Breeding Rainbows & Monarchs with Aaron Cline | Ball Pythons, Branding & Baseball

What's going on, guys? I got Aaron Klein on the show tonight from Batter Up Ball Pythons. We're going to talk uh rainbows, uh Ultrammells, rodents, and baseball. We got a lot to get to, plus business about to pick up around here at Proper Royals. Let's get started.

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What's going on everybody? I hope that you're doing well. Uh it's like it's that time of year. It's almost the end of summer. I think some of the kids are starting to go back to school already or it's in the next uh you know week or so. all the parents can get back to a regular schedule. You know, you don't have the the kid just hanging around all the time. I hope you guys are well. Thanks for being here tonight. It is 8:00 on the East Coast. It's 7 o'clock here in Minnesota. And in Minnesota, we do the you don't go back to school until uh the day after Labor Day. So, we still got a couple weeks of u of summer. And it is actually it's really nice uh here. So, uh, I appreciate you guys being here.

We will be adree tonight, of course. That's how Proper Royals comes to you now, thanks to the fine folks at Palm Street. Uh, check this out. If you, uh, well, if you if you already are using Palm Street, you'll want to hear this. And if you haven't used Palm Street, this might be a little bit of incentive. Um, you know, in retail, there's kind of this uh, summer slowdown because people are traveling. you can't really buy your luxury stuff if you're out on the road, especially a pet or an animal. Uh maybe your credit cards have been charged up because you went to Disney World or whatever it might be. But going back to school kind of kickstarts the retail season and they are doing a promotion called the coldblooded comeback. Stay tuned this week on Instagram. I will have uh details for you, but there's incentives for both sellers and buyers. Uh you do have to register for this and you do have to do uh a live show within a certain uh time set of dates. Um I'll have all the details out this week on Instagram reel. So check that out. Like I say, if you've been looking for a reason to try it out, they're going to ensure you they're going to give you a little uh incentive to uh come come give it a shot. And again, if you're already using Palm Street, what a great opportunity. So thanks to Palm Street. I appreciate it as always.

Um, I got Aaron Klein on the show tonight. Uh, he's out of Illinois and he's pretty active uh, certainly in the regional um, market and shows uh, around Illinois, but also in the social media circles um, and you know, the ball python circles. Really active guy and I'm happy to have him on tonight. Busy guy. He's he's probably gives me a run for money on on how busy he stays and the things that he has going on. Plus, he's working with uh, Cool Jeans. So, we're going to get into all of that. So, stick around for Aaron. He'll be up in uh in just a couple minutes.

Um I alluded to it in the pre-show intro things. This is like last weekend was like my last bastion of uh summer, any kicking back or relaxation, which I'm not great at, but I did. I went out to a lake in the middle of nowhere and actually a very small lake. So, there wasn't even any uh outboards or jet skis, no nothing. I just fished. I got on some really just trophy pike, which was great. Uh I didn't get the one on I didn't get the pike on the fly rod that I wanted. I got um some really nice largemouth bass on my fly rod, but the pike I went with uh I just went with the actually it was my old snook uh setup from down in Florida with the pike. Thank god I had it, too. They were big. They were cool. So, I got a little bit of relaxation, but uh let me run down what we got going on.

Um, in the next 10 weeks I have nine and maybe 10 events. And to be honest, um, it's really a much shorter time frame than that. It's really about seven weeks, but let me give you the rundown. So, catch me somewhere at one of these shows. This weekend, I'll be in Oaklair, Wisconsin at the Snake Discovery Show. Uh, and that's a whole exotic pet show. Like, they have I mean, there were foxes there at the last one. There are these I guess they're monkeys on some sort of primate type animal. Um anyway, a very cool show. Uh there are some great breeders that'll be there. I know uh JSA will be there. MBK is usually there, but I'm not 100% sure if they are going to this one. Kyle's Reptiles will be there. So, uh I hope if you're in the area, you'll come out and check out the Oaklair show in uh Oaklair, Wisconsin.

Then September 13th and 14th, uh, I'm off to the CRBE  up in Toronto. I'll be broadcasting with Chris Eaton of the Fat Man Nation on the Fat Man Nation channel all weekend. We're doing marathons, back-to-back marathons. Uh, once we start recording, we don't go off the air for the whole day. So, for sure that will be broadcast on the Fat Man Nation. We'll figure out uh if uh what if any of it will come across on my channel, but I'll be up there for the Canadian Reptile Breeders Expo. Then there's a slight chance I could be convinced to go down to Kansas City the next weekend for the AARP show.

Um, then Epic is back, the Exotic Pet Industry Conference that I work with. Yeah, we've been working behind the scenes putting together another conference for you. That'll be two in the very first year. Uh we've expanded the number of tracks. Uh we've expanded the length of the sessions and it's going to be Saturday in the daytime so we can have a full like six-h hour um conference. Stay tuned for the schedules, the announcements, the keynote speakers. We're just ironing out who's doing what and who all the um you know almost all the speakers are nailed down. But stay tuned for that. You're going to start seeing promos on that which is just going to be it's a cool lineup and a cool um uh session this year this this fall. So that'll be September 27th. Okay.

Then uh September 28th I am in Sou Falls, South Dakota vending. October 5th I'll be in Minneapolis at the Cold Blooded Expo show. October gets a little weird. Listen to this. October 5th, Minneapolis. October 10th  uh starts Tinley weekend.  uh October 25th, I'll be in Fargo, North Dakota. Then the 26th, the very next day, I'll be vending in uh Hastings, Minnesota. That's another Snake Discovery show. And then  uh November 2nd, the following weekend, I will be in De Moine, Iowa. And if I have any inventory left, then  uh we'll just do a  uh a Palm Street auction and get rid of it all.

Uh, I am going to do a Palm Street auction at the end of this month, either the 29th, the 30th, the 31st, somewhere in there. I'm going to pick one of those dates. So, I hope to see you. I got uh a lot of good inventory. Obviously,  uh, Patreon gets first dibs on that then, but then just keep an eye on Instagram. Whatever makes it out of the Patreon world will go up on Instagram and proper royals.com. I do put stuff on Morph Market, but not everything. Uh, everything is on properroyals.com and generally I post it on Instagram. So, keep an eye out. I hope to see you out there somewhere. I've been kind of itching for a run of shows. So, I I got what I've been itching for here. This is a a lot going on between now and the end of the year. So, I hope to see you somewhere.

Um, as I said, we got um Aaron Klein from Batterup Ball Pythons. I might have said batterup balls earlier. Battle Batter Up Ball Pythons. Um, I met uh we had chatted quite a lot. Aaron and I chatted I don't know and in all these little groups where we all like hang out together and a whole lot of people that we've never met in person you know and then  uh I started um being able to vend Tinley and vending Tinley and I got to meet  uh Aaron in person. I've met him a couple times and I think I got to check I think he has one of the very limited edition proper royals hats. I think he's one of the few owners of those in the world. So  um anyhow happy to have him on the show. Please welcome for the very very first time ever  uh Aaron Klein to the Proper Royals stage.

What's going on? How are you, man?

>> Doing good.

>> Have that hat.

>> I thought so. I was like I think I think you're one of like  uh 12 to 14 people, I think, is is the  uh is it. So, very limited. You want to hold on to that, man? You can  uh you know what? I'll sign it for you next time. I'm joking. Thanks for the support, man.

>> Well, it was that and a spot-nose clown were donated, and I wanted the hat. I actually got the spot-nose clown and the hat for 45 bucks. So, I paid 45 bucks for a hat and got a free spot nose clown. It was a It was a pretty good deal for me.

>> That's a screaming deal. I think the hat alone was 35. So,  uh but hey, I got the  uh Yeah, that was at the US Arc auction, right?

>> Yep.

>> Yeah. So, everybody won. You got a deal. I got a tax write off. And here we are talking about Proper Royals merch. So, I'm  uh I'm down with it. That's cool.

>> Yeah, it was a We try and buy something every time, even if it's just a shirt or something, right? But that was something I was like,

>> it's a win either way. So, it was pretty cool.

>> No, and that's that's the best thing about the auction. Like, it's it's a win to donate it. Like you say, it's a win to buy something. There's always something good that you can grab. And not everything is $8,000. Like you saw, you get 45 bucks and have a little something to go with. And I always tell people like no, excuse me, no amount is too small. Like give what you can, but if everybody could give just a little bit, it'll go farther than the big numbers you hear. I mean, the the the participation of everybody really is what makes it work. So, nice job. I'm glad to  uh I forgotten that that happened at the  uh at the auction. I was trying to I was thinking of I couldn't remember if I'd sold it to you or not. So,  um anyhow, thanks for being here, man. I appreciate you.

>> Yeah, no problem. I was I was happy to step in. It was a It was something we had talked about, you know, so it's it's cool to finally get in and we got to talk. We've got to talk at Tinley, but Tinley is so busy.

>> It's hard, right?

>> Sit down and talk for a few more minutes. And

>> yeah, between like I generally vend alone. I do vend with Chris in October, but even still, we both have kind of our own thing going, our own businesses going, our own deals going. So, yeah, it's really, really hard to break away. And I I def that's not to say to anybody don't come by and and say hi. I want you to. But there's also that balance of like how long I can like stay out of selling mode where versus trying to to  uh interact with everybody. So  um tell  uh for people that don't know you, give yourself a little  uh introduction on here.

>> Um I'm Aaron Klein. We're from  uh Matune, Illinois. Literally, we are right in the middle of we got Chicago two hours north, Indie two hours east, and St. Louis, two hours west of us. You know, we're right in the middle of everything. So, we go to Tinley, we go to St. Louis and ARBC's. I just vended Shamberg what, two weeks ago. So, we kind of we bounce around.  uh My son with his  uh he's just turned 13. He plays baseball.  uh That's what a lot of people knew us for. That's where the batter up balls theme came from.

>> But we've been he's played in Florida, all over the Midwest.  uh We try and get out there to the East Coast as much as we can. Not like over there you're going to play. It don't matter if it rains or what. We play snow actually up here. So it's that's what a lot of people know us for is baseball.  uh So we just keep the theme going. You know, right now our new  uh shirt that we are selling with merch is a baseball jersey. A legit baseball jersey button up. Got our name. Got his number and name on the back. So

>> we're going to change that a little bit more. We're going to add some color different colors into it. Right now it's black and gold.  uh I want to go with like other teams like the Yankees, the Cubs, Cardinals. I want to do all the different color schemes and just have some fun with it.

>> I got to get some notes from you on where you ordered it from. I've toyed with the idea, and maybe I still have time. I've toyed with the idea of like  uh in the past of doing like a a Tinley specific  uh soccer jersey and having like the  uh the proper Royals instead of like the the the badge or the you know the the badge on the front that the soccer teams have have proper royals there and then I could pre-sell like 10 where people would get like their name and number on the back of it

>> and then you know do another 15 or 20 that are just  uh

>> um that se that year of Tinley and then and then be done with that color. Don't make it in that color anymore. So,  um

>> I could get you set up and you would probably have it before Tinley.

>> Perfect. Well, then there's also the money problem. Yeah, I got to come up with some cash and do that, too. So,  um no, actually, but all joking aside, I think it'd be great. And I think like I love thinking of stuff that people haven't done. So, how did the  uh how did the baseball jerseys do? Were they popular? Were they a hit or how'd it go?

>> Well, at Shamberg, I sold more jerseys than we did snakes or anything, if that tells you anything. So, they're they're pretty popular. They've done really well.

>> Um, were you able to make anything or did you do it basically at cost for some advertising or would you do or maybe you don't want to say maybe I don't?

>> No, we've made money on all of our jerseys, you know.

>> Okay. When we did our first run of batter up shirts,  uh it took us a while to get rid of those and we were giving those away, you know, a few dollars above cost just to, you know, we got to store them and everything else. These we've done pretty good on, you know, they're and they're comfortable and they're a legit baseball jersey just like the ones he's wearing all summer.

>> That's cool, man. That's cool. Yeah. I I like say we'll have to change  uh trade notes on  uh what where you get the jerseys from because I'm guessing if they do baseball they they either do soccer or they'll Yeah, they'll get me in touch with somebody. So

>> um that's cool. So  uh yeah, talk a little bit about  uh Shamberg. I mean I know that I know the narrative out there. I also know  uh you know, Siri  uh was pretty strong  uh I think this past weekend from the the reports I've heard. So what was your experience at Shawnberg? Had you vended it before?

>> Uh this was our first year getting into Shawnberg. We spent a lot of money in the off season. So a lot of people realize we're gone from March until July. We're at baseball every weekend. I spent 14 weekends in a row in a hotel pretty much.

>> So this was our first weekend without ball and we were in a hotel at in Shamberg. Shamberg was was I don't know. Shamberg is the floor was not the same as Tinley. You know, you had concrete floor. So, I'm a person that, you know, I got bad ankles. I, you know, I broke both ankles. So, I'm looking at, is it comfortable to me? No.

>> Yeah.

>> So, then I look at Tinley. Tinley's carpet isn't very comfortable. But then you go to St. Louis and St. Louis is amazing.

>> So, that's one of the ones I look at. I I looked at that  um during setup day was very easy to get in, set up, find your booth.  uh What was cool is because of where it is, the convention center with the hotel and all that, the restaurant, they were bringing around samples to all of us vendors all night.

>> Oh, smart. Good on them. That's a good idea, right?

>> Talking like chicken  uh tuna little bite things. I don't know what they are. Some tomato on a stick with lettuce. I don't know.

>> That's a caprese. That's a little caprese.  uh There you go. Yeah, I got So this is this is my area. Yeah, with the basamic. It probably got a little mozzarella cheese on that skewer. Huh. There you go.

>> So I I have no clue what this stuff is. They just keep bringing it by a little

>> and she'd hand it out and we'd eat it, you know. It was pretty cool. Um setup, I'll tell you what, was it went by easy. There's few people walking around buying. A lot of the vendors were chatting. We were getting to know each other.  uh Um, it just wasn't. When we got there on Saturday morning, there was a line and I'm like, man, it's going to be a good day. As soon as VIP opened, they took off sprinting. Where did they go?

>> Yeah. Snake Discovery. Yeah, right. Yeah.

>> It was like, oh man, look at all these Packer fans. I didn't expect this in Chicago. Now we know why. So then, you know, that that was fine. They'd come around.

>> Wait, hang on a second. Was that their theme to get everybody to dress up as Packer fans in in Chicago?

>> Yeah.

>> What? What a power play. Those two are amazing, man. That's okay. Good. I'm not a Packer fan.

>> I'm like, why is all these Packer fans here? You know, it's Chicago and then there's a few people that kind of went against it and were their Bears stuff. But yeah, what is going on with the Packers here? I didn't

>> Oh, man. What a flex. That is that is strong. Okay. All right.

>> It was pretty good. Um, other than that, you know, there's people, you know, I sold one, you know, it was just a head clown. That was all we sold all weekend. So, for me, you know, you're looking at this is a it's expensive to vend,

>> you know, I can 10 shows and price I paid for this. But the marketing, the people you're meeting, you know, I I like talking to like the guys from Cyber Serpents.  uh Rice Rice was walking around. Bryce is, you know, he been in all of them though, but he comes around and we're all chatting.

>> I say Billy, Billy's great, man. He's I gota say, he's just so good. He's he'll talk with you. He'll he'll interact, man, and make you feel like um million bucks, man. He's a great dude.

>> Oh, absolutely. Um there was a lot of variety there. They had some aquatic people there that were more not about selling fish, but they're selling the chemicals and stuff. So, that was something neat to see. It's opening it's opening the horizons for us because there's a lot of money in aquatics. A lot of money in just the the the hobby itself. So, that's a good thing to see. Um, all the vendors pretty much said the same thing. It wasn't a great sales show as much as it was a, you know, marketing, getting our names out there. There was one guy, he sold really well, but he was also really cheap. you know that but he was also trying to you know unload some stuff so we get

>> wrong show to do it at it was a when we all got to pay for these tables  uh it was it it that one hurt but like this weekend we're going to go I'm driving seven hours we're going to Joplain Missouri for a show me show  uh it's going to be a first ever it's in an amazing convention center so that'll be a it's a this place is amazing they put the banner for the show on the front  uh like TV billboard.

>> Oh, cool. Did they Nice. Nice.

>> Yeah, it was pretty neat seeing that. Um Mickey's been finding some neat places like that. So, this will be a first time. I'm hoping with the college atmosphere there, you know, the students just getting back. I went to school, I can tell you. All you got to do is put it in your  uh if you're in a dorm, you just got to put it in the closet. They can't go in your closet. So, we got ways that can help you get all python. So,  uh

>> what  uh what's in Jofflin? Is that is that where Missou is?

>> Um, where is it? I can't think of I'm not from over there, so I don't know the college, but it might be Missou. There's one of them. One of the bigger schools are down there.

>> Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, I'm an SEC guy, and I don't know. I mean, Missouri's way out there for I mean,

>> this is right on the Oklahoma border.

>> I'm saying, man, like, how is Missouri in the SEC? That's a little bit much. But to be honest, they've been in it. They've been in the SEC for a long time. So, but I don't know. I don't know what  uh what schools there. funny about the dorm though that's

>> Oh yeah. Oh, we learned you know as long as you whatever you put in your closet that is your own private space. So

>> you can hide whatever in there.

>> Yeah. I mean

>> we'll get a black dragon hanging out in there one of these days. But

>> I forget the  uh the guys from um Gen Z Reptiles I think they were called a little while back. man, they t they were they were they were growing a lot of snakes in their closet in the  uh in in their dorm room to get started, man. They did amazing in a short period of time, you know.

>> Well, we all don't have a college like Justin that's like, "Here, we're going to give you a whole laboratory to work in or room." So, you know, it's kind of neat to, you know, when I was in school, we had one. You know, when I was 19, I bought my first ball python.

>> Oh, okay.

>> I'm 40 now. So, we've had him for a while. is just growing it up and growing it up, but we've had a lot of variety since then, too.

>> Nice. So, um,  uh, sorry, where Okay, so you're going to be in, uh, Missouri, Joplin, Missouri coming up. Where else can people find you on the road or what other shows you got on the horizon?

>> We're going to do the AARP over there in Overland, Kansas City show.

>> Kansas City. Yep.

>> Yep. We're signed up for that. Um, we're signed up for the NBC St. Louis as well.

>> Cool. We will be at Finley walking around unless somebody's got some extra space, but we'll we're all looking for that. I think there's a there's probably a good list of them people, but

>> I joke that I think I was the last ball python breeder to get into Tinley. Maybe ever. Who know? I don't know that. I hope I'm not the last ever, but it was Yeah, I'm very very back corner. That's Well, you know where my table's at.

>> Yep. No. Yeah, I've been back there a few times. Back there with the cold-blooded cafe guys.

>> That's right, man. Right across the aisle. Okay. Missouri Southern State University. That's where  uh that's what's in Joplin. All right, Travis coming through on the  uh on the trivia there. All right.  um yeah, I  um I may very well end up down in Kansas City. I got to look at a little bit of inventory  uh stuff. That's another one of those you brought up. Like it's not it's a great show, but it's also not cheap to do. You got to suddenly get three nights of hotel.  um And the the tables aren't quite tinly priced, but they also aren't  uh

>> show me neighborhood show prices either, you know. So, the overhead the overhead gets up. I think if I were to I don't want to speak for because  uh Nick and Troy are awesome. They do great things. I'm not trying to undermine anything. It's going to for the weekend I figure it's going to before food or even with food, it's going to be around a,000 bucks it's going to cost me to get into that show and that's not counting gas. So that's that's a lot. You know, you got to think about those.

>> Yep. Three nights in a hotel, three meals a day. You know, it it adds up. Unless Door Dash me messes up, then you get a free meal. So it's

>> we look at the same things. You know, we can only write off so much. And

>> can you justify, you know, the way I got to look at it is if I'm the show is going to go until 3 or 4 on Sunday, it's a seven hour drive for me. six, seven hour drive and then I got to work at 6 am. So,

>> right,

>> you know, by the time I get home, unload everything, get the snakes put away, it's midnight, two o'clock in the morning. So,

>> yeah, but with the shows with Troy and Nick, the way they put on a show,

>> I can take I can take away a loss of sleep.

>> It's it's they do fantastic. I've been to actually I've been to all of the Colorado shows and they do just a phenomenal job. So, I'm not, like I say, I'm not undermining that anybody should consider doing that. It's just if you're doing I think I'll do  um I think I do like 24 or 26 shows this year. You just got to that stuff you start thinking about. You start going, well, yeah, it's smaller, but it's closer. There's no hotel. There's no, you know, I can do I can do snake discovery shows for a very small fraction of that that are here in town. And let me tell you, they bring people through the door as well. like you know um it's funny when I'm like oh I'm really looking forward to this Oaklair show this tiny little town in Wisconsin man it's packed all day long because of them

>> oh yeah and that's anywhere you go right now we see it anytime we go to St. Louis, we go to Tinley.

>> Yeah,

>> they have I guarantee they bring in half of the people that come through there.

>> It's almost It has to be It's close to it if not because they have so much popularity right now. It's totally worth the I don't and I don't know. It's not my business. I've never asked whatever their asking price is to show up. It's completely worth it. If you're a promoter, pay them to show up and promote your show. Man, that's a that is a no-brainer. And um the last one in Colorado was they did really well because the meet and greet emptied into the show floor. Like you had to go you had to exit through it was the exit through the gift shop model. Man, you had to go through the show once you met  uh Ed and Emily. So that helped all the and I wasn't vending. I had no no dog in that  uh in that what do they say? Dog in the fight. That's a bad expression, but you know what I'm saying. I I I had no  uh no horse in that race, man. Like it was  um it was cool to see though. It was and it was hopping, man. It was busy.

>> It And that's it's having people like that. I know Bob just talked about it last week. He he talked about when he can bring in Ed and Emily to that and then they did the Pokemon theme. So, that was one of those huge things bringing them in. He said he waited until the third show to do it, too.

>> Yeah. Well, and credit to Bob. There's a bit of buzz around the um  uh like the bested show and the ribbons and the the you know the the kind of the show animal mentality of it which I think is a I think is a neat idea and I think it's it's going to take a little while to take form and to take shape but  uh there's a good buzz out there about it and it got people talking. It got people showing up. It was another  uh piece of intrigue and and entertainment at the show.  um And and again, I I haven't heard any any sales reports, but I have heard attendance reports that were pretty nuts at at Siri for sure.

>> I've heard every every show they've had. Sales are amazing there.

>> So, but there's nothing else like it in the area besides Repicons. And they're not even competing anymore, I don't think, with that. I'm on the waiting list. If I could have got in that show, I was going to be there.

>> Oh, nice. Nice.

>> So, we're just waiting until he can open it up some more. Um, we're we're in the Patreon, too. So, we're always listening what Bob's, you know, if he has suggestions on what we need to do different, we'll do it.

>> So, that was that's one of the things a lot of vendors put in the marketing, you know, put in the banners, put in the displays. So, we've been changing stuff. We got rid of the little white fuzzy stuff in our displays. Now, we're down

>> Oh, no. Alpha Dry. What are you using now? I like I use the white fuzzy stuff. I like the Alpha Dry. Well, you're probably using the little cubes, the little squares.

>> I am. Yeah.

>> Alpha Dry is like the stuff they got for like hamster cages and stuff. The That's the stuff that a lot of us use.

>> It's the stuff you can go to Walmart, the colorful stuff. You can put it in.

>> Oh, Alpha Dry, I mean, is literally the That is the cubes. That's the brand name of the  uh of the cubes. But yeah, that's the that's the lab equipment  uh supply shop. Yeah.

>> Yep. So we we were using that little stuff you buy at Walmart that's a little fuzzy and by the time it's said and done it if one of them urates or anything in there it's nasty. So what we changed to was  uh we've got we got a local print shop. He he cut me out hard paper that sits in there perfectly and then we put a paper towel underneath it so it keeps it clean and then we're going to get it hopefully we're going to print our logos and stuff in there. So, right now we have stickers for it, but just

>> anything you can do to make it look more professional is our biggest thing. You know, when we're looking at our, you know, we bought that big banner now. We bought the real nice two-sided 8 foot one. You know what those cost? That's Yeah, that's not fun.

>> Expensive. Yeah. I mean, it's like just not to not to magnify like the stress sometimes, but I actually it was Ed and Emily I was talking about like it occurred to me like three, four years into like being self-employed. I was like, all self-employed means is that you take all your money, you put all of it back into business and hope that you can keep the lights on and keep your some food on your table until one day like you pop up above the water and I was going to say nobody really tells you that. Everybody tells you that. Nobody really hears it until they until they like  uh embrace it themselves, you know. So,  um I can't complain. But yeah, it's just there's always something more to put money into to keep the business going or to differentiate it or to make an investment to go  um further up or like you said earlier, there's only so much you can write off.

>> Unless it's something that's like durable goods like racks that you can depreciate and amvertise, then then there's that opportunity. So, it's like, well, do I do it now or do I do it next year? You know, there's always that. So yeah.  um what was the feedback? Did you like your setup? Were you happy with it?

>> Oh yeah, it's it is so much better. You know, we got the printed  uh tablecloths now, too. So, you know, just throwing the logos out there, getting getting people to remember it. That's the biggest thing.

>> All we got a ton of stickers. My local print shop guy, he hooks me up big time. Uh he hooks sends me tons of stickers. I've got 3-in stickers, one inch stickers. We just throw them on the table. Those kids I any little kid comes up there and they got a little brother or sister. I'm the one who says, "Hey, grab one of those little ones. I'll give you bonus points if you get it stuck on his back and he walks around the show." I've had them and or you get the little like toddlers. They'll stick it to their forehead and it's it's on their forehead the rest of the day. You know, it's so I love it when people like the things that annoy most people that somebody can turn into like a positive or an angle. I really love that's a great example of it because I guarantee you most of the people in the audience would have been like, "Oh, these kids, they keep stealing my stickers where you're like, "Dude, paste them everywhere. I'm going to give you more. Do you just keep them going, man?" Like, that's smart, though. That's that's a good, you know,

>> dad's back bumper. He's gonna love it.

>> Yeah. You know, it's  uh that was another thing. Ed and Emily, they were giving away a little  uh book to put stickers in. So, these kids were all coming around trying to fill that book with a sticker.

>> Yeah. The passport thing. Yeah. The passport  uh model that they do is f and you can I don't know if they charge for it or you just got to talk to them and ask, but you can angle or strategize or some way there's some way to get your table in their passport book. So like that's where the kid like you have to go there to get like you know something cool and it's probably just like you say a stamp or a sticker to be like hey I did it but it's such a good idea.

>> Oh, I don't even I had Carson he filled up my stickers like we were just throwing them out on the table. He had to fill it up probably every half an hour to an hour.

>> Yeah.

>> We gave away so many stickers.

>> But it's stickers. What? We ain't got no money in those. A thousand stickers for 25 bucks or something.

>> Yeah. that you got to keep doing it. And we lanyards are not cheap, I'll tell you that. But we gave away I I thought I brought 50 of them. I think I came home with two.

>> Yeah. I think you have to buy like 10,000 from overseas. Get them overseas. But it's like you say, you got to buy 10,000 to even get them imported to make it make sense, you know?

>> But stickers are something, you know, everybody sticks them on their incubator or places. So, I'm fine with that. and we'll keep giving away stuff. Business cards, make sure you got nice business stick out.

>> So, we've invested a lot in just advertisement,  uh marketing, you know, we do a local  uh it's the small business expo here at our mall.  uh They bring in hundreds of different vendors and last year they wanted to bring us in.

>> Oh, cool.

>> And a lot of people, like I said, know us for baseball. I didn't put my snakes out the first night, the setup night. I just put my big banner. I don't know if people thought we were bringing bats and gloves and stuff,

>> right?

>> I showed up at 8 am the next morning, started setting up, and the guy that put it on is like, "Holy crap."

>> Yeah.

>> He didn't even know what was going on. And I brought in like full displays and we did everything. Brought in, we brought in rainbows. We brought in all the different snakes. And while we were there, it was like he was bringing people by. We were easily one of the most popular vendors there. So, that's something we'll do again in October.

>> Yeah. just keep doing it. I I love it.

>> Do you ever find This is an interesting topic to me because I get  um I get pitches to come do like these non reptile things like our I don't know it's not Comic-Con but whatever the local like comic  superhero cosplay thing is. They're like, "Hey, you know, would you come vend and actually, you know, you can?" They they'll give me the table. And I'm like, part of me is like, man, a whole bunch of people are going to see me. The other part of me is like, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of stress on the animals. Nobody's going to buy. And if they do buy, it's going to be an impulse buy that they shouldn't be buying anyway.  um So I kind of wrestle with that. What  uh what effects have you seen or what residual benefits have you seen or what's your thought? You said you're going to do it again, so you found it worthwhile.

>> I absolutely think it is a great idea. There's a local, like you said, Comic-Con that it's 30 minutes away. I don't get any reptile shows within an hour. So, I'm going anytime they do the Comic-Con, I'm going to do it because

>> that is our crowd. A lot of them. I was gonna say I would like should I be doing like tattoo fests like that's I don't know like what who hasn't thought of it. We got we got animals we got plants and reptiles overlap man. We got to get the  uh the tattoo in the reptile convention. Right.

>> I said it at Shamberg. Why do we not have a tattoo artist throwing, you know, quick ink 30 minute tattoos on people?

>> Yeah.

>> It's like these there's a lot of us, you know. So I believe in doing that. it I think is any type of marketing if you're showing what our product is because a lot of people don't realize you know without going to a mom and pops pet store pets smart any of that they don't realize that what we have what we're selling you know they're thinking hey I a ball python is a normal for $75 at PetSmart well what about these monarchs that are going for 25 what about these DG pides that are going for You know, they have no idea that

>> what people in our industry are producing or have. Like I remember the first year I went to Tinley, I was just walking around and I watched this guy pull a man purse off of his back and pull out hundreds. And I watched him count $13,000 on the Canova table.

>> I'm like, what what are we doing wrong here? you know, and why does everybody have a fanny pack? You know, I I was completely confused. And now, you know, after being in it, now we see it. You know, before we got on here, I just sold two snakes on Morph Market.

>> Oh, nice.

>> It was It's been a great, you know, and I wasn't a person that pushed Morph Market for a long time,  uh for sales, but now because I do so many shows, I literally have another probably 10, 15 shows before the end of the year. Yeah. And in baseball season, I'll do a show probably two to three times a month.

>> So, and right now I'm trying to navigate to where I'm doing two to three day shows or well where you show up on Friday and do the two-day shows. That's kind of where I want to be because I don't want to drive two different shows in two days. That is like you said, it's a lot of stress on the animals. It's also a lot of stress on me driving.

>> So,

>> well, you know, in in it I found it's a relative thing. So, like in Florida,  uh I did they're all two-day shows there on the the Repiruit, but all the shows were three, four, five hours away, except for my hometown show, Jacksonville. Whereas here, I bet 70% of my shows are within three hours and they're one day shows. So, it's actually kind of nice that I can drive out, vend, drive back in.

>> Even if I don't get the animals unloaded that night, it's still a shorter time that they're in the displays if I get them unloaded the next morning. If I just get them obviously unloaded out of the car, but if I just get them into the the reptile room,  um they're good for the morning. And sometimes I debate, man, those two day shows like if people know it's only one day, it's not like they're waiting. It's not like they they know they can't wait. Like even the

>> coming in for the Sunday clearance.

>> Yeah, exactly. There's a circuit in Wisconsin. The shows are only four hours. They're 11 to three, man. It's non-stop. It's just line at the door. Big rush straight ahead sales for four hours. See you later. Headed back home, man.

>> Well, we got we've got some of those one day shows.  uh We'll do one next week. It's a Saturday, but it's within an hour and a half of me.

>> But the problem is we also got some of those shows that are one, you know, one day, but they do it every month or every other month. And by then, nobody's want to buy a new reptile. They're there just eaters and,

>> you know, maybe some cool, you know, gadgets or something. So, that's why we

>> I I've pretty much opened it up. I want to do within eight hours. I think I can justify an eight hour drive if I'm doing a two-day show. And I want to do the bigger shows, though. I like Atlanta, I'd love to do that stuff.  uh I saw somebody was talking about Nashville, the Show Me Show.

>> I was signed up for that in the spring.

>> That might have been the AARP show, but either I'm not sure which one specifically they were talking about.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, Show Me was at the Opry and we were supposed to do it out of Opry. You'd love that. And they They rented out the opery for a snake show.

>> It's this weekend.

>> Oh my gosh. That would be great.

>> Oh no, it's it's in two weeks. They're doing opery in two weeks, I think.

>> But the problem was is the first time they scheduled it, they had to cancel Opry double booked or did something. So they rescheduled it. Well, that weekend I have somebody off at work that's out for surgery. So now I don't even get to go.

>> Oh man,

>> that one that's a two-day show at the opery.

>> It is gonna be amazing.

>> Mother church, man. That's legit right there. That's cool.

>> That would be one for you to you might look at flying out for that. Well, no. I think you're I think that's the same weekend maybe you're in Canada.

>> So,

>> yeah. Well, it again, it's the problem of what makes sense to be going to do like where Anyhow, and we've all we've all heard the dollars and the pennies  uh  uh discussions. Yeah. And there's only so many of I can like say I'm already doing I think 26 is my number and what I rattled off 10 or 11  uh just in the next 10 weeks. So it's like okay you know just got I can't do them all. And I'm still yet to make it to Pomona out to the west coast or I'd love to do the one in Scottsdale. Man, brilliant location for a show that they  uh Nick and Troy found as well.

>> I would like to do the one KG from Bomb Projects puts on.

>> Oh, it looks great. Yeah, kind of feel. Yeah, man.

>> Free entry if you sign up early.

>> It is.

And the way they did it, it just looked like it was an art show more than reptile show. So, yeah, they're they're doing it right. You know, they're bringing people the doors to see what we got.

Yeah, man. I love it. Um, well, good luck on the road. It's it's they're some of my favorite things. I like you you were talking about, you know, being on the road every weekend for baseball, man. If it were, it's not really feasible to be on the road every weekend, but I'm pretty close to it for the next next little while. And I've been looking forward to it. I I backed off this year for some of the reasons we're talking about. Like you go out, you do every show, you see which one makes sense to continue doing and which one to shave off. So, I backed off a little bit this year, but um, I'm ready to get back to it. It's been uh, it's been a little little slower action this summer than I would have liked. And I think um, I think I could even if it's not great, I think getting out there and like you say, still promoting things, promoting your brand, meeting people, it all leads to stuff. So I I think next year I'm going to I think there's a middle ground I need to get back just a little more into next summer, I think. So we'll see.

Um, make the pitch. We're both in this project. Give me the Give me the pitch. No pun intended on the baseball stuff on Rainbow. Man, I know you're excited about it. We geek out at uh Tinley over it. What is uh why why does anybody care or should they care about rainbow?

I my honest thing is one of the most popular jeans ever was what? Banana. Yeah. And this is what I've always called. I said this is the banana that isn't ever going to spoil. You're not It's not going to get all the black spots. And now we're starting to see, as you've seen, you got the rainbow clown. Yeah. People have begged and begged and tried to make that. Uh, I'm sitting here. I've got six females that are quad head. Well, I guess triple, but they're rainbow hypo kryptonons. So, we're sitting I'm sitting here on those. I've got I've got girls that are making visual rainbows already. I've got rainbow pi stuff brewing. You know, it's already they're already out. It's just uh they're double heads. So, this is that gene. One of the guys, Levance, has always told everybody, "Find something that nobody else is doing." Right. Right. You got to do You got to find something that makes you happy and it's going to catch everybody's eyes. So, Rainbow was that thing. You know, how many other people had it? So Nixon, man, he's one of the other guys. He's he's big in it. Uh, find something that's going to be different than everybody there. You know, we got these Super Hurricanes coming out now. Uh, a few weeks ago on KG and Jaffy's show, somebody dropped a monarch rainbow visual. Double.

Let me ask you on the on like the the albino pigment genes, did they run into any issues breeding that double visual? Did they talk about any any clutch mate issues or anything?

He didn't show. He didn't say anything, but the one he laid out, he lit. So, I popped on late and KG's like, "Hold on, hold on, Aaron, you got to see this." He's like, "Hey, grab that snake and pull it back out." And he said, "Which one?" He goes, "That monarch rainbow." He pulled that thing out and it was just like, "Well, there goes that project." I thought I was gonna I was ahead of the game, you know? I I was I I've got a R monarch boy we made this year. I was like, "Well, guess what's going in there next year because I got that rainbow hypo girl that's visual." I was like, "There's my project." And then I was like, "Well, I guess not." It was kind of a well there. It was amazing though. I was I was very happy to see that.

But but why not do it just because somebody else has done the base of it? There's 99 There's 199 other Kodoms we could put in.

That's where we've we've done that. That's what we've been working on. You know, we've got Wookie going in it. We've got uh leopard, red stripe. I've got everything going in Rainbow. So, my goal is continue. You know, I've got visual girls. I've got visual boys. So, we'll continue working it. Uh, is just getting now my visual boys. You know, they're about three 400 grams. They're growing. Uh, doing something like I said, I got to find something different. So, I'm looking at all the other stuff right now. The one thing I'm missing I would and I talked to a guy last week in Shamberg. I'd like to find me a thousand gram sunset. Yeah. So, it's we're just trying to find stuff that nobody else is doing. You know, look at Malice. Look at uh Cosmos. Finding those genes. Those guys that found that gene and throwing it into other stuff. Uh, who is it? Uh, DSR. Is that who's working the uh, what is it? Cantaloupe. But what's the other one? He's got the dark the darker gene. Um, I couldn't say. I'm not sure. He's got a gene that I' I'd really like to work on. Uh, there it's coming out of Canada. Mhm. It's not the Malice, though. No, it wasn't Malice. Malice was from uh Ash. So, this one was Gosh dang. He's got cantaloupe and he's got something else. Somebody's going to comment it. It's a darkening gene. It It just Okay. But I would love to find that also in there. Gorilla. Gorilla. There you go. Koala. So, I don't know. It's just I want to find stuff that nobody else is doing, which all of us should be doing that. We should all have, you know, you got your clown projects, you got your random, you know, your pides. You got to have stuff that's going to sell, but we got to find something and add or find something that nobody else has even considered yet. So that's that was where Rainbow was with me. But we've also got Ultra Male, we've got Monarch, you know, we've got all the, you know, the common stuff now, which I guess Monarch isn't really common, but we've got your pides. Um, a lot of people know us. It's been talked about on Whiskey Bomb multiple times. I'm a guy that we do a lot of shows, so you got to make your bells. A lot of people, us breeders, we're like, uh, bell uh, bell jeans. Me on the other hand, I look at it as I can throw something else in that bell that nobody else is going to see, but we can use it later. Mojave is one of your most popular jeans throwing it throwing into like even sunset. So, even Ultram or Monarch, I mean, they're just electric with uh with the bell combos, man.

So, my bells that I've been making the last two years were from Mojave Girls. Some of them had fire or pastel in them also. But we also have the male. So my original male came from uh what was it? Bradley and Brad or Bailey and Bailey. Okay. It was a Mojave Entie double head true ghost. So forever that was what I was using to make my bells. I would put him to everything else, make my True Ghost stuff, working on that, but I'd throw him to the Mojave stuff to make my bells. So a lot of people didn't realize when they're buying bells there's possible true ghost like right heads. So now this year we replaced him. So this year we replaced him with a Mojave lace head clown. So there's a chance when you buy a bell from us this coming the boy isn't up to size but this coming next year or two we're going to have some bells with lace and some uh some heck clowns in there. So we're just I'm trying to do stuff. You know, you got to have your pides. So, you know, Brandon Osborne was a guy that I've looked up to for a long time. Uh, he made urban camos. So, this year I bought I got a girl off of KG to make my urban camos. Well, the only boy I had was my double headic pi. So, all of the stuff, all my pides and everything are all or well as a visual pi head. So, now they're all poss. I've got pides that are pewtor pides that are sand blast and so all to make your urban camos but you know I most of the shows if you actually look at my tags I don't list all the hats but when you get your breeder card from me it'll say you know what's all possibly in there. Right. Right. It's you gota you got to go with your market you got to look at what your you know area where you're going what kind of money are they looking to spend you know $50 to $300 Are you going to be at places that are $1,000?

Yeah. Do you ever I I think about that a lot and for me where I've landed is Yeah. You you got to kind of focus and play your market, but then like I always bring stuff on the fringes above both both under and way over. Um, and I know some breeders will roll their eyes, but there, you know, if there's a pet show and you find somebody that's willing to spend $8900 on an animal, you go, "Wow, I didn't expect that today. That's pretty nice." you know, versus Tinley, you might be like, "All right, well, I need a few more of those to make ends meet today." Kind of, you know what I mean? Like it's it's there there's the different like parameters that you go in with. What how do you do you do you always try and bring stuff, you know, outside of where you think the focus is or do you just stay ultra focused on on where where your experience tells you that market is?

I will. So, we we'll go to Marian next week. That's they're it's a pretty they have good money there. Uh, so what we'll do is we'll bring every show I go to, I'm going to bring my $50 to $150 snakes. I'm always still going to bring bells if I got bells and I got pides. And then I'm going to bring, you know, your higher budget snakes, 500 to a,000. Then we'll bring a rainbow. Most of the rainbows are never listed. I'll bring the monarch, you know, and I'll list it. You know, there's stuff like that. We'll bring it. Most of the time people are going to be like, "Wow, I didn't realize that much." And it's like, dude, this is 30. There's some snakes that are 30 times as much as this. Right. Yeah. So, I look at most of the time, you know, what I think I can do. If there's a tape, if I can buy two tables for 40 bucks each, then I'm gonna bring I'm going to unload over there. I'm going to bring bring everything. Yeah. Um, if if like when I did Shamberg though, I couldn't bring much because I only had one table. So, I had two displays set up. I had shirts. So, it really depends on do I have the space? Yep. We also have somebody helping me because once you get into more than one table, it's really hard to concentrate. I know. You got a lot of people going to look and touch and it's like you don't want to be one of those people with a net over everything. So,

Well, I tell people it's like it reminds me of my bartending days. Like, you got to entertain six people at once and make them all feel special. And you might not really want to deal with any six of them because there's somebody behind them, those six that you really need to get to, but you still got to take care of them. And it it's I love it, but it is um, it's difficult and it's exhausting and it's one of those things that that it's probably not as feasible as I like to tell myself that it is, you know.

Absolutely. You know, and you're talking to the one person that's looking at the say the monarch. Okay. $1,700 They're looking at that. They're looking at that. What's is the chance that they're actually going to buy that? But you're ignoring the person over here looking at that $50, $200 one. There's a better chance that they're going to buy this. So, you always have to make sure you're communicating all the way around. And I like bringing my son. Unfortunately, he is terrified of snakes. And it's it's something I've offered him. Hey, you get 10% of whatever we sell. And it's like, dude, if you go sell this $1,500 snake, you're going to make 150 bucks, buddy. Right. He is absolutely terrified. Well, at Shawnberg, he's finally, he's he just hit that 13-year-old age. And like, we pull up to a gas station and he wants one of them Alani drinks or he wants something. It's like, "Go buy it yourself, buddy. You got money. You got That's right. Card, go buy it yourself." So, now he's like, "Hey, I'll hold one." He held his first snake at Shamberg and I've been doing this for 20 years. Having on and off. So, Absolutely. Yeah. I'm doing freeways this weekend, by the way. If anybody

Well, I think it's something I I have I mean, and every again, everybody's had different resources. So, there was never a world where I was going to have four or eight or $10,000 to invest in any amount of ball pythons, much less a singular one. So Jen brings up saying selling pides bells and basic freeway highway and ultramls to fund sunset and puzzle. Yeah, that it's a valid strategy. That's how you stay in business. I mean that's how you fund keeping the lights on or buying the rodent equipment and then starting the rodent business and then and then and then man that's that's the cash flow. I'm I'm with that all day long. I have no problem.

You will sell 10 $150 snakes before you sell that one $1,500 snake just big time. Easily. That's common. That's that's going to any show. You know, we don't have the Bob Vu name. We don't have the Justin name. You know, we're growing. We're building ourselves up. But we got to be realistic. I can sell I can sell more rodents than I am a snake and I'm going to make more money. Our local pet shop here, they're selling rodents for $10. So,

Yeah. No, that's what got me into rodents. I got here to Minneapolis and I I'm not going to say the shop name, but anybody who knows Minneapolis knows what I'm talking about. It's $10 an ASF and it doesn't matter what size. You want an ASF? And you're like, "Well, it's the tiny one." They're like, "Yeah, well eventually that'll be a big one and that's that's worth $10 to us." And we're like, "Our guy will not sell a female. He'll sell every male." But, you know, I go in now, you know, it's hard for me to keep up on hoppers. And with me, when you buy a snake off me, my goal is I wanted to eat a mouse. I wanted to eat a ASF, and I wanted to eat a rat. I start with a rat pup. First thing I do is drop rat pups in. So, you know, he's and he used to only give me males. Now, he knows I I'm not I don't need any of his. So, I'm getting pups because I need to feed. I don't I'm not trying to build my colonies. I've got plenty of colonies. I'm just trying to feed. So, and he gives me a heck of a deal. He's he's worked with us for a long time, but he also he'll message me and say, "Hey, I need some snakes." I'll take them over and I'll give them to him for what he needs, you know? Right. Right. If we don't have those local, you know, brickandmortar shops, we're all in a lot of trouble, you know?

Oh, that's the gateway, man. It it absolutely it's it's um Yeah, it's absolutely the gateway. It's absolutely the um just like with guitars, man. Like I I'll never be a guitar center, but we need guitar centers because the kids go in and play guitars and dream about the day they can buy the collector lees Pauls from me or what you know what I mean? Like it's it's there's a ton of things that way. You got to have the uh you got to have the the brickandmortar entry levelvel stuff, man. Got to have it. I think

I try my best not to ever sell anything local. I will not sell a rodent local. You know, if you buy if you're local and you buy a snake, you know, some people randomly you'll find me and hit me up and want to buy I'll give you your first three feedings, that's fine. But I will always push you to go to him to buy, you know, aquarium if you want an aquarium, any of that stuff. I try my best, you know, he carries rep to chip in stock, so I always push him that way. Um, but my goal is I never want to impede on him getting a sale. You know, if I go to a show, I've been to Marion multiple times and there's somebody there has 20 axelottles and I'm like, "Hey, this guy's got axelottles." I will pay for and buy them all, bring them back to him, give them for he'll give me the money. Here you go. So, we work together. We've had a very good, you know, relationship together with that.

I was going to say those relationships are important and it's something I didn't think about for a little while, too. So, I'm kind of with you except the opposite way. So, I'll wholesale to places that are outside of my market because I want to be retailing rodents. I would rather have somebody buy three rodents from me, but they're going to come to the shop and start perusing all my snakes for sale than give a wholesale batch of halfpric rodents to somebody that that that I'm not going to be able to get those buyers in the door. So, it's got to be it's got to be a good hour and a half from me before I'll wholesale it. And I do have some wholesale uh buyers outside that range. Otherwise, man, it's it's retail and I I stick pretty pretty firmly by it. And I still can't produce enough uh AS to keep the markets uh happy with with the demand that I get.

That's so where I'm at, I don't actually use heat or air. Well, I use heat during the winter if it gets real low, but other than that, we don't use we use fans. Right now, my garage door is open and we use that to cool everything. It does really well. But that's where my problem is is with ASF. I don't keep it hot enough. You know, they need to stay, you know, 80s or whatever. They like it warm. That's funny. Mine mine I don't know what it is. I don't know if I conditioned them to it or what, but even when I bring in new blood, mine at I like mine at like 72 to 74. Man, when they're at 85, they're just it's slow. Like this right now production is really slow, but I guarantee you come October, they'll just be exploding, man. They'll be nuts.

Yep. Well, that's kind of, you know, right now we do Norwegians and we only and we do mice. I don't do any ASS. If I need Okay, that's different. Yeah. I'll go to the shop and I'll buy them off of him. He's got he's breeding it's a crazy amount of ASS. So, I can go up there. he'll give me a deal. Uh, and so that's one of the things is having that right there for me. That helps me a lot. So, and like this weekend I'm like trying to count how many of these snakes have fed, how many have ate so I can get to the bringing the show. So, my freeways have ate five, six times now. So, they'll be coming. Yep. My freeways are poset ultra metal also. So, we've been sneaking stuff in there. Uh, marketing, we were just talking about that. This is one of the biggest things that I I think a lot of people miss out on. I sponsor a local wreck baseball league. One team. It's $250. I think $275. What a lot of people don't realize is that's 12 little kids and three adults wearing batter up jerseys. Right. Those three little kid or those 13 kids, 15 kids sometimes, what do they do before a game? They go get breakfast and they're wearing that jersey. What are they doing after? They're going to get ice cream and lunch. Yeah. Going to Walmart. They're wearing my jersey. They're going to wear it to school. I pay enough. So, what is a normal shirt? 10 bucks if we're buying it. So, you're talking I'm getting $180 worth of shirts and all the publicity from all these little guys. So, I got that show the 23rd. The 24th, we are actually going to take my big banners. We're going to take the displays. We're going to go up to the ball field where my team is playing and we're going to put the snakes. We're going to do a thing. We're going to make a donation jar. Whoever wants to donate, it don't matter. We're going to take pictures with some of the big girls or big a couple of my bigger snakes. We'll bring some of the babies. We'll have them priced. Doubtful anybody would ever buy one. It'd be It's just more to show them, but also we're just it's advertisement, but let all these kids hold the snakes. We're going to watch moms run. We're gonna watch dads run. We might see some kids pee their pants, but it's going to be a

Do they do like uh uh cards for their league? Like do they get do they get their own baseball card?

Uh, some of the travel ball tournaments will do it. Uh, this one is just a wreck ball, you know, just the local, you know, towns. We are one of the local towns that does a fall ball. So you get it's from like July until close to October. So, and it's just a few games and it's on Sundays. So it works out good for me. I don't have anything planned that weekend, so I'm going to take them up there. And

I was going to say it'd be fun to have the uh the players with the uh with a with a with a snake in their card would be would be a great thing because they'll always keep that. It'll be different. They're going to I mean, they'll probably keep all of them, but they'll always keep that one and show it off. You know,

I'm trying to think. I'm pretty sure this season we have over a hundred probably close to 150 kids playing in this league. Yeah. So, you're talking kids from six year olds till probably close to 11 year olds. So, think of how many of those kids will be wearing a snake and their parents are going to take a picture of it and guess what's going to get put on Facebook that night in front of my band. Yeah. It's going to get tagged. It's And I I don't know. But here's what I see from the outside of like the sports league world. They share more pictures than brides on their weddings do, man. Like this is like like everybody's tagging everything. We're here. We're in this hotel. We're hanging out with these people. Saw them in Syracuse last weekend and now I'm in wherever. Like, yeah, that's a good circuit to uh to to sponsor and to get in with, man, for sure.

I try my best not to post a whole lot of baseball stuff on the Batterup Balls Instagram or Facebook. You know, if we like this year, we won state. Uh, so I did share that. You know, if we win a tournament or if Carson does really well, I'll share it on there. But I try and not overload. You know, this is this is our business. So I try and not overload much with Carson on there. But, you know, there's a reason we're called batter up balls. If they don't like it, this is this is we're a baseball family. You know, that's that's part of it. Be you, man. That's it. It It is cool. And it

But those we always hear in social media like niche down. get into a niche and go deep into it and you can get known and really like appreciated and revered if you look out for that niche kind of thing.

Well, you got Troy from Balls and Strikes. His daughter, I believe, was softball and me and him have sat down and talked about it a lot. You know, the way they did all their marketing, Right. You know, and we're we're starting to figure it out. It's once you figure out like we all know you is for guitars and restaurants. So, you know, you find your you it fits with you proper royal. So, there's a lot of stuff like that that with marketing you can take advantage of. Right. Right. And we're just that's where we're working. We're trying to work our niche and keep growing.

Well, and I think it's uh I don't know how much you keep up or follow, but I I bought a car wash recently and like I'm finding it sounds so silly, but you could do the same thing with a car wash. What do you do with a car wash? uh wash uh old cool car. Oh, let's do a car show. Oh, we can get food trucks. Oh, you can have, you know, so actually all the stuff you're talking about in the small it's in a little town of 4,500 people. Like that's the stuff I need to be doing. Like I want to paint like the state state champs years of high school on the side of the building. I want to sponsor a little league team or a bowling league or you know just because where else they if if I'm taking care of them where else are they going to wash their vehicles and then they're going to tell their friends or we have the kickoff or they could do their fundraiser they can wash people's cars for donations you know who cares what however it works you know

Well bowling team I think would work good with the proper Royals logo bowling soccer team think about that you could put a bunch of kids in the soccer jerseys. Yeah. In the in the jerseys. So, um, no, I I I think um, some I actually, I was going to say sometimes I almost always think that our it's awesome how tight-knit our community is, but we also all stand in a circle and stare at each other where if we would just turn around and look outside, man, there's a massive amount of opportunity out there. And I think uh, I mean, granted, I'm biased, but I think companies like Palm Street see that. Companies like Chewy are investing massive. I have no affiliation with Chewy. I'd be happy to be affiliated with Chewy, but I they are they're investing. They see opportunity. I think I think sometimes our little world, we got to we got to look the other way sometimes is really what I think.

We So, Palm Street did reach out to us after uh we did a few shows and we've done a few of the podcasts. Palm Street reached out to us I think in like March or April. We haven't got on it just yet. Like we're we're approved and everything. We just haven't had the inventory. I think that's been the biggest thing. and we they messaged back and forth and that was one of our things. We just don't have the inventory just yet. You know, most of stuff we go to shows and we don't do too bad normally.

Well, there's you talked about it earlier, certain shows you bring certain things. I think that's true with online sales platforms. I think there's I don't think Palm Street's the end all beall cure all, but I think that there's a place for it. And like you say, when you have the inventory that fits it or you have the need for it or some people are more com like you're pretty naturally outgoing interacting with people. Some people really aren't comfortable with that. Some people are far more comfortable. This is really foreign to me still, but talking into a machine right here that I've got to engage with and try and be charismatic to the machine. But some people are far more comfortable with that. So that's a good fit for them versus uh the logistics of travel and being out there, you know. So, um, it it fits. It's a cool it's a cool opportunity. I think, uh, Erin, I got to take, uh, like two minutes. We got to pay some bills, take care of people that take care of us and our industry. And then, uh, I want to hear about the, uh, the Monarch project and what you got going on with Monarch. And actually, I still have some questions about Rain Rainbow. We got to circle back to that for a minute. We, uh, we we rushed through it too fast. So, uh, guys, before uh, don't turn away. I got good stuff for you. If you have I mean if you're watching this show you're probably enough into the industry to know what's going on with shedtesting.com but uh Charlie just dropped prices massively um he can do it faster uh as accurately or more accurately now with less human error in his processes that he has and uh it's quicker fiveday turnaround. You can uh your first shed test on one animal is $35. The second test on that animal is just 10 bucks more and then every test after that is $5 until you hit $85 and then you can just buy a panel after that. Like and again fiveday turnaround full panels in five days. Think about it at a lower price, a better price and a safe process, safer process uh where there's less human interaction and human touching of any of the samples or organizing or reporting the data. It's all automated, which in science is what you want. You don't need humans screwing these things up. So, go check it out. Um, promo code proper 10. It changed. Listen, yes, it's less of a discount. It's only 10% now, but he just chopped like if you were to buy uh a pan a 10 test panel prior to now, 10% off is still way more than you were ever going to be able to get off and a better price and a better value. So, go check out shedesting.com. Great service, best service in the industry from Charlie Williams. Check them out. Uh, also speaking of service in the industry, check out Redline Shipping. Long time taking care of the industry, taking care of the people that take care of them. Uh, it's still hot out there. Watch your temps if you need insight. They have a number you can call. They have the equipment and supplies that you can buy. They're with you every step of the way, and they've been at it for a very, very long time. The institutional knowledge is priceless, and the team is just phenomenal. So, go check out Redline Shipping. If you haven't been in a while, go check it out. Use the promo code proper 5. Get yourself five bucks off. And, uh, experience the user interface that they have as well. It's very userfriendly. Um, and also, you're going to see it integrated on properroyals.com very, very shortly. I just got word on that yesterday. So, if you buy an animal from me on there, uh it'll all be wrapped up right into uh fully integrated on Redline shipping and shipping prices that are quoted for you right there. I don't even have to do flat rate anymore pricing. You just get the actual pricing and off it goes. Um, Reagan Renee, Royal Pythons, that is Charlie Ryan, the current undefeated uh 15 minutes of lame champion. good friend, somebody that I've really uh kind of clicked with. If you believe in the birds of a feather kind of thing, um go check out Charlie uh professionally trained scientist in his day job that transfers over to how he treats his uh his animals. Uh specializing in krypton, man. The best recessive combo uh best in show at Siri was a Krypton combo from my boy Shane. He gets a little sneak in there. Small town exotics. But if you're into the Krypton project, go check out Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. Look at his morph market as well as DG Gstripe Candy uh excuse me, Candy Pides and Clown single, double and triple uh recessive ingredients. That's Charlie at Reagan Renee Royal Pythons. Danny and Renee Roachcha, Portuguese Pythons. We're about to discuss our third year working together, which I'm just so thankful for. Great people to continue to do work with. Uh, I know we're going to talk about uh Monarch, but I'm an Ultramale guy and let me tell you, Portuguese Pythons's Ultra Male Chef's kiss, you know. Uh, they're working puzzle in Ultramal, Clown and Ultramal, Pied in Ultramal, um, and, uh, True Ghost Projects as well, along with great dark jeans that they're doing in Ultramal, Het, Red, Isanthic, GHI, and they also have Sunset Hypo Combos, um, and Ultram Clowns. I said that earlier, ultra puzzles and clowns. So, go check them out. wonderful people to do business with and uh most of actually all of uh my Ultramal Pide project stuff came from them. So, so happy to be working with them and their animals. Sund Dog Serpents, that's Sarah and Josh from Orlando, Florida. Speaking of people I've been doing business with, uh I had the uh pleasure of uh vending with Sarah, I don't almost four years ago now uh down in Orlando. I got to know them very very well when they were starting out and now they've just built a banging collection. Uh definitely specializing in TSKanthic and TSK clown projects. Uh they also are working asphalt and super asphalt projects which is a little bit rare here in the states. Uh so really nice examples of those uh combos and genes if you're interested. They also work with animals like blood pythons and euromastics. So they got really cool stuff going on and they're great people to work with. I can give you a personal vouch for them. And BNS Reptilia, that's the last. That is Chris Shelley out in Pennsylvania. He is the original advertising partner on Proper Royals. All these years later, we now vend Tinley together. He's my business partner. And uh you heard Aaron mention the rainbow clown. Chris and I actually own that snake together. That's a partnership that uh he and I have. He's 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. The pool snakes and the pine snakes. He will have those at Tinley in October at the proper royals and BNS reptilia table. And he'll also have all the right paperwork and permits and all of that. It's all on the up and up. Check out Chris. He is the regional distributor of the Chipper in Pennsylvania. If he can help you with that Coco, give him a ring. And also uh if you're interested in becoming a distributor of the chipper yourself in your own region, get in touch with him. He can help you on that. Thank you audience. I couldn't do it without you. Uh all these years I've been at this now. Tuesday nights are a blast. I look forward to them every week and it's because you guys are here. So thank you so much again. Coming to you ad free from the support of all of these companies that are taking care of the industry. You're not getting interrupted by ads for who knows what because you said something out loud in a conversation. ad free proper royals from all these folks. So, take a look and uh support them where you can. Thanks for hearing me out. Uh we got Aaron Klein from Batter Up Balls. We've been talking all night. If you're just joining us, you should uh certainly go catch the replay from the beginning. Packed with ideas, information, and experience for sure. So, all right, let's talk uh Rainbow and uh uh Monarch. Which are you more I don't know if you could be more excited. I don't know if you can like pick one, but what are you uh what are you looking for like this year? What's exciting you this year and these years uh this year's pairings?

So this year, right now, my rainbow hypo girl has been paired with our Wookie red stripe leopard hat clown boy. So right now, our goal is to get some more of the hats built up. So, that'll make my triple head, my clown uh rainbow hypos. So, with that coming, that's going to add some of the dark jeans in.

I was going to say, sorry to interrupt. I thought the key to that was also not only the triple head, but the combos on top. Like, don't just rush to the triple. You got to have the other stuff along the way, man.

Uh, we've been working that. That's all of my hats right now either have, you know, they got lesser, they got pin, they've got Enie, you know, we've got a lot of Kodoms and stuff, uh, incompletes in there. So, that one, that one's a really big one to me. We've done really good with that boy. Uh, he came from, uh, Jersey guys a few years ago. Um, we've also got I'm trying to look over here. I've got a double head rainbow girl that I bought that I've been putting my quad hat mail to. So, double rainbow. What? Double hat rainbow. Uh, I want to say she's rainbow hypo again. Gotcha. I bought it. It was one of the morph market auctions. Got lucky on got really lucky on. Got her up to size real quick. So, my quadhead boy has been in there. So, we're just hoping to prove him out because we don't have the the shed test yet. that Charlie has a lot of my shed test. Uh, we've we've sent him a lot of visual stuff, so

it will be there soon. I am extremely confident in that just from I I'll just leave it there. Very soon.

He's been sending me like cryptic messages. Right? Exactly. There you go. Yeah, you got to read those just a certain way. But yeah, they're uh they're on their they're on their way, man. you know, he he's messaged me and said, "Yeah, that one didn't have hypo in it or something." So, he's working on, but I've got seven more from these quad heads just sitting here. You know, and that's the big thing. I want to know, you know, the rainbow because I've got six girls that are about 800 to a,000 grams right now.

I'm trying to think of the good analogy. Like you do the science and you do the work and you know and you get to a point where you know the roads leading then you got to verify it to where you're like I know. Y. But then you got to do it where it's like in the science world it would be like peer review which which obviously they don't have to do in in the shed testing world but good science says you got to do that part and we'll just say rainbow is somewhere in that spectrum right now like it's it's it's on its way you know it's it's it's out there. So,

we've talked a few times at Tinley. We talked every once in a while message. He'll send me that cryptic, you know. Yeah, this one didn't have the hypo in it, but so, you know, we're just we're figuring it out. Uh, Right. So, we've been working a lot trying to get those built up. You know, now I've got all the visual males. I got some visual girls growing. The males will be ready to breed, I would say, probably in the spring. So, I'll save some clown stuff back for them. I'll save some other stuff, you know, Monarch. So, Monarch was just something else that a lot of people didn't, you know, didn't work. Uh, it just it started catching on. So, at the last show at Shamberg, uh, Rhino did an came by and he took some video. He got his main one he picked though was the Rainbow.

But what a lot of people didn't realize, they'd walk by my booth and I had a brand new clutch. It was super pastel Batman's. Uh, there was some fire in there. It was a It was a cool clutch of clowns that were super pastel. I put the whole clutch in one display, like one center spot, big spot. Oh, yeah. And they would look at that, but they would miss the rainbow. They would miss they'd miss the monarch. And I stuck the ultramale. I had a pastel ultramale leopard girl. I stuck the monarch and that girl in one thing. And a lot of people are like, they didn't they didn't really see it. Then a couple people are like, "Well, there's a monarch." Oh, that's an ultramale. It was to give them the, you know, the view of both. Right. Yeah. Because you actually don't get to see that, especially in person very often. And then I had both rainbows on each side of it. So you had the rainbows and then you had that right there. And then I had Scrambler right below those. And a lot of people didn't even catch that. And then I had Wookie Heat clown stuff right next to that. So, a lot of people didn't realize it that, you know, I think I'm the only one who had a monarch at the show. I know I was probably the only one with a rainbow at the show, right? Had a lot of ultra male. So, it isn't that I don't like any of this stuff. And people need to, you know, you can't have the sides. I'd love to get a sunset. And I've already said that once tonight. You know, why not? You know, there's if you got the space. I I still have quite a bit of space in here. I got empty slots on a 1065. I've got a 7030 on one side, a 5040 on the other side, and then I've got a bunch of hatchling racks. So, if I've got the room, I can make it. And then if is I would say one of the biggest things that a lot of people that know me, I'm going to try and make the sale. You know, I'm not going to undercut us where we're giving away stuff, but I'm also I have zero 2024 stuff. I have zero 2023 stuff, right? I get really good at I'm not cut I'm not bringing anything over. You know, the first two clutches of the year are already gone for the most part. So, I do my best to keep things moving. You know, if you're sitting on it, you know, if snakes are getting four or 500 grams, you might want to might want to look and see if you're trying to have Canova prices or you doing in real reality, this is my price.

Exactly. Yeah. And I actually I had that conversation with somebody very recently where I was like, "Look, it's your animals, but your comps aren't the same as there's a brand value and there's a uh" and I could say it humbly because I don't have that brand value either. I have a little brand value, but not that brand value. And um it it takes time and it's it's not necessarily fair, but it's also not a uh you know there's not an advertised commodity price like a stock exchange or something. This is that that's the beauty of what we do. We can we can figure out the price in real time, you know.

Well, I had somebody stop at the and they were like, "Hey, what would you take for that monarch? It's head Gstripe and all that. What would you take for it?" And I was like, "I don't even know. I never even It's a male. I never even considered it. I've got a female visual monarch gstripe here. And I had no inkling to even sell it. And I was like, well, I don't know. Let me think about it. Cuz honestly, I already had the visual. My boy came from best dress balls, so I know it proved out already Monarch. So, I was like, let me think about it. So, I got on Morph Market and I started looking. And how I've always done it is I look at the highest and lowest and kind of in visual monarch. And just for a single visual monarch, no hats, nothing from Justin was $1,800. And I said to myself, I said, "What do I

"Think my het G-stripe though would be worth?" And I, this is how I think I'm like $1,400 >> for even a hit compared to Justin's. And, you know, I got to look at what is Bob, you know, Bob's probably going to be in that same, you know, price range. I don't have either one of their names. So, I have to be able to move it, but also offer it. You know, I can't say, "Hey, I want 1500 bucks." Because Justin does.

>> Well, then you're just gonna go to Justin and buy it.

>> It's like, so, and I'm like, "Hey, if you give me $1,400, I'll throw in a shirt. I'll give you >> That's right. >> Thank you." >> Yeah. And I'll call you every every week for a few weeks to make sure you're doing well. No, I I do tell people some, but like sometimes I get get beat up on price where they're like, "Oh, I could get it right here." You know, they show me their phone and I'm like, "Well, here's the animal in your hand right here. You're not paying shipping. You're not risking anything. I'm local. I'm here to uh, you know, you could get your feeders from me. You can get support from me. I'm going to do better on that." And it's still coming in less by the time you figure out shipping and all that. And I'm like sometimes though the the the the price undercutting just drives me bonkers. Not I'm not saying among breeders that fine, that's business, but just when people are like, you know, they're just throwing 30, 40% offers at you. It's like, yeah, it's a little hard, man.

>> Well, we've been to we've done a show here in Southern Illinois and they're when I show up, my my displays are right here, ready to go, this weekend priced and ready.

>> Right. We have a guy that's showed up before. He will walk around with his little marker, write down what we all got our stuff priced for, and then go over and undercut us. We know it's going to happen. There's going to be people that undercut us, but it's like, >> why show up? What do you think is what do you think it's what do you think it's valued at, right?

>> You know, >> honestly, we we produce this stuff. We can cut our own price, >> but if you think your product is better than mine, why do you need to undercut it? Put it the same price and let's see who sells.

>> Yeah. Or put it higher if you think that you're worth more. Like have a little like there's a little bit of me that goes, why don't you have a little bit of pride in your brand? Because because that passes on like people know if they're buying a snake at 40% off. There's no backup. There's no, hey, what was the pairing? There's no followup. How, hey, this thing's not eating. What do you think that person's going to tell you? Screw off. That's on you. You know, like you're not going to get that help.

>> You're buying the customer service.

>> Yeah. Exactly.

>> Salesmanship is one of the biggest things. Yes. Anybody I can say, "Hey, I'll sell you something for 50 bucks." But that snake should have been 150. We could all do that. But in the long run, we're hurting ourselves. Well, you can't stay in business doing it. I like that's I'm like I can't the feed.

>> No, I just have to be patient sometimes and say, "You know what? That person's not going to be around very long. I'm still here. I guess I'm not getting rich, but the lights are still on." Same thing with rodent prices. You know, I'll have somebody and they're like, "Well, I need it this or, you know, it should be at this price." And I'm like, "Well, go find it at that price. I can't I can't do it at that price. It's not going to work. And I don't know what rodents you're getting at that price, but you better get them while you can because they're not going to be around. Like, I know what it costs to do this, you know?"

Well, that guy, I I want to say at the time it was a clown pied visual male, and this was back when clown, this was two years ago. Clown pides were >> some money. Yeah. Yeah. >> $800 visual clown pied, probably three 400 grams. And I'm like I was like, hey, I'll trade you something. I'm not paying, you know, but he was he kept coming by, coming by. You want to buy that? You want to buy that? I was like, I'm going to trade you something, but you just undercut us all. You're the only one who made sales today.

>> Yeah. So, it's part of it, but I believe in my my product, what I'm bringing. I believe in it. So, my prices, you know, we'll we'll we'll work with people, you know, on Sunday, you know, I'll give you a deal because I still got to pay for my table, >> right? Yeah. Exactly. We still got to make something work. Yeah.

>> I gotta I got to pay for this hotel that I stayed in for the last two nights and then the $500 or 500 mile trip back home.

>> Yeah. >> It's hard to go home when you're in the hole. A thousand bucks. It's a it that eight hour trip gets a long long eight hours when you're in the hole. Man, I trust me, I've I've made some lonely drives across the northern prairies with not much in my pocket. And it's it's way lonelier when you don't have your good friend Benjamin and his friends Benjamin in your pocket. You know what I mean?

>> Yep. I'm just waiting for that cash app or something, you know? Please, somebody buy something on Morph Market right now, please.

So, >> but we've all done it. We've all been there. Uh, and that's where right now I think with the Rainbow product, it's, you know, the value is up there. If we quit seeing them on morph or on auctions, which >> that thing's getting to annoy me, but uh, Monarch, Monarch's really held its value really well. So, you know, I'm just trying to find these projects and get more into them. So,

>> we'll just keep keep working it, >> you know. I I think that's the only way to look at it. Think I do think I truly believe this. I think every business can look around at their competition and find somebody that is offering a lower price or offering something of lesser quality or some way that grinds our gears. And I learned a long time ago, man, I can't just chase every price or every model or every um offering, even the great ones. I can't chase every great, I can't be everything. So, I got to be the best at what I can do and do that the very best. And I think I don't know. I take a little bit of solace in that going, you know what? I'm a pretty good option in this room and for certain things, I might be the best option in this room. And that's that's kind of what you got to roll with and magnify, you know?

>> Yeah. And that's finding shows that you have your crowd. And I'll tell you what, I had a show over in Terre Haute, Indiana. I would average over $1,000 in this show. And I'm talking it's in a little 4H building.

>> Yeah. >> It's smaller than most people's like garages.

>> Like you might be able to sit fit four cars in this. But I would average over $1,000. I made $1,800 in one show there.

>> Yeah. >> And I was like, "This is my favorite show until the promoter took over." Because for a long time, nobody would go to the show because who the promoter was just a horrible name behind him and Morph Market has him banned. So when he took back over the show, he had gave it away to somebody else. When he took it back over, I haven't been back.

>> And I had such a, you know, a following over there, you know, and I try my best to keep stuff posted over in that, you know, area, >> but it's so hard missing out on a show like that, but you have to make the decisions like that that it's unfortunate. That's three times, four times a year I could go over and I normally have guaranteed money because I'm the only one who's showing up with banners, >> uh, showing with the lights, you know, most of them are in deli cups. So,

>> it's it's hard to say that. And it it hurt it hurt a lot because of the people and I still people still message asking if we're coming. Now, we just heard that that show's no longer.

>> He wasn't getting the people to come back through the doors. So,

>> we're talking. We we've had some discussions. I I need to figure out the insurance policies and stuff like that. Uh, and me crossing the border, that's the other one. Me running a show in another state is also something I got to figure out. But it's something that I I would consider promoting a small show, but I know with the, you know, the following we already have on Instagram, Facebook, people know us. You know,

>> it's a small town. We're going to get We got a lot of buddies. We got Darren Taylor down there in Taylor Made. Uh, we got Tanya. She's got a scale head. We got some bigger breeders that have a lot of stuff that they need some local shows and that one is a perfect one in all of our backyard.

>> Nice. >> And then I've got a buddy, he was on here earlier, uh, Level Up. He's working on stuff. He's working on uh, Ultramale Clown stuff. So, we've got a lot of local people that are building up and now it's we got to find places to go. Effingham, Illinois. the connection of 57 and I70. Perfect place, never.

>> So that that's that's the thing that we're signing. We're trying to get into that one now.

>> Nice. Well, Erin, we're at the uh, the 90 minutes that I promised you at tonight. And uh, I'm going to I got to go be a dad and a husband for a little while. Um, and find that time. I know, you know, you got to figure out where you can find that time when you can. Uh, thank you so much for for being on the show. I'll see you uh, I'll see you at Tinley this year. Maybe I'll see you >> maybe I'll see you in uh Kansas City beforehand, too.

>> Uh, I'm looking forward to that one. I do have one thing. Anybody that's going to Joplin this weekend, I have four tickets to get in. Send me a message. I'm going to give you I'll give each person I first two people to message, I'm going to give you two tickets to get in. It's a get in for a show me show. You can come on on Saturday or Sunday. We'll have the tickets sitting at the front door waiting for you. So, all you got to do is send me a message uh on Instagram.

>> I was going to say, where can they message you? Where where can people find you on uh out there in the world, man?

>> Uh, we're on Instagram, Batterup Balls. Uh, we do have it on Facebook, but it's automatically whatever I post on Instagram goes to the Facebook. We don't really mess with the Facebook very much.

>> If it makes you feel better, I saw the post on Facebook today actually. Man,

>> I try to I try to keep my socials moving. Uh, I'm in the 15 minutes of lame for this year as well.

>> Oh, nice. >> There, too.

>> So, you're gonna start seeing some reels. We're We're working on stuff, trying to come up with some some fun stuff. So, uh, baseball themed obviously. A lot of people realize or h have seen it, but for Tinley every year for the live auction, we donate a bat and on Friday we walk around. I You've signed it for me. We have We have it signed. Uh, we've had Lori Barek, Justin, all the big names sign it. We donate that every year to the October Tinley. So, and I guess we did spring Tinley this year, too. But, you know, we just want to keep keep everybody involved. Keep those kids involved. Whatever you guys do, we got to get the kids involved.

>> All right, Erin, thanks for all your efforts, man. I enjoyed the show. You got to come back again sometime, man. We didn't We still didn't get to cover everything we wanted to. So, you got to come back sometime. All right.

>> We'll do. Thank you very much. I'll see you. My pleasure, man. You do the same. Uh, stick around for just a second. Uh, audience, be back same time, uh, same place next week and also Thursday morning, 7:30 a.m. Eastern time with, uh, Joe for Proper Cup of Joe. See you guys soon. Thanks everyone. [Music] [Music]