Ira: 0:04

Hello and welcome. I am Ira Gordon and, along with Stacee Santi, the host of The Accidental Entrepreneurs podcast. We each previously founded successful companies Along the way. We became business owners and eventually sold those businesses despite us having no real background in business or ever even planning to become entrepreneurs. In other words, we did this all despite originally having no idea what we were doing or getting ourselves into. In each episode of this podcast, we will share stories and tips from our journey and we'll answer a randomly chosen question about our experience. Let's jump right into the show.

Stacee: 0:41

Well, we're getting ready to head over to the big show season for vet med and we get to see kind of what's coming down the pipe. What do you think are going to be the hot trends for 2024 in the veterinary technology space?

Ira: 0:56

There's two big things going on that are probably not unique to veterinary medicine. At least one of them is not. The one that may be a little bit more unique is the continued emergence of telemedicine. There's been at least one and probably a couple of states that have new legislation that will enable veterinarians to create a virtual veterinary client-patient relationship, or VCPR, which means that they'll be able to diagnose and treat diseases without ever actually physically seeing a patient. So that will lead to some additional innovation in telemedicine, presumably. The other thing that continues to develop that certainly is not limited to veterinary medicine is improvement in artificial intelligence and the impact that that will have on the profession and the practice medicine. A lot of interesting things there. What do you think?

Stacee: 1:57

I agree with the AI for sure. I'm seeing a lot of companies doing some scribing, like helping the vets in the exam room which I'm sure they're doing in human side as well but able to basically take all your spills and turn it into reusable content. I think that's going to be really good because we know clients don't remember what you told them, so I can just see them this being converted to pet owner-friendly handout and stuff like that. It'd be so nice. I have some big predictions around the PIMS, the practice management software. I feel like this area has been percolating for the last five, six years and it's in need and ready and primed up for a giant disruption in overhaul. I'm seeing some companies come out the gate that I think maybe they can do it.

Ira: 2:56

Sure, would be nice to imagine going into most veterinary practices and not hearing. I hate my practice management software. I think that's been the case for as long as I've been in this field and it may not be such a dream to have that go away, but of course many have tried. It's not for lack of effort but hopefully you know technology and the investments going into improving those things will pay off soon.

Stacee: 3:22

I think someone's gonna come out here and really disrupt this area. It needs it if we're being honest.

Ira: 3:28

All right, well let's, should we see what our topic for today is gonna be and spin our wheel of names.

Stacee: 3:36

Let's do it.

Ira: 3:42

What was your first office like? Why don't you go first Stacee?

Stacee: 3:47

Okay, that's a funny one. So my first office was, I have to say, it would waver between my couch and my spare bedroom. I was working on getting Vet2Pet off the ground while watching TV every night and just piddling around on my computer. And then I ended up converting my spare bedroom, to be an office, and we had like an upstairs to the house where the kids had moved out and so we had this huge playroom with the pool table and stuff, and so I remember just lining up all my marketing boxes there and using this whole upper level of the house for my office. That's where it started.

Stacee: 4:32

When I got enough money to get out of the office, and actually when I got my first employee, I rented probably about a 350 square foot office space in downtown Durango where a former senator had or like an advocacy group had been there for the election and this room was available and they had fast internet and they had a bathroom and I'm like I'll take it, and so we got a couple more employees and we are all just in each corner of our little tiny room it was. It was pretty funny. How about you?

Ira: 5:11

We didn't have much of an office for a long time because, although when we started working on the business we were all together in veterinary school by the time the business started to grow and really function. We were all living in different places and At some point we needed to get a storage shed because we've gotten enough stuff for the business for, like, attending conferences and having things like that. So I would say, a storage that might have been our first office and then, eventually, once we had a couple of Employees, one of them needed an office and so, yeah, we rented like an 80 square foot Office in you know one of these complexes that had coffee and internet and some conference rooms, and whenever we would actually get together, like just almost because we felt like we should, because we were paying for it, like we'd go to the office and sit in the conference room and eat the you know free M&Ms and free coffee, and of course we were paying for but felt free.

Stacee: 6:08

And you guys did a lot of zoom before it was popular, didn't you?

Ira: 6:14

Yeah, I mean a lot of it was all even phone calls because of the time frame of all of this, but yeah, we did. All of our work was done virtually for really the entirety of the company. And so, yeah, calls, conference calls we used to call a party line on the phone, right, and eventually, yeah, moving towards video calls was great and certainly a challenge to run a company that way, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point, but also was great. I think people love the flexibility. Maybe we'll talk about this more in another time, but our first employee literally traveled all the way around the world while working for us

Stacee: 6:57

And do you remember being stressed about making rent or paying for your space? I mean, I was pretty stressed in the beginning. I think I paid maybe $500 a month and then we needed to grow and I need to get a bigger office and I found one that was $1,200 a month and I remember being just, oh, I was so stressed if I could make the payment and you had to sign a lease and it was a big deal for me.

Ira: 7:22

Yeah, no, by the time we got an office we were fortunately in a pretty good spot. The first thing we had to buy that had like a big monthly payment was actually our server and sort of the service that went along with it to run our website, and so that was probably a couple of hundred dollars a month, but we weren't sure how long we were going to be able to pay that before we ran out of money at first, of course.

Stacee: 7:46

And some of it is just a leap of faith. Like I wasn't really very good at planning my whole financial future for 12 months in advance, I was just like I'm going to take a leap of faith that I can do this. And I think some of that came from the veterinary practice because I knew when my schedule was so busy and so booked out Like if I was three days booked out consistently I knew we needed to hire another vet. I was just kind of how I operated and it always worked out that way If you build it, they will come. And I had a lot of that same for growing Vet2Pet .

Ira: 8:27

Yeah, we really started our business as more of a side project or side hustle is what people would call it now, I suppose and so we didn't quite have to take that leap, if you will, to sort of leave our job to run the business. But we did sort of get to this point where we just felt like we passed the point of no return, Like we put in so much work and we still didn't have a viable product yet. But we couldn't give up because we felt like we were 75, 80% of the way there. And how could you come this far and not get it to the end, even though we didn't really have the time to kind of get over those final few steps?

Stacee: 9:09

Was there a time when you started to take your side hustle and treat it as the main thing?

Ira: 9:16

Yes and no. Fortunately, we pretty much always consider that to be more of our hobby and the thing that we did to blow off steam from our real jobs, if you will, but really for quite some time, because I spent so much time as a trainee, as a resident and as a post-doctoral research fellow, my side hustle was really my main source of income for a long time, and so of course, that does have a way of impacting your priorities and where you spend your time. And certainly we had a lot of conversations where we discussed wouldn't it be cool if we could just do the thing that is our fun thing and no longer do the thing that we consider to be our real jobs? But we loved our real jobs, like love being a veterinarian and seeing patients and doing the things we'd always plan to do, and as much fun as we had being accidental entrepreneurs, we were never quite ready to leave the clinic to do it. How about you?

Stacee: 10:22

Well, for about three years I loved both things the same and I'm the same as you. That was my outlet. Vet2Pet was my creative outlet, where I didn't have anybody depending on me. Nobody was going to die Vet2Pet. There was no obligations, really, so to speak, like when you're a vet. There's a lot more on the line for.

Ira: 10:43

There's literally life and death things happening.

Stacee: 10:46

Yeah, and I always said like, oh, this is a safe place for me to play around, because, really, what's the worst thing that can happen? You cancel your service? Oh, okay, I can deal with that. At least you're still alive.

Ira: 10:59

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't know that I dealt with that well, but I tried to sort of provide that perspective that, like you know what, like losing a customer is not the same as losing a patient, right?

Stacee: 11:10

Yeah, it's in perspective. In fact I didn't even allow plants in the home office because I'm like nothing dies at Vet2Pet. This is my safe space. But I'm a big fan of trying to read the situation and see when doors are opening and doors are closing, and sometimes you want something so bad and you go and you bang on the door and you bang on the door and it just is so hard to open it and other times you can just look over to the left and the door is just waiting for you to walk through it.

Stacee: 11:45

And I kind of had that happen to me because I my clinic had gotten purchased by a big corporate group, a consolidator, and it was becoming increasingly more stressful for me to thrive in this environment because of course they had their ways that they wanted to grow their new group of practices and I was losing the ability to just do what I wanted in my little local environment and I definitely could see their side, but I found it stifling and I didn't like all their policies and procedures and I don't know, I was just I'm not good at taking top down directives, and so I just was one day thinking maybe I should do Shark Tank and go all in. What's the worst thing that could happen? I really played out that scenario.

Stacee: 12:40

My husband he was really great about it. He's like, well, the worst thing that could happen is we could lose a lot of money and then we'd have to sell our house and live in a single wide trailer. He's like but I've lived in a single wide trailer before, it's not that hard and we could totally do it and we don't want to have any regrets at the end. So we should, you should go for it, like I'm game, if you're game, and if it doesn't work out, we'll regroup and figure out another plan. And that kind of gave me a lot of safety feeling that I could take a little bit of risks with our financials.

Ira: 13:18

And that's great and it reminds me of this notion that I think is maybe sort of clouded hindsight, but I certainly reflect on some of my happiest times as a professional and a grown-up being when I was an intern with almost no income, living in a tiny apartment with my fiance and my wife and going through this hard experience with a bunch of other people that I really enjoyed going through that with and spending time with, and that really didn't need a lot of these other things to be happy, just needed to be busy doing something that you enjoyed caring about and were learning from. And we're really just focused on, like you're just sort of in the moment, doing all those things, and so I think that that's a great perspective, the sort of the realization that the worst thing that could happen is to sort of be in that state for some period of time is potentially manageable or not so bad, even though it's a little scary for sure.

Stacee: 14:31

It reminds me of this quote I think it was Jim Carrey who said something to the effect of I wish everybody could become a millionaire, and then they would realize that their happiness doesn't depend on money.

Speaker 3: 14:51

How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That's all you have to figure out. As someone who's done what you're about to go and do, I can tell you from experience. The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is, Because everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

Speaker 3: 15:19

I've often said that I wished people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame, so that they could see that it's not where you're going to find your sense of completion. Like many of you, I was concerned about going out into the world and doing something bigger than myself, until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself, Because life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. How do I know this? I don't, but I'm making sound, and that's the important thing. That's what I'm here to do. Sometimes, I think that's the only thing that's important. Really. It's just letting each other know we're here, reminding each other that we're part of a larger self. Your job is not to figure out how it's going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head. And when the door opens in real life, just walk through it and don't worry if you miss your cue, because there's always doors opening. They keep opening.

Speaker 3: 16:23

And when I say life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. I really don't know if that's true. I'm just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way. You'll come up with your own style. That's part of the fun. So, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Not religion but faith, Not hope but faith. I don't believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Stacee: 17:04

Because it's really true. I mean, the money allows you to do more things and buy more things, but there are consequences that come with that and you sometimes, oftentimes, are beholden to all the crap you purchased.

Ira: 17:20

Now that reminds me of this gift I sent one of my partners at the business. That was this plaque that had this graph that I found on the internet. It was probably a meme or something, but on the X-axis it has money and on the Y-axis it has problems and it's just an arrow going up and to the right, right and I think that's yeah, it's totally true. Obviously, it is a tremendous privilege to have the financial resources to take care of the things you want to take care of, even indulge in some luxuries from time to time and not have the worries that come along with not being able to afford things, but it really only provides very short windows of happiness and joy in the things that actually drive, that are really left unfulfilled by that alone.

Stacee: 18:18

Yeah, if you're thinking of starting a company and you're like, take the chance, take the risk, look at your life. I mean we don't want you to be homeless or not have food for your kids, but there's probably some risks that you can take to try to get your dream to come to life. It's just worth it because it's the journey right, like Miley Cyrus, like it's the climb.

Ira: 18:46

I couldn't agree more.

Stacee: 18:48

Okay. Well, now it's time in our program where we're going to share a favorite tip or trick or quote or bit of inspiration tool that you used to make your startup successful.

Ira: 19:03

We were one of the probably the earliest adopters of a tool that is extremely widely used in business now, and it is the communication platform Slack. And we, you know, as a virtual company. When we started using Slack, you know we only had about 10 people at the business, but all of a sudden it's just. It seemed like every day people were joking with each other on Slack and it really brought us all together as a way to sort of informally communicate in ways that you know email could never do and that there was never really a way for telephones and sort of live meetings to to provide either. And, of course, now there's a number of different communication tools that have similar functionality. But yeah, I'm a big fan of Slack.

Stacee: 19:58

Yeah, I like slack a lot to you. It took me a while to get on board, but once I was I I really liked it. My tool that I'm going to recommend today is Jotform, so this is better than Google Forms in my opinion. It's got more conditional coding. It's easy for a normal person to build forms and do surveys and I really had a great time using job form, and one of the ways I used it is, as the company grew, I found it harder to know everybody and kind of know how their mental state was and how they were doing and if they're having a hard week or personal thing.

Stacee: 20:39

I just lost a bit of the knowing what was going on because we were growing so fast, and so I created a job form and I called it a TPR kind of your, your, a pulse check, basically, and for those of you that aren't veterinarians, that stands for temperature, pulse and respiration. It's kind of like your base metrics and I would send this format every Monday and it was just a couple of questions like how are you feeling this week? Rate your, are you overwhelmed, underwhelmed? Just right, you know how, how is your mental state and Anything you want to share with me. It could be a fun joke, it could be what you did this weekend, it could be something you're stressed about, and it really worked well because people could just return the information to me and then I could see who on the team was In a good state, who is in a bad state, and then we could like help each other, because it all ebbs and flows.

Stacee: 21:36

You know you're having a bad week this time, someone else will have a bad week later. You can sort of cover for each other and I knew who could take extra work at that time and who was had their playful. So I really like job for my. Use it for a million things. But that's just one example.

Ira: 21:54

Great. I'm a recent adopter of Jotform only in the last year or so that I start using it, but it's a pretty cool tool your story reminds me of I hand. One of my mentors as a resident was this radiation oncologist is his French and he, I guess, was ahead of his time because you know wellness wasn't a big thing in the workplace at the time, but he would ask me on roughly a weekly basis.

Ira: 22:19

He'd say how's your joie de vivre ? And I'm sure I just butchered the pronunciation of that, but I didn't even know what he meant the first few times he asked me. But yeah, literally, I think, translates to joy of life, oh, and

Stacee: 22:36

Okay, I'm gonna use that.

Ira: 22:39

Might want to ask an actual French speaker to pronounce it, otherwise you'll probably be embarrassing yourself as I just did, but I still use that. I ask people about that question all the time.

Stacee: 22:52

That's great. Well, let's go ahead and spin the wheel and see what we're gonna be talking about in our next episode. So hold on, hold the line, here we go.

Ira: 23:10

What are some marketing ideas that failed, oh boy. We might need to get a little more serious. We might need more time for our next episode of Stacee.

Stacee: 23:22

All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the show today. If you want to learn more about my story or Ira's story, be sure to check out episodes two and three. And if you are an accidental entrepreneur and would like to be a guest co-host on the show just message BEACOHOST (no spaces) to 1-833-463-9727 and tell us your story. See you next time.