling stuff? So nineteen was like five fifty. And half of it was the product. So in year one, like immediately half was was product. So I was like, Oh my God, I think what I've been building this whole time

Is the top of a business and not the bottom of it. Like I thought media was the whole thing. It was like, oh, actually, media is right here and it monetizes, but the bottom is actually where. Where uh And that's like the weird innovative idea. I remember uh so like Uh my friend Nathan Barry has this awesome blog post called like billion dollar blogs. And it's like basically the story of a handful of people who started out blogging and then built companies around the blogs.

And the most famous example is probably Glossier or I think that's what it's called, Glossier. It's the the women's makeup uh brand that started as Emily Weiss, I think her name is. She had like a fashion and then she Was like oh this selling stuff is way better than selling ads and became a a billion dollar company and he has a few more examples of that. And that

That's when I first read about that idea. But I still thought this is way too intimidating and like too challenging. And particularly for me at the time, I ran a business website and I was like, I can't What am I gonna possibly sell? Yeah, like what product. Yeah, so like it didn't really make sense for me, but even still I was like, This is too intimidating, but you were living it and doing it, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean I frankly, like, it was quite intimidating to me, but I just was too either dumb or smart to like realize that and just Went ahead and did it. But anyways, like the to wrap that up, like I ended up talking to a friend of mine who was in commerce and he's like, What the hell are you doing, dude? Just get like a three PL.

and get a freight forwarder and send the container to there. Book the Shopify to there and then they'll ship it all out for you and That's what I ended up doing. And so that that was kind of the genesis of selling products at Epic Gardening. And didn't you grow that to like seven million in revenue with like four people? Yeah. So yeah, I mean

I think twenty twenty would have been two point eight in revenue, so Almost a six X thing. Year on year. And then twenty twenty one was seven point three. Seven point four or so.

And most of it was product at that point in time. And that would have been on a team of me. My garden assistant. My actual assistant, a video editor and and a writer. And that was it. That's all we had. On seven point three in revenue, what could your profit be?

Oh man, it was probably like Fifty percent or something like that. So you're rolling in it. Yeah, yeah. Well'cause'cause the thing about it is you If you run it like that. And that was with zero dollars of paid spend, right? And so I have no acquisition cost.

My acquisition cost is equal to my media, because that's the only way I was getting the word out, but my media It's not a cost, it's a it's a profit driver. And so it's that term negative cack. Like I had negative cack on the business. Why raise money then? I know y you raised, I think, seventeen million dollars. Why cause Like if you

The cool thing about bootstrapping a company is you can do whatever the hell you want. Yeah. And there's like freedom in that. And That's frankly, my favorite part about business is like the freedom of like you're creating your own empire. You can do whatever the hell you want. If you want to grow it, you can. If you don't want to grow it, you don't have to. Um, you get all the money. You don't have to answer to anyone. I assume at this point you own you still own one hundred percent of the company. At least if I'm you, I'm not given equity to.

My employees because it's like Uh I've been doing this by myself for a long time. I'll I'd rather just pay you a high salary. Why even take Seventeen million dollars. Yeah, I I wrestled with it.

For a long time. Like maybe That deal took like six months to close, I would say. And at least for the Turner Group, it's not some massive deal for them. Like that's not that's not a ton of money for them. It's it was a huge amount for me.

The the logic ended up being I was like Do I know what I'm gonna do in the next couple of years? Like do I understand the complexity of the business I I had built? Cause it's a that's a really lean team to be at seven point three with like a Commerce business, shipping product. Yeah, there's like a bunch of redundancy issues like at that around like anything north of five million, it's like all right, we've got something here. We've got a seed of something working here. It potentially could be huge. Like I should have some I should actually like shift to being a proper CEO. And like with being being a proper CEO is like hiring extra employees, even if like, you know, like at that point it's like

With with the size that you were, everyone was working a hundred and ten percent. And at that point it's you kinda like almost purposely become a slightly more inefficient because you're like, if I get seventy percent of effort from ten people, that's better than a hundred and ten percent effort of five people and I'll have some redundancy so people can like chill a little bit or someone gets sick or quits. Like there's actually like some proper CEO work you have to do at that stage, I would think. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, totally. I mean and the operational side, like the hiring, et cetera side, like I had no clue because I was on a team of me and And for contractors. Like I didn't I didn't really have hiring experience.

And then on the commerce side. It's not like we got to seven point three selling like an online course, which would be a lot simpler to fulfill. Like there's there's inventory planning, there's like sales tax nexus that you hit in all these different states that you have to file for. So there was a lot of complexity I was like staring down the barrel of that I I knew

That I didn't know about. I was at least smart enough to know I didn't know what was coming. Uh and then Frankly, like that was just a crazy period in the market. Like two thousand twenty one was probably still the last best time to do any kind of raising. And um

And then at the same time, I was like, look, I'm already ahead in in my space. Like no one, no creator in gardening is is doing what I'm doing. And so why don't I just make sure that I stay ahead? And partner with people who actually understand how these media to commerce businesses are built and that's what ended up making me do the deal.

Were you able to take any money off the table or did the seventeen go straight to the balance sheet? I was able to take some off, which was great. Um Yeah, that's like life changing, right? Yeah, it was it was life changing and then like I had bought A warehouse. Um to to start fulfilling because eventually like I moved off the three PL. I was like, you know what, I'm paying these guys like thirty, forty K a month in fulfillment fees.

Why don't I just like start a separate company, buy a warehouse, and then become my own tenant? And like build equity in the real estate side. And so when we raised, I I actually didn't that that warehouse didn't go with it. And so I I had the warehouse too. So like the way the whole personal financial math worked out, I was like The way I live

I'm good now. And I can just like fully focus on trying to win this space. So that was another part of it. Do you have family? Uh yeah, I've a I have a girlfriend. Yeah, and then a lot of my family lives in San Diego.

What's it feel like to uh be I don't know if you were single at the time or not, but what's it feel like to be a young guy, uh, and you're like, I'm good. I'm good for potentially forever. Yeah, I mean It's kind of uh Underwhelming I guess. I don't know. Was it like that for you? I don't know, for for me I had I'd already made quite a bit of money running up

through two thousand twenty one just sort of solo. And so it was a huge change, but it wasn't It wasn't like You know. one million to two hundred million dollar net worth or something like that. Like

The w the way I live, I just don't I just don't need it. I guess. Um and so all it did was eliminate worry about like I don't know what if something medical goes wrong or I couldn't even figure out if I wanted to buy anything for a while. Like I didn't

I didn't buy anything like fancy to celebrate or whatever. Not having money is Mm the the period of my life where I didn't have as uh money was more stressful than the period of my life where I did have breathing room. That that I completely agree with. That I I always think like it mitigates all your downsides, but it doesn't

At least I haven't found that it makes you Some massively happier person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you remember that that Study where it was like seventy thousand dollars a year.

Right. That's bullsh. That is absolutely bullshit. That I agree is bullshit. Why why do you agree that that's bullshit? First of all, I think inflation adjusted, isn't it? Like a hundred and sixty K now or something like that. Yeah, even I think that number's might be bullshit too too. Shocking doesn't go very far. Doesn't go far. Yeah, I think I think that's bullshit because The things Let's say you're making like two hundred a year.

you can get like you can have someone come and clean the house, or you can have like meal support or these sorts of things. That that help you free your time up from things you like genuinely don't like to do. Uh there's things like I love to do that of course I could pay for. Like I obviously I grow my own food and I like cook meals and and bake my own bread and stuff like that. I I don't have to do that.

But like I I don't clean my house anymore. Right. Uh and so like things like that I think give me I don't know if like positive joy would be the way I would phrase it though. It's just like I don't have to do an annoying thing. Is the way I think about it. Yeah, it's like uh you remember that book, Like The Five Languages of O Love, and it's like

Oh, your girlfriend's like an active service woman. So like if I do something nice for her, she'll feel loved. Yeah. There's like the five languages of love, but for money, where it's like for me it's not nice things, but for some people it could be they love cars. For me, it's the same thing where I've got a cleaner who comes often and I just like genuinely feel happier. Not having to do my laundry and clean. Yeah, and so and those like small things, which frankly aren't expensive. Uh it it it it definitely makes you happier. Like the those little small things.

I learned that all from Remet. Same. I learned that all from remain is is just He has like a surgical team on every single part of his life that he hates. Uh to do and I was like, Oh, you know what? That's actually pretty smart. And so

And he spends big on stuff. I was with Rumi on Saturday. He he like always asked these like crazy questions where sometimes I'm I'm just wanting to chill and have fun and he's like Sam, let me ask you a question. What's your rich life? And I'm like, I don't know, man. Uh like let's just drink our coffee. He's like, No, no, tell me your rich life and I'm like, Okay.

Uh it's not stuff, it's uh services. He goes What would happen if you 10X your spending? On your services. And I was having coffee with him. We had the same conversation. With his accent. He goes, he goes he goes. H

How how big would your staff be if it could be as big as you wanted it to be for your house? And I was like, I don't know, like I th I think I have like a cleaner and maybe like a cook every so often or something. He's like oh man, like what kind of cook? You know, he gets into the details. He gets into the details. He loves it. He loves it and When he asked those questions, frankly, it does make me start thinking, A, like, maybe I should do this. And B, like, Am I thinking too small? Like, if I love something, why don't I like get Ten X more of of that thing.

And so It is like cool to think about. He he does do a good job w with that, uh, of like make of like pressuring me to think beyond like how I'm thinking and And Remate stuff has actually been life changing for me. Same.

How big's a business now, can you say? Yeah, yeah, we're we're about ninety ish people. Uh and we're hoping to hit somewhere around like forty, forty five million this year in revenue. That's insane, right? Did you ever think that and are you doing it profo profitably still now that even though you've raised money?

Yeah, we're we're profitable. We're profitable. Well the first year after, I think we were not. Because you know, we hired quite a bit ahead of of growth because we were like way under hired with me and four contractors. And then um This year this year we are.

You think uh how big how big do you think it's gonna get in like five years? I mean I think it's like A foregone conclusion to get above a hundred million. Uh because we have We made a couple acquisitions. We made two small ones and one large one.

And even just sort of growing those, I think, has a shot at at getting us past a hundred. I don't know. How much bigger than that. Why acquire something instead of m building it on your own? It's really just speed and If you have the competency internally to do it. Did you I mean you you you studied accounting, but did you know anything about acquiring a company or did Chernin kinda hold your hand?

So the big the big acquisition where we bought the seed company. That was Cherning led a lot of the diligence on that'cause it's like way too complex a thirty year old business. Like I there's no way I could do the the diligence on that. But the two small acquisitions, I led those and they sort of just helped with the legalities of of getting it all done.

So the very first one was a seed tray. So like when you s when you're gardening, you usually start seeds in like a little tray. And a lot of these trays are made out of pretty flimsy plastic and they're just like Throw away things. And so a friend of mine

who is in the space on the media side of gardening, who's like an educator. He he was developing these trays and he hit me up and he's like, Hey, can I come down to the house and just show you this new tray that I made to start seeds in? And this was uh early two thousand twenty one. I was like, Yeah, sure, come on down. He comes down, he shows me this tray and it's like this very s super sturdy, durable tray to start seeds in.

Which solves like some of the problems of Them being flimsy. Then he had like cut all these little slits in it. There's like a big hole in the bottom, which if you're a gardener, you know it's like It makes it easier to like pop the seed out and put it out in the garden. So I hold the tray and the second I Hold it.

'Cause I've been gardening for like eight years now. I'm like Holy shit, this is like the best seat starting tray I've ever seen in my life, like for sure. He's like, You can stand on it if you want to. So I like I'm like two hundred twenty pounds, so I stand on it with one foot. It doesn't budge, and I'm like Okay, like that thing's durable.

And so I go, Well, what do you wanna do? Like I think this is a cool product. Uh, do you wanna like I can put it on my Shopify store and like see if the audience wants it. And he's like, Yeah, sure, what do you think? Like We'll just split the profits fifty fifty. You have you have the audience, I have the product, and and let's go. So I started teasing it in like Instagram or YouTube videos.

And it's an injection molded. product product. So We can only make so many in a day. You have to like press the mold and like accumulate inventory. So we we built up like maybe a week or two of inventory. Or what we thought was.

And then I just put an Instagram reel out and I was like, Hey This is the coolest tray I've ever seen and there's a link in my bio to go grab it. And we sold it out, like Shopify has this live analytics you can look at. It's awesome. It's like it's like it's like uh just the biggest dopamine rush when you've started seeing that getting. So I remember I I was screen recording. Uh just to see. Uh

just to kinda flex and and record the live screen and we sold out like couple weeks inventory like twenty five seconds. How much revenue is that? It was like twenty five or thirty grand, I think. So now that's a that's an entire line of products we own. It's on our shop. It's called our our epic tray line.

Uh, so if you go to our shop and you go to Seed Starting Supplies, you'll you'll see all the trays there. So Over the next like Over the next like three, four weeks we just like Built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out. Built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out.

And we were just splitting the profits. And then I go to him and I was like, Hey, look Not only is this working like really well, like better than I thought But There's definitely more trays that we could make. There's like different form factors and different ideas and like little domes you could put on top to keep humidity in or whatever. And I was like, but I can't make them.

'Cause that's what you do. And I'm like ninety Five percent of your sales. So

What if you just joined Epic. You know, we raised some money. I was like You could be our product lead. Well we'll I can't really like buy the business based on revenue'cause that

That is. We are your revenue, right? And so how do how how do we structure a deal? And so the deal we came up with without getting into like crazy specifics is We basically paid him for all of the assets, like the the the molds themselves.

and and the research and development time and a premium on that. Um gave him some equity and hired him as our product lead and then we've built that line out. So like I think like twelve or fifteen SKUs.

Going D to C and wholesale now. Um And it's like I think I think we're like Up seven X probably on the acquisition price as far as like revenue after the fact.

So and and that wasn't like a big acquisition, it was some five hundred thousand. So To me I'm like That's why you would that's why you would buy because I Yeah, and that's a great that's a great deal for everyone involved. Yeah, exactly. It was a total win win. What are the other two?

So the second biggest one we did w w was actually a media acquisition. So that was a block. So a friend of mine from from like the old SEO days had built a gardening blog. And we were hiring for a director of

editorial like just someone to run our blog. And our blog was doing well. Like maybe like Eight. Ten million sessions a year. And that was monetizing off of display ads, but then hopefully like people will go through and like buy some stuff on our store too. All from search.

Or mostly from search? Yeah, it's like mostly search. I say like eighty percent search. Um And so This guy emails me and he's like Hey look, I saw that.

that had of editorial position. I'm working in SEO right now. But I've also been building a gardening blog. On the side. It was called All About Gardening. dot com, which is now redirecting to epic gardening.

And he's like I'd like the job. Like I'd like to put my hat in the ring for the job, but I kinda have like a competing blog. So to me I go, look You've built that blog really fast.

Way faster than our we're currently building ours. But you kinda can't work for us and run that blog. So what if we bought your blog? And hired you. To run our blog. And he goes.

Okay. And so what we did is we bought the blog. And we migrated his blog into our blog. Which was like call them both like ten million sessions a a year, something like that. So you'd think like ten plus ten is twenty.

But our blog from an SEO perspective was like super strong. So by migrating his into ours our blog went to like we've probably got like a twenty, thirty percent premium on the traffic. So like

Ten plus ten equals twenty five. Right. Uh So then you're monetizing better off of the display ads there. But then we also just made more from the ads themselves.

And so effectively the acquisition financed itself. by the increased revenue like month one. Uh so That was another like sort of weird acting. Can you say w was that more or less than five hundred?

It was yeah, it was it was in between five hundred and a million. And the way we structure that one is we paid some up front and some over a period of time. Job plus equity. So is this post this was post Chernin? This is post Chernin, yeah. So the way that one has ended up working out is

We have a awesome leader running our blog at a higher level than ours was before. our traffic has over doubled and we're monetizing at over double the rate on the traffic. So you know like ha like YouTube RPMs, right? It's the same with blogs. Like our our blog RPM doubled after doing

The acquisition. And so Basically we just created like a cash flow that that finances the thing that we bought that created the cash flow. Did you read a book about this? I mean, how did you learn about acquisitions like this? I mean that's a pretty good one. I just thought I don't know, I just

If I do that. I feel like all these things will happen. And then They did.

I don't know. You're like look, I don't make up the rules, I just think them up and write them down. I I I don't know. I just I I I I Well you know how I just people say like there needs to be one re one like core reason to do something. uh like a acquisition or a business move or whatever. I I agree with that. But to me I un the way I mentally underwrote both of those things is I was like well the core reason is pretty obvious like I don't have a product, now I do, or like I don't have the traffic in a leader, now I do.

But then I just go How many other ways could this benefit us? And how many other ways could it Hurt us. And if the ways that could benefit us outweigh the ways it can hurt us, I go like I feel like it'll just Three of it'll just work then.

And this probably holds true for like acquisitions that are smaller where it's maybe a less efficient market or something like that. I don't know how it would work if if you have some sort of big big deal. What was the third one? Because you're two for two. You're two for two now. That sounds pretty good. Those those ones work those ones have worked out. Yeah, yeah. So the the third one

was almost like kind of a condition of doing the churn and deal in the first place because they were like, look, like this is this is not a big amount of money for us. But We wanna do some follow on. And See if we can like purchase a really awesome company in the space and help power up epic gardening. I was like, Okay, cool, that sounds good. Which is I think what they did with like Meat Eater.

Uh a few others where they buy like they buy the or they invest in the the media company and then immediately they're like, Let's go acquire a company to sell to the audience. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so We were looking man, we looked at so many different companies, like maybe a hundred fifty, hundred and sixty different companies in the space. I was like out at a uh fruit tree farm in Missouri at one point in time. When you say look at a hundred and fifty, does that mean just like

put like ideas on paper, or does that mean actually contacting a hundred and fifty people? Oh, it's it means contacting more than a hundred fifty. It it means like talking or like looking at a deck or inspecting in some way. Somewhere around a hundred fifty. Something like that. I mean that's a shit ton of work.

Yeah, this is why this is why having them has been has been helpful or having an investor on your side has been helpful'cause like I'm out here running the business and I'll I might mention a company and they'll they'll diligence and say like yeah this makes sense this doesn't make sense and then they'll they'll cold email them or cold call them and be like hey who we are. I know this is out of the blue, but Would this ever entertain you? And then if they say yes, and like look, uh, why don't you like put together some high level numbers and then um send something over and then we could talk about it with our team and then you get some type of like Doxen or PowerPoint or You get something and you're like

Uh, yay or nay. Like it could go to the next step. Let's actually have a real discussion about this. Is that is that how the d diligence looks like? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Like I I remember we l we were looking at like the top six hundred gardening apps at one point in time. And so we I got like a sheet from uh one of the people on the investment team and they were like Yeah, here are like the seven we think make any sense whatsoever, and here's like the five hundred ninety three that

Don't make any sense at all. So it's So these guys are doing a lot of the work then. Uh they're helping you. Oh yeah. They're pulling their weight. Oh I think so. Yeah, absolutely. Um So so anyway, so the seed company. This is like the big The big acquisition.

This was a company that without me knowing it, it was the first pack of seeds I had ever grown when I first started gardening. So I went into some random nursery with my brother and just picked up like a beautiful packet of seeds. These cucumber seeds. And lo and behold, turns out to be the seed company we end up buying in the story I'm about to share. So we go out to Colorado. It's this company called Botanical Interests, and they they're really well known for having high germination rates. So the seeds sprout really well when you buy them, but also the packet is just beautifully designed. What are they growing? Uh you know, I'm a noob, I'm a total noob when it comes to this stuff. What are they what's the output?

There's six I think we we stock about six hundred fifty varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. So pretty much any anything under the sun. Anything that you would like reasonably want to grow, we we have it. And it's a it's a husband and wife. They've been running it for like twenty eight years. They were married. I think they had divorced like a few years prior to that. And they were sort of ready to

hand the business off to whoever wants to run it next. But it You know, it's so it's like one of those like quote boring businesses that people talk about all the time. who's who's actually gonna be able to buy it. And the seed business is actually fairly complex. There's a lot that goes into it that you have to understand. And so we go out there.

I meet I meet the guy, the husband, and he's like, Hey, can I grab a selfie? Like Actually I have a friend who's like a big fan of your YouTube. It'd be amazing if if I could show her that we met and um immediately I'm like Okay, like I've maybe I've got a little edge in this in this process. Like maybe I'm gonna be able to get this company. It could go either way. It could be like you have an you you have an edge or shit, they know that they're that we have money behind us or something like that. Could be that too. Yeah, it could be that too.

But We go through the whole like the diligence happens, we go on a tour of the place, where we're talking through pricing and all this sort of stuff. And so I told my investors, I was like They gave me all this swag. They gave me like a hat. So

I'm just gonna wear this hat in every piece of content we make. until we either win or don't win this deal. Because I know the guy watches it, right? And I know like probably his team watches it too. So for the next like this was maybe May, for the next six months Which is a great time. Like May that's spring through summer.

I'm cranking YouTube videos out. I'm cranking Instagram reels out, short form, whatever. Hat hats on twenty four seven, every single piece of content. And we go through the bidding process, we win the deal. We were not the highest bid by like quite a bit, I would say. A a material amount for the sellers to like not have in their pocket if they went with us.

And we go out to celebrate. And I go, Hey, you know, I really appreciate you guys. Like it's it's truly an honor to be able to carry on the legacy of this company. Like this is the first seed packet I ever grew. And I'm I'm just being very gracious'cause I I did feel that way. And he goes You don't know how much wearing that hat helped.

And I go I You knew it. Got it. Yeah, I got'em. Not in like a malicious way, just like I'm I'm using the angle that I have, which is my Everyone won. Everyone won. Everyone won.

Did you uh what were some of the red flags and and I guess green flags or whatever it is th for that deal along with a few other deals when you're looking through the financials and the business? So that the seed companies red flags are that it basically that it is a seed company. Like that's just a hard it's a difficult business. Like there's a ton'cause So many different skews. Tons of different skews.

Uh, there's you have to do like a non GMO certification, you have to do germination testing, you have to do pesticide and herbicide testing. You're you're physically purchasing or contracting a grower to to grow seeds that you then receive Test. Repack, et cetera.

And so there's just like a lot of com it's not like you're you're selling like a rug or something like that, and you can just buy rugs from China and then sell the rug to other people in America. So that was complex? But the part that I think was really green about it is it was far and away one of the best brands in the space. Like I I loved it. For ten years.

And On top of that They were mostly a wholesale business and the online business they they sort of hadn't done a whole lot with. And I was like, Okay, well we're we're definitely an online first company, media and product, so why don't we just plug Plug those two together.

I think the first year after we we did the deal, the online part of the business for the seed company was up like seventy, sixty or seventy percent year over year without really doing much. Like all we did was move it to Shopify and tell people we own the company now, and that's pretty much it. What what what payback cycle were you looking for? And what type of multiple do businesses like this sell for? Man, I I don't remember offhand the multiple, but I wanna say

It was probably six to eight X. Somewhere like that. Uh income. Yeah. I think so. And w how long till you could pay back

The acquisition. That's a good question. I don't know. Hopefully like

So I mean I I I think that's pretty fast. Yeah, it's like five I would say like five, hopefully. Yeah, I mean uh or I mean if you only if they only sell for five to seven times, I would think that you you'd actually grow it or get that money back significantly faster, I would think. Because of kind of like The audience that you have. The audience and then like just the opportunity'cause we're

W were carried in I would say forty five hundred stores around the country. And so to me I'm like well it's just seeds that are carried. Like just our seed brands there,'cause th they were a seed company. But we're making these trays that I told you about. We're making these other new products. We now we have a distribution network.

So why don't we tell all those retailers, hey, look, we're like making better product that your customers will want. Just stock our product in your store. And so that was that was another like big lever, I think. We're still testing it out and trying to prove if if that's right or not, but we're like

Yeah, why why wouldn't we just offer a ton of our products now to wholesale? in a network that we couldn't have built. Have you ever been to a Chip and Joanne's like Way, like they're like it's a show for them. Uh in twenty twenty.

Like you were on their show. I filmed a show for Magnolia. Back then. They have uh it's basically like Disneyland for like four year old white chicks. Uh, it's like you could like buy anything in the world, uh that you're like for your home or living room.

Uh I went to it once and like my uh mother in law and her sisters like wanted to go and like take pictures of like they just wanted to like Anything with Chip and Joanne's name on it. They just wanted to see it. And I was like doing math around like how I mean it's like a it's it's like a it's like a campus. And so they've got like food and uh many, many different stores And I was doing math and I'm like These guys are gonna be billionaires. Like this is gonna be

This is gonna be the greatest thing ever. And That's gonna happen to you. Because you've got the same shtick where You're you're in a good uh niche of of I imagine it's mostly women, uh and they probably have

they probably spend a lot, or just for the hobby, they spend a lot. But B You got the charisma, you got the look. Like It's gonna happen. Do uh do you get crazy like stalker messages or like fans who are obsessed with you?

Um, it it's definitely happened. Yeah, it's definitely happening. People make fun of me on this podcast all the time. But you know. I I'm not embarrassed to say you're a charismatic good looking dude. I I imagine you've got you've got a lot of fans. Back at you, dude. We so Everyone thinks I'm gay too, actually. Just because I'm a just because I'm a guy, I think it's'cause I'm a a younger guy in gardening and gardening is seen as a more feminine hobby. Uh

People just think I'm a gay guy. What It's just it's just an interesting phenomenon to experience on the internet all the time. But um Yeah, no, I mean I would say It ha it happens for sure.

I I've done the whole like delete all your info from the internet. Process But it's kind of good. It's never good enough. It's never good enough. Especially when you film at your home, right? Like my set is my outdoors and so I can't like not show the street, et cetera, because it's it's just in the shot. There's nothing I could really do about it. Dude, I've had times where like I took a picture of my house and I didn't think you could see it. And then like the next couple of days I'll get gifts sent to my home.

And like people will find it on like Street View and I'm like shit. And like I'm not a famous person. I'm a mildly popular person in a small subset of the internet. And so I can't imagine if you're like real famous or if I'm like you and my videos get millions and millions and millions of views. Yeah, I mean uh look, it's it's it hasn't been as bad as I think like Legitimate celebrity type. People but I've definitely had like I had an experience

earlier this year where this woman We're all in the backyard'cause that's where we film most of the time. But there's a garden in the front yard too. And I have security cameras on now that record like locally to my house, so I can pull up footage of whatever I want. And this woman like comes up the front door, knocks on it.

says you who and then like looks in the house And then goes out into the front gate, walks, opens it. Like kinda messes around with some plants, tries to walk around the backyard. And my assistant was in the back yard. She's like coming around the the back to the front. So they kinda like buttted heads. And my assistant just freaked out. She's like, Who is this woman? And this woman s saw nothing wrong with what she was doing. She's like, Oh yeah, I just wanted to see if you guys were filming, like wanted to come say hi. And we're like, We don't know who you are.

And she like there's nothing we could have said to her that would have made her understand her behavior was like completely out of the norm. And so every so often it's like the law of large numbers, man, like If you have an audience of Many millions. All you need is point oh one percent.

And that's still like fourteen people. You know? That'll come mess mess with you. You were telling Ari before uh about something that I wanted to ask you about, and this is something that I've been crazy interested in. It's a business I don't really know much about other than listening to like two or three podcasts and reading a couple of articles.

But uh the l like licensing of uh fruits or vegetables or different type of seeds. So like I was reading about the history of honey crisp apples. And I believe it was started in either I think it was Minnesota, like University of Minnesota. What they did was I think they like

Took two plants and they Bread'em, however that people even do that. I don't even know how you do that. But it took like many decades because I guess it takes a year to get a a new plant or I guess it takes like ten years to get an apple tree in the first place or five years, something like that. And then you screw up a bunch and then it so it ultimately will take many years, sometimes decades to get like a good apple. And then they come up with a really cute name, like Honey Crisp. Or like I think I had one the other day that was called like uh Cotton a cotton candy apple. Like you like brand it with some like cute name.

And then you license it out to other other farmers and you build this massive business that has this moat that will take Thirty years to disrupt. Is that how it wor is am I do I have that right with that? That's pretty much right. That's pretty much right. So

We're gonna go into like garden nerd territory for a sec, just so I could explain how it works. So When you're making a new tree. It's h it's really difficult, like you mentioned. Like actually when you're making new varieties of most plants, it's Yeah. It's super painful.

to get the variety. that you actually want. Like I met a guy at a farm once he'd been working on a potato for like twenty years. And what was his uh goal outcome for that potato? So the goal outcome, potatoes are are grown from what are called seed potatoes, which is basically just just a potato that you throw in the ground. So you don't plant like a little seed, you just throw potato in the ground.

So this guy was trying to make a potato that you could grow from an actual potato seed. Cause when a potato is in the ground, it throws Like leaves up and it actually makes a potato flower. Which produces a potato berry and that berry has seeds in it. And if you plant those seeds The problem is that you don't get the potato that you planted. You guys. And so his outcome was like a more efficient way for for a farmer. It wasn't necessarily a certain taste.

Yeah, it was it wasn't it w I mean, it definitely was a taste, but you're right, like The idea was Instead of buying a ton of potatoes and planting them by hand, you could just plant a bunch of seeds. That took him tw that took him twenty years, right? Did he get his out d did it did he do it? He got it. Yeah. It's called the Clancy Potato. We actually sell it on our our store. It's an awesome potato. Did he get wealthy from it? I hope so. I didn't ask, but I hope so. I think he did it under

A seed company, so probably they got wealthy, I'm not sure. But uh either way he's interesting guy. So with fruit trees though. It's kind of the same thing, where like You have to

You have to keep developing tons and tons of trees and then figure out, let's say, okay, this is the apple out of the hundreds that I grew out. That I actually like. It's that's my next honey, Chris, right? And what you then do Is

You you have to graft, you have to take a piece of that tree and put it on what's called the rootstock of of an apple. So like the roots and below. 'Cause you can't use the seed of that'cause it'll be a different apple and it will take a long time. So let's say you you get this magical new honey crisp. Uh.

What you do is you take a bunch of those those little branches off and you put them on other apple root stock. And then grow those out. And then those are genetic clones of that new honey crisp. And then you do that again. And then you do that again. And so that's how And is each time one year, or how long does it take to grow a w a tree? Mm, it's probably like

It's it would really depend on the type of fruit, but it it it's probably I'll say this, it'll shorten from growing from seed by like seventy, eighty percent. It's like way faster than growing it from seed. Not only that. It you you have to do it that way'cause you won't get the same genetic apple.

And so what what guys like The honeycrow guy you mentioned, or there's there's a guy named Floyd Zager who's who's sort of known as like the godfather of stone fruit, which is like peach, nectarines. All those types of of trees. What they do is they have tens of thousands, I think, of trees that they're Cross pollinating.

Growing out, grafting, tasting, testing. And then when Maybe actually become a variety.

they now have a patent on that because they've developed that what's called a cultivar. They have that cultivar. And then they can license that out for other people that put into production. They take like a licensing fee on all those. So you're right. Like once they actually create the next honey crisp or the next like killer peach. they can make a cash flow off of that thing for like Who knows how long? Until the next one comes around. I'm looking at this guy, Floyd. So he's ninety four years old. It looks like he's he's still doing it. I think he passed away like a couple years ago. But he's like a total legend in the space. Oh yeah, you're right. He he passed away, but it looked like based off the photos, up until like when he passed away, it looks like he was still Yeah.

planting or or involved. Did he build a big uh what his name of his company was uh Z Zager's Genetics, is that right? Yeah, Zagra Genetics and then what What there's a nursery called Dave Wilson nursery, which I think they sell the most fruit trees in the US. They use a lot of Zagers. Stuff.

Uh, and so they'll they'll be the people who grow out a lot of Floyd Zagers. Actual trees. Uh so it's a it's a crazy model,'cause you're right, like Good luck competing. You you have to spend like twenty years to even get started.

Does it make re uh does it make is it like a good business or is it something that looks awesome, but day to day it's quite challenging. I mean, I don't think it's the easiest business. You have to know a lot about plant botany and genetics and all that, but like the people who like this type of stuff, like There's nothing you could pay them to make them stop doing it. So They might as well have a business based on it, you know?

Yeah, my parents are in the agriculture industry. So my uh father, his first business was a fruit stand. on the he started as a stockboy in like the produce section of a grocery store. Then he opened up a fruit stand And then he created a produce brokerage, which is like a basically U have relationships with farmers in Idaho or Bakersfield, California, and you buy, let's say, five hundred thousand dollars of onions, and then you go and find a trucker to pick it up, and then you sell that five hundred thousand dollars of onions to Walmart for five

five five hundred thousand, fifty thousand dollars and you make like ten grand of profit or something like that off organizing that. That deal. And you have to sell at this point he's sold over a hundred million dollars of of onions over the course of twenty years, but

the margins are like three percent. Or like like like it y you know, it it'll be basically him by himself selling twenty million a year worth of produce and like you make, I don't know what you make, but like three hundred thousand dollars a year. So good living, but like you've got to sell a shit ton of product in order because the the the margins are so small. Uh, and so I've grown up. talking to some of these farmers and it's it's it's uh It's more of a vocation than anything because it's just what they know. It's, you know, they've been born and raised doing that.

And it's like I I am a farmer. Yeah. no matter what. And it's not like maybe traditional businesses where it's like, I see an opportunity, I'm gonna do this. It's like no, this is just

What I was bred to be. That's what I've noticed in our in our space'cause There's a lot of like smaller product companies or small seed companies, et cetera. Like no one's No one was try to get super rich doing it. Like Even even me, like back

In the earlier days, I was like I I just I'm very happy making that two fifty that I made gross revenue and pulling out whatever I made. It just so happened that I also like business. Uh and so They combined really well.

Can I uh I we' we'll wrap up here in a second, but l I wanna ask you a quick question about uh diet. I'm I'm a little I recently moved to a new place just mostly because it was across the street from a farmer's market and I've been obsessed with the idea of buying produce and uh meat. That only comes within like a twenty or fifty mile radius of where I am. Um because Like even if you buy food at Whole Foods, I still think like Whole Foods is supposed to be like

Some type of standard which I don't think it is the standard anymore, but for a long time it was like that was the standard of healthy eating. Um But I still feel crappy after I eat that because I don't uh you know, like I don't even know what organic actually means. And I don't actually bind to the hype necessarily that that

Mix That is the right way to do things. Are you Eating all of your own food and Do you think that makes you feel different than grocery store food?

I think I think for sure it does because I don't know that I believe you know that book Blue Zones? Remember that one that came out? Yeah, I think that that that book is awesome, but I think it's bullshit. Like I think a good part of it is bullshit. Yeah. You know why it's bullshit? So here, well, I'll tell the audience. I did a little research on it. It's like What they all have in common is that

uh like in Osaka, Japan or uh like They lie about their age. And so like they notice that like Wow, this In this town, there's a shit ton of people born on January first. Like what's going on? And turns out a lot of them lie about their age, I guess so they get social security at a certain time or something like that. Oh wow.

Uh and so there was a lot uh like the the the the Although maybe he there was some bit of truth in there. the commonality between the five blue zones is that they have a huge amount of like age fraud. I also saw something about can you imagine like lying to be older? Uh, I saw something about like it also maps to

When we started accurately tracking birth certificates. Like a lot of these people are old enough that they're from before when we did that. And so how can you really know how old they are? The thing I do And maybe that's the that's the nicer way to put it what I maybe said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I think the thing that is somewhat true there is like It does seem to just make logical sense that the fresher food you eat, the better

Off you'll be. And so to me I go, Well, it doesn't get fresher than that in my own backyard, right? Like we just had a Amazing carrot salad we made yesterday. I've even grown my own wheat to make my own sourdough bread, which is definitely extreme. Like I don't think that's practical.

But yeah, I mean I think you do feel better. And I think the best the next best thing to grow your own food would be going to like a farmer's market. As long as you know like the farmer is actually growing things the way that they say they are,'cause now there's like farmer's market fraud. 'Cause down here in San Diego, people will drive up from Mexico. With like mono cropped food.

And just pretend like It's a farmer's market. What questions do I have to ask them? You would have to ask like Well w where is your farm?

Yeah, yeah, they they should have pictures of it. And you could ask like Yeah. Do you spray. pesticide, herbicide, fungicide. If so, like which ones.

You don't even have to know what their answers, but if they can't fire the answers off quickly, that's your signal that they kind of don't know what they're talking about. What do you do for me? Meat I tend to just buy And um I'll I'll go to like a Whole Foods or there's like a local fish market uh called Poe Loba Seafoods down here in San Diego. I'll try to go to.

And sometimes. So I'm trying to get like some friends to do that like quarter cow thing with me. Yeah. So far no one's down, so If you're out there. All right. I've been trying to do that as well. Uh you need like a huge garage fridge, which is how you know you made it by having a garage fridge to like store all this meat. Uh but I've been doing it too. Have you seen um

Uh it's called uh w it's called Coop. But if you Google like Cool. Yeah, yeah, we shot him on our podcast. AJ Smart Farm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, AJ's a good buddy of mine. AJ's awesome. Um I what's his URL? I want to give him a shout out.

Coop.farm. So coop is like It's like they like the tagline that I saw in the article was like it's like the Tesla for a chicken coop. And it's a so coop dot farm. It's like a smart chicken coop. Um, and it looks pretty cool. I think I might get one. Um

I think it'd be awesome to have your own chickens, uh,'cause that's like a pretty low maintenance uh way to just kinda get into the habit or get a hobby. The other thing that I've done for years is uh beekeeping. Um, so I've raised my own bees, um, in order to get honey. uh which is like an awesome hobby and beekeeping is a cool thing because y it requires like cl not much maintenance as all uh at all. And from a business perspective, You remember that Flow hive or whatever that went viral like Kickstarter and it raised like twenty million dollars. I do think that uh beekeeping like the the supplies could actually be a legitimately good business. Um and you could create like because you can create like a a a lifestyle brand around it because the

Content. to around that is like inherently quite viral. Like I used to create These like just videos of me like uh scraping off the honey or the uh

What's it called? The um Honey comb like the honey from the comb. Yeah, like scraping the comb off of my uh Uh my trays or whatever that's in the hive. I don't actually know anything about it, even though I've had bees for years, but like that's how little you have to know about this in order to like successfully do it. Like I would like scrape off the comb and like make these awesome videos and then just like give it to my friends and they loved it. And it was it's like such a fun hobby. Uh and so I'm really big on that.

Named uh I think her name is like Texas B Works. I don't know if you've seen her stuff on the internet, but she has this like very soft, pleasing voice. And she'll be like There'll be music and it'll be some crazy scenario where there's a hive and she's like called out and she goes, I've I've been called out to take this hive out of a manhole Dude, she has a mil uh one point six million subs on YouTube. Oh yeah. Yeah, she's huge. And so I I always look'cause I know what I did with Epic and I look at all these other people and I go like

Don't you realize like you could have a thriving beekeeping like goods company? But then, you know, mo the the sort of paradox of the whole creator world is that most creators just don't want to do that and that's why they don't do it. Did she was on Joe Rogan. I'm looking at it now. She Erica Thompson. She was on Joe Rogan She goes, I did my first podcast.

And it's Joe Rogan. It's Joe Rogan. She goes, I did my first podcast, the link is in the bio. Thank you so much, Joe Rogan and team. This was such a wonderful experience for me and my bees. Damn, that's a flex right there. That's a flex. Awesome. This this is a this is a gem. This woman, uh, she's got it. Um yeah, man, beekeeping's a good uh is an interesting hobby. You you should try it out. You like it requires no work and I'm pretty sure it makes your plants way better. I notice that whenever I get bee whenever I get bees, you start seeing like all different types of flowers uh in the backyard. That's the last

thing I haven't done. Like I've got the chickens, I've got it all the pond. You know, I I don't have bees yet, so I might have to get some bees. Dude, it costs like two hundred dollars to start. Like a uh like I I my hives are from Amazon for two hundred bucks, and then you go on Craigslist and you find like a B delivery person. Uh, the lady that I used was this like beautiful, like Eastern European woman. She shows up in her Lexus, she pops out with an hive. She's not wearing any mask. She's got like a fancy watch on and like beautiful blonde hair and nice clothes. And she just goes like

You know, I've got your B's and I was like, Yes, ma'am, please Come put'em over here. And uh I paid her two hundred dollars for the bees and then two hundred dollars for the hive that I got on Amazon and that's all you that's all I needed. Do you know what's going on? Right now. Uh I recently moved, uh but up until recently, yeah, I had'em on the I had'em in San Francisco. And I had them in Texas, but in San Francisco I had'em at my small little house, uh, I had a backyard. And then I also had'em on the roof of my office in downtown San Francisco. And I had about ten thousand bees and you wouldn't even you could your hive could be like

thirty feet away and you wouldn't even know that it's there. Yeah. Uh it's like a pretty self contained thing. It's like I've got some hive. I've got a spot for my hive, then I have the perfect spot in my backyard for my hive. Yeah, and like I think I Like I don't even know what I'm talking about and I have'em. And like I got I got stung. I've been stung like twice. Like it's like not like that big of a deal. Like pe it's like people think it's a very intimidating, unapproachable hobby, but

I got into it because I like made a list of like I was like I need a hobby that doesn't require a ton of work. Uh, I c it can't cost a ton of money because if it costs a c ton of money, I'm gonna break rule number three, which is I can't turn it into a business to make money. And so like I like and I was like What's a good hobby? And then I saw a Bird Speed documentary. And I was like, That's a good hobby. Let's do it. Go and um AJ's a buddy of mine and uh

He got the independent Be keeping as well. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited to see how that coop that smart coupe business does. It's a really cool design. Um well thanks for doing this, dude. You're the man. Uh

You're uh You uh You're gonna be fun to watch over the next like five years. This is gonna be a very exciting journey. I um We take pride on having people on before they like

right the beginning of their like takeoff. And even though you're you're already incredibly successful, I have a feeling that this is still gonna be early in your journey and And we're gonna brag about having you on early in your career. That's awesome, dude. Well thanks for having me. Appreciate it. All right, that's Todd. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day song On a roadless travel never looking back

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