 This is lemonade, by the way, in case you're wondering. Hey guys, welcome back to the tiny herd, where we talk about everyday pet care for guinea pigs, rabbits, and other small pets. Today, I just felt like I needed to make a different kind of video. If you are new to my channel, my normal content is educational vlog style or sit down videos where I talk about everyday pet care, like I just said. And it's normally a lot more structured and is meant to help you guys give you pet care tips and teach you about different aspects of pet care. For some reason, I just kept getting the feeling that I needed to just sit down and talk to you guys. I've been getting a lot more subscribers lately and I've been chatting with you guys a bunch in the comments and I really just wanted to make a video to kind of tell you guys more about my story, why I started the tiny herd and what I'm trying to accomplish with the tiny herd, just to kind of build that connection with you guys. Like I want you guys to be excited about my content so that you come back and learn more about pet care and I love getting to talk to you guys. I really do. I love the community that has been coming out of this and I know that sounds very cliche, like every content creator's like building a community, but like really guinea pigs and rabbits and rats and mice that I have are not the most common of pets for just like every day. Like you don't go to work or school and like two or three people have guinea pigs or rats, not the same way that people have dogs and cats. So having this community that we've kind of created where we all get to talk about the animals that we really love and learn more about them and share care and tips and ask questions, I just really, really enjoy that. So I'm just gonna talk at you guys if this is not the video that you wanna watch, that's totally fine, but I just wanted to tell you guys more about this and hopefully give you a little bit more insight into me and why I started this. So again, if you're new to my channel, hi, my name is Allison. I started The Tiny Heard all the way back in actually 2017. Honestly, I don't wanna go through the whole history of my YouTube channel, but basically I kind of started it in 2017, didn't post for a whole lot for like a couple years. August, September or August of 2020, I really came back to my channel and that was because I had previously started and run a different online business that had to do with like personal finance and I did well, like I made money doing that, not enough to leave my job or anything, but I made money doing that. And I kind of came to the realization that I did not love talking about that. It put a lot of pressure on me and budgeting is like very personal and it just wasn't what I wanted to do. That realization coincided with me realizing that I absolutely hated my previous job and kind of in September of 2020, I decided to come back to my pet channel because the thing I've always loved my whole life is animals. I don't like, people are always like, you should have been a vet. Why don't you do something with animals? And I'm an accountant if you didn't know, I'm a CPA, so that is as far from animals as you can get. And I decided I wanted to come back and start the Tiny Herd up again and I'm super glad I did that because at this point we are just under 3000 subscribers and I'm just really excited about where things are gonna go. So that's kind of the background but the real reason why I started the Tiny Herd is because I want to make a better pet industry and world and environment for animals. So dogs and cats have tons of organizations and companies and owners and all of that that advocate for them and provide proper care information and create great products and that's awesome. Like that's fantastic. It's amazing that the internet has made it possible for people to spread information. Like there's information on raw diets and whether this food is good and what kind of heart, like so many things. I mean, you get what I'm trying to say here. There's a huge industry around pets but I don't see as much information about bunnies or guinea pigs or rats or turtles or geckos. There is a much bigger reptile community I think but there's just so many animals that there's no market. Like well there is a market. There's you guys that love guinea pigs and rabbits. Like we are the market. What I want to do with the Tiny Herd is basically do all of those things for guinea pigs and rabbits and hamsters and mice and rats. All those animals that there are plenty of people that love them. You can buy them at the pet store but still the care is just not up to where it should be. Not from a community perspective because a lot of us do our own research. There's been studies, vets are starting to come up but like PetSmart's care guides are trash. Like I'm just gonna say that. Why? I just think there is a place where I can lend my voice to share what I have learned and researched and know from the last six to eight years that I've had pets that I can share with others and get other people excited about the possibility of having these animals as pets and how they should be taken care of. The other reason that I came back to the Tiny Herd and this is like the big reason. This is like what drives me. This is why I've been staying up late to work on my website. Why I plan out videos. Why I do all of these different things and there's so many things that I haven't even showed you guys or told you guys about yet because I'm just working on so much behind the scenes but the big thing that I really really want out of the Tiny Herd is I want to start an animal rescue. And if you've been watching my videos for a while I've mentioned this a couple of times so you're probably not surprised by this but I want to start an animal rescue. I literally have never wanted anything so bad in my life. I just have come to the realization that I feel like that is the thing that I could do and be good at and I'm building the Tiny Herd to be the support system for that because I don't ever want to be in a situation where I have to, I don't want to have to be constantly fundraising and constantly stressed out and worried about money and how are we gonna pay for things and do we have enough funding to take more animals? Like I want to have the foundation built of this online business so that I can support my rescue. That is my big goal. And ultimate really, really I would love to do that, learn how to do it, learn how to teach it to other people because I have been researching how to start an animal rescue and I feel like it's so inaccessible. There's nowhere that you can go take a class on how to start an animal rescue. There are books but they're not super helpful. There's nothing that you can go to as a resource and be like, this is how you start a rescue. And obviously I haven't started one so I don't know those things but through the Tiny Herd, I want to build an online business teaching about the stuff that I love, about how to take care of these animals, spread information, get ideas from you guys, like all of that different stuff to support running a rescue and maybe having the potential to teach you guys along the way. If you want to start a rescue or support a rescue in your area, how to do that. That's really, really what my goal is with this entire channel, with my website, with all of the things that I'm trying to do, even my Etsy shop. I'm not trying to make money for the sake of making money. I really, really, really want to make this happen and I want to make it happen sooner rather than later. And that's really what my driving force is here. So I don't know if you guys cared about this video at all but please let me know any of your thoughts down below. If you did enjoy this video, I want to hear from you guys. I love talking to you guys about stuff so if you want to know more about anything, feel free to ask me questions down below. I'd love to chat with you guys about all of this stuff. You can probably tell from this video I get really kind of excited about it. So it's just something I wanted to share. I just kept feeling like I should just put it out there and tell you guys what I'm really trying to do, why I'm trying to do it and talk to you guys about it. Just put it out in the universe. So thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye.