Transcription
It's just you and me tonight. Just a little quality one-on-one time. What did our uh teachers used to tell us? This isn't a spectator sport. I need your participation. Let's get to it. We got some fun cooked up for you here. Let's go.
[music] [music] >> [music] >> What's going on everybody? Uh, flying solo tonight. Have no fear though. I got a lot to I got a lot to cover. We'll get to it. Thank you for being here. Thanks.
Uh, special shout out to uh Alicia from Herpen Harbins. She hung out on a Palm Stream uh live stream today. Palm stream. Palm Street right there. I could get their names right. Palm Street live stream. Uh pretty fun actually. Very intuitive, easy to do, worked well, no problem. We just got to figure out how to be able to have her sell her stuff in my live stream. So, anyhow, that's going to go in my notes to uh Palm Street this week.
Thank you all for being here. I hope that you're doing well. I'm actually feeling pretty good and I like doing these uh solo shows every now and again because I build up a bunch of crap to say and I'm like, well, I don't want to really make the show about me when you have other guests and you know, if you got a good guest, the announcements and lectures can run long. So, you just got to do a solo show sometimes.
[laughter] That's That was a long way of saying this one's about me. No. Uh, in music, I like playing a solo gig every now and again because at the end of the day, like I like working with other people, I like the conversation of other people. Uh, I like playing music with other people. But if I can perform on my own, if I can entertain people on my own, if I can engage people on my own, it means I'll always be able to get a gig. And likewise, if I could do that in this show, maybe I can remain I don't want to say the word relevant. That's so loaded in our little world, right? I can remain uh you know, pertinent. How about that? That's a [laughter]
Thank you all for being here. Uh first things first, happy Veterans Day. I am thankful that uh Veterans Day this year fell on a Tuesday. I don't know that I've ever been able to properly uh say happy Veterans Day on the day on the show. Um to all that have served in our military, thank you. Uh if you've watched this show for a long time, you know that one of my biggest fears in life is being a hypocrite. And what I'm about to say makes me about the h biggest hypocrite that I could be. Philosophically, I think we should all actually have to serve in some way. Maybe the military angle or certain portions of the military aren't suitable for everybody, probably myself included, but uh I would challenge everybody to find some way to serve their community, their country, make this place a better place. Uh but I would say to our veterans that served in our military, which I could not and never did bring myself to do, thank you so much. Uh while it hasn't been part of my personal act of life, I have so much respect for that.
Um my father served in the military, my uh father-in-law uh served in the military, my grandfather um served in the military, uh aunts, uncles, and I'll tell you a story about uh a person. I was going to say a gentleman. I I don't know him. I didn't know him. Uh he was um killed in 1918 uh October I believe it was October 16th 1918. Uh George G. Shyra um I think maybe the equivalent of a sharecropper but definitely a day laborer. Maybe he had a little more autonomy than a sharecropper. Uh South Georgia leaves a bride and four children. Heads north I guess by a a bus or a train. I'm not sure how you go from South Georgia to New York City in those days to uh sign up for uh the Great War. He does so uh steams across the Atlantic on a boat called uh the Kinfon's Castle, which is actually kind of neat to Google and see. You can see pictures of this steamer and learn about it. Uh but it was used to take um many thousands of uh uh army I don't know if they were recruits, drafts. I don't I'm not sure if he went of his own valition or I'm not sure how. Um steams across uh to England and then proceeds to invade uh the north of France uh where it was German occupied and was summarily uh killed in action um I guess immediately but but very very soon. And I'm not exactly sure how the afterlife works and all of that but I could tell you that's my great-grandfather who I'm speaking of. Um, I would be pissed. It was it was 26 days before November 11th, like a little over 3 weeks before before the uh the armistice. Um, to this day, George G. Shy in a uh military uh cemetery in France uh decorated all that. His medals are in our in our family custody. Um left a widow, four children. Uh that widow remarried a man named uh West and went on to have five more uh children. And so if you ever meet a West or Shyra in South Georgia, um they're likely related to me somehow or another and they would be uh either the descendants or essentially the result that resulting West family uh of uh of the Shy. So happy Veterans Day. I'm glad that you all if you're watching this that you're here and that you came home. So thank you.
Um, we're in a Look at you. 40 people tuning in for me solo. That must have been some hell of a uh of a of a of a thumbnail, huh? Um, [laughter] that that thumbnail is one of my favorite pictures. I was in Toronto. Uh, Chris Eaton was hosting me at the CRBE. Uh, called me to be his co-host on the uh, you know, the social media broadcast. And we went to a steakhouse for dinner and the steakhouse dining room had all these like cool hats as lampshades and I after a couple beverages I stuck my head up into one of these hats with the light glowing around my forehead and uh Chris was kind enough to take a picture that evening. Um so that's where the thumbnail picture comes from.
Speaking of Chris, uh he is I just I just spoke to him. Uh well texted we didn't speak but texted to him. Um he's still in the hospital bed 42 days uh waiting waiting to get moved to physical therapy. Uh I don't like to let this isn't about Chris, this about somebody else. I don't like to let somebody else's actions determine my behavior, especially when it comes to representing myself and my brand. Uh, so I've tempered my response a little bit, but screw that dude. Whoever puts up a uh, rest in peace as if Chris died today uh, post. You can only imagine if you've ever hung out with me in a casual setting, what words would be flying out of my mouth right now. I don't care about the drama in our industry. I don't care about the tribes and all of that. a dude literally with heart surgery complications that hasn't been able to get out of a bed in 42 days you're making jokes about like get your heads right people. Um that's just to the one dude not people person uh screw that guy. So uh Chris keep getting better. I can't wait to uh hear you ripping on me for running a solo show.
Um, and uh, you know, hey, um, also, uh, on a on a happier note, I want to say, uh, and I always mispronounce his last name. Adrien Hoververter, I think is how he pronounces his last name. Um, Adrienne's Reptile Creations rang the bell for his uh, cancer treatment. Congratulations, man. All the blessings, all the uh, all the cool stuff. Uh, I'm so happy to see that. I know it's not a uh hall pass for eternity. I know that things can change, but in this moment here and now, congratulations ringing that bell. Those of youall that don't know, when uh you leave the um um uh oncology ward or your final chemotherapy treatment, you ring the bell as you walk out the door. Uh nice job, Adrian. I'm I'm so happy for you.
Um, yeah, tonight we're in a couple different formats. Um, uh, Streamyard has this new thing where I could be, uh, landscape like I'm always been, but also I, it has a portrait, um, version now, too. So, I can be doing I can be on like a YouTube uh, cell phone version where it'll be upright. I don't know if anybody's watching that, let me know how it is. It is very difficult for me to follow the comments while I'm flying solo. So, I apologize for that. Uh, let me see here. That Okay, that emoji is pretty close. Not bad. Not bad. Um, if you guys have topics that you want to cover, let me know. I have a bunch, but I would much rather be interactive rather than just like, you know, pontificating at you.
Um, yeah, this I'm going to talk about that in just a second. this dual sale thing. Um, I have no I mean I have contacts at Palm Street because I [laughter] full disclosure I do get paid every now and again from Palm Street. So I have somebody that I contact about getting paid and making sure that they're happy with the work that I'm doing and all of that. So I am going to pass it on but I'll pass it on to you guys here in a moment as well.
Um uh yeah, somebody did do that and I just there's a time and a place for most things, but but not for that. Um definitely happy Veterans Day. Uh yeah, throw them out of the room. When somebody shows you who they are and they're that out, get out. I don't I don't I don't need you in the life. I don't need you around. I was fine before I knew you and I'm going to damn sure be just fine when I don't know you anymore. Uh, I agree. So, uh, there we go. I like the separate chat. I wonder what that means. I don't know. See, I only have like my control screen versus uh what you guys see. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch it. And then I guess I have to rewatch it on the uh the vertical thing, too.
Um, anyhow. Yeah. Uh, so there we go. I got I added a little bit to the backdrop because I don't have any racks and stuff anymore. I was like I look like I'm just like lonely in a room. >> [laughter] >> So, my show my show schedule has slowed down and uh I've brought in one of my show banners uh back there now, too. Uh let's go back to what uh Herp and Harbins were saying. [snorts]
So, let me take off my advertiser hat and just put on my user hat. I'll do my best I can. Some might argue that that's not possible because when you're biased, you're biased. Fine. Uh, full disclosure, uh, I advertise for Palm Street, as with all of the people that I advertise, uh, for and with. Uh, and my timing just got off. This is for all the people that I advertise for and with, I'm a believer in what they do, and I stand by their products. So, it doesn't bother me. I don't feel like I have to be biased because I don't feel like I'm lying in the first place. However, um, I feel like I should be transparent. So, Palm Street is pretty I'm sure they don't want me to say this, but it's it's kind of the Tik Tok of sales platforms. So, super interactive. It's all live streambased. It's all cell phone uh um um based. So, it's all vertical portrait. And the thing that I there's two things that I really really like about it uh just in a big macro uh level. One is the interactive ability. You can uh we were Alicia and I were talking today. You [snorts] answer one question and if 30 people are in the live, 30 people hear the answer versus at a uh you know a reptile expo where one person asks or 18 different people ask the same question and you're just saying it over and over all day. So the interactive portion of it I really really like. The other part of it that we hear a lot and none of us really have, you know, there's some people that have a great answer, but most of us don't have the time in our lives to have a great answer for it is how do we get more people into this uh hobby. I talk a lot about the industry, but what we need is more people coming into the hobby. If they want to grow into an industry, that's that's on them. But the industry relies on the hobby, and they overlap a lot. But you can have a hobby without the industry. You cannot have the industry without the hobby. So we need more people getting excited being and and I guess just entering or or engaging or embracing the hobby. And what I like about Palm Street is there just a vast number of users. There's 200,000 unique users each month on Palm Street. That's the exciting part of Palm Street. It's also the downside of Palm Street. Most of those 200,000 people have no idea what a ball python is. They have no idea that it can be a pet. So, it's a classic untapped market. How much will be able to tap it, I have no idea. What I do like is that um they're in a buying platform, so they're in a buying headsp space. I say this with uh adoration and care. They're as crazy as we are about whatever they're there for. So whether it's plants, uh, crystals, labuboos, uh, anything else that's sold on Palm Street, uh, Artisal Crafts, like they are niche as niche gets. So like they're wired the way that we are wired about our ball pythons. And I say that because we're all sitting in a ball python podcast interacting with a dude in Minnesota from his basement. Okay, I don't know what that says about us, but it says something about us. And that is the audience of Palm Street. So, they're wired similarly. The ball pythons are cool. The reptiles are cool. The gecko people have kind of figured it out. The plant people have figured it out. Palm Street just celebrated its fifth uh anniversary, millions of downloads. So, I like the opportunity to get in front of that audience.
Now, let me be as transparent as I can. I don't think the auctions are any better or any worse. They're a different format and they're interactive. So, I like them that way and that way I think that they're better. Auctions are auctions. What I saw today, which was pretty cool, and I saw last week, so every Tuesday I do this live from the shop thing where basically I'm just cleaning and running my yapper and and interacting with people. Um, and last weekend, this week, uh, retail, full retail sale through Palm Street, you can populate a shop. It doesn't have to be auction items. You can populate a shop. You can put them in there and uh, through doing this regular, it's not really, I mean, say it's not really a sales pitch. In some ways, anything I do with a proper royal shirt or under that brand or banner is a sales pitch because it's a business and I need revenue to do anything. But it's not like I'm going, you know, auctioneer style. Hey, this one's up. It's it's for sale this price. It's more just like talking about what I'm doing. Oh, this snake is cool. Let's talk about what's in this snake. This is the project I'm working. What project are you working? That kind of thing. And some of the same people have started to come back. And that's the beauty of doing things consistently and doggedly uh and in a way that I'm thankful for that you all are back as well. So, um anyway, I'm enjoying it.
Uh Alicia came on the show today from Herp and Harbons. And uh first I'm always happy to hang out with Alicia. Uh she and Josh are great. And um by the way, if you scroll down into the description under the advertisers, there's a link where you can donate to the Dr. Tom Harbin uh scholarship fund uh at Auburn University fully endowed managed by independent um either third party or the university but but the Harbons um aren't aren't active managers of it or any of that kind of thing. So it's not just like hey let's donate some money so Adam can go to school. That that's not the case. um fully endowed which uh means if it's managed correctly only the dividends of the investments will be uh dispersed which means that the scholarship will always exist like how cool it will endure in perpetuity which is uh an amazing testament to uh Dr. Tom Harbin, you can go donate to that. And I think I speak for the Harbins. There's no amount too small. Why don't you It's It's coming into that season. Why don't you pick a little something to give a good, you know, a good cause to give a little something to and uh send it over to them?
So, uh Alicia comes on the the the live stream today. And the idea was the other thing I like about Palm Street, if it's all about live stream and interaction and engagement, then what if two people could sell at the same time? And you can do this thing called dual stream. So, you can have a guest on the show. Uh, but we couldn't get her sales items on the show, uh, without like me putting them in my shop and then the fees would come for me and the money would come for me and I'm going to move it over to her. Anyway, I'm going to pitch that to the Palm Street folks and like part of me thinks like, "Wow, that's a great idea." And then another part of me is like, "Yeah, of course it's a good idea because I'm sure 99,000 other people thought it would be a good idea, too. There must be a reason they're not doing that already. But I don't know what it is. I'm not a web developer. I don't know how easy or simple that is. The rest of their platform is sleek and lightning fast and it's like a Ferrari. So like why? I don't I'm sure if they wanted to do it, they could. So anyway, I'm going to pitch it out there. I mean, talk about brand building, crossbranding, meeting uh, you know, the Harbin's audience and the Harbins's meeting my audience and them following each other and and all those social media mushroom cloud things that we all hear about. Like, that's how to do it, right? Um, anyway, I'll see. I don't know what's up with that.
So, if you've tried Palm Street, let me know. The one thing I will say that I think um myself included uh most of us are guilty of we try something once or we try something twice and we're like h that didn't work screw it. Like what in life do you do once or twice and you're really good at like um I think to I think if you want to really maximize those benefits and those opportunities, you just got to do it consistently. And it took me a little while to come around to that, but uh this Tuesday live from the shop uh thing that I did, it was two and a half hours today. Um it doesn't cost me anything. I'm doing chores anyway. Uh turns out I got to build my brand a little bit and I got a full retail sale out of the deal that I wouldn't have probably gotten otherwise because if I'm cleaning tubs, it's really hard for me to promo things on Instagram or, you know, cut reels and stuff. So, it's kind of cool. Um, I like it. If you got ideas on it, I'm all I'm all for it. I'm all for hearing it of how to reach and engage people. But I'll tell you, I'm I'm by and large I'm mostly over auctions. They have a place. The feedback I hear on Palm Street is from sellers going, "Yeah, it's just low dollar auction stuff." Yeah, that's what all auctions are. [laughter] They're not If you if you could just print the high dollar stuff at retail, you wouldn't take it to auction. So uh in that way I don't see it as any any certainly not as any worse and I again I like the interactive nature of it. So in that way you know okay but I do like that the store is there and it's easy to populate. I populate everything just right on my phone. Um it's it's so easy to populate which is nice. The downside is it's less searchable. So like take Morph Market for example. If Morph Market has, I don't know, how many fields are there that you have to fill in when you list an animal? 20, 30. That's 30 different fields you could search by and sort by. Whereas on Palm Street, it's just just splatter on the wall kind of deal. Like, it's in the shop, it's there, and you could call it whatever you want. You can list it whatever you want. You get a nice picture and it it shows it. Um, but I think the only fields are title, description, uh, cost, and shipping. That's it. So, you can't you can't really sort by like, hey, let me look for Adam's gravel projects. You just got to you just got to sift through and scroll through. So, strengths and weaknesses.
Um, but anyway, uh, if you've tried it, let me know what you think. Uh I do encourage people to look at it as a long-term building opportunity and as an opportunity to reach um again that vast number of users that are kind of wired like we are.
Um I it's so weird to do a shout out and not really be sure who you're shouting out. There is uh I think it's a guy uh and they certainly seem like a nice person that I would call a gentleman. Um, there's a gentleman that I actually like message back and forth with, but I don't know who he is. Um, and they have a name like Retired Life, I think. I don't even You wouldn't really even know it's a Snake account unless you like click through it. Um, but he brings up some really good points. There's benefits to people not knowing about our restaurant industry, too. Our reptile industry and the inner workings of our reptile industry. They don't know about our drama or idiots making fun of somebody else when they're in a hospital or um you know supposed pyramid schemes or uh market booms and busts or pump and dump things on morphs. All they know is that they're badass looking animals and like it takes it right back to the core of what we all got into it for in the first place. So those are all the things that I like and I would say that with any if if a platform comes along and says, "Hey, our goal was to reach new customers and they pitched a viable concept of how they were going to reach new customers and new potential buyers and new enthusiasts, I would be just as enthusiastic about it." That to me is what is is most most exciting about it. So there you go. Uh enjoy food for thought on that. Thanks Alicia for enjoy uh for participating in the experiment. Hopefully we get something of it. How fun would that be to run like dual sales or dual auctions? Um Alicia brought up some really good points like plants you could just pick up and like set them down and you know you can be doing this. You can't really do that with snakes. Like you got to open a tub or you got to go get a tub or you got to look for where it is or whatever. So, like while one person's fumbling around, the other person is going and it it just becomes non-stop, which is which is pretty fun, especially as somebody who generally does these by myself without even like a partner in the room helping me along. So, that would be uh that would be cool.
What do we got here? Um uh did you did YouTube switch their Oh, here we go. Did YouTube switch their streaming vertical? So Charlie, there's actually two separate streams. There's a vertical and a horizontal one. You got to leave one and go to the other. How you do that? Don't know. Uh this is me learning as I go tonight. I saw it was a new feature and I was like, man, the world runs on vertical these days. I gota I got to try it. See what it's all about. Um so uh there you go. That's that.
Um, oh, the portrait mode has its Oh, you can't see each other's chats. Look at that. Oh, yeah, you can. Wait, no, I put heart of if I put it up there, you could see it. So, Heart of the Python is on both right now. Uh, I like the separate chat. Huh. Like I say, I'm going to have to go back and rewatch it. I saw it was a Let me tell you, Streamyard rolls out new features like every every week. Well, I log in twice a week because I do the the proper cup of Joe. Every time I log in, there's like boom this new feature, boom, this, and they're pretty cool. This one I was like, uh I was it, sorry, this just popped into my mind. So, I'm trying to uh formulate this idea really quickly. When I was working at the last uh the resort, it's so funny when I say the last resort. The last resort that I worked at, um we were going through this like generational change both in our membership and in our leadership, I was one of the leaders. So while I might not be the young guy in this world, in the world of private clubs and golf, I am a baby even at 45. Okay. So, uh, imagine when I was 36 coming into that particular property, uh, like I say, as part of their leadership, um, and I spent so much time just screaming that our customers were going to be reached on their phone. And now I feel like I have to scream, our customers are not reached like this on their phones, they are reached like this. So, when I saw StreamYard had the uh the vertical, I was like, man, let me uh let me let me try it out. So, that's all I know about it. I don't know what uh uh how it's coming across on the user end. Any feedback is is welcome on that.
Um, yeah, [laughter] you guys are like yelling across canyons at each other. Hello, other chat. Uh there you go. Um, oh, the comments just roll with the bottom now. Now I feel like now I feel like I'm missing out. Like I want to know what you guys are experiment are experiencing. Okay, that's fine. Hello Chris. You see folks, he is alive. That's uh there was a whole bunch of BS. Hey man, uh you go back to the start, you can uh you can hear it. Uh whatever. Um, I'm not really sure how like the the powerful guy or person in the in the in the sky works, but but uh we all we all set a little something to our own version of that guy for you, man. Uh, keep going, brother.
Um, it's showing up like Instagram or they just like pop up and just Anyway, well, I'm going to go back and see it. It'll be it'll be fun to watch. Um, okay. I got next on my list, Scrambler Jean. What do you guys think of this? It's one of my favorite topics. um with or without your input, although I would love your input. Um because I'm it's new to me and I'm pretty excited about it. I do this thing where unless I have a gene or I want to get it or I have a means to get it, I don't let myself get excited about it. Like I think uh uh man, I saw a picture of a cosmos today or yesterday. Showstopper stopped me scrolling and I was like, what is that? Um, I can't get excited about it because I don't have 30 grand to go get one or however much they are. They're probably more than that. I don't know. Um, so I don't really like like I keep it outside of my mind. And that's sort of where Scrambler was. Um, because the prices really aren't all that attainable. And then we don't quote know exactly what it is. Although some people are sure they know what it is, so maybe they do. But when I went to Toronto, everything changed because suddenly I had the means to acquire some scramblers. The American dollar is pretty powerful there right now. And uh some relationships came through and some logistics things came through and the importing was uh feasible because Tinley was coming up and there was a big import already scheduled and voila, Adam now has Scrambler.
So, on the one side, um actually here's the main crux of my argument. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to fire up the chat. This scrambler usually gets things going when people talk about it. Um, I don't really care what it is because it exists and we know from breeding if it exists in one and we breed that one in a generation or two or some combination of two or three, we'll be able to recreate it. And then we tend to price things based on how easy or difficult it is to recreate it because that's a function of supplying and saturating the market which of course drives the price down. So in that way if it's just cool and badass looking I don't really care what it is. I care to know because I'd like to make it the most efficient way that I can. So if it's a line breeding thing, I probably need to do scrambler to scrambler to keep these good things going or I need to plan two generations to do offspring back to parent. Um or similarly if it's I don't think anybody thinks it's recessive but say it was you would want to hold backs and and plan accordingly. So in that way I care but I'm far more excited about just how stunning it looks. I mean, it's not going to have the effect on the on the industry that say Pied or Banana did, but I think it's right there otherwise. And for that to be the base gene that really can be recreated fairly easily because it's either some version of a dominant and spare me the complete or incomplete do. Okay, you got one copy, you see it. That's what I'm talking about. Um it it seems to be some version or it seems to be a lime bred uh fine example of another non-recessive gene in in Orange Dream or some combination of those two that work really really well together. Any of those aren't that difficult to make which I think is actually really cool. I know some people are going well that's going to drive the price of the project down. it's not going to drive the price of the project down in any other way other than if you don't get other things into it. So yeah, basic clown pides torpedoed because people weren't putting uh non-recessive genes into it, the dominant genes into it. The people working clown pides that are doing cool stuff with it, those are hanging out there at a pretty good value still. So I think the same thing will be with Scrambler and then finding what to do with it. Whether it is a gene, whether it is a really nice example of something that already exists, which I really don't I don't I think it's way more than the nicest example of super orange dream that you could think of. I really really do. I think there's something more there. What I don't know people Mark Mandic's been working at it for 10 years. He'll have a better input than I will have. I can't speak for for him or for the gene. I just just started fumbling around with it. But um I am excited about it and I'm excited to see what happens. We're start we've already seen it in um Pied and in Hypo. We're starting to see it in Clown. What's this thing going to do in Ultramal? What's this thing going to do in Clown Ultra? Uh Ultramal Pied. [gasps] Buckle up, man. Uh in DG. I don't know. I was going to say, we have seen it. I did see one in DG already as well. So, there's cool stuff to be done with it and I think we've just scratched the surface and we're going to see it in a whole lot more combos. We primarily only see it really show off in orangeream and calico combos. So, like there's other stuff out there and I know that means it's been tried in the other stuff, some of the other stuff and hasn't done great, but like what would it do in mahogany? That'd be cool. or with some of these dark jeans or uh black pastel tends to have an orange hue to it or some orange components. That would be fantastic. I don't know. I'm probably going to try it in some gravel. I'll tell you that much. Um so I'm excited about it. What do you guys think on that? Um every time I see a bright cool animal, it almost always has scrambler. Not sure what it does, but whatever it does, I want it. I'm with you. Here's what here's what I'm worried about. Uh, and here is my prediction as well. Scrambler is gonna have a lace moment. Um, I think a lot of people are like, "This is a really bright animal and it's got orange dream in it. We're going to call it Scrambler." Uh, I don't know how to prevent that. And I could say, you know, only buy from Mark Mandic or only buy from Antoine at DPR. I have no idea the the um um what do you call it in animals? Uh, the provenance of um Chris Hearn's uh line, his stuff is banging. I got no reason to think that's not Scrambler. But now that I have it from Mark and from Antoine and I want to sell it, well, there's 99 other breeders that have already bought it as well. So, I don't even know a good way to be like, "Well, just buy it from like really really trusted resources." Like, all I'm gonna say is that I got mine from [laughter] Antoine. I don't know what that future genetic test is going to say. I know that my eyes say it's amazing and that I want to keep working it. So, that's it's this we don't know a better way to go about it, but I don't I know on this one I don't want to sit around and wait for people like this is almost like an ultrasound kind of thing. An ultrasound is not going to make your female more or less pregnant or faster or slower pregnant. Well, I guess it could in a binary way. If you didn't know to breed it, then okay, sure, it'll give you a chance to to make it pregnant. But otherwise, like it's not changing nature. Like the genetic test is not going to change nature. I may as well get on with experimentation and work this thing while our genetic uh test testing figures it out. I'm down with that. I'll That's where I'm at on that. I think um 319 that's Chris. Uh 319 reptiles. I have no doubt it's a gene. Just worried about the ones that have been sold that aren't really scrambler. Yeah. I don't and I I don't know how to I don't even know that they've been done that way purposefully. I think there's people that are fully convinced that what they have is scrambler. I heard about scramblers far back probably [sighs and gasps] three and a half four years ago and it was in the context of well I got these I got these cool things popping up in my pi somebody says it's scrambler like I feel like you I feel like we need to have it a little more lineage or a little more tied in than that but but maybe it's almost like scrambling in the room with us because we're all sort of like well I kind of know what it does but I'm not real sure but it looks amazing. Amazing. So, we'll see. We'll see what's going on there. Um, I like it and I'm excited and and I have invested into it. So, you know, we'll uh we'll start there.
Um, let's throw these up here for a minute. Look at all these good folks. These are good folks that support our uh industry and they are from within our industry as well, supporting our industry. So, if you're thinking of places that you might want to go shopping, you can look at those above. And if you want to look at ways to uh uh double check what you bought, you can look at shed testing. If you want to look at ways to ship it, you can check it out with red line shipping. There's the focus. Bam. There it is. Um, yeah, I'll leave those up for a little bit. Do I should I do this? I feel really dumb. I'm not doing that. My forehead's just going to get blocked out a little bit. There we go. Uh oh, look at I broke the uh the vertical presentation on the You put the overlay on and there's no uh there's no vertical presentation anymore. That'll break that.
Um, all right, fair enough. It does enhance orange. I will I will uh grant that I I believe it enhances orange incredibly on there. All right. Uh well, send me your thoughts on Scrambler. Keep it going in the comments.
Um, talked about that. Oh. Uh, tomorrow night I'll be on the Morph Forge podcast. Always good people to hang out with. Pretty fun. Little different take on podcasting, too. I got to hand it to them and they're doing creative stuff. So, I'll be on uh More Forge. That's tomorrow night. And then Thursday night, a very rare uh show appearance that I do that's about showing off animals. So, that's going to be with uh irresistible balls and lace balls. And I I shouldn't do a promo that I'm not 100% sure of. Uh if I'm not mistaken, I think it's called Show Me Your Rack or What's in Your Rack? I think it's called Show Me Your Rack. Anyway, go check it out. Irresistible Balls, uh Lace Balls. Thursday night, I'll be hanging out with them next week. Next Thursday, I'll be on Supreme Gecko. Look at this, man. I'm getting uh getting big. I guess I'm going on Gecko podcast. Uh that's Wall-E and Nanette. Uh if you haven't checked out their show, you got they are amazing at building community. Fantastic. Good for them.
Um, oh, I made some notes here. Uh I titled this one Dirty Laundry. Um I don't think you guys need to hear. You guys are sane. You you know, you wouldn't watch the show if you were insane. I don't think but and it's funny because it's a local car wash that's not mine and I'm not bringing it up because it's a car wash. Uh I bring it up because it's it's absolutely foolish. Um so the other day in town just massive massive police presence. Uh turns out there was a barricade hostage situation in town. It's a small town. So when you see like military style vehicles with a battering ram going down our primary streets, you go what's happening? So, I go on like my town's called Northfield. Um, I go on the Facebook group and it's called like concerned citizens of Northfield or something like like they're like Facebook vigilantes or some nonsense with that title, but anyway, um, no offense if you're a part of a group called Concerned Citizens of wherever. Um, and uh, I found out about what the police stuff was. But then I see this guy who I guess owns a car wash in this town. Mine's in the next town over. And man, these people were just brutal to this guy. And I'm like, why are they being so why do they care? Why are they being so rough on this guy? And then I look like all this dude is doing is airing his dirty laundry. So like every time So it starts with like a colonel of like a a realistic complaint. Um somebody robbed his vacuum machine. That's a crime. That's not cool. That should be handled with the police. And if you need to find help finding the perpetrators, sure, social media is a great place to do that in a small town. What happened is this guy starts keeping like a diary of every person that's ever wronged him and then adds like a dollar amount to the grievance. So like so and so threw a bag of McDonald's on the ground and I had to pick up the fry basket and the bag and that cost me three minutes of my time and I built it this much. So he did that for like 99 things and he's posting it publicly and I'm like and as you can imagine in a social media space the town's people are just absolutely just frying this guy. And I'm like this is the perfect reason of why you you don't air your dirty laundry. Like if you're publicizing something, make sure that anything you're publicizing is at least like at an acceptable bar. It doesn't have to be polished. Doesn't have to be professional. Like I didn't shave. Okay, fine. I look a little uncapped. I get it. But like if I got issues, the person I have issues with is going to know about it. And the people that can fix the issue, if there is such a thing, are going to know about it. Otherwise, I'm not bringing it up, man. Like that's a that's insane. Anyway, I thought it was a good story to share. Don't uh don't air out your dirty laundry.
Um, okay, next section here. I really This was great. I'm going to take you behind the scene here. Show behind the show. Every week, uh I'll, you know, I'll invite a guest. We'll schedule the guest. Uh if I'm on my game, I'll have guests scheduled. Oh, by the way, next week, uh, Billy Rice from Rice Family Reptiles. Boom. How about that? You didn't even know what you were sticking around for. There's your breaking news. Um, next week, uh, Billy Rice is going to be on. And we're can I I think I could tease these. I I could just say I don't know when they're going to be on because that is a true and b if it's not for a long long time, it's still true. But I think coming soon, uh, we'll have Winston from WHS and Antoine from DPR. We're going to finish this year strong. I promise you, friends. Uh, also Chris from Wide River as well. So, they'll be coming soon. Keep an eye on the scheduling and all that kind of stuff.
So, what I do, I invite people on the show and I come up with ideas or basically generally what I do is I come up with three topics. I don't write 20 questions. I write three topics and then I hope that they're a good enough conversational dance partner that we can have an intriguing conversation that flows nicely and that I can ask some inquisitive questions along the way that make me say aha. And I'll do a little bit of research about the person or the work that they're doing or I'll check out their morph market accounts or whatever might be. Um, and that's how it flows. And when you make a show on YouTube, ideally you're going to tell ideally the ladybug is not crawling on my neck. Did you guys see that? I just pulled a freaking ladybug off my neck. Okay, you see that thing on my finger? Anyway, story goes on. There it is now. Oh, it focused for a half a second. Um, I'll put you right there. Anyway, sorry for the interruption. I build these people then YouTube on with any and actually this is applicable to any any uh social media platform. If you want it to get pushed or presented, you got to tell the platform what it is. So, I got to write a description. I put in keywords. Uh I put in uh the advertiser partner links. I put in uh tags down. There's a tag section. And I don't really even know what those do, but I I do them and I do all that before the show and I publish it and then hopefully it tells you all that, hey, Adam's coming and he's got this neat thumbnail and you check it out, you click, you watch. Okay, you know how this stuff works. Here's where my story gets a little bit more interesting and intriguing, which is going to lead into the next segment here, is that as you all know, sometimes the conversation goes in directions I don't expect and I do not have in the original description or the original thumbnail or the original title. And something you can do is after, it usually takes about one day, but if you go to any of my previous videos and you look in the description down below, if you scroll all the way down, there's a button that says show transcript. If you show the transcript and you copy the the transcript, uh yeah, that ladybug, it does stink. They do
smell terrible. If you copy that transcript, what you could do then is take that transcript and I take it back to my uh chat GPT and I tell it, "Hey, here's what I originally described it as. Here's the transcript of the show. Write me a new title. Write me a new description. Write me new keywords. and write me new Google SEO tags so that YouTube can crank this out in front of people that are most likely to click on it, engage in it, watch in it, grow proper royals brand, and eventually buy a ball python or return an investment to the advertisers. I do that every week because I'm insane. And I do that for Proper Royals Live and I do that for Proper Cup of Joe every week.
when I was coming up with what to talk about tonight, like I just like trying things, just like seeing what happens. So, I go to this chatbot in chat GPT. Uh his name is Alex. He's my social media uh SEO activator manager, activation manager, and I go to Alex typing. Alex isn't a real person. I know this. Uh I type to Alex. Oh, and I've been doing this for about a year and a half. ever since chat GPT was was made available in a free form. So I go to Alex, I say, "Hey, go review the years worth of transcripts and everywhere that I've said that's a conversation for later. I'm not going to discuss that here, but I will sometime." That's a topic for a YouTube video or something of that ilk. Let me know because I am that means that it's something that's been unressed and I'm going to address it. Alex was on it. 33 different bullet points. He had citations. It was from this episode with this guest. Blah blah blah. It was great. And so I'm excited because now I have four uh uh topics that I can discuss a little bit. And I'm actually just going to discuss one. We're already at 50 minutes of me yapping away here. Um, but uh you might try something like that or along those lines because one of the things I'm about to talk about is that I think I need to rebalance my media presence. I don't do nearly enough of the classic long-term format YouTube videos. And uh I I'll return to why in a moment. But one of my goals, not even just for the new year, for like now is that I need to make those. And if you're like me, you go through your life going, "Yeah, I should make a video on that topic." Then when you have time to make the video, you're like, "What was I going to make the video on?" And you're not like inspired anymore. You know, this thing gave me 33 great ideas that I already said I was passionate about and that I had something to talk about on and it gave me the citation of the context of where I said that. So, it's like a ready-made outline of inspiration that now I can get down to business and go make some long format YouTube videos.
So anyhow, I did all of that and here are the topics that I gave and I think what I'm going to get I think I'm just going to jump into one uh really short side one. Um if you guys have any uh suggestions, referrals, who you'd like to see on the show, put them in the comments, message them to me. Uh Instagram message what? Text them to me. You know how to get a hold of me. Um these Tuesdays are relentless, man. There's a lot of Tuesdays that come around and think outside that's a dumb I hate that expression. Think outside the box. Okay. um come up with some other nifty expression, but think about people that like maybe have influenced you positively or their sales experience uh either buying or uh was incredible or they did something different that made them stand out or uh you think, man, this person is going to be around kind of deal or they've just got a knack for making beautiful animals or something. Um, I'm always intrigued by that kind of stuff or they've got a business insight or an amazing career outside of ball pythons that we all go, man, that that person like those are all the things that kind of make me tick and that that are like primo guests when I can find those people. So, if you if you have anybody like that, uh, let me know. Um, because there's always another Tuesday and if there ever comes a time where there's not another Tuesday, we got bigger problems on our hands. So, we're not going to care about proper royals at that point. So, let me know. I'd love to love to have that.
So, um all right. I'm going to tell you the topics and then I'll tell you what I'm going to dive in on. And then got to give a little thanks here, too. So, uh one of them uh and and here's the actual response that my my chatbot gave. [snorts] Genetic creativity is the title. Uh with Clayton Kaufman, you flagged this as a topic you wanted to revisit. How to balance creative pairing with business realism. That's a pretty good YouTube video right there. Uh mentorship and accountability. It didn't expand on that. It just says you need to talk about that. All right. I like that. That's a good uh it is something I believe in. Um and they're not even necessarily related. Mentorship and accountability. Those that could be two separate topics. Pretty good. Uh long-term proper royals goals. In several intros, you said, quote, "That's a story for another time when referencing what's next for Proper Royals as a business entity." I hinted at it earlier. If I have a guest on the show, I don't want to make the show about me. I need to make it about the guest. You guys are probably tired of hearing me about me. Um, so I never dive into it. That's a good one. Um, we're going to get into that in just a second because I do have visions changes. The scene has changed massively for me in the past two years. It's changed massively for me in the past year. It's changed massively for me in the past 6 months. So, we'll talk all about that in just a second.
I mentioned earlier, check out uh Redline Shipping Temps are changing. It's about to get a little hairy out there for shipping. Uh man, sometimes it focuses, sometimes it doesn't. That says red line shipping. Um, you want to know when to ship, when it's safe to ship, check out Redline Shipping. They're going to get you through it. They have the uh supplies, the equipment, the knowledge to help you safely ship the animals that you are purchasing and buying. Use the promo code proper 5 for five bucks off of your next shipping order. Should you run into issues when you're shipping, Red Line's got your back. There's a phone number you can call for human services that are reptile enthusiasts and reptile keepers and educated on both FedEx shipping ins andouts and reptile keeping ins and outs. There you go. Uh shedesting.com is now a part of uh phenome.com. Uh if you want to know more about what that means, I did an episode with the Phenom team that includes Charlie Williams from shedtesting.com. Uh but in the meantime, you can still go to shedtesting.com. You can place your orders there and your payments are the same. The ordering process is the same. They've just made it better. You'll see the website is is probably a little bit sleeker now. And behind the scenes, Charlie, even before that uh evolution to Phenom, Charlie had uh improved his uh lab relationships and um processes, less variables, faster turnaround time, cheaper price, better, faster, cheaper. Man, it's the triumvirate there of uh service and business. What you hope for. Use the promo code proper 10. You're going to get yourself 10% off of the new lower prices. When I say lower prices, you can run a 10 gene recessive panel or dominant panel. You can run a 10 gene panel for $85. That's $8.50 a test. Don't know what something is, but there's something going on. Yeah, we're going to put that to bed. We're going that Oh, that's going to be a new rule for 2026. No more something going on. Just go right to shedtesting.com for that. Okay.
Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. That is uh that is um Charlie Ryan. He's in New Jersey, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Uh go check out Reagan Renee.com. That's the ad. That's the push. Reagan renee.com. All of his inventory is on reanne.com. All of his inventory is there. Listen to this. Free shipping if you buy from.com. Full stop. No like percentage. No uh this or that. free shipping if you purchase from reagan rene.com. Massive variety of payment options as well as the uh uh what's it called? Like the buy now pay later thing that that uh Square offers. What is that called? Anyhow, you know what I'm talking about, man. Get you a snake. You could do it right away. Uh Charlie is focusing on Krypton and DG projects. He's got uh Krypton's DG g-stripe clown pi clowns um in a variety of single, double, triple, and quad ingredients. So, go check out reagan renee.com. And he has shown me I'll let him unveil it when he's ready, but two pretty cool other features that are just going to be free value ads, I believe, uh coming up um on his site, too. So, he's really cooking behind the scenes, and I'm excited for what's coming there. uh Keeper Kane. Uh that is Kane Fritz Wallace and uh Michelle as well. And they have a YouTube channel documenting kind of all their experiences and their life with animals. Uh big snakes, ball pythons, uh tarantulas, aquatics. It's all documented there. It's all familyfriendly. Uh they're a great couple. Really, really active in our community, too. Supporters of several, I might even say many uh Patreons. So, not only supporting and advertising, but staying active in the community as well. Least you could do is go check out their YouTube channel. Doesn't cost anything. You might be pretty entertained. I got to say it's a pretty fun channel and they're great folks and again pretty good ball python breeder as well. Working in the bongo pi project. How about that? Boom. Um, Sund Dog Serpents. That is Sarah and Josh. They are down in Orlando, Florida. I've been doing business with them for about four years. Uh, I vended with them on the Repan Circuit down in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Lakeland, all around Florida there. And, uh, they're really, really, um, I hate to just keep saying, people are great people. They're very good people that I trust a lot. I've bought from them. I've sold to them. Uh, we're working projects together. We have a monsoon uh, clown project that we're working together this uh, winter. And I think you should do business with them and give them a shot as well. uh working hard on TSK clown ingredients and double visuals. If you're into TSK Exanthic, you should know Sarah and Josh at Sund Dog Serpents. Also, Super Asphalt projects. I went the gravel path, they went the asphalt path. Um, there's nice uh mutual respect there, uh shall we say. So, check them out. They also have some visual puzzles that they've hatched recently that are looking great as well. Uh, go check out Sarah and Josh Instagram, Facebook, uh, Morph Market, all the usual suspects and around and about on that Repiruit in Florida. Go see them.
Last but not least is Chris at BNS Reptilia, the original advertising partner of Proper Royals, uh my business partner at Tinley, and we own a rainbow clown project together as well. So, another person that not only I say is good to do business with, I do business with. Um, Chris is reptilia because not only does he specialize in ball pythons, but blood pythons, colubrids of all shapes and sizes, pituous, if you know what that means, the bull and the pine snakes, he's got the education, the paperwork, uh, to make sure that you can own them legally, wherever you are, and he'll give you the education to make sure that you could take care of all those animals. He's also a killer resource. He's been doing this a long, long time, and he knows the species. He knows a ton about each species and he's really fantastic on identification, all that stuff. Uh, and he is the regional uh, distributor of the Chipper Cocoa. If you're interested in becoming a distributor of the Chipper Coco yourself, get in touch with Chris and uh, he'll get you set up. There you go. Uh, take care of those folks. Again, earlier I said it and I believe this. These folks are people supporting our industry that are in our industry uh, looking out for this industry. So go support them if you get a chance to. Um, and Proper Royals live content is brought to you adree uh by the fine people at Palm Street. So thanks very much. Go back to the beginning of the show if you have not um seen or you're not familiar with Palm Street. I talked quite a bit about it. Um Oh, Royal Car Wash. It's got a nice ring to it. I'm not sure if it's legal that they call it that. I'm going to have a little talking to with them about that one, man. >> [laughter] >> All right. Uh, my razor blade. Oh, come on now. One of the beauties of being an entrepreneur is I shave on my own schedule. I'll have you know. All right. Um, Keeper Kane is hanging out. Um, no, not car wash wars. I have no beef with No, I am I am a neutral car wash. I don't I don't I don't I'm not tribal in the ball python world. I'm not tribal in the car wash world. Absolutely not. No, we're not getting into that crap. Um, no. I have no desire for that.
All right. What's coming up? Let's go back to what's changed for Proper Royals. I spent a whole lot of time when I first started Proper Royals about like what's my purpose? What's my mission? Um, what what what is why is the why? What is the why? Why am I doing this? And my goal was to be uh I I I used the word purposeful. I wanted to be a purposeful breeder of ball pythons. So I didn't want to breed just for volume. I didn't want to be a ball python mill. Um I wanted the ball pythons I was breeding to have a uh purpose. Now, I don't think they're changing the world, but I'm also not just producing like if I can't use or work towards uh something with what I'm making. Um or I don't think it or like in the in the uh uh example of bells, I'm not furthering the bell project, but I do believe on Palm Street, if somebody who's never seen a ball python sees a bell, they go, "Holy smokes, I need to understand that." So I wanted I wanted to be purposeful in what I was doing. I wanted to be uh recognized for honesty for uh the care that I provide to the animals and I wanted to be a resource online. Um not in a way that I know everything but in a way that I'll go seek knowledge and I'll share that uh that seeking. I don't know that pursuit. That's what seeking is. I would I would share that pursuit uh publicly because at the time when I started this um that wasn't really a common like hey let's go learn this together. It was almost like you had to like I know everything and you had to almost like fake a whole bunch of knowledge and then and then you get called out for being fake because you are being fake and all of that and I was like screw it. I'm just going to be like the dude that's figuring it out and doesn't really know. But I'll share my experience and I'll be transparent and all that. [snorts]
In uh November actually uh was when I started um the proper royal proper royals channel. November 2020, five years. This is the 795th video that I've done that you are watching and maybe 96th because it has the vertical and the horizontal version. I don't know. I can't imagine what I've had to speak about for nearly 800 videos. Um, I say all that because I've gained some experience and I've gained some actual knowledge along the way. I have found that there is overlap from things I do consider myself an expert in Allah, inventory management, cost of goods management, managing uh a business with very narrow margins in a bit of a world of crazy consumers. I'm talking about managing private clubs, food and beverage operations, uh, late night bars, and navigating the music industry. Those are things I do consider myself, not so much navigating the music industry, navigating the small-time local music scene, yes, industry, no. Uh, restaurant, hospitality, private clubs industry, absolutely. So, that's changed a little bit for me in the five years. Two years ago, I moved from Florida to Minnesota. Uproot my life, changed my life with my wife, with my son. It was great. We're all in it. We're all here together. We've all survived it. We're still here. Um, a year ago, I buy a car wash, which people have alluded to, which has become kind of funny because I'm known as the dude with a car wash now. Uh, with the intention of turning one of the bays into a reptile facility. I did that. I could well the renovation is basically complete. I have some loose ends to tie up. I moved into that facility about 6 months ago which changed everything. And now I'm at the point where there's literally in that little ARS uh 55 series uh racks. There are two female snakes left to lay and that will uh complete the transition to the car wash. So much has changed and my goals have changed because of that. And I thought when my handy sidekick Alex, the old AI, Alex, um said you should talk about uh long-term proper royals goals. I said, you know, I actually really believe in and now they have to be wholehearted. They have to be legitimate and they have to be followed. But I really believe in like mission statements, company values, uh visions, all of those sorts of things. Um and I wish that I had had it in front of me. You can Google it or actually somebody probably could Google it and put it in the chat. Uh there is a pretty famous story and it's been not story study that's been repeated and and has stood the test of uh of uh you know peer review and repeated results and all those good scientific things. The simple act of writing down your goals increases your odds of achieving those goals by a massive amount. Writing down your goals, posting them where you see them every day further increases the likelihood of you reaching those goals. It's amazing just how simple some of those acts are um that it scientifically has results of improving your chances of reaching those goals. So, no matter how far-fetched the goals seem or how tough they are, you probably already believe in it since you have those goals, write them down. Look at them every day. And I had to say to myself uh last night when I was writing this show, um Adam, you haven't done that lately. That's something you believed in. It's something that I've did uh um through my career. It's something that I do in managing the uh household. I would say my personal finances, but when you're married and you have a family, you don't really have personal finances. They're family household finances. Our I uh in 2012, I wrote out a monthtomonth until uh through the age of like 72 of where I wanted my financial net worth to be. And monthto month, if I've exceeded that, that means I have a little bit of spending money. And if I haven't exceeded it, it means that I have to stop anything until I do get back to it and I get back ahead of it. And honestly, not only do I have to be ahead of it monthto monthth, I have to be ahead of it with a little bit of money set aside for some fun stuff so that so that I can afford a little trip up here and there or market adjustment or whatever. And that really was an incredible set of long-term goals. And I still look at that constantly. I still make those decisions. I probably I look at it daily if not maybe maybe I'll go two days without looking at it. But I say all that because I actually believe this stuff.
So here's what I wrote down for my goals which will uh shape um what is coming up for the future of proper royals. Because one thing I can tell you that happens if you buy a car wash and you convert that car wash into a reptile room and small town Midwestern America people find out that you've had uh reptiles in it, it might be a little harder to sell one day. You are stuck with that unique piece of architecture which you have uh created into your own vision. And um while I technically own the car wash outright, I took a pretty significant loan on the home equity that I have. So I do owe a lot of money on that car wash or Proper Royals owns owes the Shyas a whole lot of money uh on that car wash. I'm saying all of that to say I'm going to be around in this world for a little bit and I better come up with something to show for it is what I'm going to say. So, um I wrote down um four goals, some of which are immediate, some of which are uh in a year, some of which are 3 to five years. Um and I actually wrote uh five goals. Five goals. So, here you go. I challenge you to do this yourself. If you want to share them, that's fine. If you want to keep them to yourself, that's fine. I think that it's um it's a good exercise. And if you don't meet the goals, doesn't mean that you failed. Means you need to find out why you didn't meet the goal. Maybe it's a dumb goal in the first place, which is probably giving yourself an out, but maybe it is a dumb goal in the first place. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Uh second, usually there's something that prohibited you from reaching that goal. And if it's a really long-term goal, you shouldn't wait till the goal deadline. You should see it along the way. Hey, this isn't working. I need to tweak something. So, it helps guide your decisions. It helps guide your focus. It helps keep you at it. We've all heard the expression, you only lose if you quit. Like, you got to be the tortoise. We all want to be the hair. We all want, you know, our Palm Street auctions to make us rich overnight. That doesn't happen. It's not real. It's not there. So, you got to be the tortoise.
All right. Um, I want to and I I capitalized some of these. So, I capitalized the word the. Uh my goal number one, I want to be the ASF resource in my market. When I say in my market, I'm going to define that as uh most of southern Minnesota with just the border of northern Iowa, just the border of uh western Wisconsin. And that's about an hour and a half radius all around me. So that gets just north of the cities um gets west out towards Mano, east towards Wisconsin and south just to the border of Iowa. If I could be the ASF resource, not everybody uses ASFs, but almost nobody else is breeding them. I have the proof of concept. I have the process down. I have scaled up my production. It is now time to take that cash flow and and continue to increase because I still have space. I still have opportunity to grow more and I've other than Instagram posts I've done no advertising for ASF and I still gain customers and I still don't have enough to meet all the customers demands. So um I want to be the ASF resource in my market. Why is that? ASFs are profitable for me. They are frankly very profitable. They're fairly I don't want to say easy because that's a kind of a loaded term, but I have figured out the efficient process for them and I have the facility set up for the efficient production of ASF. So, becoming uh the ASF resource in my market, I want that I want to be able to say that within one year I'm the guy. Um I may or may not be. There might be some other breeders around who are like, "Oh, really? I'll take that challenge." And that's cool. That's competition. That's healthy and all of that. Uh but I think I could be the ASF resource uh in my market uh within the next year. And I think there's a ton of profitable opportunity there. So pretty cool there.
Um I want to be known in three to five years again with the capital V. I want to be recognized as the breeder who is leading the super gravel as a recessive project. Okay. Adam, the hell does that mean? Gravel is a dominant gene. You put two two gravels together, it makes a super gravel, which is wildly different looking than the gravel is. Super gravel in my opinion and aanthic looks cool in clown looks cool and hypo looks cool and ultraml looks cool. I think it will look cool in rainbow. I think it will look cool in candy and lavender. So I think the sky's is the limit on Oh, and it looks very cool when you add other jeans into it. Enti looks really cool. Pinstripe looks very cool with it. Uh, it's untapped. We haven't gone to um I don't think anyhow I don't think we've gone to acid super gravel clowns. The heck is that going to do? It's going to be unbelievable. Uh, mahogany. There's really cool opportunity there. I want to work it and I am working it as if it were a recessive project. So this year and last year was breeding for hets, hetererozygous gravels, one copy of gravel that will go into uh future super gravel projects, gravel uh het other recessives or visual other recessives with gravel. And so I have been working, accumulating, putting together one of the best artist pallets of super gravel that I think exists. Now I got to execute it though. are gonna make that happen. I thank John D for uh that inspiration. What he did with TSK is exactly what I'm describing trying to do with super gravel. I can work all the other projects. They're just going to have gravel and super gravel in them. Much like John D works all kinds of projects, but it has to have aanthic in it. And I believe it's TSK that he works as well. I'm in the VIP world, but I believe that's that's his. So, three to five years. There are people ahead of me in the project. I don't know that they're as focused as I am. Um, I could argue they're not as crazy as I am because they don't own a car wash uh to [laughter] you get my point. Give me three to five years that I want to be the guy, not a guy. I want to be the guy on that.
All right. Immediate goals. here is an aggressive ambitious goal that will change my business model um and will be a quantum shift reflective of uh the changes that I outlined just a moment ago from 5 years ago till now. I want to in 2026, I'm about to write my budget for 2026. I want to reduce my equipment and my labor spending by 70%. 70%. If I do that, that will be an immediate net increase of $15,000 in 2026. That's not enough to, you know, buy private jets and stuff. On the other hand, um, that's more than my mortgage next year, and I'm already profitable. [snorts] So, if I can make a quantum shift like that and have it pay for my mortgage for a year, that's that's a pretty good return on investment. Um, how you might say, "Well, that's great, Adam, but how are you going to reduce something by 70%." That's if you need it, you you you can't just cut out 70%. Um, my equipment spending over the past five years accumulating equipment has been break neck speed. Basically, everything that I've made, I've put back into proper royals. The car wash is full. Unless I'm going to convert those next two bays, which just converting the bay comes at a cost of about $25,000 before you put a piece of equipment into it. I don't know what you think I deal in, but I don't deal in, you know, quick swings with 25 grand. I I don't I don't have it. That's not me. So, what I'm saying is it doesn't matter how good of a deal the next ARS rack is that comes down the line, I don't have space for it. I cannot take it. I'm not going to take it. I have um and and this is gonna go on the next solo show. This is a discussion for another time. I have the inventory that I want. I have the quantity of females that I want. Yes, there will be investments in animals made in the coming years and and in the coming year. However, it needs to fit into the equipment and the space that I have. If I max out the equipment and space that I have, that would get me to right about a 100 breeder females and I want to stay a oneman show. I don't want to have I just said I want to reduce labor by 70%. I am all about now working as efficiently as a oneman show as I possibly can and that would make me outgrow myself. Doesn't mean that won't change in the future, but for 2026, um, part of why I bought the car wash was that I could make my processes even more efficient by laying it out basically like a kitchen, like a professional kitchen would have been laid out, which I never was able to do in this room. I certainly wasn't able to do in the little uh garage conversion space in Florida that I had. So part of that investment and part of paying that investment back of buying the car wash is doing this work myself and getting that money back that I was and I have been paying and I'm thankful for the other people and they nobody got uh nobody got fired or put out there. It was a side job for everybody and they had a good they had a good landing spot. So everything is good there. But um my equipment and labor spending I need to reduce by 70% in 2026. That's a one-year goal.
My last two goals, uh, rebalance my media presence. I want to get back to useful YouTube videos. Uh, evergreen content on YouTube is really, really useful. And I I would give up isn't the right word. I have learned that to actually make money through via YouTube, you have to have bazillions [clears throat] of views. And it that's not realistic really with my scale and scope of right now. uh or my content for that matter probably. However, finding or establishing myself as a useful resource that people rely upon and trust and when they go to say to themselves, I want to buy a ball python. They go, well, who's that Adam guy? That guy, he seems to have his act together. Let's check out what he's got available. That's where YouTube videos come in really, really handy. They build your community. they uh build uh um authenticity, credibility, expertise to your name. Um, now, you have to be authentic and credible and an expert or you have to declare that you're not because otherwise you're going to be seen as a fraud. But um I need to get back to doing that and that needs to be a really really uh high focus. Adam, you've been saying that for two years. I have been saying that for two years. Uh two years ago, I moved to Minnesota from Florida and I brought all the snakes. year ago, I bought a car wash. Um, I had really one great person that helped me, but I built that car wash with the help of one other person as far as the renovation, all the framing, all the sheetrock, all the uh, you know, the the the modifications, the plumbing, the electrical, everything. Um, I don't have all that to do this off season or this winter. I'm going to make some YouTube videos.
Okay, last one. Up to this point, I've really, really focused on generating cash flow, taking that cash flow, reinvesting it. So, one way to make a splash is to take a big chunk of money, buy the stuff, get to work. I didn't have a big chunk of money. I had a career that was fine. I did not make a finite choice to walk away from a career and then um [snorts] take my 401k, cash it out. Anybody's choice is their choice. Whatever they want to do. I couldn't do that. That wasn't for me. I left my career. I started a consulting company. At the same time, I really got to work on proper royals. I always kept a consulting company. I still have that that pay that that keeps me safe. Um, but in the meantime, I would sell a banana enti. And then I could buy a banana clown. And then I could make a banana clown enti and make a little bit more. And then I could uh, you know, buy an acid leopard hurricane black pastel clown. And I got really lucky on that and that tested monsoon. And what I'm saying is I always had this cash flow model for five years. So I didn't accumulate any debt. I didn't accumul I didn't use up any household uh resources and family resources. However, I never bought like this just boom, here I am animal and this is the most amazing crazy thing ever. And maybe that's smart because a lot of people do the opposite and then they go away. But a lot of people try and make it my way and can't ever get ahead or feel like they're they're doing anything of of any purpose or scope or scale. So, I say all that because my fifth goal I uh and I capitalize the word really. It's time to really go after my projects. And what does that mean? Just like I just defined the super gravel as a recessive project. I pretty much want to pick three other projects. And you could see from how I described it, that's not limiting myself. It's focusing what I do with that project. Super gravel is a recessive. You want to put ultram in it? Great. put Ultram. You want to work, put clown in it, great. You want to put clown Ultraml in it? Great. No problem. It's time for me to figure out what I'm going to be known for and what I'm going to be passionate for. And I want to basically whittle down what I'm doing over the next year to three years. I want to whittle down my focus. Doesn't whittle down doesn't necessarily mean get rid of stuff. It means get rid of the distractions. In this in this case, I want to whittle down to projects I'm exceptionally passionate about that I could talk about the way that I talk about super gravel that I have um an exciting level of ingredients for. And then I think four is going to be the number. And then things that are outside of that that don't get me excited about those four projects that I have, I got to start I got to start getting that out of here. I don't think it's fat. I don't think it's trimming the fat. There's some exceptional animals in there that I just won't have a need for. Um, to be honest, some of that's already started. I have a uh hypo pied super pastel. It's a triple homozygous animal. Really powerful animal. I've gotten what I need out of that animal. It needs to move on. I don't have anything to add to it. I'm not going to take the hypopied pastel project any farther. And I have the holdbacks uh double and triple hats that I've made with that animal. I don't need them anymore. It's got to go. Uh I have a really good producing het VPI female. What am I doing at this point breeding with that female anymore? Now, somebody who's excited about the VPI project just starting out and maybe bought a banging male that's VPI and they go, "Holy cow, I could really use that." They're going to get it at a great price. Somebody will use it. they're healthy uh animals that are useful. So, it's time to put the pedal down. And when I say that, really focus on on my projects and what I'm going to be excited about. And um there'll still be a component of my business that is everything's got to be eye-catching and really get me going. And that could be at the $250 price point or the $25,000 price point as long as it's meeting that criteria. Because again, as I said at the beginning, if we could bring new hobbyists in that become industrial, great. Um, if I can make a whole lot of money on the high end, I'm also happy with that. But those are my goals uh for proper royals in the future.
A forward-looking question. I talk about consulting quite a lot. I talk about my goals quite a lot. I talk about my business pretty transparently. What if you guys were the consultant and you know what I what you know about my business now? What goals would you have for Proper Royals in the next 1, three, and five years? Let me know in the comments below. Let me know in a private message if you feel like it's better suited in a private situation. I genuinely mean that. I don't ever want to get so full of myself that I don't think that I need other people's opinions. Um it's what has made this show, this Tuesday night uh regular occurrence, this uh community that you come and join. That is what that mindset is what has made this work. I haven't done this show that the show didn't start I it's till August, believe it or not. I got to go all the way to August to get to five years. Um but four years and a few months ain't ain't chump change either. Not so bad. So that mindset of learning and getting feedback has always been at the core of what I do and really a driving point in what I do. So I would love to hear what you think my goal should be in uh the next one, three, and five years. And if you think it's that I should go away, I'm sorry to disappoint you that I will be here. All right, thanks for hanging out tonight. Uh look at that, man. That's two 87 minutes solo. Uh that's a little um that's a little much. Oh man. pursue revenue growing opportunities. Yeah, we're gonna have to talk about that. All right. Next time you're on the show, we're going to pick that apart, brother. Thank you. Uh oh, Northern Lights tonight. I'm all amped up after a show. I might have to go uh check it out late tonight. I like that. Um George, how are you, man? I hope you're doing well, too, man. Thank you. I'm just catching up on some of the comments before I sign off. Yeah, we're back to the smelly ladybugs. I agree. Uh, all right, guys. Uh, Billy Rice from Rice Family Reptiles will be here next week. Same place, same time. I can't tell you how thankful I am for the viewers that stick around on a solo show. That means the world to me. Thanks so much. See you next time. Bye. [music] >> [music] >> Heat.