Mycologist Career: The Business of Mushrooms
Foraging, Cultivation & Building a Fungi Business
$0 – $1M+
In this episode, we go behind the scenes with John Michelotti founder of Catskill Fungi, a mycologist and educator who turned a mushroom-foraging hobby into a business built on guided walks, workshops, retreats, and medicinal mushroom extracts. He explains how mushroom identification actually works, how a fungi business earns money, and why mushrooms may be the most misunderstood organisms on the planet.
What you'll learn in this episode
How John accidentally discovered mycology
What a mycologist actually does
Why mushroom walks became a business
How medicinal mushroom extracts are made
The best mushrooms to grow at home
Why fungi may be the future of sustainable materials
The biggest business opportunities in mycology
What mushroom entrepreneurs actually earn
How to safely begin mushroom foraging
How much can you earn?
Fungi careers span an unusually wide range, from unpaid passion projects to seven-figure businesses, depending on whether you're identifying mushrooms, cultivating them, or building a product line around them.
Field mycologist / citizen scientist: $0 – largely volunteer; occasional paid hourly work through grant-funded nonprofits like the Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS)
Home cultivator / side hustle: A few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month growing oysters or lion's mane in buckets or grow blocks and selling to neighbors or local restaurants
Small commercial mushroom farm: Roughly minimum-wage equivalent per hour of labor at first, improving as volume and wholesale accounts grow; startup costs run from a few thousand dollars into much larger sums for climate-controlled grow rooms
Education & product-based fungi business (walks, workshops, tinctures): Can become a full sustainable living once a business hires staff and diversifies revenue across services and shelf-stable products
Large-scale commercial cultivation: $1M+ in annual revenue for operations that scale production and distribution
Wild specialty mushrooms (e.g. truffles): $100–$400 per pound at market, since some species still cannot be reliably cultivated
What does a fungi business owner actually do day to day?
A community mycologist spends surprisingly little time behind a desk. Much of the week is spent outdoors foraging in the forest for seasonal species like reishi, hunting logs and leaf litter for anything fruiting. Back at the farm, harvested mushrooms are sun-dried to boost vitamin D, dehydrated, powdered, and processed into extracts through a month-long alcohol soak, a cold water bath, and a slow triple decoction that can take weeks from forest to finished tincture. On top of processing, the job includes leading weekly guided mushroom walks, teaching cultivation and cooking workshops, giving presentations to garden clubs and organizations, and running multi-day retreats. It is part science, part hospitality, and part small-business logistics, and very little of it looks like sitting alone with a field guide.
What surprised me most
The biggest surprise wasn't the business. It was learning that scientists have identified less than 5% of all fungal species. There may be between 2 and 10 million species of fungi, making it one of the least explored kingdoms on Earth. The opportunities are only beginning!
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FAQ
How much money can you make in a mycology or fungi career?
Field mycology is largely unpaid volunteer work or occasional grant-funded gigs at $0 to a few hundred dollars per project. Small-scale cultivation as a side hustle can supplement rent money from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. A full-time educational fungi business, like mushroom walks, workshops, and tinctures, can become a sustainable full-time living once it scales past a solo operation. Large commercial mushroom farms can generate millions in annual revenue.
Can you make a living as a field mycologist?
Not on its own. Field mycologists typically volunteer or work with nonprofits like the Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS), which occasionally pays by the hour when grant funding is available. Most field mycology work is done out of love for the subject rather than as a full-time paycheck.
How much does it cost to start a mushroom cultivation business?
You can start small with a few thousand dollars, growing mushrooms like oysters in buckets using spent coffee grounds and selling to local restaurants and farmers markets. Scaling up requires bigger investment in humidity and temperature control, misters, air conditioning, and heaters, plus additional staff once volume grows.
What is the easiest mushroom to grow at home?
Oyster mushrooms are the easiest to cultivate indoors, since they grow well on inoculated coffee grounds or cardboard. Outdoors, wine cap stropharia is one of the easiest to grow in a garden on mulch, wood chips, or straw.
Is foraging wild mushrooms dangerous?
No mushroom is poisonous to touch, so identification itself is safe. The risk comes from eating misidentified species, since some contain liver toxins, compounds that react badly with alcohol, or hydrazine compounds that can cause illness. Learning from an experienced guide and confirming identification before eating is essential.
What does a mycologist do day to day?
A community mycologist splits time between foraging in the forest, cultivating mushrooms on logs or in a commercial kitchen, leading guided mushroom walks, teaching workshops on identification and cooking, and processing harvested mushrooms into shelf-stable products like tinctures and extracts.
What degree do you need to work with fungi?
There is no single required degree. Many community mycologists build expertise through mushroom clubs, mentorships, hands-on internships, and continuous reading rather than a formal mycology degree, since academic mycology programs are limited.
This show first aired on July 2026