SNM227: The Power of Marketing with Dr Jill Lopez

Jonathan Green: She turned her passion for animals into a digital empire using the power of marketing. It's Dr. Joe Lopez on today's episode of the Serve No Master podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Canva. When we finally decided to grow our social media presence, Canva was the only option. I tried dozens of alternatives. But I had to admit that nothing else comes close. We use Canva for social images, print on demand designs, and tons more at Serve to Master.

Grab a free account today@servetomaster.com slash canva. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master Podcast, where you'll learn how to open new. Dreams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author, Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. Hello everyone.

Welcome to another amazing episode of the Serve Master Podcast. Today we have Dr. Jill Lopez, a veterinarian who's turned her passion into animals, into a massive international business and showing that it's possible. For doctors, veterinarians, and women in the modern world to do some amazing things online, and I'd love to hear more about your story. Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Jill. Jill Lublin: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm real excited to be on your show.

Oh, that's so kind of you to say. I'd love to hear a little bit about your story. It's, you know, the journey between veterinarian and working for large companies. Tell me a little bit about where it all began. Well, as, as with every, almost every veterinarian I've learned this, that most of. Want to become veterinarians when we were very young.

And um, I don't know if anyone's done any research on it, but I would say probably 90% of people I meet that are in the veterinary field had the calling really young, like in, in elementary school. And when you trace it back, sometimes it, it, it's, um, Related to a time when you had a care for a sick or injured animal.

And I hear it from people like Evan Anton, who's, who has, um, a Nat Geo Wild Show in a book and he, he was like that as a child. He loved animals. There's a few of us that stumble onto the. To the field from just random things. But most of us have always loved animals and the same thing is true for me. I grew up in a family that we always had pets and, you know, always was looking to help.

Anything in the, in the neighborhood that was sick, people would bring me their pets to to care for. Once there was a Canadian. That was just laying in our, our backyard and stuff. And I tried to nurse it back to life and, and help it and things. And, and again, it's something you commonly hear about veterinary medicine that people, people sometimes they, they grow up in a farm or they have experience helping pets or, and things. And that's true with me.

And I went to vet school and when I was going to vet school, I imagined that I would come back. My native area, which was West Virginia and have a practice, but things turned out much differently than I ever expected. So a lot of people, when they think of veterinarian, they either think of when my dog is sick, I go to the vet, or they think of horse babies. They never think of anything in between those two ends of the spectrum. So yeah.

How did you end up not going back to West Virginia and. Ending up in another part of the veterinary world. Yeah. You know, strange things happen and, and I see this happening now when I have friends that are in vet school and a lot of people go into vet school thinking they wanna be a horse vets, for instance, they love horses. They go to vet school, they do the rotation, and guess what? They're doing anything but being horse bets.

And with me, while I was in vet school, I had a chance to do some internships and I always encourage, um, college students to do as many internships as you can so you can see. You know, different career options and one of those internships opened up into another opportunity.

So after, after practicing for a couple of years, I actually got a call from someone who asked me to move out to Illinois and work for, um, at the time it was the poison control center, and it was with the University of. Now it's with the A S P C A. And so that was a strange thing to do as a practicing veterinarian. Instead of seeing patients, you were sitting in front of a computer and talking on the phone all day.

And, and it was, it was great. I thought it was gonna be horrible and I felt like I was. You know, I don't know. I was like embarrassed in the beginning. I thought, Oh my God, I tried to be, you know, I was wanting to be a veterinarian and I'm not even touching animals, but it, it allowed us to, we really helped. Um, the facility helps thousands of animals every year. You wouldn't believe how many animals get poisoned like every day.

So being able to help that was, was amazing. And that led me onto, A non-traditional career where I worked for hearts for a while, ended up working at Merck Animal Health for, for many years. Yeah. I grew up always hearing don't let the dog get near the antifreeze cuz it's delicious. Yeah. And I was like, That's all I remember is antifreeze is delicious. They say, Yeah, it's taste sweet.

So I always think that's, you know, one of the things you get, at least where I grew up, you get warned about it, is, you know, now I have four kids where I was worried about the kids getting the stuff. But yeah, your animals could get into all sorts of stuff. I remember it when I was in high school, my dog found a dead bird. Mm-hmm. , and he just rolled around in it. He's like, I love this dead bird. I wanna wear it.

And I said, I didn't. You never, you just never know what your dog's gonna do. So that makes a lot of sense that you could, Yeah. Out people you wouldn't believe. I mean, I should have written a book about it, the things that dogs would do. And the funny thing was is things that you didn't think were toxic, were toxic. And some things you thought that were really toxic. Were, were not toxic, but antifreeze for sure. And it's not just antifreeze.

Antifreeze is actually the same thing as coolant, engine coolant, and it's deadly, You know, it's very deadly to dogs and cats people too. So it's, it's super deadly. But things, things you would never think are toxic, like pennies. Can be very, can be deadly to animals. No one thinks about it. And Lily's, for instance, like the lily flower can kill a cat in three days. It causes kidney failure. It's super toxic, but you would never think of it cuz it's such a beautiful flower.

So it's just, it's just amazing what could be dangerous and. And you know, I'd say our most frequent, the frequent flyers or whatever were Jack Russell Terriers can eat so much stuff. You would not believe it. I had a call once where a Jack Russell Terrier ate one of those to barone, like mega bars, and it was, I, it was like a pound of. Chocolate and the dog weighed like 12 pounds, so it almost made us weight in chocolate and it was very, very sick.

And, um, Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, they have, they are always looking to poison themselves. So they were like, almost every other call was the golden retriever or Labrador retriever doing something crazy. Yeah, it's interesting that you kind of, it's the unexpected, like you want to, you know, baby proof your house or prepare for your dog, whatever, but it's all the things you don't think of that are the crazy things that kind of get out.

Like when you know, now I have four kids, I'm always reading up on the most dangerous stuff and it's like the most dangerous thing for kids is balloons. I was like, That wasn't on my list. It's like the number one cause of choking for kids is a balloon. And then number two is coins. And you don't think about it until you look it up. You go, Oh yeah. If you get a balloon in your throat, it's really hard to pull it out.

So that's why I'm like the most paranoid balloon dad for exactly those reasons. It's never what you think of. Yeah. So it is very interesting place to go and people, especially now people starting to realize telehealth can be very good because I live very remotely. I live in a small home in the middle of nowhere. We do a lot of telehealth. Mm-hmm. for myself and my wife and my kids.

Even when you go to the doctor's office, sometimes they'll take a picture and send it to a doctor somewhere else, . Or we go into the doctor's office and then the doctor's just an iPad on the on a stick. And I'm like, Wait a minute, couldn't I have done this from the house? And we're realizing that a lot of times, yeah, you don't really need the in person as much cuz sometimes, especially you need the quickness. Sometimes you need an answer very quickly.

And sometimes the light at the vet is long or the vet's not an expert in that. The expert's. You know, the vet's not a focus isn't dog poison, so they might not know. So it sounds like a really helpful service and very interesting. And, but now you've started doing your own thing. You started building your own career and kind of wanting to be the boss. What's that moment like? I think this is the thing people are most afraid of.

It's um, It reminds me that moment in Man On Wire when he steps out on the wire and there's nothing below him, there's no net, nothing holding. I think that's how most people feel. Think starting your business will feel like. Is that what it felt like to you? Yes. Yes. So, um, my husband actually has his own practice, so he's a man on the wire already and I was working at the time for, um, a Fortune 500.

So we have the best insurance you can, you can get, which is not that great anymore, . But I mean, we had really great insurance. We had, uh, you know, had a steady paycheck every week. I'd have, you know, every other week get a paycheck. I'd have, I had a pension plan.

The company actually had a pension plan and you know, you have all this stability, you have all this stability. and you go from that to having nothing and you are walking on a wire because you don't have, you don't have, you know, if something happens, what do you do? You go to the doctor, you don't have insurance. Now you used to have great insurance. Now you don't. And one of the companies I work for, we actually got.

The human, the human side of it, we would get free prescriptions, like for their products. That's how good the insurance was. So you go from that to now, you don't have, you know, you don't have this great insurance. You're not getting a steady paycheck and you have to, you know, you, you work really, really hard. But sometimes, , you get nowhere. So you have to work really smart.

And so that feeling of going from having, you know, a nice little safety net and having the stability to being my own boss was a little scary. And it's, it's, um, I was watching this show on Netflix and the main character, actually, she did the same thing. She left and started her own company and one day something horrible happened and, and her husband actually said he. Nobody's coming for you, . And she's like, What? He's like, Nobody's coming for you. You, you are the person.

And that's one thing. When you have your own company, there's no one coming to help you. It's just you and you, and you have to get that in your head. You don't have this, the luxury of. Working for a company and maybe you have to go on vacation or you get sick. Somebody's always there to do your job. Nobody is there to help you. It's just you. And it can be, you know, very scary.

But when you do what you love it, you know it's not work anymore. If you really love what you do and you're, you're working for yourself. You know, it's, it's a different, it's a, it's a very different feeling. So, so there are struggles in that first letting go of the safety net of having a, uh, you know, a company support me and all that stability was very scary.

Yeah, they, sometimes people say that you give up a 40 hour work week for someone else to work a hundred hours a week for yourself when you're starting a company that you have the freedom of working two and a half times more hours or. But what I'm interested in exactly is how did you overcome that and not go, Oh, this is too much, I'm gonna go back.

That's the thing I think where a lot of people get stuck cuz they meet a lot of people that they try for less than a year and then they go back. So what's that moment where you finally go, This is a one way trip. I'm never going back. What's that moment feel like and what was that moment for you? Well, you know, I think when I left the previous company I was, I was working for a place.

I knew there was nowhere to go above where I was. There was, you know, there was nowhere to go above. I could keep doing what I'm doing and, and just sort of plateau and just know never go any higher and, and that's very frustrating. So, so when I left, and you know, once you get over that shock and you get your first customer and you're able to deliver something amazing, and my first company, or my first customer was a company that made, uh, vaccines.

And the funny thing was, is vaccine was my forte when I worked at. At my previous company, I was in charge of the vaccines and I was able to take them out of the field of four companies that make vaccines in the animal health department. I was able to take them from fourth place to number one.

Um, I was able to, I worked on a launch of a, um, a new vaccine for a disease that had just entered the United States like in 2015, and I was able to take. That newly created vaccine and tape it, take it to the number one vaccine pod position on the planet. And so my first , my first assignment, my first client was actually what I loved to do. And I had, like, I had such, I had such great experience to offer them.

So when, when they came in and it was, it was like a little small thing, but um, but I work with them on it and I understood the. Like nobody else could because I, I had been working on that for like 10 years, so I was able to take something that was, you know, a lot of people think vaccines are commodities, especially in the animal world. One vaccine is as good as the other one is what a lot of people think.

So working with this client, I was able to create something just, you know, something really amazing for them. We, we worked with an amazing influencer that talked about the disease in a different way, and we figured out what the competitive advantages were for the product and was able to, you know, really relay that to the audience. And so when that first, that first assignment came out, I think it, it really made a splash and it made a splash.

In our profession where our profession is very, I don't know, it's not, it's not very, um, modern people are very slow to change. So the way we did things wa uh, you know, really changed the way that information is delivered to our audience. And I think it was very shocking. And right after that, like right after we were able, Take this first client and make something amazing. Then all of a sudden my phone was ringing off the hook.

So I think when that was the point when I realized. You know, I think, I think we're gonna be able to do this. And then we had other opportunities. When you're working for someone else, you know, you always have somebody who is telling you what to do and, you know, giving you, you know, giving you advice or telling you which way to do this and which way to do that.

And when you're by yourself, you don't really have that, which it's, it's great when you don't have someone doing that. You sort of have to struggle and you have to figure out, you know, maybe, you know, am I doing this right anyway? And you, you really need that feedback. But working for myself once I have actually, I have my hands untied and I'm able to do what I wanna do. And not have to depend on a whole bunch of red tape to do anything.

I think that's the point when I realized like there's no way I can go back to working for someone else because I, I like to be able to do things really differently and do things like just, you know, almost like disruptive. I like the disruptive part, doing things that make a big splash that no one else is doing. And when you're working. A company, you know, a lot of times, you know, they have very rigid practices.

They don't, you know, if it's not your actual job duty, you can't do it. So I would say that's probably the point when I realized that it would be really hard for me to go back. . Just something else where you have to move so slow and you. Or like come up with the creatives, you have to have someone else come up with the creatives and everything would take so long to do something.

And so I guess that's when I realized that I don't think I could ever work for someone else. I think you brought up two really, really good things there. The first is that there, while there's a sense of security at a large company, everything moves slowly. having a good idea. It's not enough cuz you have to have a good idea. Then you have to go through the phase of convincing, You have to convince your boss.

It's a good idea, then their boss, then someone else in another department, and it could take a really long time. Like I, what always fascinates me is that in some industries, like medical, they say, Oh, the buying cycle is three years. It takes a company three years to make a decision. that's so slow compared to the agility you have when you're the boss or you're an entrepreneur and you're a decision maker. Sometimes I go to conferences and I meet someone. I go, What do you do?

They go, Oh, I'm number two at Google. I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't talk to number twos because you don't have the power to make a decision. and there's, That's the thing. It doesn't matter how big your company is, if you're the boss, Yeah. Everything is on you, right? If the company doesn't make enough money, your kids don't eat. You have to let people go. You have to cancel people's raises. It's.

That's the thing I love and maybe use a different metaphor, but I'm at like, I feel like I'm in the arena or I'm on the trapeze and I don't wanna get off. Like it's high risk, high reward, but it's the feeling of being in the game and knowing my decisions mattered. It's so exciting. It's so the fear and the excitement of the same thing.

And then the second thing I'd love for your thought on this, if you had been working for that company as an in-house employee instead of an outside contractor, do you think you would've been paid the same amount of money for that project? Oh God, no. No. Usually with what we do. Yeah, with what? Uh uh Cuz I've been on the other side of it.

You know, when you work at a pharmaceutical company, you hire an agency and then the agency hires people like us to do things. So yeah. So they pay the agency probably like three times what they would pay. The agency asks us, you know, or hires us to do it usually. So yeah, you would, But I get, I mean, you wouldn't, but if I worked in, if I worked in the company as a marketing person, I mean, it's hard to explain.

I think you, you have the ability to make more money, but the a, I mean, it's hard to explain cuz you, you know, we usually have a, we have like this middle man, which is the agency. So the agency gets paid to have someone else. The stuff like the, the media. So, but I would be paid more being my company than I would if I was an employee at the main company. But the middle man makes more money than we do, you know, they always do.

That's a no's, a really good lesson. That's how I wanted to dive into is that when an. Your boss can, can't afford to pay you what you're worth. Cuz if you're an employee and you're generating a hundred dollars a day and they pay you a hundred dollars a day, the companies break even. And no company's goal is to go to their investors and say, Guys, we broke even this year. We did perfect. We didn't lose any money.

That's not what anyone wants to hear when they own stock in a company. And that's a really important lesson for people when you're working for a company, no matter what they're paying you. , it's less than what you're generating because that's how the companies stay profitable and that employs, that applies to everyone who works for someone else. And that's the thing what's interesting, even when you're in government employee, a lot of people, they do their 20 years.

The next day they come back to the office as an outside contractor and they're getting paid twice as much for the same job. And it's amazing to realize that it's like, Oh, don't you wish you'd learned that 25 years ago , that they would pay you twice as much to not be an employee And that's a really good lesson. And there's this, the fear is that I'll, you know, I'll never get a client or that I won't be able to do it.

And a lot of that it's not true because you have the ability, Right. It's the same thing. Getting hired Yeah. For a job is the same thing as getting. As an outside consultant, it's the same process and I remembered the last time I was in a job interview was 2010 and I was so, she was like, Wow, you're so confident. And I was like, It's cuz I don't want the. . If you don't want the job, you lose the fears. And that's really the secret.

It's realizing that, and that's a lesson. Cause I know a lot of people who listen to show they, you know, they love their jobs, they like to just hear about other stuff, but they wanna stay. But your job is still the same thing. If you're working in corporate or in any business, then you wanna cultivate your career the same way. Update your resume, keep your LinkedIn update, look at other opportunities. Cuz you could still grow. You just cultivate that as opposed to cultivating your own business.

It's the exact same process. So that's some really good lessons. I'd love to get your thoughts on. Is it, in this day and age, is it that different being a man or woman starting your own company? Like how often do people go, All right, let me talk to the guy, let me talk to the boss. Do they people still talk that way, like on Mad Men in the 1950s or has that kind of disappeared? Well, , now you open up a can of worms.

One of the reasons why I started my company is the veterinary profession itself has changed. It's gone from being a profession in the seventies where only 5% were women until there was a, um, I guess title 18, I can't remember where they allowed us to go to college. And then, and then around the nineties it was 50% women, 50%. And now it's, it's, um, in vet schools it's like 85% female. And, and women surpass men as the gender, the, the largest gender in 2017.

So now it's about 65% women. The rest are men, but everything is ran by men in the profession. Every pharmaceutical company, uh, I think there's only one that has a CEO that's a. But not only that, I mean the whole, like the whole like executive department are men. All the different companies that have opened up these mega practices are ran by men and they have men at the higher level. And so you see it in the pharmaceutical industry. You see it in the.

Veterinary practices that the people that are opening up these giant practices are mostly men. And, and it's sad because the women are are, you know, destined to be associate veterinarians to the rest of their lives.

And that's why I created my company cuz I wanted to make sure, I wanted to give women a chance to, to be able to become their own, their own own, like their own business owners and to, you know, we encourage them to, To become their, you know, to just to even create things, like to design new medical devices and stuff. So we're always trying to promote that. We're always trying to promote fair wage. In the veterinary profession, the average salary of a man is $30,000 more.

And when you go up at higher levels, like at the higher level, the difference is a hundred thousand dollars. And this , this is the profession where it's mostly women and it makes me crazy. And, and like I was saying, I was, um, in corporate America, corporate America is very, it's driven by men. I mean, we had to force California to let women, to have women on board. To make it diverse. And diversity too. I mean, diversity is very lacking in the veterinarian profession too.

So one of the reasons I left is, is I knew I could be, you know, be a worker, be the rest of my life, and make the company millions and millions of dollars and just work myself to death. Or I could, you know, do what I love, do be my own boss, and that's what I did. But to this day, you know, depends on who you work with. A lot of people in marketing that I deal with with. Not the higher ups.

Usually it's the, the lower people are are women. Marketing is a very women dominated field, so a lot of the people that I work with, with the agencies are women. There are a human there, but usually it's the women who we work with. But I do have some clients that, that are, you know, maybe it's an unconscious bias, but I, I have had a couple that you know will, I don't know.

They don't, they don't like if we have, um, we have like, I have an assistant on the call who is a man. And they'll be asking him questions about stuff and, and I'll have to, you know, I'll say, Well, actually I'll have to take the ball back and they'll, you know, I, I see that happening a few times and it's, it's with my clients that are, it just depends, but it, it does happen.

You know, Now I can do things about it or, you know, or whatever. I can have the, the guy answer for me, , you know, whatever. But, um, but sometimes I do have to, you know, I do have to pull it back and tell them, you. That question should probably be directed to me.

You know, I'm the person who went to business school in the room, , so you need to ask, you probably should ask that to me, but, but I think a lot of it is unconscious bias. And, and the funny thing is, is someone who does this to me a lot, one of my clients, I really like him. He's amazing. And I, and I work with his daughter too, and his daughter is a very strong female.

So I think it's funny when he will ask the guy in, in my company, for answers . But again, I think a lot of it's unconscious bias. I don't think it's, it's directly something about me being a woman. I don't know. But you do see it and. And veterinary medicine for sure is something that, that it really needs a lot of, Um, we need some help getting, getting, you know, gender balance in the, in the profession.

And, and again, that's one of the things I created Vet Candy for is, you know, trying to highlight amazing. People, you know, no matter who they are, what gender they are. And we also talk about diversity.

We talk about the importance of inclusion, and we try to give people tools to make their life easier because maybe you might have a man who is able to run a practice because he has a wife who takes care of the kids, takes care of the home, and then you have a female veterinarian who has the kids and she's trying to struggle. Balancing, caring for her kids, trying to open up a practice, trying to manage the team.

It can be very hard, you know, and, and most women do have the. The burden of, of taking care of kids. So one of the other things you talk about too is like how, how to get work life balance. We have parenting programs. We , we try to give 'em all these great tools so they can be, you know, be somebody who can run a business and still have a good relationship with their kids. And I think that's, that's very critical right now.

And I hope, you know, that's the only thing that that candy can do is to help help. You know, have a better balanced life and become entrepreneurs, then I can retire. My mission is done. , can you explain what an associate veterinarian is? Yeah. An associate veterinarian is somebody who. Well, right now in the veterinary world, um, things, things have changed. You know, again, back in the seventies, veterinarians usually were, were small practitioners. So a veterinarian would own one practice. They were men.

Remember they were mostly men. They owned a practice or something. Sometimes they owned two. And, and then things change. So, you know, we also changed the way we took care of pets in the, you know, in the seventies, people had their pets outside. Nobody would call p c a if your dog was outside chain to a dog house cuz dogs lived outside .

So flash forward now, we're in a situation where, you know, people are buying houses for their pets and cuz they're, they want their dog to have a, a backyard to play in. Um, they'll build rooms just for their cats, for cat, like a cat gym in their house and stuff. So now pets are, are really part of the. So, so now the switch is, is that, um, most veterinary practices are corporations. So you have these large practices. One pet food company owns.

More than, um, maybe like 2,500 veterinary clinics. And that's like 10% of all the veterinary clinics in the United States. There's about 25,000 veterinary clinics that are owned by that one company. And then you have a bunch of other corporate practices, so you have a bunch of, you know, maybe one company. 400 practices or something. So at a veterinary clinic, usually you have the owner and you use corporate practices.

It's a corporation, so you'll have a bunch of veterinarians that are called associate veterinarians, and that's just somebody who is, you know, that's just your job title. It just means you're not a pro, you know, you're not the owner, you're associate veterinarian, and so, Now people are associate veterinarians for their entire career. So instead of moving to owning a practice and being a practice owner, they're gonna be associate veterinarians.

And they, maybe they get into that where they're, they're used to the stability they get, the benefits they get, they get health insurance and stuff. So maybe they like the stability that, that, you know, the paycheck, they don't want the responsibility of running a. And so maybe they're happy. So, so a lot of people may be an associate practice owner for years and, and then some of the corporations you have an opportunity maybe to move up and become a medical director.

Those are, there's only a few medical directors and there's a whole bunch of associate veterinarians, and so that's, that's what an associate veterinarian is. So do you think that the shift, and I've seen a lot of other industries too, where there becomes kind of, Conglomeration, do you think that that's negatively impacting the industry, or do you think it's better for people to go to still do the one veterinary one practice model? Do you think that's better?

As far as animal care, as far as the experience for the veterinarian? What are your thoughts on that part of it? Well, guess what? You don't have a choice anymore. You know why? Because veterinarians are overwhelmed. There's not enough veterinarian. In the planet to take care of animals.

So when you go to a vet, you probably should get to anybody who will see you and, and you know, and maybe that's gonna be corporate because they have, they probably have more veterinarians, abil, you know, ability to see people. We just move to a new state and the town veterinary clinic that's owned by someone, they, they have not accepted new.

And then, you know, so I would have to go, if I went to the vet, I would have to go probably to a corporate and drive pretty far away. We moved to a town and, and I'm not licensed in this state, so I had to get a rabies shot and they, this was during Covid and they said they're not taking new clients. So for me to get a rabies shot, I'd probably have to go. Anywhere that would take me.

And it just depends and it just depends on the person. Some people like the convenience of going into a place that looks exactly like every other place. So if they go to, if they're used to going to one clinic and it's, the corporate clinic has that look and they like it, it depends on, on what kind of style you are. It's just like going to the pediatrician.

If you are the kind of person who just wants to get it done and you don't really care about who the pediatrician. You just go to whoever will take you. But if you really wanna take your time, you'll look up and see, you know, the background of, of the doctors. Like where do they go to school? What's their focus on, what kind of place is it?

So I guess it's just sort of personal preference, but sadly, nobody has the opportunity to choose that anymore because most vet clinics are really, I mean, they're booking up. The ones that are taking new patients are booking up weeks and even months in. Which is scary and they just can't keep up with the demand. There's so much demand for veterinary care and there's states in the United States that have vast areas where there's no veterinarian.

You, you'd have to drive, you know, four or five hours away and that's just to see a dog or cat vet. And if you're looking at somebody who has horses or goats or cattle and you've got it really tough, cuz there's, there's not a lot of people even choosing. Career anymore, and there's just not enough of them to keep up with it.

And, and the government are even offering things to pay for veterinarians their, um, student loan if they go to these areas where there's no veterinarians and, and help out those lo it's very scary. It's very scary. It sounds like there's some really interesting happens, like there's some really cool opportunities right now for the entrepreneurial mindset and if you're willing to. and one of these areas that like is underserved, which is kind of cool. So that's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

But you can't find a veterinarian to work for you. You can, That's one thing that I see a lot is you have, um, venture capitalists are really getting into the veterinary market cuz it's a, it's a billion dollar business. The, the veterinary world and also with the purchasing of products is huge.

The animal, the animal market is a billion dollar market and it's, it's, you've got these people that have money and that wanna spend it, but you open up a practice somewhere and you don't have a vet, you're gonna, it may take you two or three years to find a vet, and a lot of the vets are being offered. 60 to a hundred thousand dollars signing bonuses just to work there. And it's become so competitive trying to find veterinarians to, to take jobs.

So there's places that, I mean, there's companies that have so much money that they could open up as many practices as we needed, but there's no veterinarians to, to do the work, which is, which is scary. That's really interesting. This has been really informative for me, like I've learned a lot about a lot of cool stuff. I'd love to hear about Pet Candy, which is your site for pet lovers. Tell me a little bit about.

Yeah, we, well with, with Vet Candy and Pet Candy, we, we try to, we try to focus on an audience that's neglected, that should not be neglected, and that's the millennial and the Gen Z Pet, pet lover or the veterinary professional. A lot of people are focusing more on. You know, the older generations that may be like on the vet side, like they might think that the, you know, the older generations are the ones that own the practices.

So we try to focus on the, the vet students, the younger veterinarians with vet candy and with pet candy. We try to also focus on that, that generation, we know that they, they love their animals. The millennial generation is the largest pet owning population. They're right behind the boom. And, um, you know, they're very interested in other things too that maybe boomers aren't such as, such as like the environment. And so we try to talk about things about.

We talk about pets and we try to make it fun. The, you know, people that are millennials and Gen Zs, their pets are their family. And, and again, they're buying houses for those pets. So we try to get them, you know, fun information like how, you know how to tra Like right now we're talking about traveling with your pet, how to travel with your pet, how to deal with an anxious pet. A lot of pets, right?

Have anxiety because they were adopted during pandemic and during the pandemic, especially early on, you couldn't go to a dog park. They were shut down. And so you may have a pet and it's at home with you and you're working from home and now you're going back to work. So you're going back to work and your dog's at home and he hasn't been away from you for years or you know, for a year or. So there's a lot of anxiety now.

So we're talking about topics like that. We also talk about nature and, and fun things like how to, you know, make the planet better and we try to focus on people that, you know, care about the planet and they care about their pets. And so with Pet Candy, you know, in addition we have, um, we have a very active website. It's my pet candy.com and you, there's lots of of great information. We have a monthly magazine that comes. And we talk about amazing people.

The next issues coming out in September, features, um, Steph Poppas, who is a YouTuber. She's a big star on YouTube. She has, um, a muck bang channel. Where have you seen those? Where people eat? Like she drives , she drives around Ohio, goes through a, um, like McDonald's and gets food and eats it in her car on camera. But, um, people love her and she's hilarious. I love watching her. And, um, she has a dog.

She's a big dog lover, so she's actually on the cover of our September issue. And in addition to that, we have, um, we have a bunch of video shows. We have. A vegan cooking show, um, where the host, she cooks with her dog, who is also an ins, he's an Instagram star, Jazz, the Chihuahua, And they'll, um, they have challenges to make normally, like a traditional meat dish and they make it into a vegan style.

We have another show where, um, there's a mom and her little baby and they, they make do it yourself pet toys and stuff. So, um, so it's lots of fun. Pet Candy's fun. And we also have a bunch of podcasts. We have 14 different podcast shows. Um, my favorite is called Obsessed with the Palmers, and it's a couple. Um, she, she's a veterinary receptionist and he works in a pet crematorium and they have the funniest relationship and they talk.

These strange mythological creatures, like Moth Man, the Jersey Devil, and they talk about like the science behind it and stuff, and it's, it's just hilarious. It's, it's scary, but it's hilarious. Um, so we have that as well. And for pet candy and Vet Candy, we actually have, um, smart TV apps so you can download. And you can watch all of our shows on, you know, on that candy or pet candy too. And so, so it's lots of fun.

Like we, we make so much content and it's, we try to make it very entertaining and very interesting. We even make a, we have a, a show, it's called Lofi Pets, where , which is crazy. It's a big, it's a big trend right now where you watch animals, like animals are playing. It's like animal compilation video. But there's lofa music so you can listen to it while you study, for instance.

So we have a, um, a lot of fun things out on, um, on both of the sites. That's amazing. That's a lot of great stuff. And that's at my pet candy.com and my vet candy.com. Okay, great. Yeah, the hardest thing I would say if someone's thinking of, um, becoming an entrepreneur is finding that right name. And when you find. Getting it trademarked, , and then once you get a trademark, getting a website.

So, um, so I, I was trying to figure out, like the name was such a big deal for me cuz I couldn't figure out like my business model without this name. And it came to me. And the funniest thing is, is about once a year somebody will write me an email and say, I hate the name that candy. Uh, . It's so funny.

And the first time it made me mad, like I was so mad that this person's telling me that they didn't like the name Beck Candy. Uh, but now I think it's hilarious. I'm like, Oh, thank you. You're the, the, I was waiting for that email to come. It's, you know, 2022 waiting for my third email to come to tell me how much you hate the name .

But the reason why we had to go with my, that candy, my pet candy, Somebody's always like, somebody always has your fantasy website name and so you have to sit back and wait and watch it, wait for it to come up for sale and it's never gonna be there.

So if you are an entrepreneur, you know, find that name, make sure you get it trademarked, and then just plan on not getting your website or keep, keep an eye out for that website cuz that's, I think that's the hardest part about being a business. , which is sad, but that was like one of the biggest struggles is, is finding that name and then getting it trade trademarked is, is a grueling process and a lot of people don't realize you, you have to do it because somebody can come right behind you, grab your name, trademark it, and then sue you for using their name.

Which is awesome. Yeah, that's a crazy thing. Thank you for sharing that so much and thank you so much for spending time with us today, Dr. Jill. We really appreciate it. This has been amazing. So thank you so much. Everyone go check out my vet candy and my pet candy and thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having on your show and I am gonna go get rid of all my balloons. Oh well now you know. Okay.

I didn't know that little tidbit about that. That's scary. Yeah, I'm always looking up stuff like that cause I'm the stay at home dad, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Serve No Master Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so that together we can achieve true freedom. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Serve No Master Podcast. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss another episode.

We'll be back next week with more tips and tactics on how to escape the rat race lease. Take a moment to leave a review@servenomaster.com slash it. It helps the show grow and more listeners means more content for you. Thanks again and we'll see you next week.