In this talk, the speaker uses the story of a New Jersey pumpkin farmer who grows half‑ton and even one‑ton pumpkins to illustrate how wildly successful entrepreneurs find and nurture the right "seed" for their businesses. He explains that elite growers (and entrepreneurs) spend a lot of time selecting a high‑potential seed—sometimes paying $1,500 for a single pumpkin seed—because that seed contains the genetic potential for massive growth. Translating this to business, the speaker outlines a three‑circle framework that must intersect for a venture to become colossal: (1) Uniqueness, which combines the founder’s genuine passion and personal idiosyncrasies; (2) Repeatable customer demand, meaning customers keep buying and advocating for the product; and (3) Scalability/systemization, the ability to automate and deliver value while the founder sleeps. He provides vivid examples (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s passion without demand, ordinary entrepreneurs chasing trends) to show why each element matters and why all three must overlap. The core takeaway is that entrepreneurs should deliberately select a seed that satisfies all three criteria, rather than chasing easy trends or relying on a single strength.
Chapters
I'm originally from Boonton, New Jersey, and we have this newspaper, we did have this newspaper called The Citizen. And on the backside was a story and it says, New Jersey farmer grows half-ton pumpkin. And there's a picture of this fella leaning against this huge pumpkin. In there, the journalist interviewed the farmer and said, "How do you grow such an extraordinary pumpkin?" And his first words were, "It's only 5% different than what the other guys do." So what I did was I called this guy. He's right here in New Jersey too, actually down this way in the Bordentown area. His name was Chuck, and I spent a year studying pumpkin farmers, colossal pumpkin farmers, Or as we call it, Lord of the Gourds, if you're in the club. And I spent a year with these guys and gals studying how to grow a colossal pumpkin and discovered the 5% of things that they do, which coincidentally is the 5% of things that wildly, colossally successful entrepreneurs do. Step 1, it's seed selection. You know, the ordinary pumpkin farmer— and when I say ordinary pumpkin farmer, this is when Halloween comes in a couple weeks from now, We're going to go out to the pumpkin fields and you're going to be with your children and your spouse looking around for a pumpkin. You look for the most round one you can. If your children are like my children, they find the most deformed one they can. I'm like, that looks like my mother-in-law. And tries to persuade me to buy it. Basically, pumpkins are kind of boring things. If you go where I go, there's a huge field and you kind of ignore some. You often step on a couple and crunch them down. The only pumpkins that catch attention ultimately are the crazy colossal ones. Sometimes these farms have one stored on the side, and there's that huge pumpkin, and you'll see everyone running there. The colossal pumpkin farmer is highly selective of their seed. They look for this thing called veinage. They look at the seed under a microscope to evaluate its potential to grow in their soil. A single seed The best potential seeds, this is no lie, can go for $1,500, a single pumpkin seed. But it can yield a half-ton or now they broke the 1-ton record, a 1-ton pumpkin. You know the ordinary entrepreneur is after the easy seed you can spread anywhere? It's called trends. You know, what's hot? 10 years ago entrepreneurs, for example, some entrepreneurs were jumping into real estate. 'Cause you can make so much money. Yeah, my business is okay, but if I buy a building and sell a building, I'll make money there. It was the hot trend. 5 years ago, flash animation for websites. Now, social media. Everyone and their mother knows social media. You gotta be there. And we modify our businesses to play with the trend if you're an ordinary entrepreneur. The classical entrepreneur behaves a little differently. They pick the perfect seed. Even in an existing business, you can still find the perfect seed. Perfect seed within it. And it's an overlap of 3 circles. Picture in your mind the Olympic symbols, you know, the big circles. The first symbol or the first circle in the perfect seed for a colossal farmer is what's called the uniqueness. What makes this entrepreneur unique? It's typically a blend of 2 things: their passion, what they love to do, and their idiosyncrasies, What makes them unique. A lot of people don't understand what passion is, by the way. A passion is defined by something that we love so much that it builds energy throughout the day to the point where when you're going to bed, you may be physically exhausted, but your mind is aflutter. That's when you're doing your passion. An idiosyncrasy is the stuff that your friends made fun of in high school. It makes you stand out, and you exploit it. Oscar Wilde, I'm not a historian buff, so I thought Oscar Wilde was a racehorse. I'm more of a history buffoon. Ends up Oscar Wilde wrote a thing called Dorian Gray, a very famous novel. Oscar Wilde says, "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." That's uniqueness. But uniqueness alone doesn't sell necessarily to customers. Customers may not want what you have to offer. So the second element of the perfect colossal seed for an entrepreneur is customer demand, repeatable customer demand. Customers buy from you one time, maybe you persuaded them, but if they buy from you multiple times, they're showing you through their actions their appreciation and love for you. So the overlap of those two things are critical. Now, this is where Oscar Wilde went awry. I don't know if you know this, but Oscar Wilde ended up in jail and destitute when he passed away because his real passion was exposing himself. Not much customer demand for that. So there's an example of no customer demand but a passion. They must overlap. This, and I can now have consulted with many companies, investigated many companies, that's why I write for the Wall Street Journal, that's why I write my books. I love what you guys do. I love understanding what makes work. As I investigated businesses, most struggling businesses that live check to check, month to month, love what they do, they have customers buying it, but they forget the third element where they— all these circles must overlap, and it's scalability. It's actually systemization. The ability to systematize every element of your business. And a business that can really grow does this: it lands a customer, converts that customer into a paying customer, it means you collect revenue from them, it delivers the product or service, and has them touting how good you are, getting you reviews or future customers, all while you sleep. And if you're not doing that while you're sleeping, you don't have a purely systemized business. Going back to Oscar Wilde, he kind of had a scalable business because the book he wrote kept on selling while he was in jail. That's a little scalable part. Colossal entrepreneurs have the seed. So of course the question is, where's your intersection of those three things? Thank you very much. Thank you.
