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Grow Good tells the story of purpose-driven leaders who grow their businesses while staying true to mission and values. Hosted by growth and brand strategist Anne Oudersluys, each episode features candid conversations with CEOs and founders about real decisions they make and how they operate across strategy, product, marketing, people, and scale. This show provides practical, thoughtful insight for leaders who want to grow with intention.
[00:00:00] ANNE: Welcome to Grow Good podcast for leaders who wanna grow their business while staying true to their mission and values. I'm Anne [00:00:10] Oudersluys, a growth and brand strategist with over two decades of experience helping grow purpose-driven brands. In each episode, we go behind the scenes with CEOs and [00:00:20] founders to unpack the real decisions about how they scale.
I hope you leave inspired and equipped to grow Good. Mike, welcome to Grow. Good. Thank you so much for [00:00:30] being here.
[00:00:31] MIKE: Thank you, Anne. I love the work you do and what you stand for, and it's a real pleasure and honor to be talking to you today.
[00:00:39] ANNE: Well, I [00:00:40] wanna jump in by painting a bit of a picture for how breakthrough the work is that you do at 80 acres and how you grow your [00:00:50] produce.
So can you give us a bit of a picture for what does the technology look like to grow your products from [00:01:00] seed to the shelf?
[00:01:01] MIKE: Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's interesting, we have a lot of videos online and uh, on our website, and we're definitely not trying to [00:01:10] duplicate what is happening outdoors. We think nature is very resilient, but it's highly inefficient.
We think there's a lot of problems [00:01:20] outdoors with produce and consistency, temperature, climate change, a variety of other things. So we try to capture that best moment to nature. And apply it to plants [00:01:30] every time, because different plants, different crops need different conditions to grow optimally. So instead of duplicating what you have outdoors, we actually bring [00:01:40] these fields, if you will, completely indoors, and we layer 'em on a top of each other.
So a field on top of field, top of field. But every one of those fields has [00:01:50] perfect environmental conditions for the crop that has grown there. What we do is we take. Coco corn, peat moss, and clean soils. We create a microbiota [00:02:00] around it. We add all the elements that are required to grow from nutrients. We add CO2 to our system.
We [00:02:10] add lighting and we add obviously water, and we create this perfect photosynthetic capability for plants to do it consistently. And then we stress the plans to get. [00:02:20] Tremendous nutritional density out of our plants. And when you think about it, what is food as medicine? What is medicine? Medicine is these higher [00:02:30] levels of phytochemicals and nutrients.
Not too high because you get toxicity, obviously, but it is, it is all these secondary metabolites and we eat and we process and we absorb 'em in [00:02:40] our bodies. We get tremendous benefits.
[00:02:43] ANNE: So you have a clean soil, and I realize you don't use exactly soil, but sort of a clean, [00:02:50] growing environment, and then you're able to adapt light conditions, water conditions, nutrients, and what does that mean [00:03:00] for the end product that the consumer buys?
[00:03:03] MIKE: The end product can be grown. As close to the point of consumption as possible, which is critical [00:03:10] because in US average miles that we use are 2,400 miles to get food from farm to the table. And there's a lot of steps that are non-value added but can [00:03:20] just harm the food You get the freshest product grown closest to the point of consumption that is very nutrient dense.
That is tasty, [00:03:30] and if you add the breeding component to it, because. Most crops have been bred traditionally to handle these lawn and [00:03:40] supply chains and not to die in transfer and to grow in a bunch of environments that temperatures fluctuating it's disease prone. So the [00:03:50] crops, by definition, are bred to fight off those diseases and to handle long transportation cycles.
We're working on breeding crops. For [00:04:00] nutrition, for flavor, for texture. We wanna get people to eat this produce. Eat your vitamins again, right? Don't just take it in a pill form. [00:04:10] Do something that works, because when our bodies take pills, we don't absorb, but process it the same way. That is incredibly well known.
It's just a more natural, [00:04:20] healthier, cleaner, tastier product that can be grown consistently.
[00:04:24] ANNE: I have a personal story that I can recount. Having visited one of your plants, you had a [00:04:30] grand opening of the Florence, Kentucky plant, and so I got to go on a tour and there was a portion of the tour where there were [00:04:40] trays of seedlings being moved into larger containers so that because you're very good at protecting space and growing in the [00:04:50] right size of environment.
And to do this sort of transplanting, there were these two little prongs like chopsticks that would go into each little seedling and in [00:05:00] unison lift up all a hundred of them and move them into another tray. And I noticed a few of them were dropping. While they were midair, and I thought at the time, [00:05:10] oh, well they must be slippery.
They're just kind of falling off of these chopsticks. And then whoever was the tag or the farmer was explaining said, oh no. [00:05:20] What's happening is that we're taking a photo of every single individual leaf for each individual seedling, measuring it against the spec and [00:05:30] determining is it. On target for growth and or not.
And if not, it would discard it and only preserve the ones that were to [00:05:40] spec. And therefore, you can imagine if you do this every five days, or the frequency of which you transplant, you have a perfectly. Grown product Exactly. With the [00:05:50] nutrition that you want, the size that you want, the texture. I've told that story to probably 30 people and nobody can really believe that some of the methods that you use to grow, but it's just a small example I [00:06:00] thought of how you're able to use technology and get such a consistent product in the end.
[00:06:06] MIKE: Yeah, no, thank you. You're describing our TTA transplanter. TTA is a great [00:06:10] company in Holland that is a good partner of ours and they. Uh, we work together. They have their standard equipment they use and then we modify it to our needs and they work with us on developing [00:06:20] a lot of latest technology.
They're part of our field lab partners in, in Holland, and that's one of a thousand examples of how we apply essentially advanced [00:06:30] manufacturing techniques to do what is right for the product because then the day we have to hit the right unit economics, right? If we can't get to the right unit economics.
We can tell people we're growing [00:06:40] sustainably, we're doing all these great things for the world. We're trying to use less plastic. We're blah, blah, blah. It can give you a hundred reasons why this is a better, smarter way to farm for the [00:06:50] future. But if our crops are more expensive, you know, we're not trying to grow lettuce for the rich.
We're trying to grow super veggies for humanity and bring this around the world, [00:07:00] and we need to, we need to do it with the right unit economics. So you have to. Do a lot of these things. We can talk about AI application to manufacturing, not in a way to convince [00:07:10] investors that, oh my God, they're using ai.
Their valuation should be higher, but in a way that we're solving problems that were deemed unsolvable. Just a couple years [00:07:20] ago. But it's also not about technology, right? People don't need tech. I think that was one of the big problems, our industry early on. It's about creating a consumer brand.
Technology's supposed to enable our [00:07:30] ability to produce superior products, and it's so superior. Products that have people coming back and if technology, you know, one of the big problems they were in Sierra Leon. We all kept, we were [00:07:40] all so excited about our technology. People forgot about a lot of other pioneers, forgot about.
The consumers, thank God we're working with folks like you and you know, Becca and our phenomenal marketing teams, [00:07:50] Leah and others who will never let me forget about the consumer.
[00:07:53] ANNE: Take us back to the beginning. So you've been in food for a long time and you were working for [00:08:00] a large food company, and I think the story is that you were, the company was having some financial difficulties and you had to go around to individual farmers.
And tell them that you [00:08:10] were not going to be able to pay them. Can you tell us a little bit about what that experience taught you about some of the problems that farmers experience and what was wrong with kind of [00:08:20] the big food industry?
[00:08:21] MIKE: Sure, sure, sure. And it's, it's close, but if you don't mind, I'll just, uh,
[00:08:26] ANNE: yeah, correct,
[00:08:26] MIKE: correct to me.
Yeah. Um, I've been in the food [00:08:30] industry, as you mentioned, for 36 years. I started quite young. I've been fortunate enough to grow through operations, supply chain. I've had. A lot of good marketing sales experience. But [00:08:40] at the end of the day, this was a second bankruptcy of a company that I was invited to take over and fix.
So when we were fixing this company, the reason [00:08:50] the company got in trouble and got shut down is, by the way, there's never one reason, right? There's always a lot of reasons. But in this particular case, there were, [00:09:00] um, some environmental. Issues that the company has caused, which caused at the time Arkansas Department of Environmental [00:09:10] Quality, which this particular facility was in Arkansas to shut the plant down, and they were treating it like a nuclear waste site because there was fish kill in [00:09:20] Oklahoma in the Illinois River Basin that caused the shutdown of an Arkansas facility.
And that's when we first came in. The company was in trouble. Suppliers weren't paid. [00:09:30] Farmers weren't paid, and a lot of these suppliers were really hurt. Well, what we first had to do is understand why was it that a company that is just washing [00:09:40] vegetables being treated like a nuclear waste site, and how can washing vegetables cost fish kill in the adjacent state?
We realized that there was such an over [00:09:50] application of fertilizer on most of these farms. That when you're just washing a dirt off, but white potatoes, sweet potatoes, while you're cleaning these [00:10:00] products, you're dumping so many chemicals onto the soils. It was a rainy season and the soil wasn't absorbing the nutrients, and there were so many of these nutrients that the stuff was [00:10:10] washed off into the rivers and it went down the river bed and caused.
Phosphorus and algae and a variety of other things, and which sucks out the oxygen and in the narrowest [00:10:20] spots, fish couldn't make through it. And all of that was traced back to this, you know, we were like bombing the river by washing potatoes and that's when a light bulb [00:10:30] went on that look, farmers are the hardest working folk.
They're trying to do the right thing. It's not like they're maliciously spending more money on fertilizer to dump it in to cause environmental [00:10:40] harm. This is just the way of the world of big farming. You're trying to manage massive lands. You're being told what to put on. You have somebody come sample your [00:10:50] soil, you have somebody else come, do this and that, and you're dumping these, these chemicals on, and they cost tremendous, tremendous damage to the environment long term.
So that [00:11:00] was the first to understand. And then we did start going back to all the farmers and talking about. You know, police start planting for us and they trusted us. We talked through it. We [00:11:10] got back in the business, but we learned a lot about. What these farmers are dealing with. We needed a way to reconnect our food and our communities [00:11:20] back to the food system.
We needed a way to get these young farmers to come in, modern farmers and start growing these products. And we needed not only green thumbs, but green [00:11:30] thumbs with ability to, you know, kind of flying drones, understand technology and marry the two, marry crop science with automation, with ai, with fluid dynamics and air flows [00:11:40] and engineering.
And we build a system that creates this incredible environment for the crops you control everything. 24 year olds will know more about farming [00:11:50] than any 60-year-old farmer anywhere in the world because the system, it's not that they're smarter or better than any other farmer, it's that the system repeats.
We [00:12:00] cycle so many times. Instead of just building a gut and having wisdom, which most farmers around the world have, they're phenomenal. But we actually can translate [00:12:10] that into knowledge so you know how to act in a different situations instead of guessing and hoping, because there's so many different environmental conditions, you can't control 'em.[00:12:20]
[00:12:20] ANNE: Let's transition to your purpose. It kind of builds on this learning and how your, some of the things you just talked about, the environmental runoff. Tell me a little bit, how would you [00:12:30] describe the purpose of 80 Acres?
[00:12:33] MIKE: Yeah. You know, on one hand our why is still exactly what it was When we started the company.
We wanted to [00:12:40] produce fresh, clean produce, grown sustainably in the communities by the communities. For the communities. We want to reconnect people to their food. We want [00:12:50] to do things in a better, cleaner way, and we wanted to grow higher quality food. So you pay the farmer, not doctor. It was pretty simple.
We also wanted to create a company [00:13:00] that we'd want our kids, my co-founder and I, Tisha, we wanted to create a company that we would want. I wanted my kids in there. Tisha wants her kids working there. [00:13:10] We wanted an ethical company that treated people right, that did the right thing for the right reason.
Those were kind of our whys. We've been through a lot of different cycles. We've run a lot of different companies together and [00:13:20] separately. We wanted to build a company that made money, but also serve the community and did the right thing for the consumers. And at the end of the day, we believed if you do that and if you live [00:13:30] right, good things happen and things kind of work themselves out.
I don't think our why has changed all that much. We have realized. The technology we have [00:13:40] developed is applicable to many other verticals that we can do much more than we originally thought. It's not just about growing the healthiest, best produce. We can now [00:13:50] get into ingredients. We can now get into nutraceuticals.
We supposed that we could grow much higher crops with much higher nutrient density. Now we've been able to [00:14:00] prove it.
[00:14:01] ANNE: You mentioned that your initial purpose is expanding or might be expanding in terms of the applications of your [00:14:10] technology and your business model to apply to all these different verticals.
I'm sure there's unlimited opportunity of where you could go. What [00:14:20] filter do you use to decide on what are the right strategic choices for how you're going to grow?
[00:14:27] MIKE: That's the toughest question, right? And, and [00:14:30] I'm a relatively old man here, so I get to answer because I'll answer very differently than I would've 10 years ago.
The toughest part of this job [00:14:40] is the fact that you have to say no to most things, right? There's a lot of brilliant ideas, but you can't execute 'em all, and you gotta stay focused, and [00:14:50] it is very, very difficult to. Determine what you end up backing, and I think it's difficult. I'm not gonna evade your question, I'll answer it, [00:15:00] but.
I don't have a simple rule of thumb. I will tell you that I believe that organizations are living organisms and that that answer is a different answer. [00:15:10] Depends on where we are, what our needs are, how developed our technology is, how ready the industry is, what the consumer needs are, where we can lead more easily, and where we, we believe we [00:15:20] can break in and create a pull versus where do we have to keep fighting, fighting, fighting to push things through.
I think there's a lot of strategy involved. In, what do you go [00:15:30] after? I do know that sometimes as a startup, you play Moneyball and you throw a hundred things at the wall and you see what sticks, [00:15:40] and I believe that that's an essential entrepreneurial path before you have something and then you evolve into a company [00:15:50] that it makes sense to go for a big idea.
And sometimes you have to bet a company on a big idea or two.
[00:15:57] ANNE: Was there an example in your analogy of [00:16:00] Moneyball, where you threw something out and it didn't stick?
[00:16:05] MIKE: Oh my God. 90% of our early stuff didn't stick. Maybe more. We were looking at [00:16:10] selling farms. We were talking to everybody and uh, most people were just milking us for information, wasting our time because they weren't ready.
And it was good for us. Right. [00:16:20] It was good for us to learn because. To answer your particular question, I have to almost talk about the development of the produce industry because we weren't ready. And my big belief [00:16:30] with the problem the CA has had is there's been so much focus on tech that there's been no focus in the consumer.
And at the end of the day, it's all about customer. It's all about truly building a brand. [00:16:40] In a produce industry, you used to have products that were sold in the wet wall. Very wasteful, very labor intensive. You have to take that product off and clean it and put it back, [00:16:50] and you don't want it to dry. It looks pretty when everything's going well, but it's tremendous work for the retailer.
[00:16:54] ANNE: And the wet wall is the little part, the part of the store where it's kind of misting all the time.
[00:16:59] MIKE: Yeah, well [00:17:00] now it's mist. And before it's misting. Right? When it's not mist and it's dry now, now it's, and you introduce water, even if the water is clean and you have chemicals in there, you know, what do you want in your produce?
We all think that, oh [00:17:10] my God, it's fresh, it's beautiful, it looks great, but it's the lowest moving part of the produce section. Mm-hmm. And even though it looks good and we all see it and we feel fresh and great, it's more of a visual [00:17:20] stimulant. Some people buy it, but generally that is not the best, healthiest stuff.
And it's incredibly inefficient and wasteful for retailers to have that section. [00:17:30] And then baked salads came in and when baked salads came in, instead of selling it for 69, 9 9 cents a bunch. Things move down to two 49 cent to 2 49, 2 99 for a seven [00:17:40] ounce bag, and people loved it. It's incredibly expensive, but now we think, but the reason that nobody screamed is there was consumer value created.
The value for retailers [00:17:50] was less waste, less handling. You get it out of the back room, you plan a gram, you stick it on a shelf. It's easy, it's clean. No more maintenance until it ages [00:18:00] out. You pull it off, you discount it, you pull it off, you're done. Simple and clean for the consumer. It was pre cut for you.
It's a lot more convenient. You know, you could see what [00:18:10] you're getting. It was already mixed for you. So people bought it. A whole new category was created. All new planograms were set. Well, we, that was from fifties going to mid eighties now go to early two [00:18:20] thousands and Mark Reever with Steve Taylor, Bruce Taylor's brother.
You know, they come out, they go from Fresh Express and they create Organic Girl, and these guys essentially start creating a clamshell. [00:18:30] Brilliant. Right clamshell with triple washed product. Organic Girl is brilliant, right? You wanna talk about one of the only brands in produce, I'd like to say, other than us, than 80 [00:18:40] acres, but they started it, right?
It's organic. The packaging I think is iconic. It looked great. And the triple wash concept, I mean talk about marketing is best. What is triple wash? [00:18:50] Triple wash is a bath of chlorine to wash off all the crap that comes to our products in the field. And then you take it through two more baths of water to wash off the [00:19:00] poison that you just put on your product.
But to the consumer, it sounds clean. I don't have to wash. Look how convenient and a clamps shell went up from that 2 49 to 3 99. [00:19:10] 4 99, you go to the coast, 5 99, whatever you wanna charge. Nobody bitched. A whole new category in exists now, and that's majority of the [00:19:20] produce. Baked cells are smaller, wet walls are a lot smaller.
They still exist for a variety of purposes, for restaurants, for food service, for other things. But most people are buying things in clamshells. It's convenient. [00:19:30] Price is much higher. Nobody complains. Ca comes in. We're all, you know, a bunch of tech bros come in and we all talk about our technology. We're so in love with our technology.
[00:19:38] ANNE: Can you explain CEA. [00:19:40]
[00:19:40] MIKE: CA is a controlled environment, agriculture, so greenhouses and vertical farms. We're all so in love with our technology that everybody just talks about [00:19:50] technology and how it's gonna change the world, which is great. It's a great why, but the problem is what are you giving the consumer?
Consumer looks at the shelf, they have two seconds to make a decision. It's the same stuff that everybody else has, but you [00:20:00] gotta pay off your te. So you either are charging more without creating any value or explaining to consumer what they're getting because it is a superior product, by the way, that's [00:20:10] coming outta greenhouses.
And the right vertical farm is even more superior, but nobody explains it. There's no focus in the consumer. So the question is, [00:20:20] what our industry is lacking is how do you use the technology that we have built, which is incredible technology to truly offer the customer differentiated product. [00:20:30] A real differentiator product.
How do we drive value for the consumer? What does the consumer really want? Freshness, nutrient density, right? They [00:20:40] want to put it in their fridge, and if they go on vacation, they come back, it still looks good. They want the shelf life back. The shelf life should not be with these inefficient 15 step supply chains.[00:20:50]
The shelf life should be given back to the consumer. The product is to look good when, when a consumer comes in and you know, I've watched behavior of thousands and thousands of shoppers over the [00:21:00] last 10 years, and the first thing they do when they pick up a bag, either a bag or a clam shelf salad, is they flip it over to see where you're hiding the rotten leaves.
There's no trust. A brand has to [00:21:10] have consumer promise. It has to deliver value. You look at the produce section. They're no brands, they're just labels. It's products coming from the [00:21:20] same farms brought to the same type of processing facilities that get a label. Taylor Farms, Dole Del Monte, whatever [00:21:30] label you wanna put on, it's exactly the same product going through Exactly same stuff.
There's no promise, there's no difference. Today. You get it. It could last in your fridge for, um, you know, for a day tomorrow to [00:21:40] last for three weeks. It's solely random. It's, it's a crap shoot, right? There's no consumer promise. It's the last white space in retail Today is the produce section [00:21:50] and the job of controlled environ and agriculture.
If we wanna survive as an industry is we have to find that next level. I.
[00:21:57] ANNE: Let me pause you there for a sec, Mike. So [00:22:00] those were some of the challenges that you highlighted were some of the things that when we started, first started working together maybe seven or eight years ago, and you had a laundry list of benefits that you guys could talk [00:22:10] about from nutrition, freshness, local sustainably grown.
I mean, it went on and on and on and I, and I think at that time the opportunity was to figure out. What does the [00:22:20] consumer really care about? What's the number one thing that's gonna drive their purchase? And then what is the core thing that you guys really build your brand around? And at the time, what [00:22:30] we heard, which is still true, that you mentioned freshness, was that's why people buy, produce, that it is fresh and.
Your [00:22:40] product was differentiated because it stayed fresh longer, and I think that's a, a reason that so many people [00:22:50] prefer and see it as a superior product. Certainly flavor and nutrition are core components of that, but I ordered too much 80 acres lettuce yesterday and we're [00:23:00] going outta town this weekend.
[00:23:01] MIKE: Thank you, by the way.
[00:23:02] ANNE: I was thinking, oh my gosh, there's never
[00:23:05] MIKE: too much Thank you though.
[00:23:07] ANNE: I'm gonna have to make like three salads a day to use it all [00:23:10] up, and then it dawned on me. Oh, I forgot. It lasts over a week. Like I can go away, come home and it will still be fresh in my
[00:23:18] MIKE: fridge. No, no, no. And go with the [00:23:20] original premise.
Make three salads a week. Absolutely. Invite friends. That was the right answer. I love that answer so much more.
[00:23:27] ANNE: So in terms of consumer, like why do people [00:23:30] care? Back to your point about uncovering, what does the technology enable for the consumer such that you can charge a premium price, or at least you have.
You know, you have greater share [00:23:40] of the category that you're really delivering a benefit that's meaningful. They don't have to throw it out. They can be confident that they will not, you know, that they'll use it when they need it and it'll be [00:23:50] ready and not bad in the fridge. So we've sort of discovered along the way, and I know that, you know, obviously you see so much of that day to day with your consumers.
[00:23:59] MIKE: Yeah. [00:24:00] Well, and Ann, first of all, I mean, huge thanks for that because I think you're being incredibly humble. I mean, you really. Helped guide us a lot through that process and we very much appreciate, I think it was [00:24:10] one of the key points of difference for us. But that does go back to some of, to answer that question you asked about what is the filter?
How do you apply it? Well, we [00:24:20] knew that, again, I think I told you a story when we were selling corn in a can for 50 cents a can. It was easy to be a marketing executive. [00:24:30] At that company. Right. And I'm not taking anything away from the brilliant folks that did the work, but the point is, you only have one or two benefits, you know, harvested at [00:24:40] the peak of ripeness, and it's cheap and it's readily available, right?
I mean, there aren't a lot of benefits. Our problem was exactly as you said, when we start [00:24:50] doing this, there's a hundred benefits, but you start talking about a hundred benefits and it's distracting. You're all over the place. And the question is. What are the two that you're gonna stand [00:25:00] behind that really matter, no matter what?
Freshness, no pesticides, until we can introduce super veggies, which we're about to, but you know. But the point is, [00:25:10] until we create that next level, that next category in produce, which is what we have been dying to do, and what we think our goal is, we have to create that next [00:25:20] elevated level of category.
We have to change the conversation.
[00:25:23] ANNE: So for a leader of a company who is in a category that is somewhat [00:25:30] commoditized, what would you say you've learned about how to de commoditize a category? What advice would you give?
[00:25:38] MIKE: Yeah, I think if [00:25:40] you understand why it is commoditized, in our case, it is very obvious.
All the product is truly random and the same. [00:25:50] So. The question is if you can match what does cause of commoditization and what does a consumer really want and desire, and it is [00:26:00] clear what the consumers want. It is very clear what the consumers want. The question is, is there a technology solution? Is there a supply chain solution?
Is there a marketing branding solution? [00:26:10] What is a solution to change the game from just playing the price game, the race to the bottom that, oh, it's a commodity. I'm gonna try to do whatever I can. [00:26:20] To reduce my price by 10 cents to outpace my competitor. Number two, the biggest aha moment we had is we've looked at price elasticity curves of [00:26:30] all of our products.
They're not that elastic. You're not gonna drive consumption by dropping a price for a dime. Like my favorite headline is Nobody eats more Salads because it's [00:26:40] 10 cents less. Our job is to drive consumption. Our job is to get the product to taste so good that they want to put it in their bodies and their mouth and their kids' bodies.
It's better for them. It's better for [00:26:50] the community. It's better for everybody. It's not a 10 cent question. The whole focus is wrong. It's the easiest question. It's intellectually lazy now, by the way, not by [00:27:00] everybody. Why did we get there? Because there's a lot of monopolistic instincts, and if you're Google, then you want to drive the price down and keep innovation away and drive [00:27:10] competition down.
In our case, in our industry, there's a massive, massive player who's very good, who's very smart, and they're purposely driving the price down to make sure that nobody can get a [00:27:20] return investment if they're invested and then they win. It's a very natural, monopolistic instinct of the largest player. It's fine.
It's very strategic. Our job is. [00:27:30] If I'm not bigger and stronger, how does a David fight a Goliath? And there's a lot of different ways and techniques and there's not one right answer, but that's [00:27:40] why we get paid, right? That's the fun part of the job. We gotta solve that problem. When you show up every day, you gotta figure out, hey, I'm not bigger, I'm not stronger, but I have better tools.
I have an incredible [00:27:50] team. And what are we gonna do differently? How do we redefine the problem?
[00:27:55] ANNE: You guys have grown really fast. Most recently, you acquired [00:28:00] Solely Organic and grew exponentially, the number of retail stores that you are in. Tell us a little bit about that [00:28:10] acquisition and how do you protect quality as you grow so quickly?
[00:28:16] MIKE: Yeah, so look, the, the whole quality thing, the m and a thing, is [00:28:20] again, I wanted to very quickly just mention there's technology based. Acquisitions like we did with Plante Bio and Genetics. There is, there's acquisitions where we expanded our capacity [00:28:30] in a capital light way. When we bought Calera with Solely, it was more of a product breadth and depth acquisition.
They have done a great job. They're the largest, they [00:28:40] were the largest national herb player, organic player, and conventional, again, in the country. And, uh, they had greenhouses and vertical farms and even traditional [00:28:50] agriculture. And you were sourcing some products. On the quality side, look it, it has to be who you are.
The way we do acquisitions is, [00:29:00] to me, it is all about being authentic and it doesn't matter how big you are. I learned that when I was very young and didn't know what you do with more than seven people, if you have more than seven people reporting you. [00:29:10] And then I realized that you just gotta be who you are and you have to talk to people.
When we acquired solely, we had a small management team. We literally [00:29:20] went. In the first week, I met with every associate, hourly salaried. We valued things quickly. We didn't play games. We didn't. [00:29:30] Pretend that we were very honest. We were very transparent. We talked about the financial situation of both companies, what we needed to do, the synergies we had to recognize, and what we were never gonna give [00:29:40] on, which is product quality and customers and what is important and, and we spend a lot of time in the first couple of weeks with every associate, and we're very transparent.
We tell 'em what's going on [00:29:50] with the company. We tell 'em the good and the bad, and the ugly. We talk about what we need. I mean, we really believe in alignment. I mean, we have senior leadership team meetings more frequently, but. We really try to [00:30:00] over communicate and be super transparent so every senior leader can talk with a single voice.
We all align on exactly what we're gonna do in the vision at a high level, and then we [00:30:10] execute at the best of our abilities and we hold ourselves accountable. But I think it's authenticity and transparency. I mean, it's just how a lead, it's not pretending you are something you're not. And I think it just kind of [00:30:20] works.
People see through bullshit. I always think everybody talks about change management. I know it's a huge industry and know there's a lot of books written on it, but to me it's, at the end of the day, it's, it's all [00:30:30] about leadership. Team is available that all your folks know you, no matter how big you are.
You know all of them. You might not know all of 'em by name, but you're in front of 'em on a regular [00:30:40] basis and you're accessible and you're communicating and, and I think that's how you build culture and, and we do talk a lot with our SLT. [00:30:50] That as a founder, you can't be, as you grow now, we have 1400 associates.
You can't be everywhere. I can't talk to everyone all the time. So the onus is on each of them as they [00:31:00] work with their teams to be that ambassador and to believe in the fact that we're as weak as our weakest link and we can't have weak links. And [00:31:10] it's all about just honesty, transparency. If you have a problem, tell me what it is and let's fix it.
And we align on the consumer. And we believe if we do the right thing with [00:31:20] our products then everything else will work out and um, and we just don't compromise on that.
[00:31:25] ANNE: Speaking of transparency, what would you say you learned [00:31:30] about how to be transparent with investors? Key partners and not over promise.
I imagine there was a [00:31:40] lot of inflated claims and promises about what could be accomplished, and you guys have been able to stick it out through the way that you manage [00:31:50] your plants and finances and unit economics. So I'm curious, how did you. Stay true to what you could [00:32:00] realistically achieve and also attract investment and energy, but not inflate too much what you are promising?[00:32:10]
[00:32:10] MIKE: It's a tough question. I mean, first we are just. Incredibly lucky to have the investors and share shareholders. We do, it helps to be in the Midwest, [00:32:20] but we have a lot of investors from New York and California on the coasts and some big funds and a lot of, uh, family offices. Some bigger, some smaller. We have some of the best.[00:32:30]
Known investors and some that many haven't heard about. So we're very, very lucky with the support of investors. I will defend the industry a little [00:32:40] bit because when you're trying to do something as disruptive as vertical farming, I'm not sure that people were. Purposely [00:32:50] exaggerating what could happen. I think a lot of folks, and I'll say us included, thought that we could do some things faster.
We knew we couldn't do it as fast as some were trying to promise, [00:33:00] but I'm not sure it was. All the early pioneers that went out and were raising $200 million. I would respectfully lay [00:33:10] some of the blame on, you know, the philosophy of some of the investors that came in with $200 million in the first year of this.
Because they were trying to send a message that if you [00:33:20] can't raise big and you can't play big, then go home. And they were trying to control the market and they forced way too much money in the market way too early. And then it became a race. [00:33:30] And everybody started filing a software model of spend ahead of revenue and first mover advantage is so key because in a software model, distribution is free, right?
You get the first mover [00:33:40] advantage, you lock it down, you're it, you become the defacto standard, you win. Well, this is advanced manufacturing. This is not software. This is, this [00:33:50] is, um, you know, this is completely the opposite of software. This is an infrastructure plan. Way, but the problem is that folks that came in and wanted to keep everybody else out [00:34:00] then ended up investing a lot more money and lost most of it.
But the problem is it drove fomo and when people see big names, there's a lot of lemon mentality and there was a lot of [00:34:10] pressure on founders back in 2015 and 16 and 17 grow faster. We were trying to raise a round of a hundred million and we ended up having over 400 came in and we [00:34:20] ended up taking more than we needed.
We always take only we needed and thank God we did because then the market crashed and if we didn't take more, we wouldn't have survived. But the point is we're very prudent once we [00:34:30] took the money, but. The problem is money was being pushed out and forced onto the industry. So it's easy to sit here and you know, often with [00:34:40] hindsight say, oh, these guys took 700 million.
These guys took a billion. What a bunch of idiots. Look at how they spend it. Well, they weren't necessarily asking for 700 or a billion. It was shoved in. They thought if they don't [00:34:50] take it, they don't win. And once you take it, guess what? You gotta show results in the next couple of years. So you start spending that money on everything and the cycle takes care of itself.
And you know, [00:35:00] looking back on it. It wasn't the best investing by a lot of really big names that are esteemed as superior investors. They misunderstood that this was not a [00:35:10] software play, that this was an infrastructure events manufacturing play. Having said that to your other question, look, we always try to be very.
Transparent and honest and [00:35:20] point out all the risks that we see. We also just try to keep our head down and try to work and we report honest results. It's tough. Some bigger investors [00:35:30] actually walked away from us at the time because they felt we weren't great fundraisers because they felt that we weren't willing to tell a better tale.
And I always used to tell people that, [00:35:40] look, we're not shy. We can talk and we can tell you a lot of tales we just refuse to because we're not gonna play that game because we know where it's going. So, I mean, look, [00:35:50] it's a really difficult question. It's a really difficult question. The industry has taken a lot longer to develop than we expected, but if I put into proper context, [00:36:00] we should have realized it and we all should acknowledge our part in it.
Traditional agriculture said literally millennia. To figure out what crops to [00:36:10] grow and how to grow 'em and what to do with it. And greenhouses have had a century. They've had a hundred years, you know, after World War II, greenhouses started coming to Canada and [00:36:20] all over the place. From Holland, from Spain, from all these places, right.
But greenhouses been around since early 19 hundreds. So they've had a century to go from hoop houses [00:36:30] to low tech, greenhouse to high tech greenhouse to figure out what's going on. Vertical. Farming's been around for 10 years. You know, to expect that in 10 years you're gonna accomplish what's [00:36:40] been accomplished for thousands of years, or even a hundred years, because technology does enable a much faster learning curve.
But the thing that people forgot [00:36:50] is, again, it's not just software. You have to build the hardware to get something to work, you have to develop the software. Then you have to grow crops. This is still an agricultural [00:37:00] product. Crops are growing faster, but there's still a cycle. There's still a 20, 25, 30 day cycle, and you still have to go through that cycle.
You have to collect the data, you have to learn, you make modifications. We use a [00:37:10] scientific method, so you change one variable at a time. You still go through thousands of cycles. Just that. I don't need a thousand years to go through a thousand cycles. I can go through a thousand cycles a lot faster, but you still need [00:37:20] time.
And then you learn something. You realize, oh my God, crops respond better to this kind of air flow and this kinda lighting and this kind of strengths. Stress and I get better. Stress response. Great. Well, what if [00:37:30] I didn't build that capability into my last system? Now I gotta wait to codify it into the next generation of my hardware or software.
Some you can codify in software, [00:37:40] some I have to wait and do with hardware. So the expectation, just because we know what we want, it immediately happens. Poof, because of big data in ai, it doesn't work because we still have [00:37:50] massive supply chains that we gotta move our learnings through. Same thing with genetics.
We can do 20 to 30 years of breeding in two years without genetic modification, [00:38:00] but still two to three years. And then once you get there, you learn new things because then you [00:38:10] adapt your hardware and software to work with these new crops, and you discover new limits. It's like you don't know what your total limit is.
Until you get the first [00:38:20] obstacle out of the way, and then it opens up a whole new world for you. We continue to iterate through these technological innovations. We're honest and transparent about it, but you know, you only know what you [00:38:30] know.
[00:38:30] ANNE: Right.
[00:38:30] MIKE: And I think we're kind of humble about it, and I think that gives us a lot of room with our investors because we're not walking and pretending we know [00:38:40] everything up front.
We're trying to be pretty transparent about what we're trying to do. We think it'll take, and if it takes us longer, we tell 'em, Hey, we didn't know this is what it is. We need more money or whatever. And [00:38:50] generally people see the, you know, we're working hard, we're trying to do the right thing. They believe in the vision that we have.
They believe that there is a massive [00:39:00] return at the end, and so far they've been willing to support us and continue to support us on our journey. I
[00:39:05] ANNE: am gonna change gears a little bit here and ask a bit about your leadership style, [00:39:10] but from the lens of your background. So you were born in Belarus, I believe, and moved here when you were 11, 12 years old.
How would you say that [00:39:20] experience specifically has influenced your leadership style? I
[00:39:26] MIKE: think first of all, I take nothing for granted. I [00:39:30] don't take what I do for granted. I don't take any of the people for granted. I think, um, I don't assume that I have the right to be in my seat. I have to earn that right every day.
[00:39:40] I don't undervalue any of our associates because. I grew up with nothing. I was the person in a farm. My parents were the [00:39:50] people in the farm, on the manufacturing floor. So I have tremendous respect for what every one of our associates does. Hence the comment about communication and being [00:40:00] honest and transparent.
I knew that when I was growing through my early years, and I was very ambitious and I wanted to have impact on the world. [00:40:10] I hated when people treated me like an idiot because I was hourly or I was younger or whatever else. So I've learned that one of my great mentors, Ray Rigie, who ran [00:40:20] ConAgra Foods and was on our board for many, many years, then he ran Doll Foods, a big name in our industry.
He always, when he talked to us, he always talked to us [00:40:30] as he would talk to the board. I remember asking him a long time ago, sir, why? Why do you give board level presentations to your all hands [00:40:40] meetings? And he says, because I wanna empower those that wanna be empowered and those that don't, they can take some outta it or they can play on their phone, it's their business.
But those [00:40:50] that want to learn and grow and come back with questions, I want to give 'em the opportunity to. So I really believe in, um, letting people self-select in [00:41:00] and self-select out. I value hard work. I value grit. One of my core beliefs is there are no unsolvable problems. There are problems we haven't [00:41:10] solved.
We were leaving Belarus. We had no money. We didn't know where we're going. We just knew that my parents knew that they wanted our lives to be better. [00:41:20] They wanted to give us a chance. They do what we could do and not be prescribed into some form of life and be pawns that are [00:41:30] afraid to speak up because there are serious repercussions if you do that.
Where I come from. It is not what our kids think the freedoms are. Uh, they have no idea what it's like to live [00:41:40] under a lot of these systems. For real, we think we're struggling. A lot of our young folks thinks they're struggling now. They have no idea what it's like to live under some of [00:41:50] the systems that they're preaching.
We go to out of naivete and a lot of optimism. I've lived under those systems. I've seen what happens, so I'm [00:42:00] incredibly grateful. To be here. I'm incredibly grateful for everything I personally have that 80 acres has who we are as a team, who we are as a [00:42:10] people, how we treat each other. We all have a million different opinions, but I think we're all respectful to each other.
I think best idea wins.
[00:42:18] ANNE: So my final question [00:42:20] for you is, if you were giving advice to a leader who is trying to grow their company and scale, but remain true to their [00:42:30] mission and values, what specific thing would you point to that they should keep top of mind or do every day?
[00:42:39] MIKE: I'd [00:42:40] say authenticity, curiosity, and grit.
I think [00:42:50] authenticity is key for trust. You can be wrong. That's okay. You just can't pretend that you're never wrong. Curiosity, [00:43:00] I think, is not only an essential element of any true leader and anybody who truly wants to impact things in the right way because. [00:43:10] There's so many ideas. There are so many smart people.
The moment that you shut off and you think you know everything, I think you gotta vacate your chair. There's so much brilliance around [00:43:20] us and information and is, is being shared so quickly. The moment that you just believe the feed that you're being fed and um, by an algorithm, and [00:43:30] you're not looking for the other side and counterpoints and you're not truly trying to understand humanity, but you're convinced that.
You know the truth and your truth is the only [00:43:40] truth. I think you're useless as a leader because you can't lead large, diverse groups of people, and that's what leadership is. If you can't [00:43:50] value them and appreciate 'em and bring 'em to, you can all have different viewpoints. It's where you go. I think curiosity also is disarming.
I think if you're truly curious, [00:44:00] then people don't get offended by your point of view necessarily, which could be completely different than theirs. And then if you're truly curious and you will truly listen and you [00:44:10] show respect and, and if you can do that, then you can get to some sort of an answer. It's the moment that your answer is the only answer that I think you stop leading [00:44:20] and you start becoming an autocrat.
And that's dangerous. And grit is just, I don't know. Again, um, um, I get a lot of quotes from a lot of folks, but this [00:44:30] concept of no unsolvable problems, just problems we haven't solved, I dunno where. I got it from, to be honest, I always like to give credit to the quotes. Uh, I dunno where this [00:44:40] one came from, but I just think it's a key attitude that you gotta create the world you wanna live in.
And there's a million excuses why it can't work and it shouldn't [00:44:50] work and it doesn't work and it's all fine. And as long as you live by those excuses and you have an out, you won't solve it. [00:45:00] But if you burn the boats and if you give it all you got, I think. Average people can do extraordinary things, and I think that's what [00:45:10] it's all about.
[00:45:11] ANNE: Thank you, Mike. I'm really grateful for you joining Grow Good. And for our conversation today, for those of you who have not [00:45:20] tried 80 acres yet, I highly encourage you go taste their amazing lettuce, produce basil, all the all the things they will [00:45:30] last in your fridge forever. So if you can't eat it right away, it'll still be there.
So thanks again, Mike.
[00:45:35] MIKE: Thank you, Anne. Thanks for all you've done to help us get to this point and all the things I know we'll continue to do [00:45:40] together. Appreciate you very much.
[00:45:41] ANNE: Thanks for listening to Grow. Good. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen. For deeper insights and monthly [00:45:50] reflections, you can join my newsletter.
The link is in the show notes, and if you're interested in working together on marketing or growth strategy, you can find me@coreimpactstrategy.com. [00:46:00] Until next time, keep growing. Good.