I Made $30M With My Side Project

[Music] ready when I graduated after that I really had no clue what I wanted to do and so I tried a ton of different Hobbies 2013 is or so I started gardening with my brother just to like break the pattern get off the computer get outside and I wasn't thinking it would be anything but a hobby I think curiosity as an entrepreneur is what propels you and if you innately have it then you're sort of good to go my name is Kavin spiritu and I am the founder of Epic gardening which is the world's most followed gardening brand bootstrap to $7.3 million a year and now do tens of millions a year in [Music] Revenue so we're here at my Homestead I call it in Suburban San Diego it's about a third of an acre the house is 1,000 ft so pretty small house live here with my girl girlfriend and some random cats that come by we have nine hens and probably like 300 plus plants thousands of plants I'm not even really sure 25 fruit trees but this is epic gardening headquarters this is where we film our content this where we test our products this where we grow out our new varieties of our our seeds that we sell and just kind of hang [Music] out I grew up here in Southern California San Diego in a suburban area was really science really into math was being sent to science camps as a kid was collecting rocks collecting coins and then something that threw my life for a loop was when I was 13 my dad passed away in an accident he was in a pool swimming he loved to swim and he passed out underwater something caused him to go unconscious no one was there watching they should have been and they could not resuscitate him and so you know you wake up one day um and you don't have your dad so um so after that I was very independent even before that I was exceptionally independent after that and it was that sort of way of thinking that led me to all these weird hobbies and following that path cuz I really didn't care anymore what uh anyone thought I should do so what I did is I left college graduated the problem is after that I really had no clue what I wanted to do and so I tried a ton of different Hobbies I spent a whole month doing night photography and I spent a whole month drumming so I would drum for like 6 to 8 hours a day on like an electric kit with headphones on but yeah there was just this whole period of time where I was trying a bunch of random things uh meanwhile probably playing some video games and stuff at the time and just like exploring all these different Hobbies 201 13ish or so I started gardening with my brother just to like break the pattern get off the computer get outside I fell in love with it uh just that one summer I I wasn't that good at it but I I fell in love with kind of the way that you could shape a plant the way that you could grow it so I registered a Blog and I wasn't thinking it would be anything but a [Music] hobby to me like having um curiosity is what kind of what gives you your Edge at least for me I'm trying to figure out how everything works I mean how how to grow plants how an e-commerce business Works how do you learn how to find a product how do you lead a team how do you hire all that kind of stuff I'm just innately curious in that even if I wasn't going to use it and so sometimes you get really curious you go down a rabbit hole on something that you don't think has that much purpose you don't think it has that much use or or application and then lo and behold a year later two years later there it [Music] is I think the blog made like $400 a month and so I ended up moving in for half the summer with my mom's ex and then after that with a friend of mine and basically all I did for like 12 hours a day was just write blog articles like research gardening topics I was trying everything I was like in forums like commenting on stuff and dropping links here and there and just trying to get some traffic and so yeah in about 2 or three months I think the blog was making maybe 2 or three grand a month two three months after that as you get towards later that year in 2016 it was making four five grand a month so when you start to get to that level on your own project you're like okay like this is maybe an accountant salary it's that accountant salary I was going to make so maybe there's something here that is the birth of when I decided epic gardian was like a real thing after years of trying different hobbies and side projects Kevin finally landed on the right idea if you're anything like Kevin and you also dream of finding that one idea that changes everything then imagine how helpful it would be to save yourself months of spinning your wheels by seeing examples of million-dollar businesses started by people just like you well at starter story we have a library of over 4,000 case studies and business idea breakdowns where you can see exactly how regular people turn side projects into million-dollar businesses if you're serious about this stuff head to the first link in the description and you can download a database of $99 million problems we're solving that might give you some ideas now back to Kevin and how he actually built this business that first year that first 6 months full-time was about $70,400 in Revenue that's Revenue that's just basically I didn't make any money the next year 2017 was $75,000 and after that it was 225 so that would be 2018 2019 was 540 and 2020 was 2.8 million and 2021 was 7.3 and so we've roughly tripled or more every year up until that point and there's obviously different reasons why that happened uh as the business kind of evolved [Music] you know when you're a Creator you have media brands or product brands that want to send you stuff and they want you to review it or they want to do a brand deal and that's how we made some money at Epic gardening back in the day and so what I started to put together is why would I not just be the brand who would sponsor my own content it doesn't it doesn't make sense nothing is preventing me from offering my own product line and what I noticed is there was a particular product that everyone kept asking about in the content this weird metal corrugated raised bed that you put soil in and you put plants in that and VOA you have a garden so I had racked my brain trying to think how do I build a product that people will really like that I think is a really good gardening product and all of a sudden I was just like they want this product you have it in your garden so why why wouldn't I just offer it directly to my audience the problem is I didn't have a product development background so the way I started was was Distributing a product that already existed it just didn't exist in America so that was the really clicking moment I slapped up a really crappy Shopify store cuz I had never done e-commerce before went on Instagram put an Instagram story up and then in 2 weeks we sold all of them you know 250 was media sort of Revenue and another 250 was product Revenue in 2019 and that's when I went oh actually I've been building the start of a business but the actual business is beneath the educational mat that I was putting out and that that was kind of the light bul moment so these days the days are pretty varied it really depends on the day I mean some days it's it's making a lot of content and making a lot of videos for the people that love what we do and and want to learn how to grow plans some days it's in meetings might be a product development meeting might be an executive meeting might be a you know a company that you might want to work with in some fashion so call it like the CEO type of things some days I literally have to block my schedule off so that I can just actually be in the garden doing the thing that I was trying to do all those years ago to get off the computer and to get into nature uh and as you've built a business around it it's obviously hard to uh find that time sometimes like just true gardening time cuz even even if I'm out in the garden I'll be like oh man I could like that'd be a cool video that'd be a cool concept oh that that product so you can't turn the brain off sometimes so I've scheduled time to just guarden No Agenda um I can think but I I can't really whip the phone out and start making a a video or something like that uh so it's it's pretty varied these days I think um a lot of beginners will start and they'll say look I need to to know stuff before I do stuff and that's of course true to a degree but you don't need to know as much as you think you need to know you certainly don't have to have like a fully baked business plan with you know perfectly formatted you get your business cards you have your registration on your website and all this it's all in place before you even figure out if anyone wants what you're selling so I think consume some knowledge like try to figure out specifically I want to start a YouTube channel okay there are there are some channels that I could go watch and learn how to do that but I would really try to immediately put it into action after you consume cuz I spent so many times just spinning my Cycles on I'm going to learn about this I'm going to learn about this well what about this business I could but I could do this one uh and you just get stuck there and you're really just Treading Water doing pretty much nothing in the real world hey guys Pat here if you're trying to build something but struggling a bit on where to get started or how to stay motivated then I have something for you I host a free workshop on how I built a million dollar business on Just 2 hours a day and I go over the exact blueprint of how I found the idea and how I built it while maintaining a full-time job you can reserve your seat in the workshop by clicking the second link in the description but there are limited spots I'll see you there

Channel: Starter Story

Views: 37,231

Keywords: starterstory, starters story, starter story, starter stories, starter story ideas, kevin espiritu, epic gardening, story of epic gardening, story of kevin espiritu, million dollar gardener, the $30M gardener, millionaire gardener

Id: uBGbvKScavk

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2024