- Unfortunately, the title is true
in that seven of my crested geckos died in less than a week,
and I'm going to tell you about exactly how that happened.
I will have to go back a bit.
It doesn't actually start with crested geckos
but it does end with crested geckos' lives ending.
(sighs) God.
Also, it's a little bit awkward to talk about
because of the irony in that of course it was crested geckos
because I tend to hate on crested geckos in videos.
But I promise, you're just gonna have to trust me,
I didn't want them to die, okay?
Now, for a quick rundown,
I'm actually gonna go to 2018 for just a second,
because this was right after we started Emerald Scales,
the website that takes in and rehomes reptiles.
Now, I was personally doing the Emerald Scales care,
care of my own animals,
and trying to run a YouTube channel as my full-time career.
I simply didn't have time
so I decided to hire my first-ever person on payroll
'cause I had just enough money to do so at this point.
Hiring went well
and I worked well with this person for quite a while
and I was happy with the work that she did.
She would basically come three times a week
and cover all the care of my personal animals
and most of the Emerald Scales animals' care.
She offloaded so much work from me
and saved me 20 to 40 hours a week,
depending on just how much of a load there was.
In 2019, I actually ended up putting my girlfriend
on payroll as well
after she was interested in helping too
'cause we had more animals.
I also had a third person on payroll
who was doing digital work,
but they weren't even actually local.
They just did stuff digitally for me
that offloaded additional work,
primarily for Emerald Scales.
So there were three people on payroll,
but unfortunately, things had changed
with my first-ever hire, as they do.
I mean, things don't work out forever
necessarily with employees,
and the time came that I had to terminate her.
Now, this is kind of its own whole story in itself,
but that's not the topic in this
because we're actually talking about the person
that I replaced her with.
Because of the amount of work,
I had to very quickly find a new person.
But lucky for me, I felt experienced enough
that I was confident in finding someone good.
I did the whole process.
I made some posts online, opening up applications,
people could submit information about themself and resumes
and I started doing interviews.
I start with a quick text interview
and then if they seem legit, a phone interview,
and then my favorite couple people,
I do an in-person interview with.
I was super confident about this person
and I actually was convinced
that she was going to be the best hire yet
because everything just seemed,
we talked very easily, seemed super knowledgeable
but super interested in learning as well.
It all just seemed like the perfect formula for a new person
so she came aboard and started working
I think three times a week as well.
Now, the first few times, naturally,
is going to not actually save me much time
'cause I gotta show her how to do everything, which is fine.
And luckily, because my girlfriend was also experienced
with the animal care,
she could help train as well so that it wasn't all on me
and I still had time to do other things.
But ultimately, she already had a lot of knowledge
and it wasn't too hard.
'Cause ultimately, the work isn't super complicated,
you just gotta keep track of what you're doing.
And in fact, by the end of the first week,
I was comfortable with just letting her take over
and do the work that the first person
had been doing as normal,
and I could go back to my usual schedule
to work on what I needed to do.
So by the start of her second week working here,
all the basic stuff was covered,
aside from the specialized animals
that did need those extra bits of care
and stuff that we couldn't quite trust her with yet,
but that's normal,
'cause naturally, you can trust a person
more over time as they learn more.
But overall, all of the basic care,
it was taken care of and it was super nice.
And throughout these weeks, I had been shipping animals
and the day came that I needed to ship a crested gecko.
So I went over to the shelf, grabbed the gecko,
'cause they were all just marked in their tubs
and I could grab the one that I needed,
but I noticed that there was some mold on the crested gecko
and in the enclosure, just this fuzzy white mold.
It was super weird.
I had seen this a couple times,
like, in the past, keeping animals,
but it was very rare and I was pretty confused.
So I checked on the crested gecko next to it
and it had even more mold on it,
like a serious amount of this fuzzy white mold in the tub.
And I realized that it was primarily around the food dish,
which had Pangea crested gecko mix,
which is ultimately just powdered fruit
that you add water to,
and like fruit, it can mold.
This food had been clearly left in there
for longer than it should've been
and the mold ended up spreading across the enclosure
thanks to the humidity
and even landed and latched itself onto the crested gecko.
So I pulled down all of the crested geckos we had,
which at the time was 13, and every single one was moldy.
Some of them were just a little bit of mold
and others had just this, like, big strip of mold
on their back or in the enclosure.
Now, there was one crested gecko
that actually did not have any mold,
and that's because it didn't have any food or water.
In fact, this crested gecko was already dead.
Instantly, I was like, "Oh, God, what has happened?"
The first thing I did was go to check the task list,
because to keep things organized and simple,
we just have whiteboards in the room
and each person will have a whiteboard
of what they need to do.
On the list, there was to clean all the water bowls,
deep clean the bearded dragons,
deep clean the leopard geckos,
deep clean the uromastyx on the bearded dragon shelf,
sweep and mop, and deep clean all of the crested geckos.
Each of these items were marked off,
including the crested gecko cleaning.
Now, for a second, I was like,
"Did she just mark off everything
without checking each one?"
But this was not the case
'cause she actually did not mark off mopping,
but she did mark off sweeping
because she had swept the first floor but not mopped it.
So clearly, she didn't just go through marking them all,
she clearly thought about each one.
But for some reason, the crested gecko cleaning
had been marked off each day that she came,
and they definitely had not been touched
or even checked on in probably a week.
Now, I've had issues with plenty of people
I've worked with before, which is normal.
You're gonna have issues
and oftentimes I can just work through those issues.
And honestly, each person I worked with
did lead to issues with certain animals,
I mean, including myself, my first employee, me,
the partner I worked with.
Naturally, everyone makes mistakes,
and there certainly had been human error with animals before
that were likely a cause to the death of one or two animals.
But ultimately, when you're working with animals
all the time, all day, every day,
you're naturally going to make some mistakes.
And I believe this is okay
as long as you avoid them as much as possible,
and every time a mistake happens,
you learn from it as soon as possible
and make an adjustment so it never happens again.
And yeah, this has happened with myself
and many other people I've worked with throughout the years.
It's natural, it's normal, it sucks,
but it doesn't make sense to just stop working on something
or getting rid of someone
the instant that they make a mistake,
even if it does lead to issues with an animal or two,
'cause ultimately, teaching them and working with them
and helping them improve more is a lot more efficient
than trying to find a whole new person.
But 13 crested geckos getting moldy was pretty bad.
So after I discovered that, she was not allowed to come back
and she only lasted about two and a half weeks total.
Ultimately, I only gave her one paycheck,
and I certainly felt bad
because she quit her previous job to work for me.
But at the end of the day, this was not just a tiny mistake.
Even though it was a singular mistake, it was big,
and it affected all 13 crested geckos.
One was already dead and 12 more were not looking good.
Now, after this, unfortunately,
I definitely did not have time to find someone new
so my girlfriend took over the crested gecko care
and treated them all for the mold,
which I won't get into in this video
but you can kind of research it online.
There are ways to properly and safely treat them,
but at the end of the day, there is no guarantee.
It's simple and it's straightforward
but when they're this moldy,
who knows how much they've inhaled?
Who knows how much it's affected them?
So treating them all for mold took a few weeks
and definitely took way more hours
than I had ever paid this employee for,
so ultimately, it canceled out all the work
that she ever did to save us time
because, well, we had to make up for all these other issues.
After a few days of treating, one of the crested geckos died
and then another one and then another one,
because they were just so far gone and so affected
that at the end of this,
six out of the 13 died from the mold issue
and one had died from not being given food or water.
So ultimately, less than half of them survived,
that being six,
but thankfully, they did end up being okay.
There was certainly a question of long-term effects
and how this would affect them into the future
so we didn't wanna immediately sell them
or find them new homes,
so they all stayed with us for an additional,
I think it was at least a month, maybe even two months,
to make sure that they were truly okay.
And the remaining six were okay,
that recovered from the mold pretty quickly.
From this point forward, we did have a way bigger workload
and it was very hard 'cause we still had so much going on.
And unfortunately, the team of three of us
working on animal care,
which was kind of just two
'cause I didn't do that much of it,
shrunk by half to just one person.
Now, of course, talked to the person about it.
She was very unhappy with having been let go
and was in a lot of disagreement about what had happened.
She ultimately kept complaining it on my communication,
which I'll admit, I'm not good at communication,
I'm not great at working with people.
I don't, however, believe
that this was related to the crested geckos
because it was about as clear as possible.
We wrote on her whiteboard, deep clean the crested geckos.
If she didn't know what that meant, she could've asked.
But instead, she just marked it off.
So I feel communication was certainly an issue,
but not an issue in regards to the death
of these crested geckos,
which is the ultimate reason
that I was like, "Yeah, you're not coming back."
Sorry, not sorry.
And since this experience,
I haven't hired anyone for husbandry.
There's a combination of reasons that I haven't.
But one very big reason for sure
is because I have completely lost the trust
in myself of finding someone
because I truly felt like this was the best person
I had ever interviewed, period.
At this point, I had already done dozens of interviews.
And even now, looking back at every single interview
out of the, say, 30 that I've done,
still, everything went the best with this one person.
And so I definitely question my ability
of finding the right person.
Now, at the end of the day,
yes, this was just one mistake,
but it was a big mistake and the death of seven animals,
which could've been 13 had it not been caught at this point.
It's a little sketchy, okay?
It sketches me out a bit, it's a bit scary,
and I have not hired people for husbandry since.
I recently did a video
about what I called my biggest business mistake yet,
which was the realization
that not only is Emerald Scales unsustainable
in the way that it's running,
my YouTube channel is unsustainable without Emerald Scales.
So if I were to drop Emerald Scales,
my channel would be unsustainable
and probably not go in a great direction.
But at the same time,
doing both at the same time is also not sustainable.
And one of the most common recommendations
was that I need to delegate the work.
And I certainly have delegated a ton of work
away from Emerald Scales.
It is just so hard to delegate animal care.
Even, like I said, with the first employee
that I ever hired, she did great for over a year,
but something just happened
after that one-year mark, in my opinion,
that things really went downhill and it was a lot rougher
and just ultimately not worth
what I was paying for the work.
We had a lot of disagreements
and we could not figure those out.
But for the months prior,
although, sure, there were mistakes
and it is possible that this person
was the cause of death of a couple animals,
at the end of the day, that is just part of it.
As I said, I've been the cause of death of a couple,
other people I've worked with have as well,
and so it's just,
it's such a sketchy thing and it's just so difficult.
And the thing is, I don't even know...
Okay, say I'm like, "Alright, it's time to hire someone new
but I need help with hiring this person."
I don't know how to find someone to help me.
I don't know how to find someone
to help me find someone to help me.
I just have a lot of trouble connecting
and finding the correct people to work with
who can even at least lead me in the right direction
to the right person.
This is one of the reasons that I have never,
and probably will never, accept volunteers,
because this person that I ended up getting rid of
after two and a half weeks
had quit her previous job to work for me.
Meaning that it's a very clear...
I mean, if you're relying on me for your livelihood,
you're going to be pretty motivated to do the right thing.
Let alone, if you are just a volunteer,
you just do it for fun and you come in for free,
there is so little liability on your end,
as a volunteer, to do the right thing.
Now, yes, some people do it, say, as an internship
for college credits or something.
But at the end of the day,
an employee is going to care a lot more
about keeping their position than a volunteer.
And so for this person who had quit their job,
who had done amazing in the interviews,
who had seemed to be doing great
in the first week and a half or so of work
and everything was fine,
to then make this big but weird mistake
of having not checked on the geckos
but saying they checked on the geckos
but saying that it actually wasn't their fault
because it was a communication issue,
(sighs) it's rough.
So in a perfect world,
I would be willing to just cough up the money
to hire someone new to delegate this care to.
But it is just,
it's a combination of me being bad
at finding the right people
and just not exactly knowing what to do
and how to do all this.
Because one of my thoughts was like,
"Oh, why didn't I check on the geckos previously?"
Well, I could've said that for any animal
she could've had an issue with.
But if I'm checking on every animal,
that literally defeats the entire purpose
of paying someone to check on every animal.
So even if I do check on each animal once a week,
that's not even enough for issues
like an animal not getting water,
not getting misted if it needs humidity, for example,
or the crested gecko's food not being taken out,
'cause that food can mold within just a few days.
So delegation is not my strong suit
and I wish I could just delegate the delegation
where I can delegate people delegating things
to other people to delegate them for me
but I am still not great at that.
Now, I've worked with many partners since.
many ended badly, many ended less badly but still ended.
When I delegate work for other things,
let's say artists.
I hire a lot of random artists, not on payroll or anything,
but I basically just PayPal money for different things,
for different designs, merchandise, whatever I need.
If I need a design, I can pay an artist.
If it turns out I picked the wrong person
and they do a bad job,
well, I either pay 'em and say, "Well, that sucks.
I just wasted that money."
Or if it's really bad, in some cases, I have not paid.
But the majority of the time,
I at least wanna give them some money,
even if they did a terrible job.
But a bad piece of art plus a little money lost
is very different than a bad job with an animal
and the loss of that animal's life, so it's rough.
And I know, obviously, lots of people hire animal care.
I mean look at zoos, pet stores, other breeders.
It's clearly possible. I am just very bad at it.
Not to mention, I do care a lot about my personal privacy
and I don't like people coming to the home.
And unfortunately, I would like to get a separate,
total separate space for the animals,
but I've talked about how hard it was to find rental homes
that are okay with reptiles.
It is so much harder to find office spaces.
Ideally, what we could do
is get Emerald Scales into its own space,
hire the perfect people that do everything perfectly.
Even if they make a couple mistakes, that would work out.
But then there are even more layers into this whole process
of trying to make Emerald Scales work,
which I'm gonna talk about in future videos
when it comes to some other issues
that I've been having recently.
Some sneak peaks are literally running out of good homes
to send animals to,
which might sound crazy but I am actually convinced
that I am running out of people that have adequate setups.
But we'll see. That's its own video.
So that's it, the death of seven crested geckos,
which I promise, I didn't want them to die.
I guess if I did, I would've kept that employee
and I'm sure she could've done the same thing for me
next week with the remaining crested geckos.
And with that, that'll be it for this video.
Thanks for watching. I'm Alex.
And thanks for watching.
(mellow music)