How the Lizard King Built a Reptile Empire Selling $50,000 Geckos
Shortly after graduating from high school, Brian Butler started loading trucks at a UPS freight facility in Denver. Working nights for the next 16 years, he sometimes found himself so strapped for cash he had to choose between buying groceries and paying his mortgage.
Today he's got a $350,000 pad overlooking the Caribbean, two homes in Denver and a six-figure stock portfolio. The source of his wealth? Crested geckos, docile creatures that resemble diminutive cartoon dragons. 'I bought a condo in Belize,' the 37-year-old says. 'Every time I visit, I think to myself, 'I sell lizards on the internet. How the hell did I end up here?''
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
44 minutes ago
- Forbes
How To Choose The Right Passive Income Idea For Your Business
People often romanticize the idea of passive income. They've been blasted with messages that money will flow in while you sleep, and you won't need to do anything for it. But that's not the case. Not all passive income is created equally, and not every idea is a good fit for every business. If you are a small business owner who is looking to make passive income in your business, you shouldn't choose just any passive income stream. You need to choose the right passive income stream for your business. It should align with your business model, your strengths, and what your community wants and needs. Before you choose your passive income stream, get clear on the type of business you are running. Look at what's currently bringing in sales and where the momentum is. Passive income should complement your current offers, not compete with them. The best passive income will come from what you already know and do well. Think about your expertise, the content you create, and your brand reputation. What do people come to you for advice with? If you have repeatable systems and proven methods, those can be turned into templates, digital products, and courses. This allows you to earn money from your knowledge without always being physically there. When it comes to finding the right passive income stream, there are plenty of options: Creating the passive income stream and maintaining it can be a lot of work, so before you dive in, weigh the time and energy it will take you to build it. And be sure there is a demand for this product and that people will pay for it. Consider if you can scale it and that it will stay relevant over time. Passive income only works if the return justifies the work you put in to get it running. Before you invest the resources into building your passive income stream, test your product on a smaller scale to ensure that there is interest. Create a waitlist, offer a pre-sale, or run a beta group to see if people are willing to pay. This saves you time wasted on creating an offer that won't sell. It also gives you an opportunity to refine your offer. It's smart to validate first and build second. The bottom line is that choosing the right passive income stream is an important decision that shouldn't be taken lightly. Find an offer that complements your business and existing offers so that it doesn't confuse your community. When done right passive income can create more wealth and freedom. Remember to start small, stay aligned, and build something that works while you lead your business.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Is Amazon Paying $4 Billion to Break Up With UPS?
Amazon is planning to spend up to $4 billion to enhance its ability to deliver in rural areas. The e-commerce giant has forged a partnership with FedEx on the delivery front. United Parcel Service is dramatically reducing its relationship with Amazon. 10 stocks we like better than Amazon › Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an online retail powerhouse, selling and delivering its own products and acting as a middleman for other retailers. The company's delivery trucks are ubiquitous in some areas of the country. But it has even bigger aspirations when it comes to getting products to customers. So why did United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) decide to stop handling as many Amazon deliveries? As with any good breakup drama, the story between Amazon and UPS, as United Parcel Service is called for short, is hard to call. UPS says that the Amazon business it was doing was high volume, but low margin. That meant that it didn't add enough to the bottom line to make it worth the top-line benefit. UPS says it plans to step away from half of the business it does with Amazon over the next couple of years. That effort is in keeping with UPS' goal of improving the quality of its business. But management highlighted that it will still work with Amazon on some things. Notably, Amazon is increasingly good at delivering its own wares, but it doesn't have a strong handle on returns. With a large retail store network, UPS can still provide return services to Amazon at an attractive return for UPS shareholders. So the relationship isn't dead -- it's just different. Or, you could say, they will still be friends. UPS' decision to put limits on its relationship with Amazon is a problem for Amazon. While it is true that Amazon has been growing its distribution capabilities, it now has to step up more quickly than it might have planned. To that end, Amazon recently announced that it was making a capital investment of up to $4 billion to enhance its ability to make rural deliveries. And it inked a deal with UPS' peer FedEx (NYSE: FDX), where that carrier will handle larger packages for Amazon. The market saw all of this as a win for FedEx and a loss for UPS. For Amazon, it wasn't too big a deal, noting that the stock is widely adored on Wall Street right now. While Amazon's stock is about 15% below its all-time high, its price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios are both above their five-year averages. And they are both fairly lofty on an absolute basis, as well. Still, it looks a little like Amazon is scrambling to take on the distribution services that UPS is willingly giving up. So what about UPS? The company's stock has lost more than half of its value since hitting a peak in 2022. In fact, it made the Amazon announcement just as it appeared it was getting its business back on track following a period of weakness that led to a corporate overhaul. Indeed, revenue had started to grow and margins appeared to have stabilized. Moving away from low-value Amazon business was a preemptive move made at a time when UPS had shifted from business weakness to business strength. In other words, UPS is being proactive because it sees the writing on the wall. Its Amazon business was going to keep shrinking anyway, so why not get ahead of it? The costs Amazon is incurring to make up for the loss of UPS as a delivery service is a sign that this was a big deal. But it will be a bigger deal for Amazon than UPS, since UPS was clear that the business wasn't very profitable. In fact, UPS could end up the big winner if the ability to slim down allows it to further improve its margins, even if the top line of its income statement shrinks along the way. Wall Street loves Amazon, and perhaps for good reason. But the stock is trading with a premium price tag. UPS, which could actually end up being the big winner in its breakup with Amazon, is deeply unloved. Notably, its price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios are well below their five-year averages. The stock's dividend yield, meanwhile, is historically high at around 6.7%. There's no question that UPS has extended the length of its turnaround by breaking up with Amazon. But the near-term pain could be exactly what it needs to rise up again. Contrarian investors, dividend investors, and value investors should all be doing a deep dive into UPS today with the idea of adding this unloved delivery service to their portfolios. Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $668,538!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $869,841!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 789% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and FedEx. The Motley Fool recommends United Parcel Service. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is Amazon Paying $4 Billion to Break Up With UPS? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
What Tax Cuts Mean For Small Business Leaders
Pundits and budget hawks can debate the latest CBO scores and whether the true baseline for the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' should be current tax rates or a world in which rates jack up to pre-2017 levels. But entrepreneurs and small business owners know what 'baseline' is for their businesses—and that's the monthly run rate of income and expenses, which would be upended if they are hit with dramatically higher tax rates. Lana Pol, president of Geetings, Inc., a trucking and warehousing company in Iowa, detailed what the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) have meant for her business. Tax savings created by the TCJA allowed her to expand her operations, purchase new trucks, and provide raises to her drivers: 'Before the tax cuts, everybody was struggling at that point, as far as small businesses. The confidence wasn't there…When these tax cuts came along, we saw a tremendous increase in people's confidence. Everything seemed to start flowing a lot better, cash flow was better, and just knowing that there was help out there.' Pol worries about what the future looks like for her business if taxes go back up: 'The scare is … I'm already getting hit hard with inflation, and then [if the TCJA] Lana Pol, president of Geetings, Inc., in her Iowa warehouse Jolene Riessen has a similar story. As a corn farmer in Iowa, the tax reductions created by TCJA have been critical for her business. Most public attention on tax policy focuses on income tax rates, but Riessen describes what expanded depreciation benefits meant for her business. Far from just an accounting gimmick, this policy allowed farmers like her to deduct the full cost of equipment purchases upfront rather than spreading it out over several years. For Riessen, this proved critical after her combine (also called a harvester) needed $80,000 worth of repairs. As she explained in an interview with IW Features, 'A brand-new one was $750,000, which I just couldn't justify. That's like buying a house for most people. The ability to write off equipment costs upfront made it easier to manage cash flow and keep our operation running efficiently.' Jolene Riessen on her corn farm in Iowa These are the stories that underlie all the statistics that we hear about what tax cuts meant for the economy and individual businesses. Looking back, we know that within the first two years of the TCJA's implementation, U.S. companies added 4.7 million new jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5%—with historic lows for Black and Hispanic unemployment—and real wages rose at their fastest rate in 20 years. Since that time, COVID and then inflationary government policies knocked the economy for a loop. Congress and the Trump administration are busy reversing the worst of those policies, peeling back red tape that needlessly increases the cost of business and ending counterproductive energy policies that make everything more costly. They also need to right-size the federal government by codifying spending reductions identified by DOGE and making other long-overdue cuts to wasteful programs. Yet they also must give businesses like Pol and Riessen's certainty that they aren't going to be hit with a massive tax increase. Simply put, if Congress allows the TCJA provisions to expire, the consequences could be severe: The average taxpayer could face a 22% tax hike, which means an additional $1,695 tax payment for the median family of four and 26 million small businesses could face a new higher top tax rate of 43.4%. This will mean real hardship for businesses large and small, their workers and customers. Congress and this administration have a lot of work to do to get our economy back on track. That starts with preventing a massive tax increase on American businesses and workers.
