He Turned A $300/Mo Gardening Side Hustle Into $45 Million/Year | Kevin Espiritu Interview

Sam Parr

Alright, what's happening everyone? Today's podcast is with Kevin Espiritu. 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. This year, they're going to do something like **$45,000,000** a year in revenue. Kevin walks through how they got traffic, how he built the company, and 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, and how they found other companies that they didn't end up buying and why they didn't buy them. It's a really fascinating story. This guy is really, really cool. I think in about five years, he's 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 Chip and Joanna. You guys have to listen to this podcast; he's a really fascinating guy. Let me know what you think. Alright, check it out! Dude, it's finally nice to talk to you. I didn't know who you were, and then on the podcast, Sean told your story. I'm like, "Oh, I recognize this guy from everywhere!" I didn't realize how big of a business that you'd built. So, congratulations! That's insane, right?

Kevin Espiritu

yeah yeah no it's been it's been a crazy ride it's been a crazy ride

Sam Parr

I just watched one of your YouTube videos where one of your videos had just gotten, I think, 70 million views. It's just you kneeling on a little kneeling 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."

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, that video might haunt me. I think it's the most viral thing I've ever made. It's a short-form video. I had seen this little kneeling device; it was like an Instagram reel from a German trade show. It was just this little kneeling device where you kind of popped down. I think it's made for bricklayers. So, I saw it and I was like, "You know what? I kinda wanna try it out just to see." I had my team grab one. There was like one in San Diego, where I live. I made that piece of content in maybe 10 minutes maximum, and then edited it up, tossed it out, and put it on, I think, TikTok first. It just started ripping. I was like, "Okay, I know this thing has some legs." So then, I threw it on Instagram and Facebook, and then on YouTube. I think it's at like 150 million views across the platforms. The whole logic of doing it was to put this product in front of our gardening audience and see if they liked it. Then we could either hit up the manufacturer and carry it in our store, or we could maybe make some modifications to it that would make it a little better suited for gardening. That is basically just market validation. By the time we went viral, we hit up the manufacturer, which is a German company, and they were like, "We would love to sell you some, but our entire stock in America is gone. Every distributor we already have has sold out, so we can't get it to you."

Sam Parr

how much missed revenue was that

Kevin Espiritu

I have no idea yeah

Sam Parr

I don't know guess over or under 10,000,000

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

Dude, so 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 were you like, "I'm the plant daddy now because I've got this website"? So like, which came first?

Kevin Espiritu

What came first was... yeah, I guess designing websites did come first. I came out of college with an accounting degree, but I played online poker to pay for school. That kind of put me off the path of wanting to be an accountant right out of [college].

Sam Parr

the gate and you were making money

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I made like $200,000 to $250,000 probably playing poker in college. So, I used that to pay for school, and then I had some money to sit on.

Sam Parr

was it all online

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam 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 seems like reading body language and things like that is part of the game, but what makes a good online player? Just straight math?

Kevin Espiritu

Straight math is a big part of it. Understanding probability theory and the types of hands that someone could or couldn't have in a particular situation is essential. But you're kind of right; 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. You probably have played with these people over days, weeks, or months, depending on how often they play. You can even get down to the specifics. For example, in this particular position, I'm sitting on the button, and they're sitting in this position. If they wait three seconds longer than they normally do, and it's this person's screen name, a lot of the time, you can develop some sort of weird sixth sense. You know, you're like, "I'm nearly sure that's a bluff," and you'll call them.

Sam Parr

and you made $250,000 over 4 years doing that

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

that's insane that is insane

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, so it threw me off the path of wanting to be an accountant for sure. 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. Then, I was designing websites to just pay some bills. I got into the marketing thing because I thought, "Well, once you sell a website, it's sold." So, you make your $1,500 or $2,000 or whatever the hell I was charging at that time. Then, I got into SEO stuff and built a 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 digital business card. I need a little calling card." So, I built the gardening blog as a way to show the website design clients, "Hey, look what I can build."

Sam Parr

what year was that

Kevin Espiritu

that would have been 2013

Sam Parr

Dude, I think in the same year I did the same thing as you. Were you reading "Smart Passive Income"? Yeah, yeah. Mhm. Okay, so 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. "Smart Passive Income" was by this guy, Pat Flynn, who's still quite popular. He's one of the early bloggers about making money on the internet. What did he do? He wrote a blog and an ebook on how to get your building green or LEED certified or something like that. He was making money doing it, and he would display all of his income and revenue online, which at the time was like insane. Then he did a book on how to create a food truck or something like that. He 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 it." I read that and created a "How to Treat Poison Ivy" website at the same time, and it was making like $1,000 a day. I was copying everything he was doing, and I have a feeling that you were reading that same blog at the same time.

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

you guys called me cringe

Kevin Espiritu

I mean, we all... that first site that you make, it's always kinda weird. Like, come on, *Poison Ivy* site? It's a worthy 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.

Sam Parr

are you half filipino

Kevin Espiritu

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 green certification thing. So my choice was to create a website called **cocobuttercream.org**. I went to cocobuttercream.org and started reviewing every cocoa butter cream that was on Amazon. I was using an alias, and come on, I was in my early twenties, doing some dumb stuff. I was Susie Michaels, a mother of two, who was reviewing how all these different cocoa butters worked on me. Then, I hooked into Amazon affiliates. I remember it took me like a month, and I made like $2 on that site. I was like, "Oh my god, I made money in a way that it's not like someone just paying me." It kind of blew my mind. You know the saying, "Everyone remembers your first dollar on the internet"? I wish it wasn't cocoa butter cream.

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, that was... 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. He's kind of getting intrigued by it. Then 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." This would have been like 2014, I think. He goes, "You wanna buy one?" 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. We start 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, M.A.A.D City*. So no one really knows Kendrick; only super fans know him, and there was a...

Kevin Espiritu

I think Kendrick's manager even called my cousin and was like, "We really appreciate what you're doing for Kendrick. You're putting his name out there..." The way we monetized that is we were just selling shirts, just print-on-demand shirts. I think we probably made like $30,000 or $40,000 doing that. Then, after the album dropped and he blew up, all of a sudden he trademarked his name and we had to shut the site down and stuff. But that was another weirdo internet thing that we did.

Sam Parr

Alright, look. The question that Sean and I get asked constantly is: "What skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kind of changed our business career?" And that's an easy answer: it's **copywriting**. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast. We give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, and a ton of frameworks throughout all the episodes. Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document. So you can read all of it. You can see how we've learned copywriting, the resources that we turn to on a daily basis, and the frameworks and techniques we use. It's all in a simple document, and you can check it out in the link below. Alright, now back to the show. What was the main thing though? Was it the gardening, like gardening websites, the whole time?

Kevin Espiritu

No, the gardening thing didn't really start until... For real, it was a hobby that I love doing, and I've done it every year of my life since 2013. But it was just like a hobby blog until 2016 when I went full-time on it.

Sam Parr

And hobby blog in that you were actually into gardening and you're like, "I'm just gonna create content around it." But did you see any numbers where you're like, "This could be a big company," or was it straight joy? No?

Kevin Espiritu

No, I mean it was a mix, right? Like, I was gardening for fun, and then I would just document whatever I was doing. I would make a YouTube video or a blog post, and I would try to monetize it. I'd make some ad revenue or some affiliate revenue. But I never thought it could be huge. I remember talking to friends who were all kind of doing the same thing at the time, and I was like, "Man, if this thing could just make $2 a month or if it could make $5 a month, that'd be amazing! Then I wouldn't have to go get a job." I think my mind didn't understand the scale that any business could really become at that time. So, yeah, it took a while for me to realize the potential of it.

Sam Parr

And then you kind of had this... 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. It was actually a pretty innovative idea. You said, "I'm going to build this huge blog, and instead of just making money on advertising, I'm going to sell my own products." It sounds silly that I'm calling that innovative, but 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 sell your own products. I'd rather just stick to what I know, which is content and ads." Yeah, I was totally against selling stuff, but you made the right decision for sure. That's a significantly better business.

Kevin Espiritu

It's a way better business. The brief story on that is, in 2016, I went full-time on Epic Gardening. I was at Scribe Media, or Book in a Box, as it was called before that. I was like the second employee there. So, I quit that and went full-time on Epic. It was just a blogging and YouTube channel.

Sam Parr

did you have any revenue when you quit

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I was making $450 a month. I have this whole spreadsheet of what it was making at the time. At that point, I actually thought I was going to farm... like, legit farm in people's front yards and aggregate all their square footage. Then sell that produce to restaurants and stuff like that.

Sam Parr

right I mean that sounds like really hard

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, it's a really hard way to make a smallish amount of money. There are people that do it, and I actually respect it a lot. But it's cool... it's just not scalable. So, I thought, how about I just make this blog and aim to make a couple grand a month? Because it was making $4.50, so if I can make $4.50, I could probably make $2. If I could make $2, I could make $5. I started growing it, and I think that year the blog made $17 total over about 6 months. The next year, it was $72,000 in revenue, and this is all media because I hadn't done any product yet. In 2018, it was $225, and then in 2019, I had that realization you mentioned. I was like, "Wait, why am I just making money from ads and brand sponsorships? What do the brands want from me when they do a brand deal?" They want access to your audience. Well, I have complete access to my own audience, so why don't I just be the brand selling to my own audience? What I realized is that every piece of content I put out is basically a search for validating demand for whatever's in that content. So, in all these photos I'm putting out... because I'm at this.

Kevin Espiritu

I'm gardening in Hillcrest, San Diego, in a very small front yard in a pretty urban part of downtown San Diego. I'm filming my content there. I have these little raised beds in the front yard, which is just a way to grow plants. They're made out of metal, and every time I took a photo of these, everyone was like, "What are those? Where'd you get those?" So, I was like, "I actually don't know. A brand just sent these to me, and I put them in the front yard." I started emailing this company; they're from Australia. I emailed them maybe once or twice a quarter for about a year, saying, "Hey, can I get these? Can I somehow get these to America and sell them?" They were like, "No, no, we already have someone we're working with. We don't need to do that." Then, at the beginning of 2019, they emailed back and said, "Hey, are you still interested in carrying our products? A distributor just isn't working with us anymore." I was like, "Yeah, sure, let's do it!" I think I probably had like $70 or $80 in the business bank account at that time.

Kevin Espiritu

In time

Sam Parr

Alright, so it's like... it's promising. You're not rolling in it yet, but it's media, so it's mostly profit.

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, it's mostly profit, and it's a small business with nearly 0 employees. So to me, I'm like, I'm making a mid-level doctor's salary out of this business now. You know, so I'm chilling. I'm gardening; I'm liking my life. So I hit these guys up, and they're like, "Yeah, sure! 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." In 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. Here are all these different 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. I go, "Okay, well, what happens when they get to America? What am I supposed to do?" They're like, "Well, you gotta receive it at the port, and then that container has to go somewhere. You have to unpack it, and then you have to ship it." I'm like, "Okay, cool. Thanks for that information." So what I tried to do is rent a storage facility out of a Costco, just one of the ones that you go to if you're gonna move for a year, you know, and you put all your furniture there. So I tried to do that, and I was trying to figure out how to get it from the port to the storage facility. Then I was trying to look up how to get internet in the storage facility so I could print the labels.

Sam Parr

oh and you were gonna literally mail these things out yourself

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

how many like units of stuff did you have

Kevin Espiritu

I think it was 550 beds at

Sam Parr

That time... so that's a ton, but it's like, "Alright, I'm just gonna go to the post office 4 times a week and I'll just figure it out." I mean, that's a lot of work, but I guess it's kind of reasonable.

Kevin Espiritu

I thought it was reasonable, and the reason why I was trying to do it like that is because when I ordered it and they packed the container in Australia, I was like, "Okay, cool." To my audience, I said, "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.

Sam Parr

oh no

Kevin Espiritu

While they were still getting to America, I knew... I knew it was working. 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, I think there's something really going on here!"

Sam Parr

so what was your revenue in 19 the year you started selling stuff

Kevin Espiritu

So 2019 was like $550 [thousand], and half of it was the product. In the first year, immediately half 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." I thought media was the whole thing, but it was like, "Oh, actually media is right here and it monetizes, but the bottom is actually where the business lies."

Sam Parr

The weird innovative idea I remember is from my friend Nathan Barry, who has this awesome blog post called "$1,000,000,000 Blogs." It's basically the story of a handful of people who started out blogging and then built companies around their blogs. The most famous example is probably Glossier, the women's makeup brand that started with Emily Weiss. I think that's her name. She had a fashion blog and then realized that selling products was way better than selling ads. It became a $1,000,000,000 company. Here are a few more examples of that. That's when I first read about that idea, but I still thought it was way too intimidating and too challenging, particularly for me at the time. I ran a business website and thought, "What am I going to possibly sell?"

Kevin Espiritu

yeah like what product

Sam 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.

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I mean frankly, it was quite intimidating to me, but I was either too dumb or too smart to realize that and just went ahead and did it. Anyway, to wrap that up, I ended up talking to a friend of mine who was in commerce, and he said: > "What the hell are you doing, dude? Just get a 3PL [third-party logistics provider] and get a freight forwarder. Send the container to them, hook the Shopify to them, and then they'll ship it all out for you." That's what I ended up doing, and that was kind of the genesis of selling products at Epic Gardening.

Sam Parr

and didn't you grow that to like 7,000,000 in revenue with like 4 people

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, so I mean, I think 2020 would have been $2.8 million in revenue. So almost a 6x increase year-on-year. And then 2021 was $7.3-7.4 million or so, and most of it was product at that time. That would have been on a team of: - Me - My garden assistant - My actual assistant - A video editor - A writer And that was it. That's all we had.

Sam Parr

on 7.3 in revenue what could your profit be

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

so you're rolling in it

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, well, because the thing about it is... 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 profit driver. And so it's that term "negative CAC" [Customer Acquisition Cost]. Like, I had negative CAC on the business.

Sam Parr

Why raise money then? I know you raised, I think, $17,000,000. Why? Because, like, the cool thing about building a company is you can do whatever the hell you want. Yeah, and there's freedom in that. That's frankly my favorite part about business: the freedom of creating your own empire. You can do whatever the hell you want. If you want to grow it, you can. If you don't want to grow it, you don't have to. You get all the money, and you don't have to answer to anyone. I assume at this point, you still own 100% of the company. At least if I were you, I wouldn't give equity to my employees because I've been doing this by myself for a long time. I'd rather just pay you a high salary. Why even take $17,000,000?

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I wrestled with it for a long time. Maybe that deal took like 6 months to close, I would say. And at least for the Turner Group, that's not some massive deal for them. 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 gonna do in the next couple years? Do I understand the complexity of the business I had built?" Because it's a really lean team to be at $7.3 [million] with like a commerce business shipping product voucher.

Sam Parr

There's like a bunch of redundancy issues. At that, yeah, around anything north of $5,000,000, it's like, "Alright, we've got something here. We've got a seed of something working here. It potentially could be huge." I should actually shift to being a proper CEO. The beginning of being a proper CEO is hiring extra employees, even if, you know, at that. With the size that you were, everyone was working at 110%. You kind of 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 from 5 people." And I'll have some redundancy so people can chill a little bit or if someone gets sick or quits. There's actually some proper CEO work you have to do at that stage, I would think.

Kevin Espiritu

Oh yeah, oh yeah, totally. I mean, on the operational side, like the hiring, etcetera, I had no clue because I was on a team of me and four contractors. I didn't really have hiring experience. Then, on the commerce side, it's not like we got to $7.3 million selling an online course, which would be a lot simpler to fulfill. There’s inventory planning, there’s 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 staring down the barrel of that. I knew that I didn't know about it. I was at least smart enough to know I didn't know what was coming. Frankly, that was just crazy. The market in 2021 was probably still the last best time to do any kind of raising. At the same time, I was like, "Look, I'm already ahead in my space. No one, no creator in gardening is doing what I'm doing." 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? That’s what ended up making me do the deal.

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

I was able to take some off which was great

Sam Parr

yeah that's like life changing right

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, it was life-changing. I had bought a warehouse to start fulfilling orders because eventually, I moved off the 3PL. I was like, "You know what? I'm paying these guys like $30,000 to $40,000 a month in fulfillment fees. Why don't I just start a separate company, buy a warehouse, and then become my own tenant?" This way, I could build equity in the real estate side. So when we raised funds, I actually didn't include that warehouse in it. I had the warehouse too. The way the whole personal financial math worked out, I was like, "The way I live, I'm good now," and I can just fully focus on trying to win this space. So that was another part of it.

Sam Parr

do you have family

Kevin Espiritu

yeah I have a I have a girlfriend yeah and then a lot of my family lives in san diego

Sam Parr

What's it feel like to be... I don't know if you're 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"?

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of underwhelming, I guess. I don't know, was it like that for you? For me, I had already made quite a bit of money running up through 2021, just sort of solo. So, it was a huge change, but it wasn't like, you know, going from $1,000,000 to $200,000,000 in net worth or something like that. The way I live, I just don't need it, I guess. All I did was eliminate worry about, like, I don't know, what if something medical goes wrong? I couldn't even figure out if I wanted to buy anything for a while. I didn't buy anything fancy to celebrate or whatever.

Sam Parr

Not having money is the most stressful part of my life. When I didn't have money, it was more stressful than the times in my life when I did have breathing room.

Kevin Espiritu

I completely agree with that. 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.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but do you remember that study where it was like $70,000 a year? Right? That's bullshit.

Kevin Espiritu

that is absolutely bullshit I agree is bullshit that I agree

Sam Parr

why do you agree that that's bullshit

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

Doesn't go far. Yeah, I think that's bullshit because the thing is, let's say you're making like $200,000 a year. You could have someone come and clean the house, or you can have meal support, or these sorts of things that help you free your time up from things you genuinely don't like to do. There are things I love to do that, of course, I could pay for. Like, I obviously grow my own food, and I like to cook meals and bake my own bread and stuff like that. I don't have to do that, but I don't clean my house anymore. So, things like that I think give me... I don't know if "positive joy" would be the way I would phrase it, though. It's just that I don't have to do an annoying thing, is the way I think about it.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like you remember that book, "The 5 Languages of Love"? It's like, "Oh, your girlfriend's an acts of service woman, so if I do something nice for her, she'll feel loved." There's also the idea of the 5 languages of love for money. For me, it's not about nice things, but for some people, it could be that they love cars. For me, it's the same thing where I've got a cleaner who comes often, and I genuinely feel happier not having to do my laundry and clean. Those small things, which frankly aren't expensive, definitely make you happier. It's all about those little small things.

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

And he spends big on stuff. I was with Ramit on Saturday. He always asks these 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 your rich life?" I'm like, "I don't know, man... let's just drink our coffee." He's like, "No, no, tell me your rich life." And I'm like, "Okay, it's not stuff, it's services." He goes, "What would happen if you 10x your spending on your services?"

Kevin Espiritu

And I was having coffee with him. We had the same conversation, I mean, Zach said... He goes, "How big would your staff be if it could be as big as you wanted it to be for your house?" I was like, "I don't know... I gotta 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 on it.

Sam 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) Maybe I should do this b) Am I thinking too small? Like, if I love something, why don't I get 10x more of that thing? So it is cool to think about. He does do a good job with that, of pressuring me to think beyond how I'm thinking. And Ramit's stuff has actually been life-changing for me.

Kevin Espiritu

same

Sam Parr

how big is the business now can you say

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, we're about 90-ish people, and we're hoping to hit somewhere in the range of $40 to $45 million this year in revenue.

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

you think how big how big do you think it's gonna get in like 5 years

Kevin Espiritu

I mean, I think it's like a foregone conclusion to get above $100,000,000 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 getting us past 100 [million]. I don't know how much bigger than that.

Sam Parr

why acquire something instead of building it on your own

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

Did you... I mean, you studied accounting, but did you know anything about acquiring a company? Or did Churn kind of hold your hand?

Kevin Espiritu

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 30 year old business like I there's no way I could do the the diligence on that but the 2 small acquisitions I led those and they sort of just helped with the legalities of of getting it all done so the very first one was a seed tray so like when you when you're gardening you usually start seeds in like a little tray and a lot of these trays are made out of pretty flimsy plastic and they're just like throw away things and so a friend of mine who is in the space on the media side of gardening he's like an educator he he was developing these trays and he hit me up and he's like hey can I come down to the house and just show you this new tray that I made to start seeds in and this was 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 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 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 so I stand on it with 1 foot it doesn't budge and I'm like okay like that thing's durable and so I go well what do you wanna do like I think this is a cool product do you wanna like I can put it on my shopify store and like see if the audience wants it and he's like yeah sure what do you think like we'll just split the profits 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 we built up like maybe a week or 2 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

Sam Parr

It's awesome! It's like just the biggest dopamine rush when you start seeing that coming in.

Kevin Espiritu

So, I remember I was screen recording just to see, just to kind of flex and record the live screen. We sold out like a couple weeks' inventory in about 25 seconds.

Sam Parr

how much revenue was that

Kevin Espiritu

It was like $25 or $30, I think. So now that's an entire line of products we own. It's on our shop; it's called our **Epic Tray Line**. If you go to our shop and you navigate to **Seed Starting Supplies**, you'll see all the trays there. Over the next 3 to 4 weeks, we just built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out, built up inventory again, and sold it out. We were just splitting the profits. Then I went to him and said, "Hey, look, not only is this working really well—better than I thought—but there are definitely more trays that we could make. There are different form factors and ideas, like little domes you could put on top to keep humidity in or whatever." I mentioned, "But I can't make them because that's what you do, and I'm like 95% of your sales. What if you just joined Epic? We could raise some money. You could be our product lead." He replied, "Well, I can't really buy the business based on revenue because we are your revenue." So I asked, "How do we structure a deal?" The deal we came up with, without getting into crazy specifics, is that we basically paid him for all of the assets—the molds themselves, the research and development time, and a premium on that. We gave him some equity and hired him as our product lead. We've built that line out to about 12 or 15 SKUs, going direct to consumer and wholesale now. I think we're up about 7x on the acquisition price in terms of revenue after the fact. And that wasn't a big acquisition; it was sub $500,000. So to me, that's why you would buy.

Sam Parr

and that's a great that's a great deal for everyone involved

Kevin Espiritu

yeah exactly it was a total win win

Sam Parr

what are the other 2

Kevin Espiritu

So, the second biggest one we did was actually a media acquisition. That was a blog. A friend of mine from the old SEO days had built a gardening blog. We were hiring for a Director of Editorial—just someone to run our blog. Our blog was doing well, with maybe 8 to 10 million sessions a year. It was monetizing off of display ads, but then hopefully, people would go through and buy some stuff in our store too.

Sam Parr

all from search or mostly from search

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, it was like mostly search. I was at like 80% search. So this guy emails me and he's like, "Hey, look, I saw 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. I'd like the job; I'd like to put my hat in the ring for the job, but I kinda have a competing blog." To me, I go, "Look, you've built that blog really fast, way faster than we're currently building ours, but you kinda can't work for us and run that blog. So what if we bought your blog and hired you to run our blog?" He goes, "Okay." So what we did is we bought the blog and migrated his blog into ours, which was like calling them both 10 million sessions a year, something like that. You'd think like 10 + 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. So like 10 + 10 equals 25, right? Then you're monetizing better off of the display ads there, but then we also just made more from the ads themselves. So effectively, the acquisition financed itself by the increased revenue, like month one. So that was another sort of weird acquisition.

Sam Parr

can you say was that more or less than 500

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

this was post this was post churnin

Kevin Espiritu

This is post-Churnin. Yeah, so the way that one has ended up working out is we have an awesome leader running our blog at a higher level than ours was before. Our traffic has more than doubled, and we're monetizing at over double the rate on the traffic. You know, like YouTube RPMs [Revenue Per Mille], right? It's the same with blogs. Our blog RPM doubled after doing the acquisition. So basically, we just created a cash flow that finances the thing that we bought that created the cash flow.

Sam 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

Kevin Espiritu

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 old... you're like...

Sam Parr

You're like, "Look, I don't make up the rules. I just think them up and write them down." Yeah, like, I... I don't know. I just... I... well, you know how.

Kevin Espiritu

I people say like there needs to be one core reason to do something, like an acquisition or a business move or whatever. I agree with that, but to me, 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, I don't have the traffic and a leader; now I do." But then I just go, how many other ways could this benefit us? And how many other ways could it hurt us? If the ways it could benefit us outweigh the ways it could hurt us, I feel like it'll just work then. This probably holds true for smaller acquisitions where it's maybe a less efficient market or something like that. I don't know how it would work if you have some sort of big deal.

Sam Parr

what was the third one

Kevin Espiritu

because you're

Sam Parr

2 for 2 you're 2 for 2 now that sounds pretty good

Kevin Espiritu

Those ones work. Those ones have worked out, 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, this is not a big amount of money for us, but we want to do some follow-on and see if we can purchase a really awesome company in the space and help power up Epic Gardening." I was like, "Okay, cool. That sounds good."

Sam Parr

Which is, I think, what they did with like MeatEater and a few others where they buy... or they invest in the media company, and then immediately they're like, "Let's go acquire a company to sell to the audience."

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, exactly. We were looking... man, we looked at so many different companies. Like maybe 150, 160 different companies in the space. I was out at a fruit tree farm in Missouri at one point.

Sam Parr

When you say "look at a 150," does that mean just putting ideas on paper, or does that mean actually contacting 150 people?

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

I mean that's a shit ton of work

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, this is why having them has been helpful, or having an investor on your side has been helpful. Because I'm out here running the business and I might mention a company, and they'll do their due diligence and say, "Yeah, this makes sense" or "This doesn't make sense."

Sam Parr

And then 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 interest you?" And then if they say yes, it's like, "Look, why don't you put together some high-level numbers and then send something over, and we could talk about it with our team." Then you get some type of DocSend or PowerPoint, or you get something, and you're like "yay" or "nay." Like, it could go to the next step: "Let's actually have a real discussion about this." Is that how the due diligence looks like?

Kevin Espiritu

Pretty much, yeah. I remember we were looking at like the top 600 gardening apps at one point in time. So we got a sheet from one of the people on the investment team, and they were like: > "Yeah, here are 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... these [apps] ...

Sam Parr

guys are doing a lot of the work then they're helping you

Kevin Espiritu

oh yeah

Sam Parr

they're pulling they're pulling their weight

Kevin Espiritu

I think so, yeah, absolutely. So, anyway, the seed company—this is like the big acquisition. This was a company that, without me knowing it, was the first pack of seeds I had ever grown when I first started gardening. I went into some random nursery with my brother and just picked up a beautiful packet of seeds. They were cucumber seeds, and lo and behold, it 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 are really well known for having high germination rates. The seeds sprout really well when you buy them, but also the packet is just beautifully designed.

Sam 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?

Kevin Espiritu

There are six... I think we stock about 650 varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. So pretty much anything under the sun, anything that you would reasonably want to grow, we have it. It's a husband and wife who have been running it for like 28 years. They were married, but I think they divorced a few years prior to that. They were sort of ready to hand the business off to whoever wants to run it next. But, you know, it's one of those "boring" businesses that people talk about all the time. Who's actually going to be able to buy it? The seed business is actually fairly complex. There's a lot that goes into it that you have to understand. So we go out there, I meet the guy, the husband, and he's like, "Hey, can I grab a selfie? I actually have a friend who's a big fan of your YouTube. It'd be amazing if I could show her that we met." Immediately, I'm like, "Okay, maybe I've got a little edge in this process. Maybe I'm going to be able to get this company."

Sam Parr

Or you can 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.

Kevin Espiritu

Could be that too... Yeah, could be that too. But we go through the whole diligence process. We go on a tour of the place where we're talking through pricing and all this sort of stuff. I told my investors, "They gave me all this swag. They gave me like a hat." So I said, "I'm just gonna wear this hat in every piece of content we make until we either win or don't win this deal." I know the guy watches it, and I know 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 out YouTube videos, Instagram reels, short form, whatever. Hat on 24/7, every single piece of content. We go through the bidding process, and we win the deal. We were not the highest bid by quite a bit. I would say a material amount for the sellers to not have in their pocket if they went with us. We go out to celebrate, and I say, "Hey, you know, I really appreciate you guys. It's truly an honor to be able to carry on the legacy of this company. This is the first seed packet I ever grew." 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..."

Sam Parr

knew it you got him

Kevin Espiritu

yeah I got him not in like a malicious way just

Sam Parr

like sure sure sure

Kevin Espiritu

I'm I'm using the angle that I have which is my everyone won

Sam Parr

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 and the business?

Kevin Espiritu

So, the seed company's red flags are that it is basically a seed company. That's just a hard... it's a difficult business. Like, there's a ton... why?

Sam Parr

because there's so many different skus

Kevin Espiritu

Tons of different SKUs. You have to do like a non-GMO certification, germination testing, and herbicide testing. You're physically purchasing or contracting a grower to grow seeds that you then receive, test, repack, etc. There's just a lot of complexity. It's not like you're selling a rug or something like that, where you can just buy rugs from China and then sell them to other people in America. So that was complex, but the part that I think was really great about it is that it was far and away one of the best brands in the space. I loved it for 10 years. On top of that, they were mostly a wholesale business, and the online business hadn't done a whole lot. I thought, "Okay, well, we're definitely an online-first company for media and product, so why don't we just plug those two together?" I think the first year after we did the deal, the online part of the business for the seed company was up like 60 or 70% year over year without really doing much. All we did was move it to Shopify and tell people we owned the company now, and that's pretty much it.

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

Man, I don't remember offhand the multiple, but I want to say it was probably 6 to 8 times, somewhere like that.

Sam Parr

income

Kevin Espiritu

yeah I think so

Sam Parr

and how long till you could pay back the acquisition

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

so I mean I I I think that's pretty fast

Kevin Espiritu

yeah it's like 5 I would say like 5 hopefully

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean... or if they only sell for 5 to 7 times [earnings], I would think that you'd actually grow it or get that money back significantly faster. I would think [this is possible] because of the kind of audience that you have.

Kevin Espiritu

The audience and then, like, just the opportunity. Because we're carried in, I would say, 4,500 stores around the country. To me, I'm like, well, it's just seeds that are carried—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. Now we have a distribution network, so why don't we tell all those retailers, "Hey, look, we're making better products that your customers will want. Just stock our product in your store." That was another big lever. I think we're still testing it out and trying to prove 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?

Sam Parr

Have you ever been to Chip and Joanna's? Like, boy, go! Yeah, like their...

Kevin Espiritu

it's like show for them

Sam Parr

in 2020 like you were on their show

Kevin Espiritu

I filmed the show for magnolia back then

Sam Parr

They have... it's basically like Disneyland for four-year-old white chicks. Yeah, it's like you could buy anything in the world for your home or living room. I went to it once, and my mother-in-law and her sisters wanted to go and take pictures of anything with Chip and Joanna's name on it. They just wanted to see it. I was doing math around how... I mean, it's like a campus. They've got food and many different stores. I was doing math, and I'm like, "These guys are gonna be billionaires. This is gonna be the greatest thing ever." And that's gonna happen to you because you've got the same shtick where you're in a good niche. I imagine it's mostly women, and they probably spend a lot, or just for the hobby, they spend a lot. But you've got the charisma, you've got the look... it's gonna happen. Do you get crazy, like stalker messages or fans who are obsessed with you?

Kevin Espiritu

it it's definitely happened yeah it's definitely happened people make fun

Sam Parr

...of me on this podcast all the time. Partly, everyone thinks I'm gay because I comment on 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 a lot of fans.

Kevin Espiritu

Back at you, dude! Wait, so everyone thinks I'm gay too? Actually, just 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 yeah, no, I mean, I would say it happens for sure. I've done the whole "delete all your info from the internet" process, but it's kinda hard for me to do that.

Sam Parr

it's never good enough it's never good enough

Kevin Espiritu

Especially when you film at your home, right? Like, my set is my outdoors, and so I can't *not* show the street, etcetera, because it's just in the shot. There's nothing I could really do about it.

Sam Parr

Dude, I've had times where I took a picture of my house and I didn't think you could see it. Then, like the next couple of days, I'll get gifts sent to my home. People will find it on street view and I'm like, "Oh shit!" And I'm not a famous person - I'm a mildly popular person in a small subset of the internet. So I can't imagine if you're like *real* famous, or if I'm like you and my videos get millions and millions of views.

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, I mean, look, it hasn't been as bad as I think like legitimate celebrity-type people, but I've definitely had experiences. Earlier this year, there was this woman. We were all in the backyard because that's where we film most of the time, but there's a garden in the front yard too. I have security cameras now that record locally to my house, so I can pull up footage of whatever I want. This woman came up to the front door, knocked on it, and said, "Yoo hoo!" Then she looked in the house, went out to the front gate, opened it, and kind of messed around with some plants. She tried to walk around the backyard, and my assistant was in the backyard. They kind of butted heads when my assistant saw her. My assistant just freaked out and said, "Who is this woman?" The woman saw nothing wrong with what she was doing. She was like, "Oh yeah, I just wanted to see if you guys were filming. I wanted to come say hi." We were like, "We don't know who you are." There was nothing we could have said to her that would have made her understand that her behavior was completely out of the norm. So, every so often, it's like the law of large numbers, man. If you have an audience of many millions, all you need is...

Kevin Espiritu

1% and that's still like 14 people, you know, that'll come mess with you.

Sam Parr

You were telling Ari before about something that I wanted to ask you about. 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 licensing of fruits, vegetables, or different types of seeds is fascinating. I was reading about the history of Honeycrisp apples, and I believe it started at the University of Minnesota. What they did was take two plants and breed them. However, people even do that, I don't even know how you do that. It took many decades because I guess it takes a year to get a new plant, or maybe it takes like five to ten years to get an apple tree in the first place. Then you screw up a bunch, and ultimately, it will take many years—sometimes decades—to get a good apple. Then they come up with a really cute name like "Honeycrisp" or, I think I had one the other day that was called a "Cotton Candy Apple." You brand it with some cute name, and then you license it out to other farmers. You build this massive business that has this moat that will take 30 years to disrupt. Is that how it works? Do I have that right?

Kevin Espiritu

Much right, that's pretty much right. So we're gonna go into like garden nerd territory for a sec just so I can explain how it works. When you're making a new tree, it's really difficult. Like you mentioned, 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 who'd been working on a potato for like 20 years.

Sam Parr

and what was his goal outcome for that potato

Kevin Espiritu

So, the goal outcome... Potatoes are grown from what are called "seed potatoes," which is basically just a potato that you throw on the ground. You don't plant like a little seed; you just throw a potato on the ground. This guy was trying to make a potato that you could grow from an actual potato seed. When a potato is in the ground, it throws leaves up and actually makes a potato flower, which produces a potato berry. That berry has seeds in it. If you plant those seeds, the problem is that you don't get the potato that you planted. You get some... [unfinished thought] So his [idea was to create a potato that could be grown from actual seeds, presumably]

Sam Parr

outcome was like a more efficient way for for a farmer it wasn't necessarily a certain taste

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, it was... it 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 years, right?

Sam Parr

did he get his out did did it did he do it

Kevin Espiritu

he got it yeah it's called the clancy potato we actually sell it on our our store it's an awesome potato

Sam Parr

did he get wealthy from it

Kevin Espiritu

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. With fruit trees, though, it's kind of the same thing. 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 that I actually like. That's my next Honeycrisp." What you then do is graft. You have to take a piece of that tree and put it on what's called the rootstock of an apple. So, like, the roots and below. 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 take a bunch of those little branches off and put them on other apple rootstock, then grow those out. Those are genetic clones of that new Honeycrisp. Then you do that again, and then you do that again. And so, that's how...

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

It's probably like... it would really depend on the type of fruit. But I'll say this: it will shorten the time from growing from seed by about 70 to 80%. It's 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. So what guys like the Honeycrisp guy you mentioned, or there's a guy named Floyd Zager, who is sort of known as the "godfather of stone fruit"—which includes peaches, nectarines, and all those types of trees—what they do is they have tens of thousands of trees that they're cross-pollinating, growing out, grafting, tasting, and testing. Then, when maybe 1% of those actually become a variety, they now have a patent on that because they've developed what's called a cultivar. They have that cultivar, and then they can license that out for other people to put into production. They take a licensing fee on all those. So you're right: once they actually create the next Honeycrisp or the next "killer peach," they can make a cash flow off of that for, who knows how long, until the next one comes around.

Sam Parr

I'm looking at this guy, Floyd. He's 94 years old and it looks like he's still doing it. I think... I think.

Kevin Espiritu

he passed away like a couple years ago but he's like a total legend in the space

Sam Parr

Oh yeah, you're right. He passed away, but it looked like, based off the photos, up until when he passed away, he was still... yeah, planting or involved. Did he build a big... what's the name of his company? Was it Zager's Genetics? Is that right?

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, Zaiger Genetics. And then there's a nursery called Dave Wilson Nursery, which I think sells the most fruit trees in the US. They use a lot of Zaiger's stuff, and they'll be the people who grow out a lot of Floyd Zaiger's actual trees. It's a crazy model because, you're right, good luck competing. You have to spend like 20 years to even get started.

Sam 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?

Kevin Espiritu

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, 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?

Sam Parr

Yeah, my parents are in the agriculture industry. My father, his first business was a fruit stand. He started as a stock boy in the produce section of a grocery store. Then he opened up a fruit stand and created a produce brokerage. Basically, you have relationships with farmers in Idaho or Bakersfield, California. You buy, let's say, $500,000 worth of onions, then you find a trucker to pick it up, and you sell that $500,000 worth of onions to Walmart for $550,000. You make like $10 of profit or something like that off organizing that deal. He has sold over $100,000,000 worth of onions over the course of 20 years, but the margins are like 3%. It’ll be basically him by himself selling $20,000,000 a year worth of produce, and you make, I don't know, maybe $300,000 a year. So, it's a good living, but you've got to sell a ton of product because the margins are so small. I've grown up talking to some of these farmers, and it's more of a vocation than anything. It's just what they know. They've been born and raised doing that. It's like, "I am a farmer no matter what." It's not like traditional businesses where it's, "I see an opportunity, I'm going to do this." It's like, "No, this is just what I was bred to be."

Kevin Espiritu

That's what I've noticed in our space. Because there's a lot of smaller product companies or small seed companies, etcetera... no one's trying to get super rich doing it. Even me, back in the earlier days, I was like, "I'm very happy making that $2.50 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.

Sam Parr

Can I... and we'll wrap up here in a second, but I want to ask you a quick question about diet. *Hmm...* I'm a little... I recently moved to a new place, mostly because it was across the street from a farmer's market. I've been obsessed with the idea of buying produce and meat that only comes from within 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 some type of standard, which I don't think it is anymore. For a long time, that was the standard of healthy eating, but I still feel crappy after I eat that. 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 it 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?

Kevin Espiritu

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.

Sam Parr

I think that that that book is awesome but I think it's bullshit like I

Kevin Espiritu

think I think a good part of it is bullshit yeah

Sam 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, they lie about their age. So they noticed that, "Wow, in this town there's a shit ton of people born on January 1st. 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.

Kevin Espiritu

oh wow

Sam Parr

And so, there was a lot... like the commonality between the five blue zones is that they have a huge amount of age fraud.

Kevin Espiritu

I also saw something about, can you imagine lying to be older? I saw something about how it also maps to when we started accurately tracking birth certificates. A lot of these people are old enough that they're from before we did that. So how can you really know how old they are? The thing I do... and maybe...

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think the thing that is somewhat true there is that it does seem to make logical sense: the fresher food you eat, the better off you'll be. To me, I go, "Well, it doesn't get fresher than that in my own backyard." Right? 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. I don't think that's practical, but yeah, I mean, I think you do feel better. I think the best, the next best thing to growing your own food would be going to a farmer's market, as long as you know the farmer is actually growing things the way they say they are. Because now there's like farmer's market fraud. Down here in San Diego, people will drive up from Mexico with monocropped food and just pretend like it's a farmer's market.

Sam Parr

what questions do I have to ask them

Kevin Espiritu

you would have to ask like well where is your farm which they could definitely buy about it

Sam Parr

show me pictures

Kevin Espiritu

Yeah, they should have pictures of it. You could ask, like, "Do you spray pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide? If so, 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.

Sam Parr

what do you do for meat

Kevin Espiritu

For meat, I tend to just buy at... I'll go to like a Whole Foods or there's a local fish market called Lobos Seafoods down here in San Diego I'll try to go to. Sometimes... I'm trying to get some friends to do that quarter cow thing with me, but so far no one's down. So if you're out...

Sam Parr

there holler

Kevin Espiritu

at me

Sam Parr

I've been trying to do that as well. You need like a huge garage fridge, which is how you know you've made it... by having a garage fridge to store all this meat. But I've been doing it too. Have you seen it? It's called Coop, but if you Google "like coop"...

Kevin Espiritu

oh yeah yeah yeah we shot him on our podcast aj smart farm

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

coop dot farm

Sam Parr

Coop dot farm. So, Coop is like... it's like the tagline that I saw in the article was, "It's like the Tesla for a chicken coop." It's 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 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. I've raised my own bees in order to get honey, which is an awesome hobby. Beekeeping is a cool thing because it requires not much maintenance at all. From a business perspective, remember that Flow Hive or whatever that went viral on Kickstarter? It raised like $20 million. I do think that beekeeping supplies could actually be a legitimately good business. You could create a lifestyle brand around it because the content around that is inherently quite viral. I used to create these videos of me scraping off the honey... or what's it called? The honeycomb. Yeah, scraping the honey from the comb off of my trays or whatever that's in the hive. I don't actually know anything about it, even though I've had bees for years, but that's how little you have to know about this in order to successfully do it. I would scrape off the comb and make these awesome videos, then just give it to my friends, and they loved it. It's such a fun hobby.

Kevin Espiritu

yeah

Sam Parr

and so I'm really big on that

Kevin Espiritu

I think her name was like Texas Bee Works. I don't know if you've seen her stuff on the internet, but she has this very soft, pleasing voice. There'll be music, and it'll be some crazy scenario where there's a hive, and she's called out. She goes, "I've been called out to take this hive out of a manhole."

Sam Parr

dude she has a mill a 1,600,000 subs on youtube

Kevin Espiritu

Oh yeah, she's huge. I always look at other people because I know what I did with Hepic, and I go, "Don't you realize you could have a thriving beekeeping 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.

Sam Parr

dude she was on joe rogan I'm looking at it now erica thompson

Kevin Espiritu

she was

Sam Parr

On Joe Rogan, she goes, "I did my first podcast." 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."

Kevin Espiritu

damn that's a flex right there that's a flex

Sam Parr

Awesome! This is a gem. This woman, she's got it. Yeah, bam! Beekeeping is an interesting hobby. You should try it out. You'll like it; it requires no work, and I'm pretty sure it makes your plants way better. I noticed that whenever I get bees, you start seeing all different types of flowers in the backyard.

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

Dude, it costs like **$200** to start. My hives are from Amazon for **$200**. Then you go on Craigslist and you find a bee delivery person. The lady that I used was this beautiful Eastern European woman. She shows up in her Lexus, pops out with a hive, and she's not wearing any mask. She's got a fancy watch on, beautiful blonde hair, and nice clothes. She just goes, "You know, I've got your bees." I was like, "Yes ma'am, please come put them over here." I paid her **$200** for the bees and **$200** for the hive that I got on Amazon. That's all I needed.

Kevin Espiritu

do you know how right now

Sam Parr

I recently moved, but up until recently, yeah, I had them. I had them in San Francisco and I had them in Texas. In San Francisco, I had them at my small little house. I had a backyard, and then I also had them on the roof of my office in downtown San Francisco. I had about 10,000 bees, and you wouldn't even... you could have your hive 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... it's like an awesome hive.

Kevin Espiritu

I got a spot for my hive then I have the perfect spot in my backyard for my hive

Sam Parr

Yeah, and like I think I... I don't even know what I'm talking about. I have them, and like I got stung. I've been stung like twice. It's not like that big of a deal. People think it's a very intimidating, unapproachable hobby. But I got into it because I made a list. I was like, "I need a hobby that doesn't require a ton of work. It can't cost a ton of money because if it costs a ton of money, I'm gonna break rule number 3, which is I can't turn it into a business to make money." So I was like, "What's a good hobby?" Then I saw a Burt's Bees documentary, and I was like, "That's a good hobby. Let's do it!"

Kevin Espiritu

there you go

Sam Parr

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

Kevin Espiritu

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

Sam Parr

Well, thanks for doing this, dude. You're the man! You're going to be fun to watch over the next five years. This is going to be great.

Kevin Espiritu

be a

Sam Parr

Very exciting journey! We take pride in having people on before they get... like right at the beginning of their takeoff. Even though you're already incredibly successful, I have a feeling that this is still going to be early in your journey, and we're going to brag about having you on early in your career.

Kevin Espiritu

that's awesome dude well thanks for having me appreciate it

Sam Parr

alright that's the pod