Kevin Espiritu doesn’t believe in having a green thumb. He believes that anyone can learn how to garden with the right tips and tools.
Espiritu is the founder and CEO of Epic Gardening. It is a one-stop-shop for a wide range of plant-lovers, from those looking to perfect their tomatoes to others who just want to keep their latest houseplant alive.
The company is responsible for creating video content for a variety of platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, as well as selling retail products to their viewers. On YouTube alone, Epic Gardening has just short of two-million subscribers.
But, Espiritu’s love for plants didn’t start as a business plan. In fact, it wasn’t even something that he grew up doing.
Get San Diego local news, weather forecasts, sports and lifestyle stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC San Diego newsletters.
“I grew up as like a suburban skater kid, kind of a nerd in San Diego," said Espiritu, who said his urban yard was nothing like the space he is working with now.
Espiritu grew up in San Diego, then went to UC Santa Barbara for college. He eventually graduated with a degree in accounting, but went in undeclared. When he saw his peers struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance as accounting professionals, he started to think of ways to start his own business.
Local
That’s when his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in.
“Much to my mother’s dismay, I played online poker sort of as a way to pay for school, or as a way to help support paying for school,” said Espiritu.
After this, Espiritu launched into a series of what he calls "odd jobs," including giving medical surveys at bars and creating websites, among other things.
“I also tried raising money to do a startup of my own, which didn’t really work out, and then I worked for a publishing company. I was the second employee there,” said Espiritu. “I was like, look, I need to learn how to grow a business, because clearly I’ve only gotten to a certain level on my own. I’m going to get humble and go work somewhere.”
"I need to learn how to grow a business, because clearly I've only gotten to a certain level on my own."
- Kevin Espiritu, Founder and CEO of Epic Gardening, on his early-career years
During the time period after college, Espiritu and his brother started gardening together as a way to get outside (and as a way to stop playing video games). He said he was always fascinated by science, but it was not until around 2013 when he created a hobby blog to share what he and his brother were learning.
“I was growing hydroponically, which is without soil, I didn’t even have space to grow outdoors, is the fact that depending on the light you give the plant, the water, the nutrients, the care, you’ll get a different result,” said Espiritu. “So it was sort of a way of blending the science part of my brain with the natural world that I just really enjoyed.”
Fast-forward to 2016, after a year-and-a-half at the publishing company, Espiritu decided to take the risk and make his hobby blog about gardening into his full-time job.
Epic Gardening now has 22 employees, millions of followers around the world, retail products and a plan for expansion that focuses on collaborating with content creators from different areas.
“Last year in 2021, Epic Gardening as a company did $7.4 million in revenue,” said Espiritu. ”So, that’s not profit, to be clear. Everyone always talks, ‘I did this much in revenue.’ That’s not profit, that’s not what you take home. We sell products and we have salaries and stuff.”
For perspective, he said his blog made around $17,000 in 2016 when he first started it as a business. Espiritu added they raised investment this year, which changes the equation.
Epic Gardening is on track to generate eight-figures, which is at least $10 million, in 2022.
If you’re thinking about what hobby of yours to turn into San Diego’s next multi-million-dollar company, Espiritu said there are some things to consider.
“The time has never been better to do it, because the opportunity is wide open. Anyone who has a phone can get on and make some content. Now, there’s a level of skill to that these days. It’s not like it was in the early days, where if I was talking about gardening on YouTube, I was one of the four people doing it, so everyone’s going to watch it,” said Espiritu. “There’s a lot of competition. You actually have to be good at it. You have to get a skillset for speaking, structuring content, making content, being entertaining as well as educational. It’s not enough just to say, ‘this is how basil grows.'”
While Epic Gardening has expanded and continues to do so as a dominant platform in the gardening world, Espiritu added that their mission is the same as the day it all started: to teach people how to grow.
“It’s more than a comfortable living for someone like myself who basically just wants to mess around and garden all the time. I don’t need that much money,” laughed Espiritu.
