We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hamilton Pevec. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hamilton below.

Alright, Hamilton thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Yes, I am blowing up the functional mushroom scene by offering full transparency and the best possible quality and the lowest possible price. Giving brands and consumers alike another option to source their functional mushroom extracts.

We are experiencing a mushroom revolution! They have always been in our food but fungi are finding their way into our clothes, building materials, skin products, drinks, energy bars, gummies and of course supplements.

There are a lot of different mushrooms being offered, a lot of language to learn and a lot of bullshit to navigate when you’re trying to choose a mushroom supplement that is appropriate for you and your needs. I am here to help you run the obstacle course of choosing the right mushroom product and how to identify the red flags of mushroom supplement claims.

Hamilton, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into medicinal mushrooms after about 10 years of doing wild mushroom identification and being a small organic mushroom farmer. The catalyst for my deep dive into medicinal mushrooms was watching my 96 year old grandfather lose his mind. but my efforts to help preserve his mind were too little too late and he died at 99.5 years old. However, after feeding my household mushrooms for a year we all stopped getting the flu and other infectious diseases.

I spent 3 years vetting medicinal mushroom suppliers before I partnered with the best in the industry.

During a covid quarantine in march 2020, I unearthed a film I shot 7 years before. I spent my alone time completing this film about the rare and precious ophiocordyceps sinensis, also known as himalayan viagra. making this film was such a creative joy, I realized I only wanted to make films about mushrooms. But who was going to pay for fungi films? The idea to sell organic mushroom extracts in order to finance mushroom movies came to me fully formed like a message from the mycelium, and Hamilton’s Mushrooms was born.

I started out in wholesale, even before my company launched due to my “mushroom guy” reputation. I knew what other major brands were providing, and more importantly what they were not providing.

It was clear to me that a quality shaped hole was in the center of the mushroom space and I filled it.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

My business model at the time was very simple. Sell mushroom extracts to finance films about mushrooms. Then the films help drive sales and the sales drive more films. Allowing the loop to close. I wasn’t even thinking about making money because I had already established myself as a filmmaker, and only wanted to make the films that I cared about. The biggest unfair advantage is that I didn’t have to pay myself for the filmmaking, the money gave me permission to spend time on these films, it justified the time it takes. All that is context to say that there was very little overhead to get my company started. I had saved $5000 from the year before working as a landscape gardener in order to go back to Nepal to visit our family. Then Covid hit and nobody was traveling anywhere. So I had essentially an extra $5K. This $5K became my seed money to hire a designer, buy a load of inventory, pay for a website and all the subscription apps that help run a small business. I planned on plugging into the systems, platforms and services that already exist. and 5K was enough to do it. to be fair, i still don’t pay myself, but i did about $350,000 in sales in 2022. I am making 4 films simultaneously, all them on subjects that are dear to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: Hamiltonsmushrooms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamiltonsmushrooms/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamiltonsmushrooms/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HamiltonsMushroomExtracts

Image Credits
Mark Burrows