Turning a Hobby Into a Multi-Million Dollar Business with Josh Willard, Josh’s Frogs

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: And I said, I don't have a job.

I resigned for my job because I was about to start this internship in a week.

they said, sorry, there's not much we can do for you.

And I go to my wife and I say, Hey, there's not a lot of jobs, for people

that have a youth ministry degree I'm not really sure how we're gonna save our house

and how we're gonna put food on the table.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Ordinary

People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Every now and then a story comes across my desk that I say to myself, I have to

talk to this person cuz it is so wild.

Today we're talking to somebody who turned their hobby into a multi-million dollar

business, has over a hundred employees, their Facebook page is crazy popular, over

165,000 followers, they are the largest online retailer of reptile and amphibian

products in the United States, and they've been flagged now four years in a row as

one of the fastest growing company in Inc.

5,000.

That is just incredible.

And it's all due to our little friend the frog.

Let me welcome to the show the CEO and founder of Josh's Frogs,

and that would be Josh Willard.

Josh, how are you?

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: Doing really well.

Excited to talk about, our business and talk about how we got to this point.

Yes, definitely.

Now, should I call you Josh, or how about Pastor Willard?

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: With, just Josh is fine.

because we'll definitely come to that in a second.

So why don't you tell everybody where you're from and where you grew up?

So I grew up in Jackson, Michigan for

the, majority of my childhood.

So we lived in Bellevue for a few years and then my family, moved

out to, Jackson when we were eight.

And that's really where the love for animals started.

We were two blocks away from the swamp.

we spent a lot of time in the swamp catching stuff.

did a little fishing in that, swamp.

Yep.

yep.

And so, uh, my mom's rule was, uh, you could keep anything for one night and

then you had to return it the next day.

And so that's where the love of animals came from, was right there in Jackson.

so you had this love of animals and at some point in time

you decided to go off to college.

Yeah.

Now I gotta ask the question cuz I'm trying to figure out the order here.

Yeah.

But you did become a pastor, so did you study that

Yeah.

So seminar.

Yep.

So I went to, uh, college, I, uh, did a, short stint in pre-med.

Really loved science.

Did really well in science and school.

thought that I wanted to become a doctor.

And got to connected in that first semester working with an

organization called, Youth for Christ.

It was an organization that, went into the schools.

for students that might not have, a real good, youth program in their church.

They did a youth program there at the school to pull,

kids together, in that way.

And started doing that and really fell in love with that and, uh, really

caught a passion for young people.

And changed my major to youth ministry and, finished my,

four year degree, with that.

And then, I was a pastor for, uh, just short of seven years, after

that, after I graduated, from college.

And during this whole time, you have a love for frogs.

Yes.

Yep.

So I, sold off everything when I went to college.

Couldn't keep anything in the dorm.

And, uh, when my wife and I, got married, I was a pastor.

She was a substitute teacher.

We didn't have two pennies to rub together.

And I really felt hey, as an introvert, I need to find some stuff that, that, that

really, allowed me to recharge different hobbies that I, could, invest in.

And, came back to the animals and I said, you know what?

I wonder if I bought a bunch of stuff in bulk and sold off the excess

stuff if I could cover the cost of this, terrarium inside of my house.

And so my wife allowed me to do that.

I filled our apartment bedroom with supplies against all the walls.

I sold off a bunch of stuff that I had purchased before the

credit card statement was due.

And I had this tank of frogs in our living room and I was like, that was awesome.

I think I can do it again.

And so I asked my wife, Hey, can I get another tank?

And she said, yeah, sure, you can go ahead and get another one.

And I did the same thing again.

And it grew from that into, we were a two room, apartment and we

didn't have any kids at that time.

So my wife said, Hey, you can have your animal room in that one apartment.

Just don't, nothing can come out of that, room into the rest of our house.

And so I was buying stuff in bulk, selling off the excess.

Build my collection in that room.

so I could have a couple hours, every other day taking care of animals

as a kind of a recharge for being in a job that's a very extroverted,

focused, being an introvert myself.

So I want to take a moment to give a shout out to Mrs.

Willard, cuz I'm seeing this as a total Homer Simpson moment where you come home

and go, I got this idea to sell frogs.

Can we keep 'em in the living room?

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: And she's sure.

I don't know very many women that would

say

Yes.

Yes.

Well, well the apartment wasn't the worst part because, we ended up moving

out of that apartment into our house and it was an unfinished basement.

And my wife had no plans for that.

And so I said, Hey, instead of one room, can I have the entire basement?

And she was like, yeah, sure.

As long as it stays in the basement.

And so ended up growing my hobby from, one bedroom in our apartment

to one basement in our house.

one.

Oh, that is so great.

so you've experimented with selling some, like you said you, you bought some

equipment, you're selling that in bulk.

When did you make the leap from selling just the equipment?

terrariums,

whatever,

to actually selling live frogs?

it was a hobby for, a few years where I'm

just trying to build my collection.

just really trying to fill the niche of finding a hobby for me to do.

And, at this point, the, church that I'm involved with is growing.

And, we're serving, well over a hundred kids on a given week.

And so my job transitions from less doing stuff with students to doing stuff

with adults that are leading students.

And, and I'm really feeling like, Hey, I really, really enjoy, interacting

with students, and helping students.

And so I think I wanna do a kind of a career change.

And so I decide to go get my master's in counseling.

So I do that.

I finished the program and at the very end of the program

you have to do an internship.

And that's where you do eight months working at a facility.

You get a bunch of hours and then after that eight month period, you

can graduate and get your license and you can go into the field.

I was all set up to do a juvenile detention home.

Right outside of Lansing and a week before my internship was supposed

to start, I get a call from them.

Then they say, Hey, we lost our funding.

We can't take an intern.

So I call the college and I say, Hey, I'm supposed to do my internship in a week.

We need to find a new spot.

And they say, Josh, there's just no way we can do it in a week's time.

There's no way.

We need you to wait a year and do it with the next group that does it.

And I said, I don't have a job.

I resigned for my job because I was about to start this internship in a week.

And they said, sorry, there's not much we can do for you.

And I go to my wife and I say, Hey, there's not a lot of jobs for people that

have a youth ministry degree right now.

I'm not really sure how we're gonna save our house and how

we're gonna put food on the table.

We're talking and I said, I've been selling this stuff to build this hobby.

I wonder if I stopped building the hobby and just was selling extra

stuff if I could make enough money in this given year to support us.

And so at that point, I had not made any money.

I'd just grown the amount of frogs I was keeping.

that year, I made $16,000 in profit to that one year.

was able to save our house and put food on the table, before the, internship started.

So it was really forced upon me to really start the beginning of selling animals

and selling, selling, stuff profitably.

Instead of just, trying to build a hobby at that point.

So you wrote up a business plan, a marketing plan,

did market marketing research.

Nope.

I didn't do any of that.

I love it I love it.

Your back's against

the wall.

Yep.

Let's just start selling more frogs at Homer Simpson Moon again.

yep.

So I start my internship, at that point really started wrestling with

okay, I think there's something here.

I'm doing my internship, from nine in the morning till eight at night.

And then coming home and doing frog stuff and packing boxes

till midnight, one o'clock.

Getting up at 5:00 AM putting the boxes out on my front steps so they

can ship out and doing my internship.

And I do that for that eight month period, which was just a blur for me.

Had our first kid at that point.

And at the end of the internship, the director says, Hey, Josh,

your clients show up and they pay.

Would you like a job?

We'd like to just continue this moving forward.

And with one kid at home, at that point, I, I said, I think I want to

try this frog thing for now and I can always go back to this counseling thing.

And so I explained that to the director and said, no, I think I want to try this

frog thing and see if I can, grow it from where I grew up, uh, over the, last

year and into that internship and see if I can turn that into to something.

And I always thought that I would try it for a few years and then

go back to the counseling and that just hasn't been the case.

Was your wife working during this time or

did she decide to stay home?

So she ended up, becoming a, teacher.

So she got a full-time, teaching job, right within a couple of

years of us getting married.

yep.

She was a teacher at that time.

becoming.

So you do something really scary

Yeah.

With a child at home.

Yeah.

And you are doing, like I said, something risky.

Yeah.

In the fact that you're gonna be an entrepreneur and you're

gonna start building a business.

Do you got any kind of entrepreneurial background?

Were your parents entrepreneurs?

you're, the one, maybe Black Sheep uncle in the family was an entrepreneur.

Do you have any of that behind you?

No.

I like when people ask that.

I try to look back at my past.

I don't have any relatives or anything like that or parents

that were entrepreneurs.

But I do remember my mom just getting sick of us being around the house and

saying, Hey, you guys need to start a lawn care maintenance company.

And so she made us, make these flyers.

she really

that?

Yes.

Yes.

So

she,

my

said, go cut the grass.

My mom didn't say start so she kicked us out of the

house and, talked us through like, how do you go to somebody and how do you

ask them if you can cut their grass.

and how do you do all this stuff?

So my mom walk us through that, and we started cutting people's grass and doing

weeding and doing other landscaping

stuff.

You're getting

paid

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As a 10, 11, 12 year old, kid.

and we were in an environment, a neighborhood with a lot of people that

were much older and on fixed incomes.

And so a lot of the people could not do the lawn care that was uh, required of

them and also couldn't afford to go out and pay a professional service to do that.

so we filled a little niche in our little area, for that.

And so that, that was our entrepreneurial start.

I, I mentioned earlier that I'm an introvert like that.

Like I think my mom was probably more so doing it because she realized that

tendency in me, to be really reclusive.

And so really pushed me out of my comfort zone to learn some skills about

how do you look people in the eye.

And how do you sell yourself and how do you communicate uh, with people.

so I had that, at that period of, uh, uh, of my life.

But beyond that, just really learned by listening to a lot of podcasts,

reading a lot of books, and just really trying to figure it out as I go.

When you first had the idea about, hey, I'd to have this as a

hobby and you bought some extra stuff.

So typically some of the questions that I'll get from people is initially,

where did you get that first seed of money to start this going?

Yeah.

Yeah.

at that point, I had an Xbox and so I sold that for $150.

And then I used that $150 to start the website.

And then I, had a credit card.

So I bought this supplies on the credit card.

And then I had 45 days to sell them.

So I was putting my back, yes.

So I put my, So I put my, backup against the wall and had 45 days

that I had to sell the stuff before the credit card payment was due.

Wow.

I'm glad that all worked out.

Yep.

So when you talked before about building out the website, did

you build a website yourself?

Did you

Oh, yeah.

I had $150 and I wasn't sure how long that would last.

yeah, we, if you, if you use something called the way back machine, you

go online, you can type in our, um, web address into the way back

And it's ugly and it's nasty and it's, but it works.

Yeah.

Totally surprised that it ever anybody ever purchased from it.

But it actually works though.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

And I think that's something too, that when people go out and they

start these businesses and they think everything's gotta be perfect.

You just had a website that just worked.

Yep.

Yep.

Now, done your website, when you launched it, did you have a,

credit card processing built in?

A little shopping cart.

People could buy a, a tank and I want this frog, and whatever it is,

they could do all of it on there.

So I didn't have any technical background.

Um, I was decent with the computer, at that p at that point, but really

couldn't do any of that complex stuff.

And so what I did, used PayPal at that point was doing buttons.

So you could do PayPal buttons.

And so I built it out with PayPal buttons.

So you'd click a button and you'd purchase that stuff through PayPal.

So it was all on PayPal's backend.

But learned a, grabbed, go into the library, grabbed an h html book,

and learned how to insert that code and tried to figure out how to

do it on a shoestring bug budget.

so I could support that hobby at that point.

shoot.

For our audience, we're gonna take a moment to take a quick break,

and when we come back we're gonna talk about the explosive growth

that Josh's frogs has gone through.

We'll see you after the break.

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Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today we're talking with the CEO and founder of Josh's Frogs,

and that would be Josh Willard.

Josh.

Before the break we were talking about getting your business up and running.

You'd built the website, thank goodness for PayPal, cuz you could

start collecting money online.

What I would like to do now is start talking about the

growth that you're seeing.

and I ask this question because it seems like there's, and I want to talk a lot

more about this too, there's like a tight community around the people that actually

enjoy having these exotic frogs as pets.

And also too how you're learning to breed them and to grow them and everything else.

let's just go back, so you've got the website launched.

You're starting to make some profit, like you said, I think 16,000.

Your first.

So you made that profit.

Talk to us about the next growing point from

Yeah.

Yeah.

Once I decided Hey, let's take this out of my house and let's rent a

little bit of space there in Owosso and let's make a real good go at it.

hired my first couple of employees at that period.

And what was that like?

That was scary.

it was fun though at the same time.

So scary in the sense of bringing on employees that you are responsible

for giving them a paycheck on a regular basis is scary.

But the other part of it that's, exciting for me is realizing like that I can

bring people into our business that have drastically different skills and abilities

and when I have.

Being an introvert, I'm not a very good salesperson.

So one of our first hires was Zach, who's still with our company today to head

up some of the sales and marketing that does some of the trade shows that we do.

He loved that type of work.

Very great with People fills his bucket to go and talk to people all day long.

That drains my bucket to, to talk to people all day long.

So that was really exciting to bring on some of those people, at the

very, beginning and fill the niches that, that I, I could realize hey,

I'm not really good at this part and we need to be good at that part.

As we move forward and started hiring some people that I was connected with,

so people from my the town I was living in that I had met through church.

And started doing friends and family, like finding out who has

a, who has somebody that they know that needs a job at that point and

really building a team, around that.

And so we got to the point where it became, less scary and became more stable.

And we really looked at our business and the potential of our business and said, I

think it's more than just selling animals.

I, I'd love for us to have the opportunity to make a difference in our hobby.

And so that's when we sat down and we looked at our business and we're

like, okay, we're doing some stuff on the business end that's really good.

So we took all of these, parts of our hobby and we brought 'em all together.

So we brought the plants in, we brought the bugs in, we brought the tanks

and the substrates and the animals, and we're selling all of it together.

And that's makes good business sense at that point to do.

But I said, we have the opportunity to grow and to

make a difference in our hobby.

And very early on, we decided to take a stand and say, Hey, we weren't gonna sell

wild caught animals and we were gonna produce all of our animals in house.

And so made that decision from the very beginning.

And decided that that was gonna be our mantra moving forward.

That we were gonna, we were gonna change our hobby.

We're gonna improve the quality of the animals that are in our hobby.

And do it ethically and sustainably.

and so we decided very early on that we were gonna do that, and that

has grown and changed, and morphed as we've gone through the year.

it changed from.

Hey, we're just producing animals to, Hey, I think we could partner

with other organizations, uh, that the, frogs are native and we can

support some of that conservation.

So we started working with, some, partners outside of, uh, the United States, Places

in Madagascar, Jisu, that, is collecting some of the frogs in the wild to do to

establish colonies of those in captivity because their habitat is being destroyed.

And so we're able to partner with them.

And so every time we sell a Mantella, we're giving money back to that

organization and connect people's hobby and what they're passionate

about doing, with conservation, efforts outside of the country.

So let's go back and unpack a couple things there.

So first off, the one thing that caught my attention when we came in

here was the fact that you were one of the first online retailers to

actually bring everything together.

So before, if you wanted to start collecting these little critters, you

might go to one website and get critter, then you'd have to go to another website

and get the terrarium, and then you have to go to another one to get the bedding

or yeah, get the plants or whatever it is.

But you brought that all in-house on one website so

everybody

could order everything they need to get

Yeah, yeah.

It was a, it was a glaring issue in our hobby.

That's how you had to do it.

and so it was a really quick win for us to do that.

Just so much cost savings for the and consumer to be able to just

order stuff from one location and get it all shipped in one box.

And so that was a really early win.

And as a growing business, that was hard to do because

we would have to grow slowly.

So we couldn't just start with carrying everything.

So it was adding stuff and adding stuff, as we continued to grow.

So it was a process, to do that.

And so a process that we're still continuing to this day

And before when you were also talking too about the

conservation efforts that you were doing as well, there's this talk about you

just can't go out and capture frogs and then expect them to breed in captivity.

There's, there's like a life cycle.

There's something that they have to go

Yep.

to get acclimated to be and in captivity.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

Decades ago, you would think that the majority

of pets in our, in the exotic pet industry would be wild caught.

So these are animals that are being collected, could be halfway around the

world, collected, stored at a port, waiting for paperwork to come through.

And then those animals are shipped.

Usually not in a very fast method to the United States.

Then they make it to an importer who's then gotta sell it to a wholesaler

who's then gotta sell it to a pet store.

And so it wasn't a very, efficient supply chain, especially

for something that is alive.

And so a lot of people really had a lot of trouble.

Um, and it was very difficult to keep a lot of these animals

because they endured such stress in this transportation process.

And then also too, in a lot of cases, we're very old

animals at that point anyways.

And one of the cool things, it's really awesome when it lines up this way.

but doing captive breeding is ethical and sustainable.

But it also produces a much better product.

you, I just talked about that supply chain issues with getting a wild caught animal.

In captive bread animals here in the States, we're breeding them.

We're taking care of them.

And somebody purchases one of those animals.

We put it in a box at 4:00 PM and we give it on a FedEx truck and

So that animal experiences a longer than normal nighttime period.

And that's it.

They're in their new home and ready to enjoy a happy long life.

Now, and I do want to talk about this cuz it still cracks me

up, that you can put animals into boxes and ship them around the united states.

Do you do globally or just the US?

So globally we'll work with export partners.

And what we'll do is we'll ship a big lot of animals, hundreds of animals at

a given time, to an importer who will consolidate that together and then sell

that to, a distributor in another country.

So we'll consolidate big, lots of animals that go outside of the country, but

the vast majority of our animals are sold right here in the United States.

Now, the second thing that comes to mind is when I think about,

of course I'm a big fan of the internet I buy 90% of my stuff on the internet.

At some point in time, you probably had to make this decision about if you're

gonna start ma building pet stores.

Yeah.

Or not, or maybe that wasn't even on the roadmap, but talk to us about that

decision to stay as an online re retailer versus becoming a brick and mortar.

Yeah.

That's a, a, a big question because I think it, it ties on a lot of things,

that have to do with just not our business and not in the pet industry.

But trying to figure out what you're good at and what you're built for.

So, um, you take a look at the way in which our company's built and

staffed, like we're really built and staffed around selling stuff online.

And so what we made a decision about was that we need to get

our stuff into pet stores.

But it doesn't have to be us doing the pet stores.

What we've done is we've partnered with mom and pop pet stores, that

might have one location we've partnered with, larger pet stores

that might have a few locations.

And then we've partnered, with larger big box, pet stores, to get our products into

the hands of, uh, customers that might not be looking for animals online, but would

be interested in animals and happen to come upon them in their local pet store.

We're trying to find those, uh, those partners that can

help us reach more people.

and realizing that we don't have to do that part of it, that, we can partner with

other places, in order to accomplish that

And speaking of partnering, one of the things that

I noticed being, I'm a fan of your facebook page is going through there

and all of a sudden one day seeing this big old hairy tarantula photo on there.

And it's glow in the dark blue.

So I'm like, great, I'm gonna nightmares tonight just from that photo.

And of course, your Facebook group's very active.

Yeah.

And I would like to talk about that in a little bit.

But you've decided now to branch out.

It's no longer Josh's frogs.

It's Josh's frogs.

It's like you can't know his arc here or something.

You got all these little critters.

So talk to us about branching out into

Yep.

and,

spiders and other creepy

Yeah, we started off with frogs just because

that's what I started off with.

But as we started adding, more products, we found that people like to collect

multiple different types of animals when they're keeping those as as pets.

And so we've branched off into uh, reptiles.

We breed.

not very many snakes.

We read a couple of those.

Mainly we're focused on lizards that are kept proactively.

and so we keep some desert species and some tropical species, that are, that

share some of the same supplies and some of the same care some of our, frogs do.

And then we've, also branched off from some of the insects into

some of the pet bugs as well too.

So we're doing a lot of tarantulas now.

a few scorpions, those kind of things.

And then even down to the, the land crabs as well too.

And hermit crabs as well too.

So we're really trying to branch out and trying to find, opportunities

to connect people with nature.

And that's where we really found our mission and helping people get

outside the, walls of their, cubicle.

And really enjoy what's the, rhythm and nature, that they can bring into

that glass box on their desk or in their home or in their living room.

And so we're really excited about some of those opportunities to interact

with new people, and find new ways to, bring them into our hobby.

Certainly.

And I can imagine, and I do gotta talk about this too, because

this is not a typical business.

No.

So I'm thinking about your hiring process for employees when they come in here.

So we met that gentleman, Jason, yeah.

Yep.

Who is running the tarantula room.

And as soon as I met him, I thought the might.

Yeah.

He's a tarantula guy.

so when you're looking for employees, you get kids that are scared to flip

burgers at McDonald's for crying out loud, but yet to put out there and

say, oh, by the way, you'll be handling tarantulas and if the tarantulas get

out, you're gonna have to chase 'em down and put 'em back to the cage.

So I bet you first off, there's probably a ton of people that wouldn't even apply.

Yeah.

But second off, how do you find that right fit.

Yep.

to be able to come in here cuz all of

your employees have no problem

Yep.

Yep.

The.

Creek Co.

Yep.

Yep.

I think, it's really a unique, type of business and I think that, opens us up

for unique opportunities to reach people.

when it comes to on the hiring front.

So some of the things that we do is we.

we will go to our audience and our customers, and then

we'll do job postings there.

So it's interesting that most businesses don't do that.

But, uh, sometimes some of our best customers also make our

best employees as well too.

We do a an employee purchase program, where employees get all of our

products at a very discounted price.

And so that's a big draw for some of our employees as well too.

We try to partner, with other organizations, especially organizations

that outside the pet trade but are very similar to what we're doing here.

So scientific community, legislative, that kind of stuff and partner with

them to just show what we're doing on a conservation captive breeding front.

Which sometimes leads to opportunities for people, to come and work here.

And we just have a really good HR team that engages with our marketing team to

really promote those types of, uh, roles.

And then we're just constantly trying to recruit, really good

people, that are really passionate about changing our hobby.

And so we have people that will come from all over the country to work here.

One of the good examples that I like to point out is, on the insect front, you'll

have, people that are really into insects.

So they go to college and they wanna study entomology, which is the study of bugs.

And they graduate and they find out that, hey, there aren't really

a lot of jobs taking care of bugs.

There are a lot of jobs killing bugs.

But that's not really the passion that they, that they went to school with.

And so we find these people that we can, recruit that say, Hey, you know,

instead of killing a bunch of bugs, would you like to raise a bunch of bugs?

And so that's been a really cool partnership and funnel for getting people

that are passionate about what they're, keeping and getting them to come here.

We also do a lot of projects, in teams.

So one of the, um, uh, in our isopod department, we started working with a

bunch of different crabs as well too.

So in, when you think of taking care of Isopods or Rollie Pollies,

it's a job where you're cleaning cages, you're harvesting bugs.

It gets monotonous.

And so we've been able to combine those jobs with very research driven,

experiment driven opportunities to breed other animals in that department.

And so I think that's a draw for people that we are, we're combining

doing new stuff, with doing stuff that we're just trying to do on scale.

what I'd like to do is, I wanna circle back cuz

you mentioned during our tour, you mentioned this, the legislative piece.

So we're looking at these cockroaches that you're reading and you showed me

this one cockroach that's I don't know, not any bigger than my fingernail.

And you were telling me those things.

First off, they sell for $10.

a piece.

Yes.

Yep.

Which blows my mind.

Yep.

But second off, people are going to federal prison.

Yep.

For smuggling

Yep.

Yeah,

I'm, it still blows my mind.

Talk to us about the laws that are around

this.

Are The Isopod craze is all about collecting these new

color things and about having the new and, and better stuff.

And so that, that incentivizes people to do things that are illegal, bring in bugs,

from other countries, without the proper.

Permits or paperwork, not going through the proper channels.

And so there are people getting arrested and investigated for, stuff like that.

It's really interesting.

On the animal side, there isn't a lot of legislation there.

It's really pretty wild, wild west.

On the bug side, there's lots of that.

So we, we partner with the U S D A, we have to get permitted,

in order to receive bugs.

And then we also have to get separate permits for every single state, for

every single bug that we ship out.

And so sometimes states will come back and say, Hey, no,

we're gonna deny your permit.

And we have to work with them to develop ways in which we can safely ship those

bugs to those locations and sometimes convince them that partnering with us as

a legitimate business that's following the rules is in their best interest.

So one of the interesting ones is we, New York came to us and denied our permits

for selling roaches into their, state.

And then we appealed and said, There's this black market trade of people

selling roaches all over the country.

So roaches are making an into your estate already.

But part of the permit process requires that we do some record

keeping that we could report to you.

Here's how many shipments are going into your estate.

And so we said, Hey, like we re-look at our application.

Let's talk about this and let's find ways to work together.

And we were able to get the permits now needed to do that.

And so we really feel like working with the authorities and the, governing bodies

in our, country to on the bug side, but also on the animal side, like all the

time there's, new legislation that'll come up trying to ban certain types of

animals or are nervous about, how those animals are gonna affect our ecosystem.

Michigan did something a few years ago where they were considering a whitelist

and we worked with the dnr, and some other players in our government to talk about

what would make sense, common sense wise.

And we really feel like, our role, as a player in this industry is to be involved

in that type of legislation and education.

Not only our government, and the agencies that might regulate

us, but also us as a hobby.

How do we create a clean trade, that doesn't impact wild populations?

So we work with organizations like, the University of Tennessee.

We're working with right now on uh, a disease prevention in our hobby.

So how do we create a clean trade that keeps diseases that might be

in one country from spreading to native populations here in Michigan?

When we're in, involved in a pet trade that could possibly, spread

some of those kinds of things.

And we're really excited about working with those types of,

people to to come up with solutions that are win-win for everybody.

And another thing too that I would like to talk about, you

mentioned this briefly, is your marketing.

So as somebody who plays in this world, I gotta give you guys kudos.

Cause like I said, your Facebook, a group over 165,000 followers.

You put a picture of a frog or a tarantula or whatever it is, people are going crazy.

Yeah.

So you have obviously plugged into this huge community of people out there.

Yeah.

And.

Of course we walked through your marketing area.

I was surprised to see so many people on your marketing team.

Yeah.

So talk to us about, like how did you go about, first off,

creating this marketing team?

Cause a lot of people

think

about

home.

Yep.

Yep.

in the online world, you almost have to think about that first.

Yeah, very much It's, um, in the online

world, we don't have foot traffic.

We don't have cars driving by.

a lot of it is really forced.

We have to force the eyeballs onto the products that we're selling.

And our marketing team does a really good job of presenting what we're

selling and presenting what we're doing to customers in areas that they are at.

So it's Facebook, it's YouTube.

Um, it's different forums.

We're everywhere trying to put our products in front of, uh, customers

that are interested in that.

And also building the brand that we want to do.

So a lot of our marketing focuses on the conservation type stuff that we're

doing and focuses on, some of the behind the scenes stuff that we're doing that

I think really endears people to, to brands that they feel like what we're

doing, is actually making a difference in our hobby as opposed to just

somebody just trying to sell stuff.

And then I think we're a little bit unique, and blessed in the,

arena of we as keeping animals.

That just a, allows a lot of content And so, we're able to put out a lot of content

Yes, you are animals

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: and a lot of different animals,

animals, so nice and beautiful too.

And one of the things that I would like to talk about as well, you mentioned this

several times, is it seems like there's a lot of places out there that when they're

selling these types of exotic pets, you were talking about how they're so.

close to end of life.

Yeah.

You know, versus what you're doing here.

Talk to us a little bit about that difference.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we mentioned some of that with the wild caught animals.

A lot of times they're catching adult animals, who knows how old they are

and how close they are to end of life.

One of the good examples of that, here in the US is hermit crabs.

A lot of the ones that are collected, they might see for

sale, especially down in Florida.

Those are all full adults, might not have very much life left on them at that point.

Because they're really hard to collect and breed in that regard.

So one of the projects that we worked on with a partner was how to captive breed

hermit crabs, which creates a much better experience for our natural habitat,

that were not pulling hermit crabs out of the wild, but also provides a much

better experience for the customer that get something that's younger, that's

gonna last a lot longer than something an older animal, would do at that point.

And it's less stressful on the animal as well, too.

Josh, if somebody's listening to this and they wanna

check out your website and they wanna look at your social media and

all that other good stuff, what's the best place for them to do that?

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: Go to josh's frogs.com.

and don't worry if you misspell it.

We own all the misspellings, and so I'll get you to the, the right spot.

The, uh, worst name ever for a business to have that many s's in it.

because an s sounds like every other letter as well too, so

it's really hard to find that.

So josh's frogs.com, but you can find us on, uh, Facebook, YouTube, as well.

And then, uh, we do, um, markets every so often where we invite people, the

public to come and check out our facility.

We have those on a regular basis.

The next one's coming up here in a couple weeks.

Oh, nice.

For our audience, you can just go to total michigan.com, click on Josh's

interview and be able to see all the links that he mentioned there.

Josh, once again, thank you so much for having us in today.

this is quite the place.

So anyways, thank you for letting us in.

Josh Willard, Josh's Frogs: for letting Thank you cliff.

It was, good to have you and good to show you around.

Great.

And for our audience, we will see you again next week