Earl "Bubba" Scales Email & Phone Number

As an aspiring conservationist in my 20s and early 30s, I put my people skills to work in ecotourism and interpretive design. As a husband and father in my mid 30s until just last year, I put my people skills to work in retail. Not just any retail, though. Our retail niche was as a franchise owner of a Wild Birds Unlimited store. Our mission was to improve our customers' quality of life by helping them find simple joy in the beauty of their own back yard. Secondarily but also very important, we filled our store with responsibly produced nature-related gift items. Our community came to see us as a place where they were safe to purchase items that were produced conscientiously, with respect to environmental and social impacts. Our approach to winning customers, aside from always applying the basics of outstanding customer service, was to demystify nature for the community. We helped the community understand what was going on around them, why it was important to conduct their own lives with respect to what they had learned, and how to create more and more of that kind of enjoyment for themselves.My wife and I sold that Wild Birds Unlimited franchise in September 2021 in order to spend more time with our two high school age children during critically important years and to return to something even more in keeping with our conservation ethic.Now, I am stepping back out with 20 years of experience owning and operating a highly successful, nature-related, community minded business and all of the skills in that set. I'm merging that with previous work experience in conservation, a master's degree in environmental management from Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, an upbringing in the glory days of Florida's citrus industry, work experience managing land and other assets through the greening-related decline, and not-for-profit administration.