Production at Scale, Analytics, & Smarter Breeding w/ Charlie Ryan 📱

One of my favorite minds in the ball python business is here with me tonight. That is Charlie Ryan from Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. We're going to be talking uh production at scale, logistics, analytics, and making good business decisions with all of these things in mind. If I'm speaking your language, thanks for being here. Let's get right to it.

>> [music] [music] [music] >> Good evening everybody. Thanks for tuning in tonight. I appreciate you being here. It's uh it's I say finally. I've been really happy how long it took to get here, but it's finally starting to feel like uh winter is here in Minnesota. Usually it arrives around uh Halloween. This year it waited until Thanksgiving. Again, I'll take what I could get. So, uh we got a little little ice turning to snow tonight and then the next uh 3 4 days are just going to be on and off snow for the holiday.

Speaking of the holiday, uh happy Thanksgiving. Not to get all cheesy, but I am thankful for each and every one of you watching this. Um, I just got the notification from YouTube that my channel, my Proper Royals YouTube channel just turned five years old. The show has got another eight months or so to get to the uh five years. But I appreciate you guys. Um, certainly in the beginning, um, YouTube and this show were probably my biggest uh, growth. What do you call it? the gasoline on the fire. I can't really think of whatever the uh you know the kind of hip entrepreneur word would be, but uh you guys were the ones that uh got things going for me and really started to kind of provide reach for me. So, I'm always thankful for it. I always look forward to Tuesday night.

Uh I think I mentioned I know I mentioned at the very beginning got Charlie Ryan on tonight from uh Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. he and I, we get into these uh business discussions, uh healthy debates. I wouldn't even say debates, just like bouncing ideas off of each other, um very often. And so I always enjoy having Charlie on the show. I looked back, I couldn't find it. Maybe he's gonna maybe he could check or maybe he he can have chat GPT look it up or something. It says that the last episode he was on here was November of 2023, which if that's the case, that's that's a crime because he's such a good mind in the industry and a good person. So, I'm uh anyway, I'm happy to have him back. I know that we did some 15 minutes of lame stuff last year, but maybe that was all on Chris's channel. I don't know. Anyway, uh he's here tonight. We'll figure out the uh the stats of his appearances uh another time. So stick around for Charlie.

Um, while I got you here at the very very beginning, let me tell you a story from today. This is a true story and it just goes to show why I like using very specifically Redline, but also why I'm happy to pay for service. Um I shipped out an animal yesterday. Uh sold on Palm Street at retail. By the way, the Palm Street store does work. Um, and I also am receiving an animal today was was the plan. So, I wake up to a notification that the animal that I'm to be receiving uh is going to have to be is going to be delayed. It's still in Memphis. I go to find out. I said, "Oh, man. What happened to the one that I sent?" Go to the one that I sent. And FedEx just says on its way. It doesn't give any details. I click on the littleformational icon to find out like the travel history. It has no scan information, no nothing. It just says on the way. So I assume uh that it's stuck in Memphis just like the snake that I have coming in is. And so I call uh I call the buyer and I let them know that and I say, you know, if I hear any updates, I'll let you know. [clears throat] I didn't. And again, I made an assumption that uh the same thing had happened to those snake that I have coming in.

At 4:30 this afternoon, my time, 5:30 Eastern time, I get a call from Redline. Hey, we've been keeping an eye on the the tracking this animal or we've been keeping an eye on your package. This animal hasn't been picked up yet. Uh we went to go look at the travel information and we see it didn't get scanned anywhere. Neither you nor the buyer know that it's ready to be picked up. That animal is in Jacksonville, Florida, ready to be picked up. I was able to call the buyer, made their day. They were worried. It's a first-time buyer. They they're thinking of their their new pets sitting in a box somewhere in a warehouse, you know. Uh so it was a really nice thing and a really just um a great example of why again why I use Redline. Yes, it's a plug for Red Line, but in general, why service and paying for service makes a difference. That customer is thrilled that animal is safer than it would have been um with I don't know about any of the other companies because I don't use them, but my understanding is there aren't people that are going to answer the phone that aren't are not monitoring the packages and they basically say, "Hey, it's in FedEx's hand. You figure it out." Um that's not the case with Red Line. So, I was really really uh thankful for that, but also kind of inspired like, hey, that's the kind of service I want to give. And uh so, not only did I message the guy through Palm Street, I went and found his phone number through Palm Street. I called him, he didn't answer, probably because I have a weird North Carolina number, but I texted him and then everything is good. So, I'm pretty pumped about that. So, take a look at Redline if you get a chance. That is why I like to uh ship with Redline and why I believe that their service is worthwhile. So, if you want to check them out, you'll see a promo code here very shortly.

Uh, while I'm giving some thanks right over my shoulder right there, that's uh Palm Street coming to you adree this evening. All proper royals live content comes adree thanks to Palm Street. Palm Street is a live selling platform that welcomes reptile sellers. Hey, that's a new idea when it comes to uh uh you know, selling and media platforms. You are welcomed to sell reptiles on Palm Street. Uh, check it out. Auctions, storefronts, uh, interactive lives, all that kind of stuff. Um, and a lot of the social media components as well. Viking following reviews. Go check it out. You'll see down below in the description, you can, um, apply to sell reptiles on Palm Street right through that link there. So, check them out.

Um, keep an eye on properroyals.com if you like. I've got a bunch of new animals up there on properroyals.com. Uh specifically if you're into gravel stuff, a lot of my gravel stuff started hatching. So I've got gravel clowns that are 50% head ultramill. They're in various combos. Uh I just put out a video of some new uh gravel blackhead enti pastel heck clown combos. Uh a lot of those will be available as well. So keep an eye on proper royals.com. I'll be updating that as those animals get their meals in.

Um, for the holiday. Uh, it doesn't do me and Joe any good to have our morning show on Thanksgiving morning. So, we're actually going to do a quick turnaround tomorrow morning, 7:30. If you haven't ever checked it out, check out uh Proper Cup of Joe, 7:30 a.m. Eastern time. So, do the math backwards wherever you're you're at in the United States or in the world for that matter. uh myself and Joe, if you're not familiar with it, the whole concept is he's a guy that doesn't breed snakes and he has a ton of questions about me being somebody trying to make a living and a lifestyle of breeding snakes. We've been at it for a couple years and uh it's it's a great um it's a great kind of different podcast. Uh Joe and I, that's called Proper Cup of Joe. Normally on Thursdays, tomorrow it will be on uh Wednesday morning, same time, and right here on this channel.

Um, shout out to Antoine at DPR. I have to uh do a little little Maya here. Usually have trouble keeping up with making sure that I have a guest booked every Tuesday. You've probably heard me joke before that Tuesdays are just relentless. There's always another one right around the corner. Um, so I I got ahead of myself like six weeks ago and I just booked a whole batch of people, a big block of people all in a row and I did not put Antoine on the calendar. So about 50 minutes ago, Antoine messages me and says, "Uh, hey, we still on tonight?" And I was I came clean. I told him I double booked him. I did give him first uh right of first refusal. I said, "You know, I'm pretty good friends with Charlie. I bet I can rearrange things with Charlie if it needs to be tonight." and you made special arrangements. I will redo the thumbnail and we'll just pull the okeyoke on everybody and it'll be Antoine and he said no, we'll do it in December. So, uh coming up next week is Chris at Wide River uh Reptiles um down in Iowa and we'll talk about his ball pythons. Uh by day he's a banker. By night he's one of the largest rodent producers maybe in the country but certainly in the Midwest. We're going to get get into some of that business. The following week is Lace from Lace Balls. Man, I just uh they just put out a video Lace and uh Irresistible Ball Pythons just I was on their show, Show Me a Rack. And that was a really fun episode. Check that out. If you get a chance, I'll return the favor. I'll have Lace on the show uh in two weeks. And then in three weeks on December 16th, Antoine from DPR Cold Blood will be on the show. So there we go. It's on the calendar now. and I have uh um outed myself publicly for my oversight. So, sorry. Thanks for the uh patience, Antoine.

Uh, Charlie at Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. I met Charlie I'm not sure uh it's been quite a few years now that we've been working together on this show and become friends. And I certainly met him up at Jeremy Warful's uh summertime cookout. Must have been three years ago, maybe four, I don't know. Uh, and like I say, we became fast friends. We kind of think similarly. Um, certainly different walks of life and different uh um um careers, but we both uh deal in our careers, we both dealt in pretty large scale production. Um the logistics that go with that. We enjoy analyzing numbers. that's primarily now what I do as a consultant to the in the uh hospitality restaurant industry and we've always kind of challenged each other to apply this to our ball python um endeavors and Charlie just leaves me in the dust when it comes to analytics and um using data and applying data I guess is the best way to put it to ball pythons anyhow I'm pretty good with food cost inventory labor all of that kind of stuff but um when it comes to ball pythons he's with it. So, I always enjoy chatting with him and uh I'm happy to welcome him back. I don't actually think it's been two years, but maybe it has been. Um, but anyway, we interact often enough. It doesn't feel like that, but please welcome back to the proper royal stage.

[clears throat] That is Charlie Ryan at Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. Charlie, what's going on, man?

>> What's going on? Pretty excited to be back. I I I don't think it's been two years.

>> I don't think it's been two years either, right? Or maybe there was like a maybe there was like a panel or something we did. But like I say, we did a lot of work on Chris's stuff this time last year with the 15 minutes of lame.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I maybe it was some kind of panel or something and then like we talked about earlier, I know it was on uh with Joe at one point, but it can't have been two years, although we've talked on the phone and stuff along the way.

>> Yeah. Yeah. We always chat and throw ideas at each other. But anyhow, how's every uh welcome tonight. Glad to have you. Whatever the stats are prior, uh how's everything been going?

>> Uh, been going really good. I'm super excited right now about the industry. I know a lot of people aren't, but I'll be that guy. That's okay. Um, but in general, I mean, yeah, I mean, things are good. We got a I hit a little bit of a low. Finally got a clutch back in the incubator for the first time in a couple of weeks, but that's okay. So,

>> Oh, gotcha. Yeah, actually, my last one of the year just hatched. I'll be I'll be empty till uh March, which this year is convenient because I need to move it to the uh to the new facility. So, I need it empty and I need I need to be able to move it. But, um yeah, I got the last one um in there. Like I say, just hatched. I had one more clutch, but it was no no veins. It was a dud. So, what uh what can you do? Right. Hey, uh before we get too far, how's your daughter doing? She's still slinging the uh the dad jokes and uh keeping everybody on their toes.

>> Oh, yeah. She Well, she really keeps everybody on her toes now because she's a uh little taekwond do champion. So, [laughter] it's a whole another level of on our toes, but but uh yeah, she still cracks a good dad joke, too. We were doing some at dinner earlier, too.

>> Excellent, man. Well, send uh send your family uh my best. I I remember when Anyhow, she's she's done some uh she's done some jokes with us before. So, uh it's uh uh if that came across weird to anybody why I'm asking about his daughter, it's because we've all hung out and she's she's great. And my son is 13. I think they're about Are they about the same age?

>> No, she's a little bit younger. a couple years under him.

>> Gotcha. Okay. Well, uh, and she's the namesake of your company, right?

>> Right. >> Yeah. I think if anybody knows me at all right now, they probably don't think it's that weird that you asked about it. Been on a ton of the social media with me and stuff like that. A little bit slower lately. She's getting into her own groove. Got her own little life going on and her own >> social life and everything starting to develop. So, a little less time hanging out with dad doing reels, but yeah, >> she's there. She's there. She's still a mainstay, I guess you could say, in my stuff. So,

>> sounds about right for the curve. Charlie used to be really into doing this stuff with me and like he could he could explain uh you know the the uh uh what do you call it? The the punet squares at a very young age. And now he's like I don't I'm not I'm not hanging out with you. I don't want to do any of that. Like all right, that's cool. I'll see you in a couple years, kid. Have a have a good time. You know,

>> we we'll be cool again one day. Don't worry. Oh, yeah. There's a time you go through a phase where you don't hang with your parents. Then you go through a phase where you come back around and you're hanging with them a lot. So

>> yeah, I can't wait for the day for it to hit Charlie and be like my my dad did this like ball python stuff and podcast [laughter] and like there's going to be a day where he's like wait a minute I got to pay bills and have a mortgage and raise a family.

>> That's funny.

>> It's going to be cool. So, um, man, you, uh, one of the things I really like about you, and I think as I was getting the show prepped together tonight, there was a real some time back, but you had a quote in it that basically said, uh, and I'm paraphrasing here, but basically said, uh, if you don't change and you don't evolve, you're going to die. It was basically like change, evolve, or die kind of thing.

>> Yeah. and and you uh I think you've always kind of kept those wheels going and that motor running, but um especially lately, I'm sure it's been stuff that you've been working on a long time, but you've unveiled a lot of new stuff lately. Talk a little bit about uh how you've been pushing yourself and pushing your brand and your company, man.

Yeah. So, that's um that's a it's actually I'm really happy you asked that question to team me up that way because that's that's uh pushing myself and uh trying to grow and evolve is like the reason it started to spill over into social media now and I've started to put like quotes out there and stuff like that is because I can't like can't keep it in. I've always been kind of built that way, but it this year particularly something there was a little bit of a life-changing event in my family at the beginning of the year. And um I just it just kicked me into overdrive to another level of just like getting my crap together um and you know and uh just just organizing my life and um taking better care of myself uh being more structured and really just going after it. And the more that I do it, the more um I'm consuming uh you know, other you know, I guess quotes, authors, social media, and stuff like that that's reinforcing it. The more people I'm putting myself around that think that way and the the the worse or or for or better, I guess I should say it's it's seems to be getting. So, um I give a little context of that. I mean, I really kicked it off first with and I and I recommend people do it in this order and not to to get on like a soap box and stuff like that, but the first thing I did was kind of really just clean up the very very basic structures of my life. So, what I mean by that is like what I was eating. I was eating I'd gotten very busy with work and it was makes it very easy to fall into certain traps grabbing fast food which I used to avoid like the plague grabbing fast food on the way from one place to another and stuff like that. Really just wasn't taking good care of myself and had gotten out of shape. So, that was kind of the first thing that I did is kick myself in the ass that way. Um, and then, um, I wanted to find time again to get back into working out. I was was once a US Marine. I was once in great shape. [laughter] I wanted to find time to get myself back into working out. So, that's when I started learning about like uh time blocking and stuff like that. Uh, more stuff around time management. And so, then I started kind of changing the fundamentals there. I mean, but I've gotten to the point now where it's fanatical. I went through I was just thinking about it today. It's a couple months ago now, but I went through an exercise where I basically threw out all the clothes that you don't actually wear. The shirt that you put on and every time you put it on, you go, "It doesn't fit."

>> Yeah.

>> I just purged all of it.

>> It feels so good, doesn't it? Like

>> it does.

>> It It drives my wife crazy. I'm like, "Watch this." And I'm throwing it out. And she's like,

>> "That could get put to use somewhere." And I'm like, "All right."

>> To be fair, I donated them. Yeah, I was going to say, all right, I'll put it in the donate pile, but I'm not putting it back in the dresser to sit there for another year.

>> And that um

>> uh and I think maybe we might even land in some of that. We overlap a little bit. And I don't know officially, but like uh there's a there's a like a business philosophy, mindset, uh processoriented system called lean. And that's one of the things in lean, like I remember my boss, he said, "Adam, if there's something in this building you haven't touched in a year, throw it in the trash." And I'm like, "What if we need it again one day?" He's like, "I'll buy you another one. It'll probably be cheaper in the future and better, but we're not going to pay to store it and have it get in our way, trip over it, walk by it, wonder why we're having it, does it still work, have it deteriorate?" He goes, "One year, get rid of it, man." And I I love that around the house. I find it so fulfilling, man.

>> Yeah. I mean, and so I I've I've done that a ton through I'm in manufacturing for my day job. I've done it a ton a ton of lean stuff. I got lean training next week actually. I'm going to Yeah. Um down in Georgia. But uh this was this is to this was I hadn't adapted it as much to some degree in my personal life, but not to this level. And this is almost it's it's a it's on a different level. It's almost fanatical, but it's it's fundamentally a little different too than just the fact of leaning things out for the sake of streamlining. It's like uh I'm trying to learn more, too. So, once I got kind of back to, you know, taking care of myself. I made time to go to the gym and stuff. I said, "Wow, there's a lot more time here than I think I realized just for things in general." Like, I thought I was very busy and there was a lot of wasted time. So, I I feel like what what I'm trying to say here, if I could kind of drive this home, is I wanted to get like the save the brain cycles even of like what shirt do I wear this morning? So now I literally have a pile of shirts that are acceptable shirts for myself daily. If I'm going to work or if I'm going to be home around the house or if I'm going out, I grab one from that pile. I do not care which one it is and it goes on. I do not waste time thinking about what shirt am I wearing today. So uh I've taken that a lot further. I mean I eat pretty much the same thing at the same time every single day.

>> So uh I don't have to worry about that anymore either. So,

>> I know some people might think it's crazy or like it it's like not um [laughter] like it's neurotic,

>> but actually once you like it's not about it's not about being robotic. It's about like you say freeing yourself up to focus on the stuff that you do want to. So, like I remember there was a time I used to uh look for socks endlessly and it would drive me nuts every day because I would never fold my socks cuz I hated taking the time to fold my damn socks. And then I was like every morning this is nuts and but but it's like an extra 5 minutes that I can watch get up in the morning on Sports Center or I can watch I can read the paper or I can get a head start on the day of work if I want to. And to your point about uh dressing, a I have no style, so I don't care what I wear. Second, I do need to look presentable. So, I realized that charcoal suits with basically a white uh shirt and then I could grab any tie or bow tie I wanted and it'll always match. And that's I that's what I would wear in my professional career. That's what I would wear. And it was for exactly the kind of stuff you're talking about. And I I I get it. So when you say that stuff, I'm like, yes, it's not about like being regit regimented or or like you're in the military or anything like that. It's about making time for the stuff you want to get to. If you want to have 10 extra minutes to drink a beer and sit on your butt, fine. But make that what takes your time, not looking for a sock or a shirt, right?

>> No, it's 100%. So people ask me like, "So, don't you get bored of like eating this like this every day?" And I have variety built into my dinner, and I still go out. I was out doing dinner with some people a couple weeks ago, some really nice places. But um no, I'm not wor because I have things that I really want to do now that I'm really excited about bigger things. It's why I learned how to program the whole website that I just made that we were talking about earlier because I said I'm just there's other stuff I'm so excited about that means so much more to me than deciding what shirt. So I got to just Exactly.

>> You have to You can only fit so much in.

>> You can fit a lot more in than you than you realize. I promise everybody that. But you can still only fit so much in time. You are limited on your time. So I just there's so much bigger, more important, more exciting things to me. I'm going to have to make sacrifices of certain things. So again, deciding which t-shirt is just one of them that I'm and deciding what I'm eating for lunch today is one of them. And then it's again, I know when it's coming, too. So it's easier to I get up in the morning, I put all my food together for the day, and then I like I know what I go to the next thing. It's on my calendar. So I don't know. Like I said, I don't want to soap box it too much, but I I recommend it. Somebody just mentioned a book called the um I think the lazy genius in the comments. I think that's very similar to one of the books that I read or may have inspired the person who wrote some of the stuff that

>> that I'm looking at. But yeah, I suggest everybody just just I don't know whatever path like uh get some type of a self-improvement book, something that teaches you something and just attack it with a vengeance. You know, that's that's kind of the thing, too. Like a lot of people would in um again in my career, they would say, "Adam, what what what book should I read or this and that?" And I'm like, "You know what? I I don't know. I could recommend a few of them. None of them are really going to change your life, but any of them, if you do something, will improve." So, I'm just like, "All right, what's your style? You like super like old school hard-nose stuff, fine. Go read Winning by Jack Welch. You like inspirational leadership? Fine. read a lynchpin uh by you know Daniel Pink or who you know whatever it might be actually Daniel that's not Daniel Pink drive is by Daniel Pink but anyway and but to your point like just find something because there's probably wisdom in there and honestly a lot of these books are spun the same way. We're not speaking anything that's like super super insightful. Most of it's stuff that you just need a kick in the pants to go do. You know,

>> the fact that you're committing to something going after it if you do it consistently, right, is uh is going to put you ahead of

>> most people because most people are kind of just hitting what taking it as it comes and floating. And I used to pride myself on it. Like I'm adaptable. I don't need to have anything scheduled. I'll just as it comes, I'll knock it all out. That will get you to a point, but you'll get you'll you'll start to plateau off because you can you'll realize no matter how good you are, there's only so much bandwidth. So

>> well there there's also the uh again one of my old bosses he said you know good firefighter is great to have but a great firefighter prevents the fires like don't spend all your time putting just handling what comes your way build a world around you so that you can predict what comes your way you can never predict anything you know but I mean everything but you can structure things where it's not just chaos all the time and that's what gives like even Joe in the mornings he gives me a hard time he's like is there anything that's a surprise I'm like, well, hope it not on a good day. Like, how about that?

>> Right. [laughter] Right. Exactly.

>> On my birthday and Christmas, sure. But otherwise, no. You know, if I'm doing it right, but of course, there's always surprises that always comes your way, but and you got to be able to handle them. So, uh, okay. So, philosophically, we covered that. What about what have you applied to your So, where did that lead you? Where did that lead you to? And what are some of the results of that?

>> Yeah. Um, well, one of the things, and it's funny, somebody just mentioned a guy, Hormosi, in the comments, Breeder Underground did, and he's I'm following this guy on the daily right now. I'm everything this guy puts out, I'm absorbing, and I agree with 95% of it probably. Um, but he actually talks about actually him and another guy that I that I follow and I'm listening to talk about um just doing something again like we talked about and doing it like now, like saying, "Do I have the time I so, you know, do I have the time to just get this done and knocked out today?" Right? And if you can move at that speed where you just just do it today instead of say a website, I'm going to make a website. Ah, sometime in in 26 I'm going to make my site. For me, it was 2025. In 2025, I'm going to make my website. And then I waited until about month nine and then I got on it, right? So,

>> so you you make things fit the window that you give them a lot of times. So, if you can give yourself like a I'm just going to do this today. I have time. I'm sitting down. a lot of this other stuff doesn't matter and I'm knocking this out. Right? If you do that every day, you knock you knock out one thing, you're moving probably most people put stuff on maybe a week, maybe a month, you're you're moving seven times as fast as most people, right? So I that got me the website. Then I said, "What other features can I add?" Then I have all these Excel sheets I've been using over the years. Can I make can I get them on the website somehow? And so AI is I'm a huge proponent of it. you if you're not using it, you're going to feel like I remember the iPhone came around and my my little brother had one. I just came back from overseas. I've been living in third world countries for a couple years and he has an iPhone. He showed me he's got like a calculator on it. How cool is that? [laughter] He can measure up grams of stuff. He can convert to grams for whatever he was doing at the time. We'll leave it there. [laughter]

>> Right.

>> And and I'm like, nobody needs that. Like you could just you there's calculators already you could do math in your head. And and now like if you don't know how to if you don't even know if you don't know how to use a smartphone right now, you're behind, right? Right. AI is already that

>> and so it it is teaching me how to it taught me how to build my website. It's teaching me how to program the tools into different various types of code so I can try to get them on whether it's Swift to get it to an iPhone or um you know just even just HTML to put it on websites and stuff like that. So that that led me to that next for sure.

>> So I think it's cool. Well, you said something about just just go do it today. Do what you can today. And leading into that, you said, you know, we usually we usually try and max out like the space that we give ourselves to do something. I remember one time a different boss of mine, I was setting up for a wedding and and he was like, "Where is everybody?" And I'm like, "Ah, they're working here, there." And he was like, "Why do you have your team in here five hours early? It's very expensive. You have, you know, 20 people setting up a wedding for five hours." I was like, "Wow, it's kind it's it's a big deal. There's a lot going on." And he goes, and it was so it was so frustrating at the time. And Hormosi does this sometimes, like he oversimplifies things so much that you almost feel stupid when the way he says it and then you're like, "Damn it, he's right." And that guy at the time, he said, "Adam, if you're a good leader and you give your team and they're capable, you give them three hours or you give them five hours, they're going to get it done in either three or five, whatever you set, whatever you set it for. if you tell them it's due in five hours, they will never have it done in three hours and save you the time. It's never going to happen that way. He goes, you could and and it was uh it was constructive and it was helpful to me. Like a part of my incentives was watching labor because labor is our biggest expense and blah blah blah. So, but Horoszi does that stuff where it's just like super oversimplified. And now I've started to find that in like my own like uh I I'm working with a a bank/c coffee shop in in this small town and they want to have social media stuff. And I'm like look if you could just post five things every week, comment to five people every day and follow 50 people a day, you're going to grow faster than anybody in this town of 4,000 people. And they're like, "Well, there's got to be more to it." And I'm like, "Start there. You're going to learn so much. Just do that. Just go and you will not have a choice but to learn by the results. a small town bank. I mean, so this is like I feel like I want to pull from we're just gonna quote a whole bunch of people that are trendy right now, but like Gary Vee almost if a small town bank just got on social media and posted like what the tellers are doing in the morning like them goofing around as they do start their day or something that's going to drive people from the town in cuz it's in the town and these guys are kind of funny and they're on. So I saw did you see the this is the bank if they do like one goofy thing that's a little like pushes the limit, right? Right. You're like, "Oh, did you see the bank posted this crazy thing today?

>> It's done. That's a wrap."

>> Well, and it's it actually is a really cool concept that I was actually inspired by. It is a bank with a coffee shop in the lobby. So, like and it's right on the main road. So, I stop in there >> to get coffee cuz I like I just pound the stuff all day long. And then I find that they have a quarter machine that they don't charge. If you have an account, they don't charge you anything. And it turns out I have a business that runs on nothing but courses. >> So now I'm in there every day hanging out and and then I I he's like, "What else? What do you do?" And I tell him my story and he's like, "Can you help us with social media?" So I get this consulting gig just by going into this bank. And I'm like, >> "Just get in just do this simple simple stuff." And we over we overthink it sometimes, I think. But that that's like something that reminded me of Hormuzzi where he's just like you feel dumb the way he says it and then you're like, "Yeah, that's pretty true. I should just go do that.

>> Yeah. I mean, especially some of the stuff that uh content, I mean, I've done I've done it both ways, but I've done a ton of stuff where it's really I I spent a lot of time putting this production value and like so talking about, you know, this time last year, the 15 minutes lane people are gearing up for and I was doing like mini like Marvel movies and stuff. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> But uh it's interesting some of the simple stuff. I I put the camera down on the table in front of me here and I go on a rant about what happens if you don't properly plan. and that's got just as many views. So, [laughter] just you just got to connect and be human sometimes, too. It's just sometimes it is that simple.

>> I think so. And I think there's a I think there's something to an authenticity uh that that people relate to and something that or something that people are genuinely curious about. My single biggest and I've probably gotten 20 million views on this thing. I I mean, I've reposted it probably nine times on four different channels, but it was nothing but me smearing a sperm plug with my thumb on the back of a snake. Not like stable, not well lit, nothing. Just doing that on the back of a male to try and uh entice the female to to breed. And then I put it to the uh your rhythmic sweet dreams are made of [laughter] this and I posted it and that thing has gotten I mean seriously I bet it's at 20 million views uh collectively um across all platforms. So uh hey, I see that you have discovered both so Streamyard now has a vertical uh uh presentation and a horizontal presentation. So, I've been running this experiment the past few weeks to run episodes vertically and uh and landscape, and what I'm finding is that it actually has a farther reach with a very similar engagement on both. Has been a a cool result of it. So, we're going vertical and and landscape these days.

>> Yeah. Why wouldn't you do both? I mean, it goes right to what we were just talking about, too, right? Just just uh you just got to try some different

>> try it, figure it out. Yeah. I like a lot of these guys talk about uh kind of suspending your your ego a little bit. Maybe not in the traditional sense that we talk about when we say that, but like uh realizing one like people aren't paying that much attention to you.

>> It doesn't matter, right? So, it does get nervous to put stuff out there on social media like what if people are like look at this idiot. But like one I'll probably never know because only but maybe one in thousands are actually going to say something directly to you, right? So I'll probably never know if people are laughing about it. But then also like still gets pushed around and if there's if they're sharing it to a friend saying look at this or they share it to a group chat maybe one person in the group chat goes I actually like what this guy's saying and he follows too. So it's not for them if they didn't like it but uh and you know there's uh social media rewards that too. Actually, Stephen at Leviathan, he put out a uh uh I think it was a real maybe it was a I just saw it I think tonight, but he was talking about uh uh selling hatchlings on frozen thod and somebody from the UK said, "Well, we have to feed all of ours on frozen thod. It doesn't help us sell anymore." And I was like, "What? This guy is not commenting on the right context." And then I was like, Stephen could get nine comments out of this that's going to just churn it in the in the thing. Like it doesn't m Yeah. like put whatever any attention on I mean by and large any obviously you don't want to be doing horrific things on there and getting a lot of attention but but by and large any constructive conversation is going to just churn and churn which is going to be is going to be really great

>> and I don't want to get things lost in here Charlie so you started you you rolled out your website which was no small feat but you rolled out your website which has a bunch of cool features both from inventory payments and I I'll let you talk about the value ads, but then like you piggybacked off the website to make content about how you made the website and then you piggybacked off that to where you found sort of a niche where you could help other people and I don't know if there's any revenue or anything coming from it, but there's certainly social capital coming from it. So, talk a little bit about like it went from like the one thing that still was a big undertaking to like three cool things.

>> Yeah. Well, it came from kind of like we talked about like a just just do something now and then um trying to see how much I can squeeze into different time blocks, right? And I said, uh, and a lot of people, this isn't an idea that I came up with by any stretch, but and whatever you're doing is content. So, I how am I going to figure out again, how do I how am I going to think about one making a site, doing the calculations that I need to do for my own clutches for next year to kind of figure out revenue projections. Do I need to bring in more females? What do I want to make? what what what are my long-term goals? Um what numbers do I need to show to hit that? And we can talk more about what exactly mean by that comment. What need what numbers do I need to show to hit long-term goals? But um uh so I said I don't have time to think of something else for content. I'm going to just do what I'm doing. So I made a website. Maybe other people and also it's a part of what I talked about too like the whole Gary Vee. Put stuff out there and see what res see what people grab and that might become your thing. So I said I made a website. it for me. I know the mental and it's funny two of the people of of some of the people that I helped two of them echoed exactly what I was hoping I would hear. Um, which was I know for me half the reason when I said going into 25 I was going to do it. I didn't do it until month nine is the mental roadblock of h where am I going to start this? Like I don't even know like the first thing about a website. I have to buy a domain. Like that seems like a lot. And so I just forced myself at it on a day like literally it took me a half a day to do when I finally did it. I just forced myself on a day to just you're gonna do this today. Like you you figure this out or you have failed. Like that is it. And so I did that and then I said this really wasn't that bad. And I bet you a ton of people just need to get over the like if somebody would only just show me where to start.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. And so when I put that out there of I've helped a few people get theirs and and not everybody's launched theirs, but two of them were like, I just needed somebody to do exactly this. Just show me where. And I was like, I thought that might be the case for at least some, right? Just somebody to say, look, this is how you start. And they went and did it on their own, like on their own after that. I didn't have to help that much. But

>> I think there's I think there's two things there. One, like a lot of the even if we know what the work is, we we build it up as worse in our mind. Like I just had to I just did 30 bags of leaves. We had this massive asht tree and it just they just I just sat there for a month and I was like this is going to take me days and day. Yeah, it was a lot of work but I still got it done in an afternoon just cuz I just want to like you say you just start and get it done. But the other thing is like the

Fears or the worries like, "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. Then it's going to be a waste of time. Then I'm going to waste money. Then I'm going to be pissed off." And that, I think, is actually the harder thing to get over. Like, we can all get going eventually. But I, I think that that, like, "Okay, I'm going to learn it and take on those challenges," I think, is is like the harder thing usually.

Yeah. I started reframing some of that stuff, too. Right. So, I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to waste money." Right? So, the website, I think the domain wound up costing me $4. I think it's costing me like less than $20 a month to host it. And I was like, if this thing sells one, my average snake was between, uh, you know, $600 to $1,500 this year. Each snake that I sold, $600 to $1,500, right? So, which isn't crazy high, but it's decent. But I'm like, if this website sells one snake, it paid for itself for like four years. Like, right? It's so fuzz if it's one more way for somebody to find it and to pay. And I, I think that I'm getting more, I'm getting a lot more traffic through the tool and stuff that I added now, even than just the inventory side of it. And that's fine, too. Because I've already had two or three just DM conversations where my intent was not at all to sell to somebody, but we were talking about the calculator that I put on there and some other stuff, and they said, "I've been seeing your Krypton stuff." And I was like, "Well, everything's got a price." Since they bought it.

So [gasps]. It well, and one thing I found in my website over, I guess, a year and a half now is Google actually does the Google thing. Like it learns. It learns the website. Like people, it starts like, if you put "ball python care sheet" in now, I'm starting to see it starting to come up. If people Google "ball pythons Minnesota," like one of the hacks I learned was nobody reads blogs, but Google reads them. So, if you want a certain, uh, pet ball python owners that are really into banana genes in Minnesota to look at your site, write blogs about banana genes, pet snakes in Minnesota, you know what I mean? And your, your, your AI boy can fire those off real quick, man. Like those, those blogs can can be be real productive. And you just layer those. And that takes time. But like you say, um, somebody goes there to look at the calculator, then they go, "That seemed like a reasonable guy." And then I like those cryp, "Let me go back there." "Oh yeah, he's got one for sale. I'll buy it." You know, it takes time, but it happens, you know?

Yeah. And I mean, I am a huge proponent of the same as I would say, like, uh, you know, in the workplace with delegating. I mean, I've even told my team now, delegate everything to the AI, pretty much. I mean, anything that it can do. I mean, there's a, I don't want to get too into too crazy and nerdy here, but anything that falls on the Eisenhower matrix, if anybody knows what that is, which is, uh, uh, important but not urgent. Um, or, no, urgent but not important. I'm sorry. You delegate it. So, okay, this needs to get done right now, but it's not super important that it's like, really, like, really well done or really detailed. Hey, I should be doing that for you. Just give it to them. Like, so.

I was telling, I was telling my wife the other day, it, I have a little, I have a background in some in HR just because I had massive teams and if I didn't behave properly in HR, I would get in trouble. So I had to learn some HR stuff and about giving feedback and all of that. And I'm like, you just got to be the HR manager to this AI machine. Like, I use it for writing the descriptions for all of these episodes, and it'll just leave out portions of it. And I mean, even just yesterday, I've been using the same bot, the same history for over a year. And I'm like, "Hey, don't leave this out." And don't change the structure. It's not acceptable. And I shouldn't have to tell you this after a year and a half. [laughter]

Just put it in there.

It does forget stuff. It does hallucinate. It's not perfect. You have to watch for that. You have to scream for it. There's things you can, you can do some things. There's settings. I don't know if everybody knows this in ChatGPT. You can set, um, if you go into the settings and play around, you can set preferences for yourself. You always want it to respond certain ways. You want it to be concise or things like that. There's a lot of development stuff you can put in the back. You can spend time teaching it that it can fill that thing in for you. Say, "Hey, what questions do you need to ask me so that we can interact a little more, um, smooth or a little faster, things like that?" So.

And there, there are values to both. Like, sometimes it'll pop, I like actually leaving it. So, the generative is like the, is like the creative part. That's where it's like, uh, "Okay, I have this set of information. I'm going to make a, I'm going to jump to a conclusion from that versus here's exactly when it happened." And that pops out cool stuff. Actually, it, it's, uh.

It's seen enough of my intros and it's seen me fumble around with words and then finally, it didn't even tell me to use it, but I saw it included in the, uh, uh, in the description. It said, "Thanks for being here, Dash. Let's get to it." And I was like, "That's how I need to kick my shell off. That's what I've been fumbling around with for a year because I, I hate 'let's go' and I hate, uh, 'we've got a great show tonight. Stick around.' That's the Saturday Night Live one. I can't do that." And it was like, "Thanks for being here. Let's get to it." I was like, "That's it. That's the one right there."

It's got a nice flow.

Exactly. Exactly. So, I like it when it does do some of the creative stuff, but it, there's other times where I'm like, "This is the structure. This is what it, uh, what it has to be." So, um, what are some other, uh, uh, what are some other ways that you're using? I mean, I, in some ways, we're using it for everything now, but for AI, anything very specific that you've seen, uh, in, in the ball python world or your analytics world, uh, through through AI? I, I warn people a lot, as big of a proponent, um, as I am of of AI, I warn people to be careful with asking it stuff about like, uh, proposing high-value pairings or something like that, because it comes up with all kinds of goofy off of Facebook stuff. It's going to tell you to make, which I'm nothing against bananas, but it's going to tell you, "Make bananas. They're a very sought-after gene." Or something. It's going to tell you, and it's like.

Yes, but it depends what your goals are. So, you have to, like, you get what you, you get out of it what you put in. And you have to be like, "Ask me about my goals, my customer." So, I use it, uh, for like iterative things like, um, narrowing down, uh, like my ideal customer, right? So, I've been, I mean, I have, I'm actually just pulled it up and I'm looking through some of my recent chats. I mean, I did an exercise with it where I basically was throwing all my, all my business numbers. I gave it all my sales for the year and I said, like, "Hey, what, what range am I selling the most often? What channels are helping me analyze what channels have been the most productive for me?" Um, it's interesting. So, between Instagram and Morph Market, I sold, uh, probably two to three times more animals through Morph Market than I did Instagram.

But the same revenue from Instagram from DMs.

Ah, is that tells me something, right? Tells me which area to target. So now I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to leave the Morph Market there and, you know, I'll continue to update my inventory and, you know, and stuff like that, but I'm just going to do a lot more now of like, somebody, I, I don't think the person would hesitate, would be upset with me saying this, but I posted this really nice Calico DG Krypton the other day and somebody goes, "Man, this might be the animal that gets me into Krypton." And I was like.

Hopped in the DMs and I'm like, "Hey, if you're serious, if you're not cool, like, I know people say lots of stuff in the comments, but if you're serious, everything's got a price, man. I'll hook you up. What do you want to do?" And he was.

Yeah.

Within an hour, we made a deal. So, it wasn't even like it, it feels weird because you're like, "I don't want to be like," we have a lot of, Stephen and I had a conversation about this and he helped me, um, get my head around it, but it, we have a lot of stigma around, um, selling right pythons.

Yeah.

So, we, we put ourselves in a box on that one. And it frustrates me a little bit. He, he, he reframed something that I think I knew, but he reframed it for me and helped me understand a little bit where that might come from. But in general, we also get afraid to do that because it feels weird, like, "This guy's going to get like mad at me for trying to sell him something. Is he going to be like, 'What? This guy's a.'" The, I promised the guy wasn't mad. He was thrilled. So, if it really has value for the person, I, I don't think in selling in general, I don't think you should be trying to push a product, period, on someone who doesn't actually have a need, right? Sometimes people don't, don't aren't, uh, you know, problem aware or need aware yet, and you have to, you help them see that and then sell them. And that's like, kind of as far as pushing goes in my mind.

But this was something that he said himself that he was interested in. Wasn't like a big thing, but, you know, you get uncomfortable. Like, "Is this guy going to get upset? Or is he going to tell people, 'Oh, this guy tried to DM me.'" That's not what happened. It didn't go that way. And if it does, he wasn't going to be a customer anyway. So, again, it's not, you got to get over that a little. I, I think it gets ingrained in our mind almost as like society. We're like, "Oh, that's just like, uh, corporate benchmarks or that's greedy to do." Uh, but the very best selling of the very best products, good selling is good service. And I always, I always use the example, if somebody is going to spend $35 or $40 on a steak, they can afford $12 or $15 on a glass of wine. And if you can give them the perfect red wine that's going to go with the steak, they're going to have a better, uh, enjoyable evening from it, and you're going to make more money, and they're going to be happier on it. And that guy laid that out for you just that way when he was like, "Man, maybe this is the Krypton for me." Like, "Okay, let me tell you how we do that. Here's, here's how it works, kind of thing." I think it's, I think it's, uh, um, like you say, you kind of got to get over it and get a little confidence with it and work out your own routines and I don't want to say shtick, but your own, uh, sort of process with it. But, but I agree completely that that once you get there, um, and I still work on mine. I'm not great at it, but when I first started, it shows. I was like, "I don't know what to do." Like, you got to engage people somehow or another. Get the ball rolling. My wife will be the first one to tell everybody, I am a work in progress. So, don't take anything [laughter] me saying, uh, me saying that I do something or I'm attacking something this way is I'm the best at it or I do it every time. I talk about, "You should post more on social media," but I, believe me, I beat myself up every day about, "I don't post enough." It's been a couple of days since I posted something. But in a few days here, I'll remind myself.

You got to just post something. And I'll post what I'm doing in the morning when I'm getting ready to work out. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and then, and it's funny. It's, I thought I was afraid of some of that content. Like, people are going to be like, "Why is this guy putting this on my snake feed?" And, no, because then what I get is a bunch of people jump in. They say like, "Oh, what are you like, what diet are you on? Like, what are you doing? I started doing it, too." So.

Well, and it gives you that feedback. Either people are engaging or they're not. If they're not engaging, you're probably not going to put any more of the workout ones on there. If they do, then you're like, "Man, I got this like double niche here. I got snake breeders into working out. Okay, I got an even closer tie with them."

Fair. Yeah, for sure.

I think so. Um, I, you, one thing I've, uh, I'm, this is an experiment, so I can't say that it's that it's working or not. But one of the things that, as you know, AI is really great about is analyzing a whole bunch of data, uh, that that no matter how smart we are, we probably can't comprehend nearly as fast, especially if it's in another sort of lingo or set of words that we don't usually typically understand or a world that we're not in. So, for about two years now, I've been posting ads on Facebook and Meta, and you can get all of your, I mean, the report that you can create if you check every box is absolutely exhausting. There's like 138. I'm making up that number, but it's a lot of metrics that that it will report. And it'll do that for every ad that I've ever placed and exported all in one report. And I just downloaded that and I uploaded it to AI and I said, "What's working and what's not? Tell me why." And, and I literally started with that, and it told me a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo. And I had to ask. I said, "Okay, I don't understand what that means. What does that translate to? Okay, tell me that. What do you need that that it doesn't have? What can I tell you more, uh, that that is not included in this report?" So, I ran it once with just like the, the stock settings, and then it gave me a checklist of like 32 other things it wanted. And then it popped those out. And I said, "Okay, I don't have a show for the next 30 days. I have a show, uh, five days before Christmas. It's the middle of the winter. It's going to be hard to ship, and I need to shift my focus locally. Give me an ad campaign, um, outline with a budget of $180 that we're going to do over the next 45 days." And it pops this whole thing out. And I'm like, "All right, let's try it." Now, one of the things I disagreed with, or didn't disagree with, but it didn't, I'm trying it. Like, so what I'm going to do is, I've already run the f, the ad that's running right now is the first ad. And it said, "Don't mess with five or six pictures. Do one hero picture that's going to make people click to your proper royal shop." And I was like, "I get really good results when I do five pictures. And I get inquiries on a lot of things." But I was like, "Let me try it." So, with the, when that ad concludes, I'm going to get the metrics from that ad.

Yeah.

Put it back in and say, "Analyze your first step. Did it work? Did it not? Tell me why it did or didn't work?" And then re, you know, reconfigure the, the next step in the campaign and then start it again. So, like, I can't understand all those exported information, but AI can on that. And it's just machines talking to each other. I need those machines. I can't talk to Meta nearly as well as this other machine can. Just let them talk to each other on my behalf.

It's, it is really good at that kind of stuff. Just breaking down things. Um, I'm trying to think of another example, but I, I mean, well, shoot. It's a little off top, a little off topic, but and it gives a little more insight into how extreme I am about, uh, how fanatic I am about dieting and neurotic I might be, but, um, when I wanted to get back into shape, I wanted to clean up what I was eating was step one for me. And I wanted to get out, like, a lot of just diets. And I'm borderline conspiracy nut on food at this point, but I wanted all this stuff out that I'm not, it's not food that I shouldn't be eating. So, I spent like a week working on this diet with it to get all this stuff out. Um, but then I actually happened to go to the doctor. Uh, I had a, I had to have hernia surgery a couple, a couple weeks back now. Um, trying to get back in shape at 38 will do that to you. But.

Yeah, you go lift it to. Yeah. Okay.

But I went too hard. But that's okay. I, I'll, I'll talk more about that in a sec. But, um, I got blood work done for to go before I had to go get an MRI. I dropped my blood work in and was like, "Hey, how's the diet we came up with line up with this?" And then it, we act, it ran through the, I just dropped screenshots of blood work out of like my chart that you get now on your phone. And it was like, "Oh, this LDL is a little high. This is a little low. You want to get this down. You don't have enough this in there." And it was like, "Hey, like, I, I track macros and micros and what I eat." So, like, you know, how many calories and then just like how much vitamins and different, different things. Okay.

And it's like, "Okay, we'll just add a little more of this, a little less of that."

Within a couple of weeks, I went back for the next test. All the things were in range. Really?

It's, I'm telling you, it's nuts.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I, I mean.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, and it's, it's not the same, but it, like you say, a bunch of data and a different language that overwhelms us. So, we, not literally another language, but a lingo that we don't understand. Why not ask the thing for insight? And at least, at the very least, it could have given you questions to ask the doctor and go, "Well, does that make sense?" And maybe the doc would be like, "Yeah, it does." Or, "Hey, no, in this context, let's do it this way." Whatever. You know, it gives you something to go on though.

I showed, I showed one of my doctors, like the diet, cuz he was like, "So, he's like, you're eating really healthy. You're like, in really good shape. Oh, your bluff is also great and all." And I was like, "Yeah." I was like, "Look." And I showed him on, I'm like, "Look on ChatGPT. Help me design my diet. Here's what it mean." He's like, "This is really good. You stick to this. It's crazy."

Wow. [laughter]

But I like to prompt it. One of the things that I learned that I, I tell everybody is, you tee it up too with the context you want it to approach from. So, tell it if there's a promosi, we talked about earlier, Gary Vee. What would Gary? Here's some transcripts of some Gary Vee material, or can you find some? And what would Gary Vee say about this? Or what would an expert social media marketing professional say? And then, uh, or in the nutrition one, I said, "What would a nutritionist say? If I met with a professional nutritionist on this, what would they say?" And, and let it kind of work from that lens. And it's pretty cool. It can put different hats on, I guess, so to speak. And.

Oh, definitely. And you can make, I do, I actually keep my projects separate, but the first prompt I put in each project, I actually go find a job description on LinkedIn. So, like, uh, social media SEO manager, or whatever. I'm like, "That sounds pretty good." I copy that and I say, "Hey, this is you. This is how you need to be. This is the, these are the goals that you need to be able to produce for me." And, and it's like, "Hi, my name's Alex Thompson. I'm your new, uh, social media manager." I'm like, "All right, Alex. Here." And like, I type in it. I'm like, "All right, Alex. Off we go, you know." But, yeah, I, I've had Alex for a year and a half, which is weird to say, Alex, but.

We call mine Chad. Reagan and I both use it. And it's Chad GPT instead of Chad.

And it's got a, it's got a British accent. And so, we'll even ask it like riddles and stuff in the car sometimes when we're driving. Like, we'll just like, just have, just get entertainment out of it sometimes, too.

Nice. Like, we ask, but it's so funny. She comes running out. She like, "Well, ask Chad. Ask Chad about it." And I'm like, [laughter] Chad GPT. And we ask Chad. I have not, uh, I have not gone down the entertain because I do find it gets distracted. I'm like, "No, no, no. You're going to focus on this. You're going to stay on this kind of deal." One thing.

A separate, um, in a separate GPT like a.

Yeah, I got you. One of the things I do want to try this year is I keep my budgets, uh, every year all on the same spreadsheet because it makes it easy to look back at, at, you know, how did I do last year? What did I do five years ago? And it occurred to me this year, basically my budgeting process is, is there going to be anything new? Okay, if we need a new line item and a whole new, you know, venture or a new venue or a new, uh, I added rodents last year, that's a whole new sort of business model that gets put in it. But if it's not something new, uh, do I think, do I think my results are going to go up or down? And why? What are the influences that are going to go into that? Apply that. And usually that could be done with with some pretty quick, uh, function, um, uh, you know, Excel, "Hey, multiply this line item by 1.12 because I'm going to be up 12% on this," or whatever. But I want to put it all into ChatGPT and say, "I'm really going to focus on rodents and the profitability of that next year. I would like to move my average snake sale from, I think we'll go from, you know, $283 this year. I'm, I'm hopefully, uh, with the market, my brand improvement, and the the better things that I'm producing, I should be able to get that to $340 next year. I'm going to do two more shows, and I'm going to cut out, uh, uh, 70% of my labor and 70% of my, uh, equipment purchasing because my car wash is full and I'm not buying anymore. That's it. I'm done buying." I want to put that in and just see what, like, I love making budgets, but honestly, I sit around for six weeks doing it when really it's not that complicated, and it's just a roadmap anyway, like it's not going to, it, it gives me guidance, but the reality is going to be the reality.

For stuff like that, I usually say, like, let it at least start for you, right? Especially like, so for anybody that's that's watching or anybody replays this later that, um.

Isn't it? Wants to do this more structured, do it like a business and isn't tracking like a P&L, right? And says, "I don't know what a P&L is." It's not something that you do. And they're like, "I happen to do it in a day job at a high level." So, but, and, and even still, my personal for this business, I drop a lot of my stuff now in. I was running on my own Excel sheets and I was tweaking it here and there. I drop a lot in, um, when I go to run my final end of year finances. I've been keep, I log all my transactions, stuff like that, but I'm going to drop it all in, say, "Can you dump this into the right buckets in the P&L?" And then I'll pick through and correct, right? I'll tweak and say, "This is wrong," or "I'd rather this be in this bucket," "This doesn't make as much sense." You got to check too, because it gets stuff wrong, like we talked about earlier, it just hallucinates sometimes, that's what they call it, but it'll just come up with something that I'm like, "Where did you get that from?" I just ask it too, like, "Where did this come from?" It's like, "Oh, you're right to call that out." And I'm like.

Well, then why do I have to call it out?

Well, that, yeah, there was, I gave it a really, actually, it was the, uh, the Meta ads, uh, uh, report. And it was like, "Hey, I need this information." I'm like, "That's column J." And it's like, "Okay, thank you for telling me it's column J." And I'm like, "Okay, let's go back to basics. Row one, that's the header. Everything under that word, in the in the corresponding, uh, uh, column, uh, relates to that header word. I was like, 'Go back and reanalyze this. Do you, do you understand how to read this spreadsheet now?'" And it was like, "Okay, here comes all." I was like, "My god." [laughter] All right. So, sometimes, like I say, you got to do that, that HR kind of stuff. So, I don't think it's [clears throat] going to be quite as simple as just like, "Hey, here's all this. Write this budget." I'm going to have to walk it through a little bit of what's corresponding with what. And then, like you say, you can't just blindly be like, "Okay, here it is," because you still got to check its work, just like you would any, you know, anybody that turns in something on your behalf, you're gonna, you're going to check their work for it anyhow.

I think there's still some value in doing it. Um, some of the stuff, like I said, that has that little bit of that intimidation factor and stuff anyway that you probably could figure out how to do yourself. It just makes it easier to get started. It's like having like a friend to bounce it off over, somebody walk through it with you, right? It's no, uh, there's no shame because it's not like somebody real who's going to know like anything stupid you say in the process. Exactly. So.

Yeah, you're not going to lose a job, uh, from, uh, you might lose a job by using AI if you're not supposed to, but you're not going to lose a job by asking AI for its input on something, especially personal like this. So.

Um, Charlie, I want to talk about, uh, you've done two really cool, uh, you hinted at them earlier, but two really cool like free value add things, uh, or one for sure is rolled out. Maybe one you're flirting with. Uh, maybe I, maybe you can only talk about one. I'm not sure, but I want to talk about that. And then you talked, you mentioned earlier very specifically about, um, uh, basically setting guard rails or real goal-oriented numbers you have to hit for things to make sense or numbers like, uh, results, predictive results you have to get to pursue a particular goal. And then, I guess, at the end of it, you would analyze it as well and see if you hit that. So, I want to talk about both those things. Uh, speaking of, uh, budgets and whatnot, I'm going to pay some bills real quick here, guys. I talked about Redline at the very beginning. Um, it's a service. Is is the reason that I use Redline. Um, I had a really great experience today where they, I thought a package was in Memphis because it hadn't been scanned and it didn't show that it delivered to Jacksonville, Florida. Redline found the package and they got it accounted for and they got it to my customer. Everybody won on that. And that's what happens when there's a phone number and humans that you can call. So check out Redline Shipping. Use the promo code PROPER5 for five bucks off your next shipping label. You can go to redlineshipping.com for that. Check out shedtesting.com. That's also, so if you get confused, shedtesting.com is now a part of phenome.com. So, if you go to phenome.com or shedtesting.com, they're going to end up pretty much at the same place, but it's still the same. Uh, Charlie Williams behind the scene at shed testing handling all the shed testing. Uh, he's got, uh, a much bigger, uh, lab working on his side now. Much less human interaction with your sheds, which leads to less opportunity for, uh, variables to be introduced which cause falses and errors. And it's faster. So, and he's just recently lowered the prices. So, better, cheaper, faster. That's like the, the trifecta right there. So, check out shedtesting.com. You can use the promo code PROPER10, get yourself 10% off of two orders. So, it's not just two tests. You can order as many tests as you want per order, but you can only use the promo code on two orders. So, get a little stockpile, apply your, uh, PROPER10 promo, and save yourself a little bit and go check out, uh, shedesting.com. Again, in the future, you might see that shift over to Phenome on the branding. We're still figuring out how that transition will work. Sundog Serpents, that's Sarah and Josh down in Orlando, Florida. They are working, TSK if you're into that, uh, line of Aanthic. TSK clown projects and ingredients are one of their favorites. They also do a lot with asphalt and I know that they just, they just got some stranger clown combos that are available as well. And they've also got some puzzles, uh, available that, uh, are visual as well. So, check out Sarah and Josh on Morph Market, Instagram, Facebook, all the usual places on that. Charlie Reagan, Renee Royal Pythons. I'm not gonna, uh, spill the beans here, but go to reaganrene.com. All the inventory is on there. Ton of different ways to pay. I think he's still running. We're going to check this out in just one second. I think he's still running free shipping off of anything that you buy on the website. And even Charlie's got a little PROPER10 promo code for you as well, just for, uh, supporting, uh, proper royals and a ton of ways to pay. And I think he even has the Afterpay deal on there. Like, that's, that's a lot going on. So, check out Charlie for that. Uh, and all joking aside, uh, I'm gonna make sure that he mentions, uh, how to get a hold of him and all of that kind of stuff. If you like what you hear with this, uh, business insight and you want to work with Charlie, give him a call, get in touch with him. I know that's something that he's working on. Keeper Kane is a, uh, ball python breeder. He keeps big snakes. He keeps aquatics, tarantulas. He documents it all on his YouTube channel. It's always family-friendly and he would love if you would go give a, uh, a chance and a follow and a subscription to his YouTube channel, Keeper Kane. You can also find him on Instagram and a ton of Patreons. He's very busy in the Patreon community. Um, uh, what did I say? Instagram. Oh, Morph Market. And then, yeah, go check out his YouTube videos as well. He's a good guy and a pretty good ball python breeder, if I do say so myself. Last but not least is BNS Reptilia. That is Chris, uh, Shelley. He and I have been working together the longest of any advertising partner. And, uh, Chris is Reptilia because he specializes not only in ball pythons but blood pythons, uh, locality boas, uh, colubrids of all shapes and sizes. That's Pituophis and, uh, uh, excuse me, including Pituophis, which is the bull and, um, the bullsnakes and the pine snakes. And as you might know, you might need, uh, permits wherever you're at for that. Chris will help you with that. He's got the knowledge and the education and the expertise to help you with that. He's a vast resource of information and experience when it comes to a wide range of species. So, check out what Chris has to offer. You can follow him on Instagram. He's also the regional distributor of the Chipper Cocoa. And if you're interested in that sort of business model, you can talk to him about that as well in your own region. Couple special mentions. Go check out, uh, Palm Street if you haven't already. You can download the app and apply to start selling reptiles today. Shop, live streaming, auctions, all in one place, all integrated. And then, uh, it's just crossed four years. Come on, focus. Oh, it's not dramatic enough if it doesn't focus. That's Cold Blooded Cafe's logo. Just crossed four years of working, uh, with Cold Blooded Cafe. I still love their rodents. They're still the freshest, most consistent, most reliable rodents, all produced right here in the United States. And I'm sure I don't know, I don't have the details or if it is even happening, but every year they run a Black Friday special. I'm sure that that will be out there. Uh, and this promo does not expire. PROPER11, PROPER1 will get you free shipping on orders of $200, and that does not expire. And that's a really great value when it comes to big boxes of frozen rodents. So, check them out. Huge thanks to Cold Buddy Cafe. They sponsor, uh, the morning show and then one of my other channels on, uh, Instagram. But, uh, huge thanks to Cold Water Cafe. What a great partnership. I'm so thankful. So, thanks for being here, audience. This is, uh, Charlie at Reagan Renee Royal Pythons, man. Um, let's see. Oh, yeah. We got to talk about a little bit about scaling, too. I like that. Um, where do you want to start, Charlie? Let's We've We've hinted at it, but we haven't like pinned it down. You got your website, you got some value ads on there, and you got some cool projects. We talked about learning it all from AI, but what is it? What is the product? What do you got on there?

Yeah. So, let me hit one thing real quick on the deal on the website, right? It's you got your the 10% with a PROPER10 code, right? That's going to get you 10% off. Um, it is free shipping still. I think I'm just going to leave it as free shipping on the website because it was annoying to set shipping up separate in a separate way with estimators and weights and stuff. So, I'm going to leave it free shipping there. Also, when you buy something right now, I'm sending a physical card with it in the box that has, uh, when you buy a female, any female, anybody buys, I send a physical card in the box that has a a coupon code on it. Again, similar to the PROPER10 code. I won't say what the code is right now for 50% off of a male. So, if you come, so, if you buy a female and then next year you're going to need a male for her or in two years you're going to need a male for her, you come back and you get a male pro because I'm probably in the same project. If you bought a female from me, you got 50% on that on as well. And that's just to really take care of, um, like return, repeat customers. Obviously, we love them. Somebody who had, we had a from our end had a smooth transaction with, right, um, you know, paid fast, like was, you know, easy to deal with. That's, I want to keep that person around. So, it's a part of building that customer lifetime value, which I think is something we don't look at enough in this industry, or at least I wasn't. Maybe a lot of people who are bigger and better than me were, but I noticed I was doing a ton of like one and done sales and then like the people disappeared. And some of it's that led to exactly the next thing we're going to talk about. Some of it I think is not everybody knows how to build themselves to last. So maybe they're buying one and then they're out by next year.

So maybe I can help overall the big picture. Some people not fall into some of those traps. And that led into the tools that you just, that you just alluded to that we'll talk about in a second. But then also just in general, like, right, if they are already built to last, like if we're in the same project, why wouldn't, why wouldn't I get you to come back? I'm, if I was ahead of you this year, and sometimes people get past you, but if I was ahead of you this year to make an animal that you needed from something I was willing to let go, I probably have a male for you next year, so let's, you know, let's keep in touch, is kind of my thought. And I guess somebody has that card sitting there, right, that's got that discount on it, they're going to check you and your site first. I'll be very upfront about that's what the intent of the card is, like, right, is to keep myself top of mind. But that's the classic, like, good selling is good service, just for all the things, you know, they're going to need it. They had a good experience with you that you said, maybe, maybe some people are doing it, and the ones that are doing it are doing it really, really well. I think, but I think one of the easiest things that people forget is just following up with previous customers. You have a whole database of who bought what. Okay. Last year, like you say, when I produced this pi without these hats, who bought this? Because now I got that plus something better, and they probably have that plus something better. And if you put those two together, it's going to be in the project and even bigger, better. That's good selling, good service, all wrapped in one, in my opinion.

100%. I, I, so I, I always feel weird talking about these because I feel like somebody's going to know now what I did, but I went through a phase about a month or so ago. It is what it is. It's fine. And, and because it's like you said, you said it better than I could have. Good selling is good service. I think it's just, it's just a nice thing to do anyway, and I think they appreciate it. But about a month or two ago, I went through a lot of my best customers I had previously sold when I was doing this exercise of saying, "What's my ideal customer? Who's my, like, best, my avatar, like my best customer?" I went back through those people, um, in like my Morph Market messages, in my Instagram messages, and I said, like, "I'm just going to reach out and just be like, 'Hey, how's the animal doing?' Like, 'Thanks again. It's been like a year for some of those people. Thanks again for buying from me. Like, I hope everything's going well.'" And they're like, "Oh, he's great. They're sending me update photos and stuff like that." And I think there was one actual conversion out of it. But even if not, again, you, it's a little bit of that, um, like, you know, you know, good grace. It's just good service. Like, you're just building some, uh, goodwill with people and stuff like that.

But they might have a friend that comes over and goes, "That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen." And they go, "Oh, this is your dude." And like, you, you.

Not all that fits on a spreadsheet, you know? Like, some of it is just out there in the ether and it comes out and, and I don't even mean in a weird way. Like, I feel like I could quantify it, but like, yeah, I, I'm all for what you're talking about, man. I think that's fantastic. So, your website and then what other, what other tools do you got on there?

So, like I said, uh, just about trying to help some other people. I feel like, and, and don't get me wrong, I'm not, I don't have like earth-shattering, like topline revenue. My margins are pretty good though. Little better than 50%, uh, like, and that's, that's everything, sales and all, like advertising costs and stuff like that. And that's an interesting thing too, like customer acquisition cost is something we don't look at in this industry, and it's actually super low the way most people do it, but it also explains most people's result. So.

Right. [laughter] You could raise it a little bit to get bigger results.

Yeah. So, um, so I wanted to try to put, so I had typically looked at, like, and, and everybody, I think, does a little bit intuitively. So, I'm not doing something that like other people aren't doing, but like, does this clutch make sense? But truly financially, does this clutch make sense? And, and then try to give myself a framework for how do I compare, like, if I'm going to put this male to this female? We all play that mental game of, we did the pairing episode, I think we said it was like two years ago, of like, "What if I do this male instead? Oh, that sounds more exciting." I wanted to give myself a way on paper to say, "Which one truly has the best value?" Now, there's always this aspect that has to come first of your vision and your projects. So, you have to say, well, I need to make this piece to get where I want to go with this project. I think it has value later, long term for me, right? So, you're, you're doing the super gravel stuff, right? You may want a certain gene in with that. So, it may not be the best do. So, what I'm saying is, I would line out on a spreadsheet, clutch for clutch, I would price, I would take the odds, I would price each animal, the male version and the female version, off of the same way you would go price an animal for sale. Go look at all your comps on Morph Market and try to figure out the market says it is.

And then I would do like this weighted average on the spreadsheet. And I would multiply that by the number of eggs. If I don't know, I use the six that we usually use for how many eggs we expect to get. If I know the girl's an 11 egg layer consistently for a couple years, I'm going to put 10 or 11 in there for her number. And I would figure out the dollar value on the clutch. And then I could say definitively, like, all other things equal, I don't have something I, I truly need need. I'd love a blackhead version of this, but I'd take a gravel version too.

This one, my misses are going to be worth a lot more. And so, this is the one I'm going to go with. So, financially, I keep those margins up. It's more sustainable. I'm not sitting on animals I can't sell. So, all I did now was take that and say, "Hey, here's my Excel spreadsheet. I don't know a thing about coding, you know, can we make this into an app?" And it had me start with like, I was using a couple tools, not Zazzle, what's it called? Zapier or something like that. I was using a couple different app building tools and it would give me pieces of code and I would plug that piece in and then it would give me the next piece and I plug that in. It says, "Okay, this has to go above this and above that." And I realized I could get it to, you can actually get a lot of these tools from the ground up, basically, to generate an app. Like, you really, it now becomes an iterative process and you hit these.

Little roadblocks. So let me simplify. The first thing I did was make a genetic calculator, just like what's on MorphMarket. Because what I would do when I did my process, I'd run the genetic calculator on MorphMarket and I'd drag all the text on the screen, copy it over to an Excel for all the results, and they'd be all wonky. And I'd move them. And I knew I got myself to a lean rhythm where I knew to move them this way and move them that way. Formulas to help me move them, which still took way too long. I'd go then through all the comps and fill all the values in, do my calculation, copy it to another page, do the next one.

So, um, the first thing I did was a genetic calculator. And then I said, then I had a light bulb went off when I got that working. I said, "What if you could build?" So, I had already done this in Excel too. I could take your genetic results out of MorphMarket and I could say, if this is a 50% het and it's one in four odds, when we know one in eight is going to should be hit and one in eight would be non-het after I shed test. I said, "Can we just build this in?" So I plugged that in. It gives me a little snippet of code for that, and I plug that back into the main body of like my, like word doc thing that I'm putting all the code in.

Yeah. And that got working, and now I'm like excited because then I was like, "All right, well, let's add the value piece that I was just talking about." So, I put where you could price each one. It gave you the value of the clutch. And now every day I'm now adding stuff that I wasn't even doing for myself before that I hadn't dreamed of. It almost feels like I wonder, is there a way I can screen share on this?

Yeah. Down. Um, are you on a phone or on a laptop?

I'm on a laptop.

You should have a little plus in the very bottom center.

Uh oh. Here we go.

Yeah.

All right. Cool. Is it coming up?

Uh, yeah. Here we go. There it is.

Oh, perfect. Okay. All right. Perfect. All right. We're going to do this. This is the one I looked at. I just demoed this one on the video, so it's fresh in my mind. I can say stranger clown. And my, I had a stranger clown that was a poset monsoon. I had forgotten. I did a shed test. He actually turned out to be het monsoon. Boom. I'm in the monsoon project. So this is the true story.

So, it's funny. I just had that same true story happen.

So, nice. So I got really excited. I I'm looking at different things and I said I had a, um, a double het VPI exanthic clown. And I said, "Well, what happens if I get an exanthic clown female that's out there on the market?" Right? All right. So this is basic stuff you see everywhere. So, but you see as I'm plugging them in, the results are populating down here automatically. It's not waiting for me to hit enter or anything like that. So, I had, I added that functionality. I'm really excited about that.

Now, you see my 50% het monsoons. Right. If I click on the chip there, it tests for it. Right. And so, now I have stranger clowns that turned out to be het monsoon str and they're 100%. So, let me back up a step. Half the clutch. Let me undo that. If I click on it, undo that, too. Half the clutch. Everything's a clown because it's clown to clown. Right? Half the clutch turns out stranger. Right?

Correct. Everything's 100% het exanthic and everything's 50% het monsoon. That's right. So, I've got one and two for each of these.

So, on my strangers, I say, "Oh, that's worth it to me to shed test those to find if they're monsoon, too." It's spoiler alert, both of these are going to be worth it to test for. But, well, anyway, I test for that. I've got the, uh, now I've got the ones that turned out to be het and non-het. And it drops to one and four each. This is what I was saying. They couldn't do this in the calculators before, and I'm really excited about building this in. So now I have my just clown without the stranger, het exanthic, 50% het monsoon. Okay, let's test those two.

All right. So, again, one and four. So, I made stranger clown het, double het monsoon exanthics, stranger clown just het exanthics, and I've got clown double hets and clown hets, right? All right. What would it cost me to do all these tests? So, it's going to take the probability of this line times the number of eggs times whatever my shed testing cost. And my shed testing cost. Well, we won't, we'll say $40 just so nobody gets mad at Charlie. Well, it's different now with Phenome anyway. I'm in the same price as everybody because he got the price down so good. But I used to have an advantage there. But all right, so that tells me it's going to cost me $240 to test this if I test the whole clutch for the monsoon.

Okay. So, my my clutch value right now is is, uh, so I have down here is where you you estimate the value of the clutch. Right? Right now it's a negative $240 because I haven't put any values in and it's going to cost me $240 for the test thing. Now I looked these up, so I already know the amounts.

Yeah. Okay. Say, let's just play through this real quick.

Yeah. Is like 12 grand. 12 grand. So I'm trying to keep this quick. A stranger clown het exanthic. It's maybe like $750 for a male and probably around three actually for a female. Um, clown double het monsoon axanthics. Um, right now they're listed in the 12 range, but I, I, there's a few things you want to keep in mind when you do this. The only person who's got them listed right now is Justin at 12. It doesn't mean they sell at 12, and not Justin. And I wouldn't have this clutch for a year. Right? So, the market value may come down some. So, I round things down a little bit. You can do it either as you value the snakes or you can do it on the back end. You could say, you know what, whatever this number comes out to, I'm gonna call it 80% of that.

80% for another reason, too. I'll touch on in a minute. But all right, clown het exanthic. That's probably like a $50 male now, right? If I'm being honest, right? And what's a, what's a female clown het exanthic? Maybe 150 today.

Yeah, not much.

I don't know. I'll throw that in.

Yeah.

All right. So, it's tell, so, now it weights these. It's referring back to your to your odds up here. And it's doing 50/50 male female. So, it averages the male female and then it, and then it multiplies it by the odds and then it sums all those up to get a per egg value. And then if you have six eggs, it gives you your clutch value. Now, this is a pretty nice dollar value for the.

It's got a nice ring to it if for people that can't see. Yeah. 36 grand there. Yeah, I would be in.

Yeah. This makes it worth it to me to go out and buy an exanthic clown adult female and try to get a clutch out of her in the next six to nine months.

You know, that's a, well, okay, that's that's an interesting point. Not only what you have and the decisions that you can make, but hey, what's a male that will go to five of these and up things by 20% and that will quad X whatever I pay for that male? Okay, I need to buy it right away.

And so that's what I'm looking at too, right? So I, I figure out, um, the female value on this. If the female is like $4,000 or so, it's like eight times your money back, right? And the male is fractional because you're dividing it across four, five females, six females, maybe maybe more ultrasound with a nice healthy male, right?

Yeah.

So, so you can factor that in. There's another thing you can do to play with this, too. So, I now I just added this feature yesterday because I'm a huge nerd and I got really excited about this. I just, I'm excited now that I can just add things. I can just go in and just say, "Hey, what would the code look like for this?" And I can just paste it in.

Okay, so that says 95% CI net. Confidence interval of the net value. So, this says your, your, there's one way you could look at it. Your range would be if I got all male, right, that didn't test, it'd be six times 50. But that's not really super realistic. Although, it's happened to me twice before. But anyway.

Right. It happens, my man.

Yeah. It does. Right. And then on the other end, there's not, and that's not this range down here. Ignore it for a minute. But you also could get six $12,000 snakes out of, right? So, you know, we could do the math on that, what that comes out to, but it's pretty darn good. But there's a, in statistics, there's a, using your standard deviation, there's a, and you get a Gaussian distribution, right, of of what you're likely to get, uh, on average out of this. If you take a slice down the middle of your distribution, 95% of it falls in this range.

I see. So you can be 95% certain you're going to pull at least around $11,000 worth of animals out of this clutch. Now, there's a few things to consider on this. So, don't just run to the bank and say I got 30, this is going to be me $35,000 this clutch and the worst case is going to be 11.

Yeah. That's all fun and games till the male sits there staring at you like, "What am I doing? What am I doing in this bin?" Stops eating.

Yeah. Yep. So, I'm going to put a couple more things in this here soon. But there's another bigger issue I'm trying to fix right now. I'll, I'll, I'll put myself out there in a minute. But so this tells me that the range is probably somewhere between 11 and 60. And so I like this for two reasons. It tells me kind of probably the worst case, but also I'll jump forward a second here. I can click this log pairing button. It snaps the pairing down here to the bottom, which allows me to do a couple of things. I can now go back and change the male.

Look at you, man. Just just hanging out on the weekends banging this thing out, huh? Good for you, man. I can, I can go back and change the male and I can click log pairing and it'll drop that right below this one and I can look to see which one has a worse range.

So, which one's got more risk?

Yeah.

So, not so now I can, I can look at a couple things. And one of the other things I'm going to plug in here is I'll plug in where you can plug the dollar amount for the female in, maybe the male too, and it'll give you the return, right? It would be, oh, it'd be eight times what you spend on the female, but it'd be eight times you spend on the female, but it might be a massive risk profile versus the other clutch might be five times what you spend on the female, but your your ceiling might be 25,000 or your floor, not your ceiling, your floor might be 25,000.

So, there's two other things I factor in, though, myself when I have this number.

Hang on just a second. Hang on. Hang on. Let me, let me make sure I'm understanding. So, CI, confidence index, is that what you called it? Con confidence interval. And then you're saying the closer those two numbers are together, the less risky the pairing is.

Yeah. Essentially.

Okay. It gives you, it gives you a glimpse into a couple of things insight-wise, right? It tells you your lowest, um, you're kind of, you're probably not very likely. It's a 5% chance you land below $11,000 worth of animals. Right? And then, um, and then also again, just just the range in general tells you like, I mean, it also tells you that there's a lot more upside on this too when you have a big range like this. So, if I am a gambler, I might take this shot, you know? But I plugged in, I can't remember what the other clutch I plugged in was. I think I compared like, uh, something that had a het versus the visual. And, um, like I said, the visual had a little less return, but the floor was like $10,000 more.

Right. Okay. Oh, there's, yeah. So, you have to get your rationale kind of, you have to decide for yourself what's better for you at that point, right? Like, okay, it, it doesn't probably have the same return, but man, there's a lot less risk in this pairing. This is this pairing's floor is is really high. Like, it's a really good, it's I'm in really good shape. So, this also lets you do just straight line, like I said, just change out a different male and just see what the, what the that value for that female one male for male is. And you could also like formulate your whole breeding season along those lines where you go, "All right, I'm going to take one with this massive swing, but it's one it's five out of 20. It's it's 5%."

With all your others.

Yeah. It's one out of 20. So, okay, I need, I need 80% of them in that sweet spot. That's reliable. But I'm going to give myself 10 on either end to just go wild and know on either end. This is where this is going to get. Eventually, because the next, the next thing I would do is, right, you can just log pairing, log pairing. So, I can go and I can I can plug all my pairings in. I'm going to get eventually a functionality where you can, you'll have a login and you can save. For now, you're going to have to screenshot or you're going to have to copy paste this data out. I'm going to get an export function going so you can drop it to an Excel. If I can, I'm going to get a save function, but the export to an Excel, I definitely can get very soon. Right. But you could go through and log all your pairings and then get the sum of like what your projected revenue is, right? So, you'll get, if you did every pairing and then you add all of them together, like, oh, I have three pairings at 35 each, then we know that we're at, uh, what is that? One.

105?

Yeah.

Yeah. We know we're at 105 for the year. Now, what I, what I say though, is this, and you can figure this out for yourself or you can just use a swag number of the girls I pair in a year, four or five years, four years running now, 80% of them actually go. Give me a clutch. So, if I plug, so I was doing this on this spreadsheet, I would plug all my pairings in, I'd get the value for them, and then I'd take 80% of that total is what I'd actually project as revenue for that year.

There's one other factor I would pull out, though. I pull out about, I, I found that I also keep about 30% of my value in holdbacks.

Yeah.

So, then I have to pull 30% of revenue out in holdbacks. And one other factor, how fast does your inventory turn over? So, if it's your first year, you probably, I, I pro, I think, I don't know what a good number is, but I'll just put my number out there. I turn over about 50% of my inventory typically in a year, like of what I made this year. Now, if I carried 50% over from last year, that moves out this year and I move 50% of this year's out, and so next year I've got about, you know, 50% left from the year before, right? So, you know, so you're kind of, when you, if you're trying to, if you're going as far as trying to project your revenue for the year, you're going to take this number, you're going to take it an actual, you know, um, uh, I don't know what to call it, but your rate that the girls actually go for you, like your success rate with like what you do with ultrasounding and pairing and stuff like that and how your system works. And then you're going to say probably 50, I'll probably get 50% of that.

And like I said, so there's a couple other steps you have to do. You can't just add all this together and be like, "Hey, I'm going to make $100,000 next year."

But, that's the.

On pace.

No. And it gives you, but it does give you some guidance. And I think, um, one of my favorite expressions that I say to myself all the time, like, like, am I looking at something right? The worst lies you could tell are the ones that you lie to your, you tell yourself. Like, yeah, like don't go lying to other people either. But if you're lying to yourself and making decisions on those lies, that's dangerous. So, yeah, when you're putting in your prices, be realistic or undershoot it. Like, what harm does it come from undershooting it? And then when it happens, you get a bonus. Okay, fine. Same thing with the percentage. And like each person's is different. I know that mine probably has to do with moving three times in the past five years, but I average around 55 to 60% of girls that go. So, I got to be realistic. And again, if I overachieve on that, who cares? Great. It's even better. But if I don't, I want to know what I can rely on or hope to rely on.

For sure. But hopefully, uh, I'm I'm excited to have jumped on and like kind of demoed it now because hopefully that helps.

Yeah. No, that helps hugely. And that's really cool, too. I'm, I'm actually, uh, I've switched over. I run, um, StreamYard on Chrome and I switched over to Safari real quick. It's, yeah, it's right there. And these are all free. There's not a subscription. You're not, you're not trying to haggle money out of people. Just go to your website. It's right there. You click on calculators in the top left, or clutch calculator and shed calculator right there in the top left when you come in.

Right. Yep. Reagan.com/scale or when you open it up fully, it should say, should. Oh, and here's the other tool. Should I test?

This one is just, I just did this one for fun. This took me an hour one morning. Uh, there it goes. I thought it wasn't populating for a second there. So, this one just gives you like, there's a break-even calculation. I did a reel on this before, but and I made it easier for people than doing the math yourself. Percent chance something's het. It's a 50% hit. If it, and this is, let's say I'm testing an animal to find out if it's a monsoon or whatever, right? So, if it's confirmed hit, it's a, we said it would be a $10,000 snake value. If it's not hit, it was a, um, $50 snake. It's a male, right? It's a $50 male. The value if I don't test it, if I go and list it as a poset, right? So, if I go and list as a POS het, it's a $500 male and the test cost me $40. So, I got to move a little bit here so I can see. Expected value if you test is $5,000. This is basically just playing a probability game. It's saying, um, basically almost like the average between these minus the cost of the test. So, if I test, I, you know, I can get a $50 thing, I can get a 10,000. It, you know, it should be five. And what this is, is it's doesn't work in an individual instance, but if you use this to make decisions every single time, right, you win over time is the point, right? Unless you really skew to where you do this, you, uh, you listen to it on the, um, well, you lose on a bunch of expensive snakes and you win on a bunch of cheap snakes.

Yeah. But in general with probability, right, if you did this over time, you'd be, uh, you know, $4,985. And it's saying the value right now if you just list it by itself is 500. So, you expect to gain about $4,400 in value, um, by testing. And the ROI on the test then is is massive because you spend $40 on the test. So, this is like a no-brainer. Yes, I should. Now, if it's like a, I don't know, a ma, just a male normal. And so, a normal male is $40. This is going to be a really soft cookie example. And if it tests clown, if it's a like a normal looking male and you're testing for het clown, it's now $50.

Right. Right. And so this is intuitive, but just to show like how it works, right? Value if not, well, if I just list it as a POS, it's still $40. Uh, and right, value right now is still 40. Uh, cost of test is 40. Well, I can gain about $4 if it turns out to be het because 50% of, of, you know, the difference between 550 and 10, minus the cost of the test, right? So, I'm probably going to lose 36 bucks. So, if I did this and just kept testing everything over time, which again, that one's intuitive. There's, there's ones that are much closer, though. You're like, "Is it really worth it to pay for the test or not?" This tells you. But then again, I'd also say most stuff, unless it's in this range, this I wouldn't bother testing. Just list it as normal and let it go.

Yeah. Just move on with your time. Sorry, before before you run on for a second, I think it's really important what you said. These have to be taken as as as an ongoing strategy, not it's like the, uh, what's the thing? You always split in, uh, Blackjack and like the scene from Swingers where he loses everything when he splits when he's supposed to and he's like, "No, no, you always split." And he's like, "Clearly not always." He's like, "No, you always, you're going to lose sometimes. It's not going to, it's not going to be perfect to every instance, but over time that's the strategy."

Yep. Absolutely. It's that's, I mean, it's absolutely how you have to approach it because again, like if you do in a single instance, um, on the example I showed before where it says $5,000, there's actually no possibility where you make a $5,000 snake. You wind up with the, the, uh, what do we have, like the $50 snake or the $10,000 snake, right? But if you had six of them and you did all six of them on per snake, you would, you would gain about $4,000 worth of value at the end of the day across the six. So, you test all six and on some you're going to get a $50 snake, some you're get a 10, and on average you're going to wind up $4,000 better per snake.

So, at the end of the clutch, you'd be better off, right? So, or at the end of the season if you, if you use this every time you were going to decide to test, like every time that one's not just readily obvious. But then to answer your question, like I said, yeah, it says, should I shed test? And then apparently the clutch calculator is running off to where you have to hit more, but just grab clutch calculator.

Oh, I didn't run into that when I came on on my format.

It depends where you look. If you're on the phone, it'll just list them all down. But if you do it on here, apparently it's showing more. So, I'm going to probably, I'll probably move that. I'll probably move like the contact us to the end or something so that the calculator shows up.

The only thing, so like you said, it is, it's completely free. There's no ask tied to it at all. What I am going to add when I'm done spending all my time playing with adding features, eventually, I will add something down the bottom that will prompt you. Um, if you're somebody who's gets really interested and really starts like logging a bunch of pairings in or something, I'm going to probably prompt people with a, like, "Do you just want me to do it for you?" and offer that. Now, that'll probably be a paid service. Maybe for the first couple people it won't, so I can prove it out, right? But that'll probably be a paid service where I'll do it for you. I'll even look, you know, potentially at, um, if you use this male instead with this female, it could get better. You know, just have to give me a list of, uh, what what you were thinking about pairing and then, uh, I'm gonna stop screen sharing here if I can.

Just give me a list of what you're thinking about pairing potentially. And I also could go as far as somebody would want. I, I go out and look around the market the same way I do. I buy breeder animals a lot, like breeder females a lot because I'll go and I'll do an ROI like that and I'll say like, "Yeah, okay. I could get it for a thousand dollars as a hatchling right now, but I see the value. It's a $30,000 clutch. If I drop $4,000 on this female now, I know everybody has a sitting around, but after I sell a couple animals, sometimes I do, right?" So, I, if I put four on this girl now, in nine months, I can pull back eight times, like 8x. And this is how I continue to just grow and bring revenue in.

Yeah. It's a faster ROI that way. Um, there's a little more risk to it with adults. You know, there's there's some, you could get, there's might be a reason somebody's selling an adult female. So, there's, there's, you know, there's a kind of a hit rate like how often they actually wind up going for you when you. And then the moving them to your point about moving.

Yeah.

50% success rate. My females that have been in the tubs, the same tubs in the same corner of the room and haven't moved for four years go like clockwork.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. A girl that I bring in might it might take a year for me to get her to actually go. So, they don't always turn around and go right away just because they're breeder ready.

And like everything, go, I noticed, uh, just this last time I was like, "Oh yeah, I've been in this place about three months with most of these breeders. They're back to just slamming frozen thod all of a sudden." Like, "Okay, they're comfortable. They're happy. They're back in here. They're like, 'All right, this is this is home. It's it's good, you know.'" So,

Um, Charlie, I always run out of time with you, man. We're we're well into overtime and I promise some, uh, stuff with my son and my wife, but, um, listen, man. Thank you for all that you do. I love hanging out with you. I want to. We didn't really, I mean, I branded it sort of a logistics and we we didn't even get to talk about scale and that stuff. Maybe, uh, maybe in the new year, January, February, come back and we, uh, we try and we try and keep a little guard.

No, because it's, it's the best part of the show. It's just conversation. It's just we go where it goes, you know. But, um, I think it was really, really valuable today. Some of y'all joined here at the end. Go back and watch from the start. We got into some really useful practical, go apply it now kind of stuff. And Charlie's got some great tools on his website. Uh, reagan.com. You don't have to even do royal pythons. Regan.com, right?

Yep. Yeah. I tried to make it shorter for the website. Yep. Regan.com. If you want to skip straight to the tool, regan.com/scale. But yep.

Nice. Um, yeah. Can we do that? How about, uh, January, February, something like that?

Yeah, it sounds perfect to me. This is just, I'm just, I'm all over the place, man. I'm like really hard to contain. That's why when I talked earlier about habits and stuff like that, I put those in as like guardrails for myself. That's why I just took down the number of outfits that are available, made the meals at certain times because I've, this is just how I am, man.

It's tough. It's, no, no, it's a good, and I didn't mean to. I certainly wasn't calling you out because I'm like, "No, this is exciting. We got to let it go." Because honestly, like if it's good content, I don't care what I put on the thumbnail. I can adjust the thumbnail. I can't redo the interview. Like, let's go do it, you know? So, that doesn't bother me. I, I love that part of it. But I also like, I wish that our, well, I was going to say I wish we had things that overlapped a whole lot. We do ball pythons, but I wish like our careers or consulting did because like it's the way that we think and you, you've got it mastered and brought down to a process and the science even better than I do. But it's along those lines where I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense. That's what we should do. Of course, we should do it that way. Gray shirt, gray suits, and pick whatever tie you want. Get out the door. Go be gone."

So, um, hey, what's, um, uh, let's leave on this. What's the best way for people to contact you? You've thrown out a lot and you've hinted a whole lot at wanting to help people, at building a community. You've got this website now that has free tools on it. What, like, there's so many different platforms. What's the one that gets to you?

DM me on Instagram is the is the probably the fastest way, short of like me just giving you my number. And I don't mind doing that either. If we're DMing on Instagram all the time and you say, "Here's my number. Text me." I'll probably just text you. That's actually a little faster than the DMs on Instagram, but DM on Instagram is the fastest way.

Perfect. Perfect, man. Well, everybody, go check out Charlie, reagan.com. Uh, reagan.com/royalpythons. And actually, his, uh, information is down below in the description. Uh, Charlie, let me explicitly thank you for supporting Proper Royals. You have for a long time in many ways, and now it's, uh, front and center right above us there. So, thank you very, very much. I appreciate that. That is Charlie's R right there in the middle. So, um, man, thanks for hanging out. We'll do it again. Uh, I'll get you some dates. Let's do it again. Like I say, January, February. We'll just keep the momentum going.

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Thanks everybody who's in the chat, man. All right.

So much.

All right. Thanks, guys. I got, uh, Chris from Wide River Reptiles next week. So, uh, come on back and I'll see you all a quick turnaround tomorrow morning, 7:30 a.m. Eastern time. Proper Cup of Joe's special episode. Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, man. Thank you very much. Heat.