Auction Strategy, Sales Psychology & Ball Pythons w/ Josh Gertz | Proper Royals Live

Have you ever wondered where you should price things on an auction or what pricing strategy you should have when listing something for sale, or where, uh, what you could do to make somebody take notice of a sale that you're running, or how you could use AI? We all hear about it all the time. Uh, how can we use this in our industry of ball python, uh, ball python breeding with, uh, breeding decisions, uh, sales strategies, um, uh, metrics when it comes to consumers? We're going to get into all that tonight. I got Josh Girtz from Critical Hit Exotics on the show, and we're going to dive into all of that tonight. I'm pretty pumped for this show. Stick around. Let's get to it.

What's going on, everybody? I hope that you're doing well. I'm, uh, I'm doing well. Life is starting to feel, I, I don't, I don't want to say normal because that's just like tempting the, the fates, right? Um, but things are going pretty well. The, the car wash has come together. The new facility is doing well. Uh, I just cut my first, uh, promo reel from the new facility today, so I'm pretty excited for that. Um, life is good. Uh, you can see I do still have, uh, some racks behind me, but over the course of, uh, the rest of breeding season, those will slowly move. Everything else is out. It's just a, it's a ring light. It's a camera. This, the laptop, the camera, and those two racks, and everything else down here. The sink is gone. Everything is just an empty room otherwise. So, eventually, this will become the new studio space, and I'll spruce it up a little bit. But, uh, I hope that you're doing well. Excuse me.

Tonight, we have, uh, Josh Girtz on the show from, uh, Critical Hit Exotics. And if you haven't met Josh, that's okay. And, um, if you're not exactly sure what all I'm talking about that we're going to get into, it's okay because I'm not either. But I'm always fascinated by game theory. If you think of like classic games, whether it be, uh, chess, Risk, uh, take your pick, Dungeons and Dragons, um, there's all, there are, there are, uh, there's a theory behind it, and it, I think, I'm, I'm probably misrepresenting some of this, but it centers around, uh, what happens when you put somebody else in a position to do a certain thing. What are the payoffs when you do certain things? How do you leverage different things? And this, these theories are used in international relations, war, military. Uh, big corporate companies put this stuff to use. Why not us? And, uh, Girtz works in this field. Um, he's also very well-versed in AI, and I've had the pleasure of getting to know him in the Patreon. Um, and he has shared some of his, I'm going to call them AI bots, but I think they're just called GPTs, but I'll learn. I don't know. I'm kind of a dummy on this stuff. I like using AI, but I feel like I'm just scraping the surface. Uh, he sends these things out to gather data and information and all of that stuff. So, stick around. Uh, and, and he's a cool, he's a, he's a really easy guy to hang out with, too. So, um, Josh will be up in just a second.

Couple announcements. Um, proper royals.com is up to date. I got all the pictures and everything updated. And I'm saying that as I'm saying this live, I actually, I need to sync everything. So, the animals are up there, but the pictures might not be yet, but I'll sync them shortly. If you're watching on the replay, you're going to, uh, you're going to be able to see everything that you want to. I just mentioned Patreon. I don't mention it all that often, but we have an awesome community there. And, uh, there's a whole lot of knowledge being shared. And the one thing I love about this industry is that almost everybody in the industry is an expert in something other than snakes. So, we learn tons from each other. But even in the world of snakes, it's a great place to do business. It's a great place to make relationships. Um, there's a whole library of videos of Patreon-only content that, uh, that I put out and put on there. Um, it starts at seven bucks a month. So, there's a $7 tier, and that gets you access to the, to the group chat and the whole library of information. And then there's another tier that's $35 a month. Exactly the same experience, except your $35 bucks turns into store credit. I eat the Patreon fees. You put in $35 bucks, I give you $35 bucks in, uh, I don't know, Proper Royals cash or whatever you want to call it. So, uh, if you like this show, you might like the Patreon. So, consider it. Something to think about. And I will say, whether it's Proper Royals Patreon or, or, or some of the many other great options, it's literally one of the best investments I think somebody can make if you really want to take a stab at even this being like a profitable hustle. Like, go, like the connections you make and the networking and the sales opportunities. Um, there's many, many snakes that never make it to market because they don't make it out of these small group chats and these group, uh, uh, what do you call them? Group texts or whatever it is. So, check that out. I hope to see you there. Uh, feel free to message me with any information. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com, and you can search for Proper Royals. And if you're not familiar with that, it's going to open a whole new, uh, whole new world for you. Can of worms, as they say.

Um, lots, lots, lots coming up on the horizon. I am just about to kick off a, um, 10 or 12 week period of just madness. Um, but before I get lost in all the dates and all the stops, Epic, the Exotic Pet Industry Conference, uh, that we put on, uh, this will be the second time this year that we're putting this on, that is coming together. The website epic.live is now live and accurate for the, uh, fall session. We don't have all the final bookings done. Um, not all the final decisions have been made, but the website is live for the fall session. And that fall session will be September 27th. And, uh, I'm going to have, excuse me, I get all excited and run out of breath. I'm going to have Craig from Bash Coder on. I'm not sure if it's going to be next week or the week after. I think it's going to be the week after, so we really truly have everything ironed out. But, uh, Craig is the mastermind behind Epic. Uh, I've been fortunate enough to be able to work on this project both times now. So, uh, Craig will be on in the next week or two, and we will unveil everything. We've got a few hidden secrets that, uh, that won't be on the website quite yet. So, uh, but mark your calendar, September 27th. That is a Saturday, and it'll be in the afternoon, uh, all day. So, it's convenient on the East Coast and the West Coast, and then you'll still be able to get out for the evening and have a good time that Saturday. That's part of everything that I have going on. Uh, I hope to see you out somewhere. I have a fun, fun, uh, stretch of time coming up. September 13th and 14th, I'll be in Toronto at the CRB. And speaking of Patreon and the perks, uh, I've got a couple tickets that I can give away to that, uh, Toronto show. Uh, they'll go to the Patreon first, uh, as do all the snakes and the offerings. If nobody there can use it, then we'll do a giveaway or we'll do something on that. But I'll be there broadcasting live with Chris Eaton of the Fat Man Nation. We'll be doing marathons on Saturday and Sunday. We'll start when the show starts, and we won't turn off the cameras until, uh, the end of the show. So, make sure you check that out. If you're going to be in Toronto, come hang out. I want to see you there.

Um, September 28th, I will be in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That's the day after the Epic Conference. Then the very next weekend, October 5th, I'll be in Minnesota in Minneapolis at the Cold Blooded Expose show. The very following weekend, that is going to be three weekends in a row I'm on the road. Uh, I'll be at Tinley. The very following weekend, uh, I get a weekend off. Then the 25th of October, I'll be in Fargo, North Dakota. Then the very next day, Sunday the 26th, I'll be back in Hastings, Minnesota, vending. And I'll finish everything off, uh, November 2nd in Des Moines, Iowa. So, if there's something you see on proper royals.com, recently updated, that you should check out, uh, you better snatch it up because I'm about to hit the road, and I'm going to make some sales and move some stuff. So, uh, I hope to see you out there. I'm excited. It's a fun time, fun things to get out and do.

Uh, you locals, a lot of people always ask me about this. If you want to see me, uh, playing music, the alter ego of Adam and Proper Royals, I'll be performing this Saturday night, uh, Labor Day weekend. I mean, you got two days to recover. So, that might be the perfect time. Saturday night, 5:30 to 9:00 at Egan Arms Pub in Egan, Minnesota. That is just south of the cities.

And on a personal note, those of y'all that have been following along, the new branded car wash sign was delivered. Hometown Shine is about to be official. It will get mounted this week, and I'll probably share it in the stories or whatever. I don't want to throw off, like, people that have started following me and they're like, "What is this car wash sign?" But, um, I, I'll put it on the stories and stuff like that. So, I'm pretty excited. I'm, I got to say, I'm a little bit proud of it, too. So, I'm looking forward to it.

Um, as I said earlier, uh, I got Josh Girtz here tonight. Those in the audience, thanks for being here. A whole lot of local folks, Minnesotans, but we also got, uh, Kik in the audience. Man, I hope that you're doing well, Kik. And I hope you're holding down, uh, keeping everybody, uh, in line down there in South Florida in Homestead. Man, I miss it. Uh, there's, those of you that don't know, if you're ever in Homestead and you go, why, why should I care about Homestead? As you head south, first off, Kik's there. You got to go see him. Second is, you head south on, uh, US1 like seven or eight blocks, maybe seven-tenths of a mile to a mile to the west, out of Florida City, just before you get to Florida City, there's the world's greatest fruit stand. It's called Robert is Here. And if you're like, what is Adam talking about on fruit stands? Google Robert is Here fruit stand. It's fantastic. They have all these exotic animals. They have this petting zoo. They have the greatest fruit market that I've ever been to because that, that area is the closest, uh, farm region to the tropics that we have in the United States, and, uh, they have amazing fruit there, and I always think about that of, uh, whenever my time in Homestead. And Kik, you make me think of Robert is Here, man. So, I hope that you're well. It's good to see everybody else tonight. Let's get into it. Let's get a little bit nerdy.

Um, I got the chance to meet, uh, Josh and hang out a little bit out at the Colorado ARP show. He also has his own podcast with Trevor Schneider of Ball Labs, a, uh, emeritus of the Proper Royals family. Uh, Trevor, he, uh, advertised with me for a very long time. We'll talk about the scene in Colorado a little bit too. That's, that's, that's kind of rough right now. So, without further ado, please welcome from Critical Hit Exotics, Josh Girtz. How you doing tonight, Josh?

Hey, how's everybody doing out there in YouTube land? I hope they're well. I'm doing well. I'm glad to have you here. And I said it off air, but man, the microphone is great. It's just like, uh, okay, Adam, we're going to relax. We're going to get into this. You can, uh, pipe down on the promos, and we'll get down to business here, man. But, uh, thanks for being here. How's things?

Uh, things are great. Uh, anytime I think things are bad, I think I make games for a living, so it could be a whole lot worse. I have, uh, I'm lucky enough to have a little bit of that mindset sometimes where, like, I panic and I'm like, this is nothing compared to a, a PGA Tour tournament or a, you know, my water got, my water man went out on a Friday night in the restaurant, and even that's not that bad, like, we're not in, like, being ravaged by a famine or war or whatever. So, um, you just said, uh, you make games for a living. Tell us about that. What does that mean? What does that look like? Cuz that sounds pretty cool to me.

Uh, yeah. So, for about the last 20 years, uh, I have worked in the game industry. For about 17, I worked in video games. And then for the last year and a half or so, I have worked in tabletop games, uh, making role-playing games. So, things like Dungeons and Dragons.

Wow, man. Any, um, uh, anything that that people that are into this sort of thing should go check out or that you're really passionate about that maybe hasn't hit the mainstream, or maybe something that has hit the mainstream that we're, we're going to be like, "Oh, I worked on that," kind of deal? What a coincidence.

Uh, about a month ago, uh, we released our first original tabletop role-playing game. So, I work at a company called MCDM, which is, uh, we used to make supplements for Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons had a big controversy about two years ago where their licensing, uh, was going to affect, uh, all the creators that were creating content for their game. And so, a lot of companies went out and, uh, decided to make their own thing. So, some of the larger streamers that stream games like Critical Role, they went out and made their own games. Uh, we decided to make ours. Um, and yeah, so it just came out. If you go to mcdmpproductions.com, if you're into tabletop role-playing games and want to play something a little different than Dungeons and Dragons, you can go check out Draw Steel.

Draw Steel. Now, that's an interesting, uh, strategic point that you were just talking about in and of itself. Dungeons and Dragons, like I, okay, I have to admit, I never played it. I, I know about the 12-sided die from the Weezer song. Um, you know, and that's about it. I have to admit, but I have a very slim understanding of it. But one thing that's always struck me is it's always really about community and creativity. It feels like them making a conscious decision to try and make a proprietary via licensing sort of goes against their sweet spot. Like, what, what kind of, like, what's the strategy there?

There's a long history there. So, if you go back to the '70s, '80s, and '90s, they didn't have licensing. People made products that were compatible, but they couldn't brand it. They couldn't say it was for Dungeons and Dragons. When they came out with their third edition, they, they actually were at the forefront of like, "No, we're going to do this open gaming license where anybody can use our property to make content, and they can say, you know, it's Dungeons and Dragons compatible." And there's a lot of stuff you have to do, and there's certain things that they protect that is unique to them that they don't want people using. But as long as you follow those rules, you can make content, say, "Hey, we're, we're a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. We're a Dungeons and Dragons supplement." Um, and over the course from like 2000 to now, you know, Hasbro's gotten a little tighter with their control over the IP, uh, their intellectual property. Mhm. Um, and they started changing to where, like, they get a percentage of everything where they never did it before.

So it becomes almost a royalty play then.

Yeah. So it went from like, we're not open, to we're completely open, to now we're going to regulate after 20-some odd years of it being opened, and people threw a fit.

Yeah. Well, you disrupt a community, that's what'll happen. Like, that's it's, it's interesting to me because there, I see from an outsider, again, I haven't played this and I'm not familiar with it, but I see, uh, parallels to our own communities that we see and sort of allegiances or preferences on a good day, bad day, could be tribalism, you know, in our community. I can only imagine what that was like in that game, in that gaming community.

Yeah. Uh, a lot of people that really support and their livelihood, they built businesses and built their livelihood on the, the promise that they would have this license available, and then all of a sudden, it sounded, they, they stepped back what they were going to do. Um, but I, I think, you know, some damage has been done because, you know, you have to think in the back of your head, they could just change it at any time. Right. Right.

Um, and that's the case with anything. And, uh, Jeremy at Ballstars, yes, I play a lot of Path of Exile. Just throw that out there real quick. Jeremy is a, a cool local here in the, uh, Twin Cities Greater Metro area. Um, I'm, again, I'm, I'm out of the loop on some of these things, so I'm not familiar with, with really any of these, but, uh, go ahead.

Uh, our, our on one of our on-staff artists, Nick, he actually does concept art for Grinding Gear Games that makes Path of Exile.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, it's super nerdy stuff. You can see behind me my collection of board games. Uh, so, yeah.

Let me ask you this. So, um, what's like, uh, maybe maybe two answers, one for yourself and one for like the masses. What's like the sweet spot of a game that, sure, it takes a little bit of effort to get your head around? You want it more than just, you know, Yahtzee, throwing dice and hoping, you know, keeping track of what you roll, but you don't want it to be, uh, sort of a lifestyle commitment. So maybe maybe a two, three-hour session, and there's a beginning, and there's an end, and there's an outcome. What's a really like a great sweet spot game that that really can showcase some theory or give you many different strategic opportunities, etc.? A great entry-level game for people.

I would do Dominion. Okay. It's a card game, uh, quick, and it's, they call it ABC. You take an action, you buy a card, and you clean up everything that you've played. The whole, the whole goal is just getting to a point where you can buy victory cards, cuz once, uh, a stack of victory cards or three piles of cards are gone, the game ends, and whoever has the most victories wins. Um, there's a ton of cards, and you, you only pick 10 of them to play, uh, in every game. So, every game is going to be different because you can, there might be 35 cards in the set, and you're only going to pick 10 of them to play, and they all have different interactions with each other. Um, so, it's a good entry-level. It's easy to learn, but then the, the strategy gets complex the more you play it, and you start thinking like, "Oh, if I do this, then I can buy two of those next turn."

Yeah. Is there, uh, it sounds like, uh, like a lot of things in life, the, the best things are like simple and, and attainable on their at their core, and at their entry. But then the best things can get incredibly nuanced and incredibly, uh, uh, you know, if you're only, if every 10 deck is different out of a 35 set, I, I'm sure there's math somewhere that can tell us how many possibilities, but that's a hell of a lot of possibilities and uncertainty and variable.

Then there's like 10 expansions that add, you know, 350 more cards to that that you can like, "Oh, wow. Okay. If you really like it, then you can expand that." Um, that's that's a good like two to four player game. If you, if you have a lot of people that you're playing with and you're going party game, I would do Codenames. Okay. Codenames is just fun. Um, and it plays as teams where one person gives clues for words that are on the board. And so you might go like, revolver 2, which means there are two words on this board related to the word revolver. And your team has to figure out what, which ones those are. But one of those words is going to be the assassin. And if someone on your team picks the assassin, game's over. You lose.

That game I've actually played and, uh, I went from pretty decent to a few drinks in going, I've, I've lost what I've lost what, uh, you know, lingo and jargon we're allowed to use and not use, and I was saying things I wasn't supposed to or allowed to. I was like, I, that one party game that's part of the fun of it though, like.

Well, and like, like we were saying, like I learned and understood how to play it pretty quick, actually. It, it was, it was attainable. Um, and then the one game that I, I'm actually, I wouldn't say fanatical, but I enjoy it thoroughly. I would play it for long periods of time if other people would entertain me is The Settlers of Catan.

So, if I'm, if I really enjoy Catan, what's, uh, what's another game I should look to, uh, in that mindset or that level?

What part of Catan do you like? Do you like the building or the negotiation?

Oh. Uh, I'm going to give you a different answer. I like in Catan that there are at least three different paths to victory. You can, you can come up with a good plan and you can execute it, and things go your way, and you see the resources, and you make it happen. That's always fun, and that's fulfilling. Then there's the, then there's the problem where somebody, of course, blocks you because they know what they're doing, and they see the angles too. And, you know, you can get, uh, essentially you can roll a dice, not roll a dice. Uh, I can't use that expression in game tabletop games. Uh, you could buy your, uh, what are they called? The chance cards or whatever, the, the, um, you could buy the cards. Um, and then also there's like two big slam dunks, the longest road and the largest army, where if you just can't get anything going, okay, you could go that way, and that'll get you 40% of what you need. And, um, so I like that it, you can have bad situations, or your dice can go cold, or the odds cannot work. You can have all the sixes and eights that you want, but the dice don't work the way that they're supposed to. And there's all of that. So I like that. Plus, I can explain to my son, uh, ball python breeding odds by the number of dots on a certain number in Catan, and he understands now, uh, odds a little bit better when it comes to, uh, uh, both ball python breeding and rolling the dice.

So if you like multiple paths to victory, Mhm. I would do something like Seven Wonders. Okay. So it's, it's another card game. Um, you can be affected by the people to your left and right, and it plays up to seven people. So it's really good if you have a lot of people.

Oh, cool. Okay. Um, and you can focus on science, you can focus on war, you can focus on different things to build up the seven wonders of your city, or the wonders of your city. Um, and it has, it, it just doesn't have the negotiation aspect. You can't trade things with other people. But what happens at the beginning is everybody has seven cards. You pick one and then pass it. And so this whole set of cards is going around the table. And so you can look and go like, well, I know Adam's focusing on war, so I'm just going to take the soldier card before I pass it because there's nothing else in here I need. So, uh, there's that. A good designer that does what I what's referred to as point salad games, which is you can get points in a lot of different ways, is Stefan Feld, but his games are very complex.

I see. So, it's, it's kind of like brain burner, kind of like, uh, I don't know what to do because there's 50 things to do that I can score points.

Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah. I, I guess the word I was looking for is the, the pivot factor in Catan, like, if, as long as you're willing to pivot and, and you got to play what comes your way because you, because you are rolling dice, and at the end of the day, it's, it's the, the odds of the dice.

All right, I promise audience we're going to bring this around to ball pythons. Period. Let's back out to the, the big macro thing. Why game theory? And there's, because there's a much bigger scope of game theory than the literal games on tables or the literal games on video games. How is this applied in places outside of the literal games? Where, where is this useful in, in our world? Um, and not that games aren't useful. They bring much happiness and, and needed distraction, and we learn from them, and we all can think of lessons we learned from chess. I didn't mean to put it that way, but I know that it's applied in many other ways. One of the biggest benefits of games is it pushes technology, and we get all this cool stuff because they initially make it for games, but then the broader audience gets to use it.

Uh, really good point. I mean, and that's that's crossed over to pop culture. I mean, there's there's music hits that come from video game features. Yeah. I mean, the Mandalorian is made in Unreal Engine, which is a game engine.

Okay. It's so in video games, if you were to make your own game, games cost a ton of money to make, uh, tens of millions of dollars without a marketing budget. Uh, and one of the ways that you can save is by licensing an engine that is all the technology that you need to make your game in a box.

Oh, wow. Okay. So, it, it renders the graphics for you. It has certain scripting that you can use for the logic for your game. Very simplified version of what an engine is. Um, and it's gotten so the, the, the graphics rendering in it has gotten so advanced that most of the CG scenes in the Mandalorian are done in Unreal Engine. And what they are able to do in real time is shoot a clip and be able to see it rendered with all their special effects on the fly, right then.

Wow. Um, so, and the Unreal Engine itself, it's, it's made by Epic, the same company that makes Fortnite. Mhm. Um, and the reason we have the engine is because they made games in it. Unreal Tournament, Gears of War, like that's what they made initially. So, that's a great answer because.

And that's not where I thought we were going. That is a great, that's a great point. That's a great answer.

Um, but in theory, like games are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to present you with decisions. They're supposed to ultimately make you feel like you accomplished something. Uh, a game I do not like because it's so hard, but is really good at making a person feel accomplished is the Dark Souls series. Okay. And what it is, is it's a very punishing game that has mechanics in it to where you get hit and you just die. Like, you can't take a lot of hits, but the bosses and the enemies telegraph what they're going to do. So once you experience it, you go like, "Oh, I see them winding up for this hit. I know what they're, I'm going to dodge." Mhm. And then finally you beat a part and you feel like, "Oh man, I feel so accomplished that I finally got past this."

Um, I'm old and don't have a lot of time to play games anymore with three kids. So like, I don't have the time to put into trying to figure stuff like that out anymore. I would rather sit at a table with my kids and play a board game.

Right. Well, there's that interactive benefit of it. And, and to me, again, there, even I enjoy, like, again, I'll go back to Catan. I like playing that because my son can play it. Yep. And like you say, there is the negotiation standpoint. There is the, when do I need to offer more than maybe what it says the value is because of the future value I can gain by having that thing right now? That's exactly what we do with with ball python decision making. Right. And, um, so I liked some, I, I don't know, I've always been intrigued by it, and the more that I learn about, I mean, I find citations of it being used in military decisions, uh, politics, international relations, um, and where people say, you know, like you say, it, it, it makes you make decisions. Would you say that it's almost the science of decision-making? I mean, is that, is that a way to think of it?

Yep. I, I mean, way back, if, if you want to get into nerdy stuff, uh, it's called ludology, the, the science of play. Okay. Um, and, you know, back in Roman times, uh, if you were a gladiator, you trained at a ludus, and it goes back to even, you know, primitive times, or you see this in wild animals where, uh, young animals, they play fight, but it's play, but it's training. Mhm. They, they are training to hunt. They are training to fight. They are training. Um, these are all things that kind of build up, and that it's kind of taken a form like, uh, wargaming, right? Um, initially, you, you see in like fantasy movies where they have the table of the region and they're moving the blocks of the armies across, and that's what they did as simulation to get practice because obviously going to war is expensive and it kills a lot of people, and you don't want to do that to practice, right? Um, so they would simulate wars on a table. Um, and then that went, and then at some point, and I, I want to say it was the '50s, uh, a company called 3M, the company that makes tape. Yeah. Um, actually Minneapolis company. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, they actually published a set of bookshelf games that you could take, they looked like books that you could leave as display things, and they came out almost like a vinyl record, right? And you pop them open. But they started that with war simulation games so people could do it at home. And then some people decided to do simpler games and put them in there, and that became the 3M bookshelf game series, which I have a few somewhere just for the history of games. Uh, most of them are not great compared to what comes out today, but there's a few really good ones like Sid Sackson was a designer during that era who's made some really good games that some people may have heard of, like Can't Stop. Um, Montage, uh, a lot of games that are still popular now and get re-released. U, they're just really solid games. Um, you know, going back to your negotiation and you're talking about like when to, uh, pay a little more to invest in something for the bigger payoff, right? Monopoly, it has the negotiation part too. Do I trade off this monopoly piece to get myself a monopoly? Where on the board is it? You know, is it, am I trading for a pastel het hypo or a het monsoon? Right? You know, I got my Boardwalk and my Baltic going on, you know.

Um, but there's a lot like in video games, it's really interesting, uh, because I, I worked in live operations for a long time, which is handling online games with player profiles, and a lot of times we dealt with like the marketing department that wanted to know what people are buying, you know, what, what skins are people buying, what are they buying loot boxes if the game has loot boxes.

That's something I see at reptile shows is people with the mystery bags. It's unbelievable. And I don't get it. Like, it, it doesn't excite me one bit, and yet it intrigues me because of how popular they are. Like, it, it, it's strange to me. Uh, it's counterintuitive because obviously I'm drawn to things that I'm very attracted to and that do make great sense to me, but I'm also wildly intrigued by things that I see masses of people attracted to that I don't get, and that there's a disconnect, and I wonder if it is, I wonder if it is that, uh, uh, sort of that video game similarity.

So, you, this came from more eastern design. Um, and a lot of it came because of piracy. Um, in a lot of places like Brazil's a good example, Asia, there's rampant piracy. So, if you have a, a retail game that you're charging $60 for, more likely than not, people in those regions cannot afford that. So, they pirate it. Okay. Um, and it's one of the reasons why you might see, we might price a game for $60 in the US, but in Brazil, it's only 20 bucks, right? Um, just cuz we're trying to like make compensation for the cost of living and people's income in those areas. Um, but the piracy was a concern. So, you'll, you'll notice that like in Asia, mobile games are more in the forefront because they are free, and if you have a little extra money, you can buy a loot box or buy something on your phone, and it just, you know, is going to charge your phone for your monthly fee. Um, and then there's ways you can get bonuses from like intermediaries that you run the game through and stuff like that. But overall, really, it's just like the excitement of being able to open a box to see if you got something that is worth more than you paid for it.

And like philosophically, we know I'm not talking in the video game world because I'm guessing trinket code A doesn't cost any more than trinket code B, C, D, or F, all of which you may or may not get in the box. But in our world, we know that this only works if the guy or girl making these loot boxes basically is getting over on at least the majority of the people buying it because then otherwise it doesn't make sense to do. Is that, is that right? Am I stating that?

So it's the excitement of the limited opportunity to go after it, right? How we would have handled it in games is trinket A, B, and C probably have different values. Like, even though it doesn't cost me anymore to make the skin that you could win in black or red, I know black is going to be sought after more. So I might make its rarity higher. So this only pops up 10% of the time. Didn't cost me anything more to make it, but everybody wants the black outfit, right? Yeah. Um, and then, you know, there are some things that cost a, maybe the, the super rare thing is the thing that also, it's the black outfit, but there's also fire effects on it. Right. Right. Yeah.

And, and people are just going to open those boxes hoping to get that thing. The, the thing that's weird to me, and before I get into that, uh, governments have had to step in and put legislation in place where now companies have to list out everything in the box, its rarity, like because like people have no self-control. Yeah. Right.

Well, I mean, yeah, because then there's, there's, there's the gambling aspect of it as well, which there, there's some, there's some overlap there. Does it, the mystery boxes hinge on though, the price of the thing? The price of the mystery box has to be cheaper than the price of the thing because otherwise you would just go buy the thing, right? This is where I'm like, I'm so curious about the, the, the animal mystery boxes is because one is like, these things have a value, and like me making a skin and making a black, red, pink color is like no cost whatsoever, right? Little to no cost. So, me putting it in the box and making the box 50 cents or a dollar, it doesn't matter. People are going to open them until they get the chase thing that they want. And you can put safeguards in place. Like, if you buy 10 of these, you're guaranteed to get an ultra-rare thing. Okay? You can't do that with the snakes, right? And, and the trade-off for the, for the breeder is if you put the thing in there, but you don't sell enough of the mystery boxes, then you're losing it. And you should have just sold the thing. Yeah. For its price, right? Yep. Like especially like, and I, I know we've talked about this before, someone gets super lucky and gets your chase bag, first person that buys it for. Yeah. You don't want anybody to know that. Like, you're screwed at that point, right? Like this is, this is, this is why I don't get it. Like this is just landmines all over the place.

The other things that I think about with it, and, and this is part of like when you sit in a design meeting that you think about, you think about all the aspects. What are we going to put in it? Do you think people are going to feel bad if they get these things? Uh, do we want to just reuse stuff from previous patches or do we need to make all new stuff, and how much is that going to cost versus how many people we think are going to buy these boxes? So, this is, this is all the stuff we think. The two things that I think about is one, the people that are buying the snakes as a mystery or a gecko or whatever the mystery animal concept is. Let's say I'm just a person buying a pet, and I'm going to go up and buy a mystery bag for $100. I may get something better, I may not. But I can also just go buy a normal for $30 at someone's table and save myself some money. But what happens if, as a person that's buying a pet, and this is my only animal? It's my first animal. What if I get something I don't like, right? Like, what is that person doing with that pet at that point? Yeah. We have the whole ethics of a live animal. This isn't, this isn't a piece of code that we go, well, I lost 50 cents on the, on the code today. You know, young males at a game company have a white elephant. We actually had a rule about this after this happened. Somebody bought somebody a tarantula as a white elephant gift. And of course, the person that got it was a person that's terrified of spiders. Yeah. And doesn't want it. Right. It like, so then we had the rule at the office for white elephants. Nothing live. Right. Yeah. Right. And like, so, so what, what does that person do with the animal? Let's say the other person that might be buying a mystery box would be a breeder that's trying to find a deal, right? And again, same thing. What happens if I get something in a project I'm not working? Yeah. What do I do with that animal? Now, for, for the person selling the bag, that's a good deal because I'm basically wholesaling my animals to another breeder that maybe is going to resell them. But like, again, like, what are the ethics thing here with live animals? Like, that ultimately, it's, it's why when I look at some of this stuff, and it doesn't translate well to my animals and what we do, right?

Yeah. There is a, yeah. There's a fantasy, uh, fake world to the game. That's the beauty of the games. We can, there's an escapism into non-reality, whereas we're in reality here. Uh, go ahead.

I think I, I think I cut you off there.

Uh, no, I mean, that's the mystery boxes. I do not get. Like I, well, no, that's not true. I get them. I just don't, I don't think people, and this is true even in people like other companies in g, the game industry, is they don't sit down and think through what they're doing when they do it. So you'll see even in video games, people are like, man, they are nickel and diming us in this game because nobody really sat down and went like, hey, maybe maybe we shouldn't do this. Oh, but this other game is doing it. It's like, yeah, but maybe it doesn't work for our game. Have we stopped to think about that? Yeah. Or be ourselves, or pave a different avenue, or whatever it might be. So, uh, if, and I don't know how long this would take, so we don't have to go like super deep. Let's say hypothetically, you or me are vending at Tinley. What's a good, like, philosophically, like, we don't have to, or if you want to come up and cook something up, we can, but philosophically, like, what are the, what are the, and I hate to use the word trigger, what's the leverage that's going to attract buyers to come to a table? Assuming we're not Justin, we're not, uh, you know, we don't have a $100,000 ball python on our table because that does work, but I don't have that right now. So, uh, and we're in a room of, of icons, and, you know, it's like everybody's above average. It's, it's a screwed up place where law of averages don't work. And even if you're good, you're, you're just lucky to be average in that room. Philosophically, what do you have to do? Philosophically, like, I don't have the marketing budget that Justin has. I don't have the animals that Justin has, right? You know, I'm just starting out. Like, the thing that I need to do to separate myself probably in that situation, like, first, just at a base level, I probably wouldn't vend Tinley just because I don't feel like I'm at that level, right? I don't have the animal. Most of the stuff that I'm making that's my byproduct is pet-level stuff, okay? Or, or use me, I, I, I am vending at Tinley, and most of what you're saying fits me exactly, so I shouldn't be there, but I'm there. Uh, I think about a year ago, you tried something. I did. I had a good time. It was fun. And actually, I think you helped and threw a, I don't know, I don't want to necessarily attach your name to it, but you gave me some feedback on it. Talked about it. Yeah. Workshopped it in the Patreon. Yeah. I don't think you ever really followed up though, because I kind of want to know what happened.

Oh, cool. All right. Well, we'll talk about that then. So, yeah. So, uh, and because it was because I had met you and I was just, uh, kind of diving into the world of these chat GPT things, and it was like, I, I, I had, uh, evolved from using them as just a faster search engine. Now I had a purpose, and I was like, man, I'm going to figure this out. So, I did a little research on game theory, and I, you know, the, the Prisoner's Dilemma, chapter one, day one, of our, you know, game theory 101. And I can't remember day two, it doesn't matter. Uh, and I, I, so I plugged some of this into a chat GPT thing, and I give it the context, and basically what happens is it cooks up this idea. And, oh, and I wanted to play on, I don't like sales because I think things have an intrinsic value. Why would I say they cost this much one day and this much another day and expect people to be equally as excited and loyal? No, they just become loyal to price. I don't like it. So, I called this thing the Race to the Bottom. It was the, you know, because because pricing, you know, competitive pricing is just a race to the bottom. So, it was this tongue-in-cheek Race to the Bottom. And I think what we did, uh, and I can't remember which way it went, but actually, you know what's funny? Hang on one second. I actually, I, I have it on my fridge right there. Okay. So, here's, here's what it was. Here's the event structure. Um, so it was Saturday at noon, which was not a, which was not an accident. It was, uh, the busiest day. Most people had had time to sort of make their way through, and you couldn't take advantage of it on VIP Friday. I wanted a critical mass of people there.

Um, so Saturday at noon, and we, we, we wrestled with these numbers. But starting at noon, with no exceptions, the first snake sold at noon, uh, was 30% off. 30%'s dead at that point. The next snake sold was 25% off. The next snake sold was going to be 20% off. The fourth snake sold was going to be 15% off. The fifth snake sold was 10% off. And after that, screw you on your discounts. We're done with this game here.

Um, and uh, so that's what we did. And, um, uh, it was, it was one year ago because, uh, Chris from BNS Reptilia was there. And I have to say, Chris was an asset because I felt a little goofy trying to convey this to people. I had talked about it on, uh, my platforms. I had talked about it in the web, but in the moment, as a sales guy, it just felt weird going, "Hey, in seven minutes, anything you want is going to be 30% off." And right now it's 25. I felt, I felt like a carnival barker, and I was like, "This is, this is weird." And maybe I need to embrace it, but it just wasn't me at the moment. It's not really my style. Um, but Chris was great with it. And he, he didn't come across carnival barky. He was conversational. "Hey, if there's something you see, we're, uh, everything's 25% off right now." And I know that sounds like, uh, just a hard sales pitch, but when you buy something, the next one's only going to be 20% off. So, this truly is an opportunity. And I was like, "This guy, he's killing it." And this is my race to the bottom.

Um, so the 30 and the 25% actually attracted a bit of a crowd, and, uh, it went, it went well. Um, they were friendly faces. They were people I knew. I knew they were from the audience. I knew they were from Patreon. Uh, they had kind of staked it out. They, they knew what was up. So, the flaw in it was that I didn't get enough people to know about it. Um, little segue into, into Palm Street. One of the things on Palm Street is you got to have a big audience, or else it, it, it doesn't really work. And that, that number really needs to be in the hundreds. 150, 200 people in the room. Boom. You, you're going to make some money. Um, not enough people knew about it. It did trickle through in the afternoon, and I did make my way through all of the percentage discounts. I like it. I probably, maybe I should do it again. Maybe I do it this October again. Um, I like also the theory, and tell me, and you could correct me where I'm wrong here in my thinking. My thinking was the average of 30% and the average of 10% is 20%. 20% is within my realm of negotiation almost any time at a live show. Not always, not every animal. Some I'll take even more off of, some I'm going to go, I'm harder on this price. However, 20% is within that comfortable. That's within the realm of what I'm going to do, whether I'm running a, a, a feature or not, a special pricing event or not. So, just the fact that it did resonate even with five buyers over it, probably took an hour and a half to get through those five sales. So, it wasn't like bing, bing, you know, it wasn't like a slot machine going off or anything of, of sales. Um, but it did resonate. And again, if I, and I, I can't remember what it was. I think the total sales of that time were around 15 or 1,800 bucks for those animals. Um, you know, if I had something, if I had the cumulative prices at 2,200, and I made 1,800, that's kind of what I would do. Yeah. You know, on a normal day, but not in that concentrated time. So, it actually was effective. It was kind of a fun thing. Um, and I know I'm leaving out some details. What are some of the nuances of, uh, now that we've talked through all of that, that you would tweak or you would say, "Hey, here's things you're not thinking of that a game theorist might think of?"

The, the first, I think you hit the two main things was you have to have the audience for it, right? Because you're basically saying, "Hey, there's an event happening." You got to say it to somebody, and if there's not enough people there to say it to, you end up with not a lot of people coming. Now, you got through them all. How many sales? Like five sales in an hour and a half? Yeah, I would say ballpark. I don't have the notes in front of me, but yeah, I would say it was five sales in an hour and a half. Man, I've, I've done weekend shows where vendors have said they haven't sold anything. So, I've been that vendor. Trust me, I know those are, I, I preach the word. You're going to have zero shows whether you like to admit it or not. And it, it's, it's hard because that is something you would think, like, "Oh, I'm going to have this event at this show to try to differentiate myself from the bigger breeders," but if you don't already have the audience embedded, like the bigger breeders, then it's, that's not going to work either. Um, so you have to think about that as well. And a lot of times that's why people, like you said, they, they, they're dropping to the bottom of the barrel is because that's the only knob they can turn. That's right. It's the only thing that you can do in that room sometimes. So, I, I, I mean, it was a real exercise to force myself to say, and I'm sorry, but part of another part of the thought process was I didn't want to go broke attracting people to the table. I didn't want to have to give, I didn't want to have to pay people to come to my table, which is essentially what giveaways are. So, I was like, "Okay, how do I do this and check these various boxes where I can look myself in the face and not go crazy and not just be frustrated standing in the corner of Tinley, you know?"

Uh, the other thing that you touched on was breaking down. It's like, yeah, you're giving somebody 30%, but you're also giving another person 10% and it equals out to 20%. And if you find that range that you're happy with, you could do that all weekend. You don't have to make it an event. You could go like, "Okay, every day at noon, I'm gonna do the 30%." Because it's, it's all going to equal 20% at the end. It's, you're looking at the long tail, not the immediate. And a lot of people get emotional looking at that 30% and go like, "I'm not doing 30%." Right? And it's like, yeah, but you're only doing 5% for this other guy. Like, and it's kind of built in that you don't get to negotiate. If we already carve out what the terms are, you don't get to negotiate the terms. And it's really easy to go, "No, we're not." "No, no, that's the price at the number right now." Uh, what are your thoughts? Because you just brought up a good point. Whether you do it once or you do it five times, the math is still the same. Yep. What does game theory say about, okay, not tomorrow. When this fifth one sells, we're back to 30% off again. I mean, that's just math. Yeah, but does it theory? No, but, but does it incentivize somebody to go, "Well, I want this score over here at 30%." "Give me that at 10% off and I'm taking the 30 next." Yeah. I mean, that's that's the FOMO, right? That's the fear of missing out. That's right. Um, but that, that, that it makes up for the aggregate happens the other way too for the seller in the situation that you just talked about where, yeah, they're, they're only getting 10% off this one, but they know if they buy another snake immediately, they're getting 30%. So, they know they're getting 20% off everything, right? Which we're all, we've all said we're cool with. That's fine. Yeah. Um, but I think that's where I go like nuts when I'm like, "We're putting all this effort into getting right back to the starting point that we would have all been cool with if we just agreed, just go do." But people need their dopamine hit, right? They want to feel good about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and like I think, I think I'm wired differently. Not that I don't enjoy dopamine, and I think we're all wired a little differently. I could tell you, uh, nicotine, alcohol, gambling. Oh, I understand dopamine, man. I get it. And I, I have to watch it, and very closely on that stuff. And matter of fact, there's things I won't touch and haven't touched for years because of that. Yep. Um, so I do understand that. I don't want to, I don't want to prey on that on anybody, but I do understand that. So, wow.

Okay. So, here's, here's another kind of thing. I don't know if you've ever seen on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. I see it a lot with, uh, shoes, people that deal with high-end shoes, sneakers. Mhm. Where somebody will come to the table, or I see this with like baseball cards, Pokemon cards. Um, somebody will come to the table and go like, "Well, they, they do the barter back and forth. Well, I'll give you 80 for it." "No, I want 100 for it." "How about 90?" "How about, how about 85?" "Oh, I'll flip a coin for 85." Right? And then they flip a coin, and either the vendor is going to pay 90 or 85 for it. But there's that gamble that happens that people are just like, "Oh, cool. Yeah, maybe I can win." I would, the thing that I would probably do, and it kind of ties into like my whole theme with Critical Role and what I do, is I would just say, "Anybody that buys a snake gets to roll a dice, and that's the percentage you get off." And there's custom dice for anything. I could get a dice that's a six-sided dice that's got 10, 20, 30, two times on it. Right. Right. And roll the dice. That's the. You were going to buy the snake anyway. I'm just giving you a bonus. And you get to roll the dice and feel good about what you roll.

Okay. We all want to feel like we're above gimmicks. Gimmicks. We've already, we've, we've laid out the rational thought of why it's not a gimmick and why it works and why it makes sense. Um, give me the, uh, give me the pitch of every corporate America, marketing, sales, successful anything thinks this stuff all day long, and all that they do. I mean, is that, is that the case? I mean, is this what's going on in, uh, you know, somebody, somebody brought up the point earlier, such and such company has to return a value to their stockholders. Like, is this coming through their thoughts when they're doing that? Absolutely. So, if working in games, there are subsets, there's video games, there's edutainment, there's casino games, right? If you go to apply for a casino game, they don't want their, their designers are mathematicians. They're not designers. They're not psychologists. They're not that. Most of them don't know anything about game theory. They're just mathematicians. They just want to know that the house is going to win in the long. Yep. That's it. Um, and you kind of have to think the same way. Like, if you're running a business, like, how do I make sure, like, if I have snakes and I have them priced a certain way, but I'm okay haggling with somebody over 20%. Why not do the gamified approach that's more interactive and rather than just have everything priced at that? There's this is like an onion here. We might not even. It is, and this is how design meetings go. Is you just talk back and forth until the lead designer makes a decision that this is what we're going to do. Right. But like, so this is cool because there's these unintended consequences too. You just said, "Why not have some gaming fun with somebody?" And we know philosophically, the more time we spend interacting with someone in a fun way, we're going to build a bond with them. Like, yes, revenue is what we want, but in a room like Tinley, gaining a bond, that's a victory over everybody else in the room because you're going to be stuck in the memory. And, and then the old quote of, you know, uh, "People won't remember what you say or what you do, but they'll remember how you make them feel." And now you've made them feel something. And that is an inter, maybe that's the argument that I've been looking for because I'm like, man, I don't, I don't know. I don't want to be the, the, the, you know, so I'm in the same boat as you. I don't do sales. Yeah. Like, I've never done a sale on Morph Market. Um, I don't, at my table, I don't do sales. I've been thinking about the dice thing, um, because I've been like, "Well, you know, usually I barter with somebody, you know, or they'll send me a message on Morph Market and, you know, it'll be reasonable, and I'll be like, 'Well, okay, that's, that's only 20% off what I'm asking. That's fine. Sure. I'm not going to, I'm not going to argue over that.'" And I get rid of the snake. Like, I don't breed my own rodents, so I have to pay for feeders. Like, you know, so, like, imagine a situation like, middle of Tinley. Like, let's say I, I don't know what their regulations are in terms of your booth, like if you get a table set up. Um, but I might invert my table. Mhm. People do that. Yep. Make it a middle walk into. Yeah. And I would get a big blow-up die. So, when people just walk by, they say, "Why is there a big blow-up die in the middle of your booth?" You go like, "Well, if you buy something, I'm going to let you roll, and you get 10, 20, 30% off of it." Yeah. Just build it right there. So, and as long as, as long as you're not a wing nut and you're nice and, you know, which most people are, there's some exceptions. Like, it's an impression that you give that person. They go, "Let's go back to that dice booth that was." Yeah. And so, here's what I wrestle with. And so, the dice booth, I have a relatable story. Uh, I, when I, I was working at TPC Sawgrass, flagship of the PGA Tour, somebody left a very, very kind review. They had no idea what my name was. They could not, they did not put my name in the review, but they said, "The guy with the sideburns and the bow tie." To this day, I've lost the bow tie, but to this day, I keep the sideburns. And it's part of Girtz, you, you can testify. When we sat down in the green room, I had my Proper Royals t-shirt under this, and I still put my chef coat on because somebody's gonna go, "Who's that wacko that wears the chef coat?" And four other people are gonna go, "That's Proper Royals." "Who had that big blow-up doll?" "That's weird." "Blow-up die." "That's going to end up in somebody's reel." Okay. "Who had that that blow-up die?" People are going to remember it. And so, there, there is that value to it. And I wholeheartedly believe that years in, I have no need to continue wearing the chef coat other than I do like having my pens in the sleeve here. It's just a brand sort of thing, and it does mentally, I enjoy it. It's fun to put this on and all that. But sorry to finish my thought. The flip side of me goes, I put a lot of work and care into the beauty and the output and the, uh, odds and the line selection and all of that kind of stuff. Um, and I, I don't want, again, a gimmick. I don't want something to overshadow that. That's probably just my mind screwing with me, but it is there. That bugs me. It's, it's a, it's why a lot of these gimmicks in video games work. Is people have an emotional response instead of an intellectual response. They're not thinking through the math. They're just thinking, "This made me feel good." It's why people are dependent. Like, I don't drink because I oftentimes don't know when to say no, right? You know. Um, but on the flip side, gambling for me, I, I moved to Vegas when I was 18 and lived there until I was 23 and had no, gambling wasn't a thing for me. Mhm. Like, I would go, I would visit my parents. They would take me out to dinner, and usually it would be a casino. Yeah. And they, "Oh, why don't you hang out and put a couple dollars in a machine with us?" And I'd go like, "Okay." And I'd put five in, I'd win 20, cash out, and go, "This is gas. I'm done." I guess there's always the psychological part of it. I went, uh, my wife and I were on our, our, uh, we took a honeymoon to, um, um, the honeymoon that we took was to Alaska, and it was on a cruise ship. And the first night I went out, and I like, I don't like, I'm kind of like you in one way, and that the general casino scene does nothing for me. Playing, uh, Texas Hold'em does a lot for me, especially tournaments. That's, that, I think it's the purest form of the game. I don't even like head-to-head cash game. I want a tournament game. Anyway, it's a fun evening. I kill four hours, end up making a hundred bucks, come back to the room, Kelly's asleep, no problem. Next morning, Adam, how the day go? Went great. Got $100. Explain it. Like, I would go out and spend a bunch of, like, living in Vegas, there were concerts every night, and I would spend $30, $40 a night going to a concert, getting, at the time when I was younger, a couple drinks. Yeah. Going to get food afterwards, and I'd spend $100 in a night. Mhm. And my parents were like, "Well, we spend $100 a night, too, but this is the way we enjoy it, right?" It's like, "Cool. More power to you." Yeah. If you could stop it, it's cool. And the, the funny thing though, of the matter of perception was the next day, Kelly's at the pool having a good time. I'm like, "Oh, I got a hundred bucks in casino money that I didn't have when I came here." Yeah. Promptly lost it. Had a great afternoon. $100 gone. Come back. She's like, "How'd you do?" I'm like, "It's gone." She's like, "You lost it?" And I'm like, "Yeah, well, we never had it. It didn't, it was zero. It's, it's all net zero." And she's like, "No, we did have it. When you came back last night, we had it, and now we don't." And I'm like, "That's a different perspective." But, and I'm not saying one's right or wrong. I'm not saying anybody's stupid or smart. It's, it's, it's how we're, we're seeing it there. So, maybe I need to, maybe I need to let my guard down a little bit on, on some of this stuff. And, and the fact is, like, I'm not Justin. If I was making triple visuals that the world had never seen before and that were icons and setting new standards, maybe that's one thing, but I'm not. So, I may as well try and keep the lights on along the way. And when the time comes, then I guess I can, we'll reevaluate. Think of it from this perspective. Is Justin produces a lot of animals, and we see the cool stuff that he posts and the like 400 so on animals that are on Morph Market or this website, right? But there are probably a thousand animals that he wholesales, at least. I take the over on that. Yeah, that's a good point, too. That's that's a psychological point where we only see, we almost only see what we want to see, but we certainly only see what he wants to show us, and we only show each other what we want each other to see. Um, so I, I know you only usually see me at shows when it's the ARP, and usually it's because I'm behind Trevor's booth. Mhm. Um, because I, I'm on the wait list for my own table. Um, but when I have a table, like at the REP or the Show Me Show or stuff, I'm known as the dice guy. I'm the guy that has, because I sell loose dice, dice sets. I have tether stuff at my table. So, like for me, making the, the, the jump to like, "Here's this big gimmick thing," probably isn't that big of a jump, right? Because people that go to those shows already know me as the guy that sells dice at his booth. I have dice earrings. May as well, uh, may as well incorporate them, right? Yeah. And, you know, I've thought about doing it. Um, I've seen people with the roulette wheels on their table. Yeah. The, yeah. Yep. Do something similar, like a free sticker, 10% off, whatever. Um, and again, it's, it's if you did the math, it probably still works out in their favor. Mhm. Like, I would still, like, with with the average of 20% off, I would still say that works out in my favor because I'm now not feeding another animal, right? And like, like I don't do this. Like my, my, Thanks, John. Um, like those were honest prices and honest discounts. Yeah. But there's nothing that says you can't inflate the price a little bit too. I'm not. So, I've done that. If somebody wanted to do that, that can work in your favor as well. So, what I've done on Morph Market over the last year was just trying to figure out like, what's the best way to price your animals? So, like, I started off with, "I'm just going to embed shipping in my cost, right? And say free shipping." Put the little emoji on the, the description, you know? And then it's like, "Okay, GS, hang on just a second. I want to tease this. This is perfect. I got to pay bills at some point, and we're down to I need to do that. But that's what I want to come back to. I want to come back to pricing and angles on Morph Market and auctions. And then we're going to have to do another episode on AI because I don't think we're going to get there. But that's fine. But that I got to do this because I do need to make some money, and I owe this to these are great people that support us. You do it. I'm gonna run that. Yeah. Perfect. You do that, and I want to pick up, Yeah. Uh, Morph Market strategy and auction strategy with you. So, uh, guys, thanks for hanging out tonight. This is a cool show and a cool example of, uh, uh, some of the guests that come on. And as I just said, lots of great people support Proper Royals and keep things going. Uh, Palm Street, uh, brings you, uh, a live selling platform that is different than anything out there. I'm about to release a reel, probably later tonight before I go to bed, but maybe in the morning. I've already cut the promo and all that. Uh, check it out. Uh, but ever since Palm Street came on, Proper Royals live content comes to you ad-free, uninterrupted. I don't know if you've noticed, but, uh, they've made it so that I don't have to worry about Google ads anymore. Boom. Redline Shipping for all the, uh, strategy and psychology and everything that we've talked about. Uh, service at the end of the day is still what talks to me. Redline Shipping has a team to support you. Uh, has the equipment to get your animals safe from point A to point B. It's still hot out there in various places. Um, I still check in with Redline before I ship and get their advice on animals going out. Their insurance is always great, and their team is there. You can talk to a real human. The phone number is on their website. Use the promo code proper five to get yourself five bucks off of your next shipping label. Speaking of service, shedtesting.com. That is Charlie Williams. He just upset the whole, uh, shed testing market. I don't know if you've noticed that. Uh, he dropped prices significantly. You can now get a 10-test panel for $85 and return the results back to you in five business days. Let me tell you, if Charlie says it's five days, he probably believes he can have it in two or three days. That is a safety net built in. You will have results that are accurate and quick, uh, back to you immediately. There's a saying that you can have, uh, better, quicker, or faster in business, but you can only have two out of three. I'm telling you, Charlie just figured out better, quicker, and faster. Go check them out. Go check out the, uh, jeans that are available. And if there's something you're looking for, just touch base with him. He could have it in the works. It could be close. He could talk to you about the reliability levels and all of that. Also, uh, Lace, Monarch, Hurricane, and Monsoon, uh, gene tests are, uh, live right now, so go check that out. You're going to get 10% off. I know you're saying, "Man, it was 15% off not too long ago." Yeah, that was before he dropped his prices by like 50%. You realize if you get a 10-test panel, that's $8 per test. 10% off is what you're going to get off of two orders, and you can order as many shed tests as you like per order, and you're going to get 10% off of that. Use a promo code proper 10 at shedtesting.com. Go check that out. Um, Reagan Renee, Royal Pythons. That is Charlie Ryan from New Jersey, and he is the, uh, current reigning undefeated, uh, 15 Minutes of Lame champion, and we become good buddies and good friends. Um, one of the most analytical and insightful minds in the industry, um, specializing in Krypton's, DG, Genetic Stripe, Candy, Pi, Clowns, single, double, and triple combos. Ingredients. I don't know if you know the best recessive combo award at Siri went to a Krypton, beat out clowns, beat out a special, uh, Pompei that Justin had up there. How about that? Uh, go check out, uh, Charlie for some, uh, Krypton action on there. Portuguese Pythons is Danny and Renee Roachcha. They are out in Chino, California. I love their Ultramel projects. I have, uh, Ultramel, almost all of my Ultramel, Pi ingredients come from them. They're working Ultramel Puzzle, Ultramel Clown, Ultramel Pi, and then other cool projects like Sunset Hypo, and then they work in some really great dark genes too. Uh, het Red Axanthic, uh, Blackhead, Ghi, all of those throughout their projects. So, go check them out. Eye-popping, uh, combos, really great people to do business with. Sundog Serpents is Josh and Sarah down in Orlando. I've been doing business and working in person with them for since sometime in 2021. So, I mean, that that's got to be four years by now. And, uh, they've been good friends, good business colleagues. I bought snakes from them. They bought snakes from me. They, uh, work the TSK Axanthic Clown projects. If you're looking for TSK, uh, ingredients and many different projects, check them out. Also, uh, Super Asphalt that you don't see a whole lot of in the United States. They're doing great things with that, and they also just hatched some Puzzle stuff, and they are breeding Blood Pythons as well. Go see Sundog Serpents. Um, excellent people that I, I promise you, um, great to work with. Last but not least is Chris at BNS Reptilia. Uh, the original advertising partner of Proper Royals. He is my Tinley partner. I vend with him in October, and we, in fact, own a couple animals together as well. Chris is BNS Reptilia because he specializes not only in Ball Pythons but Blood Pythons, Locality Boas, Colubrids of all shapes and sizes. Pichuous, if you know what that means. Bullpines, uh, bull snakes, the pine snakes, and he will have those at Tinley. He'll have the right paperwork, the right, uh, uh, licenses to have those there, as well as education for how you can own them legally wherever you might be. So, uh, go check out Chris, check out his inventory. Uh, you can reach him on Instagram at BNS Reptilia. He's also the regional distributor of the Chipper in Pennsylvania. That is a Coco product. If you are interested in acquiring any, get in touch with him or becoming a regional distributor, uh, in your own region. You can get in touch with him, and he will help you on that. Audience, thank you for hanging out. Uh, it wouldn't make sense to do this show otherwise. I would just hang out with cool people like Girtz without you. But I'm so happy to have you. Uh, take care of these, um, sponsors. They are people within our industry taking care of our industry, and like I say, Proper Royals comes ad-free because of these folks. So, thanks very much. Josh, here with Girtz this evening from Critical Hit Exotics. Before we get too far, where can people find you? Critical Hit Exotics. Where can people find you? It's Critical Hit Exotics everywhere. Okay, cool. Um, so, Instagram, Facebook. I mean, I've gone down the rabbit hole of Mastodon, like pretty much every social media you can think of. There's a platform called Mastodon. Yep. I thought that was just a metal band. Okay. Uh, yeah, it's, it's another Twitter like X, or I guess it's X now, uh, platform. Sure. Yeah. Um, but the tool I use to help me post social media does all of it. So, I might as well do it. There you go. That's true, too. Um, there's a lot of paths. Yes. Uh, tools like that, and then even bigger tools like AI. Like I say, we're going to have to do another episode sometime because we're not going to get to it all. But we've had fun talking about the psychology and strategy of pricing. And before the break, we were, uh, flirting with talking about pricing on Morph Market. Um, we want to, I would say, I would think collectively, we want to avoid the, "You post something at 10, I'm going to post the same thing at nine, he's going to post it at 8, and you're going to post at seven, and then six is going to get the sale, and the market just lost 40% of its value." We don't like that. Okay, what's a person to do? Because we still want to get our stuff sold. And you mentioned a strategy like, "All right, I'm just going to bake shipping in. I'm going to take an average or maybe even a slightly above average or slightly below average, whatever number you want on shipping, uh, and put it in there. Big capital letters with an emoji, free shipping. Take it away. Where did you, where did you end up? What did that, what did you learn from that?"

Um, so I did that for about half the year. Mhm. And then in July, I switched to a cost-plus shipping to see how the rest of this year goes. Um, I don't have a lot of animals, so my, my data point's going to be very, very small. So, I don't think it's going to be a good indicator. But I think what I, what I do is I think about how are people actually shopping on Morph Market, right? And the reality is, and one of the reasons why I decided to switch halfway through the year was, I think the reality is is people go to Morph Market and immediately drop, they'll, they'll search for what they want to search for, but then immediately drop down to lowest price. Yes. And sort by lowest price. That's right. And if I'm baking in shipping, I am not going to show up on that first page at all. Right. Um, so I've switched over in the hopes that it changes my sales from the first half of the year versus sales from the second half of the year. Again, very small data point. I've had between 24 and 18 animals for sale at any given time. So, people with more animals, if you want to try and follow up, that'd be great. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this from a, from a non-ball python standpoint, and maybe you have an answer from a non-ball python, i.e., whether game theory or your own experience. So, I worked in, uh, uh, wedding sales industry. That was part of what I did. Uh, anybody that doesn't know, resorts make money on weddings. Not much else, but weddings, they make a lot of money. And you, you could be a king and make a whole lot of money if you can sell weddings. And I remember saying to a wedding coordinator, one time, our salesperson, I said, "All these line items and add-ons and and and your your entree is this, and then your order is this, and then you have this bar and that bar." I said, "What if we just said, it's $300 out the door. Get whatever you want." And she said, "Nobody will look past the $300 per person sticker price. If we start at $45 a person, and then there's a 20% service charge, and then there's a $40 per person wine pairing." Yeah. And then, uh, you can get your lamb, uh, orves, and that's going to be an extra $6 or $9 a person or whatever it is. And I was like, "This is exhausting. It ends up at $300. Why don't we just save them to chase?" She goes, "Nobody will come through our door." And, um, to this day, I have to admit, she was exactly right. I still would prefer, as a person who's gone through getting married one time, I was always like, "What's this going to cost us all in, and let's be done with this?" And I guess I'm just not, like I say, wired like the masses. But where do you see that pain tolerance? Because we've all heard the the story, "Don't nickel and dime." I hate feeling nickel and dimed. So, that's the one side of it. Yet the reality is, no, start at the lowest thing and just tack on, tack on, tack on kind of deal. Sorry, I'm looking at the last comment. Um, which one is this? The, uh, Well, because Charlie's got an amazing insight. I, I like Charlie's thought processes, too. So, he says, "I search by highest price, adult female, highest price, exclude pastel, exclude sunset." But then what do you do with that information? Charlie, Girtz, carry on while we're waiting for Charlie. Now we got the show behind the show going. So, you know, there's not much that we can do on Morph Market for selling an animal like to your point where it's the al-a-carte menu, right? Because it's, you're buying a snake. Um, you know, there's, there's been a lot of talk about, you know, the, the shipping wars, and I know one of your sponsors, Absolutely. Robin. I live in the same city as Robin. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. No. No. And, and we can talk about that because one thing we've learned is price is king. I, I believe service is better. I believe the result is better. Price is king. I, I, I, I can't say it differently. I mean, that's what it is. That's what we have learned. And it's, it's that cut and dry and that callous, really, honestly. Yeah. I don't like the thing that I look at more, I think right now, at least, is so, again, we can do another episode on AI, but like some of the AI stuff that I am learning is that if, if you're selling anything under $500, that's 70% of the market. So, right now, there's, yeah, there's 32,000 ball pythons on there. You know, it's probably close to 20,000 animals or sub-$500. Does it, does it make sense? And I'm not advocating one or the other. And let me just be clear on the record. Morph Market is not my favorite platform to sell on. I don't put as much effort on platform on Morph Market, but I do use Morph Market. I am a customer of Morph Market, and I still participate with Morph Market. Is it, is that the, I mean, is what you're saying is there's 32,000 ball pythons under $500? There's not much leverage other than price. Is that enough? Is that's what the god of Darien coming right through to my room giving me a message. But I mean, is that an argument in of itself to say we got to find a different pond where at least you have a little some sort of leverage? Why not fish all the ponds? Like, you need to know what pond you're fishing in. Yeah. What bait to take, right? So, Morph Market's super convenient. Everybody's doing it. It's quick. It's at the fingertips. It's all right here on our phone. Yeah. You can get a premium, and you look more professional if you have a website. Yeah, you know, uh, there's shows I'm going to bring pet animals, but I can probably get more for those pet animals at a show than I can on Morph Market because I don't have as much competition. People are looking for a pet. Yeah. I don't have to haggle with them over a $200 snake, whereas on Morph Market, somebody's going to hit me up and it's, "Will you take a hundred for it?" Yeah. Yeah. You take, you know, right? Um, so like, I have my animals up there, but honestly, I have no expectation that they're going to sell up there. Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, even though you're not supposed to do it. Uh, shows, local shows, that's where my bread and butter is because most of the stuff I make is sub-$500, and I don't want to fish in that big pond. Yeah. Because it, it essentially turns into a, a wholesale marketplace at at some of those prices, and not at the $500, but maybe at the $150 and under, it, it just becomes, and look, I know some people snicker at $150, but there's a big difference between $40 and $150, or $125, and you know, that, I don't know about you, but $525 snakes, that's a pretty good night out, or a pretty good, uh, that's actually, it's a really good night out. That's more than on a night out. That's a really good concert night out or whatever it like, that, that's that tangible money that is that is good, and, uh, it's worthwhile on that. Um, I like the idea that you said of fishing many ponds then sort of sort of diversify. Um, could we pivot for one moment because I, maybe, maybe I'm hoping for too much. You might go, "I don't know," but I feel like maybe you got some insight or you have some thoughts because another big portion of our market these days is auctions. What's the, what's your mindset? Have you gotten, first off, do you do auctions? Do you participate in them at all? Do you like them? Do you dislike them? What's your just personal take on them?

So, I have run an auction. My, my one auction that I can run on Morph Market for the last couple months. Um, I haven't sold a single thing on auctions, but I also, I'm not, I set the minimum to what I want for the. Okay. So, yeah. Okay. Like, and if nobody bids, nobody bids. I think the audience looking for auctions is they're looking for a deal. Yeah. Well, Right. Because otherwise, you, like we were saying on the mystery box, otherwise you just buy the thing. They're looking for the thing beyond the 20, 30%. They're looking to get lucky and get that. I don't know if you remember, uh, like early 2010s, the all the rage was the websites where people won this for a quarter, and it was like a brand new PlayStation. Yeah. But you had to buy the bids, right? You, you, you pay for your bid. Correct. So, what they didn't tell you until you signed up and got involved was that it's a quarter a bid, and by the time you get to the end, in the last minute of that auction, everybody's spending quarters to bid, and they end up making like $3,000 to sell a PlayStation that's worth 500, and then somebody bought for 80 or something. Yeah. Everybody feels like they're winning, but Yeah. The, the person only spent $80 in bids to get it, but they had 10 people spending $80 to get it at the last minute. Yeah. And the people that spent $79 got nothing except for just. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. And I remember the ads for them. It was, "I got this, blah, blah, blah, for $14." Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's interesting, like, and the market's always changing. So, like, if you asked me again in six months, my answers might be different. Like, I, I look at Palm Street for example. I, so Trevor and I did an auction, like we were, you were the first one. Uh, but Trevor and I were in, I think that that first training group afterwards. Yeah. Uh, with, uh, Snakes for the Memories and a few other people. Um, we went through, I did a live where I, I had a store up, but I, I wasn't doing an auction. I was just doing like a Q&A and stuff. Okay. I kind of treated it a little bit differently than most people do, right? Yeah. You used it as like an educational or community platform rather than a straight sales. Yeah. Um, and then Trevor did an auction, and I went to his house and helped him with it because we had the two cameras going, and, um, you know, it, our experience with that in, I think it was January or February, was my takeaway was like, it feels like the step above wholesale, right? Not quite there. And the, the, the thing that we came to was just, you have to have an audience that you can bring in for this. That's where I've found. So, first, what I'll say is it, it, it takes, and look, I want to be as trans, like, it does me no good to push a brand and not be honest. It, it, it just that just undermines anybody else ever wanting to advertise with me or take me serious. So, Palm Street right now for ball pythons is challenging. It is definitely a step above wholesale, and I think that there's an opportunity for true sales, but it's this chicken or the egg thing because the good snakes's got to get there, and then whoever's going to put the good snakes there has to go, "Well, I want the good buyers there." And until there's this, you know, mindset of everything's going to be a deal that's not baked into it, it's going to be a little bit of a challenge. But that being said, one thing I found was when, and I actually want to do like a YouTube deep dive on this. I've done six, seven, eight of them now. And what I found is, yes, the, the, the number of audience that you can attract. So, doing all the social media stuff to get as many followers as you can is vitally important on there. It's, it's like anything in life. You can't just walk in and all of a sudden be amazing at it. You got to build up some things. So, if you could build up your followers, that you, that will it will advertise for you to those followers. So, if you could get, I think I have six, seven, 800 followers somewhere like that. So, there's a lot of eyeballs that that my little, uh, you know, and they're really great about notifications, man. The notifications come up on the. I really, really like their platform. It's, it's good, and it's proven in so many things. So, the last one I did was a real aha thing, and I, you're going to hear in my voice. It's hard. It's, it, I could say one set of facts, and I feel not quite sold emotionally, right? So, here's, here's what I'm, here's the payoff. I got 336 views on my last auction. I got the highest average prices, and I told myself if I get above, I can't remember what it was, but like 120, like notification bell things, that I would set a bunch of things at a dollar starting bid, which is not Adam, like you've heard me say, I don't like sales. I think there's an intrinsic value to what we've made. I think there's an established market to it. We don't want to drive this down. The things that I started at a dollar on average sold for far higher than the things that I put the minimum bid on. And that is tough to get my head around because when the day comes and I make a triple visual, I damn sure don't want to start it for a dollar, but I see what the facts are telling me, kind of thing. What, how does that speak to people bidding emotionally? Yeah. I got to win this, right? Or I'm be, they become vested in it. Like, I, maybe I'm, this is why those bid websites work. It's why eBay works. Yeah. Like, I, there, there have been plenty of times where I've bid on stuff on eBay where, like, last second, somebody jumps in, and it's like, "No, no, I did it. I'll, I'll." So, earlier this year, you know, I, I have my one-year, three-year, five-year, eight-year.

Plan. Okay. Yeah. For my business, like I plan. I'm a project manager by trade, so I plan everything out. I have a spreadsheet for the next, uh, well, when I wrote it, it was for the next 27 years of my life so that I could try and retire when I was 52.

It out. But I know, like, there's a certain growth point I want to hit year-over-year with Critical Hit Exotics. And I know I came up short in a few areas. So, it's like, well, how do I fix it this year? Okay, I'm going to get a couple breeder-ready females. Sure. Uh, they have to be like, I have rules. They have to be in my project. I don't want a male with pastel or spot-nose. Uh, certain genes that I just don't want to pass to everything, but I'm fine with them in females. Like, so, so I have all these rules for myself just to rein myself in a little bit. And I am so organized and everything with that.

An animal came up for auction that fit everything that I needed. It's, it's a dreamicle project animal, um, that is also visual tskanthic, has GHI, which is my favorite gene. Like, and I'm like, okay. So, I had, I had liked this animal for a while and it was like, "Okay, next time I get a bonus at work, I'm going to splurge a little." Yeah. Buy a couple animals, or if I sell stuff at a show, I'll reinvest. Um, and so the person that was selling it threw it up for auction, and I'm like, "Oh, man. Well, well, maybe I can get it cheaper." Uh-huh. Uh, yeah. It did not go cheaper than the price I could have just bought it at. Really? It went higher, huh? It went higher. And not only that, but I already had an animal on purchase from this person. So, I was thinking I was getting this whole deal, and and I ended up getting the deal on the shipping, cuz both animals shipped out at the same time. But like, I ended up paying like an extra $1500, $200 for this animal rather than the list price that I could have just bought it at three days prior. Mhm. And it was like, and afterwards, I'm all like, I feel really dirty like that I did this. I should have just stopped and said no. No. This person could take this auction was ending when I was taking my daughter to her guitar lesson, and my daughter had my phone bidding for me while I was driving her to her. Oh, you're just telling her you're just like, go, go, go. Yep. Yeah.

But all right. So, let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Has that animal, an analogous animal to that, come up since? Because that's a pretty rare combo. It's one thing if it's a dimension clown. That's one thing. But in this case, maybe it was worth the 15. Yeah. No, it's going to work out, and I'm, I'm going to get the like, I know I will get the return on it as soon as she drops. Yeah. Not worried about that at all. And and I'll get the return just in the holdbacks, like, because really my priority is just pushing my Dreamsicle project forward, right? Yeah. Um, and so like, I'm not worried about that, but but I, it's more of the aspect of you getting that like, no, I'm not going to lose this, right? But but would the LZ fair, uh, economists say that was the market value of that animal in that moment? I mean, it was unregulated pure capitalist. Yep. Uh, playground. That's right. In that moment, in that instance right there. Um, uh, in that auction, was it a $1 start? Was it a minimum bid start? I, I think, I think it started at a dollar, like, and I just came out at like, I just threw out like $100 to start. Yeah. Like this was before they had the incremental bidding. Okay. Implemented. This was on Palm Street or on, uh, on market. Okay. Uh, and I just, I'm like, I'm willing to pay a hundred bucks. I put a hundred bucks in. Yeah. Um, I was willing to pay more than that. Say it sounds like a pretty good animal at that moment, but I ended up doing it and just putting it on a credit card instead. But so that tells me, and again, I see the, I see the rational data. It's hard to get my stomach around advertising a Palm Street. All right, I'm going to put up 10 above average, non-h wholesale animals, and we're gonna start them all at a dollar. But my experience shows if I schedule the live enough ahead of time, if I advertise and push it enough, if I put the banner behind me, if I talk about it, if I get people to go, let me just see what this is, and it's a dollar, they get in the game, and things happen.

So, so that's that's what I was about to say is it's it's the engagement, right? Anybody's going to be engaged at a dollar. Yeah. And you get those first couple people, and then you get the situation that I was in where it's like, oh, there's 10 seconds, 10, nine, eight, and like, no, no. And then there's another 10 seconds, and then another 10 seconds. Yeah. It's brilliant. It's beautiful. Like, it's, uh, ah, it's a cool platform. Um, Girtz, I could talk all night, and maybe we shouldn't at at on another episode. I'm gonna leave it there. We covered, uh, we covered Morph Market. We covered auctions. We covered the live sales. Uh, why game theory is useful. I love it, man. We didn't get to any of the AI stuff, which, which I actually feel like, um, that's definitely on me, but I felt like what we were talking about was too good. But audience, I apologize. I don't try and do bait and switch, uh, you know, clickbait kind of things. I will have Girtz back, uh, soon if he'll be back, and we'll get into, we'll get into the AI tools because, um, you know, talking philosophically on sales drivers, or again, I hate to use the word trigger, but, you know, leverage triggers to, uh, uh, insight, uh, decisions, that's fun. But how do we put some of this to work with AI, and that really is what puts a bow on top of it. So let's do it again soon, if that's okay with you. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Uh, audience, thanks for having me. Oh, dude, this was fun. And and I will wager, um, if I do the, uh, if I use the AI SEO stuff and I do it right, I actually think this this show will perform very well over the long run, is what I think. Um, I don't know. I, but I like it. I can usually tell when things have been an easy conversation when I'm like, I got to wrap this up, and I don't want to. That means you've done a good show, you know? So, uh, all good things. Uh, also, we got to talk about what's going on in Colorado because that's pretty serious and scary and important. So, uh, audience, stay tuned. I don't know when when we'll make this work, but sometime soon because I think it's a cool conversation. Thank you so much. I'll see you, um, uh, first off, we'll see you well, Thursday morning, and then next Tuesday night, I'll see you out on the road. Um, please go check out Critical Hit Exotics. That's the name of it. Uh, that's, uh, Josh's company, uh, for sure. I know that he said they're everywhere, but for sure on Morph Market, Instagram. And we didn't get to talk about Breeder Underground with, uh, Trevor, uh, Schneider from Ball Labs as well. If you enjoyed the conversation tonight, definitely go check out the episodes of Breeder Underground. How many are you up to now? We are at 27. We did 27 last night. Cool. And that's, uh, at 8:30 p.m. Mountain. So, it's a little later in the evening for some people on the East Coast. Yeah. But replays are forever. Uh, replays are forever. What's the, uh, what's the YouTube channel? Is it on Critical Hit or is it on Breeder Underground? Breeder, at the Breeder Underground. Okay. On YouTube. All right. Check that out, guys, especially if you enjoyed tonight and this episode. Uh, all right. That's the longest ending ever. This, this is turning into a Skard song here. This is no Freeird. We're out of here, guys. I'll see you soon. Thank you as always, Josh. Thanks so much. Stick around just a second. See you guys.