We're investing €100,000 in SOME OF YOU

So in today's video, I'm super excited to announce an amazing collaboration with myself and Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees. They've planted over 36 million trees using the ad revenue from their site, which is incredible. But we are excited to announce today an incredible partnership where we're putting €100,000 of equity into up to four new regenerative agriculture startups. Super exciting. And it's a design competition designed to benefit everyone who gets engaged. So I'm excited to tell you more about it.

We got €100,000 that I'll be allocating between one and four projects so you can design the regenerative enterprises or enterprise you want startup using the guidelines below. And we'll be choosing between one and four people who will receive that money. But it's not a loan, it's like equity. We're going to give you on the ground training, you're going to get mentoring regularly with myself and a lot of promotion through the scheme and through YouTube and all those kind of things as well.

So those of you that follow our channel know we're into low cost startups and enterprises that regenerate soil while paying back really quickly. So I worked out the terms with Ecosia, there's an amazing team there and they're all committed, we're all committed to building soils, regenerating habitats, and we all want to see more regenerative ag going. And what we've identified through years of training in the field is that basically most young people, particularly young people, have lack of money, lack of access to land. And so we want to use this fund to see if we can kick start some projects that focused on quick returns. So we set the conditions that the invested money must be paid back within three years. And you've got a supply business plan that makes us confident you can do that. But then what's really neat about this project is we're asking for you to design a fair share of the profit for the following three years. So we're going to be engaged with you for up to six years. And the reason we want to do that is because we want you to pay it forward to the next generation, as it were. If this all goes well and it's really successful, then we're just going to increase the size of the pot and start funding people possibly further afield, even purchasing land as part of the program. And I'm super excited about that. I think you've got to understand this could be more expensive than taking a.

Loan from the bank.

But I think it's for those of you who would have difficulty doing so and who see the value in having.

Direct mentorship with someone like myself and.

To have a support team through a global network following the project and also getting exposed through Ecosia and through our YouTube channel, etc. I think it's super exciting and I'm so grateful to the team at Ecosia for having the foresight and the compassion to like really engage with this on this level. It's quite far removed from their original intentions setting out planting trees through their search engine.

So some things, like this beautiful plum tree in our silver pasture lanes, they don't pay back quickly. Now they can certainly be included in your longer term business plan. We want to see cash flows over at least six years. Longer term would be better, but these things aren't going to pay back the investments quickly. So you need to show viable enterprises or single enterprises that build soil and can return the money invested quickly. We want you to be successful on the ground and we think it's critical for spreading regenerative agriculture as fast as we can now. So the bottom default, it's explained in some of the videos in the page there. But it's got to build soil. We've got to be taking things a step forward. So if you're building soar and you've got a good business plan, you stand a good chance. And even if your project isn't selected, you'll get the benefit of having it screened and getting feedback and positive criticism from our global audience, which is amazing. So we designed a whole competition to be beneficial for everyone willing to step it up.

So the competition is open 15th of September through to 15th of December. That's three months. You've got to write your holistic context. You need to design your land in some visual way that we can understand and create bills of quantities. You need to look at your projected sales, how you're going to do marketing, etc. As well as write a cash flow plan for six years. It's a bunch of work, but just remember, if you're going to set about this in a serious way, you would need to do that work regardless. And what's beautiful about this competition is that regardless if you get selected, you will have the opportunity for feedback from myself from peers and professionals around the world who might be many years down the line doing the sorts of things.

You want to do.

So I think this is a super cool opportunity. We designed the competition to be of benefit to everyone who enters, regardless of whether they're selected for funding you need to take this very seriously. It's a bunch of work to do in a short space of time and we'll be screening entrants before they go up online.

And you'll be able to check back.

In on the website and see people's comments and get some feedback. All of the basic guidelines are on the webpage, so please read that through very carefully. It's really important that you make sure you're going to meet the requirements and that it's suitable for the sort of project you're putting forward. We're not going to be putting up projects that don't meet the basic guidelines outlined in the videos and resources here.

Some people might ask if this is.

Only about starting up enterprises from scratch or whether they can use the funds and apply for diversifying an existing operation and farm. That's fine. We're totally flexible at this point. We want to see specifically what you're planning to do, what we consider the overall benefit of that is, and how you plan to return the investment, along with an additional fair share of the profit of the following three years. Now, that's totally down to you and I really like this aspect of the competition because it really challenges you to think like, what do you value about this? Some people have got together and working hard to make this possible and then keep spreading it and growing the pot to make it facilitate the startup of many more enterprises around Europe and hopefully the world. So what does that mean to you? Ultimately, we're all in this together and I think this is a really exciting point that we haven't seen any of the outcomes yet. We don't know how people will respond to this and I think it leaves it really wide open and you can respond in the way that you feel. You can be a benefit and we'll see where that goes. We have no fixed ideas, but yeah, it's pretty exciting. You are welcome to apply to diversify an existing farm or to start up something from scratch.

You see some of the videos at.

The bottom of the webpage there where some of our interns have gone off and started up with super low cost. And I'm hopefully going to be posting a bunch more videos of some of our interns who've been starting up on 10, 20,000 Euros and really rocking it. So up to you. But if you do have an existing enterprise, maybe make a short video in addition to your application just explaining who you are and link your business pages and Facebook profiles, etc. So everyone can immediately see where you're at and what you're actually working with currently.

So have a think about if this is for you, it's not going to be for everyone. As we said, it might be cheaper for you to get a loan and it might be less risk like that Also now this is really a combined effort with myself and Nicosia to really see if we can unite our unique gifts, strengths and talents and put them to use. Like accelerating the amount of people going into regenerative agriculture for the benefit of the whole. Benefiting a lot of people through this competition, through the resources being shared and through the feedback we can give. So I'm super excited for it. I'm going to be mentoring people that are successful on the ground and via Skype calls or whatever as they go and we're going to ask that the successful winners of the competition are going to keep their site open to the public through site visits and open days and then also pass their gained knowledge on to the next wave of competition winners. And I think this is a beautiful networking opportunity. As I said, it's only open for people within the EU at this time. That's something that may change. But I'm sorry for those of you watching from aboard who are excited by this, but you can get engaged anyway with following the projects that are getting put up. So do read the guidelines really carefully. It's important that at the bottom line of this whole thing, we're rebuilding soil. Ideally we're rebuilding local economies and habitats as well. Now obviously the scope for what fits in with regenerative agriculture today, why? But do see the videos for guidelines. It's ultimately going to be myself working alongside Ecosia that select the winning projects and you're not out to try and impress us and we're not interested in fancy designs and pretty pictures. That's all great too. We're looking at solid business plans, things that look doable in our experience of working with these low startup Quick Return farm systems. So keep it real and don't be shy to enter and we will be screening through and giving feedback that you're going to get a lot out of this just by applying. I hope so. Thanks so much for watching folks. I'm super excited about this. I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts below. It's one of the most exciting collaborations I've been part of and I'm really looking forward to see what the results of it are. So thanks so much for watching. You can check out Ecosia in the links below if you're not familiar with their search engine and help plant trees in other parts of the world as well as now moving towards Europe as we start this start regenerative agriculture. You can check out all the links in the show notes below and we'll see you in the website there.