Single Blog

 

Interview conducted by Tina Gray.

Tina: So, first of all, just tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up?

Chere: I grew up in Dallas, Texas. We moved here when I was three from Northern California. Most of my life I lived in East Dallas and could not wait to get out.

 

T: What brought you to Dallas?

C: My parents moved here for work when we were young.

 

T: And where did you go to school?

C: I went to Bryan Adams High School, over in East Dallas.

 

T: College?

C: Yes, I went to West Texas State University, and then went to school for exotic animal training and management in California.

 

T: How did you even imagine to begin doing that?

C: Since I was a young child, I was the kind of child who brought snakes and other kinds of things home in my pockets. My mom knew she had to clear the pockets out before she washed the clothes – there were frogs and snakes.

I collected creatures, I loved animals but couldn’t really imagine being a veterinarian. I couldn’t imagine taking all the science courses. I did have ADD growing up and school was a bit of a struggle unless it was a subject I loved. I knew that I didn’t want to have a traditional ‘go to college for 4 years, and graduate, and look around, and see what I wanted to do.’ I felt it was important to pick my passion and make that work for me.

So at the time I was driving an 18-wheeler cross-country, and I was in a truck stop in Arizona. I picked up a National Geographic and they had an article on this school in California. It was the only school of its kind in the world, and they trained you to work with exotics. So they trained people to work at Sea world and circuses and zoos and the film business, which is what I ended up going into.

I contacted the school, but they only had forty people they accepted each year and they had thousands of applicants every year. And for some reason, they were entranced by the fact I was this ballsy Texas chick who was driving a truck and they accepted me.

 

T: How long were you in school there? And when you graduated what did you do?

C: Two years. Well, I moved to the Ozark and lived in a tent for a year. I was trying to figure out how I was going to incorporate what I’d learned, and I wasn’t quite ready yet to make the jump. I ended up in the Ozark living off the land, thinking I was going to do something there – possibly raise animals for a short while or something, I wasn’t sure.

I ended up coming back to Dallas and decided that Dallas was where I needed to do this business. I decided to do an animal talent agency for movies and commercials. There wasn’t any model that I could see in front of me to go by, because they were only on the East Coast and the West Coast.

I knew that I needed a business partner or someone to kind of mentor me a little bit because no one had done this in the middle of the country and I didn’t really know where to start. So I thought maybe I should try and get a veterinarian who would kind of help me get this going. I needed office space, and I needed someone that kind of knew how to care for animals in case any of my animals got in a jam.

I didn’t know any veterinarians and I literally got out the yellow pages, put my hands over my eyes, and pointed. True Story. Called him up, his name was Dr. T. E. Childers and he had Lovers’ Lane Animal Hospital, and I said “Hi, you don’t know me but I have this great idea for a company,” meanwhile, I was 28 years old, “and I want to start an animal talent agency in Dallas.” And he said, “Oh, well that’s interesting. Why don’t you come down and talk with me about it.”

 

 

T: How did you get clients? Who was your first client?

C: Timing is everything, with a lot of things, and when I started my company, within two months:

First of all, Dallas Morning News did a piece on me because it was an exciting new business and it was great press. And then the Republican Convention came to town, and I had elephants. So for two weeks, I had elephants all over Dallas, and I was interviewed by everyone. From Japanese TV to CNN, everyone was interviewing me and wanting to know about the elephants, so it was this huge media splash right away. That was very helpful.

 

T: Timing is everything. So that’s kind of how you got all your press and all the PR. After that, you became the go-to?

C: I was it. If you needed 50 cockroaches for a movie or an elephant for a Republican Convention or a chimpanzee for a fashion show or a tiger or dogs. Everyone from Neiman’s for all the fashion shows that needed animals to walk with the models. Any company president that was having their big convention and wanted to ride in on a horse lit up with sparkly lights. Everyone that needed an animal in Dallas called me.

 

T: Was that your first job? Did you have other jobs? You said you were working as a driver for an 18-wheeler, so you were an employee at that point, right?

C: I’ve had over a hundred jobs, I stopped counting at one point. I had such passion to learn about things, so I would just go and work somewhere because I wanted to see the inner-workings of whatever this was. But no, I had tons of jobs and realized I do much better working as an entrepreneur and working for myself.

 

 

T: Did you notice a difference in the way you were treated as an employee versus the way you were treated as an entrepreneur business owner?

C: Definitely. If you can, and it’s not often that you can find a niche that you can jump out of the gate and do something like this. Mine was a little bit unusual because I was the only game in town between both coasts. If they didn’t like my prices or they had attitude I’d be like, “Oh, yeah? Call New York and see what they’re going to charge you.” So it’s much better if you can be your own boss, but sometimes the path is not as direct or it’s hard to see that path.

 

T: How long did it take for you to reach a level of success in your career that you were content with?

C: Here’s the thing, every job that I did, every company that I started, I went in being happy, happy, happy because it was interesting and fascinating. With the animal talent agency, it didn’t take long. Can you imagine starting a job and everyone’s lining up like, “Oh my god, you’re amazing?” So it’s a little different. I felt successful right away.

Caveat on that, because I had no role models. I didn’t have a book that had stories in it where I could read about someone else doing this, so I did have to fly by the seat of my pants in a way that a lot of people don’t.

One story in particular I remember, we had this horse that we were using in a commercial and he had to look like he was talking. I had to get his mouth to move for like 30 seconds, which is a long time to get an animal to move his mouth. I tried so many things: put mustard on the back of his tongue, used alum, because I was going for that ‘sticking his tongue out talking’ look. I didn’t have anybody to call to ask, “How am I going to get this?”

When I started my business I told them if the animal doesn’t perform, if you don’t get the shot, you’re not going to pay me. I walked in with that guarantee, I’m going to make this work for you. But I finally figured out that I could put a rubber band at the base of his tongue, and he spent so much time trying to work that rubber band off and it was perfect. Things like that I just had to figure out on the job, no one said, “Oh yeah, horse talking, I did this.” So I felt successful pretty early on because I was just figuring stuff out.

 

T: What made you believe that you could do this animal talent agency? Did you ever feel like giving up?

C: The times that I had jobs that I felt like giving up or that I did quit, usually involved a male telling me that I had limits. I do remember that, “Oh no, you don’t get to tell me that. You don’t get to chart my future, I’m charting my own future.” I’ve had this indomitable spirit since I was a child.