We were lucky to catch up with Tomas Garrett recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tomas , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The goal is Myceliation! The Myco Zine is a zine publication that focuses on all things mushroom. By taking lessons from cultivating mushrooms and learning about foraging, The Myco Zine has modeled its growth strategy off of mycelium.

The intention of The Myco Zine is to maximize innoculation points in a similar way to mushroom cultivation by growing in several localized pockets that eventually merge to share resources. Since starting in 2022, the publication is now in 20 countries in over 250 cities.

By highlighting cultivators, artisans, chefs, and foragers of mushrooms, the entire Myco Zine network has grown into a series of localized pockets across the country and the world. As The Myco Zine continues to grow, the intention is that people from different cities will uplift their own communities while tapping into others.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an analytical chemist who helped start the first psychedelic mushroom testing company (Hyphae Labs) and we are responsible for the Hyphae Events (psychedelic mushroom conferences) across the country.

In 2022 we had already thrown more than 10 events and the sentiment became clear that after the events, people didn’t want to wait a year before they could meet up and talk about mushrooms. I figured that by creating literature that highlighted different members of the community as well as different events across the country, people would be able to stay tuned in between our events.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

One of the only reasons The Myco Zine is able to exist is because of the years of studying and working I did as a chemist. It is glamorous to think entrepreneurship is a straight path, but I actually had to maintain a chemistry position in biopharmaceuticals to get the first edition published.

In fact, over the past several years of building start ups and starting my own brand, I have had to take on work that utilizes my unrelated skills ie Chemistry.

Furthermore, if I didn’t gather skills on organization from the “working world” there is no way I would have made it this far with my project. what the mushrooms have taught me is to break things down and accept the process rather than being overly focused on the outcome.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

The Myco Zine is unique in that it is entirely based on building community. By highlighting specific people in different cities across the country and world, we build localized pockets of support. Since the publication is spread worldwide, when a person from the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and the South all get highlighted, there is incentive to share their feature to all of their friends.

To further engage the following, I have also been on tour across the country engaging with the niche of the following around mushrooms. Finally, by including series that require several editions to combined to make extra large posters, subscribers are eager to collect full sets similar to other collectables.

Contact Info:

• Website: Themycozine.com
• Instagram: @Mycozine
• Facebook: @Mycozine
• Twitter: @Mycozine
• Youtube: @MycoZine
• Other: [email protected]