We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Gill. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Honesty, politeness, knowledge and a friendly face. We work with everyone from young kids to adults in permanent care facilities. When we’re in with a younger group, especially, you need to be on their level both physically and mentally. Crawl on the ground with them, sit down with them while you chat with them, keep a smile on your face and if you don’t know an answer be honest about it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Cool Critters Outreach is an animal education and rescue organization that started in early 2006. The focus of this small organization is to educate the public on some fascinating pets: snakes, lizards, geckos, tortoises, birds, ferrets, chinchillas and many more! Our programs are conducted for all ages from toddlers to retirees.

We take in other people’s unwanted pets and utilize them in hands-on educational programs for just about any event. We go to schools, scout programs, churches, birthdays and plenty of other events. While there we get each animal out, chat about it and allow the attendees to not only see them but touch and hold some animals as well.

While there are other companies similar to ours we have something that’s a little unique: the same staff for 16 years and counting. This is a small family business, so, when you see us you will always just see us. No volunteers, no employees coming and going…it’s the same 4 people that have run this since the beginning and will continue to be so.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Initially this business was a side-hustle meant to bring in some money to feed the few pets that we had. During the 2008 recession I lost my full-time job the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that year. During that time I went on plenty of job interviews, was offered a few, but nothing was promising. I had been running Cool Critters Outreach since early 2006 and here we were at the end of 2008/beginning of 2009 and I’m still looking for a full time ‘career’. Finally the wife says, “you have a job, just take that full time’ and that’s exactly what we did.

With a lot of phone calls, emails, social media posts and some good ole grassroots marketing we were off and running! We donated a lot of time to special events (charity walks, low income schools, etc) and wherever we went, and it continues today, everyone gets a business card. Working with animals isn’t financially lucrative, however, if everyone enjoys what you do and you pass your info along to everyone people will call!

Have you ever had to pivot?

During Covid we weren’t able to do in-person programs. For a business like ours, that can be devastating. We, like many others, had to utilize Zoom! As soon as Covid began and things shut down we purchased the proper camera and lights to pivot to online learning.

We were able to do dozens of online programs during the 2020 pandemic. We got involved with an online schooling organization and created multiple classes regarding animals. We talked about reptiles, we talked about the care of these animals along with much, much more. Not only did we do online programs for our usual, local schools and churches we began conducting programs for other schools and individuals across the country and even the world.

While it was a difficult time we did what we had to do to survive. Here we are on the other end of this pandemic and we have had the busiest year we’ve ever had.

Contact Info:

• Website: coolcrittersoutreach.com
• Instagram: Cool Critters Outreach
• Facebook: Cool Critters Outreach
• Twitter: @coolcritters
• Youtube: Cool Critters Outreach