EP187 – Staying Relevant in the Ball Python Game

[Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Boys and girls, ladies and gents, welcome to another episode of Clutch Conversations. It's your boy Mike. Appreciate y'all coming out. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. Hope everybody's having a great Thursday, man. Uh, definitely looking forward to tonight's uh show. We got uh Jordan from JP Reptiles Canada in the building. So, it's going to be a dope episode. You always know he's coming to bring the heat. Uh, definitely looking forward to tonight's conversation.

But before we get too uh deep into it, first and foremost, shout out to my lovely wife, Takar, man. Y'all make sure y'all show up some love in the comments. Uh, she always holding us down, man. Like I said plenty and plenty of times before, she is the backbone of this operation. So y'all make sure y'all show her some love in the comments.

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And make sure you're supporting the Double Clutch Patreon. Me and the homie Matt from Evan and Ivory Reptiles. Got the Patreon behind the show, Double Clutch, which is uh every other Saturday. In fact, this Saturday is going to be a real good uh episode. We're going to talk about uh what you consider high-end, like what's what's high-end, what's not high-end. You hear all this talk about high-end genetics and things of that nature. So, it's definitely going to be a very uh good conversation. Looking forward to that. That's this Saturday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Uh, we're going to pay some bills and get to the sponsor videos. Then we'll be right back.

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[Music] Big big shout out to the sponsors, man. Um, I know from Rotomore Constrictors, man, he's been hatching some real dope stuff uh here recently. So definitely go check that out. Let's see who we got in the comments tonight. We got the Pink Panther in the building. Mr. Sammy Vargas, what's good? Appreciate you coming out. Proxima Reptiles in the building. What's good y'all? Appreciate y'all coming out. We got the sponsor in the building. What's good, Josh? Man, Tooth Captive Bread Reptiles aka MCBR in the building. What's good, John? Mission Morph in the building saying what's good to everybody. We got wifey pulling double duty. What's good? What's good? What's good? We got the homie Eric from Eric's Morph Factory in the building. Let's see who else we got. We got the homie Jeff from Ballhead Balls representing the Her Collectors Network. Appreciate you coming out. Hey, we gonna stop it right there. We gonna kick this intro, then we'll be right back with the show.

Baby, baby, won't you listen to me? I got that flavor. I know you're dying to feed. I ain't no dancer. Just got some hip in my feet. Now throw your hands up. You bring the light. I got the fuse. You make fire. I'll add you follow my lead. Just watch the show. Got to turn the heat up. We know who looking like this. For real. You know who looking like this. We know who looking like this. For real. You know who looking like this. We know looking like this. For real. You know looking like you know looking like this. For real. You know looking like

My stomach hurts. >> What's up? What's up? What's up, bro? Welcome to the show. Appreciate you coming out. >> No problem. I feel like we started the show backstage a little bit. >> We did, man. Anybody who uh anybody who do this know like those behind the scenes conversations man you can get wrapped in that and been at like 15 20 minutes before you know it like oh man we should have had that on the live. >> Yeah, I know I know I don't remember what we said so we just got to skip all that start fresh uh on the next point. >> Oh hell yeah. Hell yeah man. So what's been up with you? I was looking back and man time flies. It's been like 18 months since you've been on the show. That's been a minute. I didn't realize it was that long. Like I felt like it wasn't that long ago, but I look back uh this week I was like, "Dang, it was April like April 20-something, 2024, which is crazy, >> man. How things have changed just in that short time?" Well, short time, man. I'm getting old. I'm two years away from 40. >> Crap. >> So, what's been going on the last 18 months? Uh, you know, it's just some uh just doing my own thing. You know, kind of went off radar a little bit just to kind of focus on uh, you know, my family, my daughter. My daughter's going to be five in March, so that's she's been occupying a lot of the time and then just working on the projects. Collection has grown. It's just I'm so busy, you know, like there's there's a huge part of the industry that I wish I could still participate in, which is like the YouTube and the social media. Like I was really heavy on social media in the beginning, but I just I got too much, man. Like I got I got so many snakes and so many rats and now a daughter and family. And it's just like I can't even leave my house for a weekend to go watch a basketball game because I feel like [ __ ] always happens when I'm gone. Some fan is going to stop working. Some rats are going to go overheat. I'm going to lose a year's worth of production. I'm rat. Like I I just basically I'm shackled to my house. It's like it's like a you know what I mean? I can't really compare it to jail but if I if I was in jail is what I feel like. You know what I mean? I can't go nowhere. Um, so yeah, just been kind of focusing on my own stuff and just, you know, staying out of the limelight a bit. A lot of drama, a lot of you know, some relationships have gone sour, some ups and downs with my production and, you know, just keeping positive and moving forward. That's it, really.

>> Yeah, man. It's uh we was talking about this a little bit behind uh behind the scenes, but yeah, life can really change and just lead to you kind of taking a different approach to the things that you're doing. Like if you'd asked me last year this time, uh if I had like some of the things that have changed over the last 12 months, like on my bingo card, I'd have said no. No, I wasn't expecting like a lot of stuff, but like I was uh telling you backstage, uh stuff with work, like it's just kind of really amped up. And now like I'm working back in office. It's just it's a lot of different things. >> Is it worth hiring? Can I come get a job? >> Hey man, you can come on down, bro. I got you. >> All right, let's do it, man. I don't know how many more years I got left of this. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. >> Come on down, man. The weather is a lot different than Canada. I can promise you that, though. >> Oh my god. >> We've considered it. Like we've uh I don't know if you heard about Royal Canadian Reptiles. He's moving to the States. >> Yeah. >> Got his visa. It's funny enough, this whole visa thing was like my idea. I started this whole idea in 2020 and it was it was so hilarious. I I looking back in 2020, I when I the first time I went to visit Justin, it's actually second time I went to visit his facility. I had printed off paperwork from your government's website for a sponsorship and I was just like I was like Justin, what's it going to take to get a spot? I wanted to get out of Canada. I wanted to like move to the States, set up my business, you know, that's where the ball python market is and reptiles in general. So this has been my idea from the beginning. And um >> where would you move if you were moving to states? >> Well, so this is part of the problem is like Will was in a lot different of a position than I am. Like Will Will's wife was a lot more, you know, she had more capability of being transient cuz um, you know, like my my wife, she has she's been with the bank for 14 years. She has a stable career. She's she's seniority benefits like she's like really stable. we have a child too, so we have to consider like safety, schools, all these things. Whereas, you know, he doesn't have any kids and >> nothing really was holding him back. So, there there it was a lot different. So, we were trying to be a lot more methodical about it. And one of the ways that we were thinking about doing it was um she works for a bank called TD Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank. And they actually have uh 1100 branches in the US. And they're all on the east coast from New York all the way straight down to the Carolinas and into Florida. It's all like an east coast type banking. And they don't they don't allow cross employee traffic unless you have a very very good reason. So, one of the reasons was um that we thought we could potentially explore was if I was to get some sort of like visa like the way Will did it, like an E1 or E2 visa, that she could go to the bank and say, "Hey, listen, um, you know, my husband just got his visa, he's moving his business to the States, could I continue my career with the bank through an intercomp transfer?" Um, and if she was to be successful in doing that through her work, uh, because e visas don't have a path to citizenship, it they're basically temporary visas. So, you come to the US, you conduct business, if your business concludes, you go back home. There's no path to citizenship. Uh, whereas a vis employer sponsorship through her work would actually have a path to a PR and assistantship and that visa would supersede any e visas. So the idea was like if we were to do something like this, we obviously have to be a lot more methodical about it uh because we have a child, because she has a good career. Um, I don't want to go somewhere on a temporary basis. Like if we move to the States, we're moving to the States. If we're selling our house here, all of our assets, we're moving there, buying a place, you know, we're setting up shop, we're done. Like we're not coming back. We're we're not moving. So, but yeah, it's just not to get into it, but it's just funny that he was able to uh get on that bandwagon before I did, even though it was my idea because he has a lot more flexibility in his life of some of the risks he can take, whereas, you know, like I can't. My daughter just started kindergarten this year. So, it's like, you know, you got to factor in all these things, but it's always on the table and, you know, we we will explore if the opportunity arises. uh currently as it sits and the way the ball python market is right now, I don't really have the utmost confidence to to uproot and put that much risk um to do it. Like I I would have to see a little bit of a rebound, but it's always there. The option is always there. So that was something. But but going back to what your question was, um, I think I it's not ideal. Florida is not a good state because you know they have uh the Florida Fish and Wildlife. there. I hear they're an absolute cluster [ __ ] down there and you have to register every ball python and go through all these hoops and stuff and but they actually have a lot of branches there and a lot of their branches are always hiring. So I feel like if we were to do a move like that, we would have to start in Florida for like three years until she can convert her work visa into some sort of like PR and then from there we could go wherever. I'd probably I would probably stay like in the in the Justin area like Atlanta like outside of Atlanta just because um, you know, correct me if I'm wrong but the Atlanta airport it's the largest airport in North America. >> It's the busiest one. >> Yeah. They have flights going all across uh the US every 15 minutes 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. that the overall like I don't know if this is true all the time but from all my travels flying to and out of Atlanta has always been far cheaper than all of the other airports. Like I went to visit a friend in Tampa to go from Tampa to to to Toronto to Tampa was like $800 Canadian which is like $1 American. You know what I'm saying? Um, but when I went to Atlanta, like I live an hour an hour from the Detroit border and I just go to I go to Wayne County and from Wayne County to to Atlanta was like the price of an Uber and I was like I don't know if that's the way it is today because I haven't flown in three years but during CO it was like 90 bucks air like I was like what is this serious? I can't even go to Toronto on $90. Like this is hilarious. So, um I just feel like in terms of ease of travel and coming back home to Canada and visiting family all the time, like you probably want to be close to an airport that is cheaper to fly in and out of. And also the Atlanta airport I believe is the only airport on the east coast that has US fish and wildlife directly built in. And now that I do my own sightes, like I don't use third party anymore. I actually have set up my own sightes. I do my own exports. I can ship globally across the world. >> Yeah. So being able being near Atlanta and being able to do all of my US Fish and Wildlife inspections and the ease of shipping in and out of because that's a wildlife hub in the States on the East Coast. I think that would just make sense, right? >> Yeah. Florida I uh to echo what like Dale said, it's not as bad as it sounds probably to some people. Um, it can definitely be like problematic. I mean, we all seen like kind of all the issues and stuff that like made headlines, made his rounds on social media and stuff, but as far as like registration and kind of keeping up with all that stuff, it's really not that bad as long as you understand the rules. You don't have to register like every single ball python individually. Uh, you do have to like renew and it used to be somewhat of a pain to like renew via >> you need a license, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. You got to have a class three license and so you just pay for that. It's not really expensive. You renew it each year. not even made the renewal process super efficient because you do it online as opposed to the paper you had to fill out and so you do it and then boom it take like a couple days and you you in there and the system automatically send reminders and stuff so it's gotten a lot better since I got it gotten in it. Uh, but yeah, it's not perfect but it's it's not like >> well the other major concern for us would be too the weather like I I >> I don't know what it is. My life is cursed. every possible bad thing that can happen in my life is going to happen, right? That's just I've always had this bad luck associated with me, you know, since birth. So, I just feel like I go through all these hoops, I sell all my assets, I change it all to, you know, US dollars and lose I I would literally lose 35% of my net worth just on converting my Canadian assets to American dollars, right? Like that's that's right there, right off the top. Um, so it's like you go through all that and it's like I set up shop, I do the registration, I do all this stuff and then I I buy a house, I set up even though it's temporary and I just know it that same year in the fall some freaking >> Herbert's going to come through and just level my entire business, you know. >> And my friend that I went to visit in Tampa, he's been there uh for five or six years now. He told me, he was like, "It's don't believe all the sensationalism on Canadian media. Like, it's not that bad." And our and he was telling me like, "The houses down there are not built like up here, our houses are built with plaster and 2x4s, right?" He's like, "Down here our houses are built with rebar and concrete. Like, it's not the same." So, he was trying to make me feel better about that. I was like, "I don't know, bro. >> I just feel it." I was like, "I'm gonna set up shop. I'm gonna fly home on the next evacuate the state, come back, and the the collection's gonna be gone. House, everything's gonna be gone. It's gonna be like rubble. So, I was like, that's a risk. This guy in your chat says, too. He was like, [ __ ] it. Just take the risk. It's a big [ __ ] take the risk. You got to give >> high risk, high reward. >> What's that? >> Said high risk, high reward. >> That is I don't know, man. I'm I'm a betting man. In some situations, that's a that's a big bet. Like I know it's unlikely to happen. Like when's the last time um especially if you don't live like near the coast. I'm sure it's not that dangerous. I I mean I follow a YouTuber. He's lived his entire life in Florida. I mean, he's like I'm sure it's not that bad, right? Like a lot of it's sensationalized on our media, but I don't know. I'm not a Floridaian. I don't I don't know how bad it gets down there, you know? >> Yeah. I mean, it can it can get really bad. But I mean, obviously living here, you you know, things to do to kind of at least mitigate the risk, but you can't completely eliminate the risk because we're talking about like mother nature. And so, uh, it can get bad, but it's not terrible. I mean, it's a bunch of people that breed ball pythons and or breed reptiles just in general that's been down here for decades. And like, you're in Florida? >> Yeah, I'm in Florida. >> Oh, well, that's that's amazing. Like, just the climate alone is perfect for the falls, right? you know, and um >> they get kind of sweaty. >> No. Oh, yeah. Like I was down there in Tampa. This was uh about a year ago and it was like spring and I was sweating bullets and I'm like you like you walk into a store to go get food and it's like, you know, there's a 50 degree swing between the air conditioning in the building and you going outside and it's just like a a wall of just heat and then cold all the time. And I'm like, man, this is like you can get used to it, I'm sure. But yeah, I love Florida. I think it's great. Um, you know, there's some challenges. Like one of one of my founding principles, and this is the only reason I've been able to survive even in this climate. There's a lot of people like falling apart right now in the ball python game and so many clay. Even even guys like Kittinger. I just I just found out for the first time that week ago that Kittinger Reptiles is selling out, getting out and I'm like >> stuff. He's still keeping some stuff though, >> is he? Okay. I don't know the whole story. I haven't looked into it. I just know that he was pretty pretty advanced on the on the puzzle game and I'm like, "This guy's selling what? No way." Um, but anyways, it's a lot of hardships right now. And so, the one of the primary reasons I've been able to survive like I have is my one of my core uh business values has been as low of cost as possible. You know what I mean? Like that's why, you know, my wife uh before we got together, she had a house, I had a house, we lived in the city in Toronto, and we now live two hours outside the city in a small town. You know, we have a nice house. Yes. But our housing prices out here are a fraction of what they are, >> you know, in in the actual city, right? Like it's a totally different game. It's like Tampa. Like if you buy a house in Tampa or you buy something an hour outside on the outskirts, >> it's totally different game. So >> yeah, so we, you know, we were able to sell both our places. We bought this house. We our mortgage is super low. Um, our costs. I bring my own rodents, you know. I We don't go out a lot. We don't eat a lot. I don't have fancy clothes. I I have a nice truck, but I don't I don't spend money on dumb [ __ ] Like, our our overall philosophy is lowest possible operating expenses in order to weather any potential pitfall. And I would feel like moving to Florida would be counterintuitive because uh from what I've from my my friend who's been in Tampa for six years now, he told me that over the last since CO there was such a massive shift in population from people getting out of like red states and you know just people wanting to move to Florida that it's really driven up housing prices across the state because uh you know you can't really find cheap houses that much anymore. And then he was saying too because of all the natural disasters getting insuranceances getting more difficult certain insuranceances the cost of insurance for has doubled you know cars housing all this stuff. So it's like I don't know if from a cost standpoint anymore if Florida makes even that much sense if you're trying to keep your cost as low as possible. It's probably not the cheapest place to be to operate a reptile business. Right. Correct me if I'm wrong. >> It's definitely not the cheapest place. Uh it was a big culture shock cuz we came here from Georgia like not not even that far away from where we are right now but just I mean we what 90 minutes away uh I don't remember the exact mileage but not far at all but one of the biggest shocks to us when we first got here was the um the co cost of living and just how different it was. Like it's just absolutely >> it used to be cheap, right? >> It's never been cheap since I've been here. I mean it's moreensive now. It's more expensive now, but it's always been like relatively more expensive than when I where I came from. Right. >> Yeah. I just I heard your housing market has just exploded in value. Like >> good for everybody who's been in Florida for the last decade who owns a house, but bad for anybody who wants to just move there now and buy a house, right? Like, so yeah, I don't I don't know like that that that's been my founding philosophy is I think especially today with the way the market is like, you know, there's still some people out there blowing smoke up other people's asses. It's hilarious. You know, people will like post on on social media like, "Oh, I'm shipping out these 30 animals. Okay, great. For what price? If I advertised every snake in my collection for a dollar, I'm going to sell every snake. I'm going to sell 500 snakes in the next seven days." But just because I sold 500 snakes, quantity for me is not a metric for the health of an industry. It's the prices that are as is the true metric for health. >> The industry just like in general, right? Like the the health of the industry, like where you feel like the industry is. Uh before you get into that piece, >> I just I you know, I I've noticed it firsthand. sales are still strong if you drastically lower your price. Um, but on the flip side, like, and this will affect different people in different ways. If you're like me where you are, you need this to survive because you don't have a job. Um, you do have to clear a certain dollar figure every year if you want to keep the lights on, pay all your bills, send your daughter or your kids to whatever after school or programs or trips or whatever. And then people also got to take into account, you know, you like it's very difficult to stay relevant in the game if you just buy 20 snakes and you don't buy another snake again. Like you, you know, the game is to like, you know, produce some some things, sell off what you don't need, use some of that money to bring in things that you can't produce or you don't have or you're you're too far away to produce and keep things relevant. So you you know, you need a good solid reinvestment every year just to keep the wheels running in the business aspect plus all the costs. So you have to make a certain amount of money and um if prices crater and collapse it's very difficult to remain profitable and then the amount of work that's associated with this it's like if you can't be profitable then you know just because you sold 500 snakes last year if they were hundred bucks each that's not you know if I start a business tomorrow and I made $10 million in revenue but my operating expense was $9,999,999 $99. Does that am I am I running a successful business? >> You didn't make [ __ ] You made a dollar. >> I made a dollar. Right. And and I think that's one of the problems with the ball python industry as a whole is too many people get too caught up with that with the gross. You know, there's there's two lines. There's a gross line and there's a net line. And the gross can be flashy all you want. You can be like, "Ah, I made $200,000 last year on ball pythons." Okay, great. how much of it did you keep? What's in the bank right now? And that number historically from what I've seen has been fairly low, right? So, um I think you just have to make you have to make adjustments. It goes back to what I was saying like lowering your overall expenses, changing your mindset, and uh, you know, just keeping things as as low as possible so that number can increase. You want to increase that net. Um, but going back to what I was saying, like I said, for me, I don't judge market stability or market success by quantity. You know, somebody can make a story tomorrow on Instagram posting, you know, oh, I'm shipping 30 snakes. That's fantastic. But what price are you selling those snakes, right? Like, I I can do the same thing. I can go open 30 boxes and I don't advertise my wholesale stuff. My wholesale stuff goes in and out immediately. So, should I start posting, you know, stories and saying like, "Yeah, I shipped 50 wholesale yesterday. They're going to Japan for 50 bucks each." Like, oh, but the market is super strong. So, I'm just I'm not trying to [ __ ] on anything. I'm just trying to be realistic. I'm just trying to be real that for me, I I much prefer to look at the the the the money that is commanding. And the prices have come down. And I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to survive this long is uh just we've been able to, you know, get our our cost down. And these are all factors that we would have to consider to if we were to do something like move somewhere, you know, where's the best place to go, keep cost as low as possible and just whether because you have to be able to, you know, this times are not always going to be good, you know, there's going to be bad times, right? So I think that's just very important. >> Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So when you say cost coming down, you mean like they've come down from COVID or they've just come down from like some other >> I so I I I don't I don't call myself a COVID breeder. Um the reason why is because uh 90% of the stock that I acquired was between 2018 and 2019. This was >> pre-COVID. >> So I didn't buy low like I was but I also didn't buy at the peak. COVID was peak, right? Like I was halfway up that mountain. I still got some decent deals on certain things, maybe not so much on others, but I I wasn't like one of the COVID guys where every snake was $10,000, right? Like I had to spend a million dollar. No, I didn't have to spend a million dollars to acquire. So, I wasn't at the peak. So, but I also I wasn't a co breeder in the sense of sales either because um everything that I've ever bought was hatchlings and I think maybe less than 20% of my original stock that I bought was even breeding by co So, I I I had some decent clutches that I made some some good money on, but I wasn't really capitalizing on that COVID boom. I wasn't quite ready, right, um, at that time. So, for me, when I talk pricing, I I more or less compare today to when I started. If things were still floating around where where it was when I started, that's it would be different. I, you know, I don't think I think COVID was the perfect storm. I think things just got really really nutty. I mean, you would put out a $15,000 snake that wasn't even that impressive and it's like it would sell in 12 hours. I mean, >> yeah, >> it was it was nutty. Justin got so cocky with it, no offense to the guy, where he changed his policy. It was like, uh, I'm not taking the reservations. I'm only putting out more market drops on Thursdays now. If you want a chance at a snake, oh, and and if you want like first dibs, you got to go on my Patreon. This like some people were getting really cocky with the whole thing, right? Because the demand was so nutty. Um, but it's not like that anymore. Like now you breathe something even if you lower the price. You got to put time and you got to wait and people are a lot more methodical. I think there's a lot less buyers, too. There's It's sad because I actually I stopped watching a lot of podcasts because there's been a lot of people making fun of breeders who are not in that like top tier of the the pyramid. Um, you know, like, oh, get more relevant, go buy better projects, check yourself, this and that. It's like it's like these people don't understand that 80% of the industry is that lower tier. If you take away all of these pet breeders, all of these uh lower value uh collectors, pet store, all this stuff for the like if that goes away, there's no money because money flows upwards, right? >> Exactly. >> If you take the bottom half of that pyramid away, then nothing's flowing up to the guys who are at the top. So to [ __ ] on the guys who are are not necessarily at the top um it's counterintuitive because it's it's a direct effect on your ability to capitalize on anything because you need those people. Every person that breathes is going to make a little bit of money and they're going to take that money and buy something better and that's why it flows upwards, right? So, we need that bottom that bottom part of the market and that's where a lot of instability is right now is the lower end and it's trickling upwards and it's putting a lot of pressure on on sales right now. Sales are still good. It's just if if your prices are really low, but you know, it's just the the mindset has to change. And look, I I still had a I was down last year in sales. I think on my QuickBooks it was 77% overall revenue was down. >> Um, was down 77%. >> Yeah, I ended the year with 77% lower revenue in total. It was quite a shock. But but part of that was also I had I had a really bad year last year. I I it was my first breakout year. I had a I literally I went from like 30 clutches average to over 50. But I had some incubator problems with some really crappy incubators that just weren't good. And I lost I think only 12 clutches survived. >> Damn. So I didn't have much to sell, you know, like I've been operating either at in the red or break even for the last except for the last three months, but for the better part of the year. And that's part of it is because of of that. But even that, like in a good market, the very few things that I did have for sale during that period would have commanded enough revenue where I wouldn't be sweating about the lights on and buying food and stuff. You know what I mean? But because the market has been suppressed so drastically and prices have come down so much, it's like a double whammy. Like it in today's market, if you have something like that happen to you where you lose like >> most of your stock due to an incubator problem and the very few things that you have left aren't selling or can't command a lot of price, it's like it's a double double-edged sword. You're in big trouble, right? It's it's a lot harder to recover from. >> Yeah, that's how I feel about like my production this year. Like I've had production, but none of my like top top stuff really went for me this year. And even some of the stuff that did go like I had some issues with like a few of the better snakes in it. So it just it was really I'm not going to lie, bro. It was like for real depressing, right? Uh because I mean your whole I mean you breeding ball pythons, right? So your production is huge. I mean obviously. And so to to take a hit like that like it was really kind of a gut punch. Um, I know this year I'm going to be a little bit like more kind of nose in the books and paying more attention to certain things and just kind of like really like taking all those extra steps and and all that kind of good stuff. Um, that's why I'm pulling back on like some of the stuff that I'm doing so I can give myself some additional time to kind of put that extra uh extra little bit in there. Especially like now that I'm not like around them like all day every day like I was in years past. I gotta kind of go that extra mile to make sure that everything is like on point because I can't take another year like this past year. Like it sucks. Not not even I mean the revenue part sucks too, but >> the piece that drives you like as far as like making your projects and [ __ ] like that's the big piece of it. Like that shit's fun as hell. Like that's what keeps you motivated when like other [ __ ] is like not as good as it or can be or as good as you want it to be. But to not hit like any of that stuff, like it's a gut punch. It sucks. >> And and this is the this is the flaw. Like I'm I'm starting to realize certain flaws in this industry as a whole. Um, so so the first flaw is it's a numbers game, right? You things move so quickly and since shed testing, this has even been further amplified. Like shed testing, it's great. It's great to be able to know what your animals are, but the downside to that is you remove the guesswork. And sometimes guesswork helps keep pacing, right? So, for example, whereas in a normal environment where you didn't have shed testing, if you bred something and it was 66% head for whatever, you weren't sure, you would keep those. you would have to invest, you know, two to four years into those animals, grow them up, breed them out. You know, you look at one of Justin's original videos when he created the sumapiide, he was talking about how um he spent four years breeding mahogany he pides and he had three years in a row of breeding three female mahogany heads where he did not hit what he was expecting, which was a black and white snake. >> And he never gave up on it. So he spent eight years before he finally hit Assumapi and in an environment where it's like that doesn't sound very fun on the surface because it's like I don't know if this stuff is hit. I got to invest all this time. I got to breed it. I got to trial and error, figure it out, see what happens. I can just shed test it. Okay, that's great. But if everybody can just shed test everything, you're just literally putting rocket fuel in a in a in a Prius, right? And it's going to go twice as fast because you're removing all that guesswork and and guesswork helps slow things down because you're going to get bad odds. You're some stuff is not going to prove out. You're going have to go back to the drawing board where you create some different heads, try again. And so you you remove all that. You're just speeding things up. And this is what happens is when things When things are so fast, the only way to to offset the speed is with quantity, right? Because it's it's the laws of probability states that the more odds you have at something, the better chances you are to get that something, right? So to eliminate that speed now, you've got to increase quantity. And if you don't have the capacity to increase your quantity of clutches to overcome sex odds, genetics odds, and to deal with the speed, you are going to fall. And that's what's happening to me. I' I've noticed this on several of my projects. I am falling behind because look, 30 clutches, how the hell are you going to compete with anybody who's doing two 300 clutches, you know, like like and you're doing 30. But when you take that one snake that you paid 10 grand for that you want to have good odds with and you want to create a collection based around it and you've bred him to two or three girls but the person you got it from bred that same snake to 20 females, you know, like it's it's you're just there's no chance. There's no and then every when you do finally hit those things, everybody else that's able to increase their their their clutch counts, they will have moved so far beyond where you are that all the stuff that you finally did hit after so many years is going to be worthless. And I and I some of this stuff has happened to me. So So that's that's the flaw number one is just the speed and and the amount of clutches that you need. Um, but there's certain uh strategies that we can implement as smaller breeders to kind of like offset that too. Like in the beginning, my strategy was really to just try to get a piece of everything, right? Like I was I wanted to get dreams, the clown pides, the the hypo this, the DG, the monarch, ultra. I had literally monarch and ultramount. Why the hell would I want two T positives? I just got rid of one finally, right? I kept monarch. But it's like you want to be in everything because you wanna you want to eliminate as much risk as possible by being able to be involved with with a little bit of everything. Um, but if you take away all of the fluff and all of the the fat and you reduce your collection down to one or two or three specific things that you can rather than spread out your 20 clutches a year across 10 different projects, you take 20 clutches and invest those 20 clutches into one or two projects. you're going to keep up with at least in that project, you're going to keep up with times because you're not spread too thinly. So, that's one strategy that I've adopted to kind of combat this because to be quite honest, like I don't want to do 200 clutches, man. Like, I've already I've got 6,000 softwares that I got to clean and take care of myself. I got between my holdbacks and my collection, I've got almost 400 ball pythons. Like, it's work. It is a grind. Like, it is a lot of work. Kudos to anybody with more animals than that, right? But I just I have zero desire to start, you know, doubling or tripling my production and just cranking out stuff like crazy. Like it's just it's way too much. So, you just got to find a way like how do I stay a little bit smaller and try to offset some of these flaws with the whole numbers game? Because that's what it is. Like look, if anybody comes out and says number ball pythons are not numbers, you're you're full of [ __ ] I'm sorry. You're absolutely full of [ __ ] It's it's a numbers game. If it wasn't a numbers game, then guys like Justin and Garrick Demier and Mike Lank says they wouldn't be doing hundreds of clutches. What's the point? Why have all that work, right? It's a numbers game >> for sure. >> Um, so yeah, so it's it's just like that's that's a big flaw. The other big flaw with the industry that I I haven't really found a solution to yet is um just remember I was talking about like gross versus net. Um, historically my operating margin has been less than 10%, you know, like net profit every year because I've I was stupid. I look back at the amount of money I spent during COVID, all the money that was coming in, but I also spent most of that money going out trying to get new things in. And um it's like if if but the problem is if you stop buying your projects, if again if you can't produce enough to keep up with times and the shed testing, then you have to buy But if you have to keep buying and buying and buying with every dollar you make, how do you get around that? So that's been a that's been more of a challenge for me is trying to figure out how do I start keeping some money that comes in rather than having to buy stuff all the time because I just can't produce enough fast enough to stay relevant with everything. Right? That's that's been a challenge I've been working out trying to figure out solution which again one of the solutions that I went back

I was saying once before, is, uh, just like kind of thinning down my exposure to all these different, uh, you know, projects. Like, I, I don't need 12 or 15 different multi-recessive projects on, on the go, right? Like, you, you pick your two or three top ones, you build around that. And, uh, you know, so that's, that's been a challenge too. But again, my point of all this is just like, you have to pivot. You have to find these strategies to kind of, you know, readjust to the market demands and the times and, and, you know, in your project development and try to stay relevant as best you can. I don't know, like, it's just, it's not been easy. It's been a, it's been a challenging year, and I think it's been a challenging year for a lot of people, you know.

>> What projects did you release?

>> Um, I have drastically thinned down on pies. I don't really have many single, uh, recessive pie combos anymore. Uh, for the exception, I still love Dreamsicles. I just made my first Super OD Dream. I've been trying to make a Super OD Dreamsicle since I first bought my first Dreamsicle. You know, I, I've created, I didn't buy anything in that project other than Dreams. I created, I, I built all the heads and I produced it myself. It took me since 2019 to get there. Long journey. Um, so I still really like that project, and it fits really well into one of the other projects that I really like, which is Lavender Clowns and the, and the, the Holy Grail project. So, because Lavender Lav, I can kind of mix the Dream with the Lavender Found stuff for combo stacking. So I've kept that. I got rid of Ultramal. I'm sticking with Monarch. Um, I've thinned down a lot of different genetics in, uh, the codominant stacking stuff. Um, you know, I've gotten rid of animals that just weren't good producers. And right now, my, my primary focuses are the DG Hypo Clown. Uh, Chocolate is my favorite codominant gene, in complete dominant, whatever. Um, and I'm trying to get chocolate in everything. Next year, I'll have the first chance at a Super Chocolate DG Xanthic Clown.

>> Oh, nice.

>> The heads I produce myself. I've already made the Super Chocolate DG Hypo Clown. This year I made my first Chocolate Clown Head Lavender, because I would like to make a Super Chocolate Lavender Clown. Um, you know, I'm gonna eventually go into the Super Chocolate, uh, Monarch stuff as well. So, like, this is like really been my focus now is everything like chocolate, super, and just, you know, just three or four multi-recessive projects at most. And, uh, and try to keep things a little bit more, you know, tailored to, to, to that. Because if there's no sense in having 12 or 15 different projects on the go, if you can't produce 300 clutches a year, you're never going to make any ground in any of them, right? I really, really like the G-stripe stuff too. Like, I don't know, I, I've always been a big fan of DG stripe clowns. Always, always, always, always. And I regret buying the one that I did two years ago because that was the most expensive thing I ever bought. And it's not, if you look back at what's happening today in the market, anybody will tell you that was probably one of the dumbest things I ever did financially. Dumbest [ __ ] thing I've ever.

>> What was it specifically? Like, what were the genes?

>> I was at Tinley and Justin brought a Red Stripe DG Clown on his table. It was $35,000 American dollars, which in Canadian dollars was close to $50,000. It's a lot of money in Canadian dollars. And I bought it because I, I, I just remembered there was a guy here in Canada in Montreal in 2018. I think he, I think he was, I don't, I can't, I don't know. Don't, don't quote me. I don't know the history of the project that well, but I think he was the first guy to produce a triple recessive and he, and he produced two of them.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Or three, or three of them that year. Justin had bought one, Mutation Creation had bought the other one up here in Canada, and then he apparently kept the other. And ever since I saw that snake in 2018, I was like, obviously blown away. I was like, wow, this thing is so cool. And I know G-stripe is like, it's hard to work with and it overpowers a lot of stuff and, and so I get all that. But I, I think there is an avenue there to be explored. There's been so little that's been done with it. So I, when Justin had that snake, I was like, [ __ ] like, absolutely, like this will propel me to, to where I want to go so much quicker. Now that I've got all these, like, you know, you fast forward many years from when I started, I have a lot more breeders. I have a lot more genetics at at disposal so I can, you know, plug and play different things. And, um, you know, his, his first clutches dropped and Justin was selling the same snake for $6,000. And, uh, you know, so, and that's before I even produced anything, right? Like I had nothing, uh, to show for it in that time from the value. And, yeah, the argument is, yeah, but you still have the animal, you can take it, you can put other things, try to build value back. But, you know, it's, it's going to be an uphill battle. And so now I don't look at it from a financial standpoint, I just look at it from the project standpoint. It's like, I still want to make cool stuff with it. And.

>> Yeah, you got to.

>> But in, but in hindsight, if I could go back, I wouldn't have bought it. I wouldn't have spent that kind of money on that because he was selling DG G-stripe pet clowns for, you know, $6,500 to $7,000. That was probably a better investment given all of my females were visual clowns than spending 35 like I went from $7,500 or $7,000 to $35,000 for one visual gene. Yeah.

>> Wasn't good value. That was not good value. That was really stupid. And I see people still doing that [ __ ] today. Like, you know, if I put out a Super Chocolate DG Hypo Clown, do I think that's worth 20 grand, 30 grand? Yeah, maybe. Because Super Chocolate is basically like a recessive. That's a quad animal, right?

>> Exactly.

>> But, but you know, going out and spending, if, if somebody is offering a DG Xanthic Head Clown for five, but they want 30 for the triple, that that extra there, it's, it's not good value. You know what I'm saying? So, I just, that would be one thing that I would turn around and redo if I could. But at the end, I still have them and, um, I'm working it. Unfortunately, this year I'm going to rename my business to JP All Male Reptiles. I don't know what's going on, but, uh, yeah. So, um, you know, just try to pivot, try to look, look, I don't have all the answers. You ask a million questions about the industry and the market. I don't have all the answers. I am, I am taking what's going on at face value like everybody else, and I am trying to adapt to the new reality just like everybody else. And I'm, and I'm trying to make decisions within my collection to, uh, offset that. I think at the end of the day, the only real good piece of advice that I could give to anybody listening is, if you are involved in ball pythons and you're trying to make a business out of it, your number one priority should be, how do I get my overall life and operational expenses down to the absolute lowest it possibly can be so that I can actually weather these storms? That's the only real piece of advice I can give you.

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Hypo Puzzle King.

>> So, a lot of people. Wait, first of all, big shout out to the sponsors, man. Really appreciate y'all. Uh, y'all definitely go check out everything they offer, man. Give them follows, give them hollers, buy some animals. Buy some animals. So, a lot of people get upset, uh, when people say things about the industry like in terms of talking about like some of the things like things slowing down, like some of the challenges and stuff like that. Why do you think that is?

>> Uh, I just think people are, are. So, you got to think about it like I told you that story behind the scenes. One of my customers that bought a snake from me, um, during COVID. I haven't spoke to him in a couple of years now, but the last time I have spoken to him, he fell on some rough times. Like, I guess he must have leveraged his home. Um, which before everybody goes in the comments and starts making fun of this guy, like, look, you know, everybody was sold the dream. Everybody was spending big dollars during COVID. Like, we shouldn't [ __ ] on those people because whether it's you setting up a pizza shop or opening up a factory or starting whatever business you want to start online, or every business that an entrepreneur wants to start requires risk, right? And the reality is, is less than 10% of businesses that start ever amount to success. So, it's not, it's not something that's just in our industry. This is like business in general 101. Is a lot of businesses that start fail before they even get off the ground. And we shouldn't make fun of those people because at the end of the day, they wanted to take the risk and make the leap. I really hate, like, there's other podcasts out there where they're constantly flaming people who quote unquote are making these bad decisions. Like, it, look, this is not new information. People mortgage their houses and start businesses all the time. Guy wants to open up a pizza shop on the corner of, uh, Central Street in New York. He's gonna mortgage his house, right? You know what I mean? Like, the other day, let's not make fun of those people. So, I just wanted to put that out there. Um, anyways, he had leveraged his home and was, I guess, fell on some hard times. The market took a complete swing. They ended up having to sell his house. I think he's got, he's got two kids, I think. And him and his wife and his kids had to move into an apartment and they're completely [ __ ] right now. Like, from, from what I, and I haven't heard from him since. I hope he's okay. And so, this is like a reoccurring story. And going back to your question, I think the reason why people don't want to talk about these things is because so many people are so heavily invested that they don't want to accept the reality. They want to live in this utopian world and blow smoke and pretend like everything is hunky dory. And, you know what, for some people, it probably is. You know, guys like Justin are always going to be successful. He, from what I understand, he's, he's really improved and grown his exposure to the overseas markets. So, Japan and Asia, those contacts, he's able to offset the losses here and, and pick up sales there. And so, there's, there's some guys that will still do well. But I think, I think overall, that's just part of the reason why people don't want to talk about it is just because they're just so heavily invested, they just don't want to accept the reality. And this is not to be negative. Don't get me wrong. I still love what I'm doing. I still have a lot of really cool projects that I'm working on. I, one specific rack in my, in my facility, I call it the Tower of Power. I stole that from Alex Warren in the Green Tree world because he has a Green Tree rack on his videos that he calls the Tower of Power. But it's like, this is my most, these are my best animals that I have, and I produced every single one of them. They're all smashing food. This rack is going to outperform my entire facility. Like, I can't wait to get that going next year. So, there's a lot of excitement. But I also, as much as I'm still excited, and I still look for ways to keep myself motivated, I am not going to dismiss reality either. Because if you constantly dismiss reality as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, your job is to, yes, stay motivated, motivate those around you, build sales, but you also have to be willing to accept reality so that you can make better decisions and make pivots in your business to keep it running. If you just want to keep blowing smoke all the time and ignore everything and pretend like everything is fine, you're potentially not addressing real concerns that you should be addressing to further allow yourself to stay in the industry longer. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

>> That makes sense. Perfect sense.

>> So, I am not, I am not living off the negativity. I still have a lot of positive stuff that I'm excited for, but I am still open to hearing the negativity so that if there's something that I can identify that needs to be changed, I can make the change.

>> That makes perfect sense. Uh, do you think, let's just call it protectionism. Do you think there's a bit of like protectionism, whether that's like self-preservation like for your respective business or maybe industry preservation? Do you think a little bit of that bleeds into why, uh, that people kind of come out and attack people when they start talking about the industry?

>> Possibly. I, I do think there's a little bit of like, it's, it's a fine line because there's, there's some, there's a lot of people out there that know how bad things are. They're experiencing these, these hardships, and the last thing they want to do is go to a show where they're finally getting out of the house and getting social and just want to forget about all the BS and just go out and have a good time with their friends and have food and have drinks and just talk about projects and just get that, that fire back. And meanwhile, everybody at the table is [ __ ] on the game, right? Like, there's a little bit of that. So, it's like, where's the balance? You got to find a balance where you have to be willing to be open and receptive to the problems, but you also, you don't want to be around it 24/7, especially when you're looking for a place to go to get away from it.

>> Yeah.

>> Just get happy again and just be constantly bombarded with it. So, I think there's a, there's a fine line there. I think, I think there's a little bit of protectionism for sure. There's, there's a little bit of blowing smoke going on. Some people that are just like, you know, huffing and puffing and, and, and making this cloud. But I also think there's a little bit of just some people are just like, [ __ ] man. My life has got a lot harder over the last couple years. I don't need to hear about it 24/7. I just want to, you know, go to Tinley and I just want to meet up with some friends that I haven't seen in a couple years and just want to get some food. I don't want to hear about the BS. I don't want to hear, I don't want to think about me not being able to make sales and, uh, you know, me. So, there's a little bit of that and I don't, there's a fine line there, right? You got to, there's a balancing act.

>> Yeah, I agree with that 100% as far as like the balancing piece of it. Um, I feel like, and with anything, you really kind of, you got to balance, right? You can't just like focus on all the good. You can't just focus on all the bad. Like, like what comes to mind for me is like, like a SWOT analysis, right? So you're looking at something and you're looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So you're kind of like looking at a full, like gamut of things. And each one of those, uh, kind of different things that you're looking at, like they have their own utility in, in the analysis that you're doing. But you want to do a more holistic an analysis. So you can't have blinders on for the bad. You can't just be all enamored with the good, or you can't just be dismissive of some of the bad. Like, all that stuff has to factor into it. I'm not trying to say this like I'm perfect at doing this, and I, I'm not even saying I do a great job at doing this, but that's what it is, and that's my view.

>> Yeah. So, and that's why like, you know, I, I, I've been labeled it. I've, I've, one of my relationships with a friend has gone sour because, um, you know, there was a lot of negativity talk with the industry. It was like, every day we would talk, it was like, [ __ ] this, [ __ ] that, this sucks, this sucks, this is [ __ ] like, [ __ ] these things, all this stuff. And it's just like, okay, when it, when it's to that extent, it, it drags you down when you're trying to stay positive. But at the same time, I, I still want to keep my, you know, ears up, you know, like a fox listening to what's around me because I need to know. I need to know that, you know, for example, um, I could come on this podcast and say, "Fuck pies. Pies suck. They don't sell." It's true. Pies were the first crash in my business. Historically, when I first started, pies were the first thing to sell. Combo pies, this and that. They were great. Now, it could be a [ __ ] 10 gene pie and, you know, will not sell for more than $500 bucks. And even then, I have to auction it. Okay, we could sit here and just go on about how like [ __ ] pies are this just [ __ ] It's like, no, I'm not trying to be negative about it, but I was receptive to that information to where this year I barely bred any because at this, at the end of the day, what is the use of me sitting on 30 animals that I have to clean and feed and spend money on that they don't sell, right? So, you have to be receptive to some negativity so that you can make decisions in your collection that will help you offset the hardships. If you are just one of those guys that's just like, I said, I, I see it all the time, man. There's, there's one specific guy on Instagram every day. It's almost like he's trying to overcompensate and prove something because every day he has to post a picture of 30 boxes of animals he's shipping out. But we don't know if those are retail. We don't know if they're going to pet stores. We don't know if they were $50 a snake. If they're all normals. It's just he's trying to create the illusion that he's super successful. Like that's a little over the top to me, right? Because it's like, bro, you're not fooling nobody. You're not fooling anybody. This is probably all [ __ ] wholesale. Um, but yeah, so it's just like I said, it's a balancing act for me. The last couple years has been really just, you know, paying attention to what is really going on, keeping the blinders open and not pretending like everything is utopian. But I'm also trying not to live in nothing but negativity because I still think as far as, you know, financially, maybe not as much, but from a project standpoint, I still have a lot of things that I want to produce and I'm really excited to produce, right?

>> Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Like I was earlier, man, it's the, it's really the projects that that that motivates you at the end of the day. I mean, the money obviously you want to make your money back. You've invested a lot of money in this and, and kind of all those things and you have to make money, uh, to cover overhead, cover costs because this isn't cheap like by any stretch of the imagination. But the thing that's most exciting to me is the projects and that's what I think about more often than not is just like, all right, so where am I at with this project or what can I do with this? What can I do with that? Like that's the part that I kind of like, I focus on, especially like when sometimes like stuff in other spots not going as well.

>> Yeah. Exactly. And you know, I love this comic. Could be empty boxes. It probably is empty boxes. I know he ain't producing a 100 snakes a day, bro. Like, there's something weird going on here. Um, so I, I just, I don't like what I'm trying to say, uh, is I don't like nothing like pure negativity. Like one guy made a comment about the Tinley that I didn't go to Tinley because at the end of the day, everything that I do has a monetary dollar associated to it and it has to be a payoff. And, uh, for me to invest $2,000 to go to a show for a weekend when it's not really going to translate much for my business at this very moment when I'm super big online, it just, it wasn't worth it to me to go. Um, but outside of that, there was one guy that made a comment about how like, you went to Tinley, everybody was, a lot of people were super negative. And like, I get it, man. And I get it like, you, you things are hard. You're at home. Like, there's, there's a mental health aspect to this as well, right?

>> Oh yeah, thousand percent.

>> You know, nobody talks about this. And again, people on other podcasts are [ __ ] on people for this. I've been through, uh, at least two bouts of depression since I've been in, in this industry. And it's not because of the industry or the market and this and that. It's, you know, being at home. If you're an introvert, this doesn't apply to you. But if you're like me where you're a huge social butterfly and you love interactions and people, I was in sales for, you know, a decade, right? I love people. I love just talking and that's what I do. And being home for the last six years, you know, in complete isolation, uh, running my business and just doing the same every day. It's the same thing. I wake up, I take my daughter to the bus, I put on my headphones, come back, make a coffee, put my headphones on, go out in the facility, which is my garage, and start cleaning snakes. I've got my laptop or my TV. I put a movie on. I just, I've literally watched every single show and movie on Netflix. You, I'm not even kidding. Like, I've been through that entire playlist, right? And I'm going for round two now, starting from the beginning. I don't know how many times I've watched that dumb movie, Twilight, right? Because it's on Netflix and it comes up on my recommended movie list. So, it's like, it's just running in the background five times. I can recite the whole Twilight movie. It's not proud of that. It's not something I'm proud of. Okay. But being in complete isolation, you know, and it's like, okay, go out and do things. Go to, bro, the last time I went out, it was, uh, early or late spring. I, I. So, I've got fans. The the rodents are actually a bigger problem than the snakes because the rodents produce so much body heat.

>> That if you don't have fans running and AC running in there, and even if it's just a moderately cool day, that building, it's 11 by 7, it's going to overheat and get all sweaty. [ __ ] tell me how I'm gone. I'm gone for one night. I go visit some family in the big city. We go stay at my, uh, at the in-laws and I come back. Power went out. Fan didn't restart. The entire rack of soft growouts where I've got a hundred of them in each bin, all dead.

>> Right. And soft are not like racks, dude, where you can just rebound your rat colony within a couple, within six weeks. Soft, eight months to get the wheels running on soft. So that was like, I was so. It's like you can't even go places because you have so, every time something bad happens, it's when you're not home. So you're like, you're home all the time. You're high yourself for six years. Some, like I said, some people thrive in that. I don't. So, there's a little bit of like mental health there. Like, it's very difficult. I know every ounce of every wall. I, I run through the entire Netflix playlist. I do the same thing every day. And it affects my relationships. It affects my relationships with my kid, with my wife, with my family, you know, because you're just like, you're just, I, I feel like I'm in isolation 24/7. And I, it's not, it's very difficult for someone like me to thrive in. And there's some, there's some of that in the industry, too, that we shouldn't, we should be more willing to not make fun of these people, but we should also be willing to reach out. I think there's, we live in this world now with social media where everybody is just kind of like out doing their thing. And I don't know, I, I feel like if, if you, not saying you can call me, but I'm saying if you are somebody and you know somebody in the industry that you talk to and you know they are a social bird, do yourself a favor. Do them a favor. Maybe just send them a message or give them a call once a week. Just call them 10, 15 minutes on the phone. Just say, "Hey man, I just want to see what you're up to. What are you doing in the facility today? How's your projects running?" I know that we're all busy. We have lives. But something as simple as as that contact can really lift spirits and that collectively can help each other motivate each other to, you know, continue forward. I, I, you know, so for me, it's like, yeah, I, I welcome every phone call or DM or whatever and get through through the day because I feel like it's a bit of a social network and it helps with my mental health. Right.

>> Yeah. I don't understand like why people even try to clown people who having mental ill health issues because at the end of the day, I feel like each and every one of us has some sort of mental health issue. It might vary in like what you're going through, the extremity of it might vary in kind of like all those other different things, but at the end of the day, we all got like things that we have to like work through and cope with and just trying to be like all bravado and like, ah, that that guy, he's, he's an idiot or just just all that crazy [ __ ] You know, you know what I'm saying?

>> Yeah.

>> That's crazy. Like, there's, there's no point. And you also create an environment to where, uh, it makes it tougher for people to actually like express how they feel and be willing to, uh, disclose information or reach out or talk to somebody about it. Like, you never know how much a conversation can help somebody get through something just because you took the time to say something to them. Like, you never know like the impact your words might have on somebody. And I'll be honest with you, it has a major impact on me. One of the things that I look forward to the most is my dump runs. You know, taking all the rat, I fill up the back of my truck and I get, I go to the dump twice a week. And on the drive to the dump, I stop and get a coffee at the coffee shop. I try to call a couple, not everybody picks up all the time, but like the one person that picks up the phone that is willing to have a, you know, 20-minute phone conversation with me is shooting the [ __ ] that in itself could give you a week's worth of motivation, right? And, um, so I just think, I just think there's a lot of mental, and this is why you see some guys online right now just just going loopy with their stories and their attacks and stuff. And think about it like, you're, they're home alone all day cleaning snake [ __ ] you know, no, in complete isolation, not, you know, and the pressures of the industry financially and the market and all this stuff. Like that's a, that's a heavy weight to carry around, right? So something as simple as a, as a phone call or some interaction with somebody like this, to me, with you, you and I talking, this is the first time I've had like a conversation with somebody like this, God knows how long. Like, I love this. I'm gonna go to bed and sleep well tonight, man. Thank you.

>> Hell yeah.

>> I'm super excited.

>> I'm glad it's been a clutch conversation.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I just wanted to touch on on the mental health a little bit because I, nobody really talks about it.

>> I think there's.

>> I think there's a lot of people struggling right now with everything going on and I just think that we all should, if we can, just take five minutes out of our day and just collectively try to reach out to one another and just keep that communication open and just see if we can, you know, somehow touch somebody in a positive way. And it gets me through the day and it gets me motivated to continue. And I also think there's, you know, we can, this is a whole another, I don't know how much time you have, but I can go on a whole another topic. Let's go.

>> Like I was thinking too, like don't be afraid to also experiment a little bit. So, if you've been following me, I picked up some different species as of late. I've got, uh, right behind me here, that's my first rack. I've painted that wall, but the white wall. All of my new focus cube enclosures are coming in. So, all of these Green Tree Pythons are going to be on display in the next 30 days.

>> Nice.

>> Um, so, yeah, I've got, I've got nine Green Tree Pythons. I'm super excited about. Um, I picked up two different pairs of tree monitors. I absolutely, tree monitors. Look, if there's one species that I can tell anybody to get, even if you don't want to breed something else, just the intelligence and the interactability of monitor lizards is bar none. They are the best. They see you, they make eye contact with you, they look at you, they, they know you, they, they're so interactive. I mean, those, those tree monitors bring me so much joy. And I think that, you know, don't be afraid to experiment. A lot of us ball python guys are really stuck on this ball python mentality, but I also think there's a little bit of ball python fatigue. Like, if you go to shows, you know, I remember growing up as a kid when I used to go to a reptile show, you could go to a reptile show, you could see all kinds of different stuff between geckos and lizards and, and birds of prey and things. Now the shows are just like 99% ball pythons, right? There's a bit of fatigue there in terms of like what you're seeing all the time. So don't be afraid, like if you are one of these guys watching this podcast and you're going to, you guys are a phenomenal states. You have all these different shows to your disposal. Look, if, if you could, you know, Herp Time, Herp Time got some really cool different species of anoles, uh, sundowning cola with the tree monitors, green tree guys. Even if you just get a little bit of exposure outside of the ball world where you could set up a small little display on your table with your ball pythons of something different, the amount of attention that'll bring to your table because it's different. At the same time, you might get a lot of joy out of just working with something else that's a little bit more delicate, that requires a little bit more thought to. And, yeah, so I think just, I'm experimenting a little bit and divesting a little bit. And I think, you know, don't be afraid to do that. I think everybody should should be willing to to do that as well.

>> Hell yeah.

>> Strategy, strategy to deal with with the whole isolation thing.

>> I assume at some point you're going to want to breed the Condros.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the Condros, I'm really big on. I'm super big on the Condros. I love the game. I love how you know, like, look, ball pythons are cool. But when I went to visit Arix Arborals, Ellie Max Arborals, that's Socrates in Florida.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. When I went to his place, man, like something, something lit for me. Like it just changed my life when I walked in. Like, you walk into his garage, all these beautiful cages, glass sliding doors. Every animal is on display. You can see them. They're not in tubs. Like when I go to Justin's place, yeah, that's cool, but it's like, you, you stare down this Uline style [ __ ] warehouse where it's just wall to-wall of stainless steel, right? So, when you walk into a room full of stainless steel, like my garage, or like his facility, like most of us, or you walk into a guy's place like Socrates where it's just display animals and you're like, "Holy shit." And they're all so pretty.

>> They're beautiful snakes. They're on a perch. And it's like, you know, they're looking at. Make the argument, "Well, you can't handle them." Look, not everything needs to be handled, right? Like, some things are just so majestic and pretty by nature that they are just, I'm happy to just look at them, to admire them, right? And so I'm, I was so excited to to see that. And it's kind of like this vision of mine that I want to get, uh, this is my office down here. It's still, you know, I'm doing some paint work and changing some things up, but if I can get the whole wall behind me with just all displays, I like when I come down here at night and I go on my computer or whatever and I look behind me and all these animals are on displays, I think it's just like the visual appeal of it is great. The other thing I love about Condro is it's, uh, you don't need anywhere near as many animals. You know, like the average Condro breeder who is doing very well in this climate, they're sitting on 20 snakes, right? So there's, there's, there's many Condro guys are sitting on 20 snakes that are doing better than I am with 500 snakes. And to you, what sounds better? 500 animals and 6,000 rats, or 20 Condro and, you know, a bag of frozen rats in the freezer?

>> That's the easy one.

>> You know what I mean? I'm not trying to say like we should all go to Condros. I'm just saying this is something that I'm really excited to bring on to JP Reptiles and just do alongside my balls and, um, the display thing and, and I just, you know, just like I said, going to Socrates's place and seeing all that and just, I spent the whole day with him, the whole day. Took me out to a nice restaurant afterwards, a Greek restaurant.

>> Nice.

>> In Fort Lauderdale. And, uh, yeah, it changed my life, man. It changed my life. It's, I think a lot of us ball python guys, we, we have these blinders on that we don't realize the the bigger scope of the reptile industry, all these cool different species, um, all these different rare animals, these, we, we kind of lose sight of why we all like reptiles to begin with, which is bringing something into your home from a different part of the world that you may never ever get to visit or see, right? And I think there's so many cool species out there that, you know, bring a lot of attention that can also help motivate you to stay motivated. And if, if you have the opportunity to expand a little bit into something different along with your balls, I think it's, it's a very positive thing. So, I would say don't, uh, don't, don't shy away from it. There's a lot of success to be had, a lot of fun to be had in other species.

>> Absolutely. I know it's hard to really predict the future, but do you see yourself like ever like shifting away from like ball pythons and like more focusing on like Condro only or making like, right now, uh, obviously ball pythons is most of what you do, but maybe that ratio kind of flips? Do you ever see that happening?

>> Um, so, I, I think the answer is yes. Um, the, I don't want to just, I'm not going to come out here and say like, you know, I would love to become a Condro breeder and shift everything because there's a lot of challenges that this is what makes the Condro market so healthy. This is why Condros have been so stable and steady in their pricing. Like, if you were to chart a 20-year graph, like a stock market of Condros, and you would compare that to a ball python graph, the Condros would be like a very slow but gradual increase year over year over year for 20 years. Ball pythons is like [ __ ] gas prices, right? One day up, one day down. Who the [ __ ] knows? Everything's sideways. All the fugazi. You don't know what the hell's going on, right? Um, so that stability is, is in part the reason for that stability and that strength and that health of that market is because not everybody can do it. You know.

>> There's barriers to entry, really.

>> There's barriers to entry. They are more difficult to breed. There's a lot of problems that can be associated with, like, I, I picked up, uh, four new Neos in the spring. Uh, one died to a prolapse. The other one had to be assisted for eight weeks, and another one just prolapsed two weeks ago. Right.

>> And there's a huge amount of money on the line with those four animals. So this was like, there's some, there's some inherent issues there. But, but at the same time, any species that is more difficult to breed, that takes longer to breed, that requires more effort and more planning and more knowledge. These are the types of animals that will hold significantly more value much longer because unlike ball pythons, a six-year-old can go and buy three Freedom Breeder racks and, you know, 44 in each, 88, you get 150 ball pythons on on one 30-foot wall. In that same 30-foot wall, you could have at most 15, 20 Condros, right? So, 20 snakes versus 150. So the quantity is much lower. Uh, so they're, they're harder to breed. So anyways, what I'm trying to say is, there are some issues there, but that also, that's a positive, you know? Like when people talk about how like, like MJ's podcast is great for Condro because he talks about, you know, everybody that that gets into Condro gets their licks, you know? They get their, they will get their licks. If not immediately, at some point they'll lose some animals, they'll have a lot of prolapses, they'll have some issues. There's just issues. But I look at that as as a positive because those licks is what keeps things at a slow pace. And when you keep things at a slow pace, they just, they last much longer. Whereas ball pythons, with shed, I said it from day one, shed testing is great on the surface, but it's going to kill the industry in the long term because you're removing all guesswork. What normally would take four or five years for people to prove out and work towards, now they can just get the answers on day one and get rid of all the stuff right away. So that is just going to increase, like, just exponentially increase the speed at which we can barrel through this project development. If you take away all the guesswork, bad overall long term, in my opinion.

>> I still do the shed testing because I have to be, I have to adopt it because everyone's adopting it.

>> But I don't think it's good for the health of the industry because it just, when you speed things up, the faster it goes, the faster things become relevant. It's not like that with Condro. So anyways, going back to your question, I would say if there is a path for me one day to become successful at breeding Condros, having a a nice-sized collection and having great animals, I would say the answer is yes. Not because I want to make more money or I think they're going to make more money or this. It's nothing to do that. For me, it's the work, right? I am going to be 40 in two years. By the time I'm 50, in 10 years from now, I don't want to be cleaning cages for, you know, 500 ball pythons and, and taking care of 5,000 rats. That's the last thing I want in my 50s. I want to, my daughter's going to be older. I'm going to want to do activities and sports with her. I'm going to want to travel. I'm gonna like, I can't leave my house right now.

>> I can't even go on a camping trip, right?

>> With Condros, if I got 20 snakes that only need to be fed once every three weeks, I can go anywhere. I can do whatever I want, right? Um, so there's, there's going to come a time where the amount of work associated with the balls, it just won't make sense anymore. And if there's a path to to be as successful or more with something that requires far fewer animals and a lot less, uh, time investment and work, I am, I'm all for it. I'm absolutely all for it. And I just, I love them. I just think, you know, like that one, I don't know if you watch my Instagram, I, I post the one, I, one of the ones I bought is turning out to be an absolutely insane animal. Like insane animal. I got so lucky with that. Um, Socrates told me that out of all of the babies in that clutch, it's the best looking one so far outside of the two that he held back. And so I got, I got really lucky. And every day I, as soon as I come back from dropping my daughter off the bus, make my coffee, before I even go out to the balls, I come downstairs and I check on it. I just want to see it again every day. They're so pretty, man. I love these things. And I just, I know there's, I know there's some tough times ahead with how difficult they are to breed and, and, and stuff, but I, I just think that.

>> And get them and how difficult they can be to get established too, like the Neos.

>> Yeah. But I, I've watched some different videos. I've talked to some different Condro guys, you know, like some people will do like the whole like scenting the prey with the chick down and just, you know, doing that thing like for 10 minutes trying to get each baby to eat. There's actually one guy, he's a well-known, the reptile perch, David Brahms, he, one of the podcasts he did was he said he doesn't waste his time. Like if, if a Neo is hatched, if it.

Doesn't eat within the first couple of days after it's like shed, he'll just assist feed it immediately. Get it going. Like don't don't sit there and wait. And I've actually adopted that same mentality with a ball pythons. Every once in a while, you get ball pythons that come out of small legs. They're not super strong, not super, you know, like they're not like the rest. They need a little bit of help. And it's like I don't I don't why wait why wait to watch the animal wither. I just intervene right away.

>> How long do you assist feed?

>> Usually with with animals that hatch from tiny eggs or that are just underweight or maybe they didn't absorb all their yolk properly. Usually once or twice they're they're firing. They're good to go.

>> I guess a better way to ask that question. I I probably asked that in a bad way, but like do you have a limit? Like are you only going to give like three or four? Are you gonna get like five or six? Like,

>> no. No. So, so I actually I I wanted to prove this theory out for myself. Um, because there are some people out there that produce so much that they're like, you know what, if it's a shitty animal, it's going in the freezer, right? Whereas, when you're a smaller producer like me, every animal matters. You want to try to keep everything alive because I don't produce as much, right? So, I hatched it was the smallest ball python I've ever hatched in my life. This was uh the start of uh this was mid 2023 or end of 2023.

>> It was like 18 grams.

>> Oh wow.

>> 20 something.

>> No man. Tiny little egg had no yolk. It didn't absorb any yolk. It looked like a hollow pencil. Uh and I was like I want to see what will happen because some people claim that a snake that hatches like that is never going to amount to anything special. And some people say that they will all eventually catch up. I wanted to figure it out for myself. So, I kept it alive. I assist fed it the two days after it came out of its egg before it even h before it even shed. I started assist feeding it right away. Right away. I assist fed that snake for I think it was like five months. It was a long time. That snake is still here today. And that snake was way behind in size and weight to everything else. There was two other siblings from that clutch that I kept back way behind. The first year was rough. Second year it started to really take off and smash. I could I'll send you a picture after the podcast. That snake is still here. That 18 gram snake is the same size if not bigger than the two siblings. It is huge. It's huge. It's eats all the time and it's just it's going to be a phenomenal snake. Like beautiful female. I think she's almost 3,000 grams now.

>> Oh wow. 2023. Yeah.

>> Have you just

>> was that

>> you've been pairing her up?

>> I'm going to pair her up for the first time this year.

>> Gotcha.

>> Uh so I just I wanted to try it. I wanted to see like like I'm not saying every animal is going to be like that, but I think some animals if you put the time into them like if you're willing to sit there and put the time and and get them going, they they eventually they come around. And that's what David Braum said on his podcast was that, you know, for him it's like if if they're fly if they're runners, have you ever heard the the expression runners with green trees?

>> Uh, no.

>> Some babies just come out like where they're afraid of their own shadow. They have one of no interest. As soon as they see a rodent, they'll like take off. They'll they'll jump out of the tub. They'll fly in the air like a flying snake. He was like those runners. I mean, right away mouse goes in the in the mouth and it gets it fed and he's and he was like after two or three times usually it just starts eating on it. So it's good to go. So I I and I've adopted the same principle. I've I've been doing this with ball pythons for the last, you know, four years now. If you don't eat within a week after your first shed, I'm not saying I'm shoving the rodent down its throat. There's a difference between force feeding and assist feeding. Most of these animals, if you just put the roa in its mouth, it'll sit there wondering what the hell's going on for about five minutes and eventually it'll start eating it on its own, right? And they just they take off and they take off right away. I I don't f I don't find a need I don't want to sit there and wait and watch my snakes wither, especially at such a young age. They need those calories. The reason why I get so many praises from customers, especially in the US, uh, you know, you guys have a real problem in the US with maintenance feeders.

So many of so many of your breeders down there because times are tough. They can't afford the rodents. These snakes are coming in six months old at 100 grams. Like that happened to me last year. Um, I'm like, [ __ ] man. I don't do that. I feed all of my hatchlings every four or five days, small meals. Get the C. They need the calories. They need those calories early on in their life. And especially when you've got the heat, the belly heat up to 88, 89 at the back of those tubs, they're burning through those because you think about it, a a a fuzzy or a pinky mouse or softer is like it's like a bag of milk. There's not a lot of meat there. There's not

>> they're going through that like Kool-Aid, right? So, I feed them and I I get them started immediately. If they don't need, I feed them every four or five days. I get customers that send me like like literally praises because they'll they'll buy a snake from me. It's eight months old and the snake's,200 grams, right? Because I just I feed them. So, um I don't do any of that maintenance feeding stuff. I my point that I was going back to with all that talking is, uh, you know, I get things started. If they don't want to eat right away, I get them started immediately. I don't wait. I just get things moving, get get the ball rolling, and they all start smashing. And I think that's part of the reason why I've had so much success with growing babies that's, you know, so healthy, so strong, and so thick so quickly is because of, you know, my intervention.

>> So your ones that you assist feed once you get them feeding on their own, if they go back off food, will you go back to assist feeding if it's taking too long or will you just kind of say, "Hey,

>> they never do." I I would say they never do. Like I said, the all of the all of the animals that now this is I should I should preface this by saying if a snake comes out with a of its egg with a massive belly, it absorbed all of its yolk, it's fat, it's thick, it shed a week later and it's still thick and strong. Like I look at it, I feel it. If it's got really good body weight, there's no need, right? But if a snake is is after a week of uh going through it shed cycle has absorbed its yolk, its belly is a little bit sunken in, it looks a little bit thin, like those are the snakes I intervene right away. And usually one or two of those interventions, they're they're flying. They're taking off. Never have to do it again. Never.

>> Gotcha.

>> Like I said, not not force feeding, just putting it in his mouth, closing his mouth on it so the teeth get in its body and let the snake do the rest. Got it. Cool. So, uh obviously a different time right now getting into the industry than it was uh when I got into the industry, which was like right at it was 2020, so co and all that kind of good stuff. So, definitely a different strategy and whatnot now than. What would you say would be like some keys for someone to get into the game right now and be successful or set themselves up to be successful? That's like asking, you know, Elon Musk, what would you do today if we took away your entire net worth and your wealth and we said you had to rebuild that same empire? Where would you start from? It's like some of his luck, man. Like, I don't know. I don't know what I would do. It's just the the positive today over when I got in is everything has come down in price so substantially that the the quality of animals you can buy for a fraction of the price. It's like night and day difference, right? You you come in

>> with $100,000 today, you can start a freaking nice collection. But in order for you to do that,

>> you have to be confident that things are going to significantly improve in terms of overall health or just, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't even have to be financially driven. Some people just have a lot of money, right? I know a guy in Florida is super wealthy. Um, super super wealthy and uh, you know, he bought a whole bunch of he spent like $250,000 on ball pythons. He's got a million dollars in cars in his driveway like in three cars, right? Um, you know, he's lives in this [ __ ] multi-million dollar mansion. Like insane. This guy's rich beyond belief. I didn't realize people could live like that.

>> I envy them. But he just spent 250 grand on balls because he just likes reptiles. He wants to breed snakes. He doesn't care about the money. So, if you're one of those guys that just has a bunch of disposable cash, you have a really good job, and you just want to breed for fun, like then it doesn't matter. Like, yeah, you just do whatever you want. But if you're if you're coming at the ball pythons for the sole purpose of wanting to build a business, which should be the wrong reasons, like you should have some reptile interest to, you know, trust me, everything is fun in games when you have 20 snakes. It was fun for me, right? When I first got in, I had 30 snakes and and h and half freedom breeder rack. I had like two tubs of software. Like everything was great. Right now I walk into my room every morning with my coffee and I'm like, "Oh, [ __ ] By the time I get back to the by the time I finish cleaning the last rack, it's literally the end of the week. I got to start over again and start at the beginning again."

>> Right? Like it's just like a neverending loop. So, if you don't have a basic foundation of reptile interest and love and you you eventually grow to that stage, you're going to hate life, right? It's a lot of work. And I'm not even a good example of that because I consider myself small. There are so many guys out there that have twice as many animals than I do. Can you imagine? There's some guys that have twice as many animals as I do that also work full-time. Guarantee their animals are not very, you know, in pristine condition like mine are. Like you go out there right now, you'll never find a [ __ ] in the tub, right? I'm very very OCD with my tubs. But that being said, uh, you have to love reptiles to get into this. Like don't get into this just for money. Um, but but if you do, just realize that your path that like if if if you are one of those people that's going to fall for this false dream that you look at Justin and his, you know, 10,000 foot home and these expensive Porsches, his [ __ ] car garage is probably worth more than my house, right? It's absolutely He probably has spent more money on just concrete. Have you been to his place?

>> Yeah. the amount of [ __ ] concrete around this guy's house and building. Like, we're talking probably a million dollars in [ __ ] just concrete, right? Everywhere. Like, if if you think that you're going to buy a bunch of ball pythons and that's the lifestyle that you're going to work towards, you're going to be so disappointed. And I'm not saying this to [ __ ] on your dream. I'm saying this because if you set the bar so astronomically high from the start and you never reach that bar or get close, you're going to get so demotivated so fast that you're going to fall into what we talked about mental health, depression. You're going to lose a lot of money. Your animals are going to suffer. Your sales are going to suffer. Everything is going to come crashing down. So don't set the bar that high and be realistic about expectations. What happened to Justin? If you actually talk to Justin about his story, you know, this guy told me for the first 10 years of his business, they lived I I remember that the first house they were in when he built his first facility. They had he has like five kids. There was three bedrooms. A couple of the kids shared bedrooms. Uh, one kid slept with them in their bedroom. They had this old little Honda Civic that they used as like a ratunner. They only had one car between the two of them. And he told me that for 10 years all he cared about was his expenses were X and that's all he needed. Right? If if I needed $3,000 a month to pay my mortgage and buy food and you know just the bare necessities then that's all I needed. And he operated like that for 10 years and 15 years into it the perfect storm happened. You know things were starting on the up. He developed the Batman and was transitioned to the Pompei and those two projects came out a couple of years before the COVID boom. And it's like one story that if you sit down with Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, all these guys, all these multi-millionaires, billionaires, when they go on podcast, they all say the same thing. Yes, there is a there's a factor of intelligence, creativity, all that stuff. But one of the number one contributors to overall success is luck. You have to be in the right place at the right time. and he was in the right place at the right time. He had developed two insane projects shortly before uh the whole COVID boom and most of his wealth came during that those two years leading up to COVID and during COVID, you know, like during co he was making $3 $400,000 a month from some figures that I heard, not from him. I didn't hear this from him. I said, I've heard this this story from other people. I don't know if it's true or not, but all I know is most of his wealth came in a very short window. And will that come back? Will that be will will this happen again? I don't know. Probably not, right? Who are we going to go through another pandemic in our lifetime like that where everybody gets free money and things explode?

>> Probably not. Hopefully not.

>> Yeah. So, all I'm saying is just to come into it with the right expectations. Don't think you're going to be driving GT3 RS's to the track and burning through $10,000 sets of tires every weekend because you're just racing it around the track for fun. Like, that's bro, this is this is a tough game. There's a lot of work. There's a lot of grind. It's there's there's some fun in it, but just set the right expectations. And, you know, don't don't just buy [ __ ] because you're buying [ __ ] Be methodical about it. You know, like if you tell yourself, how many animals do I can I handle with my life with my lifestyle? What's the max I can handle? Okay, if this is the number, if I can only have a 100 ball pythons, then don't have 50 projects on the go because you're not going to be able to develop them fast enough because you're spread out so thinly. If all you can have is 100 snakes, then pick three or four like really good your favorite projects and work that and just build around that. And um, and the other thing too is time. So the the biggest thing that I've learned from being in the ball pythons um is time. And I'll give you a perfect example. I would say probably about 40% of everything I've ever bought never amounted to anything special. 40% of the original 113 animals I bought over the course of 18 months never bred. They're [ __ ] eaters. Didn't do [ __ ] all. Some of them died. Like you know like we're talking about the confusion team, how that's been one of them I like I I will never buy at expressive confusion again. I'm just never going to happen. But, you know, 40% of that stuff just did not amount to anything. So, it's like, you know, some people fall into that trap like I did where it's like you buy 100 animals, you think you're going to be breeding 50 clutches in three or four years. Everything's hunky dory. That's not how it works, right? You're going to have several females go off food. You're going to have some females that never really turn out to be good. You have some females that give you slugs every year. You're going to have some females that just don't breed every year for you. You have some males that that stay thin and you can only breed them once a year because the moment they touch one female, they never want to eat again. It's happened to me I don't know how many times, right? Like there's so many variables. The success comes in time. And the reason why I say time is because what I'm learning now. It's just look, I started in 2018. We're now going in 20 uh 26. Okay? That's eight years going on seven, eight years here. The success comes from your collection being self-produced. This is the big secret, right? Every animal that I have produced myself that I have grown up myself has grown fast huge eats never fasts breeds well they are your best snakes not the ones you buy the ones you buy will never well there's exceptions to the rule but most of the time the ones you produce will be your best animals and what you want to build to get to a level like Justin for example what you want to build towards is eventually getting to a point where 90% of what's in your racks, you produced it yourself because then you know all their cycles. You know when they breed, you know their habits, they all eat really well. They all grow really well. And you you're producing clutch after clutch year after year. And it's just you're you're smoking it. And I'm I'm getting there. I would say 60% of my collection now is all self-produced. I still have quite a few stragglers of bought stuff, but I've I after next year that'll be over because I have 70 plus holdbacks that I've grown up myself that I'm going to be shifting into those racks. And everything those snakes are re are replacing are all of the snakes that I have bought that I still have left from their original acquisitions. And that's the secret. And that takes time. You cannot fasttrack that. Especially if you're doing 20, 30 clutches a year. It's going to take you half a decade, if not more, to eventually replace all of these these lowhanging fruit, these bad performing animals that you've spent money on and replacing it with stuff that you have produced. And it's it's not a knock on the breeders. It's just animals that are born in your facility and grow in your facility will always outperform animals that you're bringing in from somebody else's environment.

>> Yeah,

>> it's always like that. So, that's the huge secret is is getting to a point where most of your collection is self-produced. And that takes years, years, and years. And if if you're going out there tomorrow and you want to spend $100,000 and you think that you're going to fasttrack yourself into, you know, the stratosphere in a couple of years, man, you're going to be you're going to be in for a rude awakening. It's it takes it takes the better part of half, if not a full decade to really build a solid collection. Look at all of the best performers currently in the ball python market. What's one thing they all have in common?

>> Time. Time and again.

>> They've been around a long time. You know, call up Justin, call Will Banks, call uh even smaller guys like Royal Canadian Reptiles, Bob Vu, all these guys. Call them. Ask them how much of that stuff in your racks that's breeding is stuff that you bought. The number is going to be very small, but your best your best performance is going to come from animals that you breed yourself and you make. And that's the secret. Nothing's time if you don't have the time on your side. Especially don't get in the green trees if you don't have time on your side. You can't breed those things for five years. Right. So, I think that's that's one part that a lot of people miss out on is is they just don't realize that the huge time sync that is.

>> Yeah. And then with time being like such a big factor for you to like really get rolling rolling, um, a lot of [ __ ] can happen like between when you start and when you get to that point and

>> yep,

>> it can derail you. Totally. You know what I'm saying? Life happens, [ __ ] happens, and a lot of people get out before they can even get to that point.

>> This is this is uh one of the the big aspects that's keeping me motivated right now in the industry is because I'm so close. I am so close to officially moving out the last animals over the next 12 months. The the the last animals that I have that were all purchased will all be gone except for males. Like I I'll always buy males, but the females I want to I want to breed them myself. The females, it's my stock and I'm close. And I know like every single one of my tubs of animals that I've produced, they all smash. They all eat. They don't fast. They're great. And if they do fast, they're out. Right? If you spend the time and you build a collection of self-produced, top performing animals, and all of my best animals have tags on them, when they've bred, I know their cycle. If they bred last year in July, I know exactly when to start breeding them again. I know exactly how many clutches I'm probably going to be expecting from them. I know like it's just predictable at that point. So, if you can get 200 animals, females, that are all stuff that you have produced, you know, their cycles, they all eat. It's like it's like these videos. I I watched these videos. I watched this video on YouTube not long ago. Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but this guy was like talking about how important it is to change bedding and wash your snake, give it a bath, dawn dish after it laid eggs to get the scent off the snake so that it'll start eating it. I'm like, what [ __ ] rubbish is this guy? I don't wash any snakes. I don't take the bedding out. I don't even change the water dish until the next cycle at the end of the week, right? But all of my females start I literally will take you to my facility right now. Every snake that has dropped eggs from me this year have started eating again a week later.

>> Yeah. When I was watching like YouTube videos, I saw a bunch of people talking about washing the snakes off with done dish soap and stuff like that. And um Antoine from High Desert Pythons was like, "Man, I don't do that shit." So I stopped doing it and realized it didn't have like no effect because my girls doing the same thing they was doing when I was washing them. So I was like, "What the [ __ ] am I washing?"

>> My my breeders this year, so uh most of the stuff I bred this year was my own females that I grew up and produced myself, they are all smashers. You take those eggs away from them, within a day they're eaten again. And all of those snakes will be back up to weight, if not thicker than they were in 30 days or 60 days. like that though and but that is my point. My point is that you are keeping back and you're growing a colle initially you have to buy. You have to collect everything to produce but your goal is to over time filter out all of this purchased stuff for the exception of the very few that do do well. You replace everything with your stock that you've bred. They're all smashers. They all do great. They become predictable. They're on their cycle. And if you can eventually shift those hundred animals that you bought, those 100 females to a hundred females that you bred yourself that are your best snakes, you are going to be off to the races. And I'm so close. Like I'm so close to really breaking out because I am I am almost there. I'm almost there of just having fully self-produced females. And those are the every snake that drops 10 or eggs in my collection. Every snake that is 4,000 grams or more in my collection, they're are animals that I produce. They're not animals that I bought.

>> Nice. Nice.

>> Yeah. Sorry to go on so much. I just think

>> I just think nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about how how much of a an how much higher your business can go when you get to the point where most of your breeding females are animals that you produce yourself. It just completely changes the game. to look at Justin. That's why he's able to do 300 clutches a year.

>> Why do you think no one talks about it?

>> What's that?

>> Why do you think no one talks about it?

>> Because nobody talks about the time aspect of the game, right? And ball python people are wired and programmed to just speed, speed, speed, power feed our animals, get them as big as fat as we possibly can. We breed them every year. We don't give them It's like I don't know. Like I'm not trying to be an expert, man. I'm still learning. Like I don't want to listen. Take everything I say today with a grain of salt. I don't want anybody to go out and start putting out this podcast tomorrow saying, "This guy said this. Well, he's full of shit." Look, these are my experiences. Uh, one of the things I actually a customer was just messaging me now about it. Um, sent me a picture of this mail that he bought from me two years ago. He was like, "I haven't been feeding it very much because I was told that if you let your males get too big, they don't breed that well." And I'm like, "Who the [ __ ] told you that?" Like, bro, I feed my males like I feed my females. I have uh I think like 13 or 14 males right now that are over 3,000 grams or close. I have one on Warframe right now is 2,700 grams. Those are my best males, right? They can breed 20 females in a season and not lose body weight. But if I put a 900 gram or a 600 gram male to some female, after two he's done eating, he might die.

>> Right. And also the other thing is uh with males is uh time between breeding. This goes back to what I was saying is we are programmed to speed speed breed breed breed power feed this pushed males get them breeding at 400 grams. Go go go go go go go all the time. Bro, your my males that I have bred every year do not grow big. I have a fiery yellow belly chocolate clown male that was kept as a backup and I I've been plugging away year after year to females and he is like a pencil, right? But I have males that I haven't bred in two years that are approaching 3,000 grams. If if you give your males time, a year off or only a couple breedings in 12, 18 months, and you let them get back on food, you let them eat, you let them grow, they will grow, they will get big. I think there's a misconception out there that ball python males only in wild get 1,000 grams. That's not true. They only grow to a thousand grams in our collections because we're [ __ ] breeding them non-stop, right? And they get into these breed modes, they stop eating and they stay small and then they end up dying because they just they can't handle the load. But I'm telling you right now, my DG cl I still have him. The original DG clown male that I was telling you about that is 4,000 grams. Actually, he's 4287. I I can't even put him in with some females because if I put him in with a female, the female looks like a hatchling and she's 2500 grams. He's huge. That male I think uh two years ago I ran into 40 females as a starter.

>> Oh wow.

>> Never stopped eating. Never stopped. He was a machine, right? But he he also the years prior for a couple years he wasn't being bred because I was you he was just a backup. He had time. He had time to grow. He had time to get thick. he had time to get strong and um so we're just this ball python people. We're just programmed to like everything is speed this and that. Go go go go go go. And um you know we have these blinders on and we don't realize that if we just slow things down a little bit especially with like the males you know how do you solve that? If you have this really good male and it's like well I need his genetics. Well then maybe you should hold back two or three males in the project right breed one one year give them a year off. Take the next male try something different right? give them that time. Let them grow big. Let them grow stronger. Let them get bigger. And um so I think that's BS. I think it's in total BS that the big males to get lazy. My big males are not lazy. Maybe it's true. Maybe some people have big males that are lazy. Mine are not. Mine are great. In fact, I can I can't even rely on my small males. If I have a male that's under 1,000 grams, it's like everybody talks about, oh, I got to talk I got to plan out my breeding projects. I got to I got to write uh a list of what I'm going to breed this year. What list? What are you talking about? I'm going to make this huge list of all these breeding plans. I'm going to take these 800 gram males, put them in. Oh, they don't like this female. They're not going to breed. Or they'll breed that female once. They'll never touch her again. I got to put something else in there. Right? It's BS. But guess what? I take my 2700 gram or my 3,000 gram male that's on my shelf, put them in with tubs. I He's locked in 10 minutes. He's going to lock 10 more females. He's going to lock her every single time. He ain't going to give a [ __ ] If she's curled up in a corner, he'll move her. He'll get her to, you know, he'll get her to spread out and do his thing. He ain't he ain't up for that [ __ ] right? Like, so he's consistent. I can rely on him. But I can't I can't rely on uh the small males breeding and the ones that I can rely on, I don't even know if they're going to croak dead because they're gonna stop eating, right? So, it's just like the mindset, the mentality. I don't even know where we were started with with this whole like feed thing, but I just wanted to like highlight that that these are just little quirks that I've learned along the way is that just, you know, especially with the males, man, just give them time. Bre, let your males grow. Let them get big. Like, stop this nonsense of four or five, six months old male, put them in tubs, like give them a year and a half to get big, couple years. If you do breed them, give him a solid year after that. You know, work on a different project, give him time, and man, you're But but again, it's hard to do that because what did I say at the beginning of the podcast? Ball pythons is a numbers game. We don't care. We talked about it backstage about promoting bloodlines. We're so hyperfocused as breeders on genetics that we completely dismiss one of the more fundamental uh uh things that we should be focusing on, which is bloodline. Right? That DG clown mail I was telling you about, that's over 4,000 grams. By the way, if I talk too much, tell me to shut up. Carl stop.

>> No, you're good.

>> Okay. So, that 4,000 gram DG clown mail that I have, give an example. Um, he he is the original father to all of my super all my chocolate stuff, like my chocolate DJ clown, super chocolate DJ clown, eyeball. So, he fathered the heads. The female that was the mother to those heads was also over 4,000 grams. Um, I held back those heads. I grew them up. Every single one of those heads, all the girls bred in 18 months or less. Big clutches. They're all over 3,000 grams. Those females, they're huge females. They grew super fast and all of their offspring are massive. And he that original DJ climb that I still have, I don't use him anymore. I don't even know why I still have him. I probably should sell him, but he's just so [ __ ] big. I don't know. He's so cool. Like he's bigger than most of my girls, right? He's huge. But uh what took his place was my chocolate DG double head hypo clown which is what I use to make that super chocolate triple and all my pets. He is just as big. And the point of the story is the bloodline. You breed a big snake that eats like a rockar to another big snake that eats like a rock star. Guess what? You're going to make big [ __ ] snakes that eat like rock stars. If you breed a shitty animal that is thin, that is not good, that is not responsive, receptive, that came out weak, it's just not been a great animal, and you breed that, you are probably going to make some weak animals. Like we talked about, if LeBron James makes children with a seven foot uh woman, I'm telling you right now, none of his children are going to be my height at 5'9. It's just not going to happen. They're all going to be monsters, right? So, we we don't focus on bloodlines. We focus purely on genetics and it's all about uh speed, speed, speed. You know, breed, breed, breed. We don't care about this. We just want to what? He's 400 grams. He's got sperm plugs. Put him in. Let's get him going. Whatever. But I have kind of like shifted away from that also in my collection because I I this is one of the things I identified that, you know, because I can only have so many animals, I want to keep my collection fairly small. I want every animal to be a good animal. I want every I don't care. I care about genetics, but I'm not willing to waste 10 tub spaces on subpar snakes that are just, you know, going on the year-long fasts that don't do very well. Um, just because they're genetically good.

>> It's it's a waste of space because I'm never going to get a that sumi that I bought from I bought the very first Sumapi that was ever released in 2018. I paid $8,500 for it. You know how big it is today? It's 2018. It's still a thousand grams and it's never bred and it doesn't eat ever.

>> It was a female or male.

>> It was a female. The only reason why I still have that one is because I think it's a pretty snake.

>> She's still a thousand grams.

>> Yeah, man. That snake is dog [ __ ] Just dog [ __ ] But it's like imagine imagine if I was to like, okay, I'm going to put another five years into it. I will eventually get it to breed. What do you think the babies are going to be like from that that female?

>> It's going to be just like her.

>> They're gonna be just like her. They're going to be weak. They're going to be terrible.

>> Just like her.

>> Yeah. So, I have really just kind of like over the last couple years really put a lot of emphasis on just the bloodline, the overall strength. And this chocolate stuff, all of my chocolate stuff with DG has been like even my monarch girl, like my monarch girl is huge. So, these animals are the ones that I want to promote in my collection. And I want to promote more of the bloodline aspect of it. So that you know when I sell snakes to customers like how many times do you do you hear stories of people spending $10,000 on a snake and they get it and it's like oh it died or it didn't eat or it went on a here's fast never got eggs. It's because we're just cranking [ __ ] out. We're just we talked about it behind like I'm not an evolutionary biologist but I did study biology a little bit. I do watch a lot of like biology podcasts. We talk about evolution and natural selection. And in nature, weak animals, uh, nature takes them out of the equation because they have certain mutations within their DNA that causes them weakness in whatever aspect that they're weak in, whether it's food, size, aggressiveness, uh, strength, testosterone, like anything. Whatever mutation is causing some weakness, that usually gets filtered out and the fittest survive. We don't do that in captivity. In captivity, we cut every egg open. We like I that one snake that was 18 grams that probably should have just perished, but I'm like I got her going. We are keeping everything alive. We are pumping everything and we're trying to keep everything going. And so we're not allowing nature to naturally select away from the weakest animals. So you have a lot of uh I don't want to say projects. I don't think it's project related. I think it's just animal related. I think, you know, we're just if we just solely concentrate on the genetics, we're putting these weak animals together to try to get that genetic, but we're we're not realizing that we're promoting whatever these mutations are that are in these animals DNA that causes them this weakness, this this bad feed response or this lack of breeding activity or these small clutch counts, you know, like if you if you have a 4,000 gram female that's giving you four eggs, that's a problem, right? My 4,000 gram females are not giving me four eggs. If I get a four egg female, she's gone. She's gone, right? Um, so I'm just I'm I'm really just hyperfocused on on trying to bring back a little bit more of the bloodline thing, which people like green trees, the dogs and cats, birds, a lot of other industries, they focus on that stuff, which is, you know, bloodline based, you know, promote the biggest. And and at the end of the day, it's also for my customers. I I've been I don't know if I'm just lucky, but I'm telling you right now, not to toot my horn, but since the very first snake I've ever sold in 2019, I've never had a customer come back to me and tell me that their snake didn't breed, didn't eat, or didn't do well.

>> Nice.

>> And every animal has done super well. So, I think there's a, you know, I'm I'm just giving you like the whole story. I'm I'm trying to I I'm working towards building a collection of all self-produced females, of all big females, of strong eaters, strong producers, and when I finally get there, it's just going to be like, you know, sitting back and just enjoying life go by. You know what I mean? And that goes back to what I said,

>> time. You need a lot of time.

>> Hell yeah. Hell

>> I talked too much, man.

>> Oh, no. No. It's a perfect That's good, man. I love when people come on and they talk a lot and they explain exactly what they mean and kind of like all that and it makes it so much easier to have the show. Uh,

>> and if there's anything you disagree with, let me know. Like, I'm I'm not one of those guys that, like I said, I'm telling you my experiences, but I'm not saying I'm right about everything. I I welcome people to come back to me and say, "Well, this is my like like for example, I put out a story a couple days ago about what's going on with my season. So far, I've I've hatched uh 47 babies so far and only six females.

>> Damn.

>> All male. And but I'm looking back, there's two big variables this year that have changed in my collection. Number one, I've dropped my incubation temps because I wanted to incubate a little bit slower because historically what I've noticed is animals that spend a little bit more time in incubation have come out bigger, stronger, and have absorbed more of their yolks and just look better overall. Also, I thought it would be a good to drop my temperatures down to like 87, 87 and a half. Just go a little bit slower at it where they're coming out at day 60, not day 54, 55. Um, and then the other variable is we've had one of the driest uh years I've ever seen in the history of my entire life. Actually, it's rained three times where I am since May. The grass outside is yellow and and brown. Everything is dying.

>> That kind of stuff. I had over 25 reabsorbs this year. I'm only gonna end up with 26 clutches. I would have had 50. I had And all of those females that reabsorbed were over 25 millimeters. They were like some of them were over 30.

>> Oh wow.

>> And I and I think uh it goes back to it was just so dry. It was the climate was so bad here and so harsh that most of them just aborted. They were like, "Fuck this. Like we can't drop eggs in this." because unfortunately I don't have a climate controlled facility in the sense where it's doors are always closed, windows are closed and it's just like you know perfect climate. Uh, it's my garage. So, in the in the summer months, my doors are open, right? My back door, fresh air comes in, you know, it's a perfect temperatures. It's 80 degrees that natural humidity. So, they my animals flow with the natural, you know, environment that I have here. And it just got so dry. And unfortunately, I don't have a separate building where I can fix that. Like, there's nothing I can do about it. So, I'm kind of just at the mercy of the environment. So, I got those two variables. Number one is lower incubation and uh climate has changed. And I put out the story talking about how like are we sure as a community? Are we sure as a community there is no link between incubation temp and uh sex determination? A lot of other species do have that link, right? Crocodiles, some gecko species, whatever. We all as a community think that there's no link in ball pythons, but is that true? There's no scientific data. There's no literature on it. there's been no studies, actual scientific study on it. Do we have this wrong? And um, you know, it wasn't for me to try to convince anybody of anything. It was just I wanted to open the dialogue and it was amazing. I've gotten 50 plus probably DMs of all kinds of people from small to big breeders talking about it. Some people agreed. They were like, "Yeah, I've noticed with, you know, uh cooler temperatures, more male heavy, higher temperatures, more females." Others said it was the other way around. But again, it's like what I'm trying to say is I'm open to dialogue. if I'm wrong with something, I still want to talk about it and I still want people to give me their experiences so that I can learn. And I think that was one one thing that I did this week that was actually kind of fun. I had so many great conversations on that topic. But yeah, I I think there's a link. I think there's something that we it doesn't make sense. Every year I've incubated 89. That was my natural, you know, that's what Justin does. That's what I was taught from day one. And I had mostly females.

was actually one of the uh problems with my collection becoming stale over the years is because I haven't been able to move my genetics through my collection quickly enough because all of my best snakes were always female and they take twice as long as males, right? So, I haven't haven't been able to really diversify my gene pool as quickly as I would have liked to.

Uh and then fast forward this year, incubation temp is down. It's all male-heavy. So, I'm like, is there a link there? I don't know. I I want to hear more stories from people. I think there's I mean, how else do you explain it, right? What is the probability out of 47 babies that you're only going to get females if there's not some environmental factor?

I mean, I never really I mean, I've thought about that before um in the sense and I've heard people like talking about like potential link between incubation temp and sex odds, but this year I went down dropped down to like about 88 because I had some issues last year and so I dropped it down a little bit because I wanted to be like more of a slow cook type thing. And I have been having more males, but I never even thought about that. Even though I've heard that like in the past and whatnot, but I never even thought about it. This year I was much more male-heavy for the clutches that I did get since I dropped those temps. So that's right.

It's like I've had people like like there's one guy he actually flamed me uh privately in DM saying like you don't know what you're talking about this blah blah blah and I'm like I'm like bro I'm not saying it is I'm not saying it's not. And this is I'm just sharing my experience just like really one year but that was my experience.

Yeah. cuz personally like over the last what three or however many years it's been that we've been producing I've been right at about 50/50. That's what I've been at. Traditionally I've been at like 50/50 or actually no I would say more like like 60/40 like I've been fairly female dominant over the years but I've always this is the first year that I've gone lower. I've gone lower because of uh and it's not because I wanted to like there was part of me that wanted to incubate slower but also I bought one of these new Willbanks incubators. I wanted to give it a try because okay.

One of one of my friends has it and uh I actually bought a couple new incubators to replace the ones I had. I also wanted some different incubators for tree monitors and eventually the green tree pythons because they all have different temps that they were going to be required to have. But anyways, the problem with the thing that I that I dislike about uh the Willbanks incubator is it's a proportional thermostat, right? Oh, can you still hear me? Yeah, I can hear.

It's proportional. So, it's a proportional uh thermostat, which basically means that it climbs to X temperature. Once it gets to that temperature, it drops, it stops. It allows it to fall back a couple degrees before it kicks on again and then goes back up. So, it's constantly cycling between from the high of like 89 and a half to then it drops out to like 87. Um, so my fear was if I try to aim for 89, it's going to climb to 91 before it falls back to 89. That's where you're starting to get a little bit scary because, you know, above 91 is where you can have some issues. So, I just I I went cooler for also for that reason. And it's just like, yeah, everything is coming out male and it's just it's crazy. Like, it's just crazy the change. So, yeah, there's there could be something. Maybe we don't have it right. Maybe we don't know. Maybe there's an environment that I was subjected to this year, which caused all the like I've never seen this before. I've never heard of this many female reabsorbing. It was insane, right? I would have done over 50 clutches. I bred 90 plus females. 26 clutches on 90 females is pretty terrible. Dang. Yeah.

But we've we've had the driest year on record in Canada. Like this is just horrible. At least where I am. It's it's horrible. So maybe there's things that we don't understand with that. And uh it's it's great to hear people's experiences. Yeah. There's plenty of stuff I know we don't understand. Like plenty. Yeah. So, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Um, so I got kind of I got kind of a wrap-up question for you, too. Um, yep. Yep. Definitely go as deep into this as you want to. Uh, but kind of like sum it up for us. Like in your opinion, like what does staying relevant, like what does that truly mean to you?

Uh, relevance is just down to the desire of your projects. I mean, at the end of the day, like, if there's no if there's no desire to acquire what you're producing, then you're irrelevant. And if you're not relevant, you're not making money. And if you're not making money, you can't support your hobby. It's just it's just there's like, it's plain and simple, right? Um I always I always said, um if if it gets to the point where my business accounts go to zero and I'm still operating in the red, I'm I'm just going to hang it up. I'm gonna walk away from it because at that point it doesn't make sense, right? Like and and the hardest thing to do in today's industry is to stay relevant because of the amount of clutches that you need to produce in order to hit the odds to keep moving forward. On top of that, to offset the speed that shed testing is creating and also the uh speed at which people are moving through projects and it's just it's very difficult to to do today. And that's why I think if you're if you're somebody who can only have like let's say 20 or 30 snakes then don't try to like don't try to get the jack of all trades because you ever heard hear the saying be a jack of all trades but a master at none. Yeah.

In order to make money you need to be a master. You don't want to be a jack of all trades. You want to be a master. And when I say money, I'm like, yeah, if you have a full-time job and you're just making, you know, $30,000 a year, extra money in sales, uh, through $500 snake sales here and there at a couple local shows a year, that's great. You know, it's a couple new pieces of furniture, one nice trip with the family, maybe a new car the next year. Like, that's that's great supplemental income. But when you're on my scale where your entire family's livelihood is dependent upon this, you have to make a certain amount of dollars to offset the money that's required to be reinvested in order to stay relevant the overhead and the cost and as well like your leisure and fun and it's it's not a small number, right? So it's it's very difficult and I think just being realistic with uh like I say your expectations and uh you know I want to end I want to end this podcast on a good note. There's a bit of negativity that we talked about because we were just we were just talking about you know the elephant in the room. The reality is is the market's changed and it's it's h different and it's not as strong as it was. But at the end of the day there are still a lot of great producers. I think there's a lot of people that got into it for the wrong reasons that are on their way out which is actually healthy. We don't want those people right. We want people that have a passion for the animals and the industry as a whole. And I think I think at some point, I can't tell you when, but at some point things will stabilize. Things will level off. We'll start attracting some new blood, some new faces. Those of us that are going to be able to stick around or weather the storm will be great. And uh you know, it's not going to be a co days again, but it is going to move up in the in the right direction. And uh you know, one day I will hang up my boots. I I am trying to work my way towards different species ultimately because in 10 years from now when I'm 50 years old, I don't want to be doing this. I don't want to be taking care of 500 animals, like I said, and thousands of rats. I want to be able to go on vacations and do things with my daughter and travel and whatever and not be shackled to my house. For now, it's okay, but um you know, I am working towards that. But in the meantime, there's still a lot of stuff that I want to accomplish. There's a lot of really good projects I still want to do. And uh yeah, I'm still happy about it. I'm still really just having a good time and you know, I get to I don't make a lot of money, but I get to wake up every day and I don't have to answer anybody. And um the last six months, all I can say is a big shout out to the woman in my life because she makes good money and she has uh we had this thing I I told we had this conversation the other day. I told her I said, "Man, I feel like a broke ass. Like I haven't done much for us in the last six months. I've been really struggling to just keep my business going." She's like, "Who cares?" When I went on that leave for two years, I didn't make any money. You supported the whole house. I paid every bill. I bought her her new her new lease because she didn't have any money at the time because of the the kids to get the lease. So, when money was good, I I was bankrolling everything. She got a car, she got, you know, we got the house, everything was being paid for. And she's like she she said to me, and not a lot of women are like that today, but she looked at me and said, "It's now my turn to pick up the slack on your hard times." Right? So, we have this thing where it's like when one of us falls down, it's okay for the other person to come in and pick up the slack.

And that's how it should be in my opinion. Yeah. It's a partnership. And it is. And we've built something together and she's she's just she hasn't pressured me at all. And you know, I'm not saying I'm I'm I'm bankrupt. That's what I'm saying. Like I've acquired some good stuff. But I'm just saying what we're used to from the COVID days and what it is today is a massive adjustment, right? cash flow flowing a little bit different.

I and I I wanted my dream. I I thought I I did a short-term lease on my my latest truck that I got because I don't buy trucks. I think the truck prices have gotten so [ __ ] stupid. $100,000 trucks is just absolutely [ __ ] for vehicles. But so I did this short-term lease on this truck because I I've had this dream. This is the last thing I'll end on. I've had this dream. I've wanted a Ford Raptor since the last like eight years. Like that's my dream truck. And I was like, things are moving great. The ball pythons are great. My collection is growing. I'm going to do a short-term lease when I got this one two years ago because I'm like, I am getting my Raptor next. I look at I look at the industry today and I'm like, I ain't getting no Raptor. It ain't happening. If I'm getting a Prius, you know, next year. But, uh, look, look, every business goes through this. Every business has highs and lows. Every business has uh expenses. You know, you think about the bakery down the street, their oven explodes. They got to buy a new, you know, $20,000 oven. You know, a lot of businesses today with since COVID are operating under very small margins. Not a lot of businesses have a lot of cash flow uh for that kind of stuff. So, everybody goes through these ups and downs and I think, you know, just it's a cycle. It's a cycle. You weather the storm. You you get your expenses down as low as possible. You buy yourself that nice Prius. Get a hybrid one. The nice one, right? hybrid print rolling in style with our stuff too like snakes it's a luxury item and it's a luxury item that comes with operating costs of taking care of it over time so yeah it's going to be sensitive to market conditions it's going to be very sensitive to market conditions exactly.

But I I do believe at some point, a lot of the other industries are thriving right now like green tree guys are thriving, some of the gecko guys are thriving like with the rare species of anolles and stuff. There's uh the bolins pythons guys are doing uh, you know, some of the bolins like are being sold or I got one guy who's importing 12 of them from Indonesia and he's going to make a killing out. There's a lot of species that are doing super well. Um, but I think it's just, you know, it bounces around.

The target market is a little bit different, too. Like kind of like that because we talked about it earlier like the pyramid, right? And the people at the bottom of their pyramid is different than the people at the bottom of the ball python pyramid. I feel like the people at the bottom of their pyramid like they're more experienced people or they're people who kind of got like larger bank rolls, stuff like that. Whereas people because ball pythons are like heavily marketed as a great beginner snake, right? And ball pythons been around for a while. They're relatively easy to keep. Uh like they just kind of like check off all the boxes to be attractive to people just getting in reptiles. And so the bottom part of our pyramid is a little bit different. And then I do feel like people like at that level of our pyramid like those are going to at the bottom level those people are more likely to be impacted by like the market conditions and stuff. You know what I mean? And so likely to spend that money uh on that luxury item and so like you said earlier in the show it's like a trickle up effect.

Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, that that's that's why I said before, like don't be shy if you have a little bit of spare money right now instead of going out and buying that $10,000 snake. Maybe take 5,000 of it, put in the bank, just chill, relax for now, take the other five, try something else. get a couple of green trees or buy a pair of tree monitors or do have something you know like just have something that can bring back your passion and your motivation to keep things moving that's fun and do a side project and uh, you know, like for me the goal with the tree monitors I love monitor lizards have always my favorite animals on the planet uh but also, you know, because of the consistency in breeding if you're successful at breeding them, some of that income can offset the pressures from the ball world right now. Now I I don't have to go to my my facility and say, "Well, I can't breed this to that because although this pairing would be very good for my future, I need money today to pay my mortgage. So, I better breed that to this instead because this is all visuals and that's guaranteed to make me some money, right?" And that's a short-term look. So I I just having something on the side that can kind of give you a little bit more playing room to take because right now in today's economy, you have to build for your future because it's not if you only build for the money you can make today, which is not a lot because prices have come down so substantially. Um, you're really on your way out at that point. You really have to start thinking about what's going to happen once we get out of this funk, which could last for several years. So having something else to offset that so you can take these long shot odds and not have to be worried specifically on the revenue today will hell yeah. Hell yeah. Did your audio just cut out? Damn, we lost your audio. They died. Decent timing though since we was about to wrap up, man. Um I hate that audio went out. Uh, I did have like one more question to ask you, but uh, we'll wrap it up. Uh, and I'll and I'll message you, but we'll wrap it up for tonight. I appreciate everybody uh, sliding through tonight hanging out with us, man. It's been a dope show. Joy, man, I appreciate you coming out. Great conversation. Uh, and glad to see you again, man. Let's not let it be 18 months next time. Again, man, thank you for everybody coming out, man. Big shout out to the replay game. Big shout out to the podcast to the audio podcast game, man. Y'all leave a comment. let us know that you you back now. You back now. Oh, I didn't even know my MacBook had a uh Well, you got I got 2% battery life left. So, ask me that question quick. Say that again. I have 2% battery life left on my MacBook. So, uh, ask me that question.

It's not a super quick question, but it was going to be like, what would you do? Is there anything you would do differently? Like, kind of based on all what you've learned.

I think there's a lot of things I would do differently. There's a lot of animals I wouldn't have bought. I think I would have uh probably focused more specifically on uh fewer projects. I think I spread myself out a little too thin. Um and the biggest mistake I made was not holding back enough males. You know, I've I've this has been a struggle for me to break out past that 30 40 clutch range because I've I just don't have enough males. And that that problem will be solved in the next 18 months and uh my numbers will go up substantially. But um, you know, I my mindset now is for every two females I have, I need one male minimum, right? So yeah, just just acquire some stuff, be specific, you know, work on a couple of really good projects. Try to be a master at a couple of projects, not a jack of all trades because the real money comes from being the master. You have to produce things that other people have not that want to come to you and get the ingredients that they can't get anywhere else. And in order to get to that level, which I'm not there yet, but to get to that level, you have to be a master. And if you spread yourself out too thinly and you don't have the quantity of clutches to to develop that many projects all at once, then you're going to be hamstrung. So yeah, just be be specific and work specifically with with a couple of things and then just be realistic with your expectations and and play the waiting game. Time time is what you need to to be successful.

Good answer. Good answer, man. I appreciate it. I know you're running out of battery life, so we're going to wrap it up again, man. Appreciate y'all coming out, but that's it for tonight for Clutch Conversations. I'm Mike. It's the homie Jordan. The lovely lady behind the scenes is Takar. Thank y'all for coming out. Be blessed. Peace.

Thanks, guys.

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