- And in particular, reptiles.
Ooh, doggie, that was a pretty close call right there.
(mellow hip hop music)
Oh, hey, good morning, everybody.
Welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
Today is gonna be a little bit of a departure
from the kind of day in the life type of vlog
because I want to cover a topic,
and that topic is the seven mistakes
that I think people make when they want to breed snakes.
And quite frankly, there might be
a lot more than seven mistakes.
As a matter of fact, as this vlog goes on,
I'm gonna want you to comment down below
and let me know your thoughts,
what you think people make a mistake on,
or if you agree with me.
The first one is this one right here.
That's right.
They think it's easy.
And let me tell you something, it's far from easy.
And what I mean by that is, I'll be honest with you,
a lot of people think that we just
play with snakes all day.
How awesome is that?
It's always fun.
But the truth is, the majority of successful snake breeding
comes from all of the really hard work,
the mundane stuff, the cleaning, the feeding,
all of that, because if you don't do that well,
if you don't keep your animals well,
you don't feed them well, you don't do
all of that kind of maintenance type of work,
you are not gonna be successful.
And trust me, cleaning, feeding, watering,
all that stuff takes a tremendous amount of time.
So the fact is, you have to be extremely vigilant,
or very, very dedicated in that way,
in the fact that the animals always come first.
I mean, these animals don't take weekends off.
They don't have holidays.
They don't have vacation time.
They always need to be clean.
They need to be fed.
They need to be watered.
You have to make sure that you are willing
to put in that type of work.
It isn't easy, people.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely, it's worth it.
I love it.
Every day of my life.
You know the last day off I had was Thanksgiving in 2016.
Last time I checked, that was quite a while ago.
And honestly, it's not just me that works hard.
Let's go ahead and ask Lori
when the last day she had.
Lori.
- Yeah?
- [Brian] When was the last day that you had off?
- Day off?
- [Brian] Yeah, like the last day off
where you didn't work at all.
- Like a full day off?
- [Brian] Full day off.
- I don't get those.
I work seven days a week.
- [Brian] Seven days a week.
So you think in the last six months,
you've had no days off.
- No full days off, no.
- That proves my point.
And although most of my crew takes the weekend off
besides Jessica, who typically works,
I actually force my crew to take that time,
because I don't want them to burn out
or anything like that.
Lori and I pick up the slack,
when I'm in town, obviously,
and when I'm out of town,
Lori has to do a lot of it herself.
But the fact is, they would probably
work seven days a week too,
because that's how dedicated they are.
Again, it is not easy.
You have to be willing to sacrifice.
You have to work hard.
Because the fact is, it's probably 10 times harder
than you would think it would be
to be successful when it comes to
working with any type of animals,
and in particular, reptiles.
Ooh, doggie, that was a pretty close call right there.
But I don't want you guys to think that
working hard is a bad thing,
because the truth is, it is totally worth it.
Again, if you love what you do, it's not a big deal.
But do keep in mind that it's not easy, people.
The one thing I always say that it's hard,
but if you have a reason for doing it
and you have a purpose for doing it,
it doesn't feel like you're working,
if that makes any sense.
Again, there's that old saying,
if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
And in this case, it's absolutely true.
Ball python.
Rainbow boas.
Sand boas.
Woma pythons.
Black-tailed cribo snakes.
Blue tongue skinks like Potato.
Reticulated pythons.
Gorgeous green tree pythons.
And yes, even blood pythons.
So the number two mistake that people make is right here.
That's right.
Not working with animals that you're passionate about.
And the reason I'm holding a blood python
is I've gone on the record many times
saying that I've had a love-hate relationship
with these little monkeys right here,
which are blood pythons.
I get them.
I love them.
I raise them up.
For some reason I just don't like working with them.
I typically get rid of them,
and then I half regret that I got rid of them,
and then I start to raise up new ones again.
It's kinda one of those things
that I can't explain, people.
But the fact is is that I only work with animals
that I truly want to work with.
And some people make the mistake
of working with animals because they think
there's some kind of financial gain to it.
Ball pythons, for instance,
which I absolutely love, and I started working with
ball pythons when there was no money in them,
before people absolutely loved them,
and all these crazy morphs,
and it really became an amazing kind of
investment type of animal.
The truth is is that people that didn't even
like ball pythons got rid of whatever it was,
their reticulated pythons or corn snakes or whatever,
and they started working with ball pythons,
not because they love the animal,
but because they thought that they could
make some money on it.
Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to
make money on things like ball pythons.
But if your passion is working with
something like this beautiful black corn snake here,
then work with corn snakes.
That doesn't mean you can't work with corn snakes
and ball pythons, but my point is,
to be really truly successful
working with any animal, and in particular with reptiles,
the thing that I have spent 30 years doing,
it means that you have to be passionate about it.
You have to wake up in the morning
and you can not wait to get around those animals
and do that work, or you have to get home
after a long day of work and say
I still have six hours of cleaning my snakes,
but I absolutely am gonna love it
because I'm passionate about it.
You won't find that passion if it's an animal
that you don't truly love.
And if you don't love it and you don't work hard at it
then you're not gonna be successful at it.
Next up is that people don't do enough research.
That's right.
You think that I've read this book enough times?
I've often actually quoted this book on this vlog.
And this, of course, is Living Snakes of the World
by John Mehrtens, and I have read this book
about a million times.
Hey, listen, I'm not saying go to the library
and get yourself a book.
You can go on the internet now.
The interwebs has all kinds of information on it,
but be careful, because just because
you read it on the internet
doesn't mean that it's true.
With that being said, if you do enough research,
it's gonna really help you in your quest
to try to be successful and whatever you're doing,
and in particular when it comes to breeding reptiles.
Now, I've spoken about the fact
that sometimes over the last decade or so
the reptile hobby hasn't been
the best hobby when it comes to answering questions,
what some people call newbies.
But the fact is is that I think that is changing.
There happens to be kind of a new guard
in the reptile world that are willing to help you.
I mean, there's guys like Miguel
at Always Evolving Pythons.
Brian Kusko, Mike McGrath, Billy up at Mutation Creation,
not to mention a whole ton of other people.
Go down to the comments and let me know
who your favorite person is in the reptile business
that gives you a lot of advice.
The thing that I love about the reptile hobby right now
is that we're changing from that kind of
elitist type of situation, where when someone comes in
as a new keeper, people aren't really helpful
and say, "Do your own research.
"Don't ask those questions.
"You're silly, you shouldn't keep reptiles."
This new guard that is actually happy to help people.
I've always been happy to help people,
and you should be happy.
As you learn reptiles and someone comes in,
it's your responsibility to make sure
that they know everything they need to know.
And if they ask a question, even if you think
it's some kind of a newbie, slash silly question,
you should be willing to answer it,
because after all, we asked those same questions
when we started getting into this hobby.
But that doesn't mean that you should be lazy.
Definitely check into things.
Try to do your own research.
Learn as much as you possibly can.
And then if you want to ask someone like me
or the people I spoke about
or anyone else that is willing to help you,
it's always gonna just kinda concrete
those answers in your head.
And the more you know, the more potential chance
for you to be successful.
First banana ball python I bought, $25,000.
First scaleless head ball python sold for $50,000.
Cinnies, $15,000.
Albinos, $15,000.
Pastel clowns, $45,000.
Pieds, $25,000.
Ivory ball pythons sold for $125,000
to Chad Brown from Pro Exotics
from Peter Kahl Reptiles.
Why am I tell you all this?
Oh, doggie, I'm gonna get
some people upset about this one.
But one of the top seven mistakes that people,
I believe, make is this.
That's right.
They invest too much money.
Oh no, Brian, you didn't just say that
people invest too much money.
What I'm trying to say is that
don't spend all of your money
before you've learned how to work with these animals.
If you have $10,000 and you want to
start a reptile business,
don't spend all $10,000 up front.
Get started a little bit smaller.
Maybe invest yourself $1,500 or $2,000.
Get your feet wet.
Find out, number one, if you love doing
what you want to do,
and then number two, find out, can you do it?
Will you be successful, before you blow
all of your money on one investment.
And let me tell you guys,
if I was watching this video like you guys
are right now, I would say,
"Brian, you are a hypocrite."
Hypocrite, that's right.
Because the truth is, from the time I got involved
in this hobby, all I did was spend
every dime that I had growing a collection,
trying to do this for a living.
So I'm kind of torn on this one,
to be honest with you, because I went through
some great times, I went through some terrible times,
because I was just swinging for the fences constantly.
Every time a project came up, bam, I was on it.
Hey, look at the Reptarium, right?
$45,000 over budget.
I didn't do that by being conservative.
So I guess what I'm saying is that
there's a fine line between going too far
and not far enough.
You want to be confident, you want to go for things,
you don't want to leave it on the table,
but at the same time, it's not for everyone.
Over the last year, being involved in this reptile hobby,
I have seen so many people
get into this, spend every dollar they have,
mortgage their house, do everything,
just to find out that it's not for them.
Whether they didn't work hard enough,
whether they just didn't like it,
whether it was a hobby, but when it became a business
it was no longer fun for them.
It didn't work out.
Matter of fact, the vast majority of people
actually don't succeed when they're trying to
be a business when it comes to breeding reptiles.
It's only a small percentage of people
that actually achieve that goal.
For all the things that I'm talking about now
and will continue to talk about.
Fact is is that if you get started,
you're a little bit more conservative
in the sense that you don't go broke
trying to get going breeding reptiles,
but at the same time you're putting
everything into it, then I think you have a chance
of being more successful.
I think that sweat equity is more important than equity.
With that said, I do want to continue
to tell you guys, these are my opinions
and observations that I've seen
over the last three decades.
You can take them with a grain of salt.
You can either trust me, you can listen to me,
or you can make your own opinion,
and listen, we can still be friends.
This next one is something
I could probably talk about for two hours,
believe it or not, and that is,
don't ever do this just for the money.
Now, with that being said,
Cookies and Cream is the perfect example
of why money really doesn't matter.
You should be doing it because you love it,
because you get a lot of joy
and you get fulfillment from it.
Now, with that said,
I'm gonna be completely honest with you guys.
I am not embarrassed of making money,
and you shouldn't either.
Whether you're in an animal business,
at a job, or whatever you happen to be doing,
never sell yourself short.
Never be afraid to tell people
that hey, I need to make money to make this worthwhile.
After all, I couldn't have all these animals
if I didn't make enough money to support these animals.
But the point is is that,
don't do it because you want to make money.
Do it because you really love it,
and that's gonna make you more successful at doing it.
Because if the money is the only thing
that you think about, you're gonna make decisions
that probably will impede the chance of your success.
You'll go, oh my gosh, I shouldn't buy
Cookies and Cream because that's too much money,
and they may not live, and that's a silly investment,
but the fact is, who knows what could come
of something like that?
The exposure that the Reptarium is gonna get
or just the joy that I'm gonna get
or other people are gonna get
or maybe some kid's gonna walk in
and not be that interested in reptiles,
but he's gonna see Cookies and Cream,
the two-headed snake, and go,
oh my God, that's amazing,
and it's gonna create curiosity.
My point is, don't be embarrassed to make money.
Hey, we all need to live, and we all need to eat.
With that being said, don't ever work with animals
or probably just about anything
if all you care about is the money.
Because if that's your only motivation factor,
you've already failed.
This next one I'm gonna give you a couple examples of.
And that is people give up too early.
Now, this happens to be an Axanthic Hognose snake.
We actually had the very first Axanthic Hognose snake,
bought it from a guy out in New Jersey,
and quite frankly, the animal just was
not a good animal.
I actually saw it a couple years before.
The guy showed me a picture,
and I was really into Hognose snakes.
It was the very beginning of when
people really interested in Hognose snakes,
and I saw it and I go, oh my God,
I've gotta buy that animal if you want to sell it.
And a couple years later, truth be told,
the animal wasn't doing very well,
and he decided to cash out.
So he called me up and said,
"Hey, Brian, do you want to buy this for $5,000?"
And I thought to myself,
I'm gonna take a swing on this one.
I bought it.
The animal just wouldn't eat.
It did terrible.
And ultimately, within about
six or seven months, it perished.
I was devastated because it was
the only Axanthic Hognose snake
and I wanted to produce one so badly,
but the truth is is that the word got out
that I had an Axanthic Hognose,
and another guy in Florida actually had two
that he spontaneously had, contacted me and said,
"Yeah, I heard that you had an Axanthic.
"I have two little babies.
"Would you like to purchase them?"
I went ahead and purchase them,
and that's when we actually produced and sold
the very first Axanthic Hognose snakes at BHB Reptiles.
My point is, I didn't give up.
I could have gone and just licked my wounds
and felt sorry for myself
and never pursued the project again.
I wanted to keep going, and then all these years later,
all these Axanthic Hognose are out there.
And if I would have given up,
who knows what would have happened.
Hey, someone else might have bought those animals
and it might be the exact same position,
but my point is, I wouldn't have been able to
enjoy the success of having Axanthic Hognose
and all the other mutations that we produce from these
if I would have given up.
Another example I want to share with you
is piebald ball pythons.
I love piebald ball pythons
from the first time I saw the first
wild-caught picture many, many decades ago,
and the fact is is that I was able to
buy a wild-caught piebald ball python
before they were proven genetic.
I paid $15,000 from Peter Kahl.
The animal only lived a very short period of time
because it was wild-caught.
It wouldn't eat, it was skinny when Pete sold it to me.
Now I could have just rolled over and said,
oh, well, I lost my money,
but the fact is, Ernie Wagner,
a guy out in Seattle, Washington
actually had another piebald that was wild-caught,
and he produced a clutch of what was heterozygous,
but you gotta remember, we didn't know if they were genetic.
Ernie reached out to me and said,
"Brian, I heard that you bought that animal that died.
"I'm getting $5,000 a pair for these hets,
"but I feel terrible for you.
"Would you like to buy a pair for $2,000?"
Now I could have said, hey, I lost 15 grand,
I'm not gonna invest another $2,000 into that project.
But I decided, I am not gonna give up on this project.
I spent the $2,000, and two years later,
I produced my very first piebald ball pythons.
Peter Kahl, ironically enough,
the year before, provide pieds genetic,
and guess what, I sold my first pied that year for $25,000.
That's right, I made the 15 I lost,
I made the $2,000 I invested in that pair,
and I made a profit on it.
My point is, do not give up.
If I would have given up,
I wouldn't have been producing pieds for
the last 20 plus years.
If I would have given up,
I would have lost all that money.
There's that old saying that you never know
how close you are to succeed when you've given up.
Don't give up, people.
If you love what you're doing, keep going,
because that's what's gonna make you successful.
And my final point is, have fun.
People that fail typically fail
because they're not enjoying what they're doing.
Don't get all stuffy and everything else.
Enjoy yourself.
Have a good time.
Trust me, if you're loving what you're doing,
it's gonna be worth it
and you're gonna want to do it even harder,
which means there's a good chance
that you are gonna be more successful.
I realize there are gonna be people
that say, Brian, you talk too much in this vlog.
It's boring.
You didn't show animals.
But the fact is, this is something that was
on my mind and in my heart
that I wanted to share with you guys,
and I hope somebody, anybody, somewhere,
you took something out of this
and actually enjoyed it.
And for those of you that didn't like it,
I will be back to my normal vlogs tomorrow,
and we'll show you some amazing animals.
And I think we're only three or four days away
from the Reptarium install,
so it's gonna be absolutely crazy.
With that said, I am gonna go ahead and end the vlog.
Let me know in the comments if you like this vlog.
If you would like me to do more vlogs like this
in the future, I'm happy to do it.
Let me know in the comments what you guys thing.
Do me a couple other favors while you're doing there.
Can you smash that like button,
turn those post notifications on.
Remember to always be kind to someone,
and I promise I will see you guys tomorrow.