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 going to tell us the revenue for every year that he's been doing it. But this year they're going to do something like $45 million 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 5 years, this guy's going to be a really, really big deal. He's already a pretty big deal, but I think in 5 years he's going to be like Chip and 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 could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel.

Never— Dude, so it's finally nice to talk to you. You, uh, I didn't know who you were, and then on the podcast, 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 70 million views and it's just like you kneeling on a, like a little kneeling like device so you can garden on your knees more easily. And you're like, I've been getting noticed in the streets because of this silly kneeling video.

How much, uh, rev— missed revenue was that?

I have no idea.

Yeah. What's your guess? Over or under $10 million?

Oh, it's got to— I think it's under for sure. Because I think these things are like $50 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 kind of— it was kind of a bummer. So 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? Because 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 kind of like put me off the path of wanting to be an accountant right out of the gate.

And you were making money?

Yeah, I made like $200,000, $250,000 probably playing poker in college. So 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 because it's so slow. Because when you're playing online, you're playing 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 10 or 20 times. It's just like, it seems like reading body language and things like that is 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 kind of 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 3 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 know, you're like, I'm, I'm like nearly sure that's a bluff and you'll call them.

And you made $250,000 over 4 years doing that?

What year was that?

That would have been 2013.

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 young listeners, I think you and I were on the young side probably at the time of his blog. I think you and I are the same age. I'm 34. Yeah, I'm 36. And 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 LEED 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 did like a food truck, a food truck, like a book on how to create a food truck or something like that. And he like was like, I'm going to rank high on search and I'm going to blog throughout the way so you guys can see how I did do it. I read that and I created a poison ivy, like how to treat poison ivy website at the same time. And it was making like $1,000 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 an even more cringe story around that time. So I was reading Pat like crazy.

You just call me cringe.

I mean, we all— that first site that you make, it's always kind of weird. Like, come on, it's the worst site.

Yeah, it's so stupid.

I have one worse than that for sure. So Pat to me was like a god back in the day because he's a half-Filipino, half-white guy living in San Diego. Building businesses.

Are you half Filipino?

I'm half Filipino, half white, 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 website called cocobuttercream.org. And so I go cocobuttercream.org 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 20s, I was doing some dumb stuff. And I was Susie Michaels, a mother of two who was like reviewing how all these different cocoa butters worked on me. And then I, you know, you hook into Amazon affiliates and I remember it took me like a month. I made like $2 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? And it kind of blew my mind. Like the whole saying, like everyone remembers your first dollar on the internet. I wish it wasn't cocoa butter 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 years later. So the story on that one is my cousin— I was living with my cousin at the time. He was 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 kind of 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, Schoolboy Q, like all these sort of up-and-coming artists. And this would have been like 2014, I think. He goes, you want to buy one? And I go, I'm kind of 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 10% 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 and was like, I like, we really appreciate what you're doing for Kendrick. Like you're putting his name out there, da da 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 30 or 40 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 gardening thing didn't really start until for real. Like it was a hobby that I love doing and I've done it every, every year of my life since 2013. Um, but it was just like a hobby blog until 2016, uh, when I went full-time on it.

And hobby blog in 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, 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 $2,000 a month, or if it could make $5,000 a month, like, that'd be amazing. Then I wouldn't have to go get a job, uh, because I think my mind didn't understand the scale that 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 It's a, it's a, it's not like a cliché to most people, but for the media world, it's like a cliché at this point. But at the time when you were doing it, it was like content and commerce was actually like a pretty innovative idea, which is I'm going to 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 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 way better business. And yeah, the brief story on that is 2016, I go full-time on Epic Gardening. I was at Scribe Media or Book in a Box, it was called before that. I was like a second employee there. So I quit that, go full-time on Epic. It was just a blog and YouTube channel.

Did you have any revenue when you quit?

Yeah, I was making $450 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 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.

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 gardening. I'm liking my life. 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. Because I'm used to media. And so much like the sort of cringe early days, the way I tried to do it was sort of noob. Like I was like, okay, how do I buy the product? And they're like, well, you have to pay us, you know, here's all these different like shipping terms. So I bought a 20-foot container of these raised beds for, I think, $35,000, which was like half the money that I had. And I go, okay, well, 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. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, thanks for that information. So what I tried to do is I tried to rent a storage facility out of a Costco and like just one of the ones that you like go to if you're going to move for a year, you know, and you put all your furniture in there. So I tried to do that and I was like trying to figure out how to get it from the port to the storage facility. And then I was trying to look up like, well, how do you get internet in the storage facility so you can— so I can print the labels?

Oh, and you were going to literally mail these things out yourself?

Because I didn't know anything about commerce. I didn't know you could like send it to a 3PL or you could send it to a warehouse.

How many like units of stuff did you have?

I think it was 550 beds at that time.

Okay, so like that's a, that's a ton, but it's like, all right, I'm just going to go to the post office 4 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, 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 4 or 5 days.

Oh no.

While they were still getting to America. So 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 '19, the year you started selling stuff?

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. I think that's what it's called, Glossier. It's the women's makeup brand that started as Emily Weiss, I think her name is. She had like a fashion blog and then she was like, oh, this selling stuff is way better than selling ads. And it became a billion-dollar company. And he has a few more examples of that. And 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, 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, 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 3PL and get a freight forwarder and send the container to there, hook 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 $7 million in revenue with like 4 people?

On $7.3 in revenue, what could your profit be?

Oh man, it was probably like 50% or something like that.

So you're rolling in it.

Why raise money then? I know you raised, I think, $17 million. Why? Because like if you, the cool thing about bootstrapping a company is you could 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 could 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. You get all the money. You don't have to answer to anyone. I assume at this point you own, you still own 100% of the company. At least if I'm you, I'm not giving equity to my employees because it's like, 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 $17 million?

Yeah, I wrestled with it for a long time. Like maybe that deal took like 6 months to close, I would say. And at least for the Chernogroup, that's not some massive deal for them. Like that's not, that's not a ton of money for them. It was a huge amount for me. The logic ended up being, I was like, do I know what I'm going to do in the next couple of years? Like, do I understand the complexity of the business I had built? Because it's a, that's a really lean team to be at 7.3 with like a commerce business, shipping product.

Yeah, there's like a bunch of redundancy issues. Like at that, around like anything north of $5 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 a proper CEO is like hiring extra employees, even if like, you know, like at that point it's like with the size that you were, everyone was working 110%. And at that point, it's, you kind of like almost purposely become slightly more inefficient because you're like, if I get 70% of effort from 10 people, that's better than 110% effort of 5 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 4 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 $7.3 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, 2021 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 my space. Like, no one, no creator in gardening 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 $17K go straight to the balance sheet?

I was able to take some off, which was great.

Yeah, that's life-changing, right?

Yeah, it was. It was life-changing. And then like I had bought a warehouse to start fulfilling because eventually, like, I moved off the 3PL. I was like, you know what, I'm paying these guys like $30K, $40K 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 then build equity in the real estate side. And so when we raised, I actually didn't— that warehouse didn't go with it. And so 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?

Yeah, I have a girlfriend. Yeah. And then a lot of my family lives in San Diego.

What's it feel like to 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 and you're like, I'm good, I'm good for potentially forever?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of underwhelming, I guess. I don't know. Was it like that for you? Why?

I don't know.

For me, I had already made quite a bit of money running up through 2021, just sort of solo. And so it was a huge change, but it wasn't like $1 million to $200 million net worth or something like that. The way I live, I just don't need it, I guess. 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— 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 $70,000 a year? Right. That's bullshit.

That is absolutely bullshit. That I agree is bullshit.

That I agree. Why do you agree that that's bullshit?

Okay. So first of all, I think inflation adjusted, isn't it like $160K now or something like that?

Yeah. Even I think that number might be bullshit too. $160 grand in one of the top 5 cities. Shockingly 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 $200,000 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. 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 bake my own bread and stuff like that. I don't have to do that. But like, I don't clean my house anymore, right? 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, you remember that book, like The Five Languages of 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 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, it definitely makes you happier. Like those little small things.

I learned that all from Ramit. Same. I learned that all from Ramit is just he has like a surgical team on every single part of his life that he hates to do. And I was like, 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 asks these like crazy questions where sometimes I'm just wanting to chill and have fun. And he's like, Sam, let me ask you a question. What's, 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, 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'd your spending on your services?

And I was like, I was having coffee with him. We had the same conversation. He goes, he goes, he goes, 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 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 asks 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 10x more of, of that thing. And so it is like cool to think about. He does do a good job with that, uh, of like make— of like pressuring me to think beyond like how I'm thinking. And, and Ramit's stuff has actually been life-changing for me.

Same.

How big is the business now, can you say?

Yeah, yeah, we're about 90-ish people, uh, and we're hoping to hit somewhere around like $40-45 million this year in revenue.

That's insane, right? Did you ever think that? And are you doing it profitably still now, even though you've raised money?

Yeah, we're profitable. We're profitable. The first year after, I think we were not because, you know, we hired quite a bit ahead of growth because we were like way underhired with me and 4 contractors. And then this year, this year we are.

You think, how big, how big do you think it's going to get in like 5 years?

I mean, I think it's like a foregone conclusion to get above $100 million. Uh, because we have, we've 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 100. I don't know how much bigger than that.

Why acquire something instead of 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 Churnin kind of hold your hand?

So the big, the big acquisition where we bought the seed company, that was Churnin led a lot of the diligence on that because it's like way too complex, a 30-year-old business. Like I, there's no way I could do the diligence on that, but the two small acquisitions, I led those and they sort of just helped with the legalities of getting it all done. So the very first one was a seed tray. So like when you, 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 throwaway things. And so a friend of mine who was in the space on the media side of gardening, who's like an educator, 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 early 2021. I was like, yeah, sure. Come on down. He comes down, he shows me this tray and it's like this very 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 and 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, because I've been gardening for like 8 years now, I'm like, holy shit, this is like the best seed starting tray I've ever seen in my life. Like for sure. And he's like, you can stand on it if you want to. So I like, I'm like 220 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 want to do? Like, I think this is a cool product. Do you want to 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 50/50. 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. So we can only make so many in a day. You have to like press the mold and like accumulate inventory. So 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.

Awesome. It's like, it's like, it's like just the biggest dopamine rush when you start seeing that.

Yeah. So I remember I was screen recording just to see, just to kind of flex and record the live screen. And we sold out like a couple of weeks inventory, like 25 seconds.

How much revenue is that?

Yeah. And 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 was actually a media acquisition. So that was a blog. 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 8, 10 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?

Can you say, was that more or less than $500,000?

It was, yeah, it was, it was in between $500,000 and $1 million. And the way we structured that one is we paid some upfront and some over a period of time, job plus equity.

So it was a post, this was post-churning.

This is post-churn. 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, 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 thought about it. I was like, if I do that, I feel like all these things will happen. And then they did. I don't know, like that. My old—

like, uh, you're like, look, I don't make up the rules. I just think them up and write them down. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I just— I, I, I—

What was the third one? Because you're two for two. You're two for two now. That sounds pretty good.

Those ones work. Those ones have worked out. Yeah.

Yeah.

So 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 want to 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 MeatEater and a few others where they buy, like they buy the, or they invest in 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 150, 160 different companies in the space. I was like out at a fruit tree farm in Missouri at one point in time.

When you say look at 150, does that mean just like put like ideas on paper, or does that mean actually contacting 150 people?

Oh, it means contacting more than 150. It means like talking or like looking at a deck or inspecting in some way somewhere around 150, something like that.

I mean, that's a shit ton of work.

Yeah, this is why, this is why having them has, has been helpful, or having an investor on your side has been helpful because like I'm out here running the business and 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, it's 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 we could talk about it with our team. And then you get some type of like DocSend 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 diligence looks like?

Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Like I remember we were looking at like the top 600 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 7 we think make any sense whatsoever. And here's like the 593 that don't make any sense at all.

So it's like, 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? 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 6, I think we stock about 650 varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. So pretty much anything under the sun, anything that you would like reasonably want to grow, we have it. And it's a husband and wife. They'd been running it for like 28 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's like one of those like quote boring businesses that people talk about all the time. Who's actually going to 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 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 I could show her that we met. And immediately I'm like, okay, like maybe I've got a little edge in this process. Like maybe I'm going to be able to get this company.

It could go either way. It could be like you have an edge or shit, they know that we have money behind us or something like that.

Got him.

Yeah, I got him. Not in like a malicious way, just like, sure, sure, sure. I'm using the angle that I have, which is my name.

Everyone won. Everyone won.

Everyone won.

Did you, what were some of the red flags and I guess green flags or whatever it is for that deal along with a few other deals when you're looking through the financials? In the business.

So the, the seed company's 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—

why? Because there's so many different SKUs.

What, what, what payback cycle were you looking for? And what type of multiple do businesses like this sell for?

Man, I don't remember offhand the multiple, but I want to say it was probably 6 to 8x, somewhere like that. Income? Yeah, I think so.

And how long until you could pay back the acquisition?

That's a good question. I don't know, maybe, hopefully like, hopefully like—

So I mean, I think that's pretty fast.

Yeah, it's like 5, I would say like 5, hopefully.

Yeah, I mean, more— I mean, if you only— if they only sell for 5 to 7 times, I would think that you'd, 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, because we're, we're carried in, I would say, 4,500 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, because 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 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 'n Jo-Ann's like, like They're like, I did a show for them, uh, in 2020. Like, you were on their show?

I filmed a show for Magnolia back then.

They have, uh, it's basically like Disneyland for like 40-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 many, I mean, it's like a, it's like a campus. And so they've got like food and many, many different stores. And I was doing math and I'm like, these guys are going to be billionaires. Like this is going to be the greatest thing ever. And that's going to happen to you because you've got the same shtick where you're in a good 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, like, it's gonna happen. Do, uh, do you get crazy, like, stalker messages or, like, fans who are obsessed with you?

Um, it's definitely happened. Yeah, it's definitely—

people make fun of me on this podcast all the time. They— everyone thinks I'm gay because they're like, I comment on, like, men all the time. Yeah, but you know, I'm not embarrassed to say you're a charismatic, good-looking dude. I imagine you've got, you've got a lot of fans.

Back at you, dude. Wait, so everyone thinks I'm gay too, actually, just because I'm like, just because I'm a guy. I think it's because I'm a younger guy in gardening, and gardening is seen as a more feminine hobby. Uh, people just think I'm a gay guy, which is 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 happens for sure. I've done the whole like delete all your info from the internet process, but it's kind of hard.

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. Cause it's, it's just in the shot. There's nothing I can 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, ah, 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, look, 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 because 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, "Yoohoo," and then like looks in the house and then goes out into the front gate, walks, opens it, like kind of messes around with some plants, tries to walk around the backyard. And my assistant was in the backyard. She's like coming around the back to the front. So they kind of like butted heads. And my assistant just freaked out. She's like, who is this woman? And this woman 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 0.01%. And that's still like 14 people., you know, that'll come mess with you.

You were telling Ari before 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 2 or 3 podcasts and reading a couple articles, but, uh, the like licensing of, uh, fruits or vegetables or different type of seeds. So like I was reading about the history of Honeycrisp 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 bred them. 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 new plant, or I guess it takes like 10 years to get an apple tree in the first place or 5 years, something like that. And then you screw up a bunch. And then 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 Honeycrisp, or like, I think I had one the other day that was called like a 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 30 years to disrupt. Is that how it works? Am I, do I have that right?

That's pretty much right. That's pretty much right. So we're going to 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 really difficult. Like you mentioned, like actually when you're making new varieties of most plants, 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 20 years.

And what was his goal outcome for that potato?

So the goal outcome, potatoes are grown from what are called seed potatoes, which is basically just a potato that you throw in the ground. So you don't plant like a little seed, you just throw a potato in the ground. So this guy was trying to make a potato that you could grow from an actual potato seed. Because 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 get something different. So his outcome was like a more efficient way for a farmer. It wasn't necessarily a certain taste.

Yeah, it was, it wasn't, it, 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 20 years, right?

Did he get his out? Did he do it?

He got it.

Yeah.

It's called the Clancy potato. We actually sell it on 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 either way, he's an 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 Honeycrisp, 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, because you can't use the seed of that because it'll be a different apple and it will take a long time. So let's say you get this magical new Honeycrisp. What you do is you take a bunch of those little branches off and you put them on other apple rootstock and then grow those out. And then those are genetic clones of that new Honeycrisp. And then you do that again and then you do that again. And so that's how—

And is each time 1 year or how long does it take to grow a tree?

I'm looking at this guy Floyd. So he is 94 years old. It looks like he's, he's still doing it.

I think, I think he passed away like a couple years ago, but he is 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 planting or, or involved. Did he build a big, his name of his company was, Zager's Genetics. Is that right?

Yeah. Zager 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 Zager's stuff. And so they'll, they'll be the people who grow out a lot of Floyd Zager's actual trees. So it's a, it's a crazy model because you're right. Like good luck competing. You have to spend like 20 years to even get started.

Does it make, 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 stock boy 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 you have relationships with farmers in Idaho or Bakersfield, California, and you buy, let's say, $500,000 of onions. And then you go and find a trucker to pick it up. And then you sell that $500,000 of onions to Walmart for $500,000, $50,000. And you make like $10,000 of profit or something like that off organizing that. That deal and you have to sell at this point, he's sold over $100 million of onions over the course of 20 years, but the margins are like 3% or like, like, like, you know, it'll be basically him by himself selling $20 million a year worth of produce and like you make, I don't know what you make, but like $300,000 a year. So good living, but like you've got to sell a shit ton of product in order because the margins are so small. And so I've grown up talking to some of these farmers and 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 am a farmer no matter what. And it's not like maybe traditional businesses where it's like, I see an opportunity, I'm going to do this. It's like, no, this is just what I was bred to be.

That's what I've noticed in our space. There's a lot of like smaller product companies or small seed companies, et cetera. Like no one's trying to get super rich doing it. Like even me, like back in the earlier days, I was like, I just, I'm very happy making that $250,000 that I made gross revenue and pulling out whatever I made. It just so happened that I also like business. And so they combined really well.

Can I, we'll wrap up here in a second, but I want to ask you a quick question about diet. 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 meat that only comes within like a 20 or 50 mile radius of where I am. 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. But I still feel crappy after I eat that because I don't, you know, like I don't even know what organic actually means and I don't actually buy into the hype necessarily that that makes, 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?

It's like, dude, I think that, that, that book is awesome, but I think it's bullshit.

Like, I think, 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 noticed that like, wow, this in this town, there's a shit ton of people born on January 1st. Like what's going on? And it turns out a lot of them lie about their age. 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 of like the, the, the, although maybe he, there was some bit of truth in there. The commonality between the 5 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 think is—

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 out of my own backyard, right? Like we just had an 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 growing 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 monocropped 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, where is your farm? Which they could definitely show me pictures. Yeah, yeah, they should have pictures of it. And you could ask like, you know, do you spray pesticide, herbicide, fungicide? If so, like which ones? You don't even have to know what their answers mean, 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 meat?

Meat, I tend to just buy at, I'll go to like a Whole Foods or there's like a local fish market called Point Loma 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, me too. But so far, so far no one's down. So if you're out there, holler at me.

I've been trying to do that as well. 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. But I've been doing it too. Have you seen, um, uh, it's called, uh, it's called Coop. But if you Google like Coop.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just had him on our podcast. Uh, AJ. Smart farm. Yeah.

Yeah. AJ is a good buddy of mine. AJ is awesome. Um, I, what's his URL? I want to give him a shout out.

Uh, coop.farm.

Named, I think her name is like Texas Bee 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 there'll be some crazy scenario where there's a hive and she's like called out and she goes, I've been called out to take this hive out of a manhole.

Dude, she has 1.6 million subs on YouTube.

Oh yeah. Yeah. She's huge. And so I always look, cause I know what I did with Happyc 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, 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.

Dude, she was on Joe Rogan. I'm looking at it now. 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. 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, she's got it. Yeah, man. Beekeeping is a good, 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 noticed that whenever I get bee, whenever I get bees, you start seeing like all different types of flowers in the backyard.

That's the last thing I haven't done. Like I've got the chickens, I've got it all at the pond. You know, I, I don't have bees yet, so I might have to get some bees.

Dude, it costs like $200 to start. Like, like my hives are from Amazon for $200. And then you go on Craigslist and you find like a bee 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 a 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 bees. And I was like, yes, ma'am, please. Come put them over here. And, uh, I paid her $200 for the bees and the $200 for the hive that I got on Amazon. And that's all you, that's all I needed.

Do you still have them right now?

Uh, I recently moved, uh, but up until recently, yeah, I had them on the, I had them in San Francisco and I had them in Texas, but in San Francisco, I had them at my small little house. Uh, I had a backyard and then I also had them on the roof of my office in downtown San Francisco. And I had about 10,000 bees. And you wouldn't even, you could, your hive could be like 30 feet away and you wouldn't even know that it's there. Yeah. It's like a pretty self-contained thing.

It's an awesome hobby. 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 them and like, I got, I got stung. I've been stung like twice. Like, it's not like that big of a deal. Like, 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. I, it can't cost a ton of money because if it costs a ton of money, I'm going to break rule number 3, 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 Burt's Bee documentary and I was like, that's a good hobby. Let's do it. So that's, and AJ's a buddy of mine and he got me into beekeeping as well. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm excited to see how that coop, that smart coop business does. It's a really cool design.

Well, thanks for doing this, dude. You're the man. You're, you, you're going to be fun to watch over the next like 5 years. This is going to be a very exciting journey. I, we take pride on having people on before they like right at the beginning of their like takeoff. And even though you're already incredibly successful, I have a feeling that this is still going to be early in your journey and, and we're going to brag about having you on early in your career.

That's awesome, dude. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

All right. That's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

Up on the road, let's travel, never looking back.