Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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My name is Harrison Gardner, and sitting across from me today is Matt Smith. What's up? Matt is the co-founder and CEO of HomeTree, a charity dedicated to restoring Ireland's native woodlands. He's also a farmer, a sailor, a surfer, a published writer, and a longtime ambassador for ethical outdoor clothing company Finisterre.
His first job out of school was lifeguarding, and after that, spent seven or eight years at sea. and then he came back to the land and started planting trees. Hometree began in 2014 on a third of an acre with a few friends on a hilltop in West Clare, and today is running one of the most ambitious native woodland restoration projects in the country.
with a 12 million euro plan to restore 4,000 acres of temperate rainforest across eight different sites from Cork to Donegal by 2028 and 57,500 acres by 2035, costing 300 million euros. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thank you so much. That was a mouthful. That was huge.
Yeah. Bless me.
yeah um we're going to talk a lot about about home tree and about the ambitions of of home tree and reforesting ireland but it would be cool to learn a little a little bit more about you and how and how you became the ceo of home tree yeah it's interesting hearing an intro to yourself and just like you know the gaps that are missing and just you know they're so big and
You know, all of the things you outlined are kind of like strategic things or things that I've done, not the kind of man that I am or the values or, you know, the qualities or my friendships or my family, which, you know, really the most precious things in my life. But it is nice to remember the little journey that I've been on.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Matt Smith to start HomeTree?
But you must see that there is a greater need than just doing that.
It is interesting, you know, like, in this particular instance, you know, there's so much opportunity for HomeTree to succeed. Yeah. And there's so much need for it to be around. The problem is we don't have much wilderness, much nature, much biodiversity, much connection to nature in our lives and landscapes. So there's just a desperate need for...
organization like ours to to exist the problem is we don't have nature this and we've become a solution for it and you know hopefully one of many many many solutions you know our ambition for 2035 which is really realistic which is the 60 000 acres under management or in partnership
um so some of the land will be ours most of the land will belong to people that currently own the land we're just going to you know be a conduit and facilitate that kind of transition um that's like still a fraction of a percent of ireland you know we need 10 20 of us to emerge and succeed or
or bigger ones and us being a smaller one, or us being 10 times that big and other ones, you know, emerge to get anywhere close to a country with, you know, a lot of nature, you know. Like Japan has 80% of Japan is native woodland.
Wow.
And what's Ireland got? Less than 2% native woodland, less than a fraction of a percent of its original woodland. So we're really a long way off and there is a multitude of reasons for it, which maybe we'll get into. Let's do it. I mean, that's why we're here, right?
Yeah.
It is why we're here. I mean, Ireland was colonized and a lot of the timber was exported. But, you know, predating that, you know, when we became from kind of forestry people to farming people, you know, we had these tools that helped us cut down trees and we needed the timber from the trees to melt the iron ore to make into metal.
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Chapter 3: How does HomeTree plan to restore native woodlands in Ireland?
It was just a primed ecosystem or landscape or scenario for the removal of woodlands. And yeah, so now we're down to... we actually went down to 0% like when Island became independent. Um, and now we've gone back up to 2% native woodland cover and about 9% of the kind of timber producing woodlands, uh, the spruce plantations that you see around. Um, So that's kind of why HomeTree is there.
That's why I'm here. Before HomeTree, I grew vegetables for eight years, a not-for-profit farm in West Clare as well. And then before that, I was sailing for about eight years. So yeah, I've been outside a lot. And I suppose all of them have a really clear mission. Sailing was get from here to there.
Yeah.
vegetables was clearly we're growing vegetables and then um home trees you know our our mission is you know in a constitution so that's our main objective which is native woodland creation so A lot of ground to cover. I'm curious where you're going to take me.
Well, I guess I am curious how the Surfer Sailor farmer goes about raising 300 million euros. That's a very different set of skills. And how did you... How are you doing it? How have you done? You've already done something really impressive. I keep talking about what's coming, but you've already raised huge amounts of money and converted a lot of land into trees.
And what I really want to explore is... your end goal is the same right nature more nature more people exposed to nature is what it is what it feels like right and you've found a path that maybe is going to have a much bigger impact yeah than you just doing it yourself and and um i'd love to do it myself i know i know you know um
I really liked growing vegetables. It was super meaningful. I really liked planting the trees, but there wasn't an option for me to go work for a nature organization, a not-for-profit. You know, there wasn't an organization saying, hey, do you want a job planting trees with us? You could go and do plantations for the forestry companies.
But, you know, sometimes it would be the non-native, more commercial woodlands. Rarely there'd be the native woodlands. And
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Chapter 4: What challenges does HomeTree face in achieving its goals?
I'd just seen a huge void in the space. So that's the one that we've kind of been filling. But I would have loved that. And, you know, I really liked sailing. And the last two and a half years I was sailing, I earned quite a lot of money because I was on a beautiful sailing boat. And I saved enough to live for a few years and set up a farm.
And then I also had 40,000 left in savings and I bought a room in 2020. So I just got super lucky, really. Yeah. But, you know, how are we going to raise the money or how have we raised the money so far? I mean, mostly because it's... And you've had to learn a whole new industry, right?
Like you're, I'm sure you're not raising this 300 million like on the field necessarily, right?
You're in offices, you're here in Dublin, you're... Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a sexy sell in nature. You know, it's easy to sell to everybody. It's not, you know... Everybody can connect with it. I haven't met anybody that hasn't. And I've had a lot of help, you know, the team at home during the beginning, Ray and Mitch and Maeve, they were just like so bought in like us.
Some state programs that have kind of funded our early positions, you know. They wanted us to do it. So we were just kind of looking around. And I was actually at your house last weekend. I think you called me like a hustler or something. It's not hustling. It's really not. I've had to grind really hard and I've had to like seek out opportunities.
And I remember when I was at your house, I put my hand in my pocket and had these beach shells. And I'm like, I'm not just out there looking for money or work. I'm just like, this is what I do when I'm at the beach. I find beautiful things and I love them. So it's like I've got this attention for opportunity. And actually, that is my programming, right?
What I found when I got to go on a really authentic journey was that I really like doing lots of nothing. And actually, if I let my kind of spirit or soul decide what I do, I would do tons and tons of nothing. You know, like I've done lots of 10-day silent meditations. I spent three months on the ocean doing nothing.
But the people that know me, you know, like you do from here, you're just like, I'm just nonstop. And I'm grinding and I'm looking for opportunities. I'm making stuff happen. That's just a part of me, which has the capacity to do that stuff. But, you know, if the world was full of nature and full of nature connection, I wouldn't feel the need just to be like,
getting on with something, I'd be, you know, taking it easy.
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Chapter 5: How does personal background influence Matt's approach to environmental work?
But what you described, and I mean, it was a beautiful thing when your response to me saying that to you and you didn't respond right away. Yeah. You're kind of thinking about it. And then, yeah, you pulled out these two little shells and stones that you found on the beach and you're like, I don't think this is hustling.
I think this is just like seeing opportunities, seeing beauty and wanting to share it with other people. Exactly. Yeah.
They were really beautiful shells, actually. I've got the Epic collection and one of my kids, or both of them are, but they're into shell collecting. And the fundraising side of it is something that we've become, you know, better at. We've really got a long way to go.
Mm-hmm.
I suppose since HomeTree started in 2020, it started in 2014, but it was just a volunteer grassroots organization where our turnover was like 20 grand a year for six years. And how did you generate that turnover? Like accidentally, you know, it was just like from 2014, which was like two years before ESG became a buzzword.
You know, some companies that I was connected with through surfing or just through selling vegetables, like the Fumbly, like Tang, you know, like Finisterre, like Backwash, like these surf magazines or, you know, surf companies and or cool businesses. They were just like, here's a few hundred quid to plant some trees.
And we would just take bags of trees and plant them at this not-for-profit farm. And HomeTree was the kind of charitable vehicle just to to do that separate to the vegetables that we were growing the farming that we were doing and you know so 2014 to 2020 2021 20 grand a year turnover 19 16 24 and then 2020 it was 38 2021 It was 120. 2022, it was 250. 23, it was 650. 24, it was 1 million.
And that 1 million mark is just over a million. That 1 million mark is like where you're a unicorn cherry. You know, 1% of cherries ever make a million. So we became, we knew that we were kind of, we had broke a major threshold in 24 and then 25. It was like $2,040,000. We've got our management accounts now, but we haven't got the audit accounts. They're going to come.
Fitzgerald Power and Waterford do our accounts. They're really good. Shout out to Stuart and the team there. Stuart and Jennifer, the team, they're really good. And they're kind of so... I've had to learn a range of skills, you know, kind of financial literacy is one of them. The rest of the stuff kind of came more naturally, that kind of team building, leadership, collaborative skills.
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Chapter 6: What does Matt believe is necessary for effective ecological restoration?
What the hell is everyone up to?
Yeah. And I don't even mean, I do mean that. I know a bit about what people are doing and I can imagine, especially the very practical things and fundraising and that kind of stuff. But this organization doesn't exist. You're not copying someone else's model, right? You're kind of building this thing as you go.
To some extent, yeah. It's definitely unique in every country. But the nature-based NGO space in Ireland was pretty impoverished. There was two or three really cool organizations. Four or five I'd get strung up for. If I started listing them out because I'm going to get it wrong. But, you know, like in Scotland, like we would be the 50th biggest nature organization. Right.
In England, we wouldn't even register on the list. The same in France and Germany and America. Like, you know, the biggest nature organization in the US, the Nature Conservancy, like they earned like two billion last year. Do you know? I don't even know the difference between 2 million and 2 billion. I know there's a zero, but I don't know how many times bigger it is. Yeah.
I don't think anyone, people aren't good at that kind of understanding scale like that. You said something there that I feel like I can't ignore because I'm always telling people to build their own houses.
Oh, yeah.
That you hated building your own house.
Just don't do it, anyone. Don't listen to him. He's full of it. No. You know, for me, it was just stacked on top of a lot of things. And it was out of necessity, rather than a kind of...
curiosity or a longing or some you know notion that I really want to build my own house I would have like you know I prefer to learn something else um but I do feel really grateful that I have a house and I like living in it I have PTSD when I look at any corner of it because I just didn't enjoy the process I also had a full-time job new kids yeah you know no thank you
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