The following interviews and customer success profiles are a small sampling of Microgreens Business course members who have completed the income challenge.
The income challenge was an offer we make during many of our webinars to get more people to take action, implement the course materials, and build successful businesses. Once they reached a certain dollar amount in sales that they could prove with invoices or accounting reports, they were given a complete refund on their purchase price of the course.
We have done many, many interviews over the last couple of years, and have included some recent ones below that we think you will enjoy. We will update this page from time to time with different interviews for you to enjoy.
Huge congrats to all the rock stars below and all our other past winners!
Mike Bradley
Mike Bradley from Bradley Farms Limited. Mike has been in business for years doing different ventures, and when he found us on YouTube he decided this looked like a really cool business and he would give it a try. Also, his wife got amazing results with helping her blood sugar and eating pea shoots, so she really wanted to get microgreens into more people’s hands!
Mike has since brought on an employee to help him grow the business and is getting his daughter involved as well. He hopes to one day hand off the entire business to his kids.
Mike started out small by growing microgreens in his basement, and he quickly outgrew that space based on immediate demand. He setup a new space in an outbuilding and is now planning to setup a greenhouse so he can continue to expand production.
Mike has TONS of experience as a businessman, so when he realized immediately that there was huge demand for his microgreens and he would want to expand production, he decided to join my online course Microgreens Business in order to get some training and all the tools and documents etc he would need to scale the business.
I was flabbergasted when Mike told me my course was the best money he’s spent in his life!
Mike started in the fall of 2018 and pretty much immediately had lots of demand for his products, so he has been steadily ramping up his business and production capabilities since. Based on my recommendation of taking things slow, Mike has been going slow and steady trying his best to build his business in a sustainable way.
Bradley Farms Limited is located in Sweetwater, Tennessee which is about a half hour outside of Knoxville. He is selling his products to several chefs doing deliveries on Fridays.
Mike thought the business looked cool and it has far surpassed his expectations. He also wanted to get in this business because it looked fun, and that’s exactly what he has experienced. He is having a TON of fun running this business and see’s it as something he will continue to do for the rest of his life.
Here is an awesome email I received from Mike with some details about his microgreens journey:
Brent O’Connell
Brent O’Connell is a seasoned entrepreneur that owns a wellness center in Coeur d’Alene, ID. He was already a fan of eating microgreens and understood their health benefits, so he thought it would be great to offer them to the current members of his wellness center.
He began to experiment with growing and decided to shorten his learning curve by getting some professional training through my Microgreens Business online course.
After some successful experiments, he’d done enough to know he loves it and want to offer it to his customers, so Brent pre-sold a microgreens subscription program to several of his wellness club members.
For me, this interview really stuck home the point that quick decisive action yields quick and significant results. It also shows the potential of just reaching one market channel successfully. Maybe you have a health club in your city and can partner up with the owner to offer a weekly or bi-weekly microgreens subscription?
I also love how Brent has used the course materials to easily train other people to operate the business for him. If you have the capital and market potential to leverage employees from the very beginning, this can be a great way to create an additional revenue stream without much input from you. It’s a pretty easy business to train others in once you get your processes down (which is what we teach in the course!).
I really hope you enjoyed this conversation with Brent, I know I did!
A kind review I received from Brent:
Suzanne Luke
Suzanne started her urban farm in Tyler, TX and grows microgreens and combines them with other vegetables, fruits, and nuts and packages them up with salad dressings and delivers to customers all around town including individuals, offices, and gyms. She does also sell to restaurants, but the salad delivery has become her main revenue driver.
It’s really inspiring to hear her story of building a business as a single mom of two young kids, and embracing the learning opportunities that come with running a business. It’s cool that her kids are seeing her going after her dreams, a lesson that will no doubt have an impact on their confidence later in life.
She has really followed the market demand and adapted her business on the fly, going from focusing on just microgreens to focusing on ready made salads.
I think this is another really cool opportunity for others who want to adapt or expand their microgreens business, maybe packaged salads are the way to go?
I thought her insight about how your activities will fill the time you give it was really valuable. You can absolutely start this business even if you have a part-time or even full-time job (I’ve seen it!). Having to be super efficient with your time will force you to create dialed in systems and focus on the highest leverage activities.
I loved this interview with Suzanne who just radiated such positive energy!
Here are affiliate links to a couple great books mentioned in the interview:
4 Hour Work Week: https://amzn.to/34t9o4w
Built To Sell: https://amzn.to/2S6eQI8
Here is an email I received from Suzanne that just made my day!
Nikos Rigas
I often get the question from people in foreign countries if they will still find the course valuable? I thought it would be fun to feature an interview with someone where English isn’t their first language, so you can see that they still got a lot from the course and are experiencing some sweet success.
Nikos is in Athens, Greece and decided to launch a microgreens business after learning about permaculture and natural farming. He wanted to turn this newfound knowledge into a profitable business, and he saw microgreens as the best place to start because the feedback & learning curve is fairly quick (don’t have to wait until the next year to implement what you learn!) and return on investment was very high.
So he found a partner who had a greenhouse setup and talked him into letting him convert one entire greenhouse into microgreens production. Business picked up pretty quickly considering not many people even know about microgreens in Greece, and they are still just mostly used as a garnish. Most of the chefs he originally approached didn’t even know what microgreens were.
Many of the people said no the first time around, but he keeps following up and getting the word out and as more restaurants starting using them, he could mentioned his current customers for credibility, and when the other chefs hear who is using them, they don’t want to fall behind the curb so they start using them as well.
Nikos is growing a TON of varieties – 25 to be exact! That’s incredible for someone just starting out, and although I don’t recommend it for most beginners, it’s working for him, so maybe you should just ignore me, lol!
I really hope you enjoyed hearing Nikos unique experience growing microgreens in Greece.
Nathaniel Scott
Nathaniel Scott is growing and selling microgreens and sprouts in Tarzana California, just on the outskirts of Los Angeles. His farm is called Creation Family Farms.
Nathaniel has been into farming and growing vegetables for most of his life, and after several years away from farming, he was encouraged by a mentor to get back into farming and turn it into a living. They started out with a traditional market garden growing a wide variety of produce.
Eventually they introduced microgreens and they have been so profitable and popular that they quit focusing on all the other produce crops and put all their energy into microgreens. Of course, it wasn’t always easy which is why they decided to sign up for my course and get some good training. He’s now successfully growing over 20 varieties – incredible!
They have a lot of really cool unique things including focusing on selling live flats and growing a number of specialty mixes. They also give people a discount when they bring back the trays each week. This is a great idea and results in an increased recurring customer base and also reduces plastic waste.
They did some restaurant sales at first and didn’t like selling to that market as much as the farmers market, so they have stopped that sales stream for now but are considering picking it back up in the future.
It’s also really neat and interesting to see how Nathaniel applies love and spirituality directly to his growing process, a very unique thing you don’t see most growers doing, but I’ve heard many times it can be beneficial for the plants with reports of increasing yields, etc. If music and prayer is good for humans, it’s got to be good for microgreens right?
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Nathaniel. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Check out Nathaniel and Creation Family Farms on Instagram.
Don DiLillo
Don has built an amazing business, Finest Foods NY, on Long Island, NY that is focused around home delivery. His business is very streamlined with lots of great systems in place.
You may already be well aware of Don because the above interview has become quite a popular video on my public YouTube channel.
I have kept in close contact with Don over the last couple years as he’s grown the business and he keeps getting more and more dialed in. In addition to microgreens, he grows sprouts and even sells DIY sprouting kits.
Don’s customers place recurring orders with a $20 minimum order, than he delivers straight to their doorstep. He uses text messaging software to track deliveries and notify customers exactly when the product is delivered.
Don developed his home delivery program at first by pitching his service to customers of his farmers market stand. Nowadays he relies more on word-of-mouth, social media marketing, and getting local press.
I encourage you to check out what he’s doing by following along on his Instagram and if you want to see how he takes orders for his home delivery program, go here to see his sign up form.
Robert Stewart
I really enjoyed this interview with Robert Stewart of Stewart’s Microgreens in Port Orange, Florida. Robert converted one of the rooms in his home by laying plastic over the carpet and running a hose from a sink and next thing you know his business is really taking off.
I love the story of Robert talking over the business idea with his wife and explaining how the worse case scenario is that they will be eating lots of good microgreens, best case scenario is the business will take off, and that’s exactly what happened!
I love how he really took my course training seriously and followed my process step by step, which made it really easy for him to make quick sales and get dialed in on the growing. Robert shares some great information about approaching chefs as well, how to bring in your samples, and drop off your fresh sheet, etc. He basically made a list of all the 3, 4, and 5 star restaurants in the area and he has approached them methodically.
He’s also branched out to grocery stores and has an awesome arrangement where they pretty much take all of the extra product each week. Robert has been very humble how he’s worked with them, taking responsibility for any issues that come up, and making sure to make things right.
When I spoke to him in the interview, he mentioned his wife is already able to take days off work and he thought it wouldn’t be long at all before she would be able to quit her job and they could both just do microgreens full time. That was so amazing to hear, as that’s the dream for many people – I hope you found that inspiring as well!
Josh Guess
Josh is an OG in the microgreens world! He got into the industry very early on, and is still trucking and making a full-time living from microgreens all these years later.
It originally started as an aquaponics farm and he began doing microgreens on aquaponics through a sub-irrigation system. With his greenhouse system and the nutrient rich water, he grows some really full microgreens with large true leaves on the crops.
The cool thing about Josh is even though he’d already been doing this for years before finding my information online, he still is always trying to learn more. So he signed up for my course this last year and has now setup an indoor setup similar to mine to test against his current greenhouse/aquaponics way of doing things.
Josh’s main market is selling to chefs and through the farmers market, but since taking my course he’s become really excited about started a subscription microgreens business and that will be a big focus of his for 2020.
Josh is a fan of Lean Farming methodologies, which I have recommended over and over to people in the past. If you want to look more into that, here is an excellent book on the topic: The Lean Farm (affiliate link)
There are some great pictures of his microgreens with their large true leaves on his website: https://www.rootedfarm.com/
Shane Avery
This is the third time I’ve got on a zoom video call with Shane. The first time he contacted me and was struggling to build the business (this was the very early days). The second time we got on a call, he had started to really crush it and had just quit his full time job as a mason. So I asked him if he’d come on a third time to let people know exactly how the course has helped him. This is a great interview to watch if you are not sure if you’d be a good fit to join my Microgreens Business online course.
Shane runs Saratoga Urban Farm in Saratoga Springs, NY. Soon after moving to the Saratoga Springs area, he became dishearted by the work he was doing and wanted to find a fulfilling career. He came across my YouTube channel and something deep inside resonated, he know he wanted to get in the business. Another big part of him getting unto the business was his experience of going through the Self Authoring program created by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Shane’s success at the farmers market really picked up when he started offering sample packs with multiple different varieties in one mix, as well as wheatgrass shots, both individual shots or a full weekly supply.
Another really cool aspect to Shane’s journey is that once he started finding success with his microgreens business, he carried over that confidence by launching two other enterprises. One sells CBD oil, which you can see offered on his main farm website here, and the other business is selling Jun Kombucha, which you can learn all about on his website https://junbucha.com/.
Shane seems happier than ever when I talk to him nowadays, and finding a fulfilling career path is no doubt a big part of that change.
Ryan Peters
Ryan decided to start Good Ground Farm in Pipe Creek, TX after retiring from the US Air Force. He got the call to farm through prayer, and after buying 10 acres he began to educate himself to decide how to create a source of income from the farm.
He found my YouTube channel which made him want to focus on microgreens and that became a big part of his farm very quickly. In fact his first time at the farmers market he nearly sold out. He still does the farmers market and has expanded into a home delivery program and is about to add on restaurant sales.
My favorite quote from the interview was “microgreens are by far the most profitable product that we have”. And it’s so neat that customers are showing up at the farmers market and going straight to his booth immediately!
It’s really neat how this started out just as a fun way to supplement his military retirement income and it just quickly took off beyond his expectations. If people are growing these businesses quickly almost by accident, image what YOU can do if you really have the intention to scale a business? There is just so much potential in microgreens, it’s almost unbelievable!
