Hey, all you fish heads out there. My name is Smoke and Joe and I have some questions. Do you have fish? Do you love your fish? Do you love your fish enough to buy them their own song?

Oh, yeah.

Who needs another castle for the tank when you can have a custom tune made for your favorite binned friend? It's easy. You tell me about your fish.

I have the best fish.

You pick a genre of music, I make you a song. From metal to Irish folk, from EDM EDM to funk to punk. I'd love to make a song for you. Visit www. Dot smoke and Joeonline.com to fill out your inquiry today. That's www dot sm. Okinjoe online.com today. Hey, shrimp fanatics. I'm going to talk about the shrimp of the week from Joe Shrimp shack.com. So this week, if you go to their website right now, they have orange eye, royal blue, tiger shrimp.

Certainly.

Check these out from the picture. They are a very deep, dark blue with bright, I don't know, alien eyes. You need to check these shrimp out. They start at $16 apiece. And trust me, not large quantities are left. Go check them out and check out all the other great shrimp at Joe Shrimpshack.com. And don't forget to use our promo code, Aquarium Guide to check out for 15% off everything in the store. It's the best discount you're going to get. Joe shrimp shack.com. Check out the sweet shrimp. Also, guys, don't forget about our story time special that we're going to be doing. We need your submitted stories. We're going to review them. Certainly submit them to aquariumgyspodcast.com. At the bottom of the website, you'll find our contact information, email, telephone number, however you want to contact us, send a YouTube video of you talking about it, anything. We'll review them. And we're going to display your stories in the next story time. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guide podcast with your host, Jim colby and Rob dolson.

Jimmy, did you find.

I'm just wondering because when you sat down, there was all kinds of angelic whistles coming from your side of the podcast studio.

I have a cold that's coming out of my nose.

You have a cold that's coming out your nose and a case full of COVID tests?

Yes.

All right. So what you're saying is drink up some tequila.

Oh, absolutely. tequila will kill the COVID tequila kills anything. Yeah. Actually, my company that I work for, we sell taki chips, and somebody started a rumor that cured COVID, and we cannot keep them in stock. They actually had to quit. They had to quit making several of the varieties of the flavors because they cannot keep up. They're making like three of the regular flavors right now.

I feel like you're trolling me.

No, I'm not. I'm saying saying that who the hell.

Came up with that idea?

I don't know. Something got started online and and the talkie chips. Now we can't keep them in stock. I'm selling 400, 500 little bags at the checkout lanes at Walmart.

Well, it's the same people that did these Wall Street bets for the GameStop stocks.

Oh, absolutely, dude.

I've made so much money.

I'm in amc, and I'm up today, so it's a good day.

Well, I'm up on physical silver.

Regardless.

I'm up on cold medicine.

I'm Rob Zulson.

Hey, I'm Jim kitty.

And I'm madam on the shower.

So today we have special guest Nick neo here in the studio with us. Nick, how are you doing, buddy?

Good, man. Thanks for having me on.

Hey, it's our pleasure. Nick is the owner of Shrimpybusiness.com Certainly check that out bookmarket. But can't thank you enough for coming on. And we're going to pick your brain today on your experience of how you started a business online, got deep into this market, and are finding success in COVID. I think that's a crazy story, and we need to know your secret sauce.

Sure. Yeah. I would love to share it.

Wonderful.

Well, what we're going to do first is, like we do on every podcast, we're going to go through a couple of questions that we get throughout the week. If you guys got a question, submit it according to podcast.com Bob on the website. You'll find our email address, telephone number, leave us a voicemail or send a text message or even message us on Facebook. Jimmy still has lost the Twitter account.

I know what Twitter account is right there. My smartphone.

Your fart phone.

My fart phone.

Your fart phone. All right, so some of the first questions we got, one of them says, I was wondering if I could get your opinion on something. I'd love to construct a 3d background. I was wondering if you could skim the article and tell me if you'd be safe for a coronation. Fishing plants. From what I read, it sounds okay, but I'd love to get an expert's opinion. Thank you, guys. You rock. And it gives me an article for how to make an aquarium background. Before I get into this article that he sent me, do you know an expert?

No. You don't? I don't.

I feel like you do.

No, I don't.

You don't know an expert either?

No, not on 3d backgrounds.

Well, it's not necessarily an expert, but I've made an attempt, and my attempts have not been great. Even when I purchased pre made aquarium backgrounds, I am not a personal fan of them just because it's another place for algae and shit to collect. So if I'm going to have something in there, it's going to be a natural decoration, or if I'm going to make a natural background, it's going to be something that I'm going to be able to scrub easily. Maybe I'll use River Rock. I'll do other elements. Aquarium backgrounds, especially DIY ones, are a pain in the ass.

Have you had any experience with that? Nick.

Not really. I think my experience is mostly just mostly planet tanks now. I'm playing around with a lot of the nano tanks because shrimp. But my experience mostly I mean, I play around with angel fish just because goldfish, but nothing with background, unfortunately.

Adam, you might remember this. About 15 years ago or so, 20 years ago, some company came out with some it was kind of a foam like material that you adhered to the back of your tank inside. You remember those?

Is it the ones for reptile or.

They made them for both fish ones? They made them for both. It was reptiles and fish. And I know our friend ty Taltford had a few of those and not much great success because things like Rob said got behind the darn thing and fish got trapped back there. Algae, air pockets, all kinds of crazy stuff. So I've never really had any good. What little bit of experience I've had has not been good.

Well, the problem is what they make it out of. Generally these DIY ones are done with, like, styrofoam sheets that they go by. Number one, some of the old green sheets that they buy are kind of shitty and will decay crap in the water. So make sure that it's just pure styrofoam and not some, like, Ben Franklin. We have a little Ben Franklin craft store. We used to have a big chain. Not something like shitty michael's Craft store.

Foam. You're talking styrofoam. You're talking just like foam foam.

Literally like a foam cooler. Foam styrofoam, white styrofoam.

Well, that floats. I don't know how the heck you're.

Exactly like, how the hell did they get this stuff in there?

The ones that were made that I saw were made out of actual, like a foam, like you would make a sponge filter out of. And they had taken it and sculpted it to look like a background of mountains and stuff. It was pretty cool, but it just didn't hold up.

So it's not rigid.

No. And then things will pick at it and it just dissolves bad for your ink.

It's not rigid enough. And when you go to clean it, it falls apart. And then they use this stuff, generally called dry lock. Dry lock is what you use for your basement to seal, like a brick basement up so you don't get moisture into it. And some of it is supposedly and I'm going to supposedly aquarium safe, but most of it's kind of crap. Even when you put paint material in your tank, you'll still get chipping and crap happening in your tank. It's just not a fun thing to go around. So if you're going to do a background and they want to do a 3d background, find a way that people have been doing this. Cool trend I'm seeing from Germany is like growing mats. People have been putting it essentially it's just more places to grow plants and I think that's such a fun and interesting idea rather than just having a plastic styrofoam, shitty 3d background.

Yeah. What question you got next?

Well, also I feel like that's a whole podcast waiting to happen.

Yeah, not tonight.

Next one. Hey guys, I own a fish shop down in southern Texas and been listening to the podcast for a while. I remember you guys talking about a specific wholesaler that only goldfish here in the goldfish that have here in the States. Can you please tell me who it was that you recommend for goldfish? Thanks. Keep up the podcasts.

I'm familiar with a couple of goldfish people that I've used in the past. ozark Goldfish.

That's my favorite. Hi becca.

Yeah, and then there used to be another one called what the heck was it? Blue Ridge Mountain or Blue Ridge Goldfish. And I'm not sure if they are still around or not, but if you give becca a call over at the goldfish shop there at ozark Goldfish, they've got a nice variety of fan tails, comets, shabunkins koi. The one thing they don't have is black moors. And as we've talked about before, black moors are genetically the weakest, so they just don't work with them right now.

They come and go, they'll get a batch in, they'll farm them up, but just keeping the strains consistent and there's just so much work and they're pond raisers, so you're getting it from their covered sanitized ponds no one's allowed any access to. Like they don't even do tours at ozark anymore. They stopped that before COVID yeah.

And they've got two farms and stuff and so they will ship you from the farm closest to where you're located. I see Rob pulled up blue Ridge goldfish.

It looks like they're still open.

They still open. I notice for a while they were closed because they if I remember right, they imported some fish for breeding, quarantine them and somehow it got all their fish sick and I think they closed down for a year or two. But they are wonderful folks too.

Goldfish shops more than anything else have to be very rigid on their policies, on who get interacts with. It what goes in the waters, because carb herpes wipes out entire farms.

Yes. And that can just ruin your life.

For a few years and there's kind of nothing to do to treat it. If it has it, it's gone.

Yeah.

So those are goldfish or Blue Ridge fish. Hat tree, I would suggest you the one I've dealt with them both. They are both wonderful people.

Nicky got some goldfish buddies out there.

No, I don't have any goldfish buddies right now because goldfish eat I mean, they eat out. Shrimp is a nice snack, kind of.

Like a new age sardine thing.

Yeah.

Hey, if they put them in shotglasses down here minnows, then why not goldfish? So other than that guys go on our Facebook page, we have the aquarium guys community. We're trying to buff that up. It's actually pretty darn decent showing of people, and the memes have been great. People have been sharing a lot of their first spawns, and it's just a fun place, you know, show us what you got. Well, if you got something noteworthy and newsworthy, we'll highlight it on here. And just because of that, the tropical fish swap of Michigan march 7 is going to be having a fish swap.

Finally, everybody's gonna get together and and talk fish. How fun is that going?

They're going to share snot rags and lick dort. No, she's kidding.

No, they're not.

The Michigan governor will shut that down. Like, she didn't want anybody to garden outside. Because I'd get COVID.

No, they're going to be safe. They're going to only keep fish per bucket. And that's just like our governor said.

That we earn a lot out of the house, and he's not taking a care of it. He's not taking his dictatorship powers until the Vikings win a Super Bowl.

Hey, that means we're stuck here forever.

We're all going to be dead by then.

Pretty much dead as the guys sitting here with the seahawks. Exactly. Just knowing that victory tastes like when.

We say, Go, Vikings, we mean, like, go away. Is that what it is?

All right.

I don't know why we didn't trade stafford for cousins.

Hey, I would have loved that. That would have been a good day.

I think we could trade cousins for a bag of skittles and been better off.

That would have been a good day. So I've been having a fun week. Jimmy, just give a couple of updates. Number one, there's a meme going around on our aquarium swap sites that I look like this particularly ginger looking gentleman. And hopefully the audio doesn't crackle too bad on this, but see if I can play it.

No. At first, I didn't really like you, and now I still don't.

People think you look like him.

People think I look like him?

Actually, he's a lot better.

If you want to see it, you can go on our Facebook page.

And he's a lot better looking than you.

I'm just saying. Thank you for the compliment. That was lovely. So how's your week been?

To me, my week has been okay, but working down on my fish room, we are insulating the ceiling of our fish room, and you think it's going to be a three day process, and now it's been about a three month process, and I'm still not done. But I bought a nail gun this weekend. And you know what you could do if you have a nail gun? You could take your wife's pant leg and you could nail it to the board when she ain't looking. It's pretty funny.

I feel like that's an entire thing where yeah, you have that lump on your head for that's. Right? At least you didn't shoot yourself in the foot.

No, not yet.

Literally and not and metaphorically.

Yeah, no, we just bought the nail gun the other day, and I was practicing last night and stuff, and she wasn't paying attention, so I showed her what it would do. It was kind of fun for me.

Wonderful. So this week, I greatly overpaid for rice fish from Ujimmy, and I'm so excited.

You're a dumbass. What did I tell you? 100 times? Let me backpedal on this story. So I bought some rice fish from our friends over at seacrest Farms, and they're called white platinum rice fish. And I called up Rob and said, hey, do you want any of these? And he goes, nope, I'm broke. I said okay.

And then suddenly I fell into money.

Yeah. And so then I get them, and he goes, Well, I want them. I said, they're not for sale. I'll get you some in a couple of weeks. And he kept throwing money at me, and finally I took his damn money.

I'm just saying. We did a pet swap. He had these beautiful platinum rice fish, and I had a very lonely Benjamin in my wallet that needed to find friends.

That's right.

So we made it happen. And now I'm the proud owner of rice fish.

Yes. And then I got you some other rice fish on Saturday night.

Got some daisy rice fish, peacock gudgeons.

I got Adam some handlers, which I feel like I almost am, getting him hooked up to more crack.

I feel like I need more crack to me.

We found a local gentleman in our neighborhood who's raising all kinds of crazy stuff, and he's got the most beautiful guppies, and he's raising peacock gungeons, Mexican dwarf crayfish, all kinds of crazy stuff. And the growth he gets on these things is just incredible. He's feeding four times.

Miracle grow.

Yeah.

Feeding four times a day, and he's getting guppies into adulthood in six weeks.

Miracle Whip.

Yes. Not Miracle Whip.

You're just saying yes. I'm asking.

No, he's not using Miracle Whip. I'm on cold medicine, man.

Well, let's get down on this podcast. Nick, again, thank you for coming. We always start the podcast out, asking some of the more introductory questions. And number one, what got you into this hobby, and when did you start?

Well, fish in general, I started keeping fish. That was in elementary school. My first go at fish is keeping betas. I grew up in Singapore, so it's really a tropical fish haven there, so we didn't have a lot to choose from. And I started breeding betas in my backyard. So that's kind of how I started with the fish, and then went on to Angel Fish and Goldfish for a little bit. But shrimp in general, I only started with shrimp, I would say, about three or four years ago. Four or five years ago actually with shrimp, just because my brother in law started keeping shrimp and I didn't quite get it in the beginning when I was one was back in singapore, but I decided to give it a shot just because I wanted a small tank with some cool little creatures in it and shrimp kind of fit the bill. Yeah, I kind of just went from one tank to tanks, and now I have 100 plus tanks, so it kind of overtook my life, kind of.

And so where do you have all these tanks located at? Do you have a warehouse? Are you working out of your home?

I'm working on my home. I thought of getting a warehouse, but just running the numbers and the risk. I enjoy what I'm doing now, and I think if I did do it on a larger scale, I might not enjoy it anymore, so I decided to keep it small and just run it from running from my home.

So how long ago did you again start doing shrimp, specifically?

About four years ago.

Four years ago? And you're already this far up?

Well, it kind of snowballed a little bit.

A little bit. He's one of those things where he's got that cheesy smile going. Yeah. My wife my wife hates me right now.

No, for real. My wife can I get one? Can I get this shrimp tank? I already had, like, two it was back then When I was living, and I was still renting an apartment, so I had two tanks, and I was like, hey, babe, can I get this little shrimp tank to play with? And we we got it. And then, you know, I couldn't it took me a while to figure it out, and then once I figured it out, I was like, can I get another one? Can I get another one? Can I get another one? And then we convert our garage into a little shimp room, and then yeah. It took time to convince her that this is a good idea.

Is she on board now?

She is.

She's on board.

Yeah. She's super supportive. I have found that it is always best to ask for forgiveness than permission. That's how I end up with lots of my things. That's a good approach. I think my approach was, like, hey, this is paying the bills, and this is fun. So I kind of took that approach.

So you threw some money at her, basically, yeah. That's the rest of it. Do you have, like, a fish room or you have fish rooms where there are, like, 20 tanks in this room?

I have a shrimp room currently. Well, I have a little section for my gym. Basically, it's a shrimp room. So I have 120 tanks. 130 tanks right now.

That's a good job. What size tanks do you run?

I, like, running 20 gallons. 20 gallons for my neocaradinos and then my caradinas. I have them in ten gallons. And then for the more expensive stuff that I have, my own kind of just my my place trim. I have them in, like, two and a half, five gallons for the more exotic ones.

I'm just amazed. I'm going through some of your list, and again, we have to go through the steps of how you got this far, but I'm just nerding out. You said before that you have silawossi shrimp. Am I saying that correctly? Because I never pronounced anything correctly.

I'm glad you don't.

Yes, it's a silhouette.

Guaranteed wrong. certifiably wrong. How do you ship the silhouette shrimp?

Well, actually, the shipping process is the same as any shrimp. The only thing that we consider is for the silhouette is the temperature. They can't deal with cold. In the summer, we ship them to places like the warmer places, like Florida and Texas. We ship them with two day fedex, and they do okay. But in the winter, I tried shipping them before, and you need to overnight them. That's no question. So we pack them in breather bags, and for the winter, we add in the heat pack. But this season, I decided to stop shipping January, February, just because it's pretty cold in most of the country. And this I don't I don't risk losing them. But when it gets warmer, we'll ship them.

And what's the average cost of a package of shrimp going out on you said fedex.

Fedex, yeah. Like overnight. Like the shipping cost? Yes, the shipping cost. We have a flat rate for overnight is $45.

That's not bad at all. No.

And then for priority, we have them at $15. $15 flat rate.

How many shrimp can you pop in a box?

In a box, because I'm one of.

Those guys that if I'm going to buy a box of shrimp, I want a plum freaking full because I'm paying for the shipping.

Right. We get free priority shipping at over $100. Okay. Yeah. But if you choose an overnight option, you take $15 off if you're buying a bunch, and the shipping cost data stays the same, and we still offer free shipping as well.

Wonderful. What I want to dive into now that we got a little taste of your business, some of the stuff that you have, some of the promos is how you got there.

Right.

So you said a little over four years ago, you started Shrimp. Walk us through. You got introduced to shrimp, your first shrimp tank. You had some success. Walk is gradually through how you got this far because established business, a name in the market, and clearly you go through some volume.

Yeah, we'll be fortunate. We've been very blessed. But I guess just to kind of go back into my background, I've always been interested in selling stuff online. I've always been interested in ecommerce before Amazon came along. So I guess when I was a kid, I started selling betas. Actually, when I was in college, I started selling betas online on equity and stuff, and that paid for a little bit for college. So I was always very intrigued in selling the e commerce based and how I can do something I enjoy and also provide value at the same time. Living right, that's always a perfect balance.

Well, then let's talk about how you started there with betas, because you said that you grew betas in your backyard. I want to hear about it.

Sure. Yeah. So when I was a kid, I grew up, I brought my first batch of betas in my backyard. So this is elementary school, and then back then, google wasn't that great. So I had this lot of trying error. So I bought my first pair from the aquarium shop right by my school. I took the bus to school every day, and I literally visit the aquarium shop literally twice a day, literally twice a day each time I go to school. And I bought my first pair of betas from them, and then I started figuring out how to breed them, and then I bred my first batch. So I had little cups that my mom would use. Deli cups, those juice cups. I tend to wash them out and use them for the fry and the grove. And then I had a little coat.

In the backyard deli cups. Did I get that correct?

Yeah, like, little deli cups to separate out the fry when they get around two months old.

So when you say deli cups, what are those like, are those kind of like, small dixie cups? Are they?

Oh, no, they're like I would say in comparison, it'd be like port.

Okay.

Yeah. So I had a bunch of those for the grow up. Well, not grow up when I separate them out, but the mills do kind of go as you after two months. That's kind of when I figured there was a good time to take them out. So I had a daphne pond to grow daphne, and then I had a little grow up pond in the backyard for the grow out. That's kind of how I started growing the betas out of my backyard. And then I had hundreds of them. I didn't know what to do with them, so I went to my pet store, and I say, hey, how much do you want? I had a few of these betas. What do you want for them? And as a kid, I'll take a buck each. I'm like, a buck each. Hell yeah. I sold my first batch to them. I forgot how much I made, but at that time, it was a lot of no, it was a big deal. I just kept doing it. And then when we moved here to this, I stopped betas for a while. So my family moved here to the states. I kind of got bitten by the bug again, but this time it was different because I was in the states and trying to figure out how to import them in and how to understand the market here understand how to ship them in boxes. That was definitely a learning experience. So this was in college when I was bored.

Well, let's talk about that learning experience because I find, like, people say, oh, it's a learning experience, and then they skip it. That's like the meat of the subject right there.

That's how I lost $18,000.

Tell us the mistakes, tell us that their successes. Sure, a little bit on that one.

When I was in college, I want to keep betas again, so I kind of had to start buying my first breeder pair. Right. So how do I go about finding these fish? I went online and try to figure out, okay, how do I get them in legally? So I found equipment, I found a supplier, and I started buying them for fun. So I brought in a pair. It's really expensive, I forgot how much it was, but the shipping cost was pretty expensive. So I brought them in and the acl came. Okay, so it was a pretty good first experience. Then a pair became two pairs, and two pairs became three pairs. And sooner or later it became like my childhood again. So I converted my whole my parents two car garage into like a beta breeding barracks and then trying to ship them in boxes. Back then, it wasn't YouTube, it wasn't that wasn't much info. So I went to my local beta club and learned from some of the folks there how to pack them. Because betas, you can't put them breatherbacks, you need like a little airspace. We did that to try to figure out how to ship them. I remember what this experience where I tried to bring in an import of ten pairs of Google quality betas and they came in and they didn't come in in good shape. I think I lost half of that half of that import. I guess from there, it's definitely not a perfect business.

Well, that's just the shipping in. Shipping out is crazy and trying to explain it to some people because it changes. You need to know the demographic of the spot you're going to send it to. It's going to be completely right now if you send it to us, like Jimmy said, it's going to be 20 below in a couple of days. So by the time it gets here, literally hell froze over.

Yeah.

So that's one.

Yeah.

And then you need to know the types of shippers like fedex is different than Ups. Ups is different than the postal service.

Exactly.

It becomes hell in a handbasket to make you feel better. Right. Jimmy and I have certainly been through our line of mistakes. We've picked on each other for him continually. But I think one of the best ones I pick on is the fact a gentleman sent me and we talked about quite a few podcast episodes back. I was rather pissed off because he wouldn't message me back. Not that it happened. Mistakes happen and people learned from them. But he decided that he was going to get out of his hobby. He wanted someone to keep his fish. No one would take them. And like, well, I'll take them. I have plenty of tanks. There's places for them to go. They'll live happy lives. I'll even help pay the shipping. I don't need the fish, but I'll certainly take them because I do rescue work for like, Ohio Fish Rescue, anything that we can do. So he got a big box. I said, you're going to need a cooler, right? It's fall, they're going to get a little chilled. So you're going to need a cooler. Number one you're going to need and it's going to have to be at least a couple of inches thick. I gave him the instruction. Well, he sent them in and he was sending angel fish, shell dwellers, Moscow, Guppies, and it was all in one box, a very big box. He didn't do a cooler. He cut pieces of foam strategically to fit on the sides. It wasn't sealed. It was loose. When he put the fish in, he didn't pack them tight. The bags sloshed around and knocking them out before they froze to death. Because the heat packs he put on the bottom of the box. So the moment that it dripped out, it killed the heat packs. So it's like everything you could do wrong, this guy did wrong. I just want to let him know the status of his fish and everything. But he just flat out wouldn't message me. So I don't know what it was. It wasn't a scam because again, I got him for free. But it's a rough deal where it's the hardest bit of training and learning and there's no unique case where this is how we ship every single time.

It's definitely an art to know how to ship live animals. And I think, well if you fast forward to this day and age like Amazon, I think Amazon has really I don't want to work. Expectation for receiving stuff in the mail is really high. If I order something now, I want it tomorrow. I want you to process it tomorrow. But we ship Monday through Wednesday with two to three day mail so that they won't hang overnight on Sundays. So that's what we consider too. And yeah, and all that is from learning message from the Past where I used to ship every day and I'm like, oh crap. I have, I have a Beta sitting in the post office over Sunday package. He packs only last 72 hours. So by time, by the time he gets out on the post truck Monday and it's 40 degrees outside, it's not going to be a happy fish going to the customer. Shipping live animals in the mill is definitely an art.

Do continue. Don't let me stop the forte just to shipping. But I wanted to cover that a little bit more.

So we went on shipping betas for a while and then it's definitely a trial and error trying to figure out how to insulate the box and how to pack the beta, how much water do I add, because that definitely affects the shipping cost. The whole experience is kind of I did my research as best as I could, but it almost try an error out of college. But as soon as we figure it out, there's definitely a demand for betas, especially the ones I was bringing in and breeding them in the garage was I'm leaving my parents house. So this cost was basically no cost. It's all my time. So I was going to school in the morning and then helping out my parents at a store. So I was working at the froyo shop. My parents bought a froyo shop. So I did that in the evening. In the evening I would do the beta stuff. So that definitely took a lot of time. Like breeding fish in your garage for sale. And that scale is definitely no joke. I got burned out pretty quick. I think at one point I was shipping 100 betas a week, 100 to 200 betas a week on my own and going to school and all that was definitely tough. And then I also had a wholesale customer, so learning how to import fish was pretty interesting too, because I had a guy from Canada reached out to me and he was like, hey, what do you do with all your calls? I called them because I don't have space for him. So I had a little Oscar that feed my calls to because I just wait too. There's too many, right? So he said, I'll take a call. So I had to figure out how to import my calls over. So every month he will buy about 300 500 cows from me. But packaging them and feeding all the fry and knowing how to separate them out was definitely a challenge because betas, it's not like any other fish where you can leave them in the whole time. Let them grow out. You had to separate them out after two months into their little grub cups and then after that grade them and take photos of it was fun at the beginning and I enjoyed it, but I definitely burnt out. The money was okay, but I think for the money and what I had to do, it didn't quite make sense. So I think I stopped doing it after a couple of years. But it was definitely a learning experience of how to do things, how to maximize my time in the business. I think that's definitely what I learned since in the business you're getting paid hourly. So I want to know, I want to understand, how do I get the biggest buck out of it? Because starting that whole process, I was definitely not doing that. Putting a lot of hours in and not getting much to show for it. And also learning how to deal with customers, learning how to deal with Doways death on arrival. You're shipping a live fish in the box, it's going to happen. And how to deal with that. How do you customer service? I think customer service is definitely you definitely have to have thick skin because in that business now, 99% of customers are awesome, but once in a while you get a cranky customer. But like all business, right? How do you deal with that and not make it personal? Because I think any new entrepreneur is very easy to get personal. But it's nothing personal. You're just providing a service, just learn how to make it right. And learning how to have a thick skin to actually handle, that definitely a learning process too.

So it's fair to say that you're out of betas now, aren't you?

Yeah, for sure. I love betas, but it came to a point at a hobby where I felt like I had nothing much to learn. I wouldn't say I want to call myself an expert, but I think it came to a point where I didn't feel like doing betas anymore. So I was looking for something within the aquarium hobby to learn and grow and explore, you need a little challenge.

Challenge of your time either.

Exactly.

One of the things, because let's be honest here, when people are like, oh, wouldn't it be great to sell fish? Yes, but and people don't give it 2 seconds of thought. So just for a minute, since your AUTOBATE is, I think it's safe to ask, could you explain how margins worked at least back then? Because now it's much different, especially with COVID now that it hit. But you breed most of them, all of them? Or how did that work to start out with?

So I started off breeding all of them. I bred every single fish. But then I realized living, I was in Houston at the time and the garage wasn't heated. It was insulated, but it wasn't heated. And beta is for them to do really well, they need to be 78 to 82 fahrenheit for them for the fry to grow out. So the limitation I have with growing betas in my garage was, you know, the time, like time of year. So summer I really put my breeding parasitin and crank it up, right? And then when the winter came along, I tried breathing them in the winter and they wouldn't grow because the metabolism wasn't fast enough. So at two months my fish was like an inch and a half. So they'll add a few field spawns that way. So I wasn't really maximizing the spawn and time I had per spawn. I didn't go into actually buying wholesale and selling it at the time, but I bred everything and sold them because before doing it, I thought it was a great idea. Right. So I'm like oh, the only cost I have was food, which I was growing daphne in my backyard, and I had all the food available. So when that was out of the picture, I was like, okay, I basically have no cost. But then what I felt to realize is that I was putting in a lot of time and that was the highest cost in my energy, for sure.

Got you. There's a few things I want to pick out of you and I think you'd be the person in person to ask these quick things is, number one, the overall cost of selling a fish to know what your margin is and what you're making marketing. Because again, you're an e commerce guy and people don't understand what it means to be competitive. Like, oh, I have a fish, they will come. That's not true by any measure. And to start with that price thing, I always try to compare things to the price of a cow. When you hear a farmer, right. They talk in agricultural terms of how much a fijio do vaccinations, stable care. And they really put an overall dollar estimate on each head of cattle, literally measuring out how much feed they give even to the excess labor that it cost them to do milking, calving season, whatever it may be. So going in cow terms, right, you bred your betas in this scenario. So far you could say, quote, unquote, zero cost beside your time. And we let the time be the X because you can easily spend a ton of time or a little time, depending on how good you are. What would you estimate each one of your beta's cost you and then your sales price back in the day, right?

Man, I think I don't know. It's going to be tough to count because I had to pay my parents rent.

Well, consider that overhead, overhead of the business.

Overhead of business, for sure. But I think at a time, if I would put price, a dollar amount of an hourly rate of what I could have been doing at the time, I think my profit margin was so low I don't think there's a number to put on it. But I guess it's opportunity cost. Right. What could I have been doing?

Sure.

Let's say as a college student, I could be working at getting internship or something and making $20 an hour of $17 an hour somewhere. I would estimate my profit margin was like 20%, 20, 30%. So maybe not even 15, 20% at the time. So that's why looking back now, it didn't make any sense for me to continue doing it. So it's a fun learning process, but as a business model, it didn't make any sense.

And for those that are listening, that are not business majors, which is most of our audience, mind you, business is done on a 40% margin for no cost to handle the object. So if you're selling a can of beans on a shelf. You didn't do anything. That bean, you bought the bean. You put it on the shelf, and then you checked it out at the register or shipped it online. Right. There's nothing necessarily overhead for that object. And that's a bare 40%. If you can do a little better, great. And that's just bare business. Right. So you're saying you got 20% to 15% on livestock, which should be at an 80% or better margin to actually just make money, not to be massively successful, not to make sure you're getting that new Tesla investment, just to make sure that you're keeping the lights on. You're doing a business at least successfully.

Right, exactly. So it didn't quite make sense. Yeah.

I mean, most of the pet stores that I sold to over the years and stuff, if I charge them a dollar, they would triple it. If I charge them $2, they would triple it. And still everyone goes, oh, that's a lot of damn money. They're making money hand over fist. No, they're not. If a fish dies, they make no money. Yes, you have your costs that you can't control, such as electricity, rent. The only thing that you can control is your labor, basically. Adam and I've had these conversations a hundred times about different things about a pet store because Adam, how much were you paying for snow removal? Adams just for out in your lot? It was a tremendous amount of stupid money.

Oh, it was snow removal and then water bills and everything else adds up.

Yeah. Garbage.

Then the monthly tenant association fee.

Yeah. If you think that the pet store is ripping you off, they are just trying to ecology, and none of them are really busy. None of them are making a lot of money. So don't think for a second that anybody's getting rich off your dollar that you're spending at your local pet store. There's very few people who make a lot of money, and those people that make a lot of money will not tell you how they make a lot of money.

Again, we had to pause there to try to get some of the points as you're going across them. But to continue your story, you did beta's, you got burnt out. Although you had success, was it just because you're burnt out? You need to find something that, number one, challenges you, or was it something different where the cost of doing shrimp was so much easier?

I think Trent, I wasn't ready, I think, mentally to kind of put the pieces together. I think as a college kid trying to start a business, it got too much in the sense that there's definitely a lot more work than I thought it was to make sense. And also, shipping fish is not really forgiving there's definitely more challenges shipping fish compared to shrimp. So when shrimp came along, I think it was a different space. Fast forward. That was like almost ten years later from college, so I went to the military.

Wait, you got to help me out. You don't look very old. How old are you?

I'm 30. How old am I? I'm 33.

Oh, my God. You can't be that old. You're older than me.

Yeah, I'm 33.

I got shoes older than both of you.

I need to be Asian because literally he looks like he's in his twenty.

S I would guess in his early 20s.

Yes, it's all that shrimp, body lifting, whey, protein.

So after you left college, did you get a degree in college or did you go to college like me? Drink fire.

Right. So I was going for us to say chemical engineering in Houston because everyone does no, 99% of people in Houston does oil and gas. And then I took a break from college and went back to Singapore to serve the military. And then I came back to I went back to college in beaumont, Texas, just like an hour and a half east of Houston. And I completed my camera engineering degree and then found a job up here, actually in Washington in a refinery. So that's kind of how we moved up here.

Fantastic. Well, I know it wasn't our country, but always thank you for your service.

Thanks.

When did you find your wife? Along the way.

We actually.

High school sweethearts.

Okay.

So we did a long thing for a long, long time. I don't know how it worked out, but it worked out.

One of these times Jimmy is just waiting for someone to say, I asked her to marry me with a tattooed fish. It's not going to happen, jimmy, you can calm down.

So how long have you been married now?

Seven years.

Seven years. Got you.

Do you guys have any children?

In my head, but no children. Just two of us.

Any shrimp on the way?

Lots of shrimp along the way.

Wonderful.

No human babies.

And so you said earlier that your wife is very helpful and supportive of your business, and that's always a big thing, and people just don't realize that. We have so many listeners that talk about how their significant others just don't get it.

Oh, yeah. We're always like people are like, what would you put in here? I can't fit this, this and this. And we'll get another tank. And you're like, I'm sorry, my wife won't let me. And it's amazing you found your problem. There it is.

Rob'S wife is very supportive. She comes down and pulls all the babies out of their central system. My wife last night went downstairs and pulled over 200 guppies out of our little pond and stuff. And it's so great to have people who are supportive in your family. And so I always like to bring it out. When you've got a good, supportive wife, I'd like to give them a shout out and say, thank you for doing that. And stuff.

Successful business recipe right there, boys.

Yeah. And so for the rest of you who don't support your spouse, bite me.

No, it definitely helps. I don't think I would be able to do this without her, for sure. I don't think she would imagine a millionaire should be helping me pack shrimp.

Yeah, I'm sure that's probably on her list of priorities when she started dating you.

Even ex wife Jimmy supports the podcast. I mean, look at this table we stole from her. That's right.

We have a table in our podcast that my ex wife gave me just.

To get out of her house and we drilled holes in it in honor of her memory. Yeah.

And so anyway, I gave it to rob's just to get out of my house.

No bad juju at your house?

No.

Got you.

I was going to honor her.

Yeah, we drilled some holes in her head.

So talk to us about the shrimp business. Number one, you said over four years ago, now that we're caught up, how you got this far over four years ago, dove into shrimp. You found it challenging. We rudely interrupted. You talking about the start of you and the shrimp hobby and how it came in the area. Do continue.

Yeah, so I moved up to Washington and then I started watching videos on YouTube and then ship in the States was starting to get traction. I mean, it wasn't a huge hobby like other fishes, like plecos and viscous and other types of fish. That kind of was a big thing. But the hobby was kind of evolving at that point and I kind of saw that trend of folks wanting smaller tanks and wanting to have a desktop fish tank versus 1500 gallon tank in their home. So I decided to give it a shot. So I went on ebay. No, actually, no, I take it back. I went to one of the larger suppliers, bought some shrimp from, didn't set up my tank correctly, and I put them in, I didn't acclimate them in and they all did make it. So I was like, what the heck? I thought I did all my research, I did everything I could to make it right. And they all died at that point. I think I got bitten by the bug because I found something that was challenging and what I couldn't figure out at the time. So I bought another pack of shrimp and made some mistakes and they all died and they kind of fueled the fire, I guess. And then once I got it right, it was pretty fulfilling, right? Because I bought some shrimp and then now they're producing, now they have a whole bunch of babies, have a ten gallon, started with ten shrimp and now there's 500 shrimp in a little ten gallon tank. And then I thought, okay, now I have 500 shrimp in my tank. And I was at work and work was okay, work paid great, and the folks there were folks that were quote, but I always have felt that was something missing. Yeah, I just didn't feel complete at work. I don't know if that makes any sense. So I was looking for something, but I didn't know what it was. And my wife was like, hey, why don't you try selling the strip on ebay online and see how that works? You sell stuff online before you can figure it out? Yeah, I think I can figure it out. So one day I was looking at the tank. I'm like, hey, let's just give it a shot and see how it goes. Right? Now we have YouTube, so it helps so much because you can learn so much quicker than ten years ago. So learn how to pack shrimp in basically a day. And I found a few suppliers and got all the stuff I needed. And ebay is pretty shampoo on ebay. Perfect. Let's just list it on ebay and take some nice pictures. Now we have cell phones. Back in the day, I had to use my camera and chase the fish around. Now the cell phone pictures are really easy. Then put a macro lens on there. Nice. You have perfect. You have nice stock pictures. You go on. So I put them up, put on ebay, and I think we sold out in like two weeks. I sold like 500 cherries in like two weeks, and I was like, okay, I think there's something there. Then I started dabbling other shrimp, sabrina blue boats. I brought crystals and then started breeding them, and then I did the same thing. And the cool thing with shrimp versus fish is that you can put a lot of shrimp on the business side and the hobby as well. You can put a lot of shrimp in the tank, right. So you don't need that much space to stock up a whole bunch of inventory. So that was really exciting, too, for me. So we managed to get the crystal tank going, blue boats going. They didn't sell as fast as the crystal, the cherries, but because of the stages of the hobby, most people are getting to the easier trim you cut.

Out during that part. Why didn't they sell as well?

Just because they're more advanced shrimp. So most people getting the hobby, the beginners, they're getting into cherry shrimp and the new Yorkeridan shrimp, there's definitely more demand now, but back like four or five years ago, there was less. Well, I think overall now you're going to find less demand than the new Yorkeradina shrimp. But they were still selling. Yeah, I kind of started there and started selling on ebay, all places, and then we decided to try to scale it up a little bit because I realized I couldn't breathe them quickly. So we found a good importer from Taiwan, and we started working with them, and we brought a little I didn't want to risk a whole bunch of money on an import and kind of not work out. So we found an importer that's willing because I think most people don't know, but most importers, the minimum order quantity is like, ten boxes of shrimp or fish or anything. Yeah.

Some of them won't even tell you boxes. They'll just tell you 15 grand. That's your minimum order. And I can't tell you how many people have contacted me saying, hey, you want a wholesale shrimp? I'm like, bomb your list. We have a minimum over there. Over there with you, right?

Yeah. So we managed to find a good wholesaler that's managed to work with us, so we brought in two boxes and learning how to import them in. It was funny. My wife and I drove down to the airport, and we thought we had our documents. So we were there at the customs office, and the customs officer was like, you need this, this. And we're like, oh, my God, we're freaking out. The cargo area of the airport closes at 05:00 p.m.. We're there struggling at 04:00 p.m.. We're going to lose this trim. The stream is going to stay there overnight. But we're fortunate enough that this one officer that gave us a free pass to collect them. But that was a good learning experience because we almost lost our first part. But then we got a custom broker to help us for the next few months. Yeah, that's a lot easier.

That some of the people that don't like having fun with you, you can't tell them that you're hiding cocaine and your anus. You can't do that.

Yeah, exactly. That didn't work over at all.

Maybe that's our problem. Jimmy I once told the Schmelta Airlines clerk that she looked explosive today.

I hate the airlines.

I tried to be nice to her, but then she saw you and it was all over.

The airlines hate me so much. I walk in.

Why is that?

I yell a lot. Because you have to realize that we live in maybury. We really do. I go to the airport. Our airport has three gates. They have 14 flights a day. They ain't that damn busy. And I get there and they go, I'm here to pick up my fish. They know who I am. I've been doing it for 30 years. We're going on break. Well, I'm right here. Yeah, we'll be back from break.

I'm going to be yeah.

Okay, well, let me reach over and strangle you while you're on break and urinate on the floor. They drive me insane. I just want to blow the damn place up, let's put it that way.

You've literally heard them say, I'm going to make him wait on purpose?

Yeah. They have said that to me just to be a jerks. And they've called security on me because I've yelled at him and you brought me in.

His backup.

Yeah. I'm very popular at the airport, and I think it's profiling, personally.

See, that's why we don't look like Adam Wise. Then we'd definitely be hauled out on our herds.

That's right. Anyway, I'm just a fat, little, short white guy, comes in with that attitude, and all I want is my dan fish. I'm here. I've gotten there. I'm not kidding you. I've gotten there. I won't. It's an hour and hour and ten minutes to the airport for my house. I won't even leave until I know they're sitting there, because I can't. Because they come in when we bring them in. They come in from either Florida or California into Minneapolis and Minneapolis, into our little place in fargo, and it's a 45 minutes flight from fargo or from Minneapolis to fargo, and I'll look on the Schmelta Airlines website, and it'll say intransit. And I thought, well, if I take off and you get there 20 minutes before I get there, I'll be in and out and stuff.

The company rhymes with smelter, but yeah, it's not the other one. It rhymes with schmelta.

Yeah, schmelta. Got. You got it.

And and then rat bastards. I'll get there and they'll go, oh, yeah, miss the flight. Well, it says it's here. Well, it's not. It'll be in an 11:00 flight. It's 430 in the afternoon. Am I going to drive home? Am I going to go to the strip club and eat? Because they do have to go to.

The strip club and eat.

I have done that. I will admit I've done that. And you know what? I should have just got a hotel room and just took a nap, because it had been cheaper than sitting at the strip club at the buffet. You got $1 bills yeah.

To take me to the buffet?

No, if you don't want to eat there, there's always hair in the food. Oh.

That'S nice.

People go, oh, I want to import fish. I want to own my own pet store. If you've got nothing but time to throw out the window and stand at the airport, it drives me insane. But after during COVID about a year went by, and I was unable to use Shmelta Airlines, and I had to use Ups. Well, they are just schmelt airlines on steroids who like to charge you more rather than charge me $75. We're going to charge you $150 for half the stuff. Jamie yeah. It's guaranteed overnight. But if it doesn't get through overnight, we ain't refunding your damn money.

What could Brown do for you?

Brown? Yeah. I tell you what.

Burn your green, that's what.

Yeah, exactly. And so you get me in my horse, because I've been importing for years. I had an $800 order come in of tropical fish, and it got into Minneapolis at 01:00 in the afternoon. This is quite a few years ago, and there were four more flights coming into fargo. And I called him and said, It's 20 below. When are you going to get. Them here. And you know what they did? The bastards put them outside frozen solid and then sent them $1,800 frozen solid with heat packs frozen solid. It took me over six months to get my money out of schmelt Airlines. That was beginning of our hate, hate relationship.

So just to give people pictures, there's six heat packs in Alaska box. To get that on 20 below, you have to put them out directly in open air where there's a 35 miles an hour wind blowing against the box.

The heat facts were so hot at one time, it melted the styrofoam damn near. I mean, it just drives me insane.

Oh, man, I totally empathize with that. Yeah, I think it's universal or airline.

And I've imported. I brought in from locals and stuff. And I tell you, if I can get from somebody who actually cares, like yourself, and I call you and go, my shim didn't arrive. And you'll go, Let me check into it, and you get back to them. I can't tell you how many people I'll call. Well, my fish haven't shown up. What do you want me to do about it? Yeah, well, I don't know. You sent them, so yeah, it's just frustrating.

All right. Sorry about that.

Rant I'll get off my bandwagon, jimmy.

Gets like, these Vietnam flashbacks.

God, I wasn't in smelt of flashbacks. Sorry.

Your zoloff is coming. And also our new merch line will have our merch update. Will have fu. Schmelta has a T shirt.

I hate shmelta airways.

All right, so now that we got over that over elongated shipping conversation, do continue.

Okay, where was that all your paperwork? All the paperwork, yeah. So we almost lost our first import, but, yeah, we have definitely struggles with we swapped airlines because I revised this is during COVID by the way, so there's no one there at the office besides me.

That's because they're on break.

Right? But no, I gave my paperwork to the clerk, and she went out there and called the folks to bring the boxes over the front for half an hour. I'm the only guy here. And I went out there, and they were thinking smoke breaks at the back. I'm like, there's no one working on the floor, and I just want to bring my boxes front so I can get a hell out of there, right? And I waited a floor, I swear, an hour and a half for them to bring the boxes over. I was the only one there.

Yeah, that happens.

I can tell.

That happens to me all the time. And the thing is, you're attractive, jimmy's.

Not.

Due to the airbornes.

I'll sit in my car and I'll call in, and they'll have a cordless phone on their hip, and they'll answer as I'm looking at them, and they'll say, yeah, we're really busy right now and loading a flight. It'll be about half an hour. I can see you're right there. Smoking a cigarette. You're not unloading a damn airplane. And that's why people get ran over. I mean, I truly get it. You're sitting there going, I could pin them all four against the wall with my little freaking minivan. So yeah, I totally get it. If you want to have a great business plan where you lose your freaking mind, start importing fish.

There you go.

Yeah, for sure.

So you found a reputable vendor. You figured out that you have to bring a ton of paperwork and that you shouldn't wear a shrimpy business T shirt when you go to the airport.

Yes. Right?

I'm going to get a shirt from like adam sandler says, guns don't kill people. I kill people. Remember that guy from Adam sandler's? Happy gilmore?

As long as it has an airplane in the background, I'm okay with this. So now you've established a good vendor. It's clearly working out for you now. Even still right.

Yeah. So we have a good relationship. We're lucky to find one. Finding a good vendor that's willing to work with you and grow and learn and willing to give you a give us a shot for someone who has no experience whatsoever was definitely a blessing for sure. So. Yeah, we had the same vendor now. So we brought our first import just literally two boxes of cherry shrimp just to see how it goes. Right. Because in my mind, I didn't want to take the risk and blow tens of thousands of dollars on my first import and then have them all die on me. And then that's definitely not the way to go. So we brought our first two boxes, and in my mind, going in was okay. Through this learning process. If we break even, it's a success. So that's kind of my learning, kind of a course of importing trim and quarantining them and treating them. So I was willing to let that money break even on that import. Even if it's a little bit, it's still a success as long as we learn from it. So brother in and then quarantine them because imports have a really bad rep. So we make for shrimp. So we quarantine them for a long time to make sure they are stable. So we quarantine them for a long and then after their quarantine stable, we then start shipping them out. So we don't want to be one of those guys that bring them in and start flipping shrimp. That's not how I wanted to build a business on.

Right?

You want a successful product.

Exactly. So I want to make sure that as healthy as possible and kind of put the customer's lens on myself. I mean, look through the customer's lens as far as the customer service and all that, too, and how they receive a package. We learn how to so I got to install the panel supplier locally. We're lucky to have one there. Have one here and we still work with him to this day. And then actually, before that, we actually cut panels ourselves. My wife and I would buy these huge panels from depot, like the eight.

Foot by four foot.

Yeah. And we cut them in the living room. We measured so we have a template out. My wife would draw the lines, I would go and cut it. So that's kind of how we started cutting styrofoam panels. messy as heck. I'm so glad we don't do that anymore. Styrofoam was all over the place, up in my nose.

Now it's just cocaine.

Yeah. In your wife's hair.

In my wife's hair. All over the place.

Hanging out.

Exactly. So we did that for a while and then we sold that little import and customers were happy and we started building a reputation on ebay. And then yeah, we brought, we brought another one. Did the same thing. Learn from it. Learn how to treat them differently as far as the quarantine process to make sure they're as healthy as possible and out and yeah, so we, we started from there. So we started with a few tanks and then we grew to more tanks and scaled up from there. So during this business, I didn't want to take a look from a firm believer at this day and age, to start an online business, you don't need a loan, you need somebody. Yeah, you need some money. I'm not saying you don't need any money. I was fortunate enough to have a good paying job to fund that business, but I was from Believer alone. So starting small and managing risk is definitely key and taking small steps at a time. Don't go big and go home. We took smaller steps at a time. Reinvesting the business and keep reinvesting and kept reinvesting and learning. I think that was how patience was definitely key. But then it came to a point where ebay just wasn't cooperating anymore, because I knew ebay wasn't sustainable. Just because they can change the algorithm anytime and then rank someone above you and you can't do anything about it, there's definitely tricks here and there where you can go around and kind of give your ranking a little boost to put you on the front page. But then sales started dwindling, and then I was kind of panicking a little bit because I was like, oh my God, it's not going to work, it's not working out. Sales are not coming in. Then I realized our ranking drop, we're not on the front page anymore. Because ebay will usually give new sellers a shot. They put them on the front page and then when you're on for a while, they give new sellers, new sellers a chance and they kind of go on the rotation with however their algorithm works. So I knew at that point I needed to understand how to run an ecommerce business the right way. Yeah, they're folks on other apps, selling on selling and having selling groups because facebook and facebook, facebook used to be the place to buy shrimp and buy fish. Right. But after facebook cracked down on the live animal sales, they moved on to other apps to do that. And I definitely support those folks because those folks are hobbyists selling to other hobbyists, which is awesome. But I didn't think that was a sustainable business model. From my past experience. I definitely want to maximize my so how do I maximize my time and put my business in front of people, provide them better the service that they're looking for so that they can keep coming back for that service. Right.

Repeat customers at the end of the day.

Repeat customers? Yeah, that's the main thing. So if you give them a good first experience, it's a numbers game. Put your business in front of as many people as possible, and then the conversion rate is typically around lines around two and a half percent, 2%, two to 3%, roughly. So it's a numbers game. So I learned how to run my ads, how to build ads, I learned how to the avenue to run my ads, and then I took courses for that. So I paid money for courses, and then I took courses on how to design a website, how to maximize your conversion on the website, how to build email list. Yeah, it's definitely a lot of things I learned in a short period of time when I was working, but those courses definitely helped. And then after starting my ads and making tweaks on them, and we didn't put a lot of money in those ads at first, but I knew once we could get them working, we could use that to scale. And then from there, learning how to get free traffic. Free traffic is like organic traffic, how to rank them. So that was the next step for us, how to learn how to rank organically. So I think it was definitely a different lens to look from it's more how do I run an ecommerce business versus how do I list stuff on even sell it?

Well, just to give a picture, right?

Yeah.

There's certain questions you don't ask a person, like you don't ask a lady how old she is. Right. That's impolite to risk his weight. Right. You don't want to know. You can't count that high.

Yeah.

So to not ask those questions, but instead, how many total shrimp do you think you sell in a month? Right now? Come on, guess. ballpark it impresses. This is where you get to flex. Come on, put it up there.

Okay, so packages wise, right? So packages, I think we're pushing out around 200, 200, 200 ish a week.

And that's not including dry, good sales, all the other stuff. So definitely a sustainable business.

More packages that's in boxes. So I guess if you think about packs of shrimp, our average, average is around two bags of pack two bags of shrimp is around five to ten shrimp a packet in each box. So that's that's what we're doing now.

So what, 25 shrimp a box? Is that what I'm getting the math at?

My brain hurts around around, like, around, like, I would say 20 shrimp a box.

So we'll say 20 shrimp a box, 200 boxes, math, 4000.

It's a lot.

You're you're literally pumping shrimp so out of that pie. How many of those do you farm yourself? Because I'm assuming the high end ones that you have to farm yourself. Silhouesse, stuff like that.

Yeah. So the high end ones, I breed myself. So the caradinas, besides the crystals every month, just because I could have the tank space and breed them to spread the demand.

So is it fair to say, like, 40% to 30%, you breed yourself?

Yeah, around there.

That's incredibly a large number.

And you're talking the story about that first time you imported, you got a couple of boxes of red cherry shrimp, and you're hoping to break even. Did you break even?

Yeah, we broke even.

Broke even. Do you use a trans shipper or do you have an import license?

I have an import license.

An import license.

I drive to the airport myself every few months to bring a name and.

For the listeners and stuff. Can you explain how you get your import license? I mean, it's not all that easy.

I think, getting the license. You kind of just go on like, washington Department of Fishing. Okay. They don't really spell it out for you. I think now, looking back, there's definitely a lot of trial and error to try to figure it out because you can't go online and type, okay, how do I import lifestyle. Right. There's two agencies that works with the import, so that's first customs. So we get an import license from them, and then we get an import license from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife because they will clear the shipment. They would check the shipment as they come in to make sure you don't bring anything illegal or so the customs is the folks that clear the package, of course. And like I said, yeah, the fishing wall looking from the length of whether you're bringing anything. But we tried doing the shipment of sales the first time without going through. There's definitely a lot more paperwork to do than I thought, and that's one of the reasons why we missed our first shipment. So we actually now pay a customer broker, they're not cheap.

No.

Most people think, oh, you just paperwork. I was so surprised at how much they were charging. I was like, you charge? I kind of had almost no choice, really, the way it's all set up, because they do everything for us. They clear everything, they do all the paperwork. I mean, they're really good folks to work with, but definitely more than what I thought.

You could easily, probably spend $200 on all the bs. I mean, I personally use a trans shipper and they do all the paperwork for me and stuff, but I do have a friend down in Minneapolis who did the very thing you're doing with the import license himself and stuff, trying to save a few bucks and get your fish even cheaper. But what he found out is that in Minneapolis, there's only one or two guys that do it, and if they got the day off or they've already gone home and your stuff sits there he called me the first Time he did it. He goes, yeah, I got here at 630. The guy went home at six. They said I have to wait till tomorrow to get my stuff. And people don't realize that. So there's a couple of different ways you can go about it. You can get your own import license, or else you can use a trans shipper and stuff, right? But with a trans shipper, of course you're going to pay a little extra money and you won't have that one on one conversation with your shipper. So, like, when I use a trans shipper, I've got 1012 countries I can pick from, from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore. I can't really ask my salesperson a question about this particular shrimp because then she has to send an email. It might take two days to come back. They're in a different Time Zone, of course, than we are and stuff.

And that's a scenario of, like, a full on distributor model.

That's just very frustrating. You Got a picture for your peace of mind, you have to go out the lesser of Two evils for yourself.

Yeah, for sure.

And to ship in, you need an international airport. So if you are in a rural area where you don't have an international airport, you've just now multiplied the amount of effort it's going to Take to get the Stuff in. Incredibly, unless you're in a huge city with international airport and you have time to go Hang out to the airport, having your importer's license isn't that easy. That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I think the big thing that I want to beat up with you before you leave is your e commerce Transition. So you started on ebay right before we get your history of what you did. What platforms are you currently on now? Is it just your website, shrimpybusiness.com? Or do you still do ebay? Maybe the aqua bid, other things like that.

No, I have Ebay On just because they don't work to set up Other listings. So it's on there, but we mostly do my website. 90% of the Business is from the site.

So how do you drive customers to your website? Because everybody thinks if I get a good quality shrimp, if I make sure there are good margin, I list them online, I build my own website, that they'll come. That's very much not the case.

Yeah, definitely not the case. I think understanding how to Google Ads is king and Facebook Ads, so that's definitely a restriction for life animals because Google has different types of ads, right? So you have Google Shopping ads. When you type a product, the shopping tab click on it, you can go in and shop for different folks of different products from different sellers. You can't do that live animals because they have a restriction on Google Shopping for live animals. So the only avenue you have left is your search, your page search. So you type in carry ship and then your ad pops up on the first sponsored ad, the first thing you see that's search ad. And that's kind of what I had to learn how to optimize that you get the right audience and not pay too much for it. Because it's really easy to overpay for ads. People pay thousands of dollars for ads and not get anything out of it. So I think understanding that and scaling slowly, I think that was key. You know, I didn't throw a bunch of money into ads, spent a little bit. OK, it works. Okay, let's make this little tweak assessment. Okay, we have more folks coming in and then you analyze the demographic, you analyze who's coming to your website and then well, first you ask yourself who is your target audience?

Wait, is your target audience fat, bearded, fish nerds? I don't know how to select that.

In the Google Search, basically by genre you can actually use John. It's kind of crazy if you think deep how much you can actually filter your audience for Google to actually choose the audience for you. So you can age, gender, income, you can select all that stuff. Also you can select the genre that people search for to attract, to put your business in front of audiences that want your stuff and who are searching for your stuff. And then next thing is putting the right keywords. And we're lucky because we're not a very competitive niche. So our cost per click, if you click on the ad, you get charged for each click. We're not that expensive because our niche is not that competitive. So we're lucky. But yeah, I'm trying to make sure that our ads are most optimized as possible. Facebook, I kind of created a little video hall. I'll shrimp Facebook. Folks want videos, they get checked by the video. So if they see a bunch of strip nice shrimp in the tank and lodge for them. It's kind of my approach in putting a business in front of people.

Is that your secret sauce or what? Besides, trying to come to a podcast and get the word out is the best advertisement solution.

Well, that is how we started. But then the next key is, okay, you got folks coming to your website. How do you get their trust that you are a trusted seller? Because I'm not one of the big names. There's so many big players out there and I don't want to be that's not my goal. I enjoy what I'm doing at this scale. I don't want to scale. The other part, I guess, is getting the reviews. So right now on the website, we have about 1000 reviews and our customers are super. They have post pictures and everything. And I think the cool thing about it is because of our brand, I want to create a kind of happy go lucky brand. And I think that branding kind of attracts the folks that we're looking for, folks who are looking to learning. So, customer reviews, branding, and then your website experience, make sure it is flawless. The Snowbucks super easy to navigate, super easy to find. Websites, if you have a lot of products, can be very messy. And when I created this website, I wanted to be as simple, as simplistic as possible. It's different aspects, I guess.

So just going on a little background of trying to do branding, marketing and other things. For those who are listening and thinking or even having your own business, repetition is key. If you're trying to get it out there, you need to not, as you said, blow up your budget, but you need to do it on a consistent basis. You can't just expect one and done is going to do the solution also, how are you doing it? You're not just selling shrimp, you're selling an experience. If you're trying to sell a vacuum cleaner, what are you trying to show? Jimmy? You're trying to show the hassle of dealing with what you have. And wine mines better. So with shrimp, you're really trying to show, wow, the beauty, the color, the simplicity. I make it easy. It comes to your door, you're selling the experience and joy of having the shrimp.

Exactly.

Or you're having something that at least makes them laugh in the commercial, which is why we pick on Joe so often in our different advertisements. We always pick on six inch chola wood and make it to worthwhile because they're going to remember either quality content or the experience that you're trying to offer. So, yeah, you said Google Ads, what was your beginning spend that you saw success with? Because that's always like a mystical number and yours is very much in the niche of our audience when they're trying to think of what am I going to put out for a dollar amount? What's, in a reasonable amount that I'm going to see enough success with, that I'm not burning my wallet.

Like how much ad spend?

Yeah, what was your starting ad spend that you saw success with, that you weren't blowing your budget with?

We start off I started off $100 a month just to try it out.

Is that where you saw a good success is $100?

No, I found some sucks, but then $100, we converted some sales. Right? Sure. You're always looking for return on ad spend. Right. Your role as what is your return on ad spend? For me, my return on ad spend, I want it to be at least 78 right now. So meaning if you spend a dollar, I'm going to get 75. That's really good at spend. That's definitely it kind of fluctuates. There's no benchmark of what good return on ad spend is. In some industries, you have 100 times return on ad spend. Some industries you have to but right now, that's kind of, what if I can do better, great. But we spent $100, we made some sales, and then our return ad spend was around three to four. So each dollar I spent, I made about three to $4. But then we saw real success. Well, not real success, I guess success in my mind is in a business that we can make a living out of. We saw it around the $500 a month spent.

So the measurements are not just like you try to do it adequate in dollars. The measurements that you have is like kpi is literally you can go by a promo code on how people got it back. You can go by clicks, and then you can also go by awareness, and awareness shows by certain views, demographics, social response, and it's very hard to measure, but as long as you're getting measurement, that's how you equate your dollar amount based upon different sales and fluctuations and trying to make it unique. Like, we even picked on Joe recently saying that he use promo code bathwater and we'll send shrimp Bathwater package, which, by the way, you asshole is listening. I want to put it out there that you guys demanded that he had a line item on his website. You can go there now. And he's actually selling shrimp bathwater and actually making a couple of sales at it. So I don't know what's wrong with you people, but I call that a successful ad campaign.

That's funny.

When you create social media conversations, there's a little bit of spend. We lay right there.

Well, we've talked so much crap about his six inch Cholawood down that's the number one Google search you pull up Cholawood not even spelled correctly.

He calls it cholo wood. It was Cholawood. He has the exclusive to Chola wood.

We had Joe here in the studio with us last week, and when I left, I sit out and visit with him a little bit out in the, out in the parking lot here. And the one thing I was going to ask him and I completely forgot is, is I want twelve inch troll. I want him to get twelve inch troll of wood and I want him to sell it.

That's it.

Nick'S gonna have to help her.

Shut up.

He's going to have to get the full twelve inch Cholawood in.

I'll need to hey, if you guys.

Want to get a giggle, go to the website. Shrimpybusiness.com. And on the top of this thing he'll have like food and botanicals and all the other accessories.

Right.

He's got teddy bear chola wood.

What's that?

It's like the big if six inch chola wood was a flaccid penis reference, this would be the thick chode. You know what I mean?

It's a four inch, though.

That's a chode. That's what we call four inches around and long around.

Yeah, that's a good start.

So you got to corner your market somehow. And I think we just found nix.

I think nyx is bigger around than it is long. Is that what you're saying?

It's like the cheese wheelcholo wood.

It's all about girl.

Awesome. Well, certainly help me out in the ecommerce commerce footing. At least get a grasp on some stuff. Ours is a little more unique, Jimmy.

Than our trolley wood is much smaller.

No, our social media marketing. Since we're thin size wise, since we're an advertised department and we supposedly are supposed to sell ad space. You're supposed to get on that. By the way, ours has been very much share this with your friends marketing exclusive. But again, our measurements are listens, not sales. So I think that you've expired us that when we break even on this, we need to spend another $100.

Another $100 on it.

Yeah.

Get started on that Google ad space. I don't know. I think we might not be selling live creatures, but I think Google will flag us for an appropriate behavior.

And then we'll have made our goal, basically because it's good. Bad publicity is just as good as any good publicity. Right.

You guys can get on setting a decision. Six, eight and twelve inch trio. It's got to get in on that.

Oh, yeah.

Expandable.

For your pleasure, Jimmy.

Yeah.

Well, Nick, I think the last questions that we have are for ecommerce especially because that's so crucial for business. Is your vision on how COVID has treated you? Again, you started this business not too long ago. COVID certainly impacted everybody, but yet you're still successful. How did you have to be flexible and what do you see as a change that we all need to adapt to?

When COVID hit, I think we got hit because we bring in ship from Taiwan, right. And when COVID hit, we definitely saw the limitation there because they weren't able to bring in ship on certain days and we bring in some other goods from and they weren't able to bring them in. So I think it's definitely, I guess, open our eyes to see for that limitation. But I think as COVID passes, suppliers are getting more flexible in terms of finding solutions for that. So for dry goodwise. Well, outside the pet space, for example, they have warehouses now locally where folks can fulfill orders versus just drop shipping for shipping them from China. But I think in the pet space, I think COVID has caused a lot more folks to. Purchase online, and that's also live animals. So I think an online business if someone were to start an online business now, it's definitely, I would say, slightly easier than we was before. Because just because of so many people shopping online and more people are getting okay with buying live animals in a box shipped to their door, you're saying.

That it's a lot better market. Yeah, it seems shocking, but when we talk to all of our friends wholesalers and everything else, they say that if they never would have held back during COVID it would have been absolutely astounding because they broke records this year. Even the exponential, like our podcast once COVID the Shock and Scare and people went back to work. Our podcast spiked, everybody finally got back to work. Even amazon's magazine have broke records selling copies. So it's just a lot more time at home.

Yeah, it's crazy. And we sell plants too, right? And plants is definitely not our main thing. There's definitely other suppliers that do only plants. But we have plans for nano tanks and we get them locally from local farms, and the local farms can't put enough out to supply the how crazy. I think COVID has impacted the market. I think folks are at home and they have more time to play around with the fish tanks or shrimp. So it's been crazy. So I don't think COVID that's impacted adversely, probably maybe in the beginning where logistically goes from China overseas might be just because of the flights, but now when the flights are back, I don't see COVID impacting it negatively unless we go back to that space where airline starts limiting flights again.

I had a conversation the other day that I want to share with you guys. All glass aquarium, of course, which is a big part of our industry, is telling their customers that do not expect to get any tanks bigger than 40 gallons for another six months because they shut down their plant for a number of months. And now they're just doing the bread and butter. 510. My friends that own a pet store in West fargo, they've got an unbelievable amount of people who want the large tanks, 75 gallons, 100 gallon tanks, and they're on a waiting list and they're saying it's going to be six more months. Now we're doing this the 1 February, and they're saying it's going to be late summer before we can get large tanks. So if you're out there and you're thinking about doing some additional tank buying and stuff, you may be forced to start buying some used tanks, which is going to drive the used tank market up a little bit. I got a feel and stuff. So if you see a great deal out there on a large tank, go ahead and pick it up and put it in your garage, even if you don't need it. I personally just took about five or six tanks that I'm not using that are all pretty good size, and I took them over to my friends that own the pet store. They sold them the next day.

So all of them?

Yeah, they just do it as a favor for me. I got rid of these tanks that were just collecting dust in my basement, and now they're in somebody's fish room being used, and I got pretty good change for it. I mean, considering that they're used tanks. I mean, they're clean, but they're not spotless and stuff. So if you're going to get into breeding shrimp and stuff, you're going to be in good shape because you can use the smaller tanks. But if you're going to start doing malawi cichlids and different things like that and big, large goldfish, you're going to need some bigger tanks. Good luck to you.

Right, well, Nick Niger, there's other things that we didn't talk about I wanted to briefly go over, which again, your food line, which I think is very interesting. I would like to at least finish up with that, but anything else that you think we missed today?

No, I guess just to cover the customer service aspect of the business. So customer service wise, I do everything for service side.

Wait, can I pretend to be a rajesh on the line? How may I help you?

I don't source it just because it's a very niche to outsource, but at the same time, I definitely want to provide the right information for the customer service. I know other big companies has a big team, but customer service side, it's just me. And you don't need to buy anything from us. You can reach out on Tributebusiness.com, and then I'll get to the question or concern as soon as I can. But it's all me. Whenever you reach out on the website.

That's what I love about small business, is I don't have to go through multiple people to find out if you've got this in hand, if this looks good, if this looks bad. When I do business with certain people, they'll steer me away from things that just came in, saying, you know what, we want to set them for a few weeks just to make sure they're okay.

Just like he told me no to silhouette when I started messaging him and pretend to be a random person online. Like, no. You're in Minnesota. It's a bad idea. Always. You should never do that. I don't want your money. So that's what I like about small.

Business, is that I'm going to call you. I'll be able to get all my questions answered with one quick phone call or an email, and I won't have to wait around. So I love small business. Please support all of our small businesses out there.

Wait, is this where we put out nick's personal cell number right now?

And a Social security number and a Visa number, too?

I can't remember my phone number for some reason.

Don't tell it out loud.

That was a joke. What's the name of your business and your website? Give us that.

Yeah. So it's shrimpybusiness. Shrimpybusiness?

You cut out shrimpybusiness.com? Certainly. Check it out. Free shipping over $100 using promo code. Free ship. And if you guys want to nerd out, we didn't talk a ton about shrimp. We know a little bit about it. Again, this is more to cover the business aspect because there's a lot of loopholes, and people ask us all the time on different business questions. And, Nick, you really did nail some of them home, especially like ecommerce really gave people a platform. And again. You're using shopify. There's a lot of different platforms that are easy to use. wix does a lot square space, and they're all, as far as I've seen with other people using them very much animal friendly. When you're doing it correctly online, they accept different payments. So that's not a huge deal. It's more of how to get your name out there. And I think you really did hit the nail on the head with a group of the questions. So certainly, thanks for that. But go to bentley pascal pasco. bentley pasco's? YouTube channel. And you can check out this interview that you guys did. You did two videos. I think it was over 2 hours of content. You guys got real nerdy, man.

We got super nerdy.

You got deep in there.

Yeah, we've had bentley on this program several times and stuff, and what a great guy. What a great guy.

Knowledgeable also into Magic the Gathering, which is why I love them the most.

You are so super nerdy.

So, again, certainly check that out, guys. We'll have links in the description. Nick, thanks so much for coming on. You got anything else for us, buddy?

No, I think that's it. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure meeting you guys.

Well, thank you so much. Adam, you got any questions?

No, I'm good, thanks.

You're good?

Thanks for coming on.

Hey, Adam. Nice T shirt.

Yeah, thanks. My kids are excited that we have merch. We didn't realize that we have merch.

Literally before we started the podcast because we're on twitch TV. According, guys, if you want to watch us live on mondays at 07:00 Central, jane's like, I need to go put on clothes.

We're a little confused.

Like oh, the merch line. That's right. Okay.

Thank God.

We're just expecting a lot of, like, pog faces and and Milk dud references in the chat, so thank you, Adam, before I close it.

Oh, okay.

So Adam is wearing our aquarium Guy certified shirt tonight, right? Is that correct?

If you like the content of the podcast, go to our website, buy a T shirt, look like Adam.

You know, nobody looks good at that.

B fly like a half white guy.

Ever, as I like to call him. malibu Camp.

Right. Well, until next week, and Nick stop by again. Sure, man.

Thanks so much for having me again.

Thanks, guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this melting.

Don't even get me started on this.