On April 4, our pitch for CowPots was aired on ABC’s Shark Tank! We paraded on stage, and when I say we, I mean myself and a very generous studio employee who was willing to climb into an inflatable cow costume and be stuck in there for the entirety of my time on stage – approximately 45 minutes! The first 90 seconds of my time on stage had been rehearsed hundreds of times. Every day when I walked my dog I would practice the drafted pitch, introducing the Sharks to CowPots and emphasizing why they would want to ‘grab a shovel and start turning the brown stuff into green stuff with me’.
Luckily, we walk in the fields behind our farm where no one could see me talking to myself.
If you haven’t yet, you really should watch the show! Shark Tank, Season 16, Episode 15 is streaming on Hulu.
Getting on that stage to make a pitch was made possible by the community of people that support us. I especially love to share the details behind our Shark Tank display. First of all, the fact that the on-set art and graphics team at Sony Studios was able to take my 2D sketch using Canva and transform it into this 3-dimensional art piece is nothing short of amazing. But each of the individual components that made up this display have a story.
LIVE PLANTS: I knew that it was critical to have live plants growing in CowPots for our display. But I am in Connecticut and the studio is in Los Angeles, California. My first thought was to post on Facebook looking for any potential mutual connections that lived in the LA area. I needed someone who was willing to receive a case of CowPots, go to a nursery and buy plants, transplant them into the CowPots, keep them alive for a couple weeks and then deliver them to the studio. That’s not exactly a ‘small’ favor – that’s a lot to ask. I reached out to a slew of people asking this strange favor while also being very sheepish about explaining what this was for (at the time it was strictly confidential).
I was striking out and had about 3 weeks before my film date. It was a crap shoot (pun intended), I next reached out to a friend from Peace Corps, we served together in Zambia in 2010 and he’s living abroad, but his parents live in Simi Valley. Across time zones and over a decade since seeing each other, I managed to get on the phone with ‘mom’ Cindy and instead of confusion and resistance, Cindy met my request with complete enthusiasm!
Next thing you know she was sending me pictures from her local garden center and selecting purple basil, orange marigolds, artichokes, peppers and lettuce, even strawberry plants. She carted all the plants home along with a bag of potting soil and up potted all the plants into the assortment of CowPots that I had shipped to her earlier that week. Temperatures for the last week of August in southern California reached 110+ degrees! It was no small feat keeping this collection of plants thriving and ready for the big stage.
With her husband Walt, they loaded up the car the day before I was set to film and delivered the ‘goods’ to the studio to set up for my display. I’m still overwhelmed with appreciation for their incredible contribution for my Pitch!
Hopefully by now you have had a chance to watch my Pitch on ABC’s Shark Tank. If not, what are you waiting for? Seriously, go stream it on Hulu. The set was a perfect backdrop to my pitch about our eco-friendly, renewable and recycled gardening containers made on our family’s farm. I also want to recognize our neighbor Sonja Zinke who came out in the Spring of 2024 for a CowPots photo shoot and was the eye behind the lense for the CowPots photos that were included in my display.
Now what about after the show? We had the option of shipping our booth display and supplies back home. But the cost of shipping is just high enough that I didn’t actually want to send this $#!+ back home 😉 And there was no way I would be able to package the live plants to survive the trip plus the extra bags of potting soil that I ordered but didn’t end up needing.
So here I go again – reaching out into the social interwebs to see if anyone could benefit from this assortment of veggies, flowers and pots for growing in. Just a week before filming, I sent a webform to the Los Angeles Community Garden Council to inquire about whether they would be able and willing to collect up these supplies. The Executive Director, Omar responded, at first a bit skeptical – it was a strange request indeed.
But he garnered interest by some of his community gardeners and 2 days after I flew home, he stopped into Sony Studios to retrieve plants, potting soil and CowPots to distribute amongst his coalition of community gardens. It was such a gift that the items used for our pitch could continue to grow and nourish members of the LA community.
The one thing that did get packed to bring home to the farm with me?!
The inflatable cow of course! She’s joined the herd and is doing just fine!
