170: Cartoons, Crops, and Community: Reimagining Sustainable Farming with Smart Farms’ Mike Smart

Mike Smart 00:00:00:

How about we funnel all of that consumerism into sustainable farming methods and then scale those sustainable farming methods as a nonprofit as opposed to forcing people to pay taxes to jump on board with whatever systems they can remain centralized and shut us off from our electricity or shut us off from our food supply anytime they want. Instead, you're going to have to go to every city in every state and shut down these little farms, and you know, they're off grid. So when you leave or just turn them back on, you know, it's not like you can. Can't do nothing about it. And that's what the most exciting part about it is for me is power to the people type thing.

Harry Duran 00:00:40:

So, Mike Smart, founder of Smart Farms, thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

Mike Smart 00:00:45:

Thanks for having me.

Harry Duran 00:00:47:

Where's home for you?

Mike Smart 00:00:50:

Oh, well, it used to be Washington, but now it is Colton, South Dakota.

Harry Duran 00:00:55:

Okay. What prompted the move?

Mike Smart 00:00:58:

Lots of different things. I'm a single dad of two girls, and they're just hitting the teenage years, and there was, you know, public indecency on a regular basis. There's violence and, yeah, wasn't really many good options for schools. And it's just the rent was going up and it was just time for me to leave the, you know, west coast in general.

Harry Duran 00:01:21:

Yeah.

Mike Smart 00:01:21:

And then I was looking for better opportunities, better schools, more affordable land, and that's what brought me to the Midwest.

Harry Duran 00:01:30:

Yeah, it's been new for me, too. I grew up in New York. I've spent some time in LA as well, and now I'm in Minnesota. And so being on both coasts, you really don't have a perspective of what life like in the Midwest. You just kind of see or hear about it. It's a change in culture. One of the biggest shocks was my. My partner was like, you don't say hi to anyone or why don't you go, like, spend some more time, like, being sociable? And I had to learn how to just, I think it's a New Yorker. Go, go, go. That I had to, like, learn how to slow down and say, hey, how's your day going? Like, how's everything? How's everything going for you? So it was an adjustment.

Mike Smart 00:02:03:

Yeah. I was kind of the opposite where even in the city and I, you know, rough around the edges in general, but I still like to be friendly and wave and everything. And, yeah, I never stopped waving to people in Washington, but when I moved here and I was waving, it was met with a smile and a reciprocal wave, whereas Washington, it's Like, yeah, the hell are you smiling about? It's cold and rainy.

Harry Duran 00:02:22:

Where do you draw your inspiration from when it comes when you're having days that you're feeling kind of low and you just need to, you know, put on a good face.

Mike Smart 00:02:30:

I pretty much just beat myself up until, you know, I submit. I don't really draw any sort of positive energy out of it. I just can kind of like, all right, this is what it is. You know, like working out when it starts to get hard is the real value starts to come.

Harry Duran 00:02:44:

So that's a good point. So you know, we had a chat last week or a couple weeks ago, just kind of, I had reached out and I think I'd seen some stuff you're doing in the vertical farming space. And so I'm excited to share your story. But have you always had this like entrepreneurial like thread running through your life or did you start out thinking you'd maybe be doing a 9 to 5 or just kind of. Did you always know that if you never could work for anyone?

Mike Smart 00:03:10:

Well, it really depends because I went through in my, you know, teen years and twenties it was just party, party, party. And then it wasn't until I, you know, I was a teenager and I would mow yards and help the neighbors with their weeding and stuff like that. But I just thought that was a normal kid thing to do, not so much entrepreneurial until I started reaching my 20s and then I picked up every single multi level marketing thing you can imagine from Amway to, you know, the team biz. And I sold construction, remodeling, done door too, sales for all sorts of different things. Until I've around 2019 is when I, you know, actually started getting serious in business and not just side hustles.

Harry Duran 00:03:59:

Very familiar with Amway. My parents were in Amway for many as we went pretty deep and the road trips down to like the conferences and tried all the stuff they were passing off as food at that time.

Mike Smart 00:04:12:

Yeah, yeah, I bought into it all because you know, it's more or less just the, the community building aspect that gets you. It's like, you know, the music and the vibes. A lot of people can just go just to get the camaraderie and not even worry about getting rich quick.

Harry Duran 00:04:28:

Yeah, it is interesting because I think that's a lot what a lot of people are starving for lately, you know, and probably seeing this more after the COVID this epidemic of loneliness. People talk about just lack of community, not being able to connect and I think they sort of when they, when done well, they really nail those vibes and you feel like you're part of something bigger. They get you into these big. You know, there was a religious aspect to it, we, which I wasn't aware of at the time, but I just looking back now, like, we'd go through these big groups and we're singing songs about Jesus. I think at the time I thought we were here for like Amway products and it was related to that as well. So I thought it was interesting. But I think it just speaks to like a need that we all have as human beings to connect with each other.

Mike Smart 00:05:08:

Yeah, yeah. I did the whole metaverse thing, you know, and I was deep into the going to the meetings, but it's just like you get the audio shut down, you know, you're not physically there. And while it's nice to be able to communicate with other people in a kind of personal level, it's much better to get it in person, you know.

Harry Duran 00:05:28:

So the metaverse stuff, and I think you did some work with some digital payments as well. Were you always drawn to. To tech and new technologies?

Mike Smart 00:05:35:

To be honest, what got me into crypto to begin with is investing. You know, I was doing stocks first, and then I was like, I can trade 24 hours a day and this is all new, you know, like, I bought Bitcoin back when it was like $3,000 a piece. And so I've been around a while, but, you know, and then I ended up losing a considerable amount of money, like $300,000 worth of crypto to almost nothing. And that's when I started thinking, okay, how do I provide value instead of sit around and wait for this nascent technology to become mainstream? How do I help with that? And that's where the payment industry came in, where I was like, I can there. You know, I was on a wait list for this device that ended up, you know, empowering businesses and merchants to accept crypto at the point of sale as long or as well as fiat. And that was Pundi X, I believe, out of Singapore. But then I quickly realized the payment industry is not for me. I don't want to bother people or, you know, try to undercut a service that already exists. The fees were ridiculous anyways, and the crypto fees are much more than payment processing fees. So it's kind of defeated the purpose of the peer to peer transaction type thing, especially when you have to batch out as a business. Anyways, so it's just. Yeah. So I segued over into the building virtual environments with the money layer via smart contracts in the metaverse type deal. And that was like herding cats, trying to get all those free web3 freelancers that people who can actually understand the technology, but trying to get those guys to focus on anything. They're like, they'd rather play video games, build in a virtual environment. They don't want to do any marketing, they don't want to be on the phone. It was just unsustainable.

Harry Duran 00:07:24:

So how did indoor farming come on your radar?

Mike Smart 00:07:27:

I've always enjoyed growing my own food. And during the organized economic slowdown in 2019, I refused to do certain things that could jeopardize mine and my family's health. So going to the grocery store wasn't so much an option. And so I just started growing food in my living room. And I was on a three story apartment in the middle of the ghetto. You know, the. I didn't have attachment to the dirt, so I had to figure out how am I going to garden enough to feed me and my two daughters in containers, you know, in a third three story apartment. And so that's when I really started getting into the whole gardening indoors or gardening to get in containers. But I've always loved plants.

Harry Duran 00:08:14:

Where did you go for like the knowledge? Was it just a pure YouTube search and just trying to figure this all out on your own?

Mike Smart 00:08:20:

Well, I've been. So I did landscaping when I was a kid and then I worked at a college managing 100 acres for the college where the college was broke down in a way that had like different signs in front of the trees and it kind of explained what it was and how it works. And that was intriguing to me. And then walking through the college fields with my kids and having them be able to pick it up and like, oh, I just learned about a plum tree. Just walking through a park style environment and I'm like, you know, it kind of grew on me as time goes by and I'm like, how could we make something like that? That's kind of like a college but for kids, geared towards kids, you know, like, this is exciting. Hold my phone up to a tree and the tree sings a little song about where it comes from and how to grow it type of thing. So I don't know, that's essentially where I got inspired.

Harry Duran 00:09:16:

What I think is interesting is that this idea of self sufficiency was something that's like important for you. And obviously as a dad, you know, having and being that influence for your kids and showing them that there's a different way that it's possible, you know, to have some sovereignty about like food choices and you don't have to like eat the mass market stuff. And I think it's, I applaud you for doing that early on with your kids. I think it's an important thing to teach, you know. Cause I grew up not necessarily in a super urban environment, but I lived in New York City and you know, you just have a different perspective on life there. You know, when you go and you think just everything just comes from a shelf in a supermarket. And then I think being here in the Midwest has been helpful for me. My partner's dad is a hunter, he's hunted venison, turkey, grouse that goes fishing in Alaska. So it's been, you know, a real eye opener for me to understand and respect like where food comes from and access to it and fresh. And I think these conversations have been helpful for me as well. Just understanding like food, desert, supply chain disruptions, all the stuff we went through. So sounds like that's the journey you were on. But then you're tying this all into this experience you have with like the jobs you've had in the past, the digital payment stuff, the Metaverse stuff. So talk a little bit about, you know, kind of like how all the roads led to the stuff you're working on now.

Mike Smart 00:10:35:

Well, so when I started the payments company, that was before the NFTs scene kind of popped off and I was part of the early NFT crowd. I was in the first documentaries. I launched Grammy nominated NFT album with Arturo Sandoval through a company called Metajax, which I'm also a founder of. And that's kind of like decentralizing record label type vibe to it. And the whole way down it's always been about empowering individuals, removing the necessity to, you know, engage with centralized systems. And that's where the crypto first came from, was like, you know, you're not going to tell me how to spend my money, where to spend my money, you're not going to watch me do it, you know, and then it was just like, okay, well payments are efficient, digital payments are efficient, but what's the overall vibe? And it's the overall vibe is decentralization and removing the necessity for, you know, utilizing central banks, central banking system, which is the root cause of all of these problems to begin with. And so then what better to decentralize than food security? And you know, I spent years and years, tens of thousands of hours sitting in decentralized autonomous organization chats and you know, like talking about infrastructure and building communities and then, you know, just moving on to the next one. And I learned a lot about decentralized communities and how, you know, decentralization is not a new buzzword. It's been happening. You know, daos have existed in co ops for hundreds of years. People just had, you know, didn't identify them with technology. But when you add decentralization and food security, it makes more sense. Especially when you got people like the head of the, what is it, what is that called? Longshoremen long going on strike so they can double their already gigantic wages because they know, because they've got that position to say so, like, oh, well, you're not going to be able to eat or shave or blah, blah, blah, unless we open the doors to these shipping containers. And I'm sorry, but that's a direct, you know, fu directly to my face when it comes to the type of person I am. Like, oh, you think you have that kind of power? Watch me completely dismantle the global distribution chain and create localized farms that don't rely on global distribution. And then, you know, then who's got the chips type of thing.

Harry Duran 00:13:07:

But so it's interesting to have that perspective. And just for the benefit of the listener, dao, I always forget what the acronym stands for. Is that decentralized autonomous organization. Is that right?

Mike Smart 00:13:17:

Correct.

Harry Duran 00:13:17:

Yeah. And so this is obviously top of mind for you. And I think you, you come from a perspective where you had this experience, you know what it was like and you know that these, this type of thinking is possible and you're inspired by all these people who are seeing that this is the future and now you're tying it to like your food source. So what was next for you when you start putting all these pieces together and thinking about what you could build in this space?

Mike Smart 00:13:44:

So what really attracted me to the whole cartoon thing was the NFT space. I saw how crazy things went and making tons of money selling NFTs of little digital owls and stuff like that. I was just like, there's a lot of potential in hype around characters and around functionality of a character and the merchandising of a character breaking down, oh, I can own this in the metaverse, I can own an NFT of this. It turns every single facet of a character into a collectible, you know, merchandise. When you think about the digital aspect, you can create a digital representation of the physical product and completely cut out manufacturing costs and still be selling a product that is tangible to these, the future generation who are spending Most of their time in virtual environments anyways.

Harry Duran 00:14:35:

You know, I think what's interesting for this conversation is probably the first time the two worlds have collided because nft, you know, is non fungible token in the Metaverse world. But in the CEA space, I started hearing the term and I'm like, what are they talking about? Because NFT in CEA is nutrient film technique. And it's like a hydroponic system for how getting nutrients to plants. So it's so funny because it's like the two acronyms coming together now. And in this conversation, I never thought that the two worlds would join. So it's fun to have this conversation. And for people that are in the CA space hearing nft and they're like, wait, is he talking about the CEA space or the digital space? So it's nice to bring those together. But yeah, so you had this idea and you mentioned the comics, so you essentially started a. How would you describe it? Like a comic series or talk a little bit about what you actually created.

Mike Smart 00:15:24:

So I created the Bucket Buddies book series, which this. I won an International Impact Book Awards on this one for children's education. And basically you've got. Find a. You got these little bucket. Anthropomorphic bucket characters that teach lessons about different subjects. So this one's the importance of pollinators. And then you've got all the Bucket Buddies live at Smart Farms, which is the farm and the business that owns the Bucket Buddies brand, Smart Farms. And then coffee, Kofi's Journey. And the idea is that there's products branded to each. So he's. He represents coffee. He's from Ethiopia, where coffee comes from. Yep, originally. And then there's coffee. Coffee cups and chocolate covered coffee beans. And each character's got their own, you know, like sunflower, Susie, sunflower seeds. They're all legit. They're already in stores.

Harry Duran 00:16:29:

Okay.

Mike Smart 00:16:30:

Anyhow, very blues dry blueberries, strawberries. And then I've got seed line. So these are marigold seeds. And my daughters and I just grow marigolds and harvest them up, dry them up and throw them in the packets. Yeah, just another product. And it's a pleasurable experience, you know, tea. And so, yeah, we got 34 characters and products that are coming out for every single character and books around every single character. We've got coloring pages and homeschool activities. And this is Farmer Smart, which is essentially me, but can be anybody with a hat and some overalls and. Yeah, so the idea is that Farmer Smart picks the character of the day and Just like, you know, Sesame street or whatever, they got the letter of the day, what the number of the day. We're going to have the character of the day. Each character's got their own song, their own grow kit. This is Pepper Pete, and the Pepper Pete hot sauce is his product, but it's got seeds, watering can and all supposed to match the character. We've got one for every character, Minty Max, you know, and so that's the idea is to get the kids into the homeschool activities, get the grow kit so they can grow the plant that is the character of the day or the character of the month, depending on how it ends up working out. And while they're learning, instead of learning stuff like Mary went to the store and spent 35 cents, you know, on some cupcakes, how, you know, whatever. Instead of just pointless storylines, we can use the math and the science and everything built around other points of knowledge. Like, you know, Tommy has needs to plant eight tomatoes and the garden beds only 20 by 4ft. How many square footage can Tommy tomato fit around each plant? You know, whatever. So you're doing the math, but it's for a purpose. And you're learning how to space tomatoes and how to efficiently garden, so on and so forth, all built around the bucket, Buddy's characters. And then the snacks kind of ring it in, you know, it's a globally or at least nationwide distributable product that doesn't rely on, like, farmers markets and stuff like that. And it all ties in to these vertical or hybrid tower farms where you build everything for the products or you grow everything for the products in a vertical environment and just mass produce these products. And then on the outside of the greenhouse, you'll have a food forest where there's like a. You pick more of an agro tourism type feel, all connected to a restaurant so that we can. Kids can come in like it's Disneyland, you know, see where the food is grown, see how it's processed, see how they can make a meal out of what they grew, you know, and it's a whole experience.

Harry Duran 00:19:33:

How do. I mean, there's a lot you've done here, so congrats on, like, all the progress you've made so far. I mean, it feels like a big undertaking. It's almost like you're. I've never read it, but I've heard the biography of Walt Disney is pretty fascinating, like how he came up with the idea for Disneyland. And that's what I'm thinking as you're describing all this big vision that you have. So talk a little bit about the journey. Like how did you get like this started? And like how hard was it to get this stuff off the ground and to get people's interest and to make you've got physical products in your hand already, which a lot of times people just get to a concept and they can't get to something physically physical. And so you've really given us some thought and it feels like you're all in on this. And I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about like what that process has been like to get to this point.

Mike Smart 00:20:18:

Well, you know, like I said, I had a couple businesses and brands and launched and I was wildly successful really quickly and then fizzled out just as fast and just kind of like scrambled, like, what the heck? Why aren't people supporting me? Like they were from, you know, the beginning. And a lot of that has to do with how I handle certain things. And when the money doesn't flow, how are you going to maintain your composure while everything's falling apart around you? And that's why I focus more on the foundational aspect of like, what it is the brand, you know, how can the brand hold itself up in times where, you know, it's hard? And that's where it's like storytelling came in real handy. And in order to tell a quality story, you gotta have quality personalities. Therefore character development was a huge part of it. And I'm obsessed, dude. I don't do anything else. I spend time with my kids and do this and sometimes those go hand in hand. And the whole idea is that adults are indoctrinated and it's harder and in fact impossible to change the mind of an adult who doesn't want to change their mind. And so it just only makes sense to start with educating the youth, making this stuff entertaining, fun, stickable, addicting. And they're getting addicted to quality things like, oh, I got to have another bucket buddies grow kit. You know, that just means I got to learn how to grow another vegetable, you know, and it's like if you take that consumerism and the hype around consumerism and build it up under something that has long term positive benefits, then it just grows itself.

Harry Duran 00:22:00:

For lack of better words, what's been the feedback from your daughters and as they kind of join you on this journey?

Mike Smart 00:22:08:

They love it. They think I'm crazy, but you know, they've seen it from the beginning. They helped me with the SDP Owls brand and which was Smart digital payments. Owls was A Mickey Mouse for my crypto payments company, basically. But they watched it fail and why it failed. And I've been very transparent through the process of, like, it wasn't marketable. Bucket, buddy. Super marketable. Yeah, it just makes sense. I was trying to, you know, but yeah, they've helped me with things like when I'm doing graphic design, it's like, well, this character would look better next to this character. Type of girly touch that I don't have. I'm a single dad. I've been single for. Since I've been raising my daughters. They bring the only woman touch to the artistic aspects of this, which is important. Yeah, well. And they've got. They've given me great ideas that. Because one of my daughters, she makes music and she designs dresses. And so it's like there's a lot of artistic energy flowing. And my other daughter is very entrepreneur. You know, she can sit there and give quality feedback. Like, I think that's a waste of time and money. Maybe you should spend a little bit more time doing this, little less time.

Harry Duran 00:23:19:

This sounds like you got a pretty solid marketing and R and D team right there with your daughters.

Mike Smart 00:23:25:

Yeah, my daughters are an asset for sure.

Harry Duran 00:23:28:

So what's the future for this? Like, where are you now with the project? And you think about, you know, where you want to be a year from now or five. Five years from now. Like, what does that look like, that timeline? Maybe that's too far ahead to think about. But talk a little bit about where you're at now. What are your. Some of your current challenges and, you know, what are you looking for help with?

Mike Smart 00:23:52:

Well, so right now I've got the characters, I've got the products, scalability, you know, foundation lined up, the packaging is legit. Barcodes are set up for online like Amazon. And then as well as stores, they're already in the gas station. And the books are in 13 libraries. One awards. So, like, the whole Bucket Buddies brand is set to, you know, a position where I plan to scale it because, yeah, sure, I'm the author now, but there's going to be a hundred or more books. And that's the idea, is to funnel the brand into a scalable book, cartoon production, you know, world. I can put aside, you know, $10,000 a month to generate cartoons and books. And the plan is, you know, one episode, one cartoon kind of ties into the same storyline. So you're doing double, you know, productivity there. And so scale the book and the cartoon and the brand. Automated. Like, without my attention. I do Quality control and that's it. And then the idea is to get the farms up and running, which we're currently raising money for and trying to get solid on land because I've got USDA coming through to guarantee a loan. And so I'm working with Dakota Resources to try to get that loan and so many different things. But yeah, acquire land and then grow the stuff that is the products that we're selling so we can dramatically decrease our cost, improve, you know, profits as well as control over the quality of the product. And it's scalable. You just, if you need more production, you know, if you've got 50 acres, you set up another 5,000 square foot greenhouse and you fill it full of towers. And now you've doubled your production, you know, and it's like same with the outdoors. If you want more people to come, you pick. If you're just getting sold out, you just build onto the food forest. But the idea is hyper local farming. So if you have a town that's an hour away, you don't want to rely on the food that's being grown at this Smart Farms. You, what you'll do is you'll rally the community together. There's get some pre subscribers, you know, ahead of to see the demand. And then if enough people subscribe, you build a farm out there and start servicing that local community from that local farm. So it kind of decentralizes the food aspect because you're not shipping. The whole idea is to eat local, grow local and create local solutions on a global scale.

Harry Duran 00:26:43:

And so how do you tackle the. A lot of times when we talk to small farmers, obviously they're really focused and they have a specialty in growing. They have an expertise, they know how to do that. Right. And the challenge is that they're not marketers, so they don't know how to like sell their product. And so there's a obviously supply and demand issue that you have to think about as you grow these farms, as you decide where to place these farms and to have, you know, maybe takeoff agreements with either restaurants or hotels or schools or if they're using it for education. So how do you think about that problem? Sometimes it's sort of like a chicken and egg situation.

Mike Smart 00:27:14:

That's why the whole, the books and the cartoons are just crucial. And you got to think too. All of these foods that I'm making are shelf stable for six months to a year and some longer. So the idea is to be able to mass produce and store for a long period of time. And that way you know, you can also the. Another key part of this whole thing is to monetize without being reliant upon production on the farm. So you can sell digital items, you could sell books, merch and stuff like that. And money's coming in online from that whole endeavor. And then you can set up one of these little stores at each one of the farms as well so people can buy non perishable items on top of the perishable items. And then if you've got people coming in, let's say you do a, you pick once a week during this, the summer season now you've got people coming in to buy those value added products as well. And then everything that doesn't get bought at these stores and during the summer season, ship to Amazon, run ads to it until you run out and then, you know, and you can grow year round. So it's not like you have to wait for the seasons. It's 65 days for another, you know, crop of peppers or three weeks for any kind of leafy green.

Harry Duran 00:28:41:

Yeah.

Mike Smart 00:28:42:

Any herbs. And you can, I mean, we've got spices, sauces, drinks, you know, teas, snacks, you name it.

Harry Duran 00:28:51:

How do you think about this? Because it seems like so much that you're managing and do you try to, are you trying to align yourself with partners who have specialty and like, you know, CPG goods or marketing on Amazon or are you kind of, you're wearing all the hats now until that becomes a problem. Because it sounds like there's, you keep having to switch all these like skill sets and wearing these different hats and doing all these things to make this work.

Mike Smart 00:29:14:

Yeah, that's the whole idea is that right now I'm, I've been shutting down all of my graphic design studio stuff and I'm like, okay, I'm not doing any of this stuff anymore. And I'm telling the universe I'm done with doing it. I got the ideas, the concepts pretty locked down. Five published books, four of them went to best selling on Amazon or best 100, top 100 and then one of them won an award. I figured I got the concept down, now I can scale the books and I've already got an animation studio who's worked with brands like Coca Cola. They are ready to rock and roll on the cartoon side. All I got to do is just feed them concepts and they're already professional team executing on the marketing side as well. And I've got connections in Hollywood with some, a Marvel author, bestselling Marvel author, and some Hollywood studio type people. So that Whole thing is going to go crazy. I've got also got some hip hop voices that are talking about getting on some of these characters. So if I can just license the whole book and, and cartoon thing out, the physical products that I can't grow, like, let's say coffee. I'm not going to be producing massive amounts of coffee. I'll just outsource that and then just focus on production. Just purposeful crops. Pump out, you know, 60 days, pump out a bunch of hot sauce, cayenne peppers and stuff like that. Then work on the next, you know, basil, mint, and just start stacking those. Like mint tea can stay on the shelves for years. So just pump out a couple hundred pounds of mint and then dry it up, leave it in barrels, and pack as people order it. That's pretty simple stuff.

Harry Duran 00:30:58:

What keeps you motivated?

Mike Smart 00:31:02:

Coffee? Yeah. No, I mean, I just trying to. It's all keeping me motivated because you look at the, the Make America Healthy Again movement and it's like, okay, cool. But it's more like pig with lipstick on it. We're like, hey, we're gonna keep doing business with all these scumbags who were poisoning everyone for however many decades. And then it's like, okay, guys, well, we'll take the rat poison out of your Cheerios now. Let's move forward. It's like, no, burn it to the ground and let's do it my way. You know what I mean? And so that's, that's where I'm at with it is like, there's no more, you know, waiting for the government or waiting for daddy to come fix things. Like, I'm Daddy in my world and I'm fixing everything I can fix with these processes. And if, if I can create a subscription service to these micro local hyperlocal farms in instill the curriculum into all the libraries and the schools and homeschool, you know, communities so that the kids are learning. Smart Farms is where we get our food. You know, this is where the bucket buddies live and we got the snacks and the cartoons and all these things, keeping them engaged with the brand. Then we're going to be a household name and the smart farms are going to be the same. You know, it's like. And then people will realize, oh, I can grow some of this at home on my counter. We'll give them the grow kits to empower them to do it. Now they're growing all their leafy greens. That reduces the demand on us to grow that leafy green stuff. And we can focus on value add products like hot sauce and whatever and turn it into an educational like Sesame street style cartoon. Already brandable, like video games and puzzles and we already got all that stuff in the works. So it's, it sounds like a lot and it is a lot, but they're all different areas. Like I can hire somebody to build out the homeschool curriculum. There's professionals. Why recreate the wheel? I could just insert my brand. Same with a video game. I can just download the 3D items into a already existing template and boom, you got a video game. You know, it's like that stuff is simple in theory and hireable in execution.

Harry Duran 00:33:23:

With all the stuff that you have on your plate, what's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Mike Smart 00:33:29:

How do I make money today? You know, like, because, you know, a lot of this stuff is big vision. And now that I'm moving away from the big vision, because I've already set the path and put the people in place, now it's like, you know, I need to find the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to land and building the proof of concept farm so that I can show people that it works on much less land. You know, the production is, uses 95% less water, 90% less land. And yeah, so basically it's how do I keep the main, the big vision, communicate it when necessary to investors or whatever, but also keep it short and sweet so that the investors know, okay, all this stuff is great for marketing, but it's just one piece of the pie. I need land and operating capital that's not going to come from nickel and diming a bunch of snacks is going to come from partners that come in and say, I know how to do this side of things and just kind of, you know, get somebody on the development side of using my templates for the educational material and the farms and then scale this thing 50 state, you know, wide. I want at least one farm in every state, but I prefer 80,000 farms over the United States.

Harry Duran 00:34:53:

I love lofty goals like that. So who would be a good next fit for you in terms of like, what do you have an immediate need for? Because you know, obviously we're going to get the word out when the episode is published and you never know who's listening. So when you think about ideal partners, like in terms of what you have an immediate need for next, like, who are you on the lookout for?

Mike Smart 00:35:14:

I've been poking a lot of real estate investors because I know they, they like to do creative financing and stuff like that. So I just want People that understand investing and want to invest in either a real estate play where, you know, they can partner up on the farm, stuff like that, help with down payments and holding contracts and whatnot. Otherwise, equity investors. Okay, I can see he swept your camera around to a rug, but yeah, so that's basically investors in the business or in the real estate that I need to use for the business.

Harry Duran 00:35:58:

And then what have you been doing now to get the word out? Is there, like, conferences you go to or, you know, how do you let people know what are all the things that you have and you've been making progress on? Like, how do you keep people updated?

Mike Smart 00:36:09:

LinkedIn, for the most part, networking. I've been going on all the government websites and looking at all the politicians and all of the nonprofits and going on. LinkedIn is. LinkedIn's been the most helpful tool for this whole thing. But finding companies that align with what I'm trying to do, like the usda, and I just follow everybody from any kind of USDA or agriculture or government of economic development, and then I harass them on social media, tag them and everything that I think is important and call them and email them and. Yeah, until they answer me. And then I also have been. I use Bordy, which I think he's the one that introduced us. So he's super hyper efficient when it comes to networking.

Harry Duran 00:36:56:

Yeah. For. So for the viewer and listener who don't know, Bordy is an AI agent that I stumbled across probably six months ago. It's pretty fascinating. I don't know what their business model is because they're doing everything for free now, but it mines your LinkedIn connections and you can have a chat with it. There's a WhatsApp. I don't know if you use the WhatsApp version, but the WhatsApp version is like you're talking to it today. I need you to connect me with people who are interested in, like, you know, indoor farming or on my side, on the podcast production side. And it's. I'm very specific about the types of profiles and people, and it's been fascinating. I mean, just people. I would never have. Probably would never have met you if not, you know, because that's not like you can just spend all day on LinkedIn. So it's. Some of these tools are really helpful, I think, for meeting people that you are, you know, want to have a connection with.

Mike Smart 00:37:43:

Yeah, it's important that people, you know, utilize modern technology. And that's a huge part of this, too, is, like, most of them Farming is automated. Only thing you have to do is plant and harvest. The majority of the time, you know, computers are handling the pumping of the water, it's gravity fed. And just combining all of the sustainable practices that people are using in, in their little areas and just doing the, a big version of it, you know, like cartoons exist already. I'm just trying to do one that makes sense for the planet. Like if you're gonna spend $28 billion a year on consumerism for, you know, trolls which lead to nothing or you know, any kind of Disney movie that just goes right into the pockets of Bob Iger and whoever else. And so it's like, how about we funnel all of that consumerism into sustainable farming methods and then scale those sustainable farming methods as a nonprofit as opposed to forcing people to pay taxes, to jump on board with whatever systems they can remain centralized and shut us off from our electricity or shut us off from our food supply anytime they want. Instead, you're going to have to go to every city in every state and shut down these little farms and you know, they're off grid. So when you leave or just turn them back on, you know, it's not like you can, you can't do nothing about it. And that's what the most exciting part about it is for me is power to the people type of thing.

Harry Duran 00:39:15:

Yeah, I think that's a very admirable. I'm glad we crossed paths and I'm excited to share your story with my listeners, my viewers. So if folks want to like connect with you, where do you think is the best way or where do you want to send them?

Mike Smart 00:39:27:

Best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. It's basically like my living resume slash, you know, watering hole because I'm in the middle of nowhere. So I don't get to communicate with human beings in person very often. But yeah, and then my website is where you find all my products. Smart Farms Global. And so yeah, I plan to separate the Bucket Buddies website from the Smart Farms website and just have one tab connecting the two. But until I get it all funded, it's gotta make sense together. There'll be the Smart Farms later down the road where it's a franchisable, scalable farming system and then the Bucket Buddies is the brand that fuels the product side of things. And that way I can justify merchandising out or like licensing out a lot of the characters because it's all about just bringing in non farm revenue to the farm and spreading the marketing materials for the products.

Harry Duran 00:40:24:

Well, I'M glad we got connected. This is super fascinating. I think what you're doing is bringing a lot of visibility to the indoor farming space from this unique perspective, but also reminding entrepreneurs, farm owners, of the importance of having these other diversified revenue streams. Because you've clearly thought this out in a way where you don't want to be tied to. Just like, it's the starting the farm and making money from the farm, and that's it, you know? And now you have all these. And I think from your background and your familiarity with, like, the metaverse and digital payments, you sort of brought all these pieces together now to create this wonderful ecosystem. And you've got big visions, too, which I think is important. There's nothing wrong with thinking big, because that's how things get done. And, you know, like I said, that's how Disney built parks like he did. So I think you're on that same trajectory. So I applaud, like, your energy and enthusiasm and the fact that you're bringing your kids into this as well is really admirable. So. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I think it's fascinating and it's fun. And make sure to keep us updated on your progress.

Mike Smart 00:41:20:

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for reaching out and setting this up. Cause that's the hardest part about this whole thing, is just getting in front of the right people, finding the right people to partner with, you know, and so having a podcast like this that's so niche, helps me. You know, it's like, okay, now I'm talking to someone who speaks my language, and they're still smiling and nodding. Then I. You know, I feel more validated from that than if I'm just, like, talking to a brick wall, and people are just like, I don't know what decentralization is. What, you know, it's like, what's sustainable farming? You mean mono crop? 10,000 acres of corn? Like, no.

Harry Duran 00:41:58:

Well, thanks again for your time, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Mike Smart 00:42:00:

Absolutely. Thank you.