We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shaun Jones a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shaun , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I took was back in 2020 when I left me 9-5 job and decided to move my family to Waco Texas without knowing the outcome .

Shaun , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Shaun Jones Jr , I’m 29 years old from Washington DC and my business started back in 2015 as just a clothing brand Yox2 apparel in Maryland. Through the years I’ve connected with many successful individuals and soaked in knowledge. When the pandemic hit us in 2020 I was still home in Maryland in quarantine with nothing to spend my money on but bills and my 1-2 year old daughter at the time . That’s when I decided to invest in my first snake ( normal ball python ) from pet smart and little did I know , that’s where my reptile journey started . I want to say this was around my birthday in April 2020 , shortly after that I researched reptile conventions and YouTube creators and just started to dig more and more into the hobby .

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One thing I can truly say is that you never really know what your calling is until you are no longer waking up daily worrying about where your next dollar is coming from . I say this because I truly thought I was going to make clothing for the rest of my life. Fashion is still apart of me but reptiles took the cake . Before moving to Texas I believed that I was destined to own a clothing store until I actually moved out of my hometown where that was like the popular thing to do and realized it wasn’t working for me because everyone was doing it . God blessed me with another gift and that was caring for reptiles .

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

My consistency built my rep . Youthful adaptations , fast but solid movement , quick thinking , and branding .
I think what people love most is that I come up with my own products , merch , etc that are not only affordable but actually worth purchasing. I respond to all messages and calls in a timely manner and have been introducing these skills to my team so we can continue being the best we can be for new and old customers and future business. I believe if I can teach my team the skills it took to build this company , the company will always run as if I’m always there because my team would now be an extension of me .

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/yox2reptilestore?r=nametag
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/pages/category/Pet-Store/Yox2-Reptiles-Store-100337405752201/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCdxpnBJnX95uDA2Jmvy9tpw