Bentley's own crop
fed on vermicompost
worms (again, it CAN be if you have a good system in place) – but I also made the mistake of thinking I could have a million different moving parts in my “business”. I wanted to grow multiple kinds of worms, and sell all sorts of different products.
It wasn’t until I really got laser-focused, and put a real value on my time that things started to head in a positive direction.
An Accident Leads to a Gold Mine
UWC: The brand butter in your physical business is something you refer to as a “worm mix,” which I would describe as vermicompost with an extreme density of worms, babies and cocoons. Can you talk a little bit about how you stumbled upon selling this way?
BC: It’s not so much a “vermicompost + worms” as it is a “quality habitat material + worms”. When the mix gets to the point of having a high concentration of vermicompost I consider it to be past its prime.
What’s funny is that I’ve always been a big proponent of the “worm mix” concept – without really thinking about it…at least not until my “major turning point” (something I’ll talk about in a minute).
Pretty well any time I would start up a new vermicomposting system, I would simply remove worm-rich material from another active system and use that as a starter culture. It ALWAYS worked extremely well, and the population in the new system would expload – and basically find its own “balance” without any assistance from me.
Interestingly enough, what I noticed with the typical “pounds ‘o’ worms” stocking method (i.e. those times where I had ordered some worms from a supplier and was using them to stock a new system) was that I virtually always ended up with:
– Some dead or dying worms
– A fair number of restless, roaming – often even escaping – worms
– Just generally, more of a “settling” period being needed before the system worked well.
All of this kinda came together for me – from a business standpoint – after nearly two (VERY frustrating) years of operating my “real world” biz based on the “pounds of worms” model. I had been basically buying ALL my worms from a supplier in bulk, and then re-harvesting for smaller orders.
What’s funny is the “major turning point” resulted from what SHOULD have been one of my easiest orders ever! The customer wanted the same quantity of worms I was picking up from my supplier! I figured I’d just bag em up, ship em off – and enjoy a decent profit, with little labor, for once.
Long story short, it was a very hot, summer day – and for some strange reason I decided to take my worms for a little road trip after picking them up, rather than heading straight home. Anyway, once they were finally in my holding trays down in the basement I started to realize that all was not well. I started finding more and more dead and dying worms
Rather than risking a TOTAL meltdown, I quickly decided to dump them all in a larger outdoor bin. While I certainly wouldn’t be able to fill the customer’s bulk order anymore, I figured I could at least use the worms for some smaller orders – hopefully at least recovering my investment.
Once the worms were settled into the bed, I was scooping up handfuls of worm-rich material with my hand and it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to partially salvage the order after all, by simply bagging up this mix. Obviously the customer wouldn’t end up paying nearly as much – but it could still be a “win/win” scenario, since I knew it would be great for stocking a new system.
Still, I wasn’t sure if the customer would go for the idea – but by that point I was so fed up that it didn’t really matter! The idea of completely shutting down my physical business was actually pretty appealing.
Long story short (oh wait – didn’t I already say that 20 paragraphs ago? Lol), she DID go for it, and that’s the primary way I have sold worms here in Canada ever since!
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