We were lucky to catch up with Jor’El and Sheth Schustrin recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jor’El and Sheth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
We were getting ready to scale up production in the first warehouse we were growing mushrooms in. Then in 2022 we were impacted by hurricane Ian. We had around 3 feet of water in our indoor farm. After breaking down everything and moving it into storage (mold issues), what we saved atleast, we were looking for a bigger warehouse and came across one that was triple in size. We also wanted to do a deli type style place for the mushrooms and now we are coming up on our first year at the new location. We added more products to the store front. We collaborated with the king herbs of life and we have a new coffee replacement with alkaline herbs and mushrooms, 2 alkaline herbs and mushrooms drinks and also do some meal preps. Local produce and micro greens can also be purchased at our store.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We found our way to mushrooms from a mycologist talking about the benefits of mushrooms and what lions mane mushroom was being studied for with neurological disorders. Our step father has Parkinson’s disease and we reduced his pill intake from 13 pills to 3 by adding lions mane tinctures to his daily diet. We believe in supporting local and that’s what sets us differently from the major distributors. Our mushrooms are super fresh and you can really taste the difference. Especially with fungi.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Two years into business we were devastated by hurricane Ian. After the clean up we had to move pretty quickly into another spot due to how our busy season works in Naples. We finically found a spot in November and signed the lease in December. We knew we couldn’t miss a season being a fairly new business in town. Long and late hours getting the new spot up and running to full capacity within a month and half time was a challenge for sure. Family, friends were pulling late hours helping us get back up quickly to have at least a few months to operate during our busy time.
Have you ever had to pivot?
This goes with the last question. Moving the business during or after a hurricane. We grow more mushrooms with the new space and have a daily pick up for the mushrooms with other products as well.
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