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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Today on the show, I've got a special guest. We bring back the most popular interview in radical personal finance history. We bring back Curtis Stone, the urban farmer extraordinaire. He's the guy who, remember, profits 80,000 bucks farming a third of an acre. Pretty cool.

But even more cool is he claims he can actually teach anybody to do it. If my memory is correct, he claims he can teach anybody how to take a $5,000 investment and turn it into $50,000 in about a year or so. ♪ I guess I probably should have said, though, "for clarity," with a lot of hard work involved.

Good morning. This is Joshua Sheets. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. Today is Tuesday, January 27, 2015. Welcome to the show. Curtis Stone is back. And this one's fun. Perhaps not quite as much grit as we wanted to, but a lot of interesting conversation. ♪ I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation.

When we started off, we intended to kick it off and really present to you a blueprint of basically how you can follow in his footsteps and build your own urban farm with some practical steps. And that's where the interview started. It wound up being much more business-minded, much more philosophy-minded, much more of basically just a conversation between two people we've never met, but we seem to have a lot in common, and it's pretty fun.

I think you're really going to enjoy this. It's not ranting, but it is a lot of philosophy, and I thought it was just really interesting what came out in the conversation. If you've not heard, as I say in just a moment, if you've not heard the previous episode with Curtis, make sure to go back and listen to that first.

In short, his story is that he set off and was a fairly idealistic man in his youth, and then he went out and decided he was going to start farming. He looked at different ways. He thought about getting involved in agriculture and various methods. But ultimately, he hit on the idea of becoming an urban farmer, and he started with spin farming, and he's since developed his own approach, I guess.

And he started to transition. He's learned a lot over the last five years, but runs a very small, very efficient, debt-free farm, farming right in the middle of the city on borrowed backyards, basically, selling to his neighbors. And he runs a very efficient, very productive business. Go back and listen to the previous episode if you haven't.

That would be a good step. It would be episode 40. And then, welcome to the interview. Curtis, welcome back to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your coming back. Really happy to be here. So I don't know whether you're surprised or I'm surprised, but here I am, Mr.

Fancy Pants Financial Planner. I figure my most popular show is going to be one of my brilliant financial strategies and one of my in-depth teachings on the intricacies of how to exploit all the little loopholes in the law to improve. And your episode, our interview, by far is the most popular show I've ever done.

It's been downloaded almost 19,000 times and just the most response of any of the shows that I've done by a wide margin. So congratulations. You're officially the most popular guest on the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. Wow. Thank you. That's amazing. Well, that and $4.58 might get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

But I know the interview, and if anyone hasn't heard it, I would recommend prior to this interview, because we're going to kind of build on the last one, go back and listen to it. And episode 40, so you can find it at radicalpersonalfinance.com/40. The title was "Making $80,000 on a third of an acre with an urban farm without owning land." And that's kind of your story.

So I don't want to spend a lot of time going back through that. I'm just going to ask anyone who hasn't heard it, go back and listen to how Curtis starts his, how he borrows and rents all of his backyards in the middle of the city on which he farms and has a small and profitable operation.

It's well worth listening to. It's episode 40. Listen to that before this show. But I want to build on that and just simply say I have heard from several aspects of several listeners who your show just really was a transformative eye-opening experience for them. And several of them are following in your footsteps.

And so what I'd love to do today is kind of build on that and give some ideas for how people can grow. Yeah, that sounds great. I'll give you one example just that I pulled up. I received this a couple weeks ago from a listener. And the listener is in Kansas City.

And he says, you know, I was asking about their goals. I've been doing some listener polling a little bit recently. And he said, you know, that my goals have changed since I was introduced to Curtis Stone through your podcast. So while we're focused on keeping and growing our current incomes, we're only going to be investing in our 401ks up to the match.

And then we are going to be investing excess funds and time into a farming or gardening business. We won't be taking on any debt or dipping into our emergency funds as long as we're both fully employed, no matter how good or bad the farming is going. And I'm going to sell at least $3,000 of food in 2015.

I'm not worrying about 401ks. I'm focusing on building up this new business. So you got at least one. I've received other emails from listeners that I didn't pull up that it's making an impact, which must make your heart feel good. Oh, totally. And I, to be honest, I've been hearing a lot of that stuff lately.

I've gone out, done a lot of press, especially over the last year. And it's been incredible, the response. And I mean, nothing tells you more than you know you're on the right path when you're having success in your own personal life, but you're also helping people improve their lives.

And that's what it's all about. I mean, I wish more people could tune into that and do the same thing themselves. Yeah, it's been, I mean, since I released the show, and I know one of the things we'll make sure to give details on at the end, but I wanted to get you on before your Florida tour, you're coming to Florida and you're doing a tour of, well, let's start with that and then we'll get into the meat.

So you're coming to Florida and you're doing a tour in Orlando and Gainesville? Yeah, so I'm actually leaving for Florida tomorrow. So Tuesday, I'll be there tomorrow night. Right. We have an evening lecture that's free in Gainesville on January 28th. It's about two hours and there'll be some question and answer stuff.

And then we've got the next day, on the 29th, we've got a full day workshop in Gainesville. And then the 31st until February 1st, we've got a two day workshop in Orlando. And then right after that, I head over to Long Beach, California, and I've got a couple more US dates in there as well.

Awesome. And this is going to be cool. And I know if people, I probably shouldn't have put it up here at the front, but if listeners haven't heard the previous, it's not going to be relevant for them. But I know I've got a friend, we're going to at some point get you here to West Palm.

I've got a friend that I've been working with locally, who we're trying to build out some of the local food infrastructure in West Palm. I've got more ideas than ability, than bandwidth to do it right now. But I'm at least going to try to do that. If I can, I'm going to get up.

I'm not sure if I will, but if I can, I'm going to get up to Orlando to see you if I can. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll see. So let's get started. So let's use this example listener of mine from Kansas City, 31 years old, husband, father of a beautiful 13-month-old girl.

And he's trying to get started with urban farming. And let's use him as an avatar, as a proxy for our listener. If somebody is interested in following in your footsteps and building out an urban farm, you've got the experience now and you've made a lot of mistakes. Where do we start and how do we go about building that type of enterprise?

Well, there's a lot of things that I teach people, obviously. But some things that I've realized recently, even in my own personal life, is to kind of start with a little bit of the personal motivation on people's end. And there's five pieces of advice I usually give all of my people that attend my lectures and workshops.

Before you start looking at all the details, to go step by step through the process. Because it can seem daunting. And then people will hear me on this show or they'll come to my lectures and people will often say to me, "Wow, this is so cool. I've never been so excited about something.

But man, you must just be really talented at this. And what about the average person? How can this work for the average person?" And usually I just say, "Stop right there immediately. Don't put me on a pedestal. Don't put yourself beneath me. Don't put yourself beneath anybody." Number one, you got to believe in yourself.

Because unless you're ready to-- unless you can do that, all of these things will seem daunting. And I got to tell you, Josh, when I started this, I was totally daunted. And I was totally burnt out. And I made so many ridiculous mistakes that I felt embarrassed when I would tell other farmers about things that I was doing.

It was a joke. But the thing that I learned over time is you got to fake it till you make it. You got to just put one foot in front of the other and just give her all you got. And when you do that, when you start going in motion and you start having little small successes here and there, people will really start to push you along because they'll see what you're doing and they'll get inspired and then they'll want to help you.

And if you make it easy for people to help you, then you'll have people in your neighborhood and community helping you all the time. And so that was-- one thing that was huge for me was just like believe in yourself. There's some other things, too, that I think are really important for people getting started is follow the path of least resistance.

And so what I mean by that is that if you keep running into roadblocks with certain things, then be more like water and flow like water. Water doesn't push its way through things. It works around. And so a lot of people in my sector come in with big ideological plans like, "I want to-- it's the whole save the world mentality," which is good.

And I have that myself. But you got to put your ideology in your back pocket a little bit for a while and just get some small successes. Because if you say, "Okay, I want to go to living off the grid, growing on my own food, producing on my own energy, all this kind of stuff.

I want to make my own biofuel," or whatever it is, start with something simple and get some successes and move forward. Don't just shoot for these big ideas and then be discouraged because it just seems so daunting. So just start small. You know? - That one is my disease.

And it's so convicting for me. I'm very much a big picture. So I love-- I've got my little property here in West Palm. It's about a half acre. And I just think, "Oh, I can transform this thing into a tropical paradise. And I could do this and that." And I've got everything worked out in my mind.

But in the meantime, as I sit here, I look out my window and my garden bed, my little four-foot by eight-foot, poor little garden bed, is chock full of weeds. It's completely neglected this entire-- winter is our growing season. And every single day, I sit here just hustling like crazy, trying to build this new business, trying to build the show, trying to get all the things that keep all my balls in the air that I'm trying to do.

In the meantime, I look out there and I see this puny little four-by-eight-foot garden bed full of weeds, not planted, missing my entire growing season because I'm working from sunup till sundown. - Well, and that's it, right? And that's where people often fail. And that's where I failed is when I started, I took on way too much.

And it was just like trying to balance 100 things at once. And then I just had a hard time getting ahead. Because one thing I've learned is, at least for myself, is multitasking is a joke. Like multitasking is this thing that everybody thinks that they should do because we live in this culture of, you know, be busy, have lots of stuff going on.

But it's like you just have so many things, you're balancing so many things at once, you just can't get any particular thing done and done really well. - Right. - So I think it's like important to set these goals and achieve a goal and then move on to the next one.

But don't move on to the next one until you get one done. And so it's, you know, kind of working through these things. And maybe in your case, it's like, you know, have a small garden and just make that happen. - Right. - And forget everything else, but just make that one happen.

Get some successes there, learn some knowledge, get that feedback loop with the natural environment that you're in. And just go from there, then go on to the next thing. - Right. Yeah, I pretty much decided that the only way it's going to get done is, A, if I have simply chosen that I can't do it all and I've got to get some other stuff squared away.

But I've just, the big one that gets me is the daylight. And, you know, I get to the end of the day around five, six o'clock and I'm ready to quit and it's dark. And so I've just got to readjust my schedule and go out at noon. - Yeah.

- Work in the garden at noon for 30 minutes or something. Just do 30 minutes, get away from the computer, get away from the work and plant and harvest some vegetables. - Yeah, I think it's, you know, I've been trying to just change my morning routine as well. And I listen to, you know, Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income, and, you know, some of these other guys that talk about how important a morning routine is, you know.

And so one thing I've been trying to get into is I get up and for the first four hours, I don't read emails, I don't get distracted by things, I just get into what I'm doing. And I try to involve exercise into that. So, I mean, right now I've got a foot of snow on the ground.

It's starting to melt now, finally. But, you know, I set my bike trainer up in my living room and I get on my bike for a while. And one thing that's the best though is if the weather's kind of nice, is to go outside and just be outside for a bit and just get your hands in the dirt or just feel connected and then come back.

And for me, I mean, I'm working on a bunch of different stuff right now. I've got a book coming out on a major publishing house this fall and I've got an online course called Profitable Urban Farming coming out next month. And I've been working on a computer for like ever since the fall.

And I'm sure, you know, similar case to you, but I find I've got to break my day up. And when I'm on a computer for, you know, 12 hours of the day, I've got to like every couple hours, I've got to get up and do something. I built myself a stand-up desk.

So that's helped. But, you know, just get outside and just do something with my hands. And I often find that my creativity really comes out when I'm doing something with my hands. And sometimes I'll just sit at the computer screen and stare at it for an hour and not write a word.

And then some days I'll write 7,000 words in a day. But it's like I got to break it up and get outside and active. - So what would be the type of goal that you would encourage someone to set? Would it be like my listener said, I want to make $3,000 in 2015?

Would you start with a monetary goal? Would you start with a goal crafted differently? How would you apply that to your business? - Yeah, that's a great question. I think really, before you make goals, you got to figure out, you know, what's your outcome? Like what are you looking to do with this?

Are you looking to be a farmer so you can kind of take control of your family's, you know, nutritional intake? Are you somebody who wants to start transitioning to making a living as a farmer? You know, first paint out what that is. Set those targets to be like, yeah, what does this look for me?

And so let's just say, for example, if it is I want to make a living at this, then, you know, depending on your situation, I mean, when I started farming, I went, I jumped right in with both feet. I took a huge risk. But some people aren't willing to do that.

So I think if, and if they're not, maybe they're in a better situation where they don't have to. If you can hold your day job for a while and transition into something, set a monetary goal. Like say, you know, you've got a quarter acre in production or that you can set up into production.

That's a good place to start. I think a quarter acre is the most amount of land that anybody who's going to start doing farming should start with if you don't have any previous experience. And just say, OK, the main goal here is let's, we'll keep our day jobs. We'll work on this on the weekends and maybe two or three hours a day.

We'll do a farmer's market once a month or something like that. And then set a goal like let's try to make $5,000 from the farm this year. And, you know, that can subsidize our income a little bit. And then we'll scale it up the next year. And then maybe you can start scaling your hours back at your previous job or maybe just go for it.

I think there's a lot of benefit in just jumping in and taking the risk because humans are incredibly adaptable. Right. I mean, we are resilient creatures. We've survived on this planet for a long time now. And we've gone through all kinds of atrocities, natural disasters. When we have to make things happen, we make it happen.

And I think everybody has that ability in them. And I don't believe anybody when they say they don't. Because when it comes to survival, you're going to survive. And I'm not suggesting you go and throw everything on the line or do it the way I did. But, you know, take some risks.

Put yourself in a little bit of a position where it's like, yeah, OK, we're taking this seriously. This isn't just Mickey Mouse and around. This is serious business. Even if it's like, OK, a modest goal. Let's make a few thousand dollars from the garden this year. And let's do a farmer's market once a month.

Let's talk to a couple, a restaurant or two and just see what kind of stuff we can sell and get things going that way. Well, the reality is also much of the challenge is in making the decision to do something. Oh, huge. If you think about I like to interview people that that go off on big trips and go off on a sailing adventure.

And I don't remember where this came from. I think it was a book. And the guy was saying the biggest decision is the one that's done two years before. Two years before when you decide I'm going to go sail around the world. And that's made two years before you leave.

After that, it's just a process of going through things. And I think even in my own life, whether it's the decision to to get married or to leave a job and start a business or to leave a business and go to job, whatever it is, the hard thing is the decision.

That's where all the stress is. Once the decision is made, it's just simply a matter of step one, step two, step three, and then not quitting when things go wrong. And making the decision, as long as you give yourself permission to basically screw it all up, it's OK. You're going to get through it.

You're going to learn. You can't have that fear hold you back. So in some ways, just kind of jumping and holding your nose and going in overcomes the fear. And then you're in it. And then you'll figure it out as you go through. That's exactly it. I mean, the first step is the hardest, but every step after that gets easier.

And the fear thing, exactly. I mean, one thing I've really learned over the last couple of years is that I make a decision. It's most often a subconscious decision, but I make it every morning I wake up. I decide, am I going to live in fear and scarcity, or am I going to live in joy and abundance, or like sort of fear versus love?

Which way am I going to go? And when you go the fear and scarcity road, that attracts fear and scarcity. It's like misery loves company. You dwell on negative things, you'll attract negative things. But then you go the other way, and you focus on positive things, eliminate negative thoughts from your mind, at least for the long term.

Negative thoughts will pop up from time to time, but be aware of them and think positive and be kind, smile to people. And it's amazing how your life will change. People will smile at you. People want to help you if you help them. And it's just incredible how just your outlook will change most of the things in your life.

Then your actions will really start to have a snowballing effect. And that's what it's been for me. It's so cool to be providing for people's basic needs in a community. That's what I love about being a farmer, is that when it really comes down to it, I'm just growing food for people.

It's simple. People can relate to it. It crosses cultural barriers. It crosses socioeconomic barriers. I'm a guy who's supplying food in my community. And I think we probably talked a little bit about this in the previous show, but we don't have that anymore. 80 years ago, 25% of the people in the US and Canada were farmers, 25%.

And we don't have that anymore. When my grandfather was a kid, they were a mixed farm. And things that they needed, they got from the people around them, for the most part. Nowadays, everything's centralized. It's either I can get pretty much everything I want at Walmart, or it's like if I can't get it, well, then I got a welfare check come in or something like that.

So when a society is completely dependent on the state, nobody really has an incentive to get to know one another. And I think there's a calling for that. I don't know if most people would articulate it. Maybe in your audience, they would, because I actually had a lot of lovely emails from people who were more along the anarcho-capitalist or libertarian mindset, which is really nice for me, because I live in a country that is so damn socialist.

Everything that's talked about solutions is just, oh, the government's going to do this, the government's going to do that. But that's the thing that I find is perpetuating this disconnection to one another. And I definitely would not be so arrogant to blame that on solely the government. I think there's many other factors there.

But I think people, if not consciously and subconsciously, are yearning for a connection with the people around them. And I think agriculture is a great place to start from that, because if you've got a good, strong food system in a community, then that local economy can build from there.

And then you could just go on to skilled labor. And then once you have a system with food and basic needs, then all kinds of other people can participate in it as well. And so I think farming is a beautiful vehicle to get those things in motion. I want to build on that, give you a little intro, but I want to ask how you can control the risk, because I love everything you just said.

And what's funny about my audience, I've got the coolest audience in the world. I get emails from people that say, "Joshua, I'm a liberal Democrat. Joshua, I'm an anarcho-capitalist." I got a cool cross-section of people, and I love that, to have a healthy, vigorous debate and discussion, and just simply have the ability to have an adult conversation and part as friends no matter where we wind up.

Exactly. I think I'm building one of the coolest audiences I've ever heard from, and I get to get the emails. It's super, super fun. So I love everything you just said, and yet there's also a corollary. I'm all for jumping in with both feet, but if you're going to jump in with both feet, don't start off with a 100-foot high dive.

Start off with one that's two feet above. And so what I love is if there's a way where you can minimize the potential risk of failure while maximizing the return. I think this can be applied in every business. I'm super thrilled. Just this last weekend, I think I figured out a way, as I kind of grope about and learn how to build the business side of my show to where it can make a living, I think I've found actually a massively potential kind of side business that will be supported by the show that will actually make me some money.

And the risk, basically I calculate my risk. Maximum risk, I'm out anywhere from 500 bucks to 2,000 bucks. And maximum upside is hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. That's a risk I'll take every time. So how can we do that in farming, and how can we figure out a way to minimize the risk and yet maximize the reward?

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's actually one of my-- this is one of my top pieces of advice that I tell people that kind of goes a little outside of the technical side but speaks more to the personal side, is source high-grade information. So that means-- I do a lot of consulting for-- That means buy your course that you're writing is what that means.

Oh, it literally does. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. It's a way to just promote my own stuff. But the thing is, I suffered for five years on your behalf. Right? I've learned the hard way because I felt that I had to rewrite the book, which is a huge mistake.

I mean, I did learn a lot of things from other farmers. But it's like people have suffered on your behalf. So why would you go and start from point A when you can go-- don't go to university for this stuff. Don't go get a master's degree in urban agriculture.

I know there's people that are providing it. Don't go waste $20,000. I'm talking about spend-- if you spend $1,000 on a little bit of consulting and going to some workshops and doing some online research and reading some books, you will save yourself years of trial and error and thousands of dollars of wasted money.

And one example is-- I didn't really learn this right away. I did in my last couple years. And I actually would pay people for consulting and actually, hey, I'm willing to bring value to the table for you because I really value your information. Things like irrigation. I heard from all kinds of different farmers on certain ways to do irrigation.

I had some bad advice as well. Often, I find the advice that's the most free and abundant can be sometimes the worst advice. Sometimes it's worth it to find the person who's doing this, pay for the time, and learn it the right way. I've got thousands of dollars of irrigation stuff that I don't even use anymore.

Because if I would have just gone to somebody in the field, an expert, paid for their time, I could have saved all that messing around. And I was screwing around for hours a week on irrigation and buying all these things I didn't need. So there's things like that. And then there's also things on the production side of whether you're-- how to grow certain things or even in the marketing side.

I mean, the marketing side is huge. But it's like if I would have just swallowed my pride a little bit and said, hey, there's got to be a better way to do this. Maybe I can have a value exchange with somebody to save that time. That's got to be the biggest thing.

Because I think most people-- it might be a little different from your audience. The emails that I got from some of your listeners after doing your show was a lot of real practical minded people, the kind of people I really identify with, that were like, OK, what's the step A for me?

Are they coming from a previous career and want to start something new? And it's just go the path of least resistance. Go learn what you can from other people and start from there. And then you don't have to suffer. I mean, the whole reason I've put together this online course, this Profitable Urban Farming course-- people, if they're interested, can just go to profitableurbanfarming.com and sign up for the newsletter when we release it.

Is that my goal is sort of-- I don't want to say altruistic. But I would like to see millions of small farmers across the US and Canada start farming. Because I think decentralization is sort of a way that we're going. I mean, I look at some of the cool technology today, and it's this trend of decentralization.

It's awesome. It is awesome. And I think there's going to be some technological solutions for urban farmers. I'm working on some myself. But I would like to see these millions of small farmers across the US and Canada-- so build this local resilient system. And it can start with farmers, and then it can go into other things.

But everybody needs to eat. That's the beauty of it, right? It's simple. Everybody needs to eat. You can't argue that. So there's going to be a need for farmers. And California is in this massive drought right now, and they feed-- well, California and Florida, in fact, feed a lot of North America.

So the California thing can't last forever. And so there's going to be a need pretty soon. And there already is in demand. Right. But I'm talking serious need. I think there's a demand, and there's not much perceived need right now. In my area, I have looked for local sources, and I can't find it.

And I know-- I just poll my friends, and I know the demand that is there. But it's hard to find the supply. And so I think it's changing. I want to jump on-- it's so funny. You and I, we got to actually meet. I got to make a point.

If I can get up to Orlando, I will. But you and I, we seem to jump on all these things that are consistent. So this weekend, my business idea is-- and I'm not going to give the subject out. But I finally figured out, I think, the course that the market is screaming for from me.

And I was blind to it until Friday. And all of a sudden, I figured out. And I can't get past them. This is what the market is screaming there's a demand for. And in order to meet the demand, I need to create a course. And so I've been thinking about this, this course idea.

And I'm thinking, OK, how do I structure it? I am so convinced beyond measure of the benefit of the course I'm going to create that when I think about the dollar amount, the highest dollar amount that I can put on it, I cannot conceive of how it could be anything less than a 10 or 20 times or 30 or more rate of return for the person, if they're in the right demographic that I'm going to target, with this course that I'm going to create.

And I can't see how it's not-- I mean, just so much more valuable. But what's funny is I'm thinking through, OK, how am I going to position it? I was thinking about what I need to learn to prepare what I need to do. So the first thing I did, once I figured out the idea, I said, oh, OK, I need to go.

And I need to get some information. And so I was researching. And I've got three courses, two of which I already have access to, and one of which I probably need to buy, that are all focused on how to launch a successful online course. This is the information that I need specifically at this point in time.

And this information, for me, is so valuable because it solves a need. And I was thinking about compare that to how we usually seem to handle life. Usually what we do is we say, well, I'm going to go out. And I'm going to spend thousands of dollars on a general primary and secondary school education.

And I'm going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this general knowledge of this college degree that's not applicable to what I need. And that's not how an adult approaches information. So most of us, I've spent $80,000 on my undergraduate college degree. And that was so foolish as far as the payoff of investment versus potential reward.

But now for me to go and spend $1,000 bucks or $2,000 bucks or whatever I spent on the course for specific knowledge to a specific need, that's intelligent education. - Oh, yeah. That's just getting to the goods, right? I mean, just think about all the time, like how many years did I waste in public school?

- Right. - It's like all the garbage that the state shoves down my throat in public school. And probably the only things that I use that I learned in public school are basic addition, maybe a little bit of geometry and geography, and maybe some people skills that I learned in school.

I probably could have learned those in four years. You know, I find that stuff ironic because now Obama's talking about, we're going to give two years of education. It's like, okay, so it didn't work for the first 12 years because everybody in the US and Canada has these garbage useless degrees and worthlessness.

And now we're going to give you two years of more free crap that's not going to do anything for you. I love the irony of all this stuff, you know. But that's it, you know, and that goes back to the source high-grade information stuff. Forget the crap, get to the guts of the stuff.

- Right. - Give the hard details. And that's what I'm all about, man. That's what I teach in my workshops is like, I'm going to save all the fluff. You know, I talk a little bit of personal stuff because I think that's relevant to people's learning experience. But, you know, get to the nitty-gritty, the real goods.

- Right. - And, you know, you go study agriculture in university and you'll get years of theory and all kinds of stuff that is just like where you could just go to a farmer who's in the business and spend a little bit of time with them and get miles ahead of all the people that are wasting $20,000 a year and just get some piece of paper that just becomes wallpaper, you know.

- Right. - Right. - And here's what's so cool though, part of the decentralization thing. I've been thinking about this and here's the opportunity that we have today in 2015 that did not exist in 2000, well, did not exist in 1995. The major, so if people can go, there is never a downside to buying specific expertise applied to a specific situation if you can have trust and confidence in the source.

But if you can't have trust and confidence in the source, then there is tremendous risk of, oh, maybe the source is not good. And this is the problem that has existed in buying transactions throughout much of human history is how do you know the source on a mass market basis?

But today, when you can find the world's expert and that world's expert can establish their credentials, not necessarily with some external credential granting institution, although that's fine, but actually can establish it with free and open information to establish who they are. Like anybody who listens to my show knows who I am.

Anybody who's listened to three or four of your interviews is going to know who you are. And now, then you can trust a person. And so we've lowered that disconnect, that fear of counterparty trust out of transactions, financial trades. So now, if I know who you are and if I'm interested in starting an urban farm, I can come to you, I can feel confident that you know what you're doing.

I can spend enough time with your material, with your content, with your talks. I can go on YouTube. I can find your talks at what's Diego Garcia's Permaculture Voices. I can go and hear you on 10 different interviews. I can hear you develop over time. I can read your stuff.

I can be confident that you are who you say you are and that you're the person I need. And if that's the right fit, boom, whatever. I don't know what you're going to charge for your course, but it's worth it because I've solved that. It's a low risk transaction at that point.

- Exactly. We've taken out the middleman, right? - Yeah, exactly. - Through a university to learn something, you can go on my YouTube channel and I'll show you stuff that I'm doing in the field and you can see that I know what I'm talking about. And that's the beauty of it.

I mean, there's all kinds of cool, there's a great tech app that's actually come out of Kelowna, my hometown here. It's a website called Soilmate.com and it's basically a way of connecting anybody in a local geographical area to farmers who grow their stuff. So you go on this website, you can search, I'm looking for beets.

Who in my, this zone that I pick has beets and it'll list these farmers. You can prepay the transactions there and then you just go and pick it up from the farmer. It's stuff like this that is more decentralized software applications. I love, I'm a huge tech fan. - What's that called?

- It's called Soilmate.com. - Okay, cool. - And I think it'll be big. I think they're onto something that is yet to really take off yet but the concept is there because it removes a lot of the barriers. Like even sometimes picking up at the farmer's market isn't always convenient for people.

You know, they don't wanna, maybe they're a little bit more adverse to the crowds and they don't wanna go and park or all these. But you now connect directly to the farmer and find farmers in your local area anywhere. So I mean, yeah, farmers should go and sign up on that too because there's the potential of it.

It's huge. And that's not the only one. There's all kinds of other ones. This guy I met in New Zealand started this one called Ubi, like four O's, B-Y. It's like out of our own backyards. It's another software solution to connect people to food producers in their area. Like the potential of this is great.

I mean, but at the same time, I don't think the grocery store in that whole system is gonna go away overnight. - Definitely not. - But it's cool to know, and I mean, I shop at the grocery store too, right? Like I'm not completely self-sufficient. But it's cool to know that we're transitioning now.

And so I think like right now, there's never been a better time to get into agriculture. - Sure. - Just looking at, you know, I don't know about you, Josh, but I believe personally, everything is supply and demand. Whether it's relationships, information, or money, or skills, whatever it is, everything's supply and demand.

And if you look at the supply and demand of farmers right now, that says a lot. We have gone, in the last 80 years, we have gone from having 25% of our population directly involved in agriculture to 2%. And now we see a massive interest in nutritional, wholesome, local food.

And people wanna know their farmers because they don't trust what the labels tell them. You know, issues of genetically modified stuff. We've got all the kinds of adverse health and environmental effects that the industrial food system has caused. People are saying, "Hey, I don't want that garbage. I wanna know who grows my food." And so this is a trend that's going to continue no matter what happens in the economy.

In fact, I think if the economy gets worse, it'll probably grow faster. So, you know, to get into farming right now is kind of like--I personally, and just even in my own personal experience, I see it sort of like the dot-com thing where it's like, "Hey, this internet thing is starting to happen.

Okay, let's do it." I think millionaires will be made in farming in the next 10 or so years because there's going to be a massive need. I mean, farmers are aging, right? The average age of a farmer in North America is around 60 years old, and there's not enough people moving in to fill those jobs.

So, you know, we talk about the economics, whether it's inflation, and rising food prices because of rising energy prices. Right now, this is just a little anomaly, I think. I mean, it can't last as far as energy prices. Food prices will continue to go up. They have been for, like, steadily since I was a child.

That's not gonna change. But the real fact of the matter is that there's just not enough farmers. And so, if more people aren't going in to fill those shoes of those farmers, you won't have any food at any price. It doesn't matter. Right. So, you know, the time is now.

It's interesting. This last couple weeks, I've been personally researching a few things and trying to figure out if there's any way that I can actually start a personal experiment of exclusively isolating the GMO food variable in my diet. And I'm overweight, and I've been overweight for a long time, and it doesn't make sense to me why I'm as overweight as I am with regard to knowing what I know about nutrition, physical activity, recognizing how much I eat.

Like, it's never made sense to me. And so, I've had some experience with some family members who finally kind of figured out some external factors about basically toxins and the impact of toxins on their body. And I've been trying to figure out, one of my projects for 2015 is to try to figure out, like, do I just lack discipline?

You know, that's what I always have told myself for years. Well, Joshua, there's something wrong with you. You lack discipline. Or is there something going on? Because I shouldn't be as fat as I am. I really don't think I should be. So, I was reading some discussion and listening to the guy who wrote, what's the documentary?

I haven't watched it yet, but I was listening to a talk by the guy who gave the documentary Genetic Roulette, I think. And he was presenting information and- Michael Pollan? No, it wasn't Michael Pollan. I know Michael Pollan. I've read some of his work. I'll find it in a second.

I'll Google it once we switch the conversation back to you. But I'll duck, duck, go. Excuse me. I don't Google anymore. So, I was reading about it. I was wondering, like, huh, I wonder, could some of my health issues be a result of GMOs? But the problem is to isolate that variable.

Because a lot of times, if you go to GMO-free, then you go to organic. Or if you go to- I mean, there are other things. And organic, I'm not trying to isolate necessarily organic, inorganic. Although I prefer to eat organic. I'm interested in isolating that GMO variable. And so, I've been researching, is there any way that I could do it?

It's tough, if not impossible, for me to do, because the supply doesn't exist locally. And so, I would do it if I could. And I might still be able to. I'm still trying to figure out if there's a way I can do it. But it's a very difficult problem to face.

And what I've learned is that there are other people who have exactly the same problem. And I can't even run the experiment, because the supply is not there. - Right, right. But that tells you that the demand is there, then, right? There's a huge market opportunity in all this for anybody who- You know, the cool thing about our roots as North Americans, we're pioneers.

We are, in our blood, most of us have farmers in there. So, I don't think any of this is anything new. And I don't think it's anything that anybody wouldn't be capable of themselves. But, I mean, as far as the GMOs, I totally agree with you. When you go to a whole food diet, and I'm by no means a nutritional expert, but I've got a pretty damn good quality of life.

I mean, I go, even in the winter here, two feet on the snow, I go up my greenhouse and pick fresh kale and spinach and juice it in the morning, and make myself smoothies with frozen berries and things that I get from other farmers around me. I mean, it's a pretty cool quality of life.

But, you know, I also eat a lot of good bacon and stuff. I eat stuff that's fatty as well, but I eat good quality. I know the farmers that I get my stuff from. And man, I have bacon every… I've got like sort of the hippie redneck breakfast going on, where I have like a green smoothie with kale and spinach with bacon in the morning.

But, it's all about the quality. - I'm with you. I can't… I don't know. Here I am. I can't find… I love bacon, and I can't find a decent source. And when you understand, as I think is true, you know, toxins are generally locked up in fat. And you think, I don't have any problem with the fat, but I don't want the Johnson and whatever, the Johnsonville or whatever.

I don't want that pig that has just stood there and hasn't been able to move for six months. Anyway, we'll get off of this. I wanted to come back to one thing on the course, and I want to continue with some practical education for people who are interested. But one other thing on the course.

I used to think that the primary benefit that somebody could bring was information. And I realized that I learned this, and I don't think I fully grasped it until recently, is I thought that as a financial planner, that what I was doing was bringing information to bear. And I've since learned that information is free.

All the information that somebody needs about urban farming, everything you know, already exists out there. Because somebody else is… You got it from somebody else who synthesized something, and there may be one idea that you actually discovered on your own, but it was with the application of two ideas that someone else had.

So if you spend enough time on YouTube, or if you spend enough time reading, whether it's current urban farming things, or go back to 1638 and read about what they said to do then, the information is out there. But the problem is we're drowning in information, and we're bereft of wisdom.

And what we get paid for, and what is so valuable, is when I finally figured out what I get paid for as a financial planner, is the application of broad-ranging knowledge to a specific situation. And that is worth big money, because it saves time. And as information multiplies and multiplies and multiplies and multiplies, we don't need information.

We need application of wisdom to a scenario. I think of, you mentioned earlier, Tim Ferriss' podcast. I listened to an interview he did with Kevin Kelly. And I didn't really know anything about Kevin Kelly. And I was just fascinated by this interview he did though, because he made the statement.

He said, "I predict that in the future, books will be free, and what we will pay Amazon for is not the book, is for the suggestion of the next book to read." Because that's what's overwhelming. And it blew my mind. And since then, I haven't gotten away from it.

That's what we need, is we need the application of expert information in a specific situation. And that's what experts bring to the table. Well, and that's just it, because going on what you said there too, is that, yes, you're right, all the information is free. It's all there. But how much time do you have?

And the more information, we are in an information age, where information is in an abundance, but expertise is in scarcity. So what can I do to save time to sift through all the crap? Spend a thousand bucks. And go straight to the heart of the matter, get what I need, and get in production and get on with my life, instead of sitting in a classroom for a year or two or three or four.

Get to it and start your life today. I mean, it's interesting, because when I started, I was at sort of, I had a few different things I wanted to do to learn how to do this. And one of the things that I was really looking at, was going to this farming school.

And it's a cool program. It's out here on the west coast of BC. And cool program. But really, when I looked at what I had to do, is I had to go into this program for a year. It's going to cost me about $20,000, a little bit more with living expenses.

And when I came out of it, I would have to, if ultimately I wanted to do is be a farmer, well, then I'd have to raise the capital to start the farm. Basically, I said, you know what, I did this bike tour down the west coast. I don't know if I mentioned this to you in the last show, but a real big turning point in my life was, I rode my bike from Kelowna to Tijuana, basically.

I went down the west coast. I visited, not urban farms, but eco villages and homesteads, and all kinds of things like this. Got really inspired about what people were doing. More or less, got inspired about myself, because I realized that when I wear my values on my sleeve, this is who I am, take me or leave me, I'm not afraid to show some vulnerability in my imperfections.

People really gravitated towards that. But I also felt like I could do anything. And so that's where I was like, I started to think about going to take this course. And I said, you know what, why don't I just go all out, take the risk, take that money I would have spent at that school, and just put it into my own business.

And even if worst case scenario, it failed, well, at least I'd have a hell of a lot better idea how to do it the next year. Or if I didn't even want to do it, it would have been the same as spending the money in the school. But I was willing to take that risk in the sense that if I do okay, then I can do it again the next year and maybe make some more money at it.

And so that was a far better thing to do, is to just, let's go for it. - Right. That resonates with me, because same thing. I mean, I try very hard not to regret the past. We all are, in many ways, our lives simply reflect a series of decisions we've made, and you can't go back and predict anything.

But I've had the same thought. Man, if I would have taken that 80 grand that I spent on college, and I would have just simply said, I am going to blow every last dime of this. I'm going to blow 10,000 bucks on books, and I'm going to read them.

And I'm going to blow 70,000 bucks on just wasted business things. I don't think there's any possibility that I could finish blowing the $70,000 without having a few million dollars in the bank. If you give yourself the permission to fail, and you give yourself a little bit of capital, not even necessarily a lot, but a little bit.

Let's say I put myself on a budget. I'm going to waste $20,000 a year over the next four years until I get a business that works. A, I'd either have a business that went, or I would have 80,000 bucks worth of hard lessons learned, and I would be on the cusp of the business that was going to work.

A lot different than having the diploma. - Well, and that's the thing too, is that, like you said, give yourself the permission to fail, but then take that and fail better. Learn from your failures and channel those. Because if you don't learn from your failures, then you're wasting time.

- Right. - So failures, that's good. That's good. And again, it goes back into this choosing fear or love in your day-to-day life. And when you choose love, you look at things positively. And so every time I screw something up, I go, "Hey, there's an opportunity." And the cool thing about it too is, I mean, I'm of the thinking, and I'm sure you can relate to this, and probably a lot of your listeners too, is that when you really boil everything down, everything just comes back to human relationships.

That's really all that's important. I could lose everything in the stock market. I could have my house burned to the ground. People could steal all my crops. But at the end of the day, all that matters is the relationships that I've built in my life. And so this comes back into failing, is that in the sense, sometimes we fail with each other.

Sometimes a customer of mine might complain about something, right? And so every time there's a failure, there's an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive by saying, "Okay, this person has given me an opportunity to make it right." And so this is something my dad really hammered into my head.

My dad is a real, like a small businessman, did many different entrepreneurial things in his life. But he always said, "You don't just make it right, you make it better." So there's an opportunity. So for example, somebody would come to my farmer's market stand and say, "Oh, I bought a bag of salad mix from you last week, and it's spoiled by the time I go home." So it's like right there is an opportunity.

So what does a bag of salad mix really cost me in the day? So to give them another one, it doesn't cost me anything. But to make it better now turns this situation that started off negative into something better. So, okay, here's a bag of salad mix. Here's a few other things as well.

And then they leave with a smile on their face saying, "Wow, I wasn't expecting that." Because most people, when people take criticism, the most of the time that just a guard goes up in front of them, and they say, "Oh, that's defensive. Oh, what? No, what are you talking about?

I never have this." And this sort of pride mechanism kicks in. But it's like, "Hey, humble yourself." You know, here's an opportunity for now to make this person make their day better. And you know what? In the end, they're probably going to come back the next week and bring their friends.

Right. So that's what I mean by taking an opportunity that was bad, not just making it right, but making it better. That's how we can make-- with our failures, we can always fail better and improve ourselves through that process. And you really only do that through experience. You don't really get that when you go to university for something, right?

I mean, let's face it, too. I mean, we're-- like we said earlier, we're in an-- information is in abundance. And like universities, since they've been subsidized by the government, have gone rampant. I mean, everybody's got a degree now, right? I mean, people working as a bouncer at a bar probably have a degree in like social science or something.

You know, who knows? But everybody's got a degree. So it all goes back to the supply and demand thing. If everybody has the same stuff, its value goes down. And so a degree today, eh, I'd say you're better off putting your money into a business and starting to make something happen, get into production, provide-- it's so simple in business, right?

Provide stuff that people need. - Right. - Right? - And keep a habit. - Yeah, that's really all it is. And it can be so fun along the way, too, because when you go into that love-based mindset, I mean, every day is fun. Human relationships are incredible. I mean, I love-- even just with farming.

I mean, I love going on the road, coming to places like Florida and meeting awesome people, too. But I mean, just with farming, I mean, you get to talk to great people all day. People who shop at farmers markets want to talk to the farmer. I mean, it's a dream, man.

- Right. I want to share one concept. I love everything you said. And it just shocks me when big businesses don't seem to recognize, if I just keep a customer, it's like their entire goal is to tick off their customer sometimes. And little businesses know that. Hey, what if-- here, it was spoiled here, three bags of salad mix and a bunch of other stuff with it.

And it's so cheap compared to future customers. But I want to go back to something you said on failure. And this is turning into swap business stories, I guess, instead of how to start an urban farm. But you and I, we seem to have a synergy of some kind.

One concept I thought that just-- excuse me, one concept I learned that has completely transformed my willingness to fail is to stop thinking in terms of success or failure and to think in terms of feedback. And what I realized, I believe if I were to cite the source, I believe this was part of-- years ago, I thought I wanted to become a copywriter and write advertising literature.

And it seemed to be kind of an ideal business for me. I was OK at writing. I figured I could do it from anywhere in the world. I could make a lot of money. So I pursued it. I bought a course. And I was working my way through this copywriting course.

And I think they were talking about the failure rates. And the thing about copywriting, when you're writing, let's say, a traditional direct mail, an advertisement in the mail-- now you see it online. But there's still plenty in the mail. Because you're always just testing. And you're always testing. And you send out one letter.

And you see what the response is. And then you send out another letter. And you see if the response is better or worse. And you're just getting feedback. And if the response is better, then that letter becomes your standard. And that's the one that everything's measured against. And you're always, always testing, testing new things, trying this, trying that, trying this, trying that.

And a copywriter, a salesperson, never thinks in terms of success or failure. They just think in terms of feedback. Wow, this one flopped. This one had a bad response rate. We'll trash that and go on to the next thing. It's no big deal. So they test in small batches.

And then they continue on. And they don't worry about and assign this whole emotional weight to, oh, this letter just failed. I am a terrible person. My business is a disaster. I should just quit. I hate my life. No, that letter didn't work. Feedback. Marketplace gave us feedback. Move on.

And that's what capitalism is supposed to be. Money is just a form of feedback. But what happens is we often assign this great emotional weight to certain things. And we say, oh, if I do this, and this business doesn't work, it's going to fail. Ignore failure. It's just feedback.

Market says this isn't valued. Market says this is valued. And if we disconnect this emotional weight and just listen to what the market is saying-- Exactly. And that's the cool thing about-- I always look at these correlations. And I love the correlation between-- I consider myself like a true free market capitalist in the traditional sense.

I don't believe what is represented in the US or Canada or most of the world today is what true free market capitalism is. But there still is a little bit of it left. And I love the correlation to what you're saying to the feedback that exists with your customers or products or whatever.

I like to-- I'll pull that back from being a farmer and say, you know, there's also this feedback loop in nature that is so cool. And when you're a farmer, you see it right away. And I think being a farmer has made me so much of a better person because of being aware of these feedback loops.

For example, things you do when you're growing plants, there's this pretty immediate feedback loop that if you're doing something that doesn't work, you notice it. You can notice it the next day with the health of your plants or your crops. And we've become so-- everything that comes to us through the power of the state, through the barrel of a gun, comes in one way.

It's one way direction. There is no feedback loop. If the government-- if something doesn't work for a government program, there's no feedback loop. They just pump more money into it, right? There's no feedback loop. And that's the thing is that when we really assess ourselves as human beings, as like emotional human beings that care for one another, these feedback loops exist in the free market, in the real free market.

It exists a little bit today, but all these things exist in nature. They exist in economics across the board. These feedback loops exist. And if we don't pay attention to them, that's when things go wrong. And this is like for me-- I open a can of worms at this, but this is like the ultimate failure of the state, the ultimate failure of the American dream originally, or what the forefathers wanted was an incredible thing.

But we've gone so far from that. And these feedback loops just don't exist. But if you are aware of the feedback and you start a business or you start a farm or no matter what your mission is in life, if you become aware of these feedback loops in everything that you do, you can make tremendous strides in your personal and business life, like very easily.

But it's just opening your ears and eyes. And I love how you talked about it. It's just like forget about whether it's failure or not, because if you say failure, then there's sort of this sense to feel sort of defeated or feel like you made a mistake. But it's just like that's just a market response.

And the beauty of a real free market is that a free market exists in everything, not just economics. There's a free market-- we are voluntarily discussing ideas here. This is a free market of ideas, too, right? And as soon as we say, let's stop the free market, well, that's when I started to get a little freaked out.

But I just try to live my life the best I can and lead by example instead of trying to force people into the way I want to see the world. I'm with you. So I want to ask you one question. And so I thought when we started, we were going to talk about how to get into farming.

And we've done very little of that. Yeah, we've done that. But it's been good. You said you are in the future going to be running a course and you're coming out with a book in the future. Yeah. OK, let's do another interview another time when you're closer to that.

And let's actually go through that how to get started in farming. And you can give some snippets away. And that'll help you publicize whenever you-- let me know after the interview, whenever that's coming out. And that'll help you publicize your course. But I want to ask you a question now before we wrap up.

I want to ask about investment. And here's the question. I've had a number of people contact me. And they're interested in investing in things like you describe-- local economy, sustainable agriculture. They're interested in supporting ideas like you have. And frankly, this is probably where I am. I would love-- I'm working hard on some business pursuits.

And although one of my backup plans is to start an urban farm in my backyard and the backyard of all the neighbors, that's one of my backup plans. But right now, I don't think it's-- it's not my primary plan. But I still really would love to invest in it.

I'd love to invest. And I'd love to own or be a partner in a local free-range cattle operation. We've got one of the most amazing places in the world for beef production is here in Florida. And I just drive through central Florida. And I think, look at the squandered opportunities here.

And obviously, there are-- anyway, how could I as an investor, how could an audience, listener as an investor who has a similar philosophical bent to what you're describing, how could they actually invest their money profitably into an organization, operation like yours or with similar ethics? Yeah, OK. Well, first of all, I'm in no way an investment advisor.

I don't want to tell people what to do with their money and then have something go wrong. And then they say, hey, that was a bad investment. So I'm not the best in that regard. But I've got some ideas on some things that I think in time in the future will prove lucrative for people in a couple ways.

And so I don't-- it's interesting. Your show is about finance for the most part. And I definitely agree with you on most things regarding finance. But I like to think about investment in a more holistic way. I like to think about the sort of the triple bottom line return that you can get on investment.

And what I mean by triple bottom line is the economic, the social, and the environmental benefit. And I think this is where new capitalism or new free marketism will go, because it just makes sense. So there's some cool things. I met a young rancher in rural Alberta. I was teaching a workshop there.

And he had a really cool way of getting investment for his farm. And so when you're starting a ranch, a pasture-raised pork or cattle, there's some capital you need up front. I mean, in my business system, you can start an annual vegetable urban farm on $5,000 to $10,000 and turn that into $50,000 your first year if you follow my steps.

But for cattle ranching and things like that, it's a bit more. And so this young man had a really cool system where he got people. He found, I think it was five investors to put in $5,000. And they basically made a bond. And so the legalities of this, I'm not exactly sure.

It might fall into some gray area. But what they did was they got everybody to put in $5,000. And then he took that money. And for three years, he gave them a 5% return on that investment, paid in a dividend, either in the form of cash or product. And then at the end of the three years, he gave them their money back.

So in a world where governments print money and we live in a low interest rate world, 5% return, yeah, sure, it's not a lot on investment if you only think about the financial return. But if you think about the social and environmental returns, they're of a way higher magnitude.

And this is why investing in your local area is so important. Because not only do you benefit from this young man starting a ranching operation that's going to feed you and your family, potentially for generations, but you are also improving soil, top soil. That's a resource capital, right? That's an investment in resource.

And you invest in a young man or woman who is going to start farming and then teach other people to farm. And then there's a social ripple effect there, too. So I think as far as investment, I don't have a silver bullet to say, hey, this is going to make you millions of dollars.

But what I will say is you might make a few bucks from it, but look at the other things that you benefit from and how they affect your community. Because really, it all comes down to relationships, right? And without that, you can lose all your money in the stock market.

And if the mood of Europe or America is bad one day, you can lose everything. But when you really talk about the real forms of capital that are most important, that's what it is. And so I think investing in young farmers, so because they're the future, right? There's an aging farming population right now, but there's a new group of farmers that are looking at more holistic ways to do it.

And I think that's important. But I think there are ways that people who have some money could come together, start maybe in some kind of investment fund that invests in young farmers and puts money into infrastructure. And you have to be a little careful with these things, because I've seen some negative effects where people offer too much money available to farmers, and it might attract people that aren't necessarily maybe the best farmers.

Because it's all the easy come, easy go, right? Like, I think it's important that people work hard for those kind of things. And I don't see any problem in charging some interest either, because I think if it's too easy come, it's too easy go. So have some interest in there, but it's got to be realistic.

So here would be a question. This is actually a selfish question. I had some correspondence with a listener, and this listener was interested in sustainable agriculture, was interested in building the local economy. And the listener had enough money to where they were able to fund everything in life that they needed.

And there are some kind of stages of wealth. And one of those stages of wealth, I think, is you have enough financial capital, or at least enough assets that are going to support anything that you can possibly personally consume. And if you reach that point in time, then you start thinking less, and maybe you want to set aside some consumption for your kids, maybe, or other people that are close to you.

But once you reach that point, there's a limit to what you can consume. And then you start looking at advancing your agenda for how you think the world should be. And this is what the wealthy do. So you see it primarily, I mean, probably the clearest example is if I've got $3 billion, then there's not a chance in the world that, A, any of my kids are going to spend $3 billion.

And there's not a chance that I'm going to let the government spend my $3 billion. So I'm going to give a couple hundred million to the kids, and I'm going to put the rest of it into my nonprofit foundation. And that allows me to change society from beyond the grave and never pay taxes on it.

That's the whole point of many so-called philanthropic nonprofit organizations, is to change society over time. And it allows wealthy people to extend past money into power, which is ultimately one of the things that money is often tied to. So I recommended to this listener, I said, listen, if you've got things stabilized, then just go invest.

Do what the rich people do. Maybe you don't have a billion dollars to set up the Carnegie Corporation or the Rockefeller Corporation or the Gates Foundation that should change the world and make it into my image, how I think it should be. But at least deploy a few million bucks into what you care about.

So if you had a few million bucks sitting aside, for round numbers, let's say five. And let's say I've got five million bucks tucked aside, and I really care about supporting some of the issues that Curtis Stone is into. Then how would you deploy that today in 2015? What ideas would you have for that listener?

>> Hmm. >> Didn't expect that one, did you? >> No, but I think there's going to be -- the key is, is we need to have more farmers because we need to have more teachers. And the more young farmers we have out there doing stuff and having successes, the more opportunities there will be to pass on those successes and learn from their experience.

I see huge potential in setting up agricultural schools in a practical sense. I mean, one of your friends I've talked to about coming down to West Palm Beach and doing something like this, setting up a hub where we can bring in new farmers, put them through a couple-month program, get them the things they need, and get them out in the field and starting those.

I see potential there. >> Would you follow the permaculture model, basically an internship? For example, one of the farms I liked -- because they have beautiful photography -- I look at Milkwood Farm in Australia. I just watch what they're doing on their farm, and they seem to be having a real impact there in their area.

They bring people in, they run their market garden for them. Would you pursue that type of approach, or how would you design it? >> Well, a little bit. But I've done that a little bit in the past. To be honest with you, I find that if the perceived value is too low, it actually affects the quality of education you get.

In the past, I've actually taken interns -- because I get people that email me from literally all over the world -- that say, "Hey, I want to come down and work on your farm for a week if you teach me stuff." The perceived value is that, "Hey, they can get a free education if they come to my farm, and then they'll walk away with all this stuff." But the problem is, if I have to take time away from my production to teach you something, it's hard to do it in a week.

You need to have time. So I actually think that there's better potential in paid apprenticeships, where people come and pay to be part of a program. That money commitment on their end not only helps the farmer so he can take time away from his operation to teach them, but it also shows level of commitment.

I often see this in the permaculture community, is there's a lot of idealism, a lot of videos out there. There's a lot of great stuff in that community. I definitely wouldn't say anything bad about it. There's a lot of stuff that's like these big promises. A lot of it's just based on a lot of altruism, opposed to practicality of, "Okay, altruism's great, but you've got to feed yourself first, and you've got to make sure you build resilience in your own personal life and business life before you can start getting other people to do the same thing." So I see more potential in a paid internship, where people pay the farmer, come on the farm for two months, and maybe even they get the money back at the end.

You put in $2,000, and if you stick around the entire season, you'll get that $2,000 after. But it shows a level of commitment, because a lot of people romanticize farming. They watch a guy like Jeff Lawton, who I'm a huge fan of, but they'll watch his videos and say, "Oh, I want to green the desert.

I want to do all these things." And then they come on my farm, and they realize that reality is pretty far removed from ideology. So farming isn't all that glamorous, really. Sure, I make it look glamorous when I tell everybody how great it is, and it is great. But there's a lot of other work that just needs to get done.

A lot of sore backs some days, right? Yeah, totally. What I try to do in my systems is make things streamlined and as efficient as possible, so we avoid those kinds of problems. But the reality sometimes isn't all that. I think there's going to be investment opportunities in systems to create more farmers.

One person can only make so much from farming, right? Let's be honest. My farm is very profitable for its size. I can do $80,000 on a third of an acre, probably more next year. But I work full days. I work a full-time job. I'm happy to say now I don't work much more than 40 hours a week.

But a person isn't going to gain that overnight. But still, that's just $80,000. I've got to pay an employee in there. I've got some expenses as well. Getting farming isn't a get-rich thing, especially on the small scale. But I think the information… We have to train a lot of farmers, and I can't do it myself.

We need to get more farmers who can do what I can do and also get out there as well. Because if we say that it's an aging population of farmers and less than 2% of people in North America know how to farm anymore, hey, there's 98% of people or whatever it is we want to get farmers back up to as far as percentage of the population.

There's a lot of people to train. And there's a lot of people without jobs in the US right now. And hey, there's a lot of opportunities there for people. I like what you say, though, about the paid apprentice model. I think that's going to… That is probably coming over time.

And it's kind of a mixture. Because if you actually look at some of the heroes, I mean, the reality of a paid apprentice is going to attract probably a different caliber of person. And if I were serious about getting into farming, I bet you what I would do, how I would approach it, I would go and woof somewhere or volunteer somewhere for a few weeks and let the romanticism get out of my blood and just get into the hard work.

OK, I wouldn't pay money until I'd first dealt with the fact of, "Joshua, are you being romantic about this lifestyle?" Exactly. That's a great point. Or, "Are you actually serious about willing to do this?" And once I got that out of my blood, man, I would pay anything I had.

Assuming I had a little bit of savings, and if I didn't, I would get some. I want the best instruction in the world. So I want to go. And if I had to pay to go and work on Lawton's farm, or if I had to go and pay to work on Salatin's farm, or if I had to go to pay and work with, I don't know, Mark Shepard or Greg Judy or whoever the other kind of heroes of the faith, so to speak, I would pay.

Because, A, that's going to get me social access. Salatin launches his interns, and they've got their business set because we're part of the Salatin brand. Well, and there's a model there, too. Right. There is a pay model there, too. And that's the thing where, that's what it really is.

From my end, anybody can come to my lectures, anybody can come to my workshops. That's a cheaper way to get my time. But if you want my time on the farm, you're going to pay because I don't have time to waste on people that aren't going to be successful.

Right. If you're going to come on my farm, you're going to pay that because I want to make sure that you, like just what you said, Josh, is a great point, is going through some wolfing. It isn't just a romantic idea anymore. They're committed. They want to do this because I want to see a million more.

I want to see 30 million new farmers start in North America. And I want to make sure that everybody that I spend time with personally is on that track because I want them to also do what I do. Not everybody is going to be as much of an advocate as I am, and that's fine.

But the more successful farming models that we see out there will create those advocates. That's what I want. I want to have impact that way. So, yeah, if you're coming to my farm, you're going to pay for it because you're going to get the highest quality value you can.

But I want to make sure that you're committed so that you are going to be one of those kind of people. And some people just want to farm, and that's totally fine. But I think we'll have a crazy ripple effect once we get more people out there talking about it and inspiring people where this becomes a mainstream thing.

I want it to become in the next few years. I want to see it become mainstream where you know a farmer now. I mean, I'm still within the thousands of people that I've met in my life, I'm still probably one of five people that actually farm for a living.

It's rare. I know more people that have studied public relations or political science or fine arts than I do farmers. And I'm a farmer. They're still in a huge minority. So I want that to change. Interesting. Interesting. I have to provide the counter argument for the stuff that we were talking about with college.

That's what college used to be and still is in some places. The reason you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a prestigious exclusive university is you're paying for social access. And it's still worth the money for people who are getting social access. And there always has been and there still is for those who didn't have the money.

In the same way that if there was somebody that came to you and got your attention through their hard work and through their dedication and through their whatever, just their character qualities, even if they didn't have the money, you would bring them under your wing. And that's what still you can still do that if you don't have the money to pay for access to that social circle, then it would still happen.

So that was the whole point of university originally is to allow the social circles to stay pure. And that's the whole point of the boarding school system. That's the whole point of Harvard. That's the whole point of I mean, there's a reason why every I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the United States, you don't you don't get to be president unless you're part of the club.

You know, there's a Harvard or Yale somewhere in your in your somewhere in your history or a bunch of them somewhere in your family. Totally. And if you and the key is, is like, I mean, this sounds cliche, but the key is if you really want to make it happen, you'll make it happen.

And I just find as unfortunate as it is, is that sometimes a dollar value is just a better way of vetting the person. Like, I don't want I'm not trying to say, oh, to get access to me or this kind of farming requires X amount of dollars. I'm not saying that at all.

But what I am saying is that that dollar figure more often than not will represent a person's will to do it. So like just like you said, at the university, if you really will work your ass off and make it happen, then you're going to have that be in that mindset of that more abundance mindset than the scarcity mindset.

And that's often I hear that a lot. I mean, I get people that say, oh, well, you know, what about why don't you have like X amount of free tickets for people that are marginalized or whatever? And, you know, it's like and we do we always do in our workshops, there's always some kind of like scholarship or free stuff to some degree, but you can't help everybody.

But it's like if you're stuck in that scarcity mindset, well, then this might not be for you. You if you want to do this successfully, you got to get out of that mindset and start to see the abundance that actually exists in the world. Because frankly, the guys that are really rich in the world, Warren Buffett, whatever, love him or hate him.

They're in that they're in that mindset. They're in that abundance mindset and abundance attracts abundance. And nature is abundance. It's the law of nature. It's the law of abundance. One lettuce plant will produce a thousand seeds to reproduce itself. Nature itself is abundant. And people need to get out of the mindset of scarcity.

People you know, it's like climate change this or we're screwing the planet. And I won't say we aren't, but there's still a lot of abundance. There's still so many opportunities, but don't let the mainstream media convince you that it's all going to shit and there's nothing you can do about it.

You know, that you can do something about it. You just got to believe in yourself and take action. I will listen to anybody who wants to convince me that climate change is going to result in the death of all of us. If they can illustrate to me what they're actually doing that actually makes a difference.

I listen to those people with ears wide open because I simply don't know. I'm done listening to people who tell me that here's why the world is going to crazy. So therefore that's why we got to control your life and tax you. Exactly. I'm done. I refuse to. When you show me that you're out greening the desert, I'll listen to you on climate change.

When there are people who are greening the desert and you're not, sorry, like you don't have a ground to stand on. I know people that can go out and green the desert and you take one half of one percent of what you're spending on all the rest of the stuff of controlling people and you give it to the people that are out greening the desert.

And man, you can change the climate. We can make rain. We can make grain. We can make green. We can soak up all kinds of carbon dioxide. It's tree food. And when you show me you're actually putting your money where your mouth is and you're not just sitting around trying to control me, I'll believe it.

That's exactly it. I'm sold. It's all the same mechanisms that are used over and over again in history and people don't really seem to learn. The people that do will and they'll always be the change makers. But it's just all this fear crap. I mean, yeah, I'm not saying that climate change exists or not.

I actually personally see effects of it. What is caused by that, I don't know. I'm not a scientist. I listen to some scientists, but I also see different opinions on it. So in the end, it doesn't matter to me because in the end, I'm still riding a bike every day.

I'm still green in the urban areas that I live in. I'm still doing the best I can all the time. And that's all that matters. I've gone down the rabbit hole, Josh, with probably every conspiracy theory that you can imagine. And I've gone through periods. It's endless. Well, yeah.

And the thing is I often start, I'm starting to see that there's people that benefit from that fear. And so I'm going, you know what? Hey, I believe a lot of stuff. I'm sure it exists. But you know what? I'm not going to be afraid because that doesn't help me at the end of the day.

It doesn't help anybody at the end of the day to give up and say, oh, this 1% control everything and all that. It's like, who cares? Maybe they've figured out something that we haven't. Maybe there's some things we can learn from them. I'm just so tired of this race baiting and this class baiting of people saying it's us against them.

I'm so tired of that crap because it doesn't get you. It doesn't change your position. It doesn't help you. Whether it's true or not, whether there's some people have privileges and some don't. Yeah, they do. Get over it. Move on. Everybody can say that somebody else has it better than they do.

Even in the 1%, my family only makes $100 million a year. Well, this guy's family makes a billion dollars a year. Somebody is always going to have it better and somebody is always going to have it worse. Get over it. Move on. Believe in yourself. Put one foot in front of the other and just make it happen.

Stop complaining and just do it. I'm just so tired of the people that are just – they're well-intended. There's a lot of – there's a saying. I don't know who says it but it's like the road to hell is paved by good intentions. I see that so much in the mainstream media especially because the mainstream media has really gone to the left as far as Obama.

I grew up in a left family. I mean I have a lot of left opinions in a way but when it comes to making people afraid of each other, especially when it comes to like, "Well, you're a black person and I'm a white person and you have this and you have that," it's like who cares?

We're humans. I'm a human being. Why don't you just call me by my name instead of calling me about what I am. Like I'm a farmer and I'm a human. That's good enough for me. Let's work together and make things happen. There's a time of personal transformation. Sometimes I think where people react, I know where I reacted and who knows, maybe I still do and who knows, maybe I still will.

Because you get disillusioned when you find out you were lied to. That's tough to take. No matter what it is, whether it's when I was a kid I thought my parents were perfect and then I realized they were people and you're like, "Wow, that's disillusioning. Here I was, I thought my parents were perfect." Or when you think, "Wow, my political party is, wait a second, what's going on?

I've been lied to." It's kind of disillusioning and it takes a little time to get over it. But the good news is that more people who can live and again, goes back to that open information and open discussion, that can be super valuable for people. So Curtis, we're recording this on Monday the 26th.

When are you going to be in Florida again? Tomorrow. I'll be in Florida tomorrow, leaving on the 27th. I'll be in Gainesville January 28th for a free lecture. So I think we've got room for a lot of people. Come out, check it out. That might inspire you to come to the workshop in Gainesville the next day, which is a one-day workshop.

But then I've got a two-day workshop in Orlando, which is, there's a lot of information in the one day you'll get. Just with two days, of course, there's going to be a little bit more stuff. Then I'm on my way to Long Beach, California. After that, I'm going to be in Seattle on the 14th of February, back in BC on the 21st, doing a workshop in Puerto Vallarta, which I'm pretty stoked about.

Fun, awesome. On February 28th, March 1st. Anybody can just go on my website, greencityacres.com. I've got all those dates there. If people are interested in my online course that I have coming up, the basic premise of this course is I want to save you two or three years of the mistakes I made and get you ahead so you can start making money as a farmer right away.

It's profitableurbanfarming.com. They can sign up to the newsletter and they'll get a notification when the course is released. Do you have an estimate of when you think you're going to be publishing the course? Yeah. We're hoping we're shooting for one month from today. We're in post-production right now. We're editing the last bits of video and the content is up.

It's a really cool site where you can navigate. It views like a book with chapters and sub-chapters. You can read content and then there's videos on how to do stuff. I've been filming content for this thing for two and a half years now. It's got tons of stuff in it.

If I would have seen this stuff, man, it would have saved me a lot of time. Are you doing a big timed launch videos, the product launch formula? Are you just doing a simple launch? What kind of launch are you doing? We're kind of launching it. I don't know exactly.

I have a partner in the US named Luke Callahan and he manages the production. What we're doing is we're just going to launch it because we want to get this information out to people. We're going to launch it for a lot cheaper than what it's worth, basically. I don't know the price exactly, but we're going to launch it for probably half of what it will be over time.

We want to get the information out there and we want to get people using it. We're committed to making it better and better constantly. When you sign up for it, you get access to it forever. We want to make it better over time. It's slick. This thing is, like I said, the information is so valuable and it goes into so much detail.

You can watch it from the convenient of your own home. You can view it on an iPad when you're out in the field. How did Curtis do that thing? You can pull up the video and watch me do it. Awesome. Tell you what, give me a week or two, but then let's see if we can get you back on.

You prepare some thoughts and let's go ahead and give some info to help you with your course launch. Let's do another recording. It was a fun conversation. We kind of got off base. Let's see if we can help you with your course launch. I know for a number of my audience that'll be helpful.

Maybe you can put together some more of the outline that we're going to go with today on how to get into urban farming and that'll help you get some people in that course. I'd like to do that if you're willing. Great, yeah, absolutely Josh. Anytime. Awesome. Maybe I'll see you in a few days.

If I can make it to Orlando, I will be there. I'm not sure about it. It's a busy week, but if I can make it to Orlando, I'll be there. Anyway, thank you for coming on. I'm sure this is going to be a hit with the audience. If the first one is any indication, this one's also going to be quite well received.

Awesome, yeah. I look forward to it. I love that kind of interview because it can really be a solution for many people. As I know from the emails that I've received and also the emails that Curtis has received, it's a solution for at least a few of you. I hope some of the ideas, some of the information in today's show made a difference for you.

As far as I'm concerned, if it makes a difference for even one or two people, it's worth it. I know that it's made a difference for more people than that. It's amazing to me. We have over 18,000 downloads of that show. Excuse me, just under 18,949 downloads of that show.

It's a great one. I hope this was inspirational to you. I hope it was encouraging. I hope you learned something. I'll make sure to bring Curtis back on with some of the meat and potatoes. We'll stay away from philosophy and try to give you some actionable strategies when he gets ready to launch his course.

I didn't know when he was getting ready to do that, but we'll make sure to do that in the next few weeks or next month or so whenever it happens. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and every one of you being here. Thank you for the support for the show.

I really value it and I simply say that. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the show financially, please consider joining the membership program. You can find the details at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/membership. But that is the way that I'm building to fund the show and fund my ability to bring this to you about five days a week.

I try to bring you straightforward, as unbiased as possible. None of us can fully get away from our own bias, but I try to give you as much unbiased information as I can. When I do have bias, I try to disclose it at least so then you can understand and you can factor that in when making your own decisions.

I'm not necessarily right in everything. I'll just share what I've learned and why I think the way that I do. Hopefully, as a thinking person, you can understand what's right for you. So that's it. Thank you so much. Talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to today's show.

If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter @radicalpf and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. But your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

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If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck.

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