In this episode of Jorgenson’s Soundbox, I continue exploring the world of web3 with my friend and former coworker Shane Mac. Shane is now the cofounder of XMTP, a decentralized and economic messaging protocol being built for web3. During our conversation, we talk about XMTP as a new protocol for building communication tools. We can spam-proof the next generation of the web! How Shane builds company culture to help him compete with world renowned companies and his personal and professional investing strategies.

To kick off our conversation, we talk a bit about Shane’s decision to move to Nashville, driven by the exhausting culture of work scale at all cost in San Francisco, and the music scene there. Shane then discusses how he came to work with Matt Galligan and start XMTP. When looking for an opportunity to build a new company, he had a lightbulb moment when Robert Leshner, the founder of Compound, presented a communication problem in the web3 space. Shane realized that people who have wallets want to be able to communicate with others that have wallets and to be able to prove ownership, and he recognized the potential for a new messaging communication protocol with the wallet as a means of sending and receiving messages. XMTP was thus founded as a decentralized messaging protocol with a universal backend that developers could build on top of and that we can all be owners of.

In the second half of the conversation, we explore Shane’s ability to create an awesome company culture. Shane says that while he can’t compete with renowned companies on having the most interesting idea, he can compete on culture. Shane aims to remove people’s anxieties so that they can be more productive. He does so by hiring personal assistants and coaches not only for executives but for everyone, removing the vesting cliff, and teaching people how to quit. We wrap up the conversation by talking about how Shane goes about investing. He says he focuses on what he knows well and believes in. Regarding crypto, he thinks of it as startup investing, and he has invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum and plans to hold for the long term. He also is the General Partner of the Logos Fund which invests similarly in startups, mostly focusing on the seed stage.

Links: 

Eric’s Newsletter

XMTP.com

How to Quit (and have everyone support you)

Compound 

Squared Away

Koinly

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

SquidDAO: Web3 Project Deep-Dive: Part Crypto Hedge Fund, Part NFT DAO. An Anonymous Conspiracy for Mutual Enrichment

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

SquidDAO is an “Economic Flywheel denominated in Ethereum.” What does that mean? Good question, I wondered too. It’s basically a conspiracy amongst anonymous people on the internet to make money together. And anyone can join! I dug in with a few members to see what it’s all about. 

They sell NFTs, they issue tokens, they invest a treasury… they earn money! And they share it with token and NFT holders. 

This is my first pseudonymous podcast as well as the longest one I’ve ever done. In this episode, we explore a relatively new web3 project, Squid DAO, with a few guys I only know by their online handles. Squid DAO is described as an economic flywheel backed by Ethereum and is part company, part DeFi investment fund, and part NFT project. SQUID is currently trading for roughly the value of the assets it holds in the treasury, which could make it a great investment opportunity. Squid DAO is a great microcosm of the world of web3 as it is essentially a megatron of the various forks of web3 projects, which makes it a great learning opportunity.

We explore the economics of the DAO and why it is denominated in ETH rather than dollars. It can be valued via income derivative, the multiple on the treasury, or what it is trading at against what is on the balance sheet. Recently, a new governance proposal was passed making Squid and NFTs productive assets so that users may better run analyses. ETH is considered the best index and essentially operates like cash for the DAO. 

We wrap up the episode by talking about how to learn more and get involved. Squid DAO’s Twitter and Discord are great ways to learn more, but the best way to gain mastery is by investing your own money. If looking to get involved, you can help with whatever skills you have to offer, be it marketing, as a developer, a degen or coding strategist, or someone with a web2 background.

Links: 

Squid DAO NFT Auctions

Squid Docs

Squid Treasury Dashboard

Squid Discourse (Governance Forum)

Olympus DAO

Index Coop

SquidDAO Discord

The Squids on Twitter

@SquidDAO

@BigSquid0x

@Zoption

@0xSquidSteed

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Simon Judd: How Index Coop is building Crypto Index products

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

Sean O’Connor: How Blockchain is Changing Society with Costless Transactions

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

Tim Hwang is the most interesting man on the internet. He runs a project called the Trade Journal Cooperative, which I've subscribed to for years. We talk about how the Trade Journal Cooperative got started it, how Tim *secretly* went to law school, and several other projects Tim is working on including an academic journal dedicated to bizarre images of Mark Zuckerberg. Thought that was all? That’s not all. Also using bots to wage information wars on social media, and Tim’s book which predicts an online advertising bubble. My favorite thing about Tim is his ability to sit on the fence between very serious and very whimsical.

To start our conversation, Tim talks off the cuff about one of his heroes, Charles Fort, who compiled books of anomalous phenomena and is the source of the term “Fortean.” This explains a lot about Tim. We then explore Tim’s role as a trade journal sommelier and the Trade Journal Cooperative which provides a quarterly exploration of various industries. We talk a bit about the vastness of the trucking industry and also about the elevator, i.e., vertical transportation, industry.

Tim also tells us the awkward story of how he somewhat unintentionally ended up going to law school secretly, and we explore some of the projects he started after graduating, including Rosen, Wolfe and Hwang, a boutique law practice that specializes in serving the unique needs of independent creators and small to midsize technology businesses, and Robot, Robot & Hwang, which was created off the notion of creating a fully automated law firm. Among other projects, Tim also started the academic journal The California Review of Images and Mark Zuckerberg, which explores why Zuckerberg seems to be exceptionally good at ending up in strange images and what that says about the media and culture. 

I ask Tim to talk about his 2019 paper titled “Maneuver and Manipulation: On the Military Strategy of Online Information Warfare,” which is about how bots shape discussions online and the possible strategies of combating public manipulation. We also talk about a couple of branches off the information warfare piece, the National Conspiracy Writing Month (NaCoWriMo), in which participants complete a “daunting, but straightforward challenge to develop a deep, viable and complete conspiracy theory during the 30 days of November,” and COGSEC, which is a conference on the real-world practice of countering online influence operations. We wrap up our discussion talking about Tim’s recently published book The Subprime Attention Crisis that explores the bubble of online advertising and its potential implications on web2 giants.

Links: 

Charles Fort Books

The Trade Journal Cooperative

Iron Clad Contract Management 

Maneuver and Manipulation: On the Military Strategy of Online Information Warfare

Sub-prime attention crisis by Tim Hwang

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber

TimHwang.org

Tim on Twitter

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Sean O’Connor: How Blockchain is Changing Society with Costless Transactions

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

This week’s podcast is my second SoloCast, and during the episode, I share my thoughts and some predictions on the potential impacts and implementations of web3. The blockchain can be basically defined as a cryptographic breakthrough that allows for openness but with very careful editing permissions. While web1 resulted in costless publication and web2 in costless communication, web3 allows for costless transactions. This will likely increase the number of transactions we make. Web3 can also create cheap digital scarcity which may help authenticate originality in the digital world.

Why does this all matter? My answer to this question regards the implications of web3 on the cost of trust and decentralization. Currently, the cost of trust in the market is relatively high, and with increasing transactions and original creations occurring via the blockchain, we will have to pay less for trust. Also, there will be less need for centralized parties such as brands or centralized banks, though it’s too early to say which authorities will all be affected.

Next, I make some predictions about what will happen as the blockchain gets deployed. The first to be impacted is the management of digital items, with finance and gaming among the earlier industries. Also, we will likely see digital components getting separated from analog components so that they can be managed on the blockchain. Another trend that may happen is that the blockchain may be implemented to manage atoms in the real world.

To wrap up the SoloCast, I explore the implications of web3. It will probably impact managerial culture, and DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations) will likely take over some market share from companies. I also believe the biggest networks will be bigger than the biggest companies, in part because there is no cap on involvement in web3 networks and ecosystems.

My goal in sharing my thoughts is not just to tell you what I think will happen but to provide some notions and rough directions so that you can hopefully overlay some of these lessons into your own experience and expertise. Web3 is still not easy to navigate, and it is still early in its implementation, but it provides incredible opportunity, and it is fun to get involved.

Links: 

Eric’s Blog

Eric’s blog post on digital scarcity

Eric’s Blog post on The Cost of Trust

Technological revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez

SquidDAO

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3

Simon Judd: How Index Coop is Building Crypto Index Products

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

Welcome to the second episode of Track Zach, a series of quarterly podcast episodes in which we will be following Zach’s journey as he starts and scales his private security marketplace, Conterra. We will check in on how the previous goals Zach set are going, hear about what he’s learned and how he’s pivoted, and see what he is looking to accomplish in the next quarter in the huge, fragmented, and heavily middle-manned $50 billion industry of private security. 

This quarter, Zach’s target was at least ten customers, 300 professionals to sign up on the supply side, and a new website launched by October 1st. His original thesis was to collect the supply side of the marketplace first. The website ended taking up longer than expected, which made him think he’s building the wrong thing. Zach stopped pushing for signups and though he didn’t get 300, there was a ton of word of mouth and recommendations going around. Zach was “collecting no’s” the second-best thing to yesses, and from the no’s, he was able to listen to what customers want, learn from that, and alter how they go to market. 

He highlights that one of the main issues in the security industry is a lack of trust amongst providers/security professionals and a fear of being taken advantage of. With this, he found collecting demand to be proving to be more difficult, while the supply side is coming easier, prompting him to alter his original thesis and focus more on the demand side. 

With all these observations, Zach says he gained clarity, and now things are starting to come together. He intends to focus the business on being the connective tissue and reputation for the major players in the space, and by doing so, they can cut out the major middlemen and reallocate that cash to those in the industry that should really have it. He is also shifting expectations and being clearer on focusing in on the things that will impact the business in a greater and faster way rather than the things that won’t have as much impact, and he is getting better at vetting and hiring. 

Zach explained his new technical roadmap as a process that starts with building a wheel, then a skateboard, then a scooter, then a bicycle, then a motorcycle, then a car. He explains that at this point, they have built skateboards.

During the next quarter, Zach expects to be neck-deep in fundraising and finding the right partners, and he is aiming to be confident in knowing the right amount of capital he’ll need. He predicts the team will look a little different as he continues to recruit for an operations person. For the next 90 to 180 days, he will be mainly focused on operations, and he hopes to learn exactly what a world-class security recruiting company looks like. 

Links: 

Conterra

Workrise

Zach on Twitter

Jeremiah Rogers Coaching

Attivo outsourced accounting

Ben & Jerry’s vs. Amazon: Strategy Letter

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Kevin Espiritu: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 figures by mixing Media + D2C Biz models. Oh and Poker, Pink Pineapples, and Male Models

Introducing "Track Zach" with Former Navy SEAL Zach Marshall

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

In the last episode, we discussed alternative assets, and in this episode, we take a deep dive into the career of Chris Powers, the master of one specific alternative asset: real estate. Chris began his real estate career when he was just 17 years old and has spent the last 17 years building Fort Capital, a real estate firm in Fort Worth, Texas. Chris was a hungry 17-year-old, just showed up at college, bought his first house with no money down in 2004. By the time he left college, he had 12 houses. Fast forward to 2021, just this year, along with investors, they purchased $500 million of industrial real estate in Texas. Throughout the episode, we discuss Chris’s journey in real estate, investing, recruiting, and podcasting.

We started the conversation by asking Chris who his heroes are. He shared the story of his father who went back to college to pursue medicine even after being a lawyer for 13 years. His dad taught him the valuable lessons that you only live one life and that money can only make you so happy.

Chris bought his first house at 17 when he was starting college and got into real estate as a means to make money during his studies. He was driven by constantly waking up and feeling behind and wanting to do something. Before graduating, he bought more student housing, started a property management business, and started a leasing business. He graduated in 2008, during the economic collapse, and had no choice but to continue in real estate.

From 2010 to 2015, Chris was doing a bit of everything related to real estate – he was building custom homes and spec homes, buying land, VC investing, and had a small team that he managed. Despite having some success, he realized he wasn’t compounding his business the way he wanted. Reading Good to Great by Jim Collins motivated him to narrow the focus of his business.

Chris talks about his need to be able to recruit and the importance of having a mission. We also discuss how flywheels can propel us forward, and for Chris, his flywheel is based on his podcast, Twitter, real estate business, and investors that create a virtuous cycle of growth.

Recently, Chris has transitioned out of being the CEO of Fort Capital, and he is learning how to be an owner. He is also focusing on his VC Funds and building Powers Capital, which he says will function like a family office but also will function like private equity. We wrap up the conversation discussing when enough is enough and measuring impact; Chris says he’s no longer in it for the money but rather to see what it is possible to accomplish during the one life he has.

Links: 

Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fortworthchris

The Fort Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4dLKPVTiXWmrFwd43iN2LZ 

Chris Powers & Pete Chambers Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2X8vKyUIQaIxV5Mr9J5KMv

Good to Great by Jim Collins: 

https://amzn.to/3yJV9Jc

Owned and Operated Podcast w/ Chris Powers: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/21-chris-powers-building-%24600mm-commercial-real-estate/id1560999545?i=1000527344852

Fort Ventures: https://www.fort-ventures.com/

On Deck: https://beondeck.com/

Token Economy - How the Web3 Reinvents the Internet by Shermin Voshmgir: 

https://amzn.to/3mpmHi7

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Mitchell Baldridge: Defeating Taxes, Crypto & Financial Planning

Codie Sanchez: Drug Cartels, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs

Nick Huber: How to Build Leverage, Buy Businesses, and Go Viral on Twitter

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

In this week’s episode, I talk with Phil Huber, the Chief Investment Officer at Savant Wealth Management and author of the new book The Allocator’s Edge. This episode does not include financial advice.* Rather, we talk about the advice Phil gives other people about their finances and the book he wrote about financial advice.

We begin the episode with a discussion about financial advising and what goes into becoming a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and a CFP (Certified Financial Planner). We also talk about how it’s important to find the right financial advisor as a person’s financial life becomes more complex. I ask Phil if any of his clients ever ask if he can YOLO them so hard with investing, and he discusses advisors’ business of growing and preserving wealth responsibly.

Phil’s new book focuses on alternative investments, and he gave us a glimpse of what those investments are. He demonstrates how diversifying clients’ portfolios help manage risk. Phil explains catastrophe reinsurance, and we discuss the recent proliferation of alternative investing apps and platforms and how barriers are being broken down to previously inaccessible asset classes for average investors.  

Any conversation involving alternative investments would in one way or another, end up with crypto. Phil talks about how advisors are trying to navigate crypto and the current difficulties of incorporating it into clients’ investment portfolios as well as possibilities for its inclusion in the future.

We end the episode talking about the process of writing a book and how it differs from blogging. Phil wrote The Allocator’s Edge for himself ten years ago. By reading his book, Phil believes that investors can become more comfortable discussing and using alternative assets.

Links: 

The Allocator’s Edge by Phil Huber - https://amzn.to/3m1tu1d

Savant Wealth Management - https://savantwealth.com/ 

Phil Huber’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/bpsandpieces 

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Mitchell Baldridge: Defeating Taxes, Crypto & Financial Planning

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

David Perell: Intellectual Openness & Mental Models for Success

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support!

Bram Kanstein has become a professional at fucking around on the internet. He has built dozens of products, three of which he successfully sold, and he previously spent time working for a VC and Product Hunt.

We dive right into talking about Startup Stash, which is listed as the number one product on Product Hunt. Startup Stash is described as a curated directory of resources and tools for startups. Two years after launching and going viral, he sold the micro product for Ethereum. He also discusses the first company he sold, roadtoscale.com, and says that both products’ success came from delivering value to the right audience.

Bram talks about how he discovered and fell in love with Product Hunt, which became the tool for his hobby of curating and discovering new startups. He loved Product Hunt so much that he joined the company a short few weeks after launching Startup Stash.

Bram got involved crypto when he was still a student and learned through experience. He recounts a funny crypto story of creating an account in the game, Second Life just to buy some BTC. After day trading for a period around 2013, he sold his Bitcoin and forgot about crypto for a while. In 2017, he discovered Ethereum and got back into crypto. Recently, Bram launched an NFT collection based on a color alphabet.

Currently, Bram is consulting a large company on innovation practices and validating new ideas. He is also teaching an online course, No Code MVP, and is working on his new idea, seedrounds.eu, which is aimed at improving deal flow for investors. The main TLDR he wants to share with everyone is, “fucking around the internet can pay off.”

Links: 

Product Hunt - https://www.producthunt.com/

Startup Stash - https://startupstash.com/

Microacquire - https://microacquire.com

LAUNCH Conference - https://launch.is/

Road to Scale - https://roadtoscale.com/

No Code MVP - https://nocodemvp.com/

Seedrounds.eu - https://seedrounds.eu/

Bram on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bramk

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Kevin Espiritu: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 figures by mixing Media + D2C Biz models. Oh and Poker, Pink Pineapples, and Male Models

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

David Perell: Intellectual Openness & Mental Models for Success

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

Chris says he isn’t the best poker player in the world, but he may be the most profitable. 

Pro poker player Chris Sparks is training for the highest-stakes tournament he has ever played in after a long sabbatical. He says he has already decided he is going to win, and now he is doing the necessary things to create that outcome.

What is the dynamic amongst poker friends? Chris says “frenemies” – all bets are off when the cards are on the table. Chris only plays when he expects to make money, and elaborates on the role of recreational players, stating that if you can’t recognize the fish at the poker table, you are the fish.

In the poker world, the meta skill of finding good games, of getting invited, and staying invited are critical. A good example is how Chris got invited to a famous comedian’s poker parties multiple times. Chris recounts these parties that feature full sets of dealers, cocktail waitresses, and masseuses--and it all ends when the comedian gets tired.

We talk about Chris’s consulting agency, Forcing Function, travel, and living with one of the world’s best pianists. Currently, Chris is coming out of a sabbatical and is preparing to play his largest tournament to date, with the prize pool potentially reaching seven figures. 

For Chris, everything is a bet. But with any bet, the decision should be weighed with the things surrounding it and you go in with eyes wide open.

Links

Chris’ Website - https://www.chrissparks.io/

Forcing Function - https://www.forcingfunction.com/

Chris Spark’s essay on Poker: Play to Win: Meta-Skills in High Stakes Poker

Rounders Movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r-K5dmt0Rc 

Molly’s Game movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu4UPet8Nyc 

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron - https://amzn.to/3ljtOIh 

Forcing Function Podcast - https://www.forcingfunction.com/podcast

Forcing Function Performance Library - https://www.forcingfunction.com/library 

Experiment without limits workbook - https://www.forcingfunction.com/workbook 

The Fifth Discipline Field Book by Peter Senge - https://amzn.to/3I5rrCU 

The Systems Bible by John Gall - https://amzn.to/3D3S9bj 

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Kevin Espiritu: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 figures by mixing Media + D2C Biz models. Oh and Poker, Pink Pineapples, and Male Models

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

David Perell: Intellectual Openness & Mental Models for Success

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support! 

This week’s guest is my friend, Kevin Espiritu. Kevin is the founder of Epic Gardening, the world’s biggest gardening education platform. We became good friends over the internet--Kevin and I talked about the trend of parasocial relationships and how you can get to know someone despite having little to no in-person interaction.

We talked about how Kevin transitioned from making a living out of playing poker, to building websites, to marketing and blogging, and finally, working full-time on Epic Gardening. This project went on to garner the biggest gardening audiences on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and has branched into direct-to-consumer business without any ad spend.

Kevin relates his mistake in scaling the company revenue faster than he built the team, saying he likely left growth on the table. Leveraging people was a challenge at first. He says he thinks of himself more as a content creator and not really as a writer or YouTuber or podcaster, which eventually helped ease the process of trusting new team members to take on such responsibilities as he grew the company.

Kevin is now raising PE money and making an acquisition as an independent entrepreneur. We’ve had such a wonderful conversation that goes beyond Epic Gardening and into fun stuff like how creators can implement web3 tools, Kevin's short career as a male model, pink pineapple piracy, and so much more.

Additional Resources

Epic Gardening - https://www.epicgardening.com/

Epic Gardening on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/EpicGardening

Epic Gardening on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/epicgardening

Epic Gardening on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/epicgardening/

Epic Gardening on Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@epicgardening

The Epic Gardening Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/epic-gardening-daily-growing-tips-and-advice/id1221085548

Scribe Media - https://scribemedia.com/

Missouri Star Quilt Company - https://www.missouriquiltco.com/

The Fish that Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen - https://www.amazon.com/Fish-That-Ate-Whale-Americas/dp/1250033314

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)

Nick Huber: How to Build Leverage, Buy Businesses, and Go Viral on Twitter

If you want to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can: 

>> Buy a copy of the Navalmanak: www.navalmanack.com/ 

>> Share the podcast with your friends and on social media 

>> Give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners 

>> Make a weekly, monthly, or one-time donation: https://app.omella.com/o/9Bufa 

>> Follow me on Twitter: @ericjorgenson

>> Follow @FirstsFamous on Twitter 

>> Learn more and sign up for the “Building a Mountain of Levers” course and community: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage 

I appreciate your support!