(soft music)
(water trickling)
(toothbrush buzzing)
(water trickling)
(coffee trickling)
- I hate coffee.
This video's gonna be a little bit different
than most of my videos.
I have a net on the pond.
Keeps the leaves out.
(soft, upbeat music)
(car dings)
I'm gonna get extremely real with you guys today.
(soft, upbeat music)
(water trickling)
(soft, upbeat music)
(Brian sighs)
I'm terrified.
I love you Drogo.
I feel like I need to be honest with you guys.
(soft, upbeat music)
Look at how cute this is. Salt and Pepper.
Hold on, you don't have to move, buddy.
I know you guys know
that we're doing the expansion into a public aquarium.
(soft, upbeat music)
(lock beeps)
And the tanks are gonna be slightly larger than this one.
And the building is gonna look kinda like this.
Well, kinda like that.
We're still working on it.
(soft, upbeat music)
I wanna make sure
I get one thing perfectly straight with you guys.
I'm always gonna still be a reptile guy.
You know, I really do love fish though.
Sriracha.
This stuff is gold.
(sponge scrubbing)
And somehow I convinced everybody
that I could open up a huge aquarium.
(soft, upbeat music)
You know, sometimes you have to convince other people
you can do something even when you doubt yourself.
(waterfalls trickling)
It's been a month since we got this building.
It's the first time we've actually came here.
- [Lori] We could do some ghost hunting.
- I have a key, we have a building, and now the demo starts.
You can see ripping down the ceiling, ripping down walls.
It's exciting, it's nerve-wracking, it's everything else.
But we need to rip everything down
so that we can see what's underneath all this stuff.
- They're ripping off the wall.
(tools banging)
God, why can't we help?
What was he looking at?
I don't get it.
- Now that things are opened up,
I'm looking in the ceiling
just to see the different height here.
You can see the height is really high here.
It's pretty low here.
This'll be opened up.
This wall will actually be pushed out 12 feet.
This will actually be part of the aquarium.
I'm looking up above.
Beam on this side, but there's no beam here,
so I'm assuming we're gonna have to put
another beam all the way across.
We're at the point of no return now.
I mean, we just demoed this building and...
Yeah.
I hope you guys are gonna enjoy this journey
'cause I'm kinda freaking out.
(Brian laughs)
Yesterday, it really became a reality.
There's no turning back now.
(soft, upbeat music)
And I wanna take you guys on this journey.
But not just the things that I want you to see,
the entire process from start to finish,
every part, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What am I risking doing this expansion?
Literally everything.
I always wanted to inspire people to live their dreams
and follow what they believe in.
And that's what I've done my entire life.
And most of the time, it's been amazing.
Opening up the Reptarium literally changed my life.
I mean, seeing people walk through the door,
seeing their faces light up, the kids smiling, families,
reptile enthusiasts just enjoying it so much,
I literally can't explain the feeling I get
every single time I see it.
But back to the aquarium.
(soft, upbeat music)
But what made me think that I could take on
a build as big as I'm doing across the street?
I'm trying to answer that question right now.
I've always believed in myself,
and I've always tried to push the limits
of what I thought I was capable of.
But this is really bordering on insanity.
I put together $3 million for this expansion,
and I'm fast realizing that it may be more.
Possibly a lot more.
I want you guys to understand that I'm terrified.
I honestly don't know that I can pull this off,
but there's no turning back now.
With that said,
I can see myself standing right here right now
and behind me are exhibits.
The reptiles, the fish, everything is here.
And I can see people walking in, smiles on their faces,
excited as I am every single day
getting to take this all in.
I can feel that experience happen,
even though we're a long way off.
But then in my head, I can already see it accomplished.
For instance, right here in the center here,
there's gonna be a 20 foot cylinder
that's gonna be a black tip reef shark
and bonnet shark tank.
Right here, I can actually already see it in my head.
(soft, upbeat music)
Yeah.
This dumpster's gonna get filled a lot.
Oh look, the Reptarium.
To accomplish big things,
sometimes you've gotta risk it all.
But I want you guys to understand my emotions.
I'm excited.
I'm nervous.
I'm terrified, to be honest with you.
And I wanna take you on that emotional journey.
There's gonna be a lot of days
I'll be thinking it was the biggest mistake of my life.
(soft, upbeat music)
You know, there's a quote that I really love.
It says, "Do what you fear most."
And for me, maybe that fear is the fear of failure,
maybe the fear that I am not gonna try,
maybe even the fear that I'm not good enough.
When I opened up the Reptarium, I was absolutely terrified.
Not only did I spend every single dollar
that I had to my name,
but I actually had to borrow $15,000 from a friend
just to open the doors.
(soft, upbeat music)
You know, and that worked out pretty well.
Fast forward four years
and we're about to spend three plus million dollars
and risk it all again.
So what do I do?
What do we do?
We push forward, and we do the best we absolutely can.
Come on, Perdita.
She's got big ole lump in her.
I'm gonna need you guys.
You guys are gonna be so important to me.
I'm gonna need you to uplift me
over the next 10 or 11 months
on those dark days when I'm really doubting myself.
And trust me, (soft music)
there's gonna be a bunch of dark days
in the next 11 months.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I wanna take you guys along on this journey.
And the only way to truly take you along on this journey
is for you to feel all of my emotions, including my fear,
understand my hesitance,
to lift me up
when I wanna just walk away from the whole thing.
But also to celebrate every time we achieve one of our goals
step by step.
Lookin' good, huh?
Can you see the vision?
- This is the way all of our visions start.
(Lori laughs)
Destruction.
- [Brian] What do you think? - I don't know, man.
I think there could be a pine tree up there.
- It's just getting started really,
so it's hard to say.
- I think there's no going back now.
- Oh yeah, we can go back.
- We can go back? Where?
- We can go back out that door.
(Lori laughs)
- The wall comes back maybe this whole way here.
This is where like, all the back of the house stuff is.
- Orange. - Wow, look at that.
- Pink.
- That's good.
- For nothing?
Like, that could come out probably, huh?
Like I mentioned, we're past the point of no return.
There's nothing we can do but go forward now.
We're gonna learn a whole lot together over the next year.
I wanna mark this date on my calendar right now,
and every time we achieve a goal,
I want to look back on this video on this date
and actually remember the hesitance I'm feeling.
And hopefully as we get going
and I look back every time we achieve something,
that hesitance will turn into excitement.
One year, we better be open.
We better have made it through this emotionally,
mentally, physically.
Which by the way,
the open date is hopefully either September 1st
or by the latest, October 1st of 2023.
I'm terrified even saying those dates.
It seems almost impossible to get this done in time.
Let's face our fears together
and celebrate each victory that we make as we go.
Every accomplishment is gonna be a victory,
and we need to celebrate that.
It's gonna be a wild ride.
But a year from now, I want us all to get together
and really appreciate what we've accomplished
over the last year.
And this snake is absolutely wonderful.
This is what they call a divergens, a mangrove snake.
Unbelievable.
I want you guys to know
that I couldn't have gotten this far,
and certainly there's no way I could take the next steps
without each and every one of you.
Each one of you are a part of this journey.
Okay, that's it.
Buckle up.
This is gonna be an insane 10 or 11 months.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, there's a playlist
that you can watch all kinds of videos.
You can also hit that subscription button.
It would mean a lot to me.
Also, hit that like button while you're down there.
Have a wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.