Episode 22 – Conservation Meets Education: How Once in a Wild is Changing Lives

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hey my name is Leon I’m Pablo and we’re here at geekdom as part of San Antonio startup week with Ricky mhler he is the CEO of once in a wild that’s correct yes [Music] hi perfect um really excited to actually talk today like you know I kind of did some digging like you know I I believe you did a pitch comp right I did okay how did how did that kind of like were you just down here for S startup week or were you walking by I knew about it because I saw a post online that they that you guys were going to be doing it

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I didn’t know how it was going to happen but I just happened to be coming walking down from the library down to geekd down and I saw somebody walking with the sign said $1,000 pitch I was like hey we’ll do it that was it and we just went for it really quick and uh a little nervous I messed it up but it was it was okay oh that was good I watched it and and you know like it comes to to get here is you know it’s it’s a jump from just anybody out there um so you you’ve made it um you want to tell us about about the

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business like what is it if you’ve got like an elevator pitch if you want to do that again do yes no pressure uh so once in a while is an educational program uh that brings the zoo to you what that means is whether it’s for school which is the majority of the work that we do is educational right we want to inspire kids to study stem be biologist zoologist so we put together a program that is created for teachers by teachers that is tees aligned what that te is for those who are don’t live in Texas is

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Texas educational knowledge system which is uh a bunch of different lessons that the kids need to learn before they go into standardized testing right that’s how they learn so we basically are creating these Interactive programs that the teachers can use whether it’s to supplement to to get them to do more Hands-On um but the majority of the work that we’ve been doing has been with after school programs right so that that we do a lot of after school programs for for kids that love animals and they get to meet a

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lot of animals up close so for those who really want to study biology it’s like a gift right um but we also do birthday parties fun team building EV experiences we work with animal therapy so we bring animals to hospitals to senior homes uh where people can pet the animals and and we see a lot of joy we see a lot of kids just glowing when they meet the animals we’ve seen kids that have disabilities right if they’re uh in the Spectrum sometimes there’s non-speaking sometimes they don’t have motor control and we

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bring animals and we see a completely different person right we see them talking we see theming you know holding their composure um it’s great it’s just lots of Joy it’s a a benefit to do what we do yeah well I I did the background and I was mentioning this earlier I heard you guys talking a little bit on uh just the intros and I looked at your website like the the one my wife was like oh my gosh like I know who they are like that’s super cool and I was like okay and and then I started looking at

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the website I was like o really beautiful brand even even here you’ve got it you’ve got it through like and that’s an oxel it is an oxel yes it’s such a cool cool animal but it’s just such a cool one it’s it’s I I love it because it’s Minecraft that’s the one thing that comes to mind is the Minecraft I’ve got the nerd in me that jums to it I love that because every year or so there’s a new animal that everybody’s like oh this is the new like you know a few years it was like slots and everybody loves slots and then

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it’s like axelos and so video games movies like they’ll start bringing you know awareness to these animals cultural change which is in a lot of times like AAL are very cultural cuz they’re Mexican right yeah um but a lot of this is because these animals are super endangered right A lot of people don’t know that axelos there’s only a few hundred left in the wild in SOI in SOI yes very small Canal system in Mexico City right which is destroyed by the by by humans and so there’s not a lot of places for them to live so us bringing

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awareness to them and kids were playing on Minecraft right and then they’ll come to the school and they go I’ve seen that on Minecraft yeah I know everything so that Sparks Curiosity on the kids and then they start going on Google and finding YouTube videos and then next thing you know it’s like oh I can have it as a pet okay let me take care of it and so those little things are kind of inspiring kids to that may have not known like oh I can do this for a living like I can study Axel see what their

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adaptations are see how they get to regrow their arms you know they can regrow their brain like they can wow I knew the like appendages or certain things they can regrow any part of their body so that means they’re cancer free they can you know if we could just get a hold of those Powers right man like we could have people that lose an arm they can grow another one I mean how cool with that like your spine I mean brain diseases like uh you know they’re very hard to find too I mean I think you have

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to go to Houston or something like that to like to be able to purchase one if you wanted to I don’t know if about San Antonio there some pet store so the good thing is that in the pet trade there’s millions of them oh there’s millions of them in in in the wild there’s not a lot interesting and so uh what could happen eventually is it becomes extinct and then we only have it as a as a pet right which also means very poor genetic material cuz there’s very limited breeding that’s why there’s so many that come in different

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colors that you would never see in the wild because those would never survive right it’s kind of the same thing as domesticated rabbits or guinea pigs like you won’t find one in the wild right mhm that we have them as pets and that’s it even though you can you know you can use them for farming you can have them for kind of stuff so I I went to uh Mexico City um in the spring with with my family and and we went to S and what the guy told us which was incredible he said that all of Mexico City all of Mexico

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City was just an island in the middle of this vast you know River or not uh Lake uh what’s the name of the lake dude it’s uh uh the the lake is it’s not Del hakan or anything like that no I forget then you like no it’s not I don’t I don’t know I’m not Mexican I’m Costa Rican but I love I love Mexico City in fact I’m going there next week um but the the um the the interesting fact that I learned was that when Mexico City was drained now uhi Milko is all that’s left and it’s only 10% of what it once was so

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everything that’s been and now of course the city has a ton of issues with with lack of water right well they also have earthquakes because of it because they built it on the lake you on the lake bed that’s correct uh but you know the it’s we’re we’re talking about now you know just social responsibility you’re doing it through education um but you know obviously we’re we’re only we’re only talking about a lot old right now but you you you obviously work with a number of different animals and specifically here

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in San Antonio where we have a very very big and you know stray animal population uh so tell us about your work with that so so well before I move into that I will we were talking about the brand yes yes I I was more interested in the brand because cuz I heard a marketing background I do so my I before this I I worked as a creative director at multiple different agencies working in campaigns for everything from Western Union Capital One Coca-Cola you name it all kinds of stuff um and so when we

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started our brand we we’re from San Antonio we love San Antonio we love Texas I’m Mexican so we wanted a brand that didn’t look like every other animal brand out there so everybody has green they look like they come out of Africa you know with the the patterns the animal patterns or the footprints Safari kind of yeah Safari and and when I think of safari I think of hunting killing I think of you know I don’t think of conservation I don’t think of you know I think of dangerous animals you know and

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and our brand is the complete opposite right we don’t like to hunt we we appreciate people that hunt it’s okay but we wanted to feel like San Antonio like Fiesta like a celebration of animals right like uh alabas right which is your animal spirit animals right so you know what notty has yeah okay yeah and so so these these animals now become kind of like um a person right so when when you have this this connection with an animal all of a sudden you’re your start your curiosity right like with the

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Axel like where do they come from what do they eat how do they survive oh what can I do in my backyard for these animals can I maybe not put weed killer because I know other rabbits are going to come here and eat this stuff okay what what things can I do right and with this we Inspire the kids right to make a difference right so if they have a pet right how do I take care of him how long should it live because a lot of people like oh God this is so sad but we get people that come and they want to share

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oh I used to have a guinea pig oh really you know how long did you have it oh three years in a diet I was like well that supposed to live for 15 so what did you you know I did not know had no idea and so and so a lot of times you know I know they’re trying to share and telling you how amazing these animals are but proper care for your animal whether whether it’s your cat your dog you know you need to know that you need to vaccinate that you need to neuter that you need to space that you need to keep

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them indoors right you don’t just let them out without a leash like you don’t take them to a park unless they’re neutered right like little things like that or learn to train your your animals right like all of we have over a 100 animals all of them have training right some sort of training even our snakes right we train them when it’s time to eat right so then when we play with them they’re not biting us they not right yeah uh same thing with a dog you train our our our dogs we we train them to

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stay within our area right they don’t go out even if I open the dog they even if I open the doors they they don’t get out right and so this little training that you can do with your animals helps so much in the city because San Antonio has one of the largest you know euth in Asia numbers in all of the United States why because people don’t train their dogs that just let them out you have them roaming around you know lots of lot dogs that don’t have have their chip they don’t you know and they’re not trained

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so they go and bite somebody they’re not socialized cuz people think it’s so cute to go with your dog right let him bark yeah it’s like you’re teaching them to be violent and to go out and bite somebody how how how much do you think that’s cultural a lot of it is not just I don’t think it’s cultural I think it’s it’s um uh what do you call it when you when you personify an animal as a human and they’re not a human they’re a dog so they think like a dog they don’t think like a human right so if we think of hey

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this is my baby I’m not going to neuter him what I wouldn’t neuter my baby but it’s not a baby it’s a dog yeah so you’re you’re harming more than you’re helping right because that dog is think about it this way if I have to go and search for a female yeah I’m going to go crazy I’m going to bark I’m going to shout I’m going to pee everywhere you’re going to be angry yeah I’m going to be really angry so what’s the point you’re not going to breed them like and if you breed them you better have a license to

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breed right so there’s a lot of people just breeding the animals everywhere so yeah and the government can only do so much right of course right as humans we are the ones that should be putting more attention to that so that’s where we come in going to the schools we teach the kids not just the the Ty typical things that they would learn in the school right which is biomes and you know what are mammals and what are reptiles and you know all the classifications and cations but they also get to learn what does a zookeeper

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do what does a vet do you know what does an Animal Care Services person do right so that way they one can appreciate but also maybe inspired to get into a career like that right and then lastly we teach them how to take care of their pets right so hey what would be a good pet for me right that I’m 10 years old should I get a tortoise tortoise is going to live for 70 years like is that the best pet for me or is it a guinea pig or well I have to buy two guinea pigs cuz they’re social animals right

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mhm how much space do they need what kind of food should I get we get a lot of rescues cuz we rescue a lot of animals too and some of the rescues that we bring in are like tortoises that have been fed the wrong food right so tortoises are vegetarian they’re her right and people will feed them protein right and so what happens is their their shell their beak starts overgrowing and they get you know they get re in really really bad shape right and so there’s a lot of things that people don’t think

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when they buy a pet because they go to a pet store and they go here’s your pet list of the things but I do no research I’ve never you know you don’t have the education it’s impul buying you know that’s why I I think it’s more education rather than cultural because you see it in every single culture there’s not one culture that does it more than others right yeah um so our job really as citizens of San Antonio would be to like how can what can I do right and there’s like little things that everyone can do

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sure don’t like even adopting a pet like that’s good for your health like everyone should have M right yeah I I just did that uh about uh 3 months ago not even 3 months ago we adopted from snipsa a little a little puppy Grady uh he’s oh gr I did not know the name Grady yeah he’s he’s a he’s a gray mut and he’s A’s he’s a great one that’s why we call him Grady but anyway he’s uh he’s chewed up everything in our house but you know we have been prepared and we knew and we you know we’ve had we’ve had

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dogs for for many years so at least we understand that but I do have a question yeah about rabbits I have a rabbit I ended up getting the rabbit the typical way most you know adults get rabbits it’s not because I love my rabbits or anything like that it’s because my son said oh I want a rabbit and I’ll take care of it and I’ll do it guess who takes care of the rabbit you do I do and now I’m like looking at the rabbit and saying hey this rabbit is indoors like all the time he doesn’t get any son he

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doesn’t you know like and and I’m thinking you know I want to set up a pen outside and you know you can find information online but as far as like the ideal living standard you know like there just isn’t enough information out there even for well-meaning people I feel like there’s an education Gap almost so I’ll I’ll tell you a story not not with a rabbit I’ll tell you how to take care of a rabbit in but uh when before I met my wife I had never had a pet ever like uh this was 10 years ago had my first dog before I met my wife

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Yeah Lil schneer I thought he was the cutest thing ever he he really got me out of my funk and got me to go out and you know really great for my mental health mhm I did not know how to train it how to feed it correctly how to you know all the stuff I went on YouTube and started doing my own research uh what I found out is that if I search should I neuter my dog I I could get two answers right one could say no don’t that’s terrible right and another one could say yes you should do it which one is the correct one right

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well if I’m a professional breeder I don’t need to I know how to educate my dog I may be breeding right but if I’m just like a normal person right how do I know what to do right MH that’s hard you can’t just go to your vet or to your you know you have to find a professional yeah and so cats dogs regardless of what pet you get you have to go to a professional ask ask them how do you take care of it what you what should you do um we have our our lines open if anyone wants to give us a call on how to take care of their

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pet we’ll gladly do it for free what’s that what’s that line what’s that what what’s the best way to reach you so I don’t know you know what just go on on www once Ina wild.com and that’s once in a wild with a d yes I’ll put it in the show Notes too so that everyone does it so so great about your your your rabbit rabbit yes so you definitely have to Rabbit proof a full room cuz they’re going to use the the whole room so make sure no cables nothing that they can bite no furniture or put padding on your

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furniture they need a lot of mouth stimulation they regrow their teeth so they need to be constantly chewing on stuff so lots of toys like wooden toys uh things that you would buy for birds or something something like that you can put them all all over you have they’re they can be potty trained so you can put their their hay and that’s where they comeing need and as long as you have a little space where they go to the bathroom and you can close it at night so they can sleep there so that way they’re not roaming everywhere kind of

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like a mini kennel yeah uh they don’t really need a ton of outside time okay um you can if you set it up a little a pan or something yeah um but they can jump real high sure and they can run real fast they can escape in two seconds and get eaten by something they a hawk could pick pick them up so like um I would keep them indoors I mean yeah and again every animal is different sure yeah it’s funny because like when you go to like a Petco or Pet Smart they’re not going to tell you any of that not only

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that but when they sell the pens they’re not big at all no you know and they don’t you know you don’t realize that’s that’s that’s just something for temporary you know you you do need to set up a a space for them but I think in general I mean you know just touching on the education I mean you’re a creative right this is obviously a passion for you and your wife right you started once in a while with your wife as well right it started off as a passion now it’s a business now it’s a business yeah um so

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tell me about how that sort of came to be um we started I mean we both had jobs mhm and on the side we would rescue animals we would do little birthday parties with the animals that we had rescued and then the collection just started growing M um Co hit and right before covid because I I I do advertising and marketing I know people on TV so we we got on TV we were doing a Morning Show and during the morning show they announced Co hit right and so everybody comes back home we’re like this will be a week give it a week give

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it two weeks three weeks a month two months uh everybody lost their jobs we’re like What do we do well I mean we didn’t need money but we we had all these animals and we needed to keep educating people so we we started doing a live stream online where we would have people come on on the show and talk about animals kind of like uh Jimmy Fallon with the with the crocodile hunter right kind like so we would invite local influencers and stuff and and that got us on on the news again like you know mobile zoo goes

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virtual for schools and we started doing a lot of school programs right and so that got us into classrooms um I have a a cousin of mine that works in edtech and so she’s she looked at what we had and she’s like oh you should really think about go create a tix align program put it in front of teachers they’re looking for stuff like this all the time because there’s no no one out there I mean there’s a lot of stem programs for robotics for coding you know you see code Nas and you see all these the

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bricks you know but there’s nothing for biology there’s no one out there coming and saying hey these are adaptations these are you know all the Natural Sciences yeah and so we started focusing on that we put together the packages we started working on contracts so now we have contracts with North Side School District with northeast side with Southside and we’re just starting to to keep growing right our goal is to I mean our big harry audacious goal is to you know hopefully create franchises where we can have serving

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different school districts and just focusing on that we there’s a company out of Canada called math science MH and they do the same but for chemistry right against them and that’s kind of I mean they’re they’re owned by Crayola I think I’m not sure um but I mean that’s kind of the goal right like how can we bring biology make it fun and entertaining and put it in front of the schools uh the other thing that we’re working towards is having a brick and mortar mhm um which is not going to be a zoo we’re not a zoo We we

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will never be a zoo our our goal is not to breed endangered animals that’s the Sue job sure our job is education 100% right we focus on schools and serving the schools and you know families too birthday parties and and companies we do a lot of work for marketing as experiential mhm so we work with uh uh dmc’s which are um destination management companies right they put together all the conventions for the doctors the engineers and allu yeah like the convention visitors bureaus and things like that ex yeah so we work with

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visit San Antonio in bringing these really awesome experiential MH uh um and I’ll show you some videos but um yeah we basically bring a pan where people can come in and put animals in their labs and start petting them and we have big giant rabbits if you’ve never seen a giant rabbit dude it is the coolest thing ever I I saw one uh there was a video of a it was a Brazilian holding this massive rabbit literally the size of like your whole torso all from head to like your knees I mean huge what you

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have two of them you have two of I want to see that that’s amazing this big wow like not kidding they eat a ton I bet too no they don’t little hay really not that much interesting pandal pellets no but they’re they’re like 20 lb rabbits they’re huge man that’s like a full-sized dog yes you’re not kidding and so so these these rabbits um uh the people just you know if if you’re in a a convention and you want activations right you want people to come in give you their information take some pictures so it’s perfect cuz we

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bring the like over 20 some animals and the people get to hold them take photos it’s so uh before this when I was working for Capital One uh we would do experiential work at South by Southwest MH and at the you know that that event would take us a whole year of planning right because everything was experiential everything was Tech so you had to build all the technology to go that goes with it yeah um out of all the super expensive Hightech VR you know things that we would put out uh we would also do like photo booths

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and art installations and then we would have some sort of animal right whether it be like cute goats or a monkey or a sloth mhm every year the most popular thing we would have would be the animals mhm like all the high-tech stuff was great it got you talking but the most active ation the biggest lines were with the animals mhm so for us we do that like at every single event like we’ll have an event and I kid you not like we do Christmas events right and Santa will be on one side and we brought like a little tortoise right

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little tortoise we put it there take a photo with a tortoise the line for the tortoise was longer than Santa two three times longer than you know people love animals yeah they love them and and you know you could have Santa and you can bring all the princesses and the Spider-Man dressed up but the most popular thing will always be the animals always they’re just animals are I think our our connection to the world like yeah they hold the DNA that that will one day cure every disease you know they hold the

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cure to us understanding the envir environment and how to take care of it um so I mean and as a business you know we’re always trying to figure out ways to make money so that we can bring out more program continue doing more things absolutely so on the business part now you said not a zoo but you do rescue and and then on the flip side you use a commercial part of the business to fund that or is there like a nonprofit entity sitting there or right now we we don’t have a nonprofit side we’re working on

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figuring out a legal way and an ethical way to do it okay uh because we didn’t set it up as a nonprofit for two reasons because one we wanted an exit at some point we we don’t think we can keep doing this forever right we wanted to make sure that the person that we take over would be good um operationally is a lot easier for us to manage the animals even though we do have a really high um you know overhead because we do have to take care of the animals whether they work or not sure sure um but um yeah nonprofit you have to

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have a board yeah you have to you know there’s so many regulations and and a lot because we do work with a lot of nonprofits and we do work with a lot of other organizations that take care of animals we know the struggles they have right and a lot of lot of times that ends up affecting the animals right whether you have to euthanize more animals or you cannot you know for example we we Rescue an animal and it’s a forever home they stay with us forever right and there are some animals that we don’t know if they’re going to be good

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in a program right can can they make us some money and I know it sounds terrible that’s the nature of business of course right but but in in another organization they would say well we can’t feed them and it’s not working we have to euthanize right because no one’s going to rescue that animal like you have to euthanize it right we don’t we with with us we go okay we we’ll have a loss you know or or you know we’ll have to let go of some some employees you know so with with the website you know I

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mean you have plenty of information about you know the the organization um what about like the stories of the animals and like you were talking about doing the live stream and things like that you know I think people they they have almost like social media followings animals do now right do you have anything like that animal so so we do and and and we don’t we mostly focus on the educational part of the animal so we definitely do have like a page for every animal where we or a little video that talks about you know what is this

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animal U the the main reason that we don’t I think when we people come in person we definitely do say hey this is sandor or a rabbit right and people will remember that and come back and say oh where’s sandor right I remember Prince as the snake right um unfortunately some of these animals won’t live as long as we do right and so we internally we’ll we we kind of say okay well this is the animal but externally we just focus on the species right right and so people would just focus on you know what the species is

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and not not on the animal but we do want that personal saf as much as we can you can do the tortoise we do yes that will will last that Outlast all of us yes and we have and we have five of them so I’m sure there you go that’s great well I mean I think I think you’re right about the the connection I mean I was I was uh talking to Carmen uh you know my wife earlier today about how she like baby talks you know every animal we have and I’m like are you kidding me like why are you doing that you know you you love

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that animal more than you love it you know me and and the two boys and uh she was like yeah you’re right see I I love I man when I before meeting my wife I had no animals mhm and so snakes spiders you know you’re like gross I’m not touching that like never like I now I I those are my favorite like I like the spiders I like the snakes and you would imagine like oh those those animals are not relaxing they’ll make you more nervous but no they’re super therapeutic like I can hold a snake all day and it’s like the

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coolest feeling ever like feeling their muscles move sure uh a lot of the textures they have like you don’t really think about or even like a spider like holding it and knowing how fragile it is you know how it could just fall down and break like so like I think the human as humans you know we’re put on this Earth to protect right our families or our our our cities but also you know nature and animals absolutely so I think having a pet you know is kind of like having a baby right like you’re taking care of

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them and it kind of gives you purpose you know sure but I I can I can certainly relate to your uh your point about uh the reptiles I mean I I didn’t grow up around reptiles and then similar to the bunny I we ended up getting a bearded dragon because and that became I mean the beardy and I his name is Bernie you know ber you the beardy and uh we I mean we bonded right so I fed him I would he would like if I would work he would like be on my shoulder uh I would put him somewhere else and he would find

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me and climb up my leg and I’d be on the computer and he’d be you know um but you know it’s it’s interesting that you you know you don’t realize that warm-blooded or coldblooded it doesn’t matter right you form that Bond and they form a bond with you and people just you know they just make the assumption that only cats and dogs are other warm blooded animals will will have that bond with you and that’s not true at all and and that’s a great Point uh a big part of something that San Antonio could do uh to not have

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a cat and dog problem is hey there’s reptiles there’s birds there’s all kinds of pets that you can have right uh insects bugs like those are cool too like we have roaches like those are the coolest pets they’re so easy to take and they’re big in San Antonio yeah but a lot of times like as you grow up right you you get a job you work you know 40 50 hours a week and who has time for a pet you know right well maybe not for a dog but you could have a snake you know you only have to feed it once a week and

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you can leave it at home you know as long as you give them a little bit of water they’ll they’ll be fine right so it’s like there’s Al Al alternative pets that you can get other things that that are more adaptable I I like that cuz I think Co a lot of folks get dogs M they were always home now they’re back to offices you know how do you manage that but there’s other animals I have aquariums I I love that you know it’s they’re they’re a little hard to manage from time to time but easier than a dog

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you don’t have to worry about you know in out you you just got to change water and feed and all that but there there is alternatives to to those pets and snakes and spiders and doesn’t it make you like having that tank doesn’t it kind of give you little purpose like you kind of get up there something to do and I I’ll see yeah I’ll see something or the temp’s off or the water’s low I’m like uh I feel bad for them I’m like I haven’t done a water change and you know for this month I’m like okay it’s it’s

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getting close I’m I’m going to do it now so there’s a lot of that um it’s theraputic too right probably yeah it gives me something to do and something like monotonous see that you’re just thinking like oh where the fish making sure count the fish try to count the fish sure am I missing one oh no they’re in the they’re hiding all that um you know kind of as if we rap the the question we always ask everybody is really around advice you would give to other entrepreneurs you know you you had a non-traditional start

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in this business and I think you’ve you’ve really found some success I think Co helped in some some ways through that that streams and then you’re very passionate about it you you know you know it you you know I I heard that your wife you know has a background in and and working with animals so there there is that but what would you tell like other Founders if they’re just getting started out especially in this building what is that advice that I’m probably like the not the appropriate person to be giving advice um this is

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what I do think is that um if you are going to be going into business you can’t be all wishy-washy you just have to just go for it and like like learn a lot there’s so many accelerators there’s so many um there’s also a lot of bad advice um one thing that I kind of understood right away was that um regardless of what business you are nobody knows nobody knows what you’re what they’re doing like everybody’s a lot of it is luck a lot of it is being in the right place at the right time um and like be really good

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with your money uh save save save save um because every every business owner the number one problem I always hear is like lack of capital we need more Capital right um so if you really learn the the finance aspect the managing the leadership um that’s the hardest part but I mean regardless of what you do I mean it’s hard this is a tough business it’s it’s really really hard so you have to be super passionate and like work 80 hours and you know find other you know similar-minded people to kind of uh because I mean the hardest part I

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think with with any leadership is the the the mental part right the the mental health where you like I don’t care how many people tell me like oh we’re successful in my mind we’re not like we’re like such a tiny little and we could be on on TV and that doesn’t mean anything right like or you could have a little bit of money and that means nothing like it’s it’s tough um um but yeah I mean um advice there’s tons of advice I would take it with a grain of salt um uh and I would definitely focus on an accelerator like right now

37:48

we’re doing an accelerator with Goldman Sachs that has been like crucial to our growth like we’ve been learning so much uh um so things like that are always that’s usually where I start and um don’t think that just because you get a big giant loan it’s going to mean anything yeah it’s tough true yeah I appreciate that and I believe in that Vice like you you as a business owner you as as that person getting the viice has to have a filter is it applicable is there is there some right here is there something I can

38:25

apply and making sure that you just because you’re going to you could sit in a um I’m sure that there’s mentors within the Goldman Sachs program One Mentor says does this the other one says does does does do it this way and you have to figure out what is going to be best to to you know whoever your stakeholders are in your case you’ve got animals you’ve got employees you’ve got yourself and in a lot of other cases you know they’ve got employees or they’ve got team members there might be customers investors so there’s always a

38:55

a give and a take and sometimes you have to figure out who who it is and you know in your case I I loved the it’s the animals the animals come come first here no no matter what through the business that’s why I had asked even about a nonprofit because I was like it you know seems a little bit in that case but I also know and I’ve seen how hard it is to do a nonprofit how hard it is to do that and then even the rules around it how what you can Market how you can charge and all of that is is fascinating

39:25

so that you built a business on that is a really interesting if I I think if we were if we acted more like a rescue that would make sense but because we we’re an educational company like our goal is to kind of get into like the ettech the the experiential education field and so that to me seems more a for-profit it’s a service like we’re not I mean we rescue animals but we’re not a rescue like the way that I see it is like the depending on what we need the animal to do right so if we if we need

40:01

an animal to be educated to to perform a certain thing then sometimes we need to go through a breeder because those animals were bred to do that function right and then there’s some animals that like guinea pigs well I don’t need to go buy me a new guinea pig I can go to the Guinea Pig Rescue and you know rescue a bunch of them and that’s usually better or a reptile will go through a reptile rescue because an older reptile will I will know what kind of personality they have right if they’re going to be good

40:30

in front of kids where some reptiles you get them as a baby and you don’t know what you’re going to get you’re right absolutely for sure so well thank you very much for joining us today Ricky oh my pleasure thank you so much for having me we look forward to seeing more growth from once in a while and uh you know we’ll we’ll put the information on show notes and you know anyone that’s interested in finding out more information visit the boost for this episode and look in the show notes and you can each once in a wild thank you

40:59

thank you thank you so much all right [Music]