S9E119 Jonah Krochmalnek / Microgreens Consulting - Turning Green: A Finance Graduate's Venture into Microgreens Farming

0:00:00 - Harry Duran

So, Jonah Krochmalnek , owner and founder of Microgreens Consulting, thank you for joining me on the Vertical Farming podcast.

0:00:08 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I'm very excited to be here. I've been listening to your podcast for quite a while and I'm really excited to participate this time.

0:00:14 - Harry Duran

How did you find out about the show?

0:00:16 - Jonah Krochmalnek

To be honest, when I was farming for the many years I've been farming it could be often a lonely journey when you're doing a lot of meticulous work repeatedly. And then, yeah that I just found it by looking at what can I listen to, that I can learn from others while doing the day-to-day work of farming.

0:00:33 - Harry Duran

Yeah, where's home for you?

0:00:36 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I'm in Toronto, ontario, canada, okay.

0:00:39 - Harry Duran

Is it the type of climate that lends itself to finding things to do in the winter to keep you busy?

0:00:44 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I guess it depends on who you are. You know like I have lots of friends that love skiing, snowboarding, but I am a very much a summer person. So I'm looking forward to hopefully getting away this winter somewhere warm and kind of living a more tropical life than Canada offers. But the summers are just absolutely beautiful here, so it's hard to beat the northern summers, but the winters are for me personally quite tough.

0:01:06 - Harry Duran

As the viewer can probably see from my hat, I'm a New Yorker's heart. I grew up in New York, grew up in Yonkers, new York, and then I've lived in the city, brooklyn and different parts of Manhattan as well, so it's always near and dear to my heart. So I had a taste of the seasons. But now being here in Minnesota, I get a different taste because I'm closer to where you are and I'm closer to Canada, and so the winters are a bit more severe, and there is something to be said for appreciating the change in the seasons. Prior to here, I was in LA for four years and I sort of it would get to 55 degrees Fahrenheit and that'd be cold for Californians, and so I had to upgrade my gear moving to the Midwest and you learn to have an appreciation for the different cycles of the season, I think when you live in climates like this.

0:01:51 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Oh, 100% agree, yeah, there's. So even within the winter you get a calm, sunny day where the sun reflects the snow and it's just like gorgeous. And then there's also, you know, for most traditional farmers, where there's a season of reflection and planning for the next. You know spring and summer to come, that I think you know there's a lot of powerfulness in having those seasons, whereas you know, if you're in a climate that's the same year round, it's hard to kind of recognize that the year is passing and you know what things to improve, what things to change, what worked. Well, that kind of reflection I always find for me, fall is that time of year when the leaves start changing and falling. I find it's always a good time to reflect and move forward in a better direction.

0:02:33 - Harry Duran

Yeah, that's happening now. As I look out the window here and I'm grateful to be on a slightly bigger partial land with my girlfriend and I mean we see deer walking through the yard, turkeys and our neighbors have chickens, and so it's just, you know, coming from a typically city life, for most of my life it's an acclamation but also an appreciation for the beauty of slowing down into your point, just reflecting, and I wake up in the morning. We look out the bedroom window. I see we're adjacent to a swamp that's thankfully not going to get built upon ever. So you kind of see the, you know you just wake up to see the trees, and I think it's something you appreciate as you get older. Maybe when you're younger you want to be in the city and you want to be in the thick of it all. But I think as you get older there's something to be said for waking up and to a quiet morning with the birds chirping every once in a while.

0:03:19 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure. There's so much wisdom and beauty in living with the speed of nature rather than the speed of a city, because, you know, a city is often very artificial and there's so many benefits to a city. But being in nature and going with the pace of nature really I feel is very grounding. And yeah it's. I totally agree. The older I get, the more I feel connected to that, more than the city. And, yeah, it's nice to have a little piece of both.

0:03:44 - Harry Duran

So we're going to get into a bunch of topics here, specifically the work you did with living earth farms and you actually have a podcast yourself. So we'll get into, because obviously that's something that's near and dear to my heart. But I'm just curious you know what was life like growing up in Toronto for you?

0:03:59 - Jonah Krochmalnek

So, yeah, I feel like I grew up in a very, you know, traditional middle class family. I kind of follow the path of my parents and my brother going into business. So I was always very like you know, I grew up in high school or I guess I should say, right when I started university the financial crisis happened in 2008. And I was so fascinated with like that whole system of how, you know, wealth can just be created out of thin air and then disappear, and it was so fascinating for me to watch and I really fell in love with business then. But the reality set in. When I finished school, I studied finance. I enjoyed it. I don't think I met my people there, but I feel like the education and the information was very valuable to understand, you know, how the world works from the financial side of things.

And I got a job and I just felt like almost like sick, like I was out of place and not where I should be, and pretty much I was like this is not for me, but I've always been gardening, so I kind of did this soul searching while having this job of like what do I really want to do If you put money aside? Put you know, all the expectations from family and friends aside, what would I actually want to spend my time doing? And it came down to I love growing food. Like I've always loved growing food. I remember I had friends that would like make fun of me. It's like, oh, you're like a grandpa growing tomatoes in your backyard. What are you 60? You're not a teenager. Why aren't you doing this, this and that?

And I didn't care. Like you know, often as a teenager those types of things would really affect you and be like, oh, like, why am I doing this? But I was like I literally don't care. I love growing food, I'm going to do it, no matter what people say. And from there I like volunteered at a farm in Toronto, an urban farm called Fresh City Farms that was kind of new and upcoming at the time, and how to piece of land in a park in the city, which you know is very unique for Toronto, and just fell in love with the people. Like I feel like everyone was on the same page. We all loved the same thing. We're striving for the same, you know, idealistic future. And I feel like I really connected with that group of people.

And from there, in that greenhouse, they were growing microgreens and I was like this, grown year round and in a greenhouse in Toronto when it's like freezing cold in the winter and I started crunching numbers and saw that, you know, microgreens were actually a very logical step for me to take to actually make a career out of farming, because a lot of outdoor farming, especially in our climate, is very dependent on, you know, a very short season, really low margins, very high land costs. There was a lot of headwinds. That made it very difficult. And microgreens you grow in your house and you grow them year round. So I started just kind of doing it for fun and then it just kind of I used my business sense to kind of crunch the numbers and see what worked, start selling to restaurants and distributors and eventually move to retail and grew it to. You know, over the 10 year period grew it to be one of Canada's largest microgreens farms. Just kind of cool.

0:07:04 - Harry Duran

Lots unpacked there, just kind of rewinding a bit. Where do you think this passion for growing food came from?

0:07:11 - Jonah Krochmalnek

It came from my dad, so my dad always had a garden and I think you know, just trying a real fresh tomato was such a positive experience and I remember I had a summer job working in finance industry and would I would grow tomatoes in the summer just for fun.

I would bring a big bowl in August when there was, like you know, the bumper crop, and just leave it out and send a mass email. I'd be like, hey, there's these delicious tomatoes, if anyone wants to try, and then I would just walk by and people were like, wow, that was like such an amazing experience. I've never tasted a tomato like that and like being able to share that experience with people I think is really at the core of what drives me to want to help people farming and want to produce like the highest quality food. Because it's an experience and food is such a way to connect with others, whether you speak their language or have a completely different culture. Like food connects us all. We all have to eat. The vast majority of us like eating, like healthy, good tasting food and it's a great way to connect to other human beings and have like a really positive shared experience.

0:08:17 - Harry Duran

The other thing that you said that caught my attention was the fact that your peers at the time I think you said you were like 16, growing produce and they're giving you a bit of a hard time, and you said you didn't care. Right, and there's something to be said for the peer pressure you get when you're a teenager in terms of fitting in with the group and doing things you know following the wave, and so I'm curious for you where did you find that belief or that strength to go against the tide and do the things that weren't, you know, popular and against the grain and do something that was more your passion and alignment with who you are? And I'm wondering where you pull from that to make decisions like that at that age.

0:08:58 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think there's a part of it that's intuition. I grew up with a family that you know ate a traditional diet and I chose on my own at eight years old to not eat meat and I haven't had a piece of meat since which to a lot of people sounds crazy. But it was just like. It just felt like the decision that was right for me and it didn't matter how much pushback, how much anything else you know negative consequences for those decisions. It just like it felt innately meat and it's hard for me to ignore that, like that strong urge to make the decision. That just feels like it's coming very strongly from the core of like who I am. Yeah, I don't know if that explains it well, but I feel like it. Intuition is the best way to kind of put it. Is this like I've always had a very strong intuition on kind of big picture decisions in my life.

0:09:47 - Harry Duran

I think it's important for folks to understand and the listener to understand, to listen and cultivate that intuition. It's something that doesn't come naturally for most folks and I think once you start to realize or pay attention to hunches, coincidences, whatever you want to call them, like signs, you know, and I think what happens is what I've noticed personally is when you start to pay attention to them and acknowledge them, that you're going in the right direction and your hunch pulled you in the right direction and you had a positive outcome. You start to have more confidence, not only in your intuition, but also being aware and seeing other signs that the universe might give you to that this is the direction you should be taking 100%.

0:10:27 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I totally agree, and maybe for me it came a little more naturally. But yeah, I think it's just a better way to live life to not push away these very strong things that you experience or feel and you know, process them and try to understand them and why they make sense for you or don't make sense for you.

0:10:45 - Harry Duran

Yeah, so talk about those early days of the microgreens business, because there's a combination of folks that listen to the show and you know established leaders and you know CEOs and founders of these companies, but also a lot of people getting started in vertical farming, trying to understand where to begin, what crop to start with, where to start you know how to you know build those relationships, like you said, with the restaurants. So I know it's been a while since you had to have that hat on of the early entrepreneur and the scrappy entrepreneur, but if you can think about the things you were thinking about and the moments where you had successes, what do you think was working right in those early days as you're starting the business?

0:11:23 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I think starting out, keeping it really small and working out the kinks in the system was very valuable for me. I actually started well, first of all, I started in my parent's spare bedroom and that's how I started growing. In the winter of 2013 is when I officially started living with farm, but I was growing food outdoors for many, many years before that.

0:11:42 - Harry Duran

And what was the setup back then? Just to paint the picture.

0:11:45 - Jonah Krochmalnek

It was plastic, like cheap Home Depot shelving units, and fluorescent shop lights, like it's so crazy to think about now because LEDs have been around for so long. I've been using LEDs since 2014, but they really started to come around in the like 2014, 2015, 2016. But in 2013, it really wasn't much available. So I was using shop lights and I remember having two shop lights for two microgreens trays just to get enough light to get like a really nice color on some crops and just watering from. You know way a lot of microgreens growers grow, which is just a hose or like a watering can to water with tray with holes and a tray without holes to absorb it from the bottom. Very, very simple, no automation. In the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like I love doing this and I'm going to figure it out and I have some pictures of that setup and I look back and it's sometimes very rewarding to see, like you know, how simple it can start and how, how complicated and advanced, it can get.

0:12:44 - Harry Duran

If you've got those pictures, make sure you send them along when the show goes live. We'll drop them into the show notes as well.

0:12:50 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure. I actually have a picture of my first tray of microgreens I ever grew. It was a complete failure.

There was like maybe 15 microgreens sprouts in the tray that grew and it's like a good reminder and, I think, a motivation for other people that just because you don't have a green thumb or you know, something fails Like I think success is often just not giving up rather than, like you know, you're not having a skill or something like that Is, if you keep doing something long enough, eventually you'll succeed, and I see that with, like you know, youtube channels that have been around for so long that I've been following from a long time podcast, like anything. You just don't give up and you keep learning along the way you're, at some point you will likely succeed.

0:13:27 - Harry Duran

Yeah, it's one of the things I've learned as an entrepreneur this idea of being comfortable with failure. And failure doesn't mean that you know all is gone. It just means that specific thing you tried did not succeed, so there's something else waiting for you to try or attempt. And I think the people that give up are the people that just get really uncomfortable with that notion. And I think the people that do have success learn how to brush that dirt off their shoulders and just get up and say OK, keep moving forward. This idea of taking imperfect action on a daily basis is really important 100%.

0:13:58 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I totally agree. I think that's a big determining factor and success. I was going to mention another really key lesson I learned in the early years was to actually figure out what people want. It sounds so simple, but just an example For the first about two years, I only grew living my Korean, so I didn't do any cut product. I sold it in the container, was grown in, Whether it's to restaurants or end consumers, and it was great. It was easy, there was very little labor involved in harvesting and it worked well for me at the time. And then, when I expanded in 2015 into the commercial warehouse the first unit that we had I started seeing like oh, it's a lot harder to get sales than I thought with this method.

Once I needed to like expand really rapidly and I came to this conclusion that you know, people are really lazy at the end of the day, Like they don't want to spend their money on something that's going to make more work for them. They want to spend money on things that make their life easier. So it was kind of like an epiphany for me. I was sitting in the farm for you know, like at the end of the day, being like how do I make this work and just like, kind of like trying to wrap my head around it, and I was like the farms that have succeeded the most in at the time were ones that were doing cut product. And then it was a whole like skew of things. I needed to get the cut product. So I would tell myself, oh, like I shouldn't do this because it's going to be more labor intensive, et cetera.

So all the reasons not to do it, instead of realizing the reason I needed to do it, was because this is what people actually wanted. This is where the demand was and this is what people wanted to actually consume and make their life easier and create value for them, rather than selling the living product, which often made more work for them. They had to dispose of the soil, they had to cut the product More chance of mold in a lot of cases for people not knowing what they're doing. And then I had people even message me on email and just be like my plant's drooping, what do I do? And then it hit me. I was like people don't. Actually it was a clue that you know having this living product wasn't the right fit for the market for me locally here. It doesn't mean it doesn't work. Elsewhere there's lots of farms that do it. But for me to grow and scale the way I needed to, I needed to adapt to what people actually wanted.

0:16:08 - Harry Duran

So when did you start to see a sort of the change in your approach to where it was leading to sales? Was it commercial? Were you doing farmers markets? Were you selling to restaurants? When did you start to see a shift?

0:16:24 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah. So when I started doing cut product I went out very rapidly and went to a bunch of distributors for restaurants. So I sold to restaurants for a very short time directly and then moved pretty quickly to the wholesale model and the reason was to get it to be able to scale up. And I saw that volume can be moved and so I went to distributor. I dropped off the product. I was hyper focused on creating a really high quality product.

There was another big grower at the time that, like at the time, I considered my main competition. I was this little small grower. They were this huge grower at the time and like selling across the province and into the US even at that point and I wanted to create a better product than they had. So I hyper fixated on creating the best tasting, most nutrient, dense and microeans. So I became a little bit of a mad scientist experimenter during that phase. But what came out of that was this cut product that I brought to some distributors and there was one distributor that ended up being one of our biggest customers that literally I dropped off the product because the owner was busy and the print I don't know where the pros manager was at the time. And then, literally 45 minutes later, he called me up. He said Jonah, when can we order the product? And I was like, let me get back to you on that.

And we were already set up in the facility then. So I was ready to get going. So you know, within a month we had one of our biggest customers, especially in the food service side, and it kind of just kept going like that and I was like it clicked. You know, I found the way to create value for people and then the money started to flow, the sales started to flow. So it was really about figuring out my side of that equation, which was how do I package the product, how do I sell it, what's the price point, All that stuff, to get it to be a mass marketable product for food service. And then I tried and then did the same thing for retail.

0:18:09 - Harry Duran

A couple of years later We'll talk a little bit about the work you're doing now on the consulting side, because I'm sure people have a ton of questions. But just out of curiosity, what do you think was the shift in what you were, in what you did to change the flavor profile, the nutrient density, whatever it was that made it like you know that you think had the effect of? When you dropped it off, they said, well, this is completely different and much better than what we've tasted up until then.

0:18:34 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure. That's another great question. So I think the main factors were the growing recipe. So it came down to the light, the soil, the fertilizer and the quality of seed. So, as an example, there's lots of microgreen seed companies out there, but if you want to get the highest quality seed you're going to have to pay more, and that extra price in seed will often equate to a much higher return on higher yield and quality than the extra cost of the seed. So the same thing applies to soil and lighting. We purchased like a more custom solution for lighting. At the time there was nothing really available that met the needs. There's a lot more available now, of course, but back then there wasn't much available, so we got our lights custom made. I spent a lot. The biggest portion of time I spent on was the soil recipe. So what fertilizers to use, what soil composition to use, and through that experimenting I was able to create a product. For example, basil was one that, like people, smelt and they're like what? How is this?

0:19:30 - Harry Duran

possible.

0:19:31 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Like you know, like it's so fragrant and flavorful, and that was that was one early on. That I spent a lot of time on was basil. How to perfect that, but it really came down to having a diverse source of fertilizer inputs was a really big one. So a lot of my Korean growers are a lot of the vertical farming industry is focused on resource efficiency, which I think is really, really important. Like it's really crucial to not be like disposing of a bunch of, like you know, fertilizer that can be used elsewhere or etc.

With microgreens in particular, I found and I've grown a lot hydroponically that for microgreens growing organically in soil with organic fertilizer actually produced a much higher quality product and the yields are actually better as well and the shelf life, whereas hydroponic lettuce versus soil grown lettuce.

It's almost impossible to beat the numbers and the efficiency and all that with hydroponics.

But in microgreens in particular, I think having a really high quality soil and fertilizer regimen can drastically make a big difference and we actually we actually did maybe it was three years ago now we did an analysis on the actual microgreens. We did broccoli microgreens and compare it to another local organic grower which I won't mention because that it's you know, and the nutrient analysis was, I knew it was going to be a big difference, but I didn't realize how big it was going to be. So the same product, broccoli, microgreens, standardized microgreens product in the industry on the low end, 40%, protein was 40% higher and on the high end, iron was 300% higher and every nutrient we tested was between that 40% and 300%. So we had magnesium, 80 something percent, calcium, 70 something percent, phosphorus, 90 something. You know, everything was like 40% or higher, which is just mind blowing because people think, oh, a microgreens and microgreens, a tomato is a tomato, but there really is a substantial difference between how it's grown and what the result is in flavor and nutrition.

0:21:29 - Harry Duran

Very, very helpful to know and I think especially for folks getting started to your point when they see them from the outside. You know, I mean, I go to farmers market, I see microgreens trace it. They all look the same to me and you don't even think about these things. So I think some of the key takeaways is really having that mad scientist hat on and just feel like continuing to tinker and just figuring this out, and probably this calls back to your early days with your tomato experiments and, just you know, always having that desire for improvement. And then also partnering with the distributors, because obviously, in terms of getting it to the most people possible, you're not having to be the one that's having those conversations with the restaurant. You know they do that on a day to day basis with their thousands of products. You know already. So just getting into there and demonstrating to them that you have a quality product that makes their jobs easier, because now they're confident in what they're selling and distributing to restaurants as well 100% and I think there was also a choice.

0:22:20 - Jonah Krochmalnek

As you know, a business person, I decided I didn't want to be a logistics company. So if you're working direct with small customers, it's very easy to become a delivery company or, you know, a relationship management company rather than an actual farm, and I was very intentional to keep my job as much as possible in farming because that's what I loved the most. Now, of course, as the farm grew, my role became less and less of the grower and more and more of the I wouldn't say CEO, but you know more of that kind of role of growing the business and managing staff and everything that comes in between HR, accounting, finance and everything else that you have to all the different hats you got to point on as an entrepreneur.

0:22:59 - Harry Duran

Some of which, speaking for myself, are not my genius. As I expand, you think about all the different things you have to do and like accounting, like I'm not, so you find the people that are good at it and then hire them as well. How big did the team get?

0:23:12 - Jonah Krochmalnek

We had at most six people plus me, so it wasn't overly big farm. But we automated a lot to reduce the cost of labor. So our labor costs were very low for you know the microgreens industry in general, because microgreens are generally more labor intensive than you know lettuces or you know other sort of crops. But the automation was like a key to success and a key to keeping labor low. And a lot of those staff were even part time not all of them were full time and there was a lot we could have improved on that front as well to make an even more leaner machine.

But part of the farm was also trying to create a community. So it wasn't just like a let's make the most profitable farm I could possibly make. It was about, you know, having volunteers be able to come and experience this like unique thing in the city that you know people see it as being something from the future. So we were very open book and wanting to share the experience of the farm with the community around us. So the focus was not just on making as efficient as possible even though that was like my forte was figuring out how to do that, especially in the latter years it was more about making sure everyone's happy, that the jobs are good and that there's, you know, a good, vibrant community around the business.

0:24:24 - Harry Duran

As you think about the 10 year journey of the farm, was there a moment where there was like a dip or you know where you just you had a bit of a stumble, or a challenging time where you were wondering you know what the future of the farm is going to look like.

0:24:38 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, I think. Well, I would say there's two. There was one more on the business side and one more on a personal side. So on the business side, when COVID happened it was so vivid Like I remember getting a call from one of my staff that they were delivering that morning saying that one of the distributors refused to accept the product because they heard the news somehow through the weeds that everything was closing. That day.

And they were just like, yeah, we can't accept the product. And I was like I heard about everything in the news and I remember being in my head like holy shit, it's starting now, you know, and it was a scary time in so many ways. I think the farm was a great thing to be a part of during COVID. I feel so many people were just motivated to grow food. They saw the shortages of food and it was very motivating for me. But it was very scary to have sales go down pretty much 40% overnight and not know how to manage that, never going through that before Now.

Luckily, you know, we went out, we went to more retail stores, we found what modes worked and then we were able to grow from there and get well beyond where we were at that point. But it was scary because you know it was like how do I make sure all the staff are paid and get the hours they need to live their lives and manage all the production and people having to stay home for two weeks when they think they might have had it and all that craziness that ensued from that. So that was the first one on the business side, but we got through it. I think it was pretty fast. About three to four months in we were already at where we were pre COVID and then from there we just grew from there. So it was like you know, there's nothing else to do.

So, I just, like you know, put my head down, was like how are we going to make this work? And just kind of went forward through that. And then the other one, which was the more recent one, was I don't take vacation too often because I always have so much going on, but so pretty much I was running the farm, I started doing the consulting and actually built a course on how to grow my greens, and then I was renting an Airbnb property and managing that. And I remember there was a specific day, the day before I was about to leave to go on vacation, they called and said a staff member called and said that the farm van broke down and it's not working. That a pipe Airbnb is a property up north. It gets very, a lot colder than even Toronto up there and someone put like one of the guests put like a garbage bag down the toilet or something like that, in the septic tank pipe froze so the floor got flooded in the basement and there was a lot of you know, I don't want to say pressure, but a lot of movement to get this course out to the people and I just remember like pretty much breaking down. I mean I can't manage it. This is way too much like. This is complete overkill. So obviously I was able to get through those items and get them done.

But I feel when I went on that vacation it was very eye opening to me to be like this is not sustainable and I can't keep doing all these things I love and want to do.

I have to kind of pick and choose and try to find balance in my life as much as like I have ideas out the wazoo on things I'd like to do and build and all this kind of stuff. But I really had to narrow down and focus on what made the most sense, where I can have the biggest impact. And that was a very big, difficult decision on what ended up leading to me selling Living Earth Farm and deciding to go all in on education, because I feel that that has by far the most impact and my time can be kind of extrapolated out to help lots of people at once rather than kind of helping just the farm grow linearly. And then I stopped there being because that was just another like I really I've always been interested in like running a bed and breakfast and kind of giving people a really good experience and having a really good vacation, but it ended up being something very different than that I ever thought it would be, but I'm glad I did it yeah.

0:28:12 - Harry Duran

Yeah, it sounds like you know a lot of maybe what you had or grew up with in terms of lessons learned. You had to pull from result, that resiliency and getting we talked about. You know, dealing with failure, and it seemed like that was a moment, all these things converging, that you really had to dig down and, you know, pull from who knows. You know if you even knew at the time where you were pulling from that strength to figure out, like, how I'm going to get through, because in the moment it happens I'm sure I've had moments like that where you're just like deer and headlights and then you realize that no one's going to come to save you. You had to figure all this out on your own and you got to pull from somewhere. That you make you know and I think it really makes you stronger as a person and as an entrepreneur and as a business owner to realize that you know if you can get through that and it kind of strengthens you for any future challenges.

0:28:59 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure. Yeah, I think the strength came from like the intuition that I'm slowly degrading, or not degrading, but like making my life a lot harder than it needs to be to try to give more to others and to obviously make more in these businesses but at the expense of my health. So I've been on a journey for, you know, many years, but especially the last, you know, year and a half, of like really focusing and being very intentional on what I say yes and no to, and I think saying no is sometimes so hard to do because there could be an opportunity that sounds like the perfect fit but you know it's going to overwhelm you and put you beyond your capacity to perform and it's hard to say no. But I think learning to say no is one of the most powerful skills in life and in business. But it's a hard lesson to learn and it's often difficult decisions to make when you have to say no to something that you really love.

0:29:56 - Harry Duran

Yeah, I think it's Derek Kelpern that says it's either a hell yes or it's a no. Yeah, yeah that discipline there. So how did the process for selling or finding a buyer for that Was that easy or was that a drawn out process? I'm curious because I'm sorry there's folks who are in that same boat and you know, start to think about how those conversations happen.

0:30:17 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure. Yeah, so it started out where I pretty much just networked with people in my community whether people that had other farms or people that I thought might be a good fit to take on the business, some of them being, you know, customers and things like that and I decided that you know the time it takes to find the right strategic buyer. It's kind of almost something that falls on you rather than you search for it. So it came to the decision of how long I wanted to wait for the process to happen and I didn't want to wait multiple years to find the right strategic buyer because, like starting this from scratch, it kind of felt like it was my baby, like I built this thing and I didn't want it to go in the wrong hands. So luckily, I found a really great brokerage from here and decided to go that route. So I spent about a couple of months networking and trying to find strategic buyer and then decided that the broker out and I'm very glad I went the broker out, because selling a business is very complicated and there's so much more than I ever thought and having that person there or team there to advise you is invaluable.

So we had tons of people interested because you know it's a very unique business and, you know, very profitable, and pretty much it came down to finding the right fit for people that I think would actually be able to best manage the business. And there's lots of people that came in and were like what are the numbers? That's all we care about? And I was like that's great, that's not a bad research to have, but it's not a good fit for the team, for the business. So we found the main thing I was looking for was passion, like people that were really passionate, like I was, who were running this business, which luckily I found, and the transition has went very smoothly and the new owners are great. We still have a great relationship. I can still go there and you know, see them at the farm, see the staff, that sort of thing, and do some side projects I'm excited about one being a seeding machine that I'm working on with some engineers to build for the industry, and we can go to Living Earth and kind of do the testing there, and so we've kept a good relationship, which I think was one another thing that was really important.

But all in all it took about from when I decided to make the decision to sell to when it sold was about a year, and then the time it took to when I had a signed deal to when it actually closed was about, I believe, nine months. Okay, so it's a fairly long process. Lots of detail in between, lots of due diligence, financing things, all sorts of stuff like that Fairly complicated. So if anyone's in that headspace of they're ready to sell and do something else, I would recommend a brokerage for sure, because they will guide you through what is much more difficult than selling a house Selling a house seems like a piece of cake compared to selling a business.

0:32:54 - Harry Duran

And I'm sure the listener or viewer wants to connect with you and learn more and then quote, unquote, pick your brain. Then obviously that's where a nice transition into what you've done now, since You've got the microgreens consulting and also the podcast as well. So wherever you want to jump in with, I imagine there was a time where you just exhaled and after the sale and caught your breath and decided what to do next. But I'm curious if you could just kind of share with us what that journey was like as you started to transition into these new ventures.

0:33:25 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, so it actually started well before I even had any plan to sell the business it started with in 2020,. I got some media attention from Curtis Stone, who's a somewhat famous YouTuber in agriculture, and media attention from the local media, and I got people starting reaching out and being like they have a farm, they have a microgreens farm, they want to replicate what living earth is doing or they want to learn to automate different areas of the farm or just kind of pick my brain on what the next steps to take are the business. And for the first six months to a year that happened. I kind of just was like I'm too busy, I don't really want to do it, and then I decided let me just take one of these calls and see what it's like, see how I can help, and I think that really shifted my mindset. I got so much fulfillment from kind of sharing that knowledge with other farms. And that's where the journey kind of started, where I was like, huh, this is something. All this knowledge I've accumulated I didn't even realize I really accumulated is so valuable to other people because they can skip all the steps that I had to take to get where I needed to go, all the failures along the way and in an hour call you can get an incredible amount of information. So I started doing more and more of that and then eventually I started not necessarily promoting it, but I just decided last year to make it an official company. So my Queen's Consulting became a separate entity and, yeah, and the goal was to kind of help other farms in different areas of business, whether it's sales or production, automation, hr, getting the numbers in line, all that kind of stuff, whatever it was that you helped with, given that I was able to do what I've done to share that information.

And then the interesting enough, the podcast actually came out after I sold the, or the idea of it came after I sold the business. I took pretty much two months off. I thought I was going to take like a year off. To be honest, I was like I'm just going to chill and take a break. It was a lot the whole process and what ended up happening is I just wanted to talk to people and help people and I was like what would be the most fun way to get this information out there For me personally?

And I was like just talking to farmers and I feel like I'd learn along the way. I can share that information and it would be really valuable for those starting out other farms that are in similar positions and find solutions to problems through conversation, and I've only been doing it for two months, but I absolutely love it. I feel that there's so much value in talking to people that have had 10 years experience growing five years, three years, even people that have six months to get their perspective on the challenges they're facing. What succeeded, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, and then going forward, I just kind of I'm a guy that kind of plays it by ear. I don't really plan like super far in the future, but we're coming out with that sitting machine and at some point I'd like to create another course or something along those lines to help people get to the next stage of business. But that's something down the line that you know, when the time's right I'll do it sort of thing.

0:36:21 - Harry Duran

Is that inherent in your nature, would you say, Because I've noticed it as a consistent thread throughout this conversation, this idea of wanting to give back and also, you know, helping others. You know, with everything that you've learned along the way.

0:36:33 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, I think it's just very fulfilling. Like you know, I always think of things of like rather than giving back to give back like, give back for the fulfillment of that. So maybe it comes off as like a you know, a selfish perspective, but at the end of the day it's a win-win for both sides. So that's how I kind of view it. It's just very fulfilling to see these farms that I work with and see how much easier life can be with having the right information or having the right equipment and how much time they can save and having that gratitude kind of go back and forth with they're grateful that they have this information, I'm grateful to help them out and, like you know, have a fulfilling career. So I think it's just, you know, try to create those win-win situations and from the first call I ever did it, felt like that and still does, which is great.

0:37:16 - Harry Duran

So, with that experience of you know, having been 10 years in the industry, what's your take on what you're seeing now is this, you know, initial resurgence and there's a little bit of a what we're calling the trough of disillusionment now for a lot of folks in vertical farming. So, having that perspective of someone who's been doing this for a while, what's your take on where we're headed with, you know, cea in general, or even just vertical farming, and what the opportunities lie or what some of the challenges might be?

0:37:41 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, I think I'm very, very optimistic long term. I feel like this is the vertical farming equivalent of the tech bubble in 2000, where there was too much money thrown at maybe not necessarily the best institutions or the best ideas, because everyone wanted a little piece of the pie sort of thing, just like in, you know, the early 2000s. But on the other end of that is very great opportunities for investors, for farms, for people wanting to get in the industry. I think the industry is there's no down in my mind that is growing and it will continue to grow. We need to feed people.

We have and seemingly more and more people you know in the world and more and more people want to eat safe, healthy food and especially things like greens, which you know a lot of. You know the field grown greens. They do their best they can. But if there's, you know, cow farms or manure close by and there's a big washout, you never know what's going to happen, whereas you're growing indoors. It's a lot safer, the quality is great Like I buy lettuce from an indoor vertical farm in Ontario and I don't think I'd go back to eating other quality product or outdoor grown product when I have the choice, because it's just it lasts longer. It's grown locally in the middle of the winter.

0:38:52 - Harry Duran

It tastes better Do you want to give me a shout? Do you want to give me a shout?

0:38:55 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I'm more sustainable Vision greens in St Catharines. Yeah, yeah, I have some other product in my fridge right now and, of course, I'm eating living with farm by greens on a routine basis. Sometimes I just like I go to health food store in my house and I buy my own product, which is very interesting experience to kind of do. But I think it's cool, you know, to go in the store and see something that I created and see other farms kind of doing that. I think you know, from my perspective, what kind of happened was a lot of money was thrown into creating the perfect, ideal automated system, and I think that's the right way to go in the long run.

But I think there's a balance between focusing on creating profitability and that automation, rather than solely on the former. And that's kind of the approach we took and I think that's a big reason why living or succeeded is we didn't focus on just creating the system and we didn't focus on just creating a good sales model. We focused on both and, yes, we could have automated more. You know like there's things most things are automated, but there's more things that can always be done and it really comes down to what is the return on that automation and how does that time be utilized versus actually increasing sales and creating a more profitable model of your business. So I think it really comes down to finding a better balance between the two. Another big one, I think, which actually came out of the podcast from another farmer that had a great insight, which is if you go to most industries, you have someone creating the technology, so you have, like, an outdoor farming, you have the company creating the tractor and then you have the farm and with vertical farming, they're doing both.

They're creating the tractor the system and they're growing the food, and it's a lot to take on. You're trying to solve two very difficult problems at once, rather than having a company focusing on building the equivalent of the tractor, which is the whole system and automation, and then having operators that are really efficient at operating the farm, and I think it was very eye-opening hearing that. I think it's true and I think that's wisdom that can be taken to the next generation of vertical farms. And that doesn't mean buying everything and just putting it together is not always the best solution, but just understanding that there's the apples that create their own technology and also, mostly at this point, just buying other companies that have the technology and focusing on sales and creating really good products within that industry. So I think it ends up being the same thing where there's the tech creators and the innovators on that end of the automation and lighting technology and all that, and then there's the operators of the farms, and I think mixing the two too much can lead to more issues than benefits.

0:41:27 - Harry Duran

Yeah, One of the examples, something that I heard when David Farkar spoke at Indoor Icon. It was earlier this year. He was on a panel with Paul Sellu of Little Leaf and, yeah, they were comparing greenhouses versus vertical farms and obviously the answer was always it depends. But it was that perfect analogy. He says you have to decide as a company are you a technology company or are you a farm? And I think a lot of what we've seen was people trying to mix and match and trying to do all things and without having the expertise in one of them, and that's what we're seeing, I think, as a result of some of the closures, restructurings, bankruptcies and all the things that have been happening in this space. So I think having your perspective is really interesting to see what's possible when you have really focused intention on what it is you really want to do. Given your journey, everything you've been through and what you're moving into with, like the consulting and the podcast now probably presents a different set of challenges. So what's a difficult question you've had to ask yourself recently?

0:42:22 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I think the biggest one, the older I get, is how to best allocate my time, and that comes down to work, but also personal life, because there's many things I'm excited to grow personally in personal development and it's like I wake up in the morning.

I'm like how much time should I allocate to the business side of things and helping others with farming, and then how much time do I allocate to that personal development side of things and spending time with family and all the other joys that life have to offer?

So I feel like it's something I struggle with on a daily basis and, to be honest, don't know what the answer is, but I feel like over time I'll lean into that more and understand where it makes sense Because, to be honest, I'm a bit of a workaholic in a lot of ways and in some ways it had to be for the farm in the early years, but to find that balance, I feel like it can make much better decisions.

So all my big decisions in business have actually been not in the business but when I'm away on vacation, which is very ironic. My decision to expand in I think it was 2016 or 2017, my decision to like a major expansion, doubling production sort of thing. The decision to sell the business was on vacation. The decision to start the podcast was, I guess, tackling, on vacation too. So I feel like my best decisions are often made when I'm focusing on more of my personal side of things and make better business decisions through that, which I think is interesting. But yeah, balancing those two is always a challenge and something I look forward to getting better at.

0:43:46 - Harry Duran

It's one of those things that I think entrepreneurs and just people who are always looking to grow personally and develop themselves, I think learn the hard way sometimes, because I've gone out for the long walks, because you feel like as an entrepreneur, you've got to go, go, go and be doing something and be actively like in the business and working, and working and to your point, I mean, for me sometimes it's meditation.

If I sit down for those 30 minutes or 45 minutes in the morning, I just calm the mind a little bit and just like help to just separate the thoughts and you're not in it and you're able to think things from a bigger perspective and this is something probably what you've experienced you just have these insights come in and just when your mind is relaxed and I feel that sometimes I took a long walk for about an hour the other day in a nice path we have here close to home and I just realized I need to do this more often because it's really there's something about calming that excess noise that's happening in your mind and for me, like I'm an overthinker, sometimes, there's always something cooking in my head and I think finding moments to relax and just let the brain calm down a bit. I think is where you see to your point really, where some of the ahas come through.

0:44:53 - Jonah Krochmalnek

For sure.

Yeah, and one conclusion I've made fairly recently in the last year or so it's really hard to make good decisions from a place of fear, and fear manifests in so many ways it could be overthinking, it can be worrying, and there's so many ways but to try to recognize that and then, like you say, meditate or do something to get out of that state.

And there's a great book that has been transformative for me on the personal side which is called Levels of Energy by Frederick Dodson, and it kind of explains, like you know, the different, different emotions and the amount of energy in that emotion. And to try to move yourself upward on that curve allows you to make much better decisions and much more clear, concise ideas to form in your mind rather than you know kind of skit like scattered brain ideas, which you know I'm very prone to that. So I think it was very profound transformation in the way I think by seeing like, okay, where am I at? Am I in a state of fear? How do I move to a higher level of energy and make decisions from there?

0:45:54 - Harry Duran

Yeah, that sounds like a good one. I will make sure to drop that into the show notes as well. So, as we wrap up, I want to thank you for being very generous with your time. I'm curious, just as a podcast, or what you've learned or how you've grown in terms of the conversation you've had since starting the show.

0:46:09 - Jonah Krochmalnek

I think I've just like I've learned a lot along the way, like you know, like I said about that, you know, separating the track and the farm, just having more conversations, making time for that, to connect to people who have gone through the ropes and learn the lessons that you learn early on and have the wisdom to share with others. I think it's really fun to do and I'm excited to keep doing it, but it's a whole new skill set. Right, it's like a brand, it's almost like a completely brand new business. Even though I'm talking about things I know about, the actual business side of it is completely different. So it's exciting. It's obviously scary, but it's very exciting to be in the space and be able to share that kind of wisdom and knowledge with others. And, yeah, it's like starting a new business, which is exciting, and yeah, I'm excited for the journey.

0:46:55 - Harry Duran

So, as we wrap up, I've been leaving some time towards the end of these conversations for any messages you might have for your peers in the vertical farming space. You know, and given what's been happening and what we're seeing in the news, what's top of mind for you of anything that you may want to share with your colleagues and your peers and, you know, maybe even people just getting started?

0:47:13 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to kind of take a step back and see is the model that we have working? And, if not, to you know, iterate and make adjustments to that, and to be to kind of put yourself outside of it, like pretend like you were not running this business or not in this business you were just an outsider, like you know, just take out your position in it and be like what advice would you give this company right now? And you know, and often there's often just having that outside perspective, looking in, can help you realize things that you don't want to believe, because you want the business to succeed. And by taking that kind of step back, you can see what things really do need to be changed or modified. And I think the other thing is just to, you know, not give up, to keep moving forward.

You know there's always recessions in industries and this is nothing new, and I've been through a few myself.

And the older you get, the more you realize the world's not ending. Because I remember in 2008, I was like holy, the world's ending. And even during COVID I was like I don't know what's going to happen. But I think, after going through those two big ones, I have a lot more confidence in the system, that humans are very resilient and we'll get through a lot more difficult times, and to remember during those difficult times, to have the confidence to be able to get through it, I think is and knowing that you've done it in the past and I think that's where entrepreneurs often have a lot of experience is getting through really difficult times and coming out the other side stronger, better, more profitable. And I think this industry as a whole and the individuals in it will experience that coming out of this one, and I'm very, very excited to see how the industry adapts, changes and grows through this. It's going to be really beautiful to see and I'm very excited to watch it happen live.

0:49:00 - Harry Duran

Very inspiring words to wrap up this conversation. Thanks again for your time. It's a really inspiring story and I'm glad we connected and you reached out and I think this is going to be really helpful for folks getting started and just to hear someone who's been through the trenches, been through the ups and downs to understand that there is light at the other tunnel. It's going to be an LED light, not a phosphorous light this time, but I think that's very inspiring story. I appreciate you being generous with your time and sharing what's been working for you. So where's the best place for folks to connect with you if they want to learn more?

0:49:32 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Yeah, they can go to our website, microgreensconsultingcom, or they can check out Instagram, which is just at microgreensconsulting. We got daily updates on just free information from the interviews that we've had and much more, so great resources are completely free.

0:49:48 - Harry Duran

And the podcast.

0:49:50 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Oh, podcast is called Microgreens Mastery. You can find it on Spotify, on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts.

0:49:57 - Harry Duran

Okay, thanks again for your time, john, I really appreciate it.

0:50:00 - Jonah Krochmalnek

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me on. Have a great time.