(exciting music) (exciting music continues) - Welcome to, "A Shot of Ag."

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

Zebras, are they a white horse with black stripes or are they a black horse with white stripes?

Are they a horse or a pony?

How do they taste?

These are all questions that I'm gonna ask our today's guest, James Aikman.

How you doing, James?

- I'm good, how are you?

- Doing pretty good.

You're from Arcola, Illinois?

- Arcola, yep.

Originally from Arthur and then we bought the property kind of outside of Arcola, so we're right between Arthur and Arcola.

- How far is, in what direction from Peoria is Arcola?

- So it would be about two hours, kind of south, southeast of Arcola.

- Okay, and you are, what is your title at Aikman Wildlife Adventure?

- So I'm president also co-founder of the park.

- Okay, and this is what you always knew that you were going to do?

- No, actually, it's the last thing I thought I would be doing.

So probably as a four or five-year-old, I could tell you the names of most animals on the planet.

I'm someone who loves animals.

I always wanted to learn about all kinds of things, especially animals.

So early 20s, I could tell you physical characteristics, habitats, where the animals are from.

But this is not at all what I thought I'd would be doing.

My background is business and finance.

And so I was a banker for 10 years.

- A banker?

- A banker, yep.

- You're running a wildlife park and you were a banker?

- It was a big shift.

- You think?

(James and Rob laugh) - Both had their challenges.

I like this a lot better, but it was not what I had anticipated.

My wife and I would've both said my future was to become president of the bank and not president of a wildlife park.

- Okay, where'd you meet your wife?

- So we actually met in grade school.

Started dating.

- You locked that one down early, didn't you?

- Started dating, I was a junior in high school.

She was a senior.

- Was that an arranged marriage?

Did your parents- - It was not, actually.

- No?

- Our parents didn't really know each other.

She moved from Champaign to Arthur.

- Oh!

- So... - Okay, the new girl.

- The new girl.

- [Rob] Back in second grade.

- New girl, yeah, yeah.

(Rob and James laugh) - Okay, you went into banking.

Were you doing good, successful, all that stuff?

- Yes, yeah, so I loved my job.

I loved helping people.

I was getting to do all kinds of different loans, helping out with the investments, helping out with marketing, bringing websites, internet banking to the bank.

And so I was not really looking for anything else.

- Well, how did something else come looking for you?

- The night of October 22nd, 2013, I had a dream that my wife and I owned and operated a wildlife park.

I told her about it the next day.

She said, "You're crazy!"

- Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Did you just wake up and roll over and go, "Pumpkin, guess what I just had a dream about."

- Pretty much!

Something, she might've been out of the bed before me that morning.

So kinda when I got outta bed and saw her in the kitchen, I kind of told her, "Hey, I just had this dream last night of us having a wildlife park.

And we were kinda standing there and cars were coming in the parking lot and driving through."

And so that's when she was very, very... Was apprehensive about it.

- It was just one dream?

- She was pregnant.

Our son's gonna gonna be born in about three weeks.

And so she knew we had a lot on our plates.

We did not need anything like that at all.

And so she told me, "You need to get that out of your head."

And I agreed with her completely.

- I mean, well, you, let's not just skim over this.

Do you have a lot of dreams that you would wake up and say, "Oh, last night I had a dream that, I don't know, I was pitching for the Orioles?"

Any weird stuff?

- No, no, so not really.

Like I would kind of pray about things, pray for people every day that I knew, and I kind of got to the point where, "God, I feel like I should be doing more specific prayers, and so can you help me know who I should be praying for specifically?"

And so, kind of in my dreams, different times he would show me a specific, one of my friends or family members or things that may have been struggling with something.

And so then I could just kind of focus my prayers towards that.

But nothing- - Nothing like this.

- Nothing for me and nothing- - Definitely.

- Nothing to get me to completely change professions.

- So she pats you on the head, gives you your cup of coffee, and you move on?

- Yeah, so I agreed that it was crazy.

That our kid was on the way.

- She was pregnant, she should be having the weird dreams.

- Yes, yes.

- Okay, so the next night... - So then that night I had the same dream.

- [Rob] Doubled up on the dream!

- So I told her, I said, "I don't know why, but I feel like this is something God's really wanting us to do."

And she said, "Well, if God is behind it, he'll find a way to make it happen."

And so from there, my mind just started becoming flooded with thoughts, plans, ideas, layouts, doors started opening.

And then about 22 months later, we bought the former Rock Home Gardens property and opened it up to the public about six months after that.

- Okay, if we're supposed to follow our dreams, and man, there's some weird stuff gonna happen in my future.

- No, I got that a lot from people.

I had people coming to interview me and asking, "Did God show you anything about rain coming?

Or are you supposed to, you supposed to build a big boat?"

And so I heard- - It's called an ark.

- I heard all kinds of things, yes.

- That is funny.

So tell me, I don't need to know your financial situation, but I would have to go to the bank to buy 40 acres and I could imagine getting that money and going, "Hey, I wanna buy this and I'm gonna put a bunch of zebras on it."

- Sure, yeah, so for me, being a banker, I kind of knew what a loan officer would be looking for, but I also knew I was at a disadvantage on multiple levels.

One, I was just turning 30 at the time.

I am wanting to start a brand new business.

I'd never really started a business before in my life.

On top of that, I'm wanting to do a brand new business that's never been done in this area before.

And so I kind of put some feelers out, didn't have any real positive response.

- (laughs) Shocker!

- So thankfully looking for land around the Arthur Arcola area.

It's very good farmland.

But then there's a huge Amish population, so they, they want their kids to live as close to them as possible.

So asking people to part with their land is like asking them to part with their firstborn son.

And so it- - [Rob] Everything has a price, right?

- Yeah, so that's kind of what took the 22 months is just trying to find land.

And so in that time, I did a lot more learning about husbandry, like raising the animals that I didn't know.

Tell people I learned more in that 22 months than I did my four years of college.

But- - I bet!

- During that time, Rock Home Gardens kind of had just recently closed down.

- [Rob] What is that?

I've never heard of that.

- So the best way to describe Rock Home Gardens is a rock and botanical garden mixed with an Amish themed park without roller coasters.

So it had a, you could do, you could do buggy rides- - Wee!

(laughs) - You could, it had a horse-drawn sawmill, it had a blacksmith shop, it had a furniture making shop.

It had two rack wagons kind of outfitted to look like train cars and a tractor outfitted to looked like a train.

And it would take people on a ride down to the river.

Guys on horseback would come and pretend to rob the train.

So it was huge in the '70s and the '80s.

- It was like Silver Dollar City, but it wasn't fun or entertaining.

- Correct, correct.

(laughs) - Okay.

- So people loved it, but times changed.

And I don't think it really changed with the times that family sold it in the mid '90s, I believe there the six owners of the property since they sold it.

We're the first ones to do something completely different than Rock Home.

- So what animal did you start with?

- So Tobias, Tobias was our, is our Grant's zebra.

So he's still at the park today.

- Your what?

- He's our Grant's zebra.

- Grant's zebra?

- There's multiple kind of subspecies of zebras.

Tobias, he's our zebra.

He's got the stripes that go all the way down to his hooves.

So Bomba, our Chapman's zebra, she kind of has whiter legs.

So Bomba would be more of a white zebra with black stripes.

Tobias would be more black with white stripes.

- Okay, chicken or the egg?

- Yeah, correct.

Yeah so, we actually had him a few months before we had the property.

And so- - What'd you do?

Keep him in the garage?

- So Daniel is an Amish guy who's been with us from the very beginning, kind of a few months after I had the dreams.

He had camels and he would do camel rides at some of the local festivals, and I got to know him from being President of the Association of Commerce in Arthur.

I knew that he wanted to have exotic animals.

So I went out and talked with him and just kinda shared him about the dreams, what I'm wanting to do.

And his reaction was, "Can I come work for you?"

- Oh!

- And so he's been with us from the beginning.

He has become our adopted brother.

So I tell people I have three brothers.

So two by blood, one kind of by adoption.

- Which one do you like the least?

- I'll tell you that after the interview.

- (chuckles) Okay... Where do you buy a zebra?

- So what a lot of people don't realize is there are breeders for different, any species you can imagine, pretty much- - Oh I know all about it.

- Across the country.

- I saw that "Tiger King" thing.

- (laughs) Yeah, yes, and there are also exotic animal auctions as well.

- Can't stand that Carole Baskin!

- So a lot of our animals come from individuals that have an animal or two thinking it'd be cool to have an animal, and then kinda realize it's not that cool.

Tobias came from a guy in Iowa.

He raised horses, thought it'd be neat to have a zebra.

Realized it wasn't a whole lot different than the horses.

And so- - Oh, yeah.

- Wanted to find a- - So you got an Iowa zebra?

- Yeah.

- It's probably slower than... - So he can be fast when he wants to be, but normally zebras kind of have the stereotype of being jerks and aggressive.

- Really?

- Tobias is same age as my oldest son, Asa, is about 11 years old.

We got him when he was fairly young, very calm, eat outta your hand, let you pet him.

So our zebras are not like most zebras.

- Okay, so take me through, so if I go to your place, tell me what's gonna happen.

What am I gonna see?

- So you come into the parking lot, you walk in, we offer multiple options for people.

So people can choose to do the drive through only.

So it's driving your own car through the drive through.

USDA does not really allow unsupervised feeding or petting.

So you can't feed or pet the animals out of your car.

But you can take it at your own pace.

You can pull- - But that's all the videos online, right?

Is the thing coming in the car and eating all this stuff.

- Yes, so that was kind of what we talked to our inspector about.

Apparently different states get kind of regulated differently.

Illinois is a lot more strict.

- (sighs) Illinois.

Thanks a lot Illinois!

- But in some ways it has helped us because those places that you see the animals coming up to the cars, there are lots of vehicle damage.

- Hey, that's your, you go drive by a zebra, it's on you.

- We have our rules of the road kind of posted right at the entrance.

But because they can't feed outta the car, the animals do tend to ignore the cars.

But they will stop right in front of the car.

They will walk right along the car.

They're not afraid of the cars in any way.

- So you get in your car, what am I gonna see?

What animals?

Like, the highlight?

Because you've got how many different... - So we've got about 230 animals probably in the drive through.

There's about 75 of those animals in the drive through is where all of our bigger hoof stock are, as well as our emus, our turkeys.

So camels and zebras are easily the most popular out in the drive through.

We also have different African antelope, we have wildebeest, we have eland, we have elk, we have water buffalo, bison, llamas, alpacas.

So all kinds of different animals out in the drive through.

And then if you are gonna do the walkthrough, our triple crown is our drive through, walkthrough, and our Museum of Prehistoric Life.

On the walkthrough side, it is more set up like a traditional zoo just with much bigger habitats.

So we wanted to try to go for quality of life versus quantity of animals.

So the walkthrough side is where all of our predators are, like our hyenas, our wolf dogs, our small African cats.

That's also where our petting zoo is.

Our parrots, our other birds.

That's where our kangaroos, porcupines, things like that.

- What's a meanest animal you have?

I'm guessing a parrot.

Those suckers... - They can be the meanest.

Their beaks, especially they're designed for cracking open walnuts.

They don't have a problem grabbing you.

Our most dangerous would be our spotted hyenas.

They're the only animals we don't go in with, but they love attention.

They'll come, and they're called just like dogs, and I spent a lot of, we have spent a lot of time working with them through the fence.

So I will pet them through the fence, but as soon as their heads move, my hands come out.

- Yeah, did you ever ride one?

- Not the hyenas, but we have ridden on, in the beginning we would ride on our water buffaloes.

Actually, I think there was a front page cover of the Champaign paper of me sitting on top of our water buffalo petting our big camel.

So we have done that.

We don't let other people do it.

And we have not ridden one for years now.

- What did the neighbors think when you were doing this?

- So we knew the neighbors ahead of time.

We originally were looking at a place in Moultrie County that didn't work out.

And so Rock Home is in Douglas County.

The neighbors kind of knew who I was.

And so that helped a lot.

Now I think a lot of them remember Rock Home in it's heyday and they're just happy that something positive is happening at the property.

- Sure, yeah.

Yeah, I mean you hear all the time, you know, "Follow your dreams, follow your dreams".

It's so scary to do that to most people.

But here you, I mean you not only took like the jump, I mean you like jumped off a building.

- Yes, yeah, and so I didn't ever really think that I would have to be following a dream.

I thought I knew what my life was at the bank, working at the bank until I retire.

And that was gonna be the most exciting thing I did.

Faith, I've always had a close relationship with God, probably ever since sixth grade.

And so I thought I knew what faith was going into this, the Moultrie County situation that kind of increased my faith tremendously to help prepare me for the next step, which was once we bought Rock Home.

It came up, I either had to choose the bank or choose the park and I chose the park.

And so that kind of gave me the faith needed to step away from my cush job and start a business.

And we didn't even... My wife and I went into the park to succeed.

And so we wanted, we did not take a paycheck.

We did Dave Ramsey, we had the emergency fund set up.

- He's no fun!

Don't listen to him.

"Oh, don't spend any money, blah, blah, blah".

- Well, so we'll say the finance major and me, like when we bought our house, I told my wife, 'cause both of us had jobs, we didn't have any kids for many years.

I said, "We're getting our house paid off so we're making three payments a month and there's multiple months."

She's like, "I don't, we don't wanna do that."

We wanna do something- - Three payments!

Three for your house a month?

Wow!

- Three payments a month.

So we, we did a 15 year loan and we had it paid off in about seven years.

- [Rob] Oh my gosh!

- When that made it, that kind of helped us step away from the bank 'cause we had no debt.

We owned our house, we owned our cars, but we had our emergency fund, but we did not, the park did not pay me anything for two years.

And so just, was she working?

- She was not working.

- That had to be tough.

- Once Asa was born, she was a kindergarten teacher for eight years and then she stepped away.

She knew she couldn't do great at kindergarten teaching and be a great mom.

So yeah, that's why we waited eight years.

But yeah, so that kind of helped us have the faith we need to step away from the bank.

And then those first two years, God provided kind of anytime we needed money.

And so that just kept increasing our faith to just face the next challenge that we've had with running the park.

- If I go into the Casey's in Arcola and said, "Hey, where do I go to see the zebras and stuff?"

Does everybody in that area know what you're doing?

- You would think so.

The the problem is people just are not on, even we have Facebook, we have Instagram, we've done ads in the paper, but you can't reach everyone always.

Even even though we've been there for eight years in a 30 mile radius, there's literally still thousands of people that have no clue we exist.

- Can you take the whole family to this thing?

- Absolutely, yeah.

So that was one thing in the beginning, people were asking us, "What's your target audience?"

And so like I knew a lot about marketing and I tried to, we didn't really have one.

'Cause it applies to any, any age level, any income level, any education level.

Like we have two-year-olds that take it, scream, and love it.

I've done behind the scenes for couples in their 90's before that have an amazing time.

We get parents coming up to us, thanking us for having something that they can do as a whole family.

That their grade schooler can love, their high schooler can love, their college age kids can love 'cause that is just very hard to find these days.

- Can I go back to your dream?

And this is an unfair question, okay.

But I gotta imagine people are out there, it's like, "You know, I have a dream that I should be this.

Does that mean I should go and completely change, you know, my banking job and all that stuff?"

What do you tell a person like that when you're talking about you've changed your complete life because you had one dream two nights in a row.

- True.

- And it's worked out great for you.

Are you hesitant to encourage other people to do that?

- So I think everyone has dreams.

Whether that actually came in while they were sleeping or things that they want to accomplish.

- Mine messed up, man!

They make no sense.

I'm glad yours did!

- And I will be honest, I've had dreams similar to that as well that I wake up and "Thank you, Jesus.

That was just a dream!"

But, but no, so I think for me it definitely helped that I had the kind of the relationship with God that I did, that I could kind of discern what he wanted to do.

Having it two nights in a row, I don't know if I've really ever had a dream two nights in a row.

There's been times where I've had woken up from a dream and it was a fun, exciting dream, and I would love to go back to sleep and go back into that dream, and that that has never happened for me.

So to have the two dreams in a row, that was a big deal.

But my wife was huge in just being able to kind of talk with her about things, bounce ideas off of her.

And then- - But she was supportive?

- She was, it was cautiously supportive, cautiously supportive.

When we bought the property that first year, I was working six days a week, usually leaving at about six in the morning, coming back at seven or eight at night.

And that was very hard on us.

Just hardly seeing her, hardly seeing my son when I come home for lunch.

So that is what kind of got us motivated to move out to the property and that's been the best decision we've made in all of this.

- Here you are, you've followed your dream, which is extremely hard and most of it is fear for most people.

Hey, I've been there too.

If you have that person that comes up to you, and let's say it wasn't a night dream or just I have this dream of doing A, B or C, what do you tell them?

- I think let them know following your dream is probably gonna be the hardest thing that you will ever do in your life.

That there'll be challenge after challenge.

But if you can stick with it, stick through it, it will always be worth everything you had to go through.

- Do you love it?

- Absolutely, yeah.

- I mean they say if you- - There are some days that I don't really like it.

- I was gonna say "hyena poop".

- (laughs) Yeah, yes.

So that and anytime, we are family owned.

So like I said, God gave me the dreams, I kind of bounced off with my wife, talk through some things, and then started sharing with my family.

My kind of three brothers came on in the beginning and we built it and we run it as a family business.

So like Andrew, my brother who lives on site as well, he is our executive vice president.

Him and I, we're kind of opposite personalities.

He's the pessimist, I'm the optimist.

And so usually working together we can come up with a something amazing in between with what we both were thinking.

- How do I find this place?

- So our website is aikmanwildlife.com.

- [Rob] Is it spelled like Troy?

- It is, just like Troy.

Our Facebook page, that's been the biggest thing for us is Facebook.

It's just Aikman Wildlife Adventure.

It's also the same thing for Instagram as well.

- Okay, and have you found that works a lot, posting on those?

- It does, it has been huge for us.

What we've found lately is it almost works better to have other pages posting stuff for us.

Because of Facebook's algorithm, anytime we post, it only goes to a fraction of the people that follow us.

Whereas if other places do it, they might be set up differently.

And so it goes out to more people.

- No TikTok, huh?

- So we have a TikTok account.

We had a part-time person that was kind of running that and then he took another job.

And so we're still kind of trying to figure that out.

- [Rob] But that's a different animal.

(laughs) You get it?

- Yes.

Yeah, it is 'cause it's kind of short videos on TikTok, you gotta realize that the attention span is very short.

- What's that?

(both laughing) (whispers) Joke!

Alright, let me leave you like this.

What's the wish animal?

What's the animal you don't have that you wish you had?

- Honestly, for years we have talked about giraffe.

We kind of know exactly what we would do with giraffe.

The problem is kind of to do what we would want to do from a quality of life standpoint.

It takes a huge building that gets heated for the wintertime.

And so that, that is a major expense, especially with just material costs and labor costs being so high.

So a giraffe is probably pretty far down the road unless we had a a donor step in and say, "I want you to have giraffe there".

So, but... - [Rob] Looking for giraffe donors in case anybody's interested.

And do you have armadillos down there?

- So we have a three banded armadillo at the park.

They're native to South America.

- Don't let that thing loose!

- They are not the ones you see coming into the States.

- They carry leprosy, too.

- So yeah, the nine banded can the three banded do not, so... - Okay, I mean if we get invaded by them, we're gonna be looking at you.

- I think they've already started coming into the state, so I think they're already- - Yes, down in southern Illinois.

You see them dead along the road.

Dense little creatures, aren't they?

- Yes.

- James Aikman from Arcola, Illinois.

I love the story, James.

I have a soft spot in my heart for people that put it all out there and follow their dreams.

I know how scary it is.

- Sure.

- It's terrifying.

Not just the the the fear of failure, but the fear of embarrassment.

But it takes people like yourself, people like your family, that are gonna be able to go ahead and do that.

So I really appreciate you making a drive up here.

- Sure, no problem.

I appreciate the invite.

- Yeah, I thought you were gonna bring a real zebra.

- Unfortunately, I drive around a Toyota Prius and the zebra doesn't fit in the Prius too well.

- Thought you were gonna bring a real... James, thank you so very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time!

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