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

Episode 591: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) talks to Kevin Espiritu ( https://x.com/KevinEspiritu ), AKA The Plant Daddy, about how he turned a side hustle into a $45M business in his backyard. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:41) $250k playing online poker (6:04) The influence of Pat Flynn (7:43) Cocoa butter cream review site (8:30) Printing on-demand shirts (12:26) From Scribe to $300/mo gardening blog (15:06) Inflection point: The metal raised bed (17:42) Billion-dollar blogs (19:20) Life-changing money (23:56) 5 Languages of the love of money (26:47) Lessons from Ramit Sethi (28:25) Path to $100M through acquisitions (29:19) Buying a seed tray business for less than $500K (33:22) Buying a competing gardening blog (37:00) Acquiring Botanical Interests (42:16) Red and green flags in acquisitions (46:12) The danger of being a celebrity on the internet (48:45) Idea: Branded hybrid plant species (52:38) Floyd Zaiger, the godfather of licenced plants (57:26) The lie behind Blue Zones (1:00:12) The Tesla of chicken coops (1:00:53) Beekeeping (1:04:46) Choosing your hobbies wisely — Links: • Kevin on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@kevinmespiritu • Epic Gardening on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@epicgardening • The Chernin Group - https://tcg.co/ • The Billion Dollar Creator - https://nathanbarry.com/billion/ • Get HubSpot's Free AI-Powered Sales Hub: enhance support, retention, and revenue all in one place https://clickhubspot.com/sym — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  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 is really, really cool.

• 0:45Sam Parr?

  I think in about five years, this guy is going to be a really, really big deal. He's already a pretty big deal, but I think in five years, he's going to be like Chippid 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.

• 1:07Sam Parr?

  Dude, so it's finally nice to talk to you. You, 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?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been a crazy ride. It's been a crazy ride.

• 1:27Sam Parr?

  I just watched one of your YouTube videos where one of your videos had just gotten, 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 guard him on your knees more easily. And you're like, I've been getting noticed in the streets because of this silly kneeling video.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that video might haunt me. 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 kneeling device where you kind of pop down. I think it's made for bricklayers. 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 and then edited it up, tossed it out, put it on, I think TikTok first and it just started ripping. So I was like, okay, I know this thing has some legs. So then I threw it on Instagram and Facebook and I threw it on YouTube. I think it's like 150 million views across the platform.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  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 is basically just market validation, right? 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.

• 2:59Sam Parr?

  How much rev missed revenue was that?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  What's your guess? Over or under 10 million?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it's got, I think it's under for sure. Cause I think these things are like 50 bucks, maybe. I don't know how many we would have sold, but I don't think there was some crazy supply in the U.S. But yeah, it's kind of, it was kind of a bummer. So the only, the only thing I've ever gotten out of it is just being memed to, to death about it.

• 3:22Sam Parr?

  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?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  What came first was, yeah, I guess, I guess designing websites did come first. Cause 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.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  And you were making money?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I made like 200, $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.

• 4:04Sam Parr?

  Was it all online?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was all online. I hated playing in person because it's so slow. Cause when you're playing online, you're playing faster, but you're also playing like more tables.

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  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 part of the game. But what makes a good online player? Just straight math?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  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. 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 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 know, you're like, I'm like, nearly sure that's a bluff, and you'll call them.

• 5:08Sam Parr?

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

• 5:11Speaker 01

  It's something like that. I didn't track it super well. It was like, 200, 250,000.

• 5:15Sam Parr?

  That's insane. That is insane.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So it threw me off the path of wanting to be an accountant, for sure. And then, when I got out of school, I played poker for like, six more months or something, and then quit, but I had nothing 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 1,500 bucks, or two grand, or whatever the hell I was charging at that time. So then I got into SEO stuff, and I built the gardening blog at the same time, because 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.

• 5:59Sam Parr?

  What year was that?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  That would have been 2013.

• 6:03Sam Parr?

  Dude, I think in the same year, I did the same thing as you. Were you reading, like, Smart Passive Income?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:10Sam Parr?

  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.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm 36.

• 6:21Sam Parr?

  And Smart Passive Income was like, 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, 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 did like a food truck, a food, 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

• 7:00Sam Parr?

  a poisey 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.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  I have an even more cringe story around that time. So I was reading Pat like crazy.

• 7:20Sam Parr?

  You just call me cringe.

• 7:21Speaker 01

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

• 7:25Sam Parr?

  It's the worst.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:36Sam Parr?

  Are you half Filipino?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I'm half Filipino, half white, and we've become good friends now, which is awesome. 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 coco buttercream.org. And so I go coco buttercream.org and I start reviewing every cocoa buttercream 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 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 two bucks on that site.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  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 buttercream, but.

• 8:32Sam Parr?

  And then, and that's when you got into like internet marketing, but didn't you do like a Kendrick Lamar website too?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 9:58Sam Parr?

  What was the main thing though? Was it the gardening, like gardening websites the whole time?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  No, 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 2013. But it was just like a hobby blog until 2016, uh, when I went full time on it.

• 10:18Sam Parr?

  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?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  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 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. Cause 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.

• 11:08Sam Parr?

  And then you, you kind of like had this, 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 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. It's a significantly better business.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a way better business. And yeah, the, 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.

• 12:07Sam Parr?

  Did you have any revenue when you quit?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was making $450 a month. I have this whole 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 like aggregate all their square footage and like sell that produce to restaurants and stuff like that.

• 12:26Sam Parr?

  Right. I mean, that sounds like really hard.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a really hard way to make a small ish amount of money, which there's people that do it and I actually respect it a lot, but.

• 12:36Sam Parr?

  It's cool.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  It's cool. Yeah. It's just not scale. So, so I go, okay, how about I just make this blog make a couple of grand a month because it was making 450. So if I could make 450, I could probably make two. If I could make two, I could make five. And so I started growing it and I think that year, the blog made 17 grand total, about six months of the year. And then the next year, it was 72,000 revenue. And this is all media because I haven't done any product yet. Right? 2018, it was 225 and then 2019 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. Well,

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I have complete access to my own audience. So why don't I just be the brand selling to my own, my own audience? 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's in that content. And so in all these photos I'm putting out, because I'm, at this point, I'm gardening in Hillcrest San Diego in like a very small front yard 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 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.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  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 have someone we're working with. Like, we don't need to do that. And then the beginning of 2019, 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. And I think I probably had like 70, 80 grand in the business bank account at that point in time.

• 14:35Sam Parr?

  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.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  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. 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 new. 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.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 16:00Sam Parr?

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

• 16:03Speaker 01

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

• 16:09Sam Parr?

  How many like units of stuff did you have?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I think it was 550 beds at that time.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  Okay, so like, that's, that's a ton, but it's like, all right, I'm just going to 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.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  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 four or five days.

• 16:46Sam Parr?

  Oh, no.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  While they were still getting to America. 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.

• 16:59Sam Parr?

  So what was your revenue in 19, the year you started selling stuff?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  So 19 was like 550 and half of it was the product. So in the 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 the business lies.

• 17:25Sam Parr?

  And that's like the weird innovative idea. I remember, so like, my friend Nathan Berry 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 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, 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

• 18:09Sam Parr?

  a business website and I was like, I can't, what am I going to possibly sell?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like what product?

• 18:15Sam Parr?

  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.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  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, 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, 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.

• 18:50Sam Parr?

  And didn't you grow that to like seven million in revenue with like four people?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think 2020 would have been 2.8 in revenue. So almost a six X-ing year on 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 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.

• 19:16Sam Parr?

  On 7.3 in revenue, what could your profit be?

• 19:20Speaker 01

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

• 19:26Sam Parr?

  So you're rolling in it.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, because because the thing about it is you, if you run it like that, and it was with $0 or 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.

• 19:49Sam Parr?

  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.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:58Sam Parr?

  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'd rather just pay you a high salary. Why even take $17 million?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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 was a huge amount for me. Though 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 had built? Because it's a, that's a really lean team to be at 7.3 with like a commerce business, shipping product.

• 20:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's like a bunch of redundancy issues, like at that, 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 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 five people. And I'll have some redundancy so people can like chill a little bit or someone gets sick or quits.

• 21:37Sam Parr?

  Like, there's actually like some proper CEO work you have to do at that stage, I would think.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, and the operational side, like the hiring, etc. side, like I had no clue because I was on a team of me and and four 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. 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.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And, 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.

• 22:43Sam Parr?

  Were you able to take any money off the table or did the 17 go straight to the balance sheet?

• 22:47Speaker 01

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

• 22:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's like life changing, right?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  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 30, 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.

• 23:25Sam Parr?

  Do you have family?

• 23:27Speaker 01

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

• 23:31Sam Parr?

  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.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of underwhelming, I guess. I don't know. Was it like that for you? I don't know. For me, I had, I'd 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, it wasn't like, you know, one million to $200 million net worth or something like that. Like the, 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.

• 24:17Sam Parr?

  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.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 24:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you remember that, that study where it was like $70,000 a year?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  That's bullshit. That is absolutely bullshit.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  That I agree is bullshit. That I agree.

• 24:50Sam Parr?

  Why do you agree that that's bullshit?

• 24:51Speaker 01

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

• 24:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Even I think that numbers might be bullshit too. 160 grand in, in, in one of the top five cities, uh, shockingly doesn't go very far.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Doesn't go far. Yeah. I think, I think that's bullshit because the things, let's say you're making like 200 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 gives 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.

• 25:43Sam Parr?

  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.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:52Sam Parr?

  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.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:08Sam Parr?

  And so in those like small things, which frankly, aren't expensive. Uh, it, it, it definitely makes you happier, like those little small things.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I learned that all from Ramit.

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  Same.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  I learned that all from Ramit 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, you know what? That's actually pretty smart. And so.

• 26:30Sam Parr?

  And he spends big on stuff. I was with Ramit 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, 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 your spending on your services?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And I was like. Coffee with him. We had the same conversation with his accent. He goes, he goes, he goes, how, 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.

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  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, 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.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Same.

• 27:44Sam Parr?

  How big's the business now? Can you say?

• 27:46Speaker 01

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

• 27:54Sam Parr?

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

• 28:00Speaker 01

  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. Cause we were like way under hired with me and four contractors. And then, um, This year, this year we are.

• 28:14Sam Parr?

  You think, how big, how big do you think it's gonna get in like five years?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's like a foregone conclusion to get above a hundred million. 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 a hundred. I don't know how much bigger than that.

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  Why acquire something instead of building it on your own?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  It's really just speed and if you have the competency internally to do it.

• 28:42Sam Parr?

  Did you, I mean, you, you, you studied accounting, but did you know anything about acquiring a company or did churn and kind of hold your hand?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  So the big, the big acquisition where we bought the seed company, that was churn and led a lot of the diligence on that because it's like way too complex, a thirty 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, 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?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  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 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, that 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 eight 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 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.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  And so I go, well, what do you want to do? Like, I think this is a cool product. Uh, 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. It's awesome. It's like, it's like, it's like just the biggest dopamine rush when you start seeing that come in.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So I remember I was screen recording and just to see, uh, 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 was that? It was like 25 or 30 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 see 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.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  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 because that's what you do. And I'm like 95% of your sales. So what if you just joined Epic, you know, we'd raised some money. I was like, well, you could be our product lead. Well, well, I can't really like buy the business based on revenue because that, that is, we are your revenue, right? And so how do, 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 molds themselves.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  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 to like, I think like 12 or 15 SKUs going D to C and wholesale now. 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 sub 500,000. 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 was actually a media acquisition. So that was a blog.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  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, 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? Yeah, it was like mostly search. I'd say like 80% search. And so this guy emails me and he's like, hey, look, I saw that, that head 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 allaboutgardening.com, which is now redirecting to Epic Gardening.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  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 kind of have like a competing blog. So to me, I go, look, you've built that blog really fast, way faster than we're currently building ours. But you kind of 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 10 million sessions a year, something like that. So you'd think like 10 plus 10 is 20, but our blog from an SEO perspective was like super strong. So by migrating his into ours, our blog went to like, we probably got like a 20, 30% premium on the traffic.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  So like 10 plus 10 equals 25, right?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  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 of like month one. So that was another like sort of weird acquisition. Can you say was that more or less than 500? It was, yeah, it was, it was in between 500 and a million. And the way we structured that one is we paid some upfront and some over a period of time. Job plus equity.

• 34:55Sam Parr?

  So this was post, this was post Churnin?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  This is post Churnin, 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.

• 35:25Sam Parr?

  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.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  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 my, my.

• 35:39Sam Parr?

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

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Well, you know how like people say like, there needs to be one read, one like core reason to do something. Uh, like an acquisition or a business move or whatever. I, I agree with that. But to me, I, 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 and a leader and 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 it could benefit us outweigh the ways it could hurt us, I go like, I feel like it'll just, I feel like 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.

• 36:28Sam Parr?

  What was the third one? Cause you're two for two, you're two for two now, that sounds pretty good.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Those, those ones were, 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. Cause they're 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.

• 36:54Sam Parr?

  Which is, I think, what they did with like Meat Eater, 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.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:21Sam Parr?

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

• 37:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:40Sam Parr?

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

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is why, this is why having them 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 diligence and say like, yeah, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense.

• 37:53Sam Parr?

  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, why don't you like put together some high level of numbers and then send something over and we could talk about it with our team. And then you get some type of like Doc Sen 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?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  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 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 593 that don't make any sense at all. So it's like.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  These guys are doing a lot of the work then. They're helping you.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:44Sam Parr?

  They're pulling their weight.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  I think so. Yeah, absolutely. 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'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.

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  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?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  There's six, 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, it's a husband and wife. They've 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, you know, it's like, it's like one of those like quote boring businesses that people talk about all the time. Who's, 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, 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.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  And immediately I'm like, okay, like maybe I've got a little edge in this, in this process. Like maybe I'm going to be able to get this company.

• 40:18Sam Parr?

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

• 40:25Speaker 01

  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 go, I'm just going to 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 24/7, every single piece of content. And we go through the bidding process. We win the deal.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  We were not the highest bid by like quite a bit, I would say, 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 just being very gracious because I did feel that way. And he goes, you don't know how much wearing that hat helped. And I go, I knew it. So yeah, I got them. Not in like a malicious way, just like, sure, sure, sure. I'm using the angle that I have, which is my

• 41:42Sam Parr?

  Everyone won. Everyone won. Did you, what were some of the red flags and, 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 and the business?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:03Sam Parr?

  Why? Because there are so many different SKUs?

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Tons of different SKUs. 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, 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 rugs 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'd loved it for 10 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,

• 42:49Speaker 01

  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? 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.

• 43:09Sam Parr?

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

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Man, I don't remember offhand the multiple, but I want to say it was probably six to eight X, somewhere like that.

• 43:22Sam Parr?

  Uh, income?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 43:24Sam Parr?

  And how long till you could pay back the acquisition?

• 43:28Speaker 01

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

• 43:35Sam Parr?

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

• 43:37Speaker 01

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

• 43:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, 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.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  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?

• 44:30Sam Parr?

  Have you ever been to a Chip and Joanne's like Waco, like they're like

• 44:36Speaker 01

  I did a show for them in 2020.

• 44:39Sam Parr?

  Like you were on their show?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I filmed a show for Magnolia back then.

• 44:44Sam Parr?

  They have, it's basically like Disneyland for like four year old white chicks. Uh, it's like you could like buy anything in the world that you're like for your home or living room. I went to it once and like my 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 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 gonna be this is gonna be the greatest thing ever. And that's going to happen to you because you've got the same shtick where

• 45:25Sam Parr?

  you're you're in a good niche of of I imagine it's mostly women 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?

• 45:48Speaker 01

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

• 45:50Sam Parr?

  People make fun of me on this podcast all the time. Particularly, everyone thinks I'm gay because they like, I comment on like a man all the time.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:56Sam Parr?

  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.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Back at you, dude. So everyone thinks I'm gay too, actually. Just because I'm a, 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. 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, it happens for sure. It, I, I've done the whole like delete all your info from the internet process, but it's kind of hard.

• 46:31Sam Parr?

  It's never good enough. It's never good enough.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  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 can really do about it.

• 46:44Sam Parr?

  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, oh 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.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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, you who? 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.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  She was 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 14 people, you know, that'll come mess, mess with you.

• 48:14Sam Parr?

  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 two or three podcasts and reading a couple of articles. But the like licensing of 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 five years, something like that.

• 48:59Sam Parr?

  And then you screw up a bunch and then it's so 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?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  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 it's really difficult. Like you mentioned, like actually, when you're making new varieties of most plants, it's it 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.

• 49:53Sam Parr?

  And what was his goal outcome for that potato?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  So the goal outcome, potatoes 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 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.

• 50:23Sam Parr?

  And so his outcome was like a more efficient way for a farmer. It wasn't necessarily a certain taste.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was wasn't, 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, that took him 20 years, right?

• 50:40Sam Parr?

  Did he get his out, did it, did he do it?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  He got it. Yeah, it's called the Clancy potato. We actually sell it on our our store. It's an awesome potato.

• 50:46Sam Parr?

  Did he get wealthy from it?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  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 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 root stock 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 you get this magical new Honeycrisp.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  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 Honeycrisp. And then you do that again and then you do that again. And so that's how.

• 51:45Sam Parr?

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

• 51:49Speaker 01

  It's probably like. It would really depend on the type of fruit, but it's probably, I'll say this, it'll shorten from growing from seed by like 70, 80%. It's like way faster than growing it from seed. Not only that, you have to do it that way because you won't get the same genetic apple. And so what guys like the Honeycrisp guy you mentioned, or there's a guy named Floyd Zaiger, who's sort of known as like the godfather of stone fruit, which is like peaches, nectarines, all those types 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 0.1% of those actually become a variety, they now have a patent on that because they've

• 52:33Speaker 01

  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 Honeycrisp 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.

• 52:51Sam Parr?

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

• 52:57Speaker 01

  I think he passed away like a couple of years ago, but he's like a total legend in the space.

• 53:01Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, you're right. He passed away, but it looked like based off the photos up until like when he passed away, it looks like he was still

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:08Sam Parr?

  planting or involved. Did he build a big, what, his name of his company was Zaiger's Genetics? Is that right?

• 53:15Speaker 01

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

• 53:37Sam Parr?

  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?

• 53:45Speaker 01

  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?

• 53:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, my parents are in the agriculture industry. So my 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 five, five, $500,000, $50,000 and you make like 10 grand of profit or something like that off organizing that,

• 54:37Sam Parr?

  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 20 years, but the margins are like 3% or 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 a good living, but like you've got to sell a shit ton of product in order, because 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, uh, no matter what. And it's not like

• 55:22Sam Parr?

  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.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  That's what I've noticed in our, in our space because there's a lot of like smaller product companies or small seed companies, et cetera. Like no one's. No one's trying to get super rich doing it like even even me like back in the earlier days, I was like, I just, I'm very happy making that 250 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.

• 55:54Sam Parr?

  Can I, uh, I know 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

• 56:35Sam Parr?

  actually means. And I don't actually bind to 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?

• 56:50Speaker 01

  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?

• 56:58Sam Parr?

  Dude, I think that that that book is awesome, but I think it's bullshit. Like,

• 57:02Speaker 01

  I think, I think a good part of it is bullshit. Yeah.

• 57:04Sam Parr?

  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, like in Osaka, Japan, or 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, I guess, so they get social security at a certain time or something like that.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 57:30Sam Parr?

  Uh, and so there was a lot of like, 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.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  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

• 57:59Sam Parr?

  And that's, that's the nicer way to put it, what I maybe said.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  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. Because now there's like farmer's market fraud. Because 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.

• 58:46Sam Parr?

  What questions do I have to ask them?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  You would have to ask like, well, where is your farm? Which they could definitely lie about.

• 58:52Sam Parr?

  Show me pictures.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 59:09Sam Parr?

  What do you do for meat?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Meat, I tend to just buy at, um, I'll, I'll go to like a Whole Foods or there's like a local fish market called Point 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.

• 59:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, me too.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  So far, no one's down, so if you're out there, all around me.

• 59:31Sam Parr?

  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.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We just had him on our podcast, the Smart Farm. Yeah.

• 59:51Sam Parr?

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

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Coop.farm.

• 59:57Sam Parr?

  Coop.farm. So Coop is like, it's like they, like the tagline that I saw in an article was like, it's like the Tesla for a chicken coop. And it's, uh, so Coop.farm, it's like a smart chicken coop. And it looks pretty cool. I think I might get one. I think it'd be awesome to have your own chickens. Because that's like a pretty low maintenance way to kind of get into the habit or get a hobby. The other thing that I've done for years is beekeeping. So I've raised my own bees in order to get honey, which is like an awesome hobby. And beekeeping is a cool thing because it requires like not much maintenance as at all.

• 1:00:37Sam Parr?

  And from a business perspective, you remember that Flo Hive or whatever that went viral on Kickstarter? And it raised like $20 million. I do think that beekeeping, like the the supplies could actually be a legitimately good business. And you could create like, because you can create like 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 scraping off the honey or the, what's it called? The honeycomb, yeah, like scraping the comb off of my, 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.

• 1:01:20Sam Parr?

  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 like such a fun hobby. And so I'm really big on that.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:01:51Sam Parr?

  Dude, she has a 1.6 million subs on YouTube.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's huge. And so I always look, because I know what I did with HEPIC. 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 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.

• 1:02:12Sam Parr?

  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

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  It's Joe Rogan.

• 1:02:21Sam Parr?

  It's Joe Rogan. She goes, I did my first podcast. Link is in the bio. Thank you so much, Joe Rogan. Team. This was such a wonderful experience for me and my bees.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Damn, that's a flex right there. That's a flex.

• 1:02:32Sam Parr?

  Awesome. This, this is a, this is a gem. This woman, uh, she's got it. Um, yeah, man, beekeeping is 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 noticed that whenever I get bee, whenever I get bees, you start seeing like all different types of flowers, uh, in the backyard.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

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

• 1:02:57Sam Parr?

  Dude, it costs like $200 to start. Like, uh, like, uh, my hives are from Amazon for 200 bucks. 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 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 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, that's all I needed.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Do you still have them right now?

• 1:03:33Sam Parr?

  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.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Sam Parr?

  Uh, it's like a pretty self-contained thing. It's, it's like an awesome hobby.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  I've got a spot for my hive. Then I have the perfect spot in my backyard for my hive.

• 1:04:01Sam Parr?

  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 like, 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. Uh, I, it can't cost a ton of money because if it costs a ton of money, I'm going to 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 Burt's Bees documentary and I was like, that's a good hobby. Let's do it.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:04:35Sam Parr?

  So it's, and, um, AJ's a buddy of mine and, uh, he got me into beekeeping as well.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

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

• 1:04:46Sam Parr?

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

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  I feel like I can 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 looking back.