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- [Alex] Although I both want to and plan
on continuing the Unboxing series,
I can't do that just yet,
but I can do something
that actually might be a little bit cooler
where you're going to see what actually happens
to the animals when they arrive to me,
when I unbox them and the whole process afterwards.
So it's not gonna be as fun as the videos
you're probably used to,
this is a more realistic.
what happens when I take in an animal?
Because just about everything on the site has sold,
that is allowed me to very slowly trickle in animals
before I get an actual new house.
Luckily, this person was near the top of the wait list,
and, the animals all looked
extremely healthy in the pictures.
We'll see if that is the case.
Also I'm in my living room because
one, my studio light stopped working,
so I need to fix that
and there's better lighting down here
and two, realistically I normally unbox animals
just around the house.
There's two bags.
They bagged two cause for some reason,
maybe the containers were too small.
This person really did wanna keep them,
but because of medical reasons,
they literally just could not.
They all look extremely healthy.
These are the healthiest fat tails I've seen that
the biggest too actually,
they're all just slightly different morphs
and I'll have to open these two up,
but before I can do that,
you need to actually set up their enclosures.
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I've learned that simplicity is key when it comes to
re-homing actually healthy animals.
When an animal is gonna be here for quite a while,
like some are here for over 12 to 15 months
while others only here for a handful of weeks,
like these leopard geckos.
So we don't really need to focus on enrichment
and instead just what they need,
and the most efficient way to keep things clean and simple.
So I just went with these Sterilite tubs
they get a couple of hides,
one on the warm side where all the heat take
one on the cool side.
I forgot to buy Tupperware's for the humid hides
but I ended up just using their deli cups later.
With some paper towel thrown in and a little moisture.
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We never know what an animal is going to want to eat
but with, leopard geckos
it's easy to start out with whatever insect we have.
I then just check back every couple
of days and see how much each one is eaten.
And if they need to change diets to a different insect.
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When I first unboxed them
I really avoid looking at them too closely.
I just give them a quick visual rundown to
make sure everything looks normal.
And if so, I can let them calm down for a few days
get a drink and consider eating something.
It's not until later
in the week that I give them a closer look
to make sure is well.
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Okay. I got very lucky in this video because these truly
were perfect animals that we got sent in.
It's extremely rare for people to send, not just one
but eight animals, all of which are as expected, ended
up having no issues in the few weeks
that we looked them over.
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Generally speaking, there's at least something little
that comes up to where they need to be here
for at least two to four months,
whether they're pickier and it takes them longer to eat
or if they're a little bit overweight, really just anything.
But these leopard geckos were definitely ready sooner
than average.
And with geckos we've almost never
had anything internal show up later.
So it's really not even a concern,
Cause even like parasites, we can pick up extremely quickly.
I didn't actually film any of the cleaning
on them or checking them, but that's pretty simple.
You just take them out, see how they're doing
and clean up their messes, give them new insects
see how much they've eaten, fresh water
all the usual stuff that you'd expect.
And now it's time to photograph them
and get them up on the site.
You could say my 2021 word of the year is simplicity.
I've already said it like five times.
And that goes to everything.
Anything I can do to save time, money or energy
without cutting corners is totally worth it.
I'd like to think of myself as a photography enthusiast
and I've loved it for years, but I have to admit
I have simply been shooting the animal images completely
on auto, auto focus, auto shutter speed, auto aperture,
auto ISO, auto white balance.
Everything. It is so much more simple and I just shoot JPEG
throw them off on the site
and it's made no difference when it comes to
sales. So it's for saving the time.
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To make listings as accurate as possible,
I take notes while I'm photographing them when it comes
to any quirks or visuals on them.
Also, if the previous owner gave me notes on the animals
I compare them to my experiences with the animals
and try to describe them as best as possible
in the description.
While the images are uploading,
I usually work on the newsletter that goes out.
You can join it at any time
those over 25,000 people on it now.
And they are some of the first people
who see the new animals.
It's a good way to directly connect with all
of you and kind of get first dibs on animals.
When it comes to pricing, I've priced enough animals now
that I can just kind of pull it out of thin air and
and get it just about right.
If an animal does take too long to sell
I gradually dropped the price over time
but we rarely have to do that.
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I decided to expose how messy my desk gets.
when I'm actually like just on a normal workday.
And once the animals are up, they usually
start selling immediately.
I can then start sending out emails to verify customers
where they can send pictures of the setup, along
with their diet, the lighting, the temperatures
everything that we need to make sure the animal is going
to the right home with leopard geckos, because they're so
common and most people know what they're doing,
I rarely have to decline people.
I normally have to decline them
for more complicated lizards, turtles and snakes
in general. You can see why geckos are usually
my favorite to get in cause everything
is just so much easier when managing them.
Some people are ready as soon as the same day
if they already have a bunch of supplies around where
they can order it, send to me all the information
and I can get the animal out right then.
But usually we can ship within about two weeks
on average because it also depends on the weather.
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And in 10 minutes
that summarizes my Emerald Scales experience.
You can see there's a lot of contrast.
If you've watched some of my videos from the past couple
of years, it's just me right now doing everything.
But that's easy when there's only
about 10 to 20 animals at any given time.
Because last year and the year before, we had a maximum
of about a hundred animals coming in at any given time
because they were basically four of us
one was running around caring for animals,
one was freaking out over just hundreds
of emails that had to be dealt with,
one of us would be focused
on the logistics and getting everything organized.
One would be just cleaning enclosures and sure
everything sanitary that new animals are being quarantined
in our separate rooms
and all of this just hectic, crazy stuff.
But now that all of those are out
and I just have to dedicate about a third
of my time to a small handful
of animals at a time it's been pretty chill
pretty relaxed and much easier.
However, this does come with downsides.
We certainly can't help as many animals.
I'm definitely not seeing as much revenue
because there's only a few animals up
in any given point and people looking
for new animals have a very limited selection.
So this is temporary.
It's just what I got to do for basically the rest of winter.
And hopefully spring will be different.
If things go as expected
you can expect a lot more content like this
where I'm just showing what we're doing
and a lot more vlog style because they are my favorite.
You can check out Emerald Scales at any time.
If you're watching this right
when I post it, there's probably not much
but if you're watching it in the future
we probably either have a much bigger selection
or maybe there's nothing at all.
Maybe we failed, who knows, thanks to everyone
on Patrion who helps give me kind of a more steady income
while I work on these projects
while things are all over the place.
And I just don't exactly know what to expect.
If I continue to build back up, I will probably
have to get help from a few more team members once again.
So if you're in North Carolina, you can always keep an eye
out for possible positions or help that we need
but I would be completely lying to you
if I said that I don't prefer how things are right now
but ultimately it's just not satisfying enough
to be my end goal.
So you can expect things to get hectic
but hopefully in a more organized chaos type of way
instead of a chaotic chaos type of way.
Thanks for watching.
You can check out the other unboxings
which were a bit more fun
or you can see me shipping off more animals.
There's a bunch on my channel
so I encourage you to check it out and I appreciate it.
If you do, that's it for this one
I'm Alex over a voiceover and thanks for watching.