(light upbeat music)
- Good morning, everyone.
And welcome to the vlog, Reptile Army.
I hope to start your day. It's amazing.
I'm excited today because I get to share with you guys,
the first 3D rendering of the new expansion.
Just got it. And I am so stoked in effect is this that,
you know, dreams take time, right?
And you've got to really kind of believe in them
and hang on to them and visualize them. Right?
If you visualize them enough, you can manifest those dreams.
Listen, I am so lucky to be working with animals
like Noah here, but you know,
really that dream started right with BHB.
And again, before I show you that 3D rendering, you know,
again, it's about following your dreams, right?
BHB is where it all started for me when I was just a kid,
you, I knew I wanted to work with reptiles
and I knew I wanted to really breed reptiles.
And so I manifested that, right.
I thought every day about being like
the best I could possibly be and having amazing animals
like this Moose Serena Rat Snake
or where I should have say a pied Moose Serena Rat Snake.
It's just, you know, so amazing to see a dream come true,
but trust me, it didn't happen overnight.
I mean, BHB started in 1989 and honestly,
I wasn't even paying my bills probably
for the first five or six years.
I mean, I was definitely starving.
I mean, just barely making ends meet.
But I believed in it so much that I continued on.
And I want to always encourage you guys you know,
get that dream, think about that dream,
and then every step of the way is absolutely incredible.
And trust me, it's going to happen 3.0,
4.0 is going to happen.
And by the way, I'm about to drop on you a 5.0 today.
That's right. You heard it here first 5.O,
I'm super excited about it, for sure.
But BHB is where it all started and Hey,
I've loved every minute of it. You guys know the story.
I don't need to beat a dead horse.
You know, BHB was bored of my life for 27 years.
And then I started really thinking about opening up the zoo,
which was a dream since I was a kid.
And then the reptarium kind of started to happen.
You kind of remember I walked into this place.
It was a tobacco shop, right? They had just moved out.
It was a, it was completely different.
And that vision, you know,
that dream of can I do this with 1.0,
kind of came to fruition. We worked our butts off.
It worked out. We didn't know
if it was going to be successful
and it turned out to be wildly successful.
And that gave us an opportunity of course, to do 2.0,
which again was a tattoo shop.
Same thing had the vision, just like the reptarium expansion
to acquire and expansion.
Now it's that vision of thinking I can do this
and not being afraid to try. And we did 2.0.
Of course we have a little road bump called COVID,
but Hey, it worked out and we did absolutely amazing,
which gives us an opportunity to get onto 3.0.
Again it's about believing in yourself and doing it.
And on top of that,
you've got to have a great team behind you, right?
If you don't have a great team all around
that support you and believes in your vision,
you can't really achieve it. Right?
So I have great people working at the reptarium.
I have great people working on this walk,
great people working at BHB.
Everyone believes in the vision
and that's what really makes these dreams come to a reality.
So keep in mind, this is the way
the front elevation looks right now, which,
Hey, I think it looks pretty cool, but again,
there's like a hundred thousand cars a day drive by here.
And now I don't know if it's super eye-catching.
I mean, if you look over, you see the reptarium van,
you see the reptiles and thing.
Certainly you're going to see it.
But this front elevation is going to be 40 feet tall
and a, Hey, listen, you guys want to see it.
I'm going to show it right now.
So as you can see, it's going to be a wall of glass
that's 40 foot tall.
You got to all the architectural kind of design
that makes it look really cool.
We wanted to take like what the large aquariums,
like the Atlanta Aquarium and the shed and whatever else.
And we want it to kind of scale it down to our level, right?
Obviously we're not the Atlanta Aquarium,
but we want it to make it look amazing
so that when you're driving down the road,
it is just like, holy cow.
What is that with the landscaping out front,
the lighting and just the actual beautiful architecture.
We wanted this building to be something
that you could see from a half mile away and go,
wow, what is that?
And then when you get there, you're like,
I've got to go check that place out.
It's absolutely amazing.
And I am so excited to see the first elevation.
And by the way, reptile army,
you know that we have our new Halloween selections out.
There are some bangers in there
and we have a fall collection,
we have a Halloween collection.
So go over to reptilearmy.com.
Get your swag. We have all the old stuff too.
I think we're up to probably 60 or 70
different Merch things that you can get now.
So you can definitely find something.
You can sport the gear, get out there,
kind of be our little foot soldiers telling people
how amazing reptiles are.
I mean, listen, you walk around with a shirt like this.
Someone's gonna go, that's an awesome shirt.
Where did you get? And then you can be like,
Hey, listen, I love reptiles.
And you can teach them and educate them.
That's what the whole movement is all about reptilearmy.com.
Now this is where the major transformation,
I mean, don't get me wrong.
The front is a major transformation,
but this is the behind the building right here.
It doesn't look all that good.
Believe it or not right here
is where the entrance of the building is going to be.
And it's going to be absolutely spectacular.
I'll show you the rear elevation here in a second,
but we're also going to have the parking lot situation,
right? Right now this is our parking lot over here.
And a lot of people park over here,
which is right behind our building, but believe it or not,
that's actually owned by our vet
that owns the building next door.
So we're hoping and praying that everything works out to
where we can paint both of these parking lots here,
which is going to lead me to 5.0 in a second here,
which is going to be amazing.
But I'm going to go ahead and show you the rear elevation,
so you get an idea what it's going to look like when you
come in here and park in the parking lot.
What it's going to look like
when you're walking into the reptarium
and without further ado here it is.
- [Man] So as you can see, you know,
obviously the front is the showpiece for people driving by,
but we want, when you walk into the back,
it looked absolutely beautiful.
Again, with a huge window area,
that's going to be two stories high.
It's going to look absolutely amazing.
That way you walk into the building. It looks really cool.
And I absolutely love the way the sides,
the front, everything look.
This building is going to be a dream.
But the one thing that is always kind of bothered me
a little bit with this building
and the expansion is fact that I thought once we're done,
once we do this, we have the upstairs for the aquarium.
We have the main floor with the expanded reptarium.
And then we have the downstairs for the kind of dig site.
It was done. You know, there was nothing else to do.
We remember, I talked about, do I open up another location?
What do I do? I don't know what was going to happen.
Well, guess what?
Yesterday I was out here and we actually had
Matilda outlet, kind of cruise around.
And again, this is my parking lot right here.
And guess what? This guy is great here
that owns this building, who, by the way,
I've been here for six years.
Never talked to the guy before came out.
He was just checking out Matilda.
And he said, oh, by the way, he goes,
I'm thinking about selling this building here.
And he said, would you be interested?
I said, what's. And so again, listen,
there's a lot of potential here.
It's about 7,000 square foot.
So I'm thinking 5.0 could potentially be in the future.
That's right.
So if everything goes well with the city
and we start going on, I may actually buy that building.
Not do anything with it in the media,
because we have a lot to do with the building over here.
Right? So we're going to be super tied up
with this project for at least the next couple of years.
But after that couple of years,
I can start working on 7,000 more square foot of 5.0.
That's right. That way when you come into the parking lot,
you come into the main building over here,
but maybe we have an auxiliary building.
I don't know what for, I'm not even sure.
As a matter of fact, if you guys have ideas,
what else we should do again?
Aquarium reptarium, a dig site.
What else should we do with 5.0, I don't know.
But listen, the dream could come true to me.
I have even more space. And that's what it's all about.
It's about visualizing. It's about manifesting.
And now that we're seeing the actual pictures,
it's in my mind, I even manifest even more
in every step you get closer to that dream,
the more reality it actually becomes.
So there it is guys.
I mean, let me know in the comments
what you think of the kind of new 3D renderings
of reptarium expansion, the aquarium expansion and,
and listen, then we start getting into the inside stuff,
totally wild stuff.
So what do you think about five point? Oh, that just crazy.
We're literally thinking about 5.0,
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.
You've got to remember I'm on step six of a hundred.
So we have a long way to go.
This is going to be a couple year process.
Just get 3.0, 4.0 going.
Not to mention now potentially 5.0.
The point is, is that you've got you really hang on
to that dream because if you hang on to that dream,
you can manifest it into reality.
(light upbeat music)
Here in the reptarium for me is like kind of twofold, right?
Number. Well, maybe threefold, to be honest,
because I love the educational part showing people animals,
but also love the fact that I get to work with animals
like baby Kush that I had never worked with in the past.
Right? So I get it as we expand,
I get to work with new animals
and you guys know we're already getting
some of those new animals for the reptarium.
The Rock Python and obviously Neil, the PI golden child,
Motley reticulated Python, a handful of other animals.
And then I'm actually in the process of working
on a couple of new things that'll be coming up here
in the next little bit.
But I also love the fact that we can give baby Kush
and other animals such amazing enclosures
and really see them become such amazing animals. Right.
And some of the stuff that we're learning from 1.0, 2.0,
we're going to apply the 3.0
and do even more incredible things.
So it's a big thing for me, right?
I mean, I love the whole process of learning,
but I also love the process of being able to work
with species that I never thought in a million years,
I could ever work with. (light upbeat music)
Told you guys before that Laurie's the gift shop
is what she's excited about.
I mean, she loves the animals and everything that we do,
but the gift shop has her little baby.
And all the time I walk around and see something brand new,
like I had never seen these little cobras before.
So she got little cobras that are so absolutely adorable.
And I didn't even know we had them.
So Laurie, she's as passionate about this stuff
as I am about the reptarium.
And there are certainly no animal other than RJ,
my boy over here.
Ooh, what are you doing there, buddy? What needs good.
Tell me why he jumped up me pretty quick there.
He's ready for a new enclosure.
And I am so excited to get this guy on display
because I know if he's over at the reptarium two things,
number one, he's an amazing animal,
two, I'm going to be able to work with them every single day
and get him back to the old RJ work training
and really working with them.
It's going to be pretty amazing.
And he deserves a new enclosure. He's been fine here.
He loves it. It's really cool with the waterfall,
everything else. But Hey, listen,
he's going to get a 20 foot long by like 10, 12 foot long,
four or five foot deep pond.
Lots of area for him to climb out on.
It's going to be absolutely amazing.
I tell you what I love RJ and I cannot wait
till everyone can just see RJ every single day.
Hey, what'd you get? What did you get?
- Her name is Twigs.
- Oh my God, Is that a Arizona Blond?
- Yeah. - Oh my God.
That thing is closed at fast.
- No. - [Man] No. It's really chill.
- I don't know. I never held it.
- [Man] You haven't held it. They're typically pretty fast.
- No, I think she's going to be great.
You want to hold it.
- [Man] I will try to hold it. - Okay.
- I think April will be better.
He actually puts an OBT in there for me
instead of as a joke.
- [Man 2] Yeah. Don't loose it.
- [Man] I won't loose it.
- [Man 2] What's your name?
- Oh, this is a.
- [Man 2] Oh, I just told you.
- I know I didn't listen. I was just so mesmerized.
This is actually quick, this sex is really good.
Wow. How old is Twigs?
- [Man 2] I didn't ask any.
- [Man] This is cool. This is a good one too. I love it.
- [Man 2] That is my best friend.
- [Man] Oh my gosh. He's so cool.
You have fun at your little show?
- [Man 2] I did. It was great.
Everybody's waiting when you hold it to show up.
- Christie told everyone I was.
- Everyone. Every single person.
I was like, yeah, my dad's coming.
I said you were coming today.
- I am. - Yeah.
- I'm on my way. - [Man 2] Yeah.
And you are the surprise guests at the office,
And I also told all the people
that are coming up here from Finland,
like MSA and Jeremy that we were taken out RJ.
- Okay. - [Man 2] All right.
- So again, let me know what you guys think
down in the comments of the reptarium expansion.
What do you think is going to look like?
Will it become a reality? Yes, it will become a reality.
Somehow we'll make it happen,
but I hope that you enjoyed this video
and if you did enjoy it and you enjoy kind
of the whole reptarium thing,
here's a list of us building the reptarium
that you can actually walk if you want.
On this side, do me a favor,
hit that subscription button.
I appreciate you guys so much reptile army.
Have an amazing day. Remember, be kind to somebody
and I promise, I'll see you in the next one.