How Josh Turned A Hobby Into An Empire

Issue #21

August 29, 2023

Quick Hits:

• The dog ate my … passport?

• Big (turtle) in Japan

• Adam Sandler & Bill Burr are elderly reptiles? 

• Why your cats love tuna, according to science

• Captain America & Animal Haven to the rescue

• An incredible story of rehabilitation (and love)

1. There is a lot of information about your journey here but can you give our community a bit of an intro to who is Josh and perhaps share something we can't read online?

I live in Michigan with my wife of 20 years and our 5 kids (3 biological and 2 foster kids). I founded Josh’s Frogs in 2004. We have been a fast-growing company with even more ambitious plans for the future. I love to ride my bike when the weather allows and I’m a total podcast junkie.

2. You built a successful business from a hobby. How were you able to get your first sales? Tell us more about the decision to take it "formal"? Was the "jump" scary or fairly easy? What were the biggest questions on your mind?

I started the business as a side hustle so I could have the money to support my hobby of keeping exotic animals. I was not expecting it to become a business. In 2004 Facebook wasn’t as big as it is today. So, in our hobby, there were still a lot of people on message forums and email lists. To get my first sales, I made a post in the “for sale” sections of these forums.

In 2007 I was all set to begin my internship to finish my master’s in counseling when my placement lost its funding. I had to wait another year for a placement. Without a job, I decided to turn my hobby into a business. I worked so hard that year to make the business successful. At the end of the year, Josh’s Frogs made $16,000 in profit! In 2008, I finished my internship and was offered a job. Instead of taking the job, I decided to dedicate another year to the business to see if I could make it grow.

As I look back at those decisions, they seem more scary in hindsight than they were when I made them. I also felt like I was betting on myself and I could work harder until it worked out. I felt like I had the safety net of going back to counseling.

3. For a lot of us, pets are synonymous with dogs & cats, so it's great to see you building a business in a different segment of the market. Can you give us an idea and some KPIs for how big your business is? How big is the reptile/amphibian market in the US?

The Reptile and Amphibian market is about $3 Billion per year in the US. It is a growing market. The latest estimates put reptiles and amphibians in 5% of US households, up from 3% pre-pandemic. The hobby is also evolving. 20 years ago the hobby was mainly driven by wild-caught animals whereas today more and more animals are captive-bred. The feed options for reptiles and amphibians have expanded in variety as has the amount of products for their care. Instead of plain, sterile enclosures, more and more of these animals are kept in bio-active enclosures that mimic their natural habitat with substrates that promote natural behavior.

Josh’s Frogs employs 90 people in Michigan breeding animals and insects, caring for plants, and shipping out everything you need to care for these pets. We ship out between 5,000 and 7,000 packages every week to our retail customers and wholesale partners.

4. What are your best sellers? Are there any legal issues shipping-certain animals across state lines, what are the rules?

There are a lot of laws and regulations surrounding shipping live feeder bugs. In order to work with a species of insect, we need permits to bring that insect into our facility. In order to ship the insects to another state, we need permits for that specific insect from that specific state. For plants, there are fewer rules and those rules only apply to a few states. On the animal front, there are less restrictions as our animals are non-native.

In the animal category, our best sellers are the poison dart frogs. While poisonous in the wild, they are totally harmless in captivity. In the wild, they derive their toxins from ants that are eating poisonous plants. In captivity without those ants, they are harmless.

Less than 10% of the boxes we ship out have live animals in them. As many as 40% of our orders have live bugs in them. We ship over a million crickets every single week in addition to dozens of other bugs.

5. You made a strategic decision to not open a retail store. Could you tell us more about that? What are your plans for the future?

We believe that running a brick-and-mortar store is drastically different than running an online store. It just isn’t what we were built for. Our goal is to reach people locally by supplying their local pet store with quality animals, feeder insects, plants, and dry goods. Josh’s Frogs is more likely to open a zoo than a physical pet store.

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• Jinx Fetches $17 million - With several celebrity investors and an expected revenue of $45 million this year, the modern dog food company Jinx closed its Series B funding round.

• Petfolk - The North Carolina company just raised $35 million.

• Martha Chewart - Martha Stewart and Chewy have collaborated to create a premium, high-quality line of pet food.

• New franchise opportunity - Dogs & beer? this might be for you!

• Maine wins - Rawz wins an award for product of the year!

• SuperZoo is super popular - North America’s premier pet retail trade show is growing!

• New vegan line just dropped - Petco just introduced a new vegan line of dog food and treats, currently only available in LA & NYC.

• After Shark Tank - How is this product doing 2 years after the show?

PAWS right there!!! Don’t forget to subscribe 👇👇

• A new bipartisan bill in Congress - A new bill would allow the DoJ to step in and protect animals experiencing harmful treatment.

• Can this happen everywhere? This supermarket in Finland is extremely dog-friendly.

• For All The Dogs - Drake’s new album is good for… dogs?

• The new Apple campaign is amazing - Dogs with prostheses are the superstars of the iPhone 14 Pro campaign.

• The POV on this one 😂 - This new TikTok trend is one we can actually get behind.

• Gimme more (dogs) - Britney Spears is getting a divorce but is keeping 4 out of the 5 dogs.

• Clay Mathile Dead At 82 - Clay built his fortune through a long, successful career as the owner and CEO of pet food company Iams.

• Magically adopted - Watch as this magician makes dog treats disappear (all for a good cause).

• Delta Airlines loses dog - Maia is currently missing after airport staff in Atlanta (world’s busiest airport) lost her.

1. Is it easier or harder to find your consumer when your customer base is a niche subset?

It is easy to find our customers who are already in our niche. We hang around the same places online and there are tons of reptile shows across the country that we visit or have our products at. The hard part is growing that audience. We are competing with other forms of entertainment and there is a learning curve as the care feels less intuitive for a frog than say a dog. That is why we invest so heavily in blog writing and videos. We want people to see how easy it is to care for these unique animals.

2. You have a large following on social media. What do you think contributed to this community? Is it the fact you provide educational content? something else?

Customers in niche hobbies are more engaged with brands. It is often part of their identity. I don’t “like” the company I buy my dog food on Facebook because I don’t feel connected to them at all. That isn’t the case in our hobby. I think the educational element plays a large part in that connection, but I also think it has to do with the fact that the content we put out on social media is engaging.

3. You have scaled the business but how did you originally finance it? Have you ever thought about taking an external investment?

I started Josh’s Frogs by selling my gaming console in 2004. We have taken no other investment and I’m 100% the owner. We have been content to grow organically and methodically. We pride ourselves in helping our employees grow with us and that takes time. We never want to be in a position where we can’t support customers the way we believe we need to.

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Finally, Why are frogs so happy?

They eat whatever bugs them.

See you next week!

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