Tactic
Go viral with a product first, then sell it
Kevin Espiritu spotted a kneeling device at a German trade show, filmed a 10-minute clip, and got 150M+ views across platforms. The viral video was deliberate market validation before deciding whether to stock the product.
“So I saw it and I was like, you know what, I kind of want to 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 10 minutes maximum, uh, and, and then edited it up, tossed it out, put it out on I think TikTok first, and it just started ripping.”
Steal thisBefore sourcing a product, post a short-form video featuring it to your audience and let view counts validate demand.
Tactic
Go viral with a product first, then sell it
Kevin Espiritu spotted a kneeling device at a German trade show, filmed a 10-minute clip, and got 150M+ views across platforms. The viral video was deliberate market validation before deciding whether to stock the product.
“So I saw it and I was like, you know what, I kind of want to 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 10 minutes maximum, uh, and, and then edited it up, tossed it out, put it out on I think TikTok first, and it just started ripping.”
Steal thisBefore sourcing a product, post a short-form video featuring it to your audience and let view counts validate demand.
Story
Paid for college with $250K in online poker
Espiritu earned roughly $200K-$250K playing online poker through college, which pushed him off the accountant path and gave him a cushion to start building websites.
“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 played poker for like 6 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.”
Framework
Every piece of content is a demand test
Espiritu treats each post as a search for validated demand: when fans repeatedly asked about the metal raised beds in his photos, that was the signal to source and sell them.
“And so what I did is I realized like, well, every piece of content I put out is basically a search for validating demand for whatever is in that content.”
Steal thisTrack which products in your content draw the most 'where'd you get that?' comments, then go source and sell those.
Framework
Every piece of content is a demand test
Espiritu treats each post as a search for validated demand: when fans repeatedly asked about the metal raised beds in his photos, that was the signal to source and sell them.
“And so what I did is I realized like, well, every piece of content I put out is basically a search for validating demand for whatever is in that content.”
Steal thisTrack which products in your content draw the most 'where'd you get that?' comments, then go source and sell those.
Framework
Media is the top of the business, not the whole business
In Epic Gardening's first product year (2019), revenue hit $550K with half from product. Espiritu reframed media as the funnel top that monetizes, while the real business value sits in the product layer beneath it.
“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. I was like, oh, actually media is right here and it monetizes, but the bottom is actually where, where, um, the business lies.”
Steal thisTreat your audience as the top of a funnel and build a product business underneath it rather than living on ad/affiliate revenue.
Number
$7.3M revenue on a team of 5
Epic Gardening grew from $2.8M (2020) to ~$7.3-7.4M in 2021, mostly product, run by Espiritu plus four contractors: a garden assistant, a personal assistant, a video editor, and a writer.
$7.3M
Annual revenue (2021) · USD/year
“And then 2021 was $7.3 $7.4 or so. And most of it was product at that point in time. And that would've been on a team of me, my garden assistant, my actual assistant, a video editor, and a writer. And that was it. That's all we had.”
Framework
Negative CAC: your media is a profit center, not a cost
Because Epic Gardening acquired all customers through its own content with $0 paid spend, the media that drove sales actually made money. Espiritu describes this as negative customer acquisition cost.
“And that was with $0 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 is not a cost. It's a, it's a profit driver. And so it's that term negative CAC. Like I had negative CAC on the business.”
Steal thisBuild an audience that pays for itself via ads/affiliates so your customer acquisition cost goes negative.
Framework
Acquire your biggest supplier when you're 95% of their sales
Espiritu's audience drove ~95% of a seed-tray maker's revenue, so buying on revenue made no sense. Instead they paid for the assets (molds, R&D) plus a premium, gave equity, and hired the founder as product lead, later 7x-ing revenue on a sub-$500K 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 molds themselves and the research and development time and a premium on that, gave him some equity and hired him as our product lead. And then we've built that line out to like I think like 12 or 15 SKUs going D2C and wholesale now.”
Steal thisIf you already drive most of a small supplier's sales, acquire them on asset value plus equity and a job rather than a revenue multiple.
Framework
Buy a rival blog and merge it for an SEO premium
Espiritu acquired a competing gardening blog (~10M sessions) and migrated it into his own strong-authority domain. Instead of 10+10=20, the combined traffic landed around 25M sessions, and the higher ad RPMs made the acquisition pay for itself in month one.
“So by migrating his into ours, our blog went to like, we've probably got like a 20, 30% premium on the traffic. So like 10 plus 10 equals 25, right? 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.”
Steal thisMerge an acquired site into your higher-authority domain to capture an SEO traffic premium beyond the sum of the two.
Framework
One core reason, then weigh upside vs downside
Espiritu underwrites smaller acquisitions by first naming the single obvious reason (gain a product, gain traffic and a leader), then listing every other way it could help or hurt. If benefits clearly outweigh harms, he green-lights it.
“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 that could hurt us, I go like, I feel like it'll just, I feel like it'll just work then.”
Steal thisRequire one core reason for a deal, then tally every secondary upside and downside and proceed only if upside dominates.
Tactic
Wore the seller's hat in every video to win a bidding war
Knowing the seed-company seller watched his content, Espiritu wore the company's branded hat in every piece of content for six months. He won the acquisition despite not being the highest bidder, and the seller admitted the hat tipped the decision.
“I'm cranking YouTube videos out. I'm cranking Instagram Reels out, short form, whatever. Hat, hats on 24/7, 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.”
Steal thisWhen a seller is also a fan, court them publicly through your content so relationship beats price in the deal.
Tactic
Plug an offline wholesale brand into your online-first machine
The acquired seed company was mostly wholesale with a neglected online business. Just moving it to Shopify and telling Espiritu's audience he now owned it grew the online segment 60-70% year over year with little else done.
“And I think the first year after we, we did the deal, the online part of the business for the Seed Company was up like 70, 60 or 70% 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.”
Steal thisAcquire a strong offline brand with a weak online presence and grow it just by adding your audience and a modern store.
Fact
New fruit varieties become patented, licensable cash flows
Breeders grow tens of thousands of cross-pollinated trees; when ~0.1% becomes a worthy variety (a cultivar), they patent it and license it to growers for a fee. The decades of work create a near-uncrackable moat, like the next Honeycrisp.
“And then when maybe 0.1% of those 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.”