I think. I think it was, like, January 1. I had 30,000 followers on Instagram, and then by the end of January, we had, like, 55,000. So my channel is growing pretty rapidly, and, yeah, so is the funds that I'm making from. From Instagram, especially. Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with nerds making money with their nerdy passion. And I am joined today, as always, by my co host, Frank. Hello. And today we have a very special guest
that I am very excited to talk to. And I don't know if he would necessarily ascribe himself as a nerd per se, but, you know, here at Nerdpreneur, we're about lots of unique businesses and people following their passion. This is Aram, and he is from Urban Tarantulas. Hey, guys. Happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here. Urban Tarantulas means the walking around, eight legged tarantulas. You're a breeder of tarantulas, is that correct?
Correct. I'm a breeder of tarantulas. Importing tarantulas and some other. Other critters. Yeah. I'm a lover of the hobby and now a video creator. Nice. Yeah, well, that's. That's how we got to actually know you and hear about you is through Instagram. I see the content you put out at urban tarantulas. For me, it's very fascinating. I got a little bit curious with spiders and just started looking up content, and yours was, like, some of the first I found as I dug into your content.
You've got a pre. You don't. You're not, like, casually breeding a couple. You seem to have, like, a really solid, big operation with lots and lots of tarantulas of all different breeds and types. And the more I got into it, the more I started to get a little bit more fascinated by what you do. How did you personally get started in tarantula breeding.
Absolutely. Okay. So the way I got into tarantulas was I used to, I used to frequent on Reddit, so I was just going through random photos here and there, and then I came across, like, this, this blue tarantula. It was a large blue tarantula at the time. I had no idea what it was, if it was a spider or a true myglomorph or something, but so I just started just digging into it, and I wanted to find out what
it was and how I could get one. It turned out that it was a goodie sapphire ornamental, also known as the p. Metallica. Very, very well known and sought after in the hobby. It's one of the bluest tarantulas in the hobby. And I just fell in love with that particular tarantula, and I had to have it. I absolutely had to have that tarantula.
I started doing research and found a couple of local people who carried that tarantula, and I contacted them, and I went over, and I didn't just buy that one tarantula. He had a couple other ones. And I just, I came home with, like, ten tarantulas that very first time. I was, I was hooked. How do you transport ten tarantulas? It was babies at the time. They were tiny, so time they were tiny.
Smaller tarantulas don't cost as much, and I didn't want to spend $500 on an adult female when I could get a baby for $100, I had a whole bunch of little baby tarantulas, and I brought them home, put them in little containers, and they didn't take up a lot of space. Ten tarantulas. And it didn't take up a lot of space at all. So I was like, okay, well, I have some more space. Let's get some more tarantulas. And then within a month, I had, like, 30. Within a year, I had, like, 150.
Wow. Wow. And then I was like, okay, this is getting very, very expensive because. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. What is your cricket bill like? It's got to be crazy, right? Okay, so about $50 a week. $50 to $60 a week I spend on crickets. I do not want to breed crickets. They stink. They don't smell very nice. Yeah, because I saw that video where you had commented that you had just fed 500 and then a thousand crickets, uh, to two different containers, and I was like, I'm sorry, what? Like, who count?
Who even counts that high on a daily basis? Like, apparently, you do? Wow. No, we buy the crickets in like thousands, though. So I purchased 2000 crickets or 1000 crickets. So usually it's $50 a week. But I also feed them, uh, super worms. We feel them Dubia feed them Dubia roaches. And I breed the Dubio roaches because roaches, they don't stink. Crickets, they probably breed pretty easily too, the roaches, actually. Not as fast as you would think. Not as fast as you would want. Actually.
Up until recently, there was a shortage of cockroaches. Believe it or not, ever since the. Pandemic, that's not something you ever hear, is like, there's a shortage of cockroaches out there. Shortage of crickets. There's actually, there's always a shortage of crickets. Crickets are never steady. Sometimes you might not get your order. Wow. Of the crickets, like, if you order 5000, you might get like 3000. Hey, we were short. Oh, my gosh.
So that's an insider tip to any listener that loves crickets and wants to start their own business, is go into the cricket breeding. That's not even a joke if you cricket breeders do very, very well. Like, when I call an order to crickets, you know, they don't care who it is. They don't. It's, it's not even good customer service because they don't care because they're making so much money. Wow.
Well, where else are you gonna go? Right? Like, so you said you had 30 tarantulas and like, that was a month or two later. Where are you at now? I wanna say between three and 5003 and five. You know, how do you 2000 that you're unsure of? Yeah, that's a pretty big range I've seen in your videos. You have these big tanks where they, like many tarantulas, live communally in an area. Right. And I didn't even know that tarantulas lived in communities like that. Is that common or.
It's not very common. There are few tarantulas that are communal. The most communal tarantula in the world is the M. Balfouri, or the Balfouri, I've been corrected recently by a latin speaker. So it's pronounced M. Monocentropus Balfouri. And they are the most communal tarantula in the world. And I have the world's largest community of them. Wow. The largest in the world. Is that like a record for them? I believe so. The, the second largest is probably like around 100.
And something that I've seen that's been posted. So I have 646 in one tank. Wow. Wow. Is that the. Did you just do some video where you, like, literally lay down in that tank with them or something? I feel like that's something I saw. You did see that. So what I did was I ordered that large enclosure. It was 72 inches by 24 by 24 or by 24 by 22. And I laid in there and we had, we released 456 tarantulas
while I was still in there. That was to kind of show people that, hey, you know, a tarantulas shouldn't be so scary. You shouldn't be terrified. Them. They're not gonna, like, jump and kill you. You know, that, that stigma that's, that's out there, the, that tarantulas are their killers. They're super venomous. I mean, they are venomous. All spiders are. But I just wanted to kind of show people that I could go in there
and I'm not going to get hurt. I mean, there was a chance I was going to get bit, but, you know, that's a chance that I was willing to take. It feels like you have that chance every day. The way I see you handle the tarantulas, it's. You seem very, very comfortable with it. Yeah, I'm curious. Was that something that came naturally, like, right off the bat, you're like, I'm totally comfortable. Or did you learn that over the course of time?
Not at all. No. In the beginning, I didn't even handle my tarantulas. I was just kind of, uh, super, super careful and a hobby there. There are a lot of people, um, more experienced keepers that just don't handle the tarantulas. And there are some people that do just like, you know, with any other animals. There are some people that want to handle their snake, some that don't. Some people handle venomous snakes. I mean, I look at those guys, I'm like, what?
What are you guys doing? You know, that's, that's insane. You're literally playing with your lives with, with tarantulas. Like, you can't die from a tarantula bite. So over the years, I just became more and more comfortable handling certain tarantulas. Like, there's a 90 something percent chance that you're not going to get bit by a new world tarantula. You know, new world tarantulas are from like, North America, North America, South America, like in the mexican regions and stuff.
And the asian tarantulas are considered to be old world. They're more defensive. They are more, their defense mechanism is to bite of. With new world tarantulas, their defense mechanism is to kick hair instead of biting you. So what does it mean when the new world ones kick hair? So they kick hair from their abdomen, and it's their defense mechanism. And then you get hair. Get hair in your face or on your arms, and it's really difficult to get the hair off of the person.
Is it kind of like a splinter? I guess so. Tiny microscopic splinters? Maybe. Whoa. Do you have to be, like, holding it, or would it kick hair, like, far away? Like, what's the range on kicking hair? The range is probably six to ten inches, I would say, at the most. That's pretty far. That's further than I thought it would actually shoot. Wow. Actually, I'm gonna go with six inches, not ten inches. All right. Wow. But. But I don't. I don't really have a lot of tarantulas that kick hair.
I actually sold off most of my tarantulas that do kick hair because it. It's super, super annoying to have hairs on person, and. And then you can't really wash it off. You have to, like, literally get, like, masking tape or something and then stick it on onto person and then just, like, peel it off. It's really annoying. So I don't have a lot of tarantulas that kick hair. So I have a lot of tarantulas that their defense mechanism is to bite you. And even then, it's
super rare for somebody to get bitten. I mean, all animals can bite. Yeah. I'm curious. Even humans. You were. Yeah. You were telling your story about how this first started for you, and I'm curious when you first thought that this would be a viable business, because, you know, you're. I mean, I I can imagine there's some obvious answers, but I'm curious if there was a specific story or someone told you something where it just clicked.
I asked, how many babies do tarantulas have and how much can I sell them for? Like, how many babies can you get out of a couple of tarantulas? It depends on the species. There are species that you could get maybe, like, 20 babies from, and there are species that you could get, like, a thousand babies from. So obviously, the ones that you get 25 babies from are going to be more valuable, a lot more rare than the ones that you get a thousand babies from. They're gonna wholesale.
They're gonna go for, you know, $2.50 each, all the way up to, like, $10. But then you said, like, the blue one that you originally wanted to get is like a $500 tarantula. Potentially. An adult female of that particular tarantula regularly sells anywhere from, I want to say $380 all the way up to $700. It's depending on the availability. That's, that sounds like an awesome business. Yeah. And is it people like the people who are buying them as pets? Is that kind of, I'm assuming that's what
people are buying tarantulas for? I don't know. People buy tarantulas for pets. People buy tarantulas and call it a collection. There are a lot of people that want to collect, for example, all the tarantulas from the mexican region. So all the brachia pelmade, the entire brachiopelma genus. Somebody wants to have one species of, of that tarantula and complete their tarantula. Or somebody likes asian tarantulas, or somebody likes pocillotheria tarantulas. Yeah. So people will specialize.
It sounds like, I'd like to know, because this business that you've got going, you, it sounds like you've expanded it a lot and you could continue to expand it by getting more and more spiders, more and more tarantulas. But I'm curious, do you have a vision or something that you're working towards with this business at this point? Maybe it's only a one year goal, but maybe a five year or a ten year goal. Do you want to expand other species or other warehouses or breeding areas?
What do you think of speaking from a business perspective? It's tarantula breeding is dealing with a lot of customers. It's very tedious answering the same question over and over and over again. Is your tarantula poisonous? No, it's venomous. Blah, blah. I like helping people figure out what tarantulas, you know, might be right for them. But I don't want to do this long term. I don't want to have, you know, a thousand of one species.
I just want to be able to have a few of one species that I really particularly enjoy and do breedings and whatever, you know, give away all the babies that we produce in my facility. So that's where content creation comes, and that's what I have been doing on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and just starting YouTube shorts, and it's proven to be pretty lucrative so far. I've gotten paid from Instagram for three months in a row, and it's been doubling every single month.
So my growers have definitely increased. Nice I think. I think it was, like, January 1, I had 30,000 followers on Instagram, and then by the end of January, we had, like, 55,000. So my channel is growing pretty rapidly, and, yeah, so is the funds that I'm making from. From Instagram especially. I'm only getting paid decently from Instagram right now. TikTok doesn't pay that well. That's awesome. So you see this going a bit more towards the direction of content creation?
That's what I would like to do, yes. I don't want to keep breeding and selling. I mean, the amount of work involved in breeding, I can imagine, is huge. I mean, just that number of crickets. Alone, I would say the maintenance is. Yeah, feeding the tarantulas and doing maintenance, you know, taking out the dead crickets that the tarantula hasn't eaten a. I don't do it myself, you know, just. Just by myself. I do get some help now, but, yeah, it takes, I would say, like, just one feeding would.
It would take, you know, between two people at least 10 hours. Oh, my God. Oh, man. That's so much time. How often do tarantulas eat? Is it, like, every single day, or do they eat once a week? Once a week? Okay. That's not that bad, right? Once a week. I was envisioning every day. No, that would be bad. So you can go two weeks without feeding. You could sometimes go three weeks without feeding. It's okay. Like, some of the larger tarantulas, they don't have to eat.
You could feed them once a month, the larger tarantulas, but the babies. The babies have to eat once a week at least. I'm curious for your brand, because you've really created a brand on Instagram and TikTok around urban tarantulas. How do you see that brand? And what is some of your core values that kind of shape the direction of the content you make? Still got a lot of work to do on my branding, to be honest. But I think I want to show.
I want to show authenticity, and I want to be real with people and also make it kind of fun at the same time. I want to show. I do want to show that tarantulas are not scary. I do want to do that. So this new direction with content creation, how long has that been? You made it sound like it was three months with Instagram. So is it about that long in general, content creation? I've only been doing it since.
I want to say I've had an Instagram with urban tarantulas for maybe a year or so, but I wasn't really posting it when I started posting. It was just like, right before October, somewhere around there. That's when I started really posting every day. Consistency is very, very important with trying to, you know, make some money with Instagram. If you miss, like, a single day or two days, they're not going to push your video.
So if you guys want to do, if you guys want to make money on Instagram, make sure to post a reel every single, every single day. Not a regular post, but a real Instagram has a thing going on right now where they are doing this thing called bonuses. And I, once your channel starts getting some views, they will invite you to the bonus program. And once you're invited to bonus program, that's when you start getting paid.
And they want to see consistency, and they want to see interaction with your viewers. They want to see you going live. They want you to reply to, like, all the messages that you receive, basically interacting. That's. It's great to hear that they at least have started to create a shared profit program for the creators, too. I think that's actually really smart of them to, to start moving in that direction, because for a long time, there was nothing.
True. I feel like they've lost a lot of people to TikTok, because TikTok's killing. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. They're copying TikTok in a lot of ways. But there's also other streaming platforms, not just the big one, Twitch. But I have a friend, she's an actress down there in LA, and her day job really is streaming on all these other platforms, singing songs or dancing.
And she is asked by these people, and she signs contracts with them by, with these companies to, you know, do 30 hours a week of streaming. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I think Instagram's finally kind of gotten on that, and they're trying to find some hybrid between Twitch and TikTok. Well, I feel like everyone's getting on tick tock now. That's true. Even, even I do. I feel like Facebook is trying to make a comeback, though. Facebook, supposedly, from what I've heard now, it's meta, right?
We're not even supposed to save Facebook if we ever want to get promoted. I don't have much more on, like, the content, but I did have a question, actually, because you do sell tarantulas as pets. And I'm curious, why would tarantulas be a good pet? That's a good one. I think, in my opinion, tarantulas make excellent pets because they are so low maintenance. Tarantulas don't need
a water dish like 99% of them. Tarantulas eat once a week or once every two weeks, and if you have a larger tarantula, you could feed them once a month. Tarantulas are just, I think, in my opinion, probably the lowest maintenance of all the other animals that you could get. I think that's the reason why they make great pets and also because there's such little maintenance. You can get a whole bunch of them. Maybe a few thousand. Yeah, maybe a few thousand. You
get a whole bunch of them. There's something. Something that's going on. You know, one tarantula could be molting tarantula, getting ready to be paired. The other one might want a, you know, a big meal. There's always just, like, something going on. When you have so many tarantulas, it's interesting to see, to see what's going on. And after a molt, a tarantula looks completely different, by the way, because they're more. They're more vibrant.
So tarantula keepers always look forward to molts because, you know, they put on a new suit, they remove their old exoskeleton. They look so much more colorful, more vibrant after a mold. So that's really exciting. What would be a good starter tarantula, or is it completely up to your own taste? You know, it depends on who you ask. I recommend, you know, just pretty much any tarantula, as long as you're an adult, you're above 18 years old,
and you're gonna respect the animal. But if you ask some of the other seasoned sellers, they're gonna be like, oh, you know, shouldn't keep an old world tarantula as your first tarantula. And that's something I completely disagree with. And I get a lot of crap for that, because I just feel like if you're an adult and you understand the animal, you know, the. Their potential, you could own any tranche or, like, there's no tarantula that's just gonna, like, jump up on your face and fight you.
You know, they're in there in containers. There are a few species that are more defensive than others, but as long as you know that this tarantula is super defensive, it just don't handle that particular one or just have a catch cup, just in case that tarantula decides to, you know, rear up and throw its legs up and try to be more defensive. So a good starter tarantula of course, there are tarantulas that are completely docile, and no matter what you do, they're most likely not gonna bite you.
You could just cup them with your hand. I can name the species, but we. Probably wouldn't know what that is or how to spell it. So my opinion, in my opinion, if you've done your research, you could own pretty much almost any tranche. Maybe not the oBt, which stands for orange bitey thing. What, uh, yeah. What is it normally called?
The scientific latin name for that particular tarantula is the paternitylus murinus, or people know that species as an oBt, which is abbreviated for orange bitey thing or orange baboon tarantula. Is it particularly bitey? It's super bitey. You could just look at that tarantula, and then it'll just rear up and try to get super defensive. And I do have some videos on there. What is the average life expectancy of? I mean, I'm sure it varies from breed to breed, but what is the difference?
What's the commitment for tarantula? How many years? Short answer. Anywhere from a couple of years all the way up to 30 years. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God. 30 years. There's spiders that live 30 years? I think so, yeah. 30, 35 years? I think. I think there's been some tarantulas that have been recorded to live over 30. If I'm not mistaken, a male tarantula does not live very long.
So a male tarantula, once he matures, which could take anywhere from one year to five years, maybe typically closer to one year, two years. It's called going into their ultimate mold, their last final mold. Then they become a mature male, and they will live for about anywhere from six months to a year, and they will just die from natural causes. That's why male tarantulas are always cheaper than female tarantulas, because they don't live as long. Right, okay. Right.
Males are very niche. It's. They're only for people that want to breed. Is there anyone that you follow that really inspires you in your business or in your world? Oh, in my business, in my world, probably. Jay from prehistoric pets. Brian Barcic. They've really built a serious audience, and they have, like, dream animals. They have a dream facility. Definitely check out those guys. I mean, if you guys don't already know them. Yeah, they have amazing content, and they're super, super active.
They have their own team. They don't do their own editing or filming. They're not one. One person gig. That's what I am right now. So I would. I would love to be in a situation where I only think about content creation. Right. Work in that genius zone. Yeah. Right. Instead of trying to figure out, hey, you know, camera angles, editing, editing. I'm trying to get my wife to learn editing, so start editing my videos. So you're married. How, like, did you.
Were you married when you became a tarantula breeder, or is that something that happened before I got that question. I've been with my. I've been with my wife for four years, and I've had the tarantulas for about ten years, so. Wow. So she knew what she was getting into. Yeah. She wasn't happy about it in the beginning. Oh, man. It must be a growth process to find out someone is a tarantula breeder. Was there a time where it just. It got easier to explain to people as you meet them?
It's never easy to explain to people. People just. And they find out you mess with spiders or you do spiders and tarantulas, it's. It's automatic that they look at you as, like, kind of a weirdo. Well, same with D and D. Yeah. Trying to explain dungeons and dragons to people. People are like, I just did that. At a wedding recently. It wasn't my own wedding, but it was a friend's wedding. Saw an old friend and told them about D and D, and they're like, what is that?
And it came down to me trying to explain it, and five sentences turned into five minutes. And I think that's kind of the definition of a nerd, in my opinion, is, like, we have some context for what we're obsessed about is needed. I think that there's a lot of nerdy passions out there that. Where people follow it, whether it be bringing spiders or dungeons and dragons or, you know, creating certain types of art, you know, I think we're potentially interviewing a guy who's a zombie magician soon.
So there's gonna, like, people are pursuing their passions and finding ways to turn that nerdy thing into a business. And I think that that's kind of what nerdy nerdism is about, is you just have a crazy amount of passion, and there's got to be some context for explaining what you do. Yeah, I like the way you put that. There's got to be context for. Yeah. And educating also. I find that a lot of the time, when we're nerds about something, we want to educate others and. And kind
of enlighten and share that knowledge. I mean, you were saying that Aram, like, earlier, one of the things that you do a lot of is educating folks, and I think that's really cool. Like, I get really energized off of people looking to educate around their passions. I really like, actually, how you said one of the core things is that you don't want people
to be afraid of tarantulas. And I'll say, as someone who started following your content as a curiosity, the more I'm watching your content, the more I'm, like, I had always said I never get a tarantula as a pet, but the more I'm watching your content, the more I'm thinking, you know, I could probably handle a tarantula. It would be kind of cool. And I think that a lot of what you're
doing is resonating through that content. The comfort and the ease at which you're handling them definitely makes people feel, I think, a lot more comfortable. So thank you. That's really cool to hear. Yeah. Try to keep it fun and, and easy, you know, whether it's a tarantula doing a front flip or a trance. Yeah, that was crazy. I love that video. I'm curious, what's some of the worst advice that you've heard in your niche or industry? The worst advice is to not own any old world tarantulas.
I know I keep talking about the new worlds and the old, old worlds, but there's just too many people out there. They're like, you know, just don't own an old world until you've been, you've been keeping tarantulas for, like, ten years. Oh, my God. Facepalm right there. You know, there's people out there that are terrified of old worlds, really? Just because they can be defensive. But, you know, all animals can. Yeah, very true.
Yeah. Especially if someone doesn't know how to handle an animal or is like, just educate yourself. Just read up about the animal and don't have to be afraid of them. They're not going to kill you. Like, especially tarantulas. So in this niche, I would definitely say, don't listen to people that ask you to have lots and lots of experience before you can handle, handle, or own a different species that you really want to because you think it looks so colorful or so cool or because,
because it comes from a certain locale. Like, I get this so often, you know, when people ask me about the Balfouri and these old worlds, and they're like, oh, okay. I'm just definitely not ready for that? I'm just asking about them. I can't own an old world tarantula yet. Right. You said you answer a lot of the same questions, right? I do. Can we speed that up by you just answering those questions here on the podcast? What is the most common questions that you usually need to answer for people?
Are tarantulas poisonous? And I have to reply with, tarantulas are venomous. Poison comes, like, from the body, like a frog. There's a poisonous frog, and then poison can secrete from their. Their body of venomous animals are, like snakes and tarantulas, where they can inject the venom. Yeah. Or if you eat the tarantula, it might poison you. Right. So that's the most common question.
Next common question would be, when they come to my facility, they're like, oh, what happens when there's an quake? Then an earthquake happens. Like, oh, as if. Do the tanks break and do they get out? Yeah. All my containers, they're. They're kind of sitting on. On shelves, and, I mean, we're gonna need, like, a big earthquake for all the containers to. Right. You know, fall. That's. That's another common question I get. And do tarantulas bite? They can just like any other animal.
What's a great beginner tarantula? I answer that a lot. What was it again? Because I don't remember these latin names. Great beginner tarantula is as long as you're above 18 years old. In my opinion, you could own just pretty much 99% of tarantulas out there as a first. Okay. People might not agree with me, but it. It's okay. I'm fine with that. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna go right ahead and say, it's okay. You're an adult. You're gonna educate yourself, particular tarantula. You'll be fine.
You can own them if you want them. You can own them. You can keep them. You can give them a good home. Yeah. Assuming a person's responsible and gonna do the research. It's. Yeah, it sounds like it's like any other pet. I mean, last real experience I had with a pet, you know, it's not a spider, but it was a bird, and he was a very vicious bird at times, and he wasn't venomous, but he could draw blood with that beak. It's. Yeah, I mean, you just kind of take your poison, you know,
no pun intended. But, I mean, you take your pick on what it is that you're willing to do the research and maintenance on. But there are tarantulas that no matter what you do, they are most likely not going to be defensive. There are certain species that are like that, that are good for kids to handle. Like, I've gone to shows and I've done shows where I've put tarantulas on kids. A real big adult tarantula. And we've let the kids handle the tarantulas. Wow. That wish that came to my school.
That would have been cool, right? Has the tarantula ever actually got out and you don't know where it is? Oh, that's another common question. Yes. Happens all the time. Oh, my God. So it's like, yeah, that's just how we live. And you find them randomly places, and not randomly. They are found in the room, so eventually they turn up. But I've had a situation where in my old house, like, a eight inch tarantula did escape and I never found it. Eight inches, like, for
like nine inch or something. It was a giant. Oh, my God. And I have no idea where that tarantula. I never found that tarantula. Sleep tight. Do you find their dead bodies here and there? No, I've. Besides that particular one recovered pretty much all the tarantulas that have escaped. Is that the one that lives for 30 years? Is it still out there? Asian species, they require humidity, so that one probably didn't make it. Guessing maybe a month or so. Oh, my gosh.
Wow. Yeah. Are you especially nerdy about anything else outside of the core business? Yeah, I am, actually. I do collect some funko pops. How big is your funko pop collection? I recently sold about, like, 300 funko pops. I have two dozen left. I have a whole bunch of funko sodas, and I have a lot of funkos coming because Funko did a collaboration with wax nfts. Basically, you purchase an NFT that is going to be redeemable for a physical funko. And I have a whole bunch of those coming.
Nice. Wow. So do you. Do you keep these. These fungals in their boxes? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Because I've never purchased these, but I've seen these around a lot and I have, you know, I know lots of people who like them and I just don't know the. The culture around them. Yeah, absolutely. You do not want to take them out of the box if you want them to retain their value.
A lot of people do take them out and play with them, but, you know, there's funkos that go anywhere from $4 all the way up to thousands like five, six thousands, I think, like, maybe even in, in 10,000 range. Yeah. I play magic, the gathering, and there is a very similar kind of culture around that. Okay, that's cool. I collect some Pokemon cards, too. There you go. Some Digimon cards. Pokemon. Digimon. Are they still making Digimon cards? They just recently, I think it's been,
it's been about a year. They came. They came back. Oh, my gosh. I don't play them. I've never played the game. I do love to collect the cards, and I do love the art. Got a whole bunch of Digimon stuff right now. And just recently, they released a booster box called the classic collection, where in, like, the new form, you're gonna see, like, old artwork. Oh, sick. So it's pretty cool. I get it. So they're bringing back the classics. The classics. There you go. I love the artwork.
Is there anything that you do daily that really is, like, the biggest key to your success? Am I successful? Sounds like it. I make sure to reply to all the messages on Instagram and TikTok. I try to reply to all the messages. Sometimes it takes, it takes a very long time. Sometimes if I have a video that reached a couple of million views, that might have, like, 14, 1500 comments, and I try to reply to everyone, and that does take a while.
It's not just like looking at the comment and then clicking fly and thinking about a reply, but you have to load and then you have to go, you know, scroll up and scroll down. And it's very time consuming sometimes. And then you lot, you get lost where you last made the comments, so you kind of have to reload. So that does take up a lot of time. And I try to do that on a daily basis.
Wow, man, that's awesome. I'm really glad we asked that question because I think that, you know, what people sometimes think is it's just, you know, oh, the most important thing I do is say this post or this other thing, but it's like you're really, like, creating a personal drive and to, you know, a personal connection with people through doing that, that work. And I think that that's actually one of the reasons why you've been growing and maintaining. That's huge. Yeah. I think it's important
to have loyal followers. Those are the guys that always push your content. Yeah. They're always there making comments and sharing your videos that you've created. Definitely want to interact more with my, my loyal followers. Yeah. If you had a million followers on the topic of followers. If you had a million followers, what advice would you give them? Million translate followers. What advice would I give them? Does it have to be translator related?
Doesn't have to be, no, just like if. Yeah, if you doing your thing was giving advice, if you had a million followers, what would you give them? Probably to not be too hard on yourself. Allow yourself room to make mistakes, and it's okay. Don't try to be perfect. And when you're not, you're just too difficult on yourself, honestly. You know what's funny is we've done a few of these interviews now, and we've asked these questions of multiple people.
And what I love about this question is that we get a lot of people saying stuff like that. Like, this has come up consistently around, like, being kind to yourself while still being aspirationally driven. Yeah, you can be driven, but not have to beat yourself up to do it. And I think that's awesome. So I appreciate you saying that. Absolutely. Why don't we do a couple random rolls? So, aram, this next section we're going to do is called random rolls.
How it works is you will roll a D 100, and based on the number, we will ask you a question from our table here. Okay, cool. Okay. One d, one hundred. It's showing 35. All right, what is the best wi fi name you've ever seen? I've had some funny ones that I've googled and used, like, FBI surveillance. Yeah, I'm gonna go with that one. FBI surveillance. I like that one. Yeah, nice. I did, uh, I had two at one point.
You know how they'll do, like, the 2.4, then the 5 did dungeons and then dragons once, and I thought I was so clever, and then every time I told people, they just facepalmed, and I was like, okay, all right, I guess it wasn't that funny. All right, go ahead and do another one. Eight. Okay. Here. Oh, this is good. I feel like this is all right. If you had all of Jeff Bezos money, what would you do with it? Try to be friends with Elon Musk. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Well, I feel like that's pretty easy once you get into that space travel circle, right. Competitors, when you could put your resources together and, you know, go for a common goal. Right? Yeah. Is there any other questions you got on that side, or we do any rapid fires? Yeah, let's do rapid fires. They're quick and silly. Like, for example, the first one. Coffee or tea? Tea. 100%. Drinking tea. Right now, what's the best munchie or snack food. That's a difficult one.
I don't really snack much. I'm gonna go with, like, weird asian snacks, probably. Yeah, we're on the west coast. Yeah. Things that I've not had. I don't like to have the same snacks regularly. I like to try different things all the time. Okay, what's the one that you're working on right now that's in the cabinet? Durian snacks. Oh, my gosh. Those are the really stinky fruit, right? Yeah. Yeah, they are. I don't think I've ever had durian. Oh, I had to google it.
You're not allowed to take them on airplanes, apparently. Yeah, exactly. I was just about to say that. Or on public transportation. You're not allowed to take them. Why? They stink. Oh, they're so sweet and delicious. I thought it might have to do with pressure, and they might, like, expand or something. It's like, wow, I didn't realize these were explosive. A classic. And a favorite question, just like any job interview. What superpower do you want besides flying?
Because I feel like that's just the cliche answer. Probably be doing, like, super complex calculations in my head and doing, like, chart analysis and figuring out best stocks to pick and things like that. So, Elon Musk. I guess so. That's his brain. He pretty much goes into his nothing. Box, and then he's just seen all the information. Yeah. Read it. Yeah. Nice. How about, is ping pong a sport? Yeah, you move around. All right, cool. How about your three favorite pizza toppings? Three favorite
pizza toppings. Pepperoni, pineapple, and mushroom. Another one for the pineapple. Awesome. Wow. I actually saw in one of your photos that you've got a cat or. Or two. No, I've had a cat. He was a bangle. He. He passed away in 2018. I'm sorry. That sucks. Well, I did want to. So I wanted to ask, how many cats are too many? How many cats are too many? Probably, like, 15. Whoa. That's a high number. That's a high number. So you'd be okay with ten cats hanging around? 14 cats.
You're still in the game. I'm an animal lover. I love. Yeah, when you've got 5000 tarantulas, that I guess that tracks. That makes sense. How about. How about one nerdy question? Yoda or Obi wan? I'm gonna go with Yoda. The little green sweet. I think Yoda is batting 100 right. Now, so hold on. But I always have to follow up with, why Yoda? Because Yoda is a lot more memorable, like the way he speaks and he's like a short little green man. Kind of like sticks. Sticks in you, you know?
Yeah. Where can people find you and support you or potentially get a tarantula if they want from you? My Instagram is the most active. Urban tarantula is on there. Same with TikTok, same with Facebook. And I'm going to start a YouTube very soon. I want to do longer format videos. I also have a website, urban tarantulas.com. people are interested in purchasing a tarantula. I don't have too many species available on my website, but we are going to expand and offer more species.
Yeah, I saw on your website you've got four here right now. Blue baboon, golden, blue leg baboon, pink toe tarantula, and golden knee choco. Mm hmm. Choco golden. Yeah. And if you click those we like, for example, the blue baboon, we have different sizes. Oh, I see. Okay, so it breaks it down into size after that. Oh, cool. Wow. Yeah. Thanks, man. This was so awesome. Cool. I'm glad to be here. Thank you guys for having me. Much appreciated. Keep it nerdy. Keep it nerdy.
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