My Reptile Business Shut Down: Why Emerald Scales Failed

About six years ago, when I was 17, a friend and I decided we were going to start a

business

. It ended up being called Emerald Scales and ran for five years. And until today, when it no longer exists, the employees are gone, the website is gone, and all the animals are gone. Nothing remains of Esmeralda's

scales

. So what exactly were

emerald

scales

? Well, my friend and I were into the

reptile

hobby where we raised exotic animals. And we wanted to do something around this. We loved the idea of ​​working hard on building a project and maybe one day seeing it become self-sustaining.

So we bought, talked and met several

reptile

breeders, saw the improvements that could be made and decided to do it ourselves and be that improvement in the reptile breeding space. Now, we didn't really have any money. Again, we were 17, so we decided to start not only making some money, but building a relationship, getting some clients, and seeing what we're doing. We could start by trying to get the cheapest animals possible, practically, and that was through Craigslist. So anyone who needed to get rid of their animal, we would take it for the least amount of money possible.

We didn't want to just sell this animal immediately for a profit because one of the most important things we wanted to do with Emerald Scales was to be as ethical as possible and have the highest standards possible while still making a profit. Because at the end of the day, you have to make money to be able to support the animals and that was... Those are our two big goals: to make money and to do the best we can for the animals. So we started buying them on Craigslist. And once we made sure they were as healthy as possible, we would sell them on the site.

And then we raised this money to start raising animals. Except we never really did. When people saw this, they started offering their animals because they couldn't keep them, whether they went to college, got married and moved away, had a child, or lost interest. All kinds of different reasons. In fact, we ended up focusing on rehoming people's animals. And this is what Emerald Scales became, a place where you could ship your animal or buy an animal. And so, yes, so Emerald Scales was born. However, Emerald Scales also died. It had a useful life of five years. So in this video, we're going to talk about 100 reasons why it

failed

.

Let's start with the management side. Not all of this will be in chronological order because I think it will be more structured this way. But it started with just the two of us and then we ended up hiring people. They went until three and then four. Maybe at some point I think up to five at a time. But generally there were between three and four people working at Emerald Scales. Now, I personally had never been hired before. I was 17 years old. I had just left school and at the time was going all-in on YouTube alongside Emerald Scales, and had no life or work experience.

That's how I was going to get it. But unfortunately, it turns out that if you've never been hired, you don't know everything about management. Number two is that he had...supposedly...poor communication skills. Who would have guessed? Someone who didn't have many friends, who had never had a job, who had never run a

business

, who didn't really know how to communicate. I did my best and got better over time. But this definitely ruined things too. I also...supposedly...micromanaged. Furthermore, our salary was bad. We couldn't offer that much. The wages of everyone who ever worked at Emerald Scales ranged from nine to $15 an hour.

The minimum wage here is $7.25, so it was above minimum wage and $9 could take you a little further in 2018 when we launched this. But it's still nine or 15. Not that it's not a big payday. Also, we disagreed about animal husbandry. Then, of course, we have reptiles. Our inventory is live animals and we as individuals have different standards. Sometimes I disagree with my friends. We would not agree with an employee. They wouldn't agree with one of us. It was just something that added a little tension. We all want it. We all have the same goal, which was a big help.

We all wanted the animals to thrive as much as they could and we wanted to get them to that point as quickly as possible. But our ways of doing it were sometimes drastically different, which, you know. That's how it is sometimes. Also, the work hours and workload were very inconsistent, as you can imagine. This is a really strange start. It's like it has many different parts. At first we had like an animal every once in a while, but then sometimes we had an influx and sometimes the animals had specific problems that took a lot longer. And so, basically, part-time employees never seemed that dedicated or motivated to do any of the work.

And full time didn't really work because a lot of times we just didn't have work for them to do. So finding the right people for this was definitely difficult. Not to mention I was just bad at the hiring and interviewing process. We made it very classic, I guess. I don't know. I haven't been interviewed for a job yet. We would interview people, literally, just go to Starbucks and do a classic interview, like how are you... how are you doing? What is your work experience? I don't know. I don't even remember what we asked. It was really about making sure we got along because that was the most important thing.

It didn't matter if they knew how to do the job because we were there to help them figure it out and we were figuring it out ourselves. So we didn't really know what we needed. And it was very interesting. Tons of skills were acquired, but when it comes to Emerald Scales, it wasn't too good because hiring people was sometimes difficult. We also didn't agree with the people who bought the reptiles, so there were two big main components to the Esmeralda scales. That was the service side and the product side. The service consisted of rehoming your animal.

The product was the purchase of an animal. And the comparison, I'm going to use it a lot and I always use it as a used car dealer, it's kind of like what they do. They have to buy cars for their inventory. They can't just do their inventory. They have to get it from other people. They pay them for the cars, repair them, make sure they're in good shape, and then sell them to someone else. But as we will learn and as you can probably guess, live animals and

emerald

scales are still a little different from used cars.

But this is the best comparison because there are these two sides and on the buying side, we didn't want to sell them to anyone like most sellers do. We also wanted to add this level of verification so we knew the animal was going to a good home. Basically, kind of like an adoption, but a real sale. But it wasn't just us who checked the enclosures and the people who bought the animals. We often disagreed, such as in management itself, about which people should and should not be approved for an animal. And this was not always consistent.

It's not that there was one person who always had lower standards than the other; There would often be different responses from different people for different species. And he went a little crazy. Then I also realized that I hate managing people. I don't like being a manager. I hate it when people trust me. It's kind of stressful. I'm becoming a more social person, but especially in 2017, 18, 19 and 20 (2020), I was even less social, not to mention I had to manage people like yes, no- I'm a bad manager. I don't like managing. That's the management section of why Emerald Scales

failed

.

Let's move on to housing. So animal housing scales changed a lot over time. At first I was 17 years old. I lived with my parents until I was 19, so Emerald Scales was part of my bedroom. It was just my bed, my desk, my... and Emerald Scales on the other wall. Also, I forgot to mention that you can follow all of this because I have a playlist in the description called 100 Emerald Scales Videos and it's 100 videos documenting Emerald Scales. There are more than 100 videos, but I chose the most relevant ones. There are also breakdowns of the finances, how much we made each month from the launch to the end of Emerald Scales.

So that you can also observe those breakdowns. Yes, there will be a lot of things in the description, but I'm trying to fill in the gaps. If you don't know much about it or anything about it. And then the living quarters were, yes, just my bedroom and my friend's bedroom. We each had a couple of animals and eventually these rooms definitely got pretty full and I ended up renting a house to live in, like I was moving away from my parents. However, most of the house, almost all of it, was converted into space for Emerald Scales.

I couldn't rent an office. I couldn't rent much of anything. Not only were the prices too high and the leases too long, but they are typically 3-5 years for the offices that were around me. But this would also be additional rent on top of my own rent, and I simply couldn't get any landlord to approve it. So I left the offices and said, okay, I'll rent a place to live. And then do Emerald Scales outside my house. I contacted more than 50 owners and different properties. Only three of them approved of what he was doing. I was quite honest.

I thought: Yes, I'm going to have some animals. They're like, they're super clean. Like I wanted to give you a summary, but I downplayed it like, Oh, it'll be like a dozen reptiles at most. And I told them honest things about how they were clean and wouldn't damage the property. Nobody is going to listen to them. They are not dangerous, they are not poisonous. But only three said, "Okay, okay." One, however, ended up backing out. One was a very unpleasant and dirty property in a pretty sketchy area, and the other was the one I ended up renting.

It was a very sad little house in a not very large area of ​​the city. And, I mean, for reference, the value of the house was $80,000, which is not a lot for a house. It was, it was, it was, it was something. However, the next reason is that there were constant disputes with the neighbors. It was crazy because word started to spread that there were reptiles in that strange children's house and they didn't like that. And this intensified over time. It was gradual. I never climbed anything. I always tried to avoid confrontation, but they started getting cranky and frustrated to the point where there were literally shouting matches daily.

I never knew I would be in a yelling match with anyone, but it was literally me yelling at the neighbors every day because they walked around the property and looked through our windows. And of course they had to start calling the police and reporting us. And it wasn't epic. This housing experience really put a damper on things. And finally I was renting a second house and this house became Emerald Scales for about half a year or so. But constantly, for another reason, we had to hide everything. If we brought something new like, Oh, we're bringing a boa, we better not let the neighbors see it.

Like it's also secret and it's a townhouse, so it's not like it's a private, separate property, the employees come to the house. We had to say... It's okay, if someone talks to your friend, you're just hanging out. Maybe like you, ugh... We had to have this second life and hide everything. And it just added this extra stress. We also needed good electrical and climate control and amenities for all of these animals, because as we grew from five in our room, we eventually had ten and then 15, 20, 50, sometimes over 75 animals. It takes some serious setup and we didn't always have that setup available, even the electric bill was often over $500 a month.

And it probably didn't depend on the safety code with the number of extension cords and extension cords and power strips on power strips on power strips. And we needed many rooms and sections. This is the next reason. And this was difficult to achieve because when you bring in new animals, you don't want them to mix with the others immediately. You want to keep them separate and quarantine them. So trying to separate these spaces was very difficult in this townhouse, but it was the best we had. So let's go ahead and move on to the admission section.

The animals were actually taken in by Emerald Scales and everything that entailed. Then you need to get rid of your reptile. Maybe you are a little incentivized to lie or you don't know that there is honestly a problem with your animal. And people were constantly misleading us about the condition of the animals over the time of the animal scales, we had over 600 animals in the five years and I don't know, maybe more than half. We are in the conditions we expected. There were so many surprises. Sometimes it was clearly the one who tricked us, whether they sent an old photo, sent a fake photo or sent an edited photo, we would ask them toThey included a document with your order number and your name and all this, but they could still take Place it at the right angles to cover things.

Or they simply didn't know that the animal had certain problems. And this was a big problem because it added a lot of unexpected time. It took so much time, resources, energy, money, everything, and unexpected stress on some of these animals that we didn't expect. We also had a lot of problems getting animals from the beginning. This is proof that this is not chronological. Going back to 2017 and 18. Like I said, we can't just create our inventory. We can't just drop more reptiles. We can't just raise them in place. We didn't even want to raise them right now.

We had a problem where there was more demand for people to buy animals than for us to get animals. And this was a very difficult and long beginning, which frustrated many people because they waited so long to see an animal. They want. And it also took a long time. Like I said, Craigslist is how we got them. And also Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp Letgo. Beside. Just like every app someone could include a reptile in. We were all over them and spent days and days just reaching out to people. We probably contacted thousands of listings and met with hundreds of people and many of them.

The scales did not appear, they deceived us about the animal. And it was extremely difficult to get these animals. Furthermore, people changed their minds. Actually, like "I don't know, maybe I shouldn't get rid of it." "I think I'm going to stick with it." except they tell us this after having gone through a very long process, most of these animals were sent to us by mail. And that takes a while. It is also very expensive. We have to buy the shipping supplies, send them the shipping supplies, put together the shipping supplies kits that we send them, send them the shipping labels, which are also expensive.

And all of this is done by customer service, people who are paid by the hour. We go through this whole process and we spend money on the animals set up on the special things that the animal is going to need, that we predict, and everything that goes into that, paying the person to set up this enclosure. And then I'm not going to ship it or help it die before I can ship it... Speaking of animals, dying people would pack animals wrong a lot of times. We try very hard to be as specific as possible about how to safely pack your animal for shipment.

They received video instructions. They received written instructions. We answered questions. I don't know what else there is to do. It's just about putting an animal in a box correctly, but you may be wondering, "Well, is shipping just dangerous?" Well, when we shipped animals, there was a 1% chance they would die. One in 100 animals would not survive shipping. Then you can do the math. We sold about 600 animals. We had about six deaths when we reached the clients. When shipping was made, it was 10%. One in ten animals would not survive. Not only was this because they somehow didn't pack them, even though we were always refining the process and making it as safe as possible, there were also health conditions that people didn't know about or covered up, and that would result in the animal dying. while they were transporting it.

Likewise, people's programming expectations were very unrealistic. This refers to the general: "When can I ship my animal?" And also “What day and time can I send my animal?” So we had a waiting list. We didn't want to take more and then we could handle it at a moment's notice. Then you would have to wait a certain period of time. Sometimes this was 2-3 weeks, other times it was 2-3 months. At one point it was more than a year. We would have to wait to send an animal. Although that is not our fault. It's also not their fault that they have to do it sooner.

So we would make as many exceptions as we could, especially since they are paying to send these animals to us. It was a service where we paid them something at first and then we just covered the shipping and then it was free and we covered the cost and then they had to cover the shipping and then they had to pay us a fee. on top and then an even higher fee. So we depended on this income and we needed people to send us animals to pay for everything because, yes, they were paying for that whole process.

But hey, we would have to refund people who end up changing their minds. And also, yes, scheduling was an issue. So if it didn't work, this isn't going to work and now we have to refund them and we already paid for all this other stuff. So, um, but yeah, we depended on people sending animals to keep the livestock. This is another good comparison to the used car dealership. You can offer more money, as you can check Carvana and see how much they are willing to pay you. And sometimes it can increase because they are more desperate for inventory or because the price of things goes up.

We cannot try to pressure someone to get rid of their animal, such as their beloved pet. Like, Oh, I think you should do it. We are having a discount. You can send it to us only for this amount. We can not do that. It has to be people who really only have to ship the animals because it is very important to get rid of a pet that you care about and have invested a lot in. And it would suck if we didn't have inventory, but we can't really do much about it other than spread the word that, hey, we're a place that can take them.

That goes into marketing, which we'll talk about later. We'll get into a lot of things later. There is a lot on this list. The animals also took a long time to be ready for sale. I believe in most companies. You want your inventory to stay on the shelves for as little time as possible and ours to stay on the shelves for a long time. I think the average animal would stay maybe two months, like six weeks, 6 to 8 weeks on average. But there were many animals that ended up staying with us for more than a year, sometimes a couple, even more than two years, to get to a place where we felt comfortable selling them to someone else.

This was like a ball python that had serious feeding problems or a leopard gecko that had serious health problems or a bearded dragon that had serious bone problems and deficiencies that we were trying to fix as best we could. Our animals were sitting here for months and years and this took a long time and was kind of a pain. I mean, it's self-explanatory. I don't need to explain that. And besides, it was not easy to do local business and local work. We didn't have a showcase like people thought. We tried to meet with people as much as we could.

We did a lot of local meetings, but it's like you have to send someone to do it. And if you pay them even a measly ten dollars an hour, that's like $20 to send someone to pick up an animal, and that's assuming the person shows up and the animals show up in the condition you expect. And that added even more. And we tried to stay that way as much as we could, because ultimately it's much safer not to send the animal away. But it sure wasn't easy doing those local things. The same with sales, local sales. It's hard to find that time, compared to if we sell like five animals in a week, we can ship them all at the same time, same day, same FedEx trip compared to five people locally.

They are all in different places. Everyone wants to meet at different times. It's much more difficult. Also, the laws during these six years, five or six years, became stricter. Regulation increased. We could work with fewer species of animals and that wasn't fun. It sucks to have this constant stress of, well, are we okay, what are we going to do with these people who want to ship it or whatever? We had a couple of solutions, which we will also see later, but stricter laws were not epic. Plus, we don't turn away enough animals. It was probably a mistake on my part and I kept making exceptions.

I could not avoid it. I just wanted to try to help them. This was not entirely altruistic. I also wanted the revenue because we needed the revenue from intakes, so I didn't really want to turn away animals and ultimately I should have had a higher bar of, okay, that's beyond the health of where we're going to take it. . or okay, we have too many. We simply shouldn't accept more. Right now. The other side of the coin I told myself is, okay, if I don't take it, I'll most likely die. This is because they told us he was going to die because they weren't going to do anything about it.

They'll just let him die. Or because they can't afford to take him to the vet or can't afford to care for him any longer, they don't have time to feed him. I don't know. They had many different excuses. I think some are justified, others are not. And so I felt this added pressure to accept as many as possible and as many conditions as there are. And that was a big mistake. If I went back, I would have a higher bar and just say it's out of my hands. I can't worry about that. He could die, but he's not ours and it's not our responsibility.

So yes, but that was a mistake. So people wouldn't send the reptiles to anyone else either. They just wanted him to come to me like me, like me. Alex Specifically, I was often put on this pedestal where, Oh, it's Alex who does it. He's going to like it, he's going to magically fix everything and he's going to be the best person for the animal. I'm aware of. That was really nice. But the people I trusted were just as good, if not better. Those are people who work with me and people I can trust. Okay, we're full.

How about this person? And they and people most of the time would just want to send them to me. Like you can visualize this specific individual who will work with your animal and make things more... It was nice. I appreciated it, but he made things more difficult. And also people's time, it didn't align with our available vacancies. I guess this is kind of a repeat. But not only will they not be able to wait a few months, they may not be able to get to FedEx on that specific day that we specifically have an open spot at the house, so we can take your animal.

And it was also based on the weather and time of year. So these opening times mean that many times they were overlooked or people just wouldn't like us to tell them, your FedEx closes at 8 p.m. m., they report to FedEx at 8:10 p.m. m. and then they can't send it to us. This adds a lot more time because not only do we have to reschedule and re-prepare when we are going to take the animal, but we would also have to resend supplies to them. Some of the supplies cannot be reused. And then let's go to shipping.

I actually like to focus on the shipping process. Shipping is limited to a few months a year with reptiles, and that's very exclusive from most other things. I used to sell a lot of merchandise. I still do it sometimes and I never thought about it. I print the hoodie, put it in a bag and it goes to your house. That's all. But with reptiles, we're in North Carolina, so we can't ship during the highest, hottest points of summer or the coldest points of winter. Therefore, we would be limited to a few months in the spring and a few months in the fall.

It is also based on holidays. And in those few months we were only limited to a couple days a week. Therefore, we also have to take into account the other person's weather and can only ship a few days a week. Ultimately, shipping became more dangerous, and so we limited ourselves to shipping Monday through Thursday, and ended up shipping only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So two days out of seven days in a few months out of 12 months was the only time we were able to ship. And we trust completely, 100%, in shipping animals. And this is not exclusive to us.

This is anyone who sells live animals. So yes, shipping is also limited to good weather in both locations. So, okay, we have Tuesday and Wednesday of these months of these weeks. Additionally, we have to check the weather at our location and the delivery address. And sometimes we check at the FedEx center that it will stop at the location because we had a couple of problems there where, oh, well, it's pretty hot in North Carolina. It's pretty cold in California, but it stops in that middle Tennessee where it's too cold. That's also a problem. Therefore, you are totally dependent on something that is totally out of your reach, whatever the weather, and even perfect shipping preparations sometimes just go wrong.

There were things like the weather, there were things that were out of our control, even if no mistakes were made. A mistake was made along the way, either on the part of FedEx or, I mean, I guess, FedEx. Even if it's not a mistake, it's just things going wrong. You are shipping living organisms in boxes. And then there is that risk and it simply cannot be avoided. Sometimes. In addition, the shipping price increased a lot. When we started our fashion scales, the average shipping label was just under $60 each, which is a lot fora shipping label, but it is what it is.

But at the end of Emerald Scales' five years, the average shipping label was $110. It basically doubled the shipping price. No, this also does not include shipping supplies, which cost between 10-20, sometimes $30. Only for that. It just sucked that shipping increased since everything has gone up in price. Shipping wasn't immune to that, especially not overnight shipping, not to mention, oh, here's one I didn't even write overnight. Shipping stopped overnight. At one point, it was almost assumed that it would take two, maybe even three days. And also people refused to pick up at the centers for some reason.

Basically, you can deliver next day to an address or a FedEx facility. It is safer to use the FedEx center, which saves a truck that the animal will not have to be on. And you don't have to worry about what weather the truck is experiencing or how the person handling the package handles it because it's one less person, one less person, handling that package. But to almost everyone we ask, we are going to make shipments to this center. Can you go there on this day? They say: No, I don't have a car. I don't have a driver's license, I don't have anyone to drive me.

I don't want to. It is very far. Most people just made us ship to their house and then people wouldn't even be home anyway, even though they were supposed to be, so the death toll on arrival increased over time. We had one die on arrival early on and spent a long time without one. But then as the years went by, it was more and more common for these deaths on arrival to occur, which was scary and not ideal. These are some of the small scratches on the surface of shipping problems and shipping issues. Now, the animals here.

Alright. The animals arrived. He is safe and sound. Excellent. Well, our inventory is alive. Back to the used car dealership. You buy all those cars and they sit in your parking lot. You really don't want the cars to sit still for too long. You should execute them. You want to make sure your batteries don't run out or whatever you want your oils to flow through. But it is not an animal that has to be fed, watered and cleaned every day. In addition to any medical concerns plus individualized attention. Additionally, we wanted to do everything we could to make sure each animal was as manageable as possible.

We didn't like selling a very defensive ball python. We wanted it to at least be comfortable to drive. And so this was changing on a daily basis, like our inventory, which should be there for most businesses, requires everything constantly, constant resources, and each animal had different requirements because we weren't just raising ball pythons. We were accepting such unique cases of animals. As you can see in the videos, there are many unique cases. It was great and everything. But also, man, that really sucked. Each animal had different enclosure needs, different temperatures, different humidity, different configuration, different diet, different medical problems, different personalities that liked to be fed.

Oh, this one likes to be fed with tongs. This one likes to eat from a plate. This one likes mealworms. This one likes dubia cockroaches. It was so, so much. Each animal is so different. And we have 75 because we need a lot of them to be able to generate enough income to sustain everything because this was not cheap, believe it or not. And animals are good at hiding problems. If you show a problem that shows that you are vulnerable and you don't want to be vulnerable because then you die, that is existence. And animals were good at hiding problems.

And even if an animal seemed fine when it arrived, it could have been covering up something we'll discover later. Or they just develop problems because animals and organisms do that. Sometimes problems arise out of nowhere. Individual problems could take hours. Sometimes it's like I remember my first assistant working eight, sometimes nine, ten hours a day. And it's like, okay, I'm going home now. I've been here for nine and a half hours and I said, "Wait, but you've barely done anything." And she said, Well, yeah, but that's because, you know, we have that leopard gecko and he was sent with a shed stuck in all ten of his toes.

And so I sat there for 2 hours with a pair of tweezers trying to do it carefully. And I kept biting myself and I was covered in blood because I was tearing my fingers while I was doing it. And then Stan, your bearded dragon, you know, has problems with his femoral pores. So I spent 45 minutes on that. And then that ball python, which has to be fed a cyst. I wanted to do it properly and carefully. So that took 30 more minutes. And it's as if a few specialized animals could occupy an entire workday. And if I pay like $12 an hour, what's that plus overtime or whatever?

I just, I don't know, it's like $100, basically, to pay for the care of a couple of animals. And that's just the surface. What about all the other animals that need everything? So, yes, problems were a problem and so were the vets. Exotic veterinarians. I don't feel like talking about them, but we'll do it quickly. I don't like exotic vets. I never got along with exotic vets. I witnessed and experienced many bad practices with exotic veterinarians. They were expensive. It was difficult to work with them. We just don't get along as people. We wouldn't agree on what the animals needed, but we trusted them.

They were a necessary evil. Because I don't have an X-ray machine. I can't do blood tests. I can't legally prescribe things to animals. I'm not a veterinarian. A lot of people said, Oh, you should get your vet license to do that. No, I would be a terrible vet too. I'm not saying I can do better. It is hard work. They have the highest suicide rate. Whatever. It doesn't mean I like them just because they are committing suicide. But what does that change? I didn't have good experiences with them and they were expensive. So even when they did what we needed, it's like, wow, there's three $400s for a single animal that we're going to make less than 100 or whatever.

Mites and ticks, in our case mainly mites, mites are everywhere. And it was to be expected that an animal would come in with mites. Luckily, we never shipped an animal with mites, but man, was it stressful. Shipping was very stressful and scary. And it's like I know he's been mouse-free for two months. Just like if an animal had mites, we would wait months just to make sure they don't come back. We didn't miss a single egg. We did a good job. But man, were those mites a pain and was that a lot of mite product? Only hundreds of dollars on various mite sprays and preventing them from spreading as strongly.

Believe it or not, fortunately we did a good job, but it wasn't easy. And also about 10% of the animals took about 90% of the time. We are not a used car dealership. Oops, we bought a lemon. The animal goes to look for the car and they crush it. We just throw it away and it goes to the scrapyard. We sell it by pieces. I can't sell a bearded dragon for parts. I'm stuck with that. It is my responsibility. And I faced the animal. Whatever problems you have, we have to solve them until the end. And that sucked.

And man, that took a long time. And furthermore this is a mistake on our part. We completely failed to maintain documentation from the beginning with Emerald Scales. We had these long, super detailed Google docs that everyone had access to. Each animal had its own. It had the day it arrived, the date of birth, when, if we know, even the name of the animal, the feeding schedule, what it did, how much, what it looks like, every little detail like a personal medical chart. with its weight and length. We just completely failed to maintain this because it took so long and we got so disorganized.

So if I could go back, I would hire a person whose only job is to keep up with animal documentation, because I think that would have made a difference. But we didn't do that. That was a mistake and made things worse. Also, not everyone knew what animals were here every day because it changed so often and there were so many scheduling changes and unexpected things that every day it was like: What is that animal? I didn't know we had fat-tailed geckos. Where did they come from? I didn't know another bearded dragon was coming. It's not the same bearded guy from last week.

Or is it a new beard? Oh, okay, so I... Oh, it changed too quickly. And it's like, Oh, where did that animal go? Oh, that one was sent. Where did that animal go? Oh, that one died. We also receive large quantities of animals at a time compared to a couple at a time. It would have been nice if every day, okay, there were two new animals a day instead of Oh, okay. Today there are ten new animals and then nothing new for eight days. This was due to timing with the weather. As if every day wasn't safe except this day.

So they all ship the same day and we have a huge influx of animals of all different conditions and species. And hopefully one doesn't have mites and, because I mean, things can spread inside FedEx as well. So, because mites are fast and also because of the unboxing videos, the unboxing videos were the real bread and butter of the Emerald scale. This is what stuck because the income from unboxing videos and attention is what made Emerald Scales have some success and to make these unboxing videos, I can't just unbox one animal, I need 20 or 30, so I would try Group them all together on the same day.

In the later unboxing videos, I ended up just putting them together so it was like five animals a day, three or four days in a row and just editing it to make it look like they all came on the same day. But in the beginning, really all the animals arrived on the same day and I loved doing the unboxing videos, but oh man, the moment the camera went off, it was like, What have I done? Those animals everywhere? Why did I do this again? And I had to do it because, yes, that's how Emerald Scales was funded.

So let's move on to marketing and logistics. The best way we brought attention to emerald scales was YouTube videos. The second biggest, sometimes the biggest for a while, especially in the beginning, was Instagram, where I got banned. I was banned from Instagram because they imposed a rule that you can't sell exotic animals on Instagram. That's the rule. But ironically, Instagram also made money from Emerald Scales, because we would promote posts, advertise on Instagram, and actually pay for ads. And if an animal didn't sell for a month, we'd just do like a $20 Instagram and that would usually sell.

We lost this. I felt like we diversified it quite a bit, but we could have done a lot better with the marketing itself. And this was very unexpected. And through another key, we have like 28 keys on this machine so far. And there are also businesses to separate people from their money. That's the whole point. Companies will do this as necessary. But unfortunately for a live pet, A: no one needs it. It is a want. It's a kind of luxury. And B: the people who want it can't necessarily afford it. So what can you do to convince people to buy things they can't afford anyway?

But you don't want to do that with a live animal because you want it to be able to afford it for the life of the animal. And also, even if you want it and can afford it, that's not enough, because we wanted to make sure that it really was an appropriate home. So the marketing said, we want as many people as possible to shop at Emerald Scales, but we'll keep an eye on you too. So no one likes to be controlled. Imagine that a company where you want to buy the product controls it and they do not allow you.

It's like we are completely excited about Ferrari. Speaking of exotic, exotic animals are classified in the same group as clothing, alcohol, gases, businesses, and adult content. I don't know why, but that's how it is. And because of this, we would have to follow the same rules that someone who sells drugs or alcohol would follow, which is pain. We would be banned and denied access to payment processors and certain online services we wanted to use simply because they involved animals. I couldn't even use FreshBooks. FreshBooks denied me. I couldn't use Wix. Wix denied me as the payment processor, as if these big services were saying, sorry, that's under gas, shit and guns, so you can't, come on, really?

And you know, if you want to buy some of these things, you have to buy them with cryptocurrency or something. That's what we were basically on our way to having to do. And our inventory (this is still marketing) was very random and inconsistent. We didn't know what we would get, so we couldn't even predict what we would market to people. We couldn't predict what was going to sell. We couldn't do pre-orders or anything like that. It was just, Oh, this is what we have.You want it? Oh, this is not what you want. Well. And to this day, still once a month, I get emails asking me when raw green snakes will be available again.

Because we once had raw green snakes because someone bred them in captivity, couldn't keep them, and gave them to us. We listed them, we sold them. We never had tough green snakes again. But because Emerald Scales was known as the seller of raw green snakes, even in 2023, people ask to buy raw green snakes. It was totally unpredictable constantly. It was so strange. Additionally, we can only view outside of the contiguous United States. That's just the entire United States, but Alaska and Hawaii, and not Puerto Rico either. And only about 60 percent of you are in the United States.

Immediately, almost half of you weren't even eligible to be customers, unlike merchandise and such. And I can't fool people about selling animals either. I mean, I could, but it wouldn't be very good. Now let's go back to the used car dealership. You got oh, look at this. Watch this. Very nice Toyota here. But don't try to roll down the rear window. And don't go over 55 and don't shift into fifth gear. It may sound a bit loud and not check to see if the air conditioning is working...like you can sell a car and lie about it.

That's what they do. They want to cover up the problems that have happened to me where- Well, with the car that I currently have and also with the cars that I almost bought, like when I was looking at used cars in 2019, I knew the car. Well, because I was so enthusiastic that I knew what things to check and he was trying to cover them as we have all experienced. Okay, that's what I'm saying. I don't mean to complain about used car dealers, but they get this kind of permission to do it. But we can not. Oh, yes this animal has this debilitating, life-altering problem.

Well, I have to reveal that, of course. And this animal, we don't know how old it is. We have to be honest, because that is the right thing to do. And unfortunately, honesty was a disadvantage. Being honest made sales more difficult. What can I say? That's how it is. Additionally, our customer service was extremely slow and always behind the animal scales. I had objectively bad customer service, just thousands and thousands and thousands of inquiries, email threads, photos and conversations. But just a couple of people at any given time, just one person sending the emails, it was crazy.

And this was very bad for us because we were very slow to respond and we were inconsistent with the answers. And then the people there were just not happy with us. Plus, people believed we were a nonprofit organization. Some people were upset to learn that we weren't, and others simply felt cheated because Emerald Scales was often known as a nonprofit. I never called it a nonprofit. It was never a nonprofit, it was just online. The idea of ​​it being a nonprofit was a big thing. And that's why people were upset when they found out: Oh, it's not a nonprofit.

I have a whole video on why Emerald Scales wasn't a nonprofit if you want to watch it. And as I said earlier on Instagram, unboxing videos were the main way we got sales and got eyes on Emerald Scales. Well, they became less popular over time. It was a series on YouTube and like any series, interest often wanes. The first unboxings have more than 2 million views each. The next small unboxing batch had a million views each, which is still really good. And then the subsequent unboxing had 500,000 and then 300,000 views each. Still, these videos boast incredible visualization, but that wasn't enough.

Not only to get enough eyeballs but also revenue from the videos. This is going to sound ridiculous, but be patient, okay? The last unboxing video “only” raised $5,000. If you ever know, the fact that he made five thousand dollars from a YouTube video is crazy. But unfortunately this was still not enough to sustain Emerald Scales. These videos needed to make over ten thousand dollars each just to try to cover Emerald Scales' expenses. It's so crazy. I love how successful these videos were, but the fact that Emerald Scales was expensive and unfortunately five thousand dollars wasn't enough. And so, as unboxing videos became less popular, things became more difficult.

Furthermore, GoHerping and Emerald Scales were the same to many people. It's totally understandable that it's not your fault. For me they are very different. I see Go Helping as my personal online persona, my little personal online brand that I can do anything with. And I saw the emerald scales as a separate project that is building on its own. But to most people I'm Alex Green, I'm pushy, I'm animal scales and I get it. We did tons of Emerald Scales content on the channel and I was in pretty much everything. Of course people are going to think that.

This caused problems. One, because my reputation is directly related to the reputation of Emerald Scales. So if I say something controversial, if I get canceled again, whatever, it will directly impact Emerald Scales, which was not good. And so, yeah, we probably should have, I don't know, I guess we should have marketed more third-party forms and not have my face so tied to it. But of course, that person, that personal connection probably helped a lot too. And finally, in the marketing and sales or marketing and logistics section of this, I probably never would have been able to walk away even if it became self-sustaining.

Emerald Scales' Objective: The first objective... I think it's okay to change objectives, but I think our objective was good. Five years from now we will be clear, just like after five years, we should have a clear path to self-sustainability where we can step back and still have Emerald Scales, but without doing practical work and making a profit from it. This, even if it happened, would have been very difficult because if people see me walking away, that was one of the main reasons why people sent their animals or bought them because, in their opinion, I was the one who did everything directly.

And it bothered people to know that I was stepping back and outsourcing more work and stuff. Next, let's talk about sales and revenue. People will only pay a limited amount for a product, no matter what it is. You won't go to a used car dealership and pay more for a 2012 Toyota Corolla than you would going to Toyota and buying a new one. Why would anyone do that? But that's what Emerald Scales was doing. We were selling animals and in more questionable condition with less information than a breeder selling a batch of new, like-new animals. There are differences here.

Many people like to know that they are not just giving money to a breeder who produces more animals. It is giving an animal a new home that needed it and has a more unique story. I guess you can put it one way: I like coins and stuff. I like silver. I prefer old paper money and old silver and things that have history and are perhaps rarer than just buying a new silver coin from the press. So I understand that there is a difference there. But at the end of the day I'm only going to pay a certain amount for that old money.

And long story short, not many people want to pay $250 for a regular male python, but sometimes we sell regular pythons for over $200, which are literally worthless. And when I say useless, I mean financially. The animal has value. I understand. And I think you understand what I'm saying. In fact, males like normal pythons and normal pythons in general. They are literally used as food animals for other animals. In any batch of ball pythons, you will pretty much get some normal ones and there are too many normal ones. And then they sell them and feed them poisonous snakes and stuff.

And I really can't compete with that. But we almost always find normal male pythons. And realistically, for Emerald Scales to keep running, I think it would have had to cost like 500 to ship an animal and like 500 to sell an animal, for it to realistically work through this. But people are not going to do that. I mean, some will, but not many. And even the expensive animals that we sell say, oh, we have this nice $500 blue-eyed leusictic, this nice Leachianus gecko. That costs $1,000. There is no genetic guarantee. There is no background. We don't know the age for sure.

We cannot guarantee how it was cared for. We don't know how they took care of him. We don't know what happened. We don't know where it came from. So many questions and so many unknowns, I guess let's go to a used car dealership. You can't Carfax the reptile we are selling, you can't search for it. You can't pay that $20 report and see what the VIN says. Does not exist. It's quite a mystery. And especially with expensive animals, like most people who buy expensive animals... not most, but many, buy them to breed. And while we weren't against breeding, yes, you could breed an animal that we sold and that alone really upset people knowing that we would be willing to sell it to someone who was going to breed it.

That didn't mean we lowered configuration standards. We didn't have like little shelves or anything like that. Where you will just sit there and not move for the rest of your life. It had to be a nice complete setup and everything. But we were okay with people raising animals because we had to be. We needed that. Those large sums of money from these expensive transformations and so on to pay for this. And we were lucky to find people who were willing to pay that, since very little was known about the animals. So yeah, and also most of Emerald Scales' revenue actually came from fostering an animal because at one point it cost like $250 or $240 to ship a reptile.

And we were earning more from eating than from selling the animal. So this encouraged us to take in more animals because we were earning more from the intake. We would rather charge more for someone to ship an animal and then sell it for less. If that meant getting it out faster, then try selling the animal for more. And this is going to sound bad, but that's how it is. People are more desperate to ship an animal than to buy one. So the only way to keep doing this is to take advantage of desperation and charge them more.

And I know it sounds bad, but that's... I don't know. Yes that's how it is. Nobody has to buy a reptile, but people do have to get rid of their reptile and that's why they are going to pay more. And yes, that was a strange thing. It felt weird, but that's how it was. And like I said, most of the revenue came from YouTube. You know, the only thing that's more volatile than Emerald Scales is YouTube. That was a volatile income or still is for me, YouTube is still my job and it's crazy with ups and downs.

It's crazy. Sometimes you'll have a great year and then a terrible year and then a good month and a bad month and a good week and a bad week. Some months I would earn 20% of what I had earned the previous month and then I would earn double that. And this was the other source of income that everything depended on. So it was everywhere too. And we couldn't sell at reptile shows. We used to, but I ended up regretting having a video about reptile shows. Um, like I said, we had this whole thing where we want to make sure the animal goes to a good place.

You can't do that at a reptile show. In fact, I would say that most sales at reptile shows are impulse purchases. And then you're selling animals to people on a whim. Some of these people have never even seen a snake in person. They just wander down the street and say, Oh, reptile show. And then, buddy, here's some money. I will take your animal. We do not know. We don't even have his contact information. Sometimes people just pay cash and then leave with the animal. It was a bad idea and I'm glad I left it sooner. But reptile shows are a great way to go.

Many breeders and sellers make money from reptiles because you can take advantage of these impulse purchases and you can persuade them. You can be a salesperson, you can talk to them face to face, face to face, and get their money and get these large sums of money in just a couple of days. And morally we could no longer do that. Basically, as someone who made a large portion of my income from merchandise, taking advantage of impulse sales, it's a huge thing, like a 24-hour limited-time sale. Although there is a limited edition last one, that's what really makes the money there and I do it all the time too.

I receive merchandise that is for a limited time and I don't know how many are left and I want to get one and I buy it impulsively. And I usually don't regret it. But even if I do, it's a hoodie, it's a beanie, it's a poster. I can keep it, I can sell it, I can throw it away. But sometimes it's not a literal lifetime investment or a lifetime agreement to try to care for this animal. Then yes,We just can't take advantage of the momentum and many marketing tactics that people use for different things. And we had to turn away and refund so many people.

Both acquisitions and sales. People change their minds. The animal dies before it is sent to us. They want their money back, and because we were trying to vet people, making sure they knew what they were doing, I really think it was fair to those standards. However, I forgot to mention that the other people and I often disagreed about which people were good to keep the animal and to take it. So that took a lot of time as well, on the part of management, like maybe I think he's a good owner, someone else would think he's not or vice versa.

It was never one-sided. Sometimes I thought they were bad and the other person thought they were good and it was different with different people. Everything was subjective. But either way, once we come to an agreement, that will be a refund and another refund. And when someone gets four frustrated on a sale because we flat out say, I'm sorry, we don't think you're the right candidate, they take it very personally because... it's completely personal. Yes, no wonder they take it personally. This permanently alienates them. They will never return. They will never place an order. Well, some of them keep repeating because they're angry and trying to get it, and then we refund them again and again.

But for those who don't desperately keep reordering under different names...we have your credit card information. We can see that fingerprint. We know that you are the same person with a different name or a different email. Anyway, those who don't do that and try to manipulate us lower our reputation. Who would want to be rejected? Word of mouth is still the best way to get clients in general. But you know what it isn't? It's word of mouth: Don't shop at General Scales. They declined. To me they suck, they're biased, whatever, word of mouth. I couldn't even place orders through them.

Do not waste your time. Go order somewhere else. And at a certain point I thought: Why are we doing this? We reject them and they are canceled the same day. Within an hour, just go to PetSmart and buy one there or order online from somewhere on morphmarket. I guess so, we are keeping the promise of the person who sent the animal that: we will make sure your animal gets to a good place. But at the end of the day, it's like they just put a different animal into the setting. So sometimes it felt weird, like, why do we bother?

And it wasn't always us who gave money back to people voluntarily. All companies deal with chargebacks, bank fraud reports, and PayPal cases. But man, do we sometimes get a lot of them almost every day? It felt like people were charging their credit card because we took too long to take their animal or their, oh, like they bought an animal. And then we thought, okay, could you answer these questions, please? And they just charge back your credit card, This sucks. We continue to block our accounts. I would like, for 30 days, great. Now I can't use PayPal. Now I can't use Stripe.

I can't accept credit card payments and I would have to literally spend hours disputing these things to avoid losing my accounts and a lot of times I lose disputes and that sucks. Also, we could only sell to adults. In the US, you can generally market and sell to children over 13 years of age. Of course, depending on what it was, I could sell animals to children, but I didn't want to. That's why most of the animals ended up with us in the first place: they were bought as children. And then they grow up and can't keep him, don't want him to go to college, etc.

And that's because a lot of my audience was under 18 and just a lot of the internet and people were spending money, especially like Teenagers often have more disposable income than adults because they don't have bills and stuff. . But we couldn't really sell to them. And in times when we liked to work with younger people, even if it was with their parents' permission and everything, it's just not a good idea. And then we had to try to restrict it to adults. Additionally, we had to accept returns on the site. We had a no-return policy where animals couldn't be returned, but we secretly accepted all returns because if someone contacts us and says, sorry, it's not what they expected.

They are moving now. They can't keep it. We want to try to fulfill the promise made to the person who sent the animal. And then we would get the animal back no matter what it cost. Are we covering expenses? Are we driving 6 hours to get it? Whatever is needed. We are going to try to honor the return so we can fulfill that original promise. And that sometimes made things difficult. And furthermore, the audience decreased and the trend slowed down. And so did sales basically over time. Yes, sales of mezcal flakes went down and that whole lockdown thing and everything.

It definitely artificially inflated sales on both ends. A lot of people had their pets locked up because they were lonely or whatever, pandemic pets, I guess they called them. And we sold a lot of pandemic pets. And then we also took in a lot of pandemic pets. People who lost their jobs due to the lockdowns had to send us their animals, people who moved because of it, people who became depressed and couldn't keep up with care. And this was great for us. We had all these entries and sales increased because people were buying their pandemic pets.

But the confinements are also over. So sales decreased there. Many companies had artificial products, not even artificial ones, but they had simply inflated sales due to lockdowns. And we did it too. So, but it didn't last forever. And people were left without money. So. Yes. And now people have less money than five or three years ago. And that also affected sales and people didn't want to answer the questions. When we sell them the animal, they buy it online. We sent them a very simple list of questions. Over time it became more simplified and they just don't want to do it.

And it was very frustrating. They say, I don't have time for this. Why you do not trust me? I'm a perfectly good goalie. But yes, they say: I don't have time. I have a you know, I have a real job that I have to go to. Do you expect me to answer these three simple questions? What's wrong with you? And there were also many canceled orders. And it's understandable that many people would only want to buy if we did medical testing on animals. They wanted to see tests for different diseases, illnesses, viruses and problems, and they wanted to see blood tests.

We just did it, it would have been cool to do it with all the animals. We couldn't afford that. I received discounts. In fact, I was able to acquire discounts. I should not have received discounts like those from non-profit organizations. They still cost hundreds of dollars per animal. And when we make a profit, I probably should have mentioned that when we made a profit of $3 per animal, we don't really have that space because we don't really have the margins to do veterinary testing. I mentioned selling t-shirts and hoodies and stuff, my margins were like $11 per hoodie.

It was more than twice as much for a hoodie as it was for a reptile. And it was easier: did it take less energy to sell a thousand hoodies than to sell 20? 15 reptiles? That was kind of a tangent, but whatever. And also we couldn't sell internationally. I already said it, but we couldn't do it, so it sucked. Also, people think that we... this was a reputation thing. They felt like they were being ripped off and we were ripping everyone off because we're listing a small leopard gecko, a juvenile leopard or an average gecko for $150 or $200. Well, we were just trying to get as much revenue as we could because we needed it.

This didn't sit well with people. And he drove the people away. and animals also develop problems after the fact, just because it is fine when we sell it doesn't mean it will be fine forever. It could be something we missed. Overall, I don't think it was or could be something the new owner did, or it could just be an unavoidable problem with the animal because it is an animal. And then it was like it had a lifetime warranty, almost like even the last car I bought didn't even have a warranty. And we had a warranty better than all extended car warranties.

It was like a lifetime helping them. To this day, people email me and I try to help them with the animals they bought four or five years ago because I feel like it's an obligation and it took me a long time to help them with that, with those things. And we had as many SKUs as we had animals, which is crazy. And SKUs are like different options. So if you sell headphones, okay, you have the black pair and the white pair, those are two SKUs. You are selling shirts, you have a black shirt and a white shirt.

There are two SKUs, but you have small, medium and large. So there are four of each. So that's eight SKUs. Each animal is a separate SKU. And what this means is let's say we have an animal on the list and it ends up developing a problem. We can't just it's not like it's a shirt defect where you just make another one and send them a new one. This is the individual animal they wanted. Every sale that is an individual SKU is crazy. Even with a car, it's like, okay, well, we were going to sell you the blue Toyota, but we can't really, now we're going to sell you the orange one.

But I wanted the blue Toyota. Okay, are you going to settle or not? Well, I guess I'll settle for blue or orange or whatever. People don't want to settle for different animals. They get attached to each other before the animal even shows up, which I understand. But it did make things more difficult and made it difficult to sell inventory. Generally we can only make one sale per thing. People were fighting over animals for sale and stuff, and this carries over to We never had what the customer wanted. And yeah, people would really fight like, okay, I'll offer you more money, but we don't want to have a bidding war with this animal.

It just felt weird. So we would do it on a first-come, first-served basis. And if they have a bad configuration, I guess the second service will be the second to arrive. And I also tried to sell animals as more packaged SKUs, for example by simply purchasing a male bearded dragon. And we will simply send you a happy and healthy bearded dragon. People didn't like that. They wanted to see the specific one they are going to receive. They wanted to look you in the eyes, get to know your personality, and get to know you before they even bought again.

I understand it and it makes sense. But it made things more difficult. So let's go back to when we started, I think some mistakes were made there. The first was that it was an LLC and each of us and my friend were 50/50, we owned 50% of Emerald Scales. I don't think this is inherently bad, but personally, if I ever start something with someone again, I won't do 5050. I might do a third, a third, and a third if there are three people doing it. But that is because there is a majority of votes. If you have to make a decision, two out of three is better every time as there is always that tiebreaker.

And with this, even if it was just 51, 49% or 55, 45 or 65, 35 or 75, 25, I don't have to be the largest number. But I think it's important for one person to have more ownership so that decisions aren't just because that's why we ended up breaking up eventually because- and I did Emerald Scales separately because we couldn't come to an agreement on things and there was no tiebreaker. There were 5050 of us. We had to come to an agreement or it will simply fail. And ultimately, no one is going to do any 5050 work. It will always be unbalanced. You can never necessarily totally predict it.

I think you can get a general idea of ​​who is going to do the most. And again, yes, it would be nice to be 35% of a project, but I'm not going to work as hard as the person with 65%. So yeah, that's something I learned for next time. Basically. And also neither of us, at the beginning it was just the two of us. Neither of us could invest all our time. And this is normal for any type of startup or whatever. I was in the school. And I think at a part-time job and I was going all-in on YouTube, if we had put in all of our time and somehow covered all of our bills and expenses and just focused on Emerald Scales, I might have had a better shot.

But that's just part of trying to create something and at the same time support yourself. We also made some really stupid decisions, sometimes we were 17 and then 18, and then 19. And like anyone, you're going to make dumb decisions, like one decision that stands out is a guy who wanted to negotiate with us. I had a good setup and everything was fine. Simply instead of buying the animal, he was going to pay us with another animal. So we do everything we can to meet him. He gives us like a corn snake and we give him a lizard. I don't remember what it was.

And I was like, okay, great. Have a nice day. Becausedid we do this? Why do we just trade animals? We just don't win anything. We don't make money. We only lost one animal. We won an animal. What was the objective of this exchange? And that's why we never did an exchange again. It was the dumbest thing ever. But it was like. It was like this. We just made stupid decisions and we would learn from them. It sucks to learn. Stinks. I don't mind making stupid decisions, but it sucks when there are live animals involved that are affected by it.

So yeah, it would have been nice if we didn't make silly mistakes, but whatever. That's how it is. We also had disagreements over individual animals, similar to how we disagree about who should take the animal or if we should take the animal. Which took a lot: sometimes it was hours of debate about whether to take a single animal or not because of the conditions it's in and stuff. But also once the animal was here, it had, let's say, a flesh wound and scratched itself or something like that. Is this injury serious enough to warrant a visit to the vet?

The ideal would be to say yes to all of them, but we have limited resources and we have to be smart with our resources. And that's why we wouldn't agree. Again, this was not one-sided. It wasn't always me saying yes, vet and him saying no, vet or vice versa. It was a mix. Each case was individual and it is annoying to have to do it. Sometimes one of us would do something out of pocket because we really felt it was necessary. And with mime too. What size enclosure, what substrate? Even little things. What should this be eating?

How often should you eat? What size? Many disagreements are simply subjective. Again, we had the same goal, which was cool and useful, and we wanted the same thing, which was to do the best we could for the animal, while being efficient with resources. But those levels of efficiency versus the best we can do, you have to cut it somewhere. I know some people say there is no limit. You have to do everything for the animal. But it's like, okay, the animal seems to have a respiratory problem. Are we going to take him to the vet? If yes, is it okay?

Will they take the exam? Are we going to get an x-ray? Are we going to get blood tests? Are we going to take this other test? You can go on forever and spend thousands of dollars on an animal and the vets will surely take the money. And then you have to cut it somewhere. And that also made things difficult and even more stressful. I wonder how many times I've said the word stressful in this video. And we were also creating for the first time a company based on products and services at the same time with live animals.

We were 17-year-old kids who had never created a business, who had never sold much of anything. Now we are going to do a service - the intakes - and a product, the sales, at the same time... with live animals. What a good idea. If I could go back, I think one of us should have focused 90% on the product and the other 90% on the service. And then sometimes we mix it up instead of trying to do both. But man, that's how hard it was trying to do two totally different strategies at the same time... with live animals, I can't get over it.

We try to do that. We tried to expand several times, many times, and this was by finding partners. Now from the beginning we had this idea, our original idea was that we would start by breeding ball pythons and then we would find other breeders that would sell through us as reputable breeders that we marketed and sold to. We ended up doing this not with breeding, but with what Emerald Scales was doing, where we would find partners who were willing to take animals the same way we were. And they make sure we use their space and then send the animal to the new person.

The difference is us, oh, and then we pay them for it. We would pay them 65% of the income, which in the end was not that much. ALEX ON OLD VIDEO: For the past few months, Emerald Scales has been selling the animals we receive and then we rehabilitate them or make sure they are all okay and then sell them again. But now we want to open an opportunity for other people who may be interested in selling their own animals on a new platform with us. So obviously, for the safety of our buyers and anyone interested, we will be quite strict with these requests and will go very deep to make sure everyone is genuine and a good person to work with.

ETHAN: And the more variety we have, the bigger our platform and our audience will be, hopefully. That's why it's beneficial to you, because you're reaching an audience that you would never reach otherwise. They had to spend as much as us on everything and they made less money than us, so it didn't make much sense for them to do it because it wasn't profitable for them either, believe it or not. But we needed that 35% to cover shipping supplies, the marketing we were doing, and we would take care of customer service. So we had to pay for customer service and everything.

It was also very difficult to find trustworthy people as at that time we were young, we have colleagues who want to do it with us and it is difficult to see who will really be dedicated because we never met any of these people in person. They were in different states and that was good because that's how we got around the laws. That sounds a little bad. If there was an animal that we couldn't accept in North Carolina, we could have sent it to one of our partners, like animals in California, we're in North Carolina, the animal is illegal in North Carolina.

So we shipped it from North Carolina to someone we worked with in Virginia. That person makes everything, and then we sell it to someone in, I don't know, California and they never touch North Carolina. So it was never illegal. But we were still the ones working with it. That was one of the other benefits of this. But yes, it was difficult to find people and people got very nervous about this. A You probably realize how hard it is and how painful it is and how fun it seems, but it really isn't at all. And B, we had people list an animal and, like, we sent them an animal, we included it on our site and then they ended up saying, actually, I'll keep it.

Like what? You can't do that now. Like, well, I'm going to do it. And it's like, well, we didn't, we really didn't do it well. We probably could have made some legal agreement where they can't keep it. But there were also people to whom we sold an animal and then they sold it to another person. Fortunately, it was not someone who was selling our animal, but animals that he had and that they were going to sell through us. We would sell it and then they would sell it before shipping it to us. And then it's like, what?

We have to cancel the other person and that sucks. And that's how we send the wrong animal. The only time we sent the wrong animal was one of these partners who did it. But of course this is reflected in the entirety of Emerald Scales. And to this day, one of Emerald Scales' reputations is that we send animals to the wrong people or we ship to the wrong people. It was once and it wasn't even us, but it's still our responsibility. We couldn't have done anything about it. But yeah, basically less quality control. Also, the breeders never showed that we were going to work with breeders.

They just never made it. They never started to reproduce. They realized it was more difficult. They didn't have the money. It's just people saying: Yeah, this is cool, I'll do it. They look really cool and they just don't do it. And finally, in this section, customers hated it when they found out about this. We didn't keep it a secret, but if they saw that their animal was going to a different state and not me directly, they would get very angry. They said that? You are fooling us, this is not what we asked for. We wanted it to be for you and they hated knowing it didn't come from me.

It wasn't me who packed it. It came from someone else in another state. This is not Emerald Scales! What is this? This is a fraud! In my opinion, it was, they were as good as me. Unless they sent you the wrong animal. But yeah, it was a good idea, but it just wasn't working well and it needed a lot more. We needed to do it. I don't know, it was going in the right direction, but it basically didn't work out. Then the distribution failed. Okay, more section and then I'll talk about all my personal reasons why I stopped it.

Let's talk about the alternative means of income we tried. Many companies will do this; Their core product doesn't actually generate revenue. It's something else that makes money, like add-ons to the product or a different service or whatever or maintenance, like car salespeople who make more money maintaining the car than selling it. And then we also had ideas, like tackling reptiles. If you go on vacation, if you go to the military, if you go to school for a semester, almost many times we almost made reptile housing where you could bring them or send them to us. I'm so glad we didn't do this.

It would have been horrible. Imagine the conditions in which the animals would arrive and we would have to legally return them, but we would not want to do it. And then if people are going to abandon them with us all the time, because a lot of the animals that we have were just abandoned with the people who sent them to us, like, Hey, I'm going to the beach. Could you take care of my reptile? No problem. They never come back. And that's what they would have done with us. And it would have been like, yeah, legally we could have kept it and then sold it and all that.

But imagine, then they come back and say: Where is my reptile? It would be like the worst aspects of a pawn shop. Like imagine the arguments and the anger people would have if we sold their animal because it took too long, and things like that. Different problems that the animals had and everything. It would have been horrible. I'm so glad I didn't do that. Reproductive reptiles. We never did. I just lost... I completely lost the passion for breeding. I didn't even want to bring new animals into the... I didn't want new reptiles to exist. We raised amphibians, we raised axolotls and everything went pretty well.

It just took a long time. It took energy away from the main thing and never got anywhere. And raising reptiles sucks. I don't like. So raising feeder insects is a little different. We raised a few here and there but never sold them just for ourselves, for the animals to eat and raising feeders to sell them is just a big separate business that would have been a third branch of live animals because insects are alive even if it doesn't matter If they die so much, it will still be a pain. And we experience it when we raise invertebrates because we really did.

Different like cockroaches and millipedes. And I forgot what else. But it was actually great. It was good. I didn't mind having them around. I didn't care about invertebrates at all. The problem was that it was another live animal that we shipped not the next day, but in 2 or 3 days because it is cheaper and no one wants to pay $60 for a cockroach as a pet cockroach. But they would also be dead on arrival, especially the isopod or. Yes, oh, springtails and isopods. I forgot we sold them, but they would also be dead on arrival. Sometimes. Not always, but we would have to resend and.

They would get expensive and we just weren't that good at raising and selling invertebrates. It was something we would have had to practice, work on and invest time in. And it was expensive and never really made a profit. I lost money on invertebrate farming because of this, and maybe it could have worked long term, but we just didn't have the resources there. However, one thing that really did generate profits was the sale of products, some original products. Actually, it was a kind of dropshipping, but no. I mean, we were just selling isopod starter kits, basically, and I provide breeding kits and they were great and we would send the different parts and put them all together and sell them as a kit and people liked them.

This is something we would have continued doing if I continued with Mold Skills. It was like an alternative medium that really worked. We just didn't expand it enough. ha ha. Emerald scales. I said scale. And then there are the donations. We didn't want to accept donations because it wasn't a nonprofit. We didn't want to confuse people. And there were times when someone met us, gave us an animal in person, and they gave us like some people gave us $100 cash. As a thank you. But we didn't want to officially accept donations because it wouldn't have helped and it wouldn't have gone in the right direction.

It couldn't be based on a donation or it wouldn't have been a good fit for Emerald Scales, which I also talk about in that other video. So. Well, it's in the description. I don't know why I pointed out. Finally, something we put a little bit of consideration into was paid events like the whole birthday thing, kind of like, oh, reptiles on your birthday, on your kid's birthday. This was a possibility because I used to do reptile events and stuff, not for money, just for fun and also to expose myself to GoHerping, or at the time, NC Nature News.

But I just didn't want to do this. That was extra work. We didn't have time for this. Neverhappened. So those are the alternative means of income. And finally, my personal reasons as to why Emerald Scales no longer exists. I got tired. That's all. What is jaded? I feel jaded is a very good word. Ha ha. Jade. Emerald. My name is Alex Green. Alex Green got tired of making Emerald Scales. Oh yeah. Fed up, tired, bored, or unenthusiastic, typically after eating too much of something. Wow, that's perfect. If that is. That's 100%. I got tired. That's why Emerald Scales doesn't exist now.

I lost motivation. I lost my way. I couldn't care anymore. I lost the ability to care, which is not good when working with animals. So I stopped working with animals. I could not do it. I bit off way more than I could chew and the stress became too much. How many times did I say stress in this video? I don't know. But every time he said it, he multiplied it tenfold and physically couldn't handle the stress. Maybe you could, but I couldn't do it. I have a very high stress tolerance now, so it's okay. But yes, I too, yes, bit off more than I could chew.

I should have taken fewer animals, I should have gone slower. But at the same time I wanted to reach that five-year goal. I didn't want to drag this out for ten or fifteen years if I didn't really get anywhere. And also, we had to work quickly because relevance on YouTube is temporary and we had to take advantage of those eyes on us. But I still bit off more than I could chew. I also came to hate people in general. It was a little sad. Everyone around me physically, the people I worked with, we didn't get along all the time.

It would get stressful. We fought, we argued, we argued, we disagreed and we stopped working together with my friends, my employees, everything. The people physically around my house, the neighbors, the people in the neighborhood, the person in the house to my left, the person in the house to my right, the people around me. We did not like it. They hated me. I came to hate those people online. Many of the customers were great and there are many good things about Emerald Scales, but this focuses on why it failed many great people online. However, not everyone was, and I tend to focus on the negative because I'm a person that's how people work and there's a lot of negativity online around them, a lot of angry customers, a lot of angry people.

And I really started to resent people who had reptiles because I spent all day watching these animals come in and seeing these emails with these abandoned animals. And it really made me hate that all kinds of people took advantage of people in general. I came to hate people and that wasn't healthy. I'm much better now. I don't hate people now. Maybe I hate a couple of people, but it's a lot better now. But yeah, those terrible people overshadowed everything. So I didn't have personal space either. I lived there. Well, there is the house, there are two bedrooms, there is a living room, a dining room and a kitchen.

They were all animals. Everything was emerald scales except one bedroom, which had some personal animals. And in our office we lived in the office, so it was one bed, two desks for the office where all the work was done. Those were not animals. Everything else was animals. And there was no personal space. And this true work-life balance didn't exist. There was no life, I had no life. None of us had a life. Our whole life was work. And the work was becoming more and more unsatisfying, not fun, I hated it, we started to hate the clients and we weren't making any money.

We were getting it, like everyone else I was working with. They pay us from 9 to 15 an hour. I wasn't making money with Emerald Scales. It was not funny. Also, I no longer enjoy animal husbandry. Like that's a big part of it. I didn't like cleaning enclosures. I didn't like making enclosures. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy breeding. That's a big part of Emerald Scales, though. And yes, I didn't have any personal life. This was my life and this is totally fine. If I have another project to do, I will do the same thing where I dedicate every second of my life to it.

Everything will revolve around it. And that's why I think it's important to put a time frame on it and No, not necessarily stick to it, but be reasonable. I like the concept of grinding: I like it, but you can't do it forever. It is not something that lasts a lifetime. The idea behind it is like hustle culture, real hustle culture. I really like the real hustle culture. And to me, true hustle culture is that you push yourself for short periods of time to get a lot done, to get to the place you want, and then you can relax.

You can't rush your whole life. And then we didn't. We did it for five years. I did it for five years. A lot of people did it for five years because of this. I could not do it. It didn't work. It wasn't working. And I feel like yes, many of the best years of my personal relationships were ruined by this. Once again, this was my fault. I put myself in this position. I can't blame anyone else, but he was not a fun person. He wouldn't have wanted to be close to me. He had a bad temper.

I was stressed. I was super anxious. I was getting very sad. I was frustrated. I didn't know how to work with people. I wasn't even enjoying the work. I was starting to resent the people and animals I worked with and lost my passion for working with animals. I can safely say that I will never work professionally with animals again for the rest of my life. I will die before I make money with an animal project again. I will do things as an amateur. I also made a video at that time. I kind of sugarcoated it, but I started rehoming my personal animals over three years ago and I finally admitted it and felt okay.

I felt like I was doing the right thing because I didn't have that personal passion that I once had. And it just didn't feel right to keep some of them. Plus, I just didn't want to keep some of them. And I just lost the love I had for them. I didn't know it would happen, but it happened and I can't deny it. Partly this was just general exhaustion and overwork, but I don't like it either, I feel bad saying this. Obviously, a lot of people watching have reptiles and stuff. I don't want to discredit your reptile love, but I just want to be honest about it and spread the word.

I realized that reptiles are much less pleasant than I thought. Person- Yes, nice. I guess I figured it out. I don't know. I realized when we started getting animals that they were exact, 100% identical clones of my own pets. It's like, Wow, this ball python, it's a clone. It's a duplicate of me. And I guess I personified them too much. I put put too much. He was unrealistic about personalities and individuality. And you don't need individuality to enjoy something like, I mean, I love cars. I drive one of the most common cars now. They are everywhere. They are all duplicates.

They are all exact duplicates. You could put me in any of them. I can't tell which one it is. It's not bad to like something just because it has a duplicate. It hit me a little hard to realize that a lot of these animals say, Wow, they really do. They just want to survive. They don't care about me. They don't care about anything. Just their little, tiny brains are just surviving. They simply exist. I'm just projecting onto them. I'm just personifying them. And I had a little existential crisis about it, and it didn't help my already loss of passion and all that.

I think everyone would agree that if I'm not passionate about working with animals, if I get tired, I shouldn't work with animals. So I stopped working with animals. What I can say, I am very happy to say this. I really love the animals I have now. It feels good to really love my chickens. I'm aware that my chickens don't really care about me. They are also duplicates of each other. But I accept it and I'm okay with it. And I still love them. I almost rehomed my cat. Shiro. Is he in the shot? I don't know where he is, but I was very close to rehoming my cat.

I lost love for him. I didn't care anymore because I didn't care about anything. I lost the ability to care for him and I'm glad I didn't rehome him because now I really love my cat. So it's nice to be able to honestly say that I'm not faking it anymore. There was a lot of pretending and a lot of just faking my care and my love for things. Funnily enough, I feel like I didn't really fake it in the videos. I was very... I guess people thought I was playing a character because of how much some animals bothered me and how much I disliked some species and how much I didn't seem to care.

And I guess people thought it was like a comedy. I was aware that there was entertainment there, but that was real, that was genuine. He was probably sugarcoating it. In my mind he was even more negative than he appeared on camera, so not everyone noticed. But yes, he was. If you watch until the end, I feel like you can tell that I'm slowing down, I'm looking more tired and have less energy, and eventually I just ran out of time. I didn't want to give this more than five years. If I couldn't make it truly self-sustaining in five years, I would be finished.

And I'm totally fine with moving the goalposts, but I didn't want to move right now. I thought it was a good goal and five years passed so I stopped Emerald Scales and that's 100 reasons why Emerald Scales failed and is no longer God. This took forever to film. Again I want to be clear. Good things came out of it, but this focuses on the bad. This is the point of the video. You can see a lot of good things in the unboxing videos and in the vlogs and in the different transformations of the animals. There were a lot of good things there.

Many animals were helped. Many people were helped. I had many wonderful experiences. I had fun, I met interesting people and good things came out of it. It helped me a lot with my YouTube channel, which is my main career and I am very grateful for that. And the vast majority of viewers are great. Those of you watching, I really loved reading the comments, interacting with you, and meeting people through it all. But that's not what this video is about. This is why I failed. To be clear, there were positives. Not everything was negative, but in the end the negative outweighed the positive.

And that's it. Yes. And yes, Emerald Scales will not return. I no longer sell animals, I no longer take animals. So if you want send me something. Sorry, I am. I probably won't even answer realistically. I don't have employees or anything anymore so it's just me now so I can't respond to anything, everything anyway. It's done. What a relief. What freedom came with that! I should. I kind of. I guess there's no reason to regret it, but I wish I'd finished it sooner. I guess I thought if I really stuck it out a few more years we might find something.

We can make it work. But not. Yes, I will never do it again. However, I'm happy to say that I haven't totally lost my passion for animals because it has returned. I really liked what I said, it's nice to feel cared for. And I haven't lost my passion for projects in general either. I'm not doing much right now. I'm just making money and existing. I'm doing videos, I'm doing Uber, I'm doing some Amazon. I plan to start more things in my life and probably within the next year, probably sooner, within a few months actually, if I can raise the money for it.

But it won't be Emerald Scales. So yeah, shout out to everyone who supported Emerald Scales over the years or my videos or whatever. Mmm, I appreciate it. And that's it. Oh what a video. Sorry, that was very negative, but it was being honest. I guess. You can check the description for more information. I hope you enjoyed or learned something. But that will be it, I guess. I don't know. I'm Alex and thanks for watching.