Because that’s where we were screwing ourselves in the early days. People didn’t think, I always felt this as a business. a business of, yes, saving animals. But of conservation, educating people, this is a business we have, everybody. This is like, your CEO is a businessman. The board is… Read More
And that’s why they’ve had several problems. I love the National Zoo, I’m not knocking it at all. Read More
Why as a zoo world gone from when you and I were in business years ago in the 1960s and seventies, what was it, maybe 75,000 at the most?… Read More
Or I’m sorry, I don’t mean most. Of all the zoos, maybe there was, I don’t know, let’s say 600,000. I don’t know what it was back then. It wasn’t much at all, by the way. And today you look at 176 million people, 176 million people visit our zoos… Read More
So this is a big business. And some people don’t like it, when I use the word. This is a business. It’s a big business. Read More
The average ability I think in this country, the education is ninth to 10th Grade. The average in the country. Go to my front gate and see who comes here. I try and tell the trustees that. See who our visitor is. I went down there for years. I’m not… Read More
T-shirts ripped. You could see these kids didn’t have hardly anything. I hate it, I hate what we have to charge for parking right now. And if this levy passes, I’m gonna change it, period. I don’t like $10 a car. Our members all get in free parking, but when… Read More
Yes, we have a high-income people come here. But look at them. Read More
Do your signage and do it to where it’s, where it draws the eyeball there. Read More
Africa, Asia, pretty simple, right?… Read More
You know, you can’t list every animal that’s in Africa or Asia. And do that. Then also at your signage, put up there snow leopard, endangered, obviously. Why is it endangered? Hunting, over population. Simple words. Maybe one sentence about it. That’s all you need. That’s what you want them… Read More
Well, we’ve had some other signs, but nothing like today. We have, you’ll see in the zoo, how we have, I don’t know right now where this is our busy season. You can start with the, I know they’re up, but you’ll see signs pointing to about everything. Make sure… Read More
And the signs were so huge. You’re never gonna sit there and read a sign, watch the average visitor, how about long he reads a sign. You go ahead with my zoo right now and watch it. If you see somebody reading a sign more than two minutes, I’ll personally… Read More
There’s an eye, the eye that the brain can comprehend in maybe 10 seconds. But this thing down there was a disaster, period. The money was wasted. Now, as we do these things, like our children’s zoo, up here, up in here, we have more of an interactive, fun thing. Read More
Make sure you have, especially big as this place is, we just got directional signs, what, two years ago, I think?… Read More
The TV thing had started and somebody else would run the zoo. And I got, and I saw this, so I went there, and said “What in the fire?” But before opened, right before it opened. “What is that stuff?” “Oh, that’s for everybody to learn “with inside the building.”… Read More
Now, if it’s done it in a way that, now we do it much differently, I’m talking 15 years ago, okay?… Read More
That was all in, you know, the stuff was all starting in zoos, right?… Read More
And at that point, this always fell back to that, you know?… Read More
Why would people come here?… Read More