The Market For Veterinary Smartphone Apps

Shawn Wilkie: You’re listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast hey you’re listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast my name’s Sean Wilkie and along with my awesome co-host we interview innovators every week Ivan why don’t you go introduce today’s guests

Meet our guest – Dr. Stacee Santi of Vet2Pet

Ivan Zak: My name is Ivan and we’re introducing today Dr. Stacee Santi a friend of mine and a founder of vet to pet software company so what we know about Stacee is that she founded better pet software tech company that builds customized apps for veterinary client engagement in 2013 she’s a graduate of Colorado State Veterinary University and she’s a president-elect of Colorado Veterinary Medical Association known as cvma and as we discussed prior to the podcast that’s also abbreviation for Canadian betForney and so it sounds like she’s getting all three titles and one which is a joke so we were laughing before the podcast on the personal side of things what we know about Stacee she is a former roller skating champion of New Mexico wow do you still do that

Dr. Stacee Santi: No I was like eight you know it’s an easy Market to tackle and

Shawn Wilkie: You have roller blade

Dr. Stacee Santi: No I cannot rollerblade that so hard for me because I learned roller skating on four wheels and in rollerblading the stops in the back and on the yeah I

Shawn Wilkie: Can’t do it sounds like it could be tragic

Ivan Zak: Yeah better than me and if she would whirring a Harry Potter house she would be in Hufflepuff so that’s what we know about Stacee so I’ve known you I think since 2000 maybe 15 I think no no we met before but I remember the one so we really got to know each other was with Joe Parker I think we’re in one of these owners conferences and we can spend time there but also in the conference is here and there so I sort of wanted to ask you what did inspire you don’t practice is about Innovation how it comes to the veterinary minds and and how do we get off our sort of visionary day-to-day routine and say I want to change something so how did that come to you how did you say I want to change something and how do you get into the whole app development for the veterinarian’s

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well it’s so funny because it’s a pretty hard left turn I took and I didn’t have ever any intention of building a company what happened is I was in clinics I practice in Durango Colorado and you know it’s no so much in the winter here we only do heartworm prevention from May to October so getting everybody ramped up on their heart worm prevention is a big deal for us I was in clinics one day it was April I was talking my clients one after another and I was saying okay let’s get to your six-pack of heartworm medication and flea and tick medication and every single time I was in the room my clients are saying oh don’t worry Dr. Stacee I still have some from last summer and I’m like you should not have any leftover you’re supposed to give it every month so it will work and I realize at this point that my clients were forgetting and they were forgetting because the only solution to remember it was the stickers in the box of medication that you put on your calendar and most people don’t have those kind of calendars anymore at least I didn’t and I actually thought to myself oh I’m guilty because I forget to give my medicine to my dog too and the reason is because we’re forgetting and I’ve always loved technology and I actually had a smartphone and I have it sitting there on the pharmacy where I would write my charts up and stuff and I got caught myself looking at my phone when someone would send a push notification and so it would be something like oh I didn’t even know I wanted a Domino’s pizza right now at 11 o’clock before me but maybe it sounds like a good idea and I realized you know if I would as a vet could send a push notification to my clients smartphone I bet you they would remember to give their heart or medicine because they were forgetting because there’s just no good way to get their attention the world’s getting noisier and noisier all the time and I decided I was going to get app for my practice and I was going to send this push notification on the first of each month to say time to give your medication and it turns out nobody was building that and I ended up deciding you know I’m going to just do it myself I guess and I found a developer at San Francisco and I asked him if he could build me an app that could do this and he said yes and that’s how I got startso

Ivan Zak: Can you just walk us a little bit through because you know I had a similar experience to a Smart flow where I experienced the problem in the hospital that I thought I want to solve it I looked for software and then I didn’t find it was that the same thing you were looking for software and you couldn’t find and then you decided to build it

The necessity of leveraging technology

Dr. Stacee Santi: Yeah I Googled it because I figure it’ll someone’s building this for the veterinarians and you know there was a pet portals and the beef I had with those is they had everyone else’s name on it it would say you know pet lyari pet health or whatever it was and I met because I selfish I wanted full credit I wanted my clients to know they are doing business with me at Riverview animal hospital and I wanted to have my own app in the app store where I could be in control of the data I could be control the messaging it was a connection between me and my clients that’s the relationship I’m trying to Foster and no one was building it and so I thought well that’s weird and I thought maybe I didn’t Google good enough but I think as it turns out no one was building it I learned later

Ivan Zak: Well and can you take us from like this is an interesting step this is where I think we sort of a hot idea comes and then how do you take yourself from you know it sounds very easy so then I thought I should build it and I found a developer in San Francisco well how does the fat goes I want a developer and finds one like what was that process did you how did you know that you need to find a developer how did you know that you don’t need to find a designer or something like that how did you explore that whole world of Building Technology because it sounds pretty easy but its not

Shawn Wilkie: And how do you ripped off because everybody I know I should have got fight all accounts I should not be here I should have got totally fleeced and there are few points here of the story that were pure luck this is one of them so I’m Googling and I’m finding out how can I have my own app and once I figured out no one was making it for someone like me can have an app and one of my friends told me oh I know a hairdresser that had the app like well if she can have one I can have one and I ended up landing on this Google page of this developer in San Francisco that was he had a software and he was building apps for private small businesses Automotive dealerships hairdressers Realtors and it was a super basic app there wasn’t much you could do with it but you could send a push notification so I just emailed him and I said listen I’m curious can you reskin this thing can I put my vet practice in there we’ve got to change a few of the words and stuff so it’s for Animals he said yeah we can do it he goes you gotta become an apple developer and Google Play developer then he said he would code my app and drop it in my account

Ivan Zak: You ever office space and movie Yes you remember how they were trying to figure out how to laundry the money any luck looking it up in the dictionary and then they had all kinds of people they were just randomly asking that’s what I kind of picture you’re sitting there how do I build the hilarious thing is that when I decided to build smart flow I went to what’s the bookstore chapters and I bought a book how do you build an app and make money on it

Dr. Stacee Santi: You did?!

Ivan Zak: It was like a for dummies kind of thing it was it was hilarious but I actually did and I found the author and I connected with him and said if we were kind of up and running I actually emailed him and I said thank you for writing the book it was super simple but it was one of those kind of you know funny moments and that’s where I thought about it Office Space movie

Dr. Stacee Santi: That’s funny

Shawn Wilkie: Cranium Russian joke as you’re talking about talking about watering money that’s an American movie by the way it’s an American movie so it’s great so Stacee you know everybody has a smartphone totally saturated in the market average Americans on them for four hours a day was six years experience in over 750 practices that you’ve created apps for do you feel like the Art Market is still under served and why do you feel that way

The market for veterinary smartphone apps

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well I feel like the veterinarian Market is got a lot of room to move here because probably 90% of the veterinary practices still aren’t reaching they aren’t consistently connecting with their pet owners on that smartphone and we’ve got a huge opportunity as a profession to do better and you know I always get these ideas and I think oh I wonder if I’m the only one that thinks this so I generally like to partner with Colorado State University my alma mater and do the surveys and we have a survey we just got published in the actually the Frontiers scientific journal and we surveyed over a thousand pet owners and we ask them all kinds of things like how do you wantAryan and we asked them the one that stands out to me the most was we asked if your pet had to stay overnight how often would you want to be updated by your veterinarian and most of the people ninety percent of the people said anywhere from an hour to every 2232426 hours it was definitely at least every six hours and then we ask them how often is your veterinarian updating you and it was 98% of veterinarians are updating once or twice a day which is a huge gap and then we ask them well how do you want to be updated and we found out you know most 90% of the updates are coming through the phone actual phone call but half of those people would prefer you to text them so we just want our veterinarians to know like we have to move forward and connect with people and we have a lot of work to do before we actual decide

Ivan Zak: Thats great to do research to prove the teacher development and because when you just start you just do things that you feel like they should be done but when you become a product you really need to be guided by what the market says so that’s great that you’re doing those and you know that that reminded me that you know we need to move forward with the veterinarian’s but it was just at the dentist the other day myself and they said would you like the card for your next appointment I was just whoo who does that and what are you doing the car I didn’t even before the cell phones like what do you do with that car do you really put it on your fridge for a year like I don’t know how those cards work is that is that the intent

Dr. Stacee Santi: Don’t know that is being you know I remember in the practice we used to in the old days we used to have a whole 12-month calendar magnet with the little space at the bottom to write the next appointment visit on the intention was that with stick it on the fridge all year long oh my God okay

Shawn Wilkie: So bizarre you know like the ways that we used to do things compared to the way that we need to do them nowadays I don’t know about you Stacee but I definitely know what Ivan if it’s not on his calendar it’s not happening and that’s the same way I am like if somebody wants me to do something they’ve become wise enough that they know that if it’s not put on my calendar it’s definitely not happening and so those kind of I guess situations in business translate directly into veterinary medicine and that interaction with the client regular

Ivan Zak: Yeah what was it your public way of complaining me not picking up the phone when you call it Shawn I wasn’t going to say it Ivan but yeah it is true and it does have to land on the calendar but not on the fridge and then I think that that’s sort of an important piece there in terms of you know one thing is to develop the application that’s very important and what I find and then one person can’t do it and then you need to figure out this weird thing called marketing so I’ve seen Muse takes because this is passion of mine marketing and general and Automation and I’ve seen you developed such a strong presence all yourself in all the proper social channels in the Visionary industry can you maybe talk a little bit about that because a lot of startups they’re just confused to find out where do you find the people how do you connect how you get out and talk I’ve seen a LinkedIn recently posted a couple episodes where you were at this startup Community presenting the project and then just basically how did you develop your persona in online presence and offline at the conference’s how did you get to speak to people because this is where a lot of people struggle so if you can talk become from founder to a marketer within our domain

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well that’s a hard question for me I think the main thing that I try to do is just be myself I am a veterinarian and I think in general just because you said that weird quirky joke about office space that veterinarians are funny weird people and we do have a lot of humor in us because we have to in our profession and so I just try to be myself and I’m not trying to come out here and be something I’m not and what you see is what you get I’ve always been that kind of person and I just tried to build marketing things that make me laugh and make me smile and then I figure you know if you’re my people you’ll get it and you’ll smile to and then we can be friends that’s kind of how I approach it the way I got started though I had no idea once I decided I was going to build a company you know NVA I was managing the practice for MVA and I was on their Advisory Board and part of this Advisory Board we were supposed to go to the regions and tell the other veterinarians what the company was doing for them and I said okay I’ll go to Chicago and talk to your people there in the region but if I could please can I have 15 minutes over lunch I won’t interrupt anybody and I want to tell them about my app and all the cool things you could do if they had a nap too and they said oh that’s fine Stacee you can do it so I would get up there with my little PowerPoint and I would just talk to the vets and I’d say listen if you do it this way clients will do this and then you can do that and I would show them the benefits and I started signing people up like that and that’s really how I got going and I would go to my little meetings and and they would tell their friends and I would get you know new customers and it was really slow like one of months that I was building an app for in the in 2013 but the next year it was thr10 a month and and then it just started really snowballing after that but as far as my marketing approach I try to just be myself and I find that my mother always told me you can’t have too many friends out there and there’s no reason to feel like you gotta protect everything and be competitive because I wouldn’t have met either of you guys if I had that mindset I just like meeting new people and everyone’s got something to share and offer and bring to the world so I try to find that way

Ivan Zak: That’s fantastic and we try to ask some hard questions too so there we go there you go usage one thing that I bumped into in my you know experience in veterinary medicine the apps seems to be the concept that every veterinarian whenever you talk to the vastly say we absolutely want an app about our Hospital from our Hospital personalized given to our own but ever from the owner side of things I don’t feel like I’m seeing enough engagement from their side saying I do want something in my pocket that reminds me about you know something to buy from veterinarian do you see that do you see engagement do you have any metrics on how often people engage with the app that you make for them through loyalty program I think it’s probably more engaging than you have in there because that’s more day-to-day sort of thing about the food so do you see owners actually engaging with a do you have any metrics combat is there any sort of calculated to back in that direction

Shawn Wilkie: That was like six hard questions Ivan you’re good you know I’ve been stood up and do you get it all written down

Dr. Stacee Santi: I’ve got it all written down obviously if there was an engagement I wouldn’t have a company and I think it’s terrific. I think that you know you can’t ask a pet owner about you never had before it’s harder for them to answer that question because they don’t really know what’s possible but I think you know my perspective is that in this comes from being a veterinarian many many of my clients would like to stay connected to me and I also would like to be connected to them that’s why I need the company vet to pet because I’m trying to build a connection to my clients and build out and strengthen the veterinary client relationship and with all the pressure coming from outside sources you know we need to focus on strengthening that relationship as much as we can and so things that you might want to tell your mother about so she can take the best care of her dog are the things you want to tell your clients about like hey there’s an outbreak of heartworm here or hey we’ve got an outbreak of where I live we the plague so when we see things like this as veterinarians we need to do a better job connecting and communicating that with our trusted clients so they see value for us and they don’t just go Google because the more we can communicate with them the more they understand the value of the veterinarian presence in their life and the Loyalty program is very engaging in gamification and kind of a hook but the real purpose of the app is to empower the veterinarian to send messages to the clients and keep them engaged

Shawn Wilkie: Stacee I remember I had one of the one of the events that we spoke at together on a remember where it was but I remember you had given a demo video of you going in and picking up a Starbucks coffee and using the online ordering app what Innovative things like that have you built into that to pet and what do you hear from your clients that they like the most an engagement what are some of the Innovative things that you’ve done lately

Veterinary client engagement

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well the big ones are the Loyalty program the Selfies this was a big hit I have a crazy ridiculous amount of selfies in my database like it’s absurd like 70,000 selfies that pet owners have shared back to the veterinarian because if you think about how fun that is you know you want someone to love your pet as much as you do and luckily the veterinarian does so you’ve got that Bond where you can both like giggle over the cute picture of your pet because that brings both people Joy that’s where we really have a lot of success with selfies the latest thing we’ve done which I’m really proud of we did this study that said pet owners want to be updated more so we came up with this concept we’ve made a little sign for our practices they can get it from our marketing store and it says would you like to get more updates while your pet is hospitalized with download the app and let us know and then we made this really cute little tag that the dog wears it looks like a luggage tag and it says somebody loves me like a lot so send them messages about me throughout the day in the app and that way the whole staff knows like hey we’ve got a live one here we need to do a little extra we need to take better care and then we can build that client relationship even stronger and increase the value that client getting the provide a better experience at the practice for that pet owner and that really is what’s going to help protect and insulate the veterinarian so they don’t lose market share to other places that are pressuring in for it

Shawn Wilkie: One of the things that I thought about when I even asked the marketing question was you know I’ve seen you market we’ve seen you you know tens of trade shows around and I always think of you as like one of the nicest quietest gorilla marketers that Ithe interesting your approach you know of just being yourself really is infectious and I just you know since Ivan’s being meat and asking your hard questions I figured I’d compliment you

Dr. Stacee Santi: Ah that’s nice and I do have to give credit because I partnered with some people early on that copy marketing person her name is Linda and a badass designer named Anthea and I’ve never had anyone do this to me they interviewed me and they ask me lots of questions like what are you trying to do here what is your purpose who are you what do you care about and they translated that into design and I think they really did a good job because you know they made it clean and fun and interesting

Ivan Zak: That’s fantastic so so the other question that I had come to mind when you were talking about the loyalty and engagement is your loyalty program and this is I don’t know if it’s a fact or not but it just feels like that probably would be the effect it brings back the client to buy food from the hospital which is right now huge problem with you know the Chuy’s and the the Amazon and everything do you see your app also helping veterinarians to bring the business back into the clinic in terms of the food sales is opposed to go into Amazon and others

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well I think yes what we have to do for the veterinarian’s if they want to be sustainable businesses and we’re competing against companies with a lot more money a lot more power I mean I order something from Amazon it’s out on my doorstep tomorrow that’s a hard one to battle but I think if we can find ways to get the client when it’s convenient for them and we press that channel will be able to stay in the game so I always ask myself wonder what Chewie would do if they got residents in my practice would sign me up for auto-ship and they would sign me up for things that they know are the path of least resistance for me and this is where we’ve got to build that opportunity for the veterinarian’s so they can say Hey listen what else do you need today because you’re already here and this will save you a stop in all loaded in the car for you you know stuff like this this is where the veterinarians can win if they can just shift a frame of mind and become more service-oriented I think that’s where we can stay in the game here and not see a bunch of our sales go out the door

Ivan Zak: Amen I think you know I think that also thinking not only is what would chewy do but also what would I want is a client because you know the whole phone communication their whole appointment book and all of that stuff we need to start thinking more about the Millennials and gen z x whichever one is next we need to think how they consume information instead of just you old things half of those people don’t pick up the phone more than half of the time one of those people I don’t pick up the phone especially when Sean calls but you know we just need to understand how people consume information and continue in that direction and I think that you’re right up in front of that sort of movement

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well one thing I’ve been thinking about lately tell me if you guys agree with me I don’t have a steady on this but I think if I am pet owner and I know maybe I low on dog food or out of dog food and I need my remedy whatever I need to pick up for my pet and it’s a hot day and I’ve got two kids in the car or where my dog like I find that a lot of friction to park the car at the clinic unstrap the children walk in there stand in line grab it and go it’s way easier for me to order online because of that so even if the practice could do line that says Park here text us will Rush the order right out bring it to you at the car things like this is where we’ve got to take our people our profession because most people want to support their local veterinary they do want that but they’re only willing to wait so long you know and be inconvenient so much then they’ve got to jump ship they just have to they don’t want to but they have to we have to stop that jumping of ship

Ivan Zak: Yeah no I agree with you and I think you’re absolutely right finding the ways to make it more convenient to the clients finding the way to match these big services and every step of the way it kind of goes back to you know what do you do in your practice and what’s important because when you’re running in circles and thinking about your revenue and how do you increase things like more number driven we forget to think about what is the customer satisfaction how do they want to be served and what is also our staff satisfaction how they want to deI think this is the big thing that I’m sort of diving in right now is I’m in my senior retirement looking into the whole burn out of the industry and how can we manage our businesses and Veterinary domain that it’s not focused on money but focused on people and customers because ultimately that will drag the money behind and that will grow with it as well so I think that we all need to refocus and reconsider how do we approach business in this industry

Dr. Stacee Santi: Yeah all we need to do honestly is hang out at two places Starbucks and the nail salon these two places Crush any kind of service you could ever hangs out all the time

Ivan Zak: He’ll next company he thinks off is going to be great and Brilliant and beautiful tasty see

Shawn Wilkie: I’ve got a question for you so you know you’ve obviously learned a lot running this type of busi takeaways and you have any recommendations whether it’s books or articles or just things that other entrepreneurs other vets that are in the industry should look at anything been kind of game changing for you that you’ve come across along the way

Dr. Stacee Santi: Well I have a few resources I really lean to this book called inspired by Mario

Ivan Zak: Oh my God I like it so much

Dr. Stacee Santi: Marty Kagan this is kind of a funny story when I was deciding I was going to quit Veterinary practice I sent an email out to all my clients saying listen I’m going to go do my app seeing I’m in two months I won’t be working here anymore you know wish you well all of that and I got this email back from one of my clients and he said hey Stacee I heard you’re quitting were so sad you know I’ve been there vet for like a decade and he said I’m going to drop my book by your practice and if you need anything just let me know I’m happy to meet with you and I’m like who’s this guy think he’s got a book who was this well it was Marty cake

Ivan Zak: No but you’re joking that’s another know who he was at all do you this is the basically this is a Bible of product management right now I’m working with a bunch of startups and I’m talking to a lot of people this is book number one that I recommend every person who runs a software company to read and use as a Bible and when I was at idexx every product manager had to read that book oh my God I had no idea it was

Dr. Stacee Santi: So we went we went for coffee and you know I was telling him about my problems and he’s helping give by his knee and at one point he looked at me and he goes CC he goes you have no idea what you’re doing I said I know I feel the same way he’s like you’ve got to come to one of my conferences so I went to one of his conferences in San Francisco and I started learning more about the developer world and I get

Ivan Zak: He was your client in the vet clinic

Dr. Stacee Santi: Yes yes yes credible a board and he’s in a little bit well it’s so cool yeah investor as well yeah he is very nice to me and I you know this is where my mother’s advice kicks in you just never know you should be nice to everyone

Shawn Wilkie: Thanks so much for listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast we’re pretty social people so you’ll find us on every social media channel also you can check out our website at the veterinary Innovation podcast.com thanks so much for listening.