Epic Gardening's $100+ Million YouTube Playbook with Kevin Espiritu, Founder and CEO
Epic Gardening's $100+ Million YouTube Playbook with Kevin Espiritu, Founder and CEO  
Podcast: The Peel with Turner Novak
Published On: Thu Feb 15 2024
Description: Kevin Espiritu is the founder and CEO of Epic Gardening, which is, by multiple measures, one of the largest brands in gardening on the planet.What started in 2013 as a blog has since evolved into a gardening empire spanning YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, 4,500 gardening stores, and three gardening books. Epic raised a $17.5m Series A from The Chernin Group in 2021, and according to external sources did $27 million in revenue in 2022. — — — — Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM. It’s powerful, flexible and easily configures to the unique way your startup runs, whatever your go-to-market motion. The next era deserves a better CRM. Join OpenAI, Replicate, ElevenLabs and more at https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel — — — — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (04:03) Sponsor: Attio (05:09) A deep dive on the history of YouTube (12:04) The YouTube algorithm and meta game (40:17) Using Reddit to drive initial blog traffic (46:56) How creator-led businesses have negative CAC (47:12) Why creator businesses must be very small or very large (49:38) How YouTube is changing today (50:00) Acquiring a gardening blog for $1k from an Indian VC (52:43) His process for doing acquisitions (53:38) Launching his first product (57:54) His biggest mistakes launching new products (58:30) Buying his own warehouse (59:04) Non-intuitive ways a product can influence your cost structure (1:03:00) Kevin’s approach to hiring (1:04:40) Why he raised a Series A as a YouTube creator (1:05:27) How to approach investing in AI (1:19:53) Why Kevin wrote three books (1:23:26) Why more people will grow food at home (1:25:20) How he approaches celebrity partnerships — — — — Referenced: Epic Homesteading: Your Guide to Self-Sufficiency on a Modern, High-Tech, Backyard Homestead https://www.amazon.com/Epic-Homesteading-Self-Sufficiency-High-Tech-Homestead/dp/0760383766 MrBeast https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast MrBeast's Feastables https://feastables.com/ Logan Paul x KSI PRIME https://drinkprime.com/ MatPat of @GameTheory https://www.youtube.com/channelUCo_IB5145EVNcf8hw1Kku7w Michelle Phan https://www.youtube.com/user/michellephan Ipsy: https://www.ipsy.com/ by Michelle Phan Matthew Beem https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR_J_SntqJh5eXw66d5hJxA The Chernin Group https://tcg.co/ — — — — Where to find Kevin / Epic Gardening Twitter: https://twitter.com/KevinEspiritu YouTube 1: https://www.youtube.com/user/kevinmespiritu YouTube 2: https://www.youtube.com/@epicgardening Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/