Megan Sprinkle: [00:00:00] Welcome to Vet Life Reimagined. Today I have Ryan Leach. Ryan is someone to watch in the veterinary industry because he is one of the most informed individuals on all things that impact our profession. Ryan brings a unique sales background that astounds me and is one of the most likable people you'll meet.
We'll talk about how the veterinary industry won him over. We'll talk about what you need to know when it comes to things happening in veterinary consolidation. And I asked Ryan to predict what he thinks is in store for our future. And I think you'll be interested in his response. He puts all his knowledge and insights in a weekly podcast called the bird bath, which are 10 to 15 minute episodes on the important industry updates.
All this on this episode of that life re imagined. So let's get to that conversation with Ryan Leach recorded at VMX 2024. Well, thank you for joining me early in the morning on the last day of VMX. And I'm really excited to learn more about your story because we have, we met at [00:01:00] the Veterinary Innovation Summit and headed off well, both podcasters, and we have a big passion around that.
And the more I meet you, the more I learn about you. The more interesting you get. Oh, And understanding how many people you know in the veterinary industry is just really neat. So, you definitely did not start in the veterinary industry. I did not. So, when did you get into this crazy profession?
Ryan Leech: Yeah, it was not something that I had viewed or planned, really.
I was told that I was allergic to dogs when I was a little kid. And that's why I wasn't allowed to have a dog. I don't know if that I have dogs now and I'm not sneezing, so someone was allergic to, to dogs, but yeah, I never really had any, um, animals, I had fish growing up that, I guess I'm kind of entrepreneurial, but I, they would have their little, they'd lay their eggs, have their babies, and then I would take the babies and grow them into another aquarium in my room, and [00:02:00] then sell those to the company that cleaned the fish tank for us.
to pay for the fish tank cleaning. But that's my only, that was my only animal experience. And so, yeah, I came right out of college. I always enjoyed sales and business and started selling cars. So, I liked cars. They were fast. They make, they're shiny. They make big noises. Um, and yeah, so I worked in the auto industry for about five years.
But I kept seeing the emergence of business that was going to be direct to consumer, and, and it hasn't happened yet, but I still do believe that we'll see the elimination or the reduction of the auto dealership model, the finance model, like a lot of those things are shaking up, and they have over the past, since I left the space, and I wanted to get into startups.
I've always liked the idea of startups. For me, I really get passionate when it's like, I put in [00:03:00] X amount of effort and I see that direct impact on an entire organization as opposed to I, you know, Hey, if I, you know, hammer away as hard as I can, it raised the end goal of the company from a hundred billion to a hundred billion and 1.
You're like, Oh, that's didn't really make an impact. I like to be like, 50% of this we can attribute to like what Ryan helped us build. So that's why I, I went into the startup space. I worked for a company that was acquired by booking.com and learned a lot about technology and remote sales. So we were selling all over the country.
We were doing Zoom calls back in. 2014, I think. Way before it was fashionable. Way before it was fashionable. Google meets, and like, I was like, what are you, you're sharing your screen? And like, people show up, and we like, show up. This is crazy, but I kept finding [00:04:00] that there were like, things that were the status quo.
Like, the expectation. And one of the things that we had there was, People would sell 12 websites. We were selling websites to hoteliers. And people would say, oh, we sold 12. That was like an incredible month. Wow, we killed it. And I was looking and I was like, what is the decision making set? What are they actually thinking about?
What's happening here? And I realized that what we were actually selling was more people booking rooms. Right? That was the end goal. More people show up and decide to make a reservation and stay with you. And. When you get the opportunity for them to make their reservation you can have them as you if you book, you know hotels online right that you add a bottle of champagne when you arrive or you add a Bar credit or like adding that cart component to it And I was like, that's what we're doing like the website great, but that's the vehicle to drive it if we can just talk with them about The direct [00:05:00] analytics and the impact of with this system, you can go from paying a travel agency or a booking.
com or a company like that, you know, 10 percent eight to 12, 10 percent right to 5 percent direct with us. You'll make more money and you'll get more people in. And so I re envisioned the whole thing that we were doing and said, you know, we can sell a hundred of these per person per month and just. So I found two other crazy guys in the company with me and we completely scrapped the entire playbook of everything that was going on.
We got extra phone lines so that we could dial one phone while talking on the other, because you had to find like this minute details. I cut down from saying, hi, this is Ryan with booking. com. I'm calling it to, Hey Ryan with booking. com or Hey Ryan with booking. And like knowing that cutting down those 15 seconds of Warmness to begin with allowed me to call an [00:06:00] extra eight people a day.
I could close 20%, you know, each week I could pick up an extra seven to 12 deal and so building that. And so I always enjoyed finding those nuances, but there's always new technology. And so I was continually looking for new things. I joined red hat, which is a Linux software company in their emerging technology space.
Cause someone told me about Docker. which is like kubernetes. It's, uh, the idea that there's a physical component and a capacity to technology, but through software and utilization of them, you can actually increase the capacity of the physical hardware through the technology. It's, and it made my brain spin, so I wanted to explore it and learn more about it.
And then I kept wanting to You know, make a bigger impact. They were the largest, one of the largest software companies in the world. They were acquired by IBM. And I heard about a mobile gas delivery company, which [00:07:00] was one of my wife's friends posted on Facebook and said, Oh my gosh, what a stupid idea.
And it's a company that you have an app on your phone. You park, and click a button on your phone. Someone comes and fills your car up with gas. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Perfect. That's, that's a perfect idea, but the CEO and the founder, he was self-described as extremely overeducated. He was a, he went to Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford.
He was a former rocket scientist. So being in public facing conversations and sales meetings was not his strong suit. And so I just reached and I said, Hey, you need someone that can do this. And he said, no, I don't. I said, yes, you do. He said, no, I don't. I said, I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and come and work for you.
He said, I'm not hiring you. I said, that's okay. I'll, I'm just going to come. And I did, showed up, worked for a day. I said, should I come back tomorrow? He said, yeah, come back tomorrow. Okay. [00:08:00] And I did that for like a week. And then I was like, can we say I'll come back for a whole week? Yeah. Can I come back for a whole month?
And I was there for, for a couple of years. building and leading their sales team. I ended up, I was an interim GM running Texas for them. They were over 200 million of fundraising round. They got a lot of money. They raised a lot of money for things and it was really interesting to see that experience. So I learned about the venture capitalist field, but the passion that kept coming to me and I, you know, hopefully I'm getting there right, right.
Is that I continued to find that I really enjoy working with CEOs and founders that. are spending too much time worrying about their sales teams and the numbers of what the people on the floor are doing and, oh, where's this lead? And they can't, at that point, take the chance to run the business. If they're spending too much time worrying about the nuances, they can't focus on the business.
So I started my own sales consulting business, which was [00:09:00] It gets to the answer of your question, but I started my own sales consulting business called First 100. And the goal was I wanted to work with companies that had under a hundred employees or under a hundred clients. So I wanted them to be smaller and small enough that the CEO and the founder was usually still just sitting there doing sales calls on demos on doing everything.
Yeah. And be able to say. I can build this for you. I can get the team in a good spot. I can train your team and I can get you a sales director, salesman, whatever you want, train them. And you can be in a completely different world worried about the overall growth of the company, but have dashboards and technology to be able to say, How many people called us?
How many leads came in? What were the sales like? Where are we? And, but not have to sit down and go, come on, please, Megan, what's going on? What's going on? So that was, I, that was what I built and did it for a whole different world. I worked with private jet [00:10:00] companies, private airlines, craft cocktail companies, event companies.
And one night over dinner. My father-in-law, who's a veterinarian, and was working with, uh, practice management software, kept telling me, you know, we need to sell more, I don't know why they're not closing deals, it's taking away focus from the CEO and the founder, and I, I was like, Say more. You know what I do, right?
Yeah. You know, like, you know how I, I, I put food on the table. He was like, Oh yeah, but you know, we don't, I have a very serious, I don't like to do mixed business and family. And he was like, I know. But I was like, yeah, okay. Just give my email to the CEO. Neither one of us is recommending the other one. And that was Hippo Practice Management Software.
So, that was my first foray into the VET space, by working with Sam and the team at Hippo. First as a consultant, and then ultimately I came on a full-time leading sales and marketing forum. The thing that was really interesting was [00:11:00] when I came in, I looked at the demographics of the business, right? It's primarily a And still, to this day, even with all the consolidation, they're independently owned businesses.
The owner is the operator, is the DVM, is the one worrying about every nuance of the business. A lot of times it's generational businesses. A lot of times family works within the business with them. They usually own the real estate. And, in my naivety, I looked at it and said, Well, what they're trying to do is get more people to make more bookings or reservations or appointments and come in and then being able to streamline that process.
I said, I did that. I did that for booking. com. Easy. No problem. Here's the playbook that I have for how to sell the hotels. It's super easy. It will be quadruple sales in a month. No, no, I was very quickly [00:12:00] slapped around and chewed up and spit out by the veterinary community, which I liked because it was a challenge.
I learned from it and I sat down with, you know, with the team and I was like, okay, what are we missing? What are the conversations? And what we ended up doing was pretty much going through the entire sales team and, changing a lot of the people's roles and hiring new people that were former vet techs that understood the nuances of when someone's answering the phone in the clinic.
The story they always tell me was like, if you call the two o'clock and they say that the doctor can't talk cause they're in surgery, they're lying to you. Right. They did surgery that morning. They're not do like the understanding of the nuance of what's happening in the clinic versus what the front desk is saying.
Like, no, you can't talk to the owner right now. They're, um, They're doing drop off points. You're like, wait, but they wouldn't have, they'd like, so I had none of that. I knew none of that. And so I've really relied on the, [00:13:00] the teams, the technicians that came in. And I thought it was a cool opportunity to be able to allow technicians that had.
Seeing perhaps some burnout or physical constraints, the demands of the job, and be able to say, hey, come in, continue to stay in the industry, continue to talk to the people that you enjoy, that you like, continue to have an impact on the business. Instead of wrestling dogs and, you know, really being physical, you can work from home.
You know, do calls from your, wherever you are, you can, we had an office, you still come into the office, you do it like, and it was a cool way to transition people into additional opportunities, which, you know, we're all about a lot about, yeah. And so I thought that was really fun and we got hippo to a, a, a great place and then found a, another sales director cause it was like, okay, like we've done it like mission accomplished.
Let's get someone else in to run the, run the ship. And so we, we got that. Then. The [00:14:00] entire time and anyone in the vet space that's been around for a few years probably knows SmartFlow whiteboard technology. And at least once a day a client would say, well, you have a SmartFlow, but man, have you ever seen what you have whiteboard?
Have you ever seen SmartFlow though? Oh, it's the best. Oh, I wish it. And I was like, I got to see this SmartFlow thing, this guy. And so I reached out to Dr. Ivan Zack, who is the. Founder and one of the creators of SmartFlow. And I was like, dude, what did you, what'd you make? I got to see this thing. What's your brain doing?
How do you work? What's going on with you? And about 15 minutes into our conversation, he was like, what are you doing? I was like, well, you know, doing my consulting and you know, just finished up a big job. And he said, do you want to work together? I said, yeah, I like you. He's like, I like you too. And we worked together for four years, straight from that phone call.
Yeah. And so that was the way that I got into the, into the industry and continue to learn.
Megan Sprinkle: [00:15:00] When you were working with Ivan, Zach, and not only maybe that you worked with the SmartFlow aspect of things, but you also worked in the consolidation side of things.
Ryan Leech: Yeah. Yeah. So I joined Ivan and a lot of the team after they had sold SmartFlow.
Some of the folks that had left IDEXX. So I did Ivan had left IDEXX by that time. So no, no credit taken for the ability to, to talk about how great SmartFlow. So just like, if I see someone that did something incredible, I'm like, yeah, let's learn, let's learn what that was. But yeah, so I, that was the, the aspect.
So we, When I joined Ivan and the team, they were working on veterinary integration solutions, or VIS. And the thing that most people, especially on the corporate side of the business, will probably recognize from this is if anyone has ever sent you a black and yellow PDF of all of the [00:16:00] consolidators, where they are, what the price, you know, how many practices they own, who owns them, what the corporate structure is, all of that.
that was our pinnacle project that we built within, within VIS. That was the most client facing. And so what we were doing was consulting with consolidators. We saw that there was continuous burnout happening. And whenever we would sit down with large scale consolidators, we would look at their website and the website says every single website and Even with our future group, you know, we had this, right?
We care about people or people first or our teams are our passion. Our heart, you know, is in the clinic or you go, okay, cool. That's awesome. How do you measure it? Are you doing, what's the key? And a lot of them say, well, we have a summer picnic every year where we invite them to the ballpark. You're like, okay, what, what else?
And. You'd continue to find that it wasn't something that was truly measured [00:17:00] or actioned upon. And, and then as we would dive deeper into the investment decks, the private equity groups were investing in, there was no component there that said, we're going to add 15 clinics utilizing your hundred million dollars.
We're going to do this. But another key component for us is employee satisfaction, employee retention, uh, reduction to burnout. All of these things that, that people put out there as being important. And if it, and our view was, if it's not in the deck or the thesis that you're giving to the people that are giving you all the money, then it's not something that you're really behind.
And so the goal for VIS was to help work with those teams to be able to through either technology or coaching or mentorship or anything, be able to help guide them. from a corporate level to understand the value of reduction. So, one of the doctors that I knew well, they said, doing well by doing good. Or, you know, and there was [00:18:00] a, the other thing that we would say, there was an ROI on caring about people.
And so it was a business case, right? Take care of your people. They'll stay. They'll be happy. The reduction, burnout will be reduced. We, like, and that's such a simplification, right? There's a lot of things you can do to reduce this and You can make money from doing it. So you don't have to, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be a bleeding heart, you know, Oh, you know, everyone will live in a shoe box as long as everyone's happy and you don't have to say, well, we're just going to make money no matter what happens.
So that was the, the big piece there. We, we pushed on that for, for a while and. Eventually said, well, if we're going to keep preaching this, we might as well do it ourselves. And that was why we started Galaxy Vets. So we, a lot of the VIS team and some other wonderful people from within the industry got together and we started our own consolidation group, which is Galaxy Vets, which hopefully will have some cool new stuff to announce in the coming, in the [00:19:00] coming year.
But we were at the tail end of the initial feeding frenzy for private equity. Um, and so we were, reaching, you know, reaching to try and get additional capital and weren't able to be successful in that aspect of it and learned a lot, but pulled back. Settled, held what we owned, Ivan's still working on the, on the GalaxyVets team and, and pushing some really, really cool stuff.
Has expanded to multiple locations in Canada, and more to come from there, so, yeah. Yes, and I, and Dr. Ivan Zak, who is a veterinarian, has been on the podcast as well, so. People can go back and listen to that episode to get ready for that very unique business model. And one thing that I think is so wonderful about you as an individual, but then what you're doing is that gap between a financial minded, you know, business and then the people in the clinic.
Each one on each side [00:20:00] doesn't always know how to Translate and come together and make it all this beautiful, you know, work. And so what have you seen in that perspective of trying to get kind of that both understanding of you have to have the complete picture to be successful, but also, you know, retain your talent, have a good culture, all of that.
Yeah, it's, it's still super tough. Yeah. I mean, it's. You know, right, we're here at VMX. And if you look at the, the course loads and the CE opportunities, there are more than I think there have been probably 10 years ago. I wasn't around for it, but I would imagine if we look at the programming 10 years ago versus today, there's a lot more of, I was walking by a practice management and how to manage for a successful startup clinic.
Mm. Okay. And I think there's more of this conversation of the understanding of that. I think the [00:21:00] continuous access to care that people are seeing is an issue are bringing to light some of the financial constraints that come into play and why we're seeing the increase in continuous consolidation of the industry.
For people to say like private equity doesn't flood into places where they. don't know that they're going to make money, right? That, that's why they do so well. And that's why they went from dental to med spa to chiropractic to vet to eventually we will no longer be their sweetheart and they'll move to their next big thing.
I hope that we can all be aligned to say, cool, and that when we do bring in external capital like that, that that we're understanding that, hey, you're welcome to come to the party but. Please leave the money behind, right? And, and that's kind of the thing with GalaxyVets. We, we were looking at an, we had an ESOP, which is an employee share ownership plans.
And, [00:22:00] uh, there's a lot of groups doing joint ventures and dividends and, and rev share. And that's kind of the thing to be able to say, instead of saying, all right, you're going to buy this business for. 10 million dollars, you're going to grow it to 100 and then you're going to take that 90 million dollars of extra capital and flood out with it.
Yes, you take that 10 million, you'll, you'll make 100, you'll take that 90 million dollars of capital and you'll leave. You take that 90 million, you'll go invest in another industry. I really think that we should think of how do we keep that 90 million dollars within the space. How do we put that in the pockets of the people doing the work?
How do we put it into entrepreneurs within the space? How do we do that sort of thing? So it is difficult, but it's one of the reasons kind of why I started my podcast. If we're going to do like the perfect transition. And by how much I talk, you probably realize why I don't have guests on mine. I just go.
But what I saw was you'll see it. I mean, you, you'll see it in the conferences that we're at. You'll see it at any event. There's, [00:23:00] Kind of these places. The perfect example is there's the, anyone that's been to VMX has probably been to Rocks Bar in the Hyatt. If you haven't been, you should go. You will see people that own your company there.
You'll talk to the people that are deciding what the new drug is that Zoetis is going to bring to market. But what you might not see, and I think it would be cool to see more of is a practice manager from a clinic in Tulsa. Who leads, you know, a practice that's part of a group and that they're there talking with a CFO of a large corporation, right?
You don't see that. Right. And there's still these silos that, that exist. And it's, you know, and I think the data probably will show, okay, well, you know, at the conference, some of these people never go in the expo hall. Some of these people never go to CE. Some of these people are never doing this. They're here and they have a suite in a room and they're just going up and down the elevator.
as [00:24:00] a lot of other people are on the floor having communication. And so the reason I started my podcast was because I saw that gap for people. And I felt like my sister in law who's a DVM, her friends, they were graduating from school. And I was asking him, Oh, well, you're working in independent practice.
You're working in a corporate owned practice. And one of them was working at. What they thought was an independent practice that I found out for them that was corporately owned. And I said So they didn't know they were in a They thought it was more of a management agreement than actual ownership because that's how they represent it.
Okay. In that situation. And it's nothing against her. It was It's designed to be Feel like a Yeah. It still felt like the independent practice, which I think is great. But she was just like, yeah, I know my checks are kind of like come from this company, but they're just managing our books and our accounting and our marketing.
And I was like Yeah, that's consolidation. That's what they do. And, and then I was like, oh, well, so you understand that their capital partner recently made this other acquisition in the space. So what you'll probably see in your clinic over the next few months [00:25:00] is an introduction of this and this could, and she's like, no, like, why would I know any of that?
And I was like, they're all talking about it. They all know these things and they're all watching for these moves. And I think if it would be, I think it's really, and a unique opportunity through my podcast, the birdbath is if technicians and practice owners and field reps and people that are not able to sit down and listen to a four hour Chewy investor day call can get 10 to 15 minutes and say, Oh my gosh, okay.
Zoetis made 350 million in Q3 on their top two selling drugs. When my Zoetis rep comes in, with a dozen doughnuts for 12, I should, like, I shouldn't be falling out for myself with gratitude. I should be thankful, right, and appreciative and just happy to have people looking out for the teams, but also be [00:26:00] like, hey, this is awesome.
I heard that you guys came out with a new drug. I was listening to the podcast, to a podcast. They were talking about this. They were talking about the investor day. They're talking about Zoetis's intention, like where their goals are or where Covetris is trying to take their software strategy and, and be able to ask your reps or have them ask their teams like, is there any way that maybe we could work on utilizing some of what you guys are doing at the corporate level to help upscale our technicians or You know, Midmark, I think, does an incredible job of a technician's dental training program.
They will come in and train the technicians on the team to be able to do absolute highest, highest, maximum level of the license. And it's been, it shows a massive rise in practice revenue, but also a huge employee satisfaction. Because you're giving people additional skills, they're learning new things.
And that's what I, like, want people to challenge their reps and their field. [00:27:00] Sure, I'll buy something from you. Oh, you brought me Chick fil A, right? Thanks for the nugget, Trey. But, like, hey, would you be willing to sponsor some of our techs going to a conference? Would you be willing to have a DVM that works for the corporate group do a zoom call with us to talk about why they think this new drug is better and to dispel questions that the team may have.
Like, if you know what's going on, then you can ask for more or you can challenge it. And I think it's cool because I want it to be the day one kennel attendant and I also would love for, you know, the CEO of MWI to learn something while listening to it too. Yeah. So. That is a great observation is the ability to keep the entire, like everybody who this impacts In the know, but if we can also allow them to have a voice, that is something I'm very passionate about, including veterinary technicians.[00:28:00]
A lot of these individuals don't have seats at these big tables, as you pointed out at the rock, which we just spoiled their hideout. We don't know where you are. We all knew we all, you can hear it like all the way down the hall. It gets rowdy. And going back to what you said, if, when private equity, is, you know, bored and they're ready to move on to the next thing.
How can we learn from them the financial aspect of things to keep that learning within our industry to continue to grow in the direction we want to grow? Yeah, I think that, first off, I recently wrote an article for today's veterinary business talking about what I see kind of the future for consolidation to be.
And I think that the key And what we've seen is that there's a lot of people that grew their businesses on arbitrage, which is one plus one equals three, right? That's arbitrage. Okay. And that's why you saw practices getting gobbled up by large groups, because if they buy a hundred of them, they're worth more than a hundred [00:29:00] individual practices.
But when the interest rates rose, the capital markets dried up, people were more cautious with their investments. Those people were sitting there going. Oh, I have to like, actually run these businesses now? I don't want to do that. I just wanted to hold them for three years. Not touch anything, not do anything.
And then sell them to somebody else. Well, some of that's changed now and what I think people should look at if they're looking at taking outside investment, whether it's for your own independent practice and you have, you go to a bank for a loan or if you're taking 150 million from a private equity group, I think the key is that money should be an accelerant, but not a lifeline.
So. If you're not putting yourself in a situation to be able to have self sustaining business models that can continue so that [00:30:00] When you reach out to say, you know, for an independent practice, if you're saying, Hey, we're doing well, we'd like to, you know, expand the practice. We want to add some more runs.
We want to do these things. Let me get a loan. If the bank says, no, we won't give you a loan. It shouldn't be the nail in the coffin for you. You should have built this strong business that you're looking to expand and grow with. And I think it should be the same thing for a hundred million dollar investment, right?
If you're not at a strong, solid foundation of your core practices, three practices, five practices, a hundred practices, that are generating revenue, moving in a positive direction, that investment would allow you to do more of it faster. But if someone says no, It doesn't mean, oh my gosh, like, we need to start laying people off, we need to close practice.
So, that's kind of what I think people should look at. Like, really understanding a strong core of the [00:31:00] business. And that works for independent practices, and that works for massive groups as well. What is the best way to start learning more of those things? Because if you think about, a lot of these owners are veterinarians who didn't go to business school.
How do they learn some of those tips? So, uh, you know, to reference my, my father in law, he's veterinary, he owned several practices. He didn't go to business school. I have not been to business school. Uh, I, I just like to read a lot. And I think the key thing is to ask questions. You know, there's, there's also some really cool business models that you can learn from.
I think the franchise model is an interesting way for people to get into business ownership with guardrails. There's downsides to it, right? You have someone dictating some of the things that you can and can't do, but you also have someone that guides you to, you know, a successful business with marketing plans and those sort of things.
I think that's a great way to look at it. I think that one of the things that I love about the veterinary [00:32:00] industry is that if you are genuinely caring about improving the industry, no one in this space is going to tell you that they won't sit down with you and talk. I think people can see through if you aren't genuine about that really quickly and like they'll, the cool thing about the space is people will tell you usually it's a pretty direct industry but like if you're genuinely wanting to learn if you're a technician in an independent practice if you like genuinely want to learn how the business is run I would be shocked if your practice owner Whether it's a corporate group, independent, anybody, or somebody, you can reach out to me.
Like, anybody in the industry, if you reach out and say, Hey, I'm genuinely interested in understanding what the triggers are that drive the industry, I think you'd be wowed by the response that people would get. It's really like, There's massive resources that are out there that [00:33:00] people just need to grab at.
Yeah. Well, speaking of what you were seeing in the consolidation space in the future, what other things are you seeing probably coming in the future for veterinary medicine? Yeah. So I always try to think of like what's going to be hot thing for the year, right? Yeah. 2020, I thought it was going to be the cloud.
instead it was a pandemic. I did not see that. That's okay. I had built like a whole campaign in my mind around, okay, we are going to educate people on the importance of cloud technology and COVID changed that. But COVID also did teach a lot of people about the cloud. So maybe it, maybe it covered that for me.
I think that we are every single thing has the word or the letters AI in it. Right. Like, and I think that, It's not going anywhere. I think it has a better staying power. I'd say two years ago, I think the buzzword was blockchain. A lot of people were using blockchain [00:34:00] technology, which is, if you have, you know, if people aren't familiar with it, it's the way that Bitcoin works.
It's the way that, it's the technology that allows you to have a digital encryption and be able to track a piece of information across the world anonymously forever. And I think a lot of people were excited about that. I don't think that it ever, I think the pandemic also kind of changed up the view on that.
But I do think that a big thing that we're going to see this year is people taking real steps to adapt and increase access to care. That's what I think, like, if you try to piece all of the disparate puzzles together, I think they will all form an access to care picture. So we're going to see AI. being utilized from, you know, what that power is doing with Ava, which is a, a phone answering, but it's an AI that answers the phone with a voice and answers questions and talks back to, and [00:35:00] does the intake forms, you know, digital who I work with, you know, we've got the opportunity for intake forms.
We have the opportunity for practices to be able to send emails and read directly from the PIMS and have chat into a tech, like, Really integrated to be able to reduce the mundane tasks that are being done in the practice and then you have SignalPet that's using it or Radimal that's using it to look at the radiology and radiographs and be able to really read into those things.
So I think all of that is decreasing workload on the practitioners which increases the availability of appointments and scheduling I think telemedicine Which is constant conversation. We're seeing the laws in California, Arizona, a lot of these places are coming into effect this year as well as last year.
That's increasing the the slice of that pie to allow people to get appointments and available access to care. We have [00:36:00] care credit and synchrony, which is divesting or moving their interest in Pets Best to Independence Pet Holding. which is owned by J B and sort of largest fund in the world or one of the, but yeah, so we're seeing a lot of that.
Everything I think though, piles on into the access to care world. And so I think that's kind of the cool thing that that's surprising that every time someone tells you something new, kick into your brain, how does this relate to access to care? And I think that's where we'll see that, that continuous thread.
So do you see a lot of things that are vet centered? Or pet centered? Or pet parent centered? Mmm. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So, this last year I began my education in pet [00:37:00] care. Okay. I have exclusively focused on vet care. before. Yeah, it's an entirely different world. The food world, the treats, the add ons, the toys, those, it's, it's an entirely different world.
Um, the, I would like it to stay vet centered. I think that it would be important. Um, a lot of the things that I'm pushing on are with the hopes and the desire that we can find it to be continue to be vet centered and that the pet care companies continue to, or increase their importance on the veterinarians and the, and the veterinary practitioners to actually listen to what they find is important.
Financially, the pet care market is massive. It's got an unending amount of capital [00:38:00] flowing into it. It's significantly easier for companies to enter. Um, it's, you know, a lot of the food suppliers in the space are marketing companies, right? Have you ever tried your dog's food? No. Yeah, exactly. So they're not selling you on taste.
No. They're not, like, it's a marketing. It's, this is healthier, or this is better, or this is more sustainable for the earth, or this is better pack They're marketing to us and that's how they get us to buy the right things. Cause none of us are going, Oh no, I like, you know, Coke versus Pepsi, right? We're not sitting there tasting it.
Unless you're the CEO of the Mars family. Cause they will, they will eat it. They will show you a lot of these groups. A lot of the big food people will eat their food on stage for you. So yes, I have not done that. I don't know if I'll be able to be in the, in the pet care world if I have to do that. But I think ultimately though, the.
every dollar that people are [00:39:00] looking to get. And if you just slice it out, right, that businesses, there's an amount of dollars that exist in the world and people are trying to get them from someone else's pocket into theirs. The pocket that they're all trying to get from is the pet parent's pocket into the business's pocket.
So ultimately a lot of this is driven around the pet parent. I think a lot of the technology companies, no matter the, Slice that they're taking and maybe not all, but the ones with high amounts of data, which is becoming more and more valuable with AI. The higher amounts of data that a company is focused on, the more that we will expect it to be looking to find direct access to the pet parent because that's where you monetize that data.
Whether it's choosing pharmaceuticals, whether it's breed specific answers, whether it's where they live and how to build practices or how [00:40:00] to get into their digital wallet, like any of those sort of things, that's ultimately what's driving it. But I think that if we as a veterinary component of the industry can continue to keep the care for the animals.
as a shining light. I think that will be really important. Well, when you think about the care of the animals, both the vet and the pet parent side of things, they very much value that. So, it's a good starting point for sure. It's definitely a better starting point than like, do we want to sell them a 45 pound or a 60 pound bag?
Yeah. Right? It's a good starting point, but it I mean, this is why I like people to, to stay abreast of what's going on. An independent practice is fighting against a massive machine of money that's pushing, you know, Dr. Jones independent [00:41:00] practice isn't running Superbowl ads. Yeah. Right. You're needing to work harder.
I think to have the veterinary voice heard in some of these situations. Um, but all of the data shows that veterinarian opinions are the gold standard. So don't get discouraged by a really cute ad and someone coming in and asking you about, well, I saw the ad for a farmer's dog. Like I want to switch to doing this.
And if you are as a veterinarian, first off, don't just say no, because it's not your answer or your idea. But if you've researched and looked at it, you can say, Hey, these are what I find is valuable about it. You know, I would recommend a kibble with a topper if you're looking for something. Like, find those kind of things and participate in that.
And look at having a digital storefront or, you know, your own access to be able to carry that inventory. Do drop shipping on that inventory to be able to [00:42:00] get some of that. There's plenty of opportunities for them. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it is listening to who your audience really is. So if you are a single veterinary clinic, listen to the pet parents.
What are they asking about? What, uh, do surveys, ask what they value the most, because even though you're not doing a Superbowl commercial, you have other values and, you know, things that you can offer that for the right audience, they're going to want that more than the company who has Superbowl ads and they don't feel appreciated or, you know, whatnot.
Whatnot. Absolutely. I think there's still opportunity for whatever style of practice that you want to do, whatever career you want, it will even make it broader than that. So, I mean, I, I think this industry is extremely exciting. We seem to have kept you for a little while. Maybe we'll continue to intrigue you.
Yes. I absolutely love the veterinary industry. I have no, like it sometimes. this will be the corniest thing I'd [00:43:00] probably ever say. Not all who wander are lost. But I think like I've, I looked around for a place where I could feel really at home and embraced and my oddities maybe are, are appreciated. I'm kind of a, maybe I don't come off as a goofball, but I like being a little goofy.
And I think the vet space is really fun. Um, and I think like it's, It's a really, really special industry that, it's not the same as private jets, I'll tell you that. It's a very different industry, there's people that are passion driven, it's really cool to be able to be around people that, you know, wake up every day wanting to improve the industry that they're in.
Not because it's going to make them billionaires, but It might. And, but like, it's really cool to, to see it, especially at a conference, like all the people that are, you know, have a tattoo of dogs on their face [00:44:00] because they're like, I love them so much that every second I need people to know that it's, it's really cool.
I'm, yeah, I love the space. Could not, I very much expect to retire from the veterinary community and that be my home and then probably be one of the old guys that keeps coming to the conferences and people are like, why is Ryan still here? You can't get enough. I just love it, yeah. So it's been, it's awesome.
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