- Hey, good morning, everybody.
And welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible.
You know what,
what is the American dream?
And really,
it's not just the American dream.
It's really everyone's dream.
And that's to turn your hobby,
what you're passionate about
into a business.
And listen,
there is nothing better than doing what you love
and actually making a business out of it.
But it's not that easy.
Sometimes it takes a long time.
You know, we started BHB back in 1989
and of course that was really just breeding reptiles.
And the reason I did that
was just because I was so passionate about animals.
I wanted to do something with animals.
And at that time,
that was my best option, you know,
I didn't have a better option
and I didn't know if it was going to work out or not,
but I did put everything I had
into just growing BHB
into the best possible reptile breeding center
that I possibly could do.
(chair clucking)
And back then it was really just a hobby.
You know, I mean,
I was actually working a real job,
paying the bills
and doing this on the side.
So I would literally work all day,
like 12 hours a day,
come home and then work another six or eight hours
on the reptiles and basically not sleep
for years and years.
And that's the big thing is
when you're starting a business,
you don't want to stop your income stream too early.
Because as soon as you stop working,
or stop bringing money from an outside source,
you start stealing money from that business, right?
Or stealing money from the potential growth
of that hobby that will hopefully one day turn
into a business.
(upbeat music)
And the one thing I knew back then
was that I didn't want to work the job that I was at.
I wanted to work with reptiles
and I wanted my business to be successful,
but I was willing to sacrifice
for really about five and a half years
of working a job I wasn't happy at
because I knew I wanted my business to really be seated.
And that's the big thing is that,
you kind of know when to quit your job
when it actually starts costing you money.
If you say, say you make 30 grand a year
and you say,
"I could have made 50 additional grand,
if I wouldn't have been working."
That's the best time to actually quit your job
and then put all of your energy
and not before then.
Because if you make 30 and you quit and you're like,
"Well, I could have made an extra 20."
That means that your business just lost $10,000.
So you got to kind of think about it
when you come to that, right?
So just keep that in mind a little bit.
(upbeat music)
But I don't want you guys to think
that everything I do is about money
because it's exactly opposite that.
I do everything I do
about doing the things that I love to do,
but the by-product can be money
and there's nothing wrong with that.
(upbeat music)
As a matter of fact,
I think it's the exact opposite.
If you're doing something you love only for the money,
then you're not really doing what you love, right?
It's really a by-product.
And one guy once told me
that the fruits of our labor are our labor.
So the fact is,
is that we can make enough money
so we can continue to do what we love,
not about the money.
But at the same time,
don't ever be embarrassed
about making money at something you love.
I mean, that's the dream, right?
To be able to do both something you love
and to be financially rewarding.
That's a huge plus.
And that's how BHB was
for the first 25 years I was in business.
(upbeat music)
And first off,
you're going to work harder
than you ever would work on a job
if you want to do what you're doing
for your own profession.
It's going to be,
in order to be successful,
you have to put everything you want into it.
With that being said,
I'm only taking on my journey.
It's not necessarily your journey, right?
I'm telling you what worked for me.
The one thing I can say,
is that BHB had some extremely successful years
and had some years
where literally we could hardly pay the bills.
So for me,
diversification is really what was the next step
in actually progressing as a business, right?
And really it kind of started
with YouTube believe it or not,
And when I started my YouTube channel,
it wasn't that I thought that there was going to be money
or financial gain.
It was a way for me to kind of get people excited
about what I loved.
And it was never an infomercial about BHB Reptiles.
As a matter of fact,
I hardly ever mentioned BHB reptiles.
But I knew if people would grow the hobby
because people would see someone that was so passionate
about it,
that BHB would grow, right?
All ships rise in the tide.
(upbeat music)
And I can honestly say when I started YouTube,
I didn't realize
it was going to kind of be a separate career, right?
You know, over the last 13 years of YouTube,
it went from kind of being something that I just love
to share my passion
to literally being a separate business entity, right?
I mean, getting views and all that stuff.
And then YouTube turned into Facebook,
turned into Instagram,
turned into Twitter,
turned into TikTok now.
And all of those things are revenue streams, right?
Now again,
when you first start,
you're not going to make a lot of money on YouTube
or any of the other platforms,
but if you work hard to grow those numbers,
that can be another way to drive revenue.
And what's amazing about it is you're driving revenue
doing something that you absolutely love.
Not only talking about your passion,
in my case animals,
but then also doing filming.
I love to film and share with you guys.
So again,
adding those different revenues
open up more and more opportunities.
And of course,
one of those opportunities was The Reptarium.
I mean, the Reptarium really couldn't have happened
if it wasn't for YouTube
and Facebook and Twitter and all those things,
because not only was it a possibility
to use some of the revenue that I generated from that,
because like I've mentioned to you guys,
I don't really care about the money side of it.
I just use that money to do other things that I really love.
But also I think it's important not to rest, right?
Not to say like,
"Hey, one thing is going well
and I'm just going to stick with that."
I think it's important to continue to push
and not only push
towards something that makes business sense,
but also push toward something
that you're really passionate about.
I've always,
since I was a kid,
wanted to open a place just like The Reptarium.
And I've said it a million times.
I built the place that little Brian wanted to go to
every single day.
And we're still working on those visions
with things with The Reptarium,
but all of that wouldn't have been possible
without all of those other things that came before it.
BHB,
YouTube,
all the other social media,
and then of course The Reptarium,
which is now a great revenue stream as well.
I mean, we're literally sold out every single weekend.
We have events to the point
where we're basically booking over six weeks out
right now in advance.
Now did I open it thinking,
oh, I can make a bunch of money?
No, I opened it because I wanted to be passionate
about something and share this with people,
but it turned out to be another revenue stream
that I'm not embarrassed to say is awesome.
Now, do I take any money on The Reptarium?
No, I've never even taken a paycheck.
Laurie hasn't taken a paycheck,
but we can use the money that we're growing
to do the next expansion.
And that's really how I do things
with almost everything.
I really don't hardly ever use any of the money I make
on myself.
I just use it to kind of better things that I want to do.
But in the meantime,
I'm growing assets,
which assets are great for me.
And I'm not embarrassed of the fact that,
hey, I do what I love
and I can make some really good money doing it.
And then I'm always kind of thinking of opportunities
that kind of fit within the brand, right?
And I thought that there was a kind of a need
for a product that was a bedding.
And we ended up opening up this right over here,
Reptile Prime.
That's right.
You can actually go to reptileprime.com.
If you want to try the coconut bedding
that doesn't have dust.
We use it here in all of our cages,
majority unless our bioactive stuff,
but all the other cages use that bedding
and we love it to death.
So again,
using the opportunity
with the outreach that we were gaining,
we're able to say,
"Hey, what can we provide that's another value
to the people that support us?'
And in this case,
it was a bedding.
And actually,
we're about to be involved in a launch
of a very big thing
that has a whole bunch of products.
I can't really mention much about it yet,
but within the next few weeks,
we're going to have a big announcement about that.
There's something in the social media realm
that's called feed the beast.
And that basically it just means that,
more content is better.
As much as content as you could put out is better,
You got to remember there's that kind of argument
between quantity and quality,
but quality is very subjective,
but quantity isn't, right?
So the fact is,
if you could put out 10 pieces of content
in the same amount of time
as you would normally put out one piece of content,
you might have the opportunity for one,
two or three of those pieces of content to blow up,
which really changes things, right?
So the more content you put out,
the better.
That's why we decided to do the podcast.
Again,
something I was passionate about
because I knew it'd be really fun
to have a platform that I could just talk more openly,
you know not with the restrictions of YouTube
and making a 12 or 15 minute video,
but as long as I want.
Sometimes we'll talk for two and a half
or three hours on the podcast.
And again,
is it making a lot of money?
Not really,
but it does drive some revenue stream.
And it just kind of adds
to the growing business model that I have
with different revenue streams from all over the place
kind of fingering out from the center, right?
You want to be able to touch as many possible areas
as you can to bring revenue in.
And as you're bringing that revenue in,
then you can apply it
to places that you're very passionate about.
Like I said,
for me I'm not buying Rolexs
or rings or fancy clothes or fancy cars,
what I'm doing is putting the money back
into things that I'm really passionate about.
Outreach,
and the zoo,
and more animals to show people,
and to kind of growing things.
Not to mention guys,
this isn't all about money,
but you guys see,
we have a lot of people that work here.
We got to pay all those people too, right?
So their livelihoods depend on our revenue streams
as well as all these animals need to be taken care of.
So it is important to kind of bring in revenue.
And again, like I keep saying,
don't be embarrassed to make money.
That's the best thing in the world.
If you can do what you love
and you can do it and make money,
that's amazing.
As long as you're not doing it just for the money
and you lose sight of what you started doing it for
in the first place.
You know, I watch a lot of YouTube
and I also follow a lot of people on social media
when really I'm getting something
that I think values my life from their content,
I'm always willing to support them, right?
So when they do merch drops,
I buy their merch,
when they have other things going on,
I always support them.
And that's a big part
of kind of that whole community, right?
Is we hope that we're giving you value
and you guys are always so great about supporting me.
I mean, literally when we do merch drops,
you guys kill it.
By the way,
we have some merch drops coming.
And speaking of merch drops,
actually Valentine's day is coming.
You guys know we have the virtual cards
that you can customize.
You can email them to someone,
you can print it out,
do whatever you can customize.
And we also have them not only in color,
we have them in black and white.
If you want to do coloring like a coloring thing,
you can do that.
I'll put a link in the description.
Again, it's a cheap $4 and 99 cents for Valentine's day.
So I appreciate that.
And the reason we do this as again,
we hope that you guys support us,
which you always do.
So we cannot thank you enough.
Hey, I think there's a whole kind of plan
of monetizing everything, right?
So that there's opportunities there.
So you're not trying to steal from people,
you're not trying to take their money,
but you're giving them opportunities
so if they want to support you,
you can give them something really cool.
And we try our hardest
and I hope we're doing an okay job.
Oh and by the way,
I almost forgot to tell you.
Speaking of merch,
remember the first merch I think we ever dropped
was the ballot banana shirt that everyone absolutely loved?
It's up by the way right here.
It was probably the most popular shirt drop we've ever done.
Well, we're going to bring it back in about a week
and we're going to do kind of a vintage run of it.
So if you guys missed out on it,
because so many people have asked me like,
"Oh, can I get one of the shirts?"
I'm just like,
"I'm sorry, they're sold out."
We're going to go ahead and put it back on.
So in about a week,
we've got that coming out
and we have another much larger merch thing
that we'll be talking about,
but I can't, again, can't say much about it.
It's going to hopefully happen here within the next month.
I am super excited.
Been working really hard on this project.
So stay tuned for that.
All right.
So I'm getting pretty deep with you guys here.
I want you guys to understand where my mindset is
on businesses and stuff like that.
So let's say that you've had success
and your businesses are going great,
and you've been able to diversify,
and you have multiple income streams,
and things are going well.
Now the next step for kind of financial security
is to start to set yourself up for the future.
Continue to do the things that you're passionate about,
but then you should probably take anywhere
from 10 to even 20 or 25% of all of your net profit,
so after all your expenses,
take that even if it's just $25.
Put that into something substantial.
Something that the bank would actually loan you money on
or that you can get out of it.
Whether it's the stock market,
whether it's real estate,
whether it's precious metals,
something that you're starting to put yourself on.
Even if you have a 401k or an IRA,
it's another thing to start setting yourself up on it.
Because the truth is like I'd mentioned to you guys,
what's financial freedom for me?
Financial freedom to me isn't about me buying a bunch
of expensive things or a bunch of toys for me.
Financial freedom for me,
is about being able to do the things I want to do.
If I want to go on a trip,
I just go on a trip.
If I want to buy a new, cool project animal,
I do it.
If I want to do an expansion of the zoo,
I do it.
If I want to replace an enclosure,
I do it.
That's what financial freedom is for me.
It's not about having money and showing it off
and making people think that I'm rich or something.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
If you do that,
and that's what your goal is,
then that's your goal.
It's not my goal.
My goal for financial freedom
is a hundred percent about freedom.
Just being able to do the things I want to do.
And that's what I wanted to share with you guys today
so that you understand the whole process
of how I've been through for the last 33 years
to get to where I am today.
Now, listen,
I have to keep pushing
because you don't want to take your foot off the gas, right?
That's why we want to expand.
That's why we want to do different things.
We're working with different projects,
new businesses launching,
new revenue streams creating all the time,
is because I want that financial freedom
to be even more secure.
So that way,
when I want to open up some giant aquarium
slash reptarium in another city,
I can do it, right?
But your dreams may be different than that,
but hopefully you'll take the inspiration
of what I've taught you today
and apply it to the things that you are.
Cause this isn't just about animals.
It's about anything.
Anything you're passionate about.
If you put that kind of energy into
and direction into,
you're going to be successful.
And you got to remember,
it's not just about the money.
It's also about the happiness, right?
If you're happy doing what you're doing,
it works out really well.
So if you enjoyed this video,
I know it's a little departure from the normal,
let me know in the comments what you think.
Let me know
if there's something else you want me
to talk about in the future.
Sometimes I talk about this on the podcast channel.
So make sure that you subscribe to that one.
If you did like this video,
you can watch some animal videos right here
on this playlist.
If you click one or two of those,
actually helps this channel,
helps my character,
helps the whole wheels keep on turning up here.
And by the way,
the podcast channel is right up here.
We are literally 35,000 subscribers away right over here
to 3 million.
Thank you guys so much.
Hit that subscription button.
Turn the post notifications on,
have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember,
be kind to somebody
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.