Applying the World Building Framework to Epic Gardening

Happy Tuesday Friends,

Last week we took a look inside Epic Gardening and how founder Kevin Espiritu went from a gardening blog in 2010 to a dynamic gardening brand and ecosystem that now generates $50 million a year in revenue. Epic has built an entire world and ecosystem around a topic that brings happiness and meaning to peoples’ lives all over the world.

Below is a brief history of Epic Gardening that we covered last week. You can read much more detail here.

Now let’s move on to applying the world building framework in detail to show you how this works. 

Welcome to the World of Epic Gardening 🌎️ 🧱 

Below is a list of a few core features that all worlds should have that we will apply to Epic Gardening.

Geography - Define the regions and cultures within your world 🗺️ 

Epic Gardening’s world encompasses information and resources for different aspects of gardening - growing edible plants, growing decorative plants, soil & compost, etc. Each, “Region” can be found on the main navigation through their website:

Gardeners from different niches (ie cultures) come to each region to form a diverse, but connected community centered on gardening. These cultures include:

• Indoor gardening - people growing plants indoors, including container or hydroponic gardening.

• Outdoor gardening - people that do traditional gardening.

• Urban gardening - people growing in small spaces, including vertical gardens and rooftop gardens.

• Sustainable gardening - people focused on permaculture and regenerative growing techniques.

• Specialized plants - people growing succulents and other exotic plants.

So, if you look at Epic Gardening’s geography visually it looks something like this:

Trade - Describe how people in your world trade with each other 🤝 

Epic Gardening has created a world where there is true two-way exchange of information, knowledge, and support with the community. Most creators have a difficult time crossing the chasm where they can motivate their community enough to participate, spend time in their world, and build stuff in it without the creator having to be there. In order for this to happen, the creator must establish trust and engage with the audience over a sustained period of time before community members participate in a meaningful way ont their own. So, let’s dig in to what is traded at Epic Gardening:

Epic Gardening's Contributions

Epic provides mostly educational content in the form of written blog posts, instructional videos, and social media posts. The content includes gardening advice, tips and tricks, product reviews, and how-to guides. This includes:

• Longer-form videos and playlists on YouTube focused on their different regions and cultures.

• Short-form videos on Instagram that are visually appealing posts and stories showcasing various gardening tips, success stories, and plant highlights.

Doing this consistently over several years has led to gaining trust from the community and meaningful engagement with their content. Epic also provides giveaways and other fun things to engage the community and create an incentive for people to enter their world. Below is a recent giveaway for a gardening starter kit.

Community Contributions

Epic has built a community where people come in and participate in a meaningful way. There is a fair amount of user-generated content all over their social channels. This includes sharing personal gardening experiences, and providing advice and support to other fellow gardeners. Below is one of countless examples in their comments.

This powerful exchange of knowledge and experiences among audience members strengthens the community and enhances collective learning. This level of engagement is actually more of an exception than the rule in the creator economy so it should not be overlooked. Most creators do not build an effective enough world where people share their own knowledge and experiences in a meaningful way.

Regional Contrasts - highlight similarities and differences within your world 👨‍🦰 👵 

Each region and culture within Epic Gardening’s world have two general categories of people: beginners and advanced gardeners.

• Beginning gardeners: benefit from content focused on basic gardening techniques, easy-to-grow plants, and troubleshooting common problems.

• Advanced gardeners: benefit from content in the form of In-depth guides, advanced techniques, and specialized plant care.

Below is a visual applying these categories to Epic Gardening’s world.

The visual shows how deep this actually goes. We count 50 different regions and cultures that are part of Epic Gardening’s world. Examples include content serving beginner indoor gardeners or content serving on advanced urban gardeners.

A quick screenshot below of their YouTube channel shows playlists targeting niches and topics within these different regions and cultures:

While Epic Gardening provides content specific to each region and culture, they have created a cohesive community of gardeners that all aim to:

• cultivate healthy plants and achieve successful harvests; and

• have a shared interest for gardening and learning that unites different segments of the community.

Epic offers something for everyone meeting them wherever they are along their gardening journeys.

Currency - Identify what is valued and traded within your world 💡 💡 

In Epic Gardening’s world, the primary currency is sharing knowledge and driving successful gardening outcomes for their community. This knowledge is highly valued by the audience and is traded for their trust and engagement. This trust is built through consistent, high-quality content that delivers real, tangible results for gardeners. When followers successfully apply Epic’s advice and see positive results, these outcomes become testimonials, recommendation, and word of mouth recommendations that serve as evidence of Epic Gardening’s expertise and valuable currency to attract new followers.

Epic also participates in community events, gardening forums, and collaborations with other gardening influencers and brands to build social capital and to further establish them as a trusted authority in the gardening community.

Wrapping It All Up 🎁 

Ok, that was a lot to unpack. We felt it was important to apply this world building framework in a more detailed, long-form way so you can use it as a guide for your own life, ideas, and world building endeavors. Remember one important thing here - what Kevin has built at Epic is a result of more than 10 years of hard work and focus. Effective world building requires consistency and focus, it’s not a linear or straightforward process. Hopefully this framework will provide some structure and guardrails on your world-building journey.

Have good week and remember to Go Direct!

Jordan & Scott