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Content as the Top, Commerce as the Foundation

How Kevin Espiritu grew Epic Gardening from $300/month into a $45M behemoth

Most people think content is the business. Write the blog posts, upload the videos, slap some ads or affiliates on top—and boom, you’ve got yourself an internet company.

That’s exactly where Kevin Espiritu started. A hobby gardener who liked tinkering with websites, he spun up Epic Gardening in 2013 as little more than a personal blog-slash-digital business card. Over time, it gained an audience. Enough readers to earn him some ad pennies, some affiliate crumbs. By 2016, he went full-time. By his own words, if it made $2,000–$5,000 a month, he’d be happy.

But then came the twist: the real business wasn’t the content. It was what the content enabled.

From Media to Commerce: The Lightbulb Moment

By 2019, Epic Gardening had traction. Articles ranked on Google, YouTube videos clocked views, and Kevin had a loyal gardening audience who trusted him.

Then Kevin spotted something: everyone kept asking about the metal raised garden beds in his photos. He hadn’t thought much of them—just a prop. But the audience wanted to know where to buy.

That moment was a revelation. Instead of being just a gardener who made media, Kevin realized:

👉 The content is the magnet. The audience is the moat. The commerce is the foundation.

So, he imported his first container of raised beds—half his bank account at the time—and put up a scrappy Shopify store. They sold out in days. By year’s end in 2019, Epic Gardening had raked in $550K in revenue, half of it from products.

Kevin thought he’d been building a media company. Nope. He’d actually built the top of funnel for a commerce giant.

Why Content as Top, Commerce as Foundation Works

Most creators stop at ads and brand deals. Kevin pushed further. And here’s the unlock:

• Content = free customer research. Every photo, video, or blog post was market validation. If the audience obsessed over a tool in frame, that hinted at demand.

• The audience = distribution. Negative CAC (customer acquisition costs). Instead of paying Facebook to find customers, Epic Gardening simply leveraged the community it already owned.

• Commerce = scale. Selling products wasn’t a side hustle, it was the business engine.

That’s why by 2020 the company leapt from media money to $2.8M in revenue. Then $7.3M in 2021. Much of it on autopilot—driven by the content that was already being made.

Small Team, Big Leverage

The wild part? At $7M+ in revenue, the team was five people:

• Kevin

• A garden assistant

• A personal assistant

• A video editor

• A writer

That’s it. Five people, seven million dollars. Lean doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Because when content is the top, and commerce is the foundation, revenue doesn’t scale linearly with headcount. Instead, every new piece of content fuels both audience growth and product demand.

The Next Layer: Scaling Through Acquisitions

With that model proven, Kevin went bigger:

• Acquired a seed tray business and folded it into Epic’s brand.

• Bought competing gardening blogs to consolidate traffic and talent.

• Partnered with The Chernin Group for $17M in funding to expand faster.

Today, Epic Gardening is targeting $40–45M in annual revenue. And still profitable.

The Founder Lesson: Don’t Stop at the Top

Kevin’s biggest insight? Media is just the top of the stack. It’s not the business.

Ads and sponsors keep the lights on. But the real foundation comes when you flip your mindset from “I sell content” to “I sell products—content is how people find and trust me.”

It’s a subtle shift with massive upside. Instead of being just another creator hoping for brand deals, you become the brand.

Takeaways for Entrepreneurs & Creators

• If you have attention, you have leverage.

• Use content to validate demand before you stock a single SKU.

• Think of ads and affiliates as training wheels. The real money is in owning the transaction.

• A small, scrappy team with the right model can outpace venture-backed giants.

🔥 Bottom line: Content isn’t the house. It’s the signpost out front that brings people in. The house itself—the solid foundation—is commerce.

Kevin Espiritu figured that out in his backyard, and it turned a $300 blog into a $45M empire.

Would you like me to also spin this into a framework article—like a clear step-by-step model (e.g. “The Espiritu Framework for Turning Content Into Commerce”) that other creators/founders could steal? That would make it more actionable for your newsletter audience.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwmD2GRz_xw