#8 - From Private Practice to Veterinary Medical Device Innovation

Embark on an inspiring journey with Dr. Stephanie Morley, the trailblazing president of Vetlen Advanced Veterinary Devices, and uncover the diverse pathways a career in veterinary medicine can take. In this episode of Veterinary Blueprints, we sit down with Dr. Stephanie Morley, who shares the story of her remarkable transition from a small animal practice to leading a cutting-edge medical device company. Her narrative is a testament to the impact of seizing unexpected opportunities and the pivotal role that continuous learning and intentional career moves play in shaping a fulfilling vocation beyond the exam room.

We address the emotional toll of veterinary practice, acknowledging struggles Veterinarians face with perfectionism, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome. Stephanie and I dissect how these challenges are often magnified for women veterinarians by societal expectations, and we emphasize the power of networking and skill translation in overcoming these barriers. Our conversation is an example for veterinary professionals grappling with similar issues, offering guidance and a sense of camaraderie in the shared journey towards personal empowerment and professional excellence.

For those intrigued by the intersection of veterinary expertise and business acumen, Stephanie illuminates the path from employee to entrepreneur. We delve into the transformational shift from strategy implementation to creation, the art of team building, and the navigation of high-stakes decisions. Furthermore, we provide an exclusive preview of a groundbreaking veterinary drug delivery device, a game-changer for long-term treatment solutions at Vetlen. This episode is more than just a conversation; it's an example in harnessing one's full potential and a glimpse into the future of veterinary technology.

Guest Information
Dr. Stephanie Morley
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniemorley/
Email - Stephanie@vetlen.com

Vetlen - Advanced Veterinary Devices
https://vetlen.com/

RECEIVE A $5,000 RESEARCH AWARD!
Vetlen Research Resident Award - https://vetlen.com/resident-research-award/

Host Information

Bill Buter – Contact Information

Direct – 952-208-7220

https://butlervetinsurance.com/

bill@butlervetinsurance.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbutler-cic/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It's. Translating those, those skill sets, into non veterinary terms makes you really realize. Well, oh my god, I could do a lot of things.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Welcome to the veterinary blueprint podcast brought to you by butler vet insurance. Hosted by bill butler, the veterinary blueprint podcast is for veterinarians and practice managers who are looking to learn about working on their practice instead of in their practice. Each episode we will bring you successful, proven blueprints from others both inside and outside the veterinary industry. Welcome to today's episode.

Speaker 3: 0:41

Welcome to the veterinary blueprint podcast, where animal health meets business and entrepreneurship ideas and insights. I am your host, bill butler, and today we have the privilege of speaking with dr stefanie morally. She has been newly appointed as the president of vetland advanced veterinary devices and she assumed that role as president recently here in october of twenty twenty three. She is over twenty years experience in veterinary medicine and stefanie's career spans from practicing small animal medicine in new mexico and michigan and three doctor practices to leading roles in research and business development. She's helped the animal health industry by bringing groundbreaking products to the veterinary field In. Her unique blend of experience in clinical and business makes her a visionary for veterinary leadership health care, and I would love to welcome dr stefanie morally to the podcast today. So welcome, stefanie.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 1:41

Well, I'm really excited we connected on linkedin is. A lot of things happen in the, the Thought leader realm for the veterinary space and we got connected on linkedin. And while I was researching bringing you on before we kind of get into your background bio, I saw that you had the opportunity to ring the opening bell on wall street. You said before we got started that gets asked a lot and so why don't you give us a little background and how you went from in your background, going from a small three doctor practice in new mexico out of that school to being able to ring the opening bell on wall street as a as a co founder of a medical device company?

Speaker 1: 2:22

So how long is this podcast again?

Speaker 1: 2:25

Yeah, I think we all have those stories right, so yeah, yeah, I mean I won't, you know, I'll let you ask any questions you have, but to shorten that trajectory, I to the short answer. I have no idea how I have it. I would like to say that I had some, you know, strategy going into my life and my career and I developed it accordingly. But that just wasn't the case. But I do think that it was a lot, of A lot of taking opportunities that I didn't think.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Whatever come to me I think it was some of it was desperation, you know, leaving practice out of desperation and Jumping into a world of of contract research that I didn't know anything about and then kind of making more intentional decisions, about Really wanting to learn new things and work with people. I enjoyed working with it. With each move it kind of Led me to really learning new skill sets that I could apply to the next thing. And so when I had the opportunity to co found that company, it was really, you know, an opportunity to build a pipeline of products that I knew I would have used in in practice, and part of the strategy for zomadica was A financial strategy to take company public. But it was also then my Opportunity to develop that pipeline. So you know, it was all those experiences that just kind of built on each other, that Kind of all came full circle and led me to that opportunity.

Speaker 3: 4:00

So you know when the way back time machines. You know Stephanie going to school at the university of michigan and you didn't go to the university of michigan. You two State university in michigan state, so you were spartan but then you wound up working for the enemy and going to work for university of michigan.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Little painful there, yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:22

But you know, going from from that to practicing medicine, your first job was down in new mexico as a veterinarian. Is that, is that right?

Speaker 1: 4:32

Yeah, that's correct, I I had an interest, so my undergrad was in hospitality business, so I always kind of had this interest in business and just providing service. I come from a line of small business owners and you know, so I liked the idea of the business, of practice, of the business of offering better care, and so, and it, you know, I graduated two thousand three. So this is around the time when consolidation was really starting to happen with hospitals and I wanted to move out west. And so, you know, because that's a good reason, I started looking for corporate practices that had Hospitals out west, and so that's how I ended up with that role was I did an externship with corporate practice out west and they hired me when I graduated.

Speaker 3: 5:28

And then you know you wound up back in michigan, see, you know you get into the veterinary world, you wind up practice out west and then you wind up getting, you know, moving to a veterinary practice back. Now you're from michigan area, so it seems like. So back to michigan. I think that you know a lot of veterinarians might have that experience right where. You know we have here in minnesota we have a lot of transplant veterinarians coming to school from all across the country and I think you know you went to vet school close to home.

Speaker 3: 5:59

I think some that's some of the trains do that, but you know they travel around. They wind up doing an externship where they go to school potentially and they wind up getting a job there Out of state and then, you know, down the road in their career they wind up at some point maybe transferring home. You transition out of see, transition back to michigan, but then you transition away from, you know, practice and I think there's a lot of veterinarians who feel that they love the industry but they have a hard time with the work life balance and you know avma has a lot of studies where you know you look at the numbers fifty percent of veterinarians are contemplating leaving practice and you're one of those veterans who did leave practice but you're able to transition that you want to talk about that for a listeners who might be, you know, getting into the, you know, in the industry. Now we're thinking about maybe transitioning out and how you're able to leverage that as the next phase of your career in the animal health industry.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, I mean, when I left practice both my practice my first practice experience was pretty bad. Long story short, I end up in solo practice about three months after I graduated from vet school. So it was a really rough first practice experience for me. And then when I came back to michigan and practice, I love the practice, I was in, love the people, but we did our own emergencies and I just that wasn't going to cut it for me, starting a new family and coming in for weekend and evening hospitalization and emergencies and everything so. But I had a non compete and so. So that's what really forced my hand into leaving practice and ended up in lab animal. So you know that transition.

Speaker 1: 7:50

I think what I learned was you don't as a veterinarian, they tell you in school, they tell you but you don't believe them that there's so many things you can do with this degree, right.

Speaker 1: 8:02

But when you get out there and you're doing the work, sometimes you feel like you're only good at the things that you were trained to do and that you can't necessarily apply new things because you've never done them before or you don't have a degree in it, right.

Speaker 1: 8:15

So I don't know if I would have made the leap to lay on the animal if I wasn't so desperate to leave practice because I'd never worked on the majority of species I was going to be working with. I'd never worked in a research setting, but I did it and I learned a lot and I got exposed to the whole world of how drugs and medical devices are created and researched and approved, not just for human medicine but for veterinary medicine as well and worked with a ton of species I'd never thought I'd work with, etc. And it really kind of helped open my eyes to realize. Like you know, we all learn things on the job, right, and so sometimes it's just a matter of saying like I'm open to something new and I will learn something new. And I was really fortunate in the position that I ended up in because that institution gave me I think I had maybe seven or eight titles in eight years.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Yeah, looking at your it was like holy cow. You just you really did it all in that role that you had and you were exposed to that. Were there times where you thought I have no idea what I'm doing, but they're giving me this opportunity, so I shouldn't say no, I should say yes.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Every day, every day, and I think that's what, that's what you know. Life experience has allowed me to be able to look back and recognize nobody knows what they're doing every day, like we all have our imposter syndrome right.

Speaker 3: 9:52

They talk about imposter syndrome all the time, right Like all the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Yeah, and women are particularly bad with it, because I don't know if you ever read I think it's called the confidence gap.

Speaker 3: 10:05

I have not. I'm going to write that down.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Yeah, it's a very good book. It talks about the difference in confidence between men and women and the good example that I had. I was on a panel with somebody one time a woman that was high up in HR in a large company and she said you know, if you have 10 requirements for a job description, a woman will look at it and say, well, I have nine, so I won't apply. A man will look at it and say I have five, so of course I'll apply and I'll get the job.

Speaker 2: 10:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:34

And that's stereotyping, but still.

Speaker 3: 10:37

I think it's accurate. I don't think it's stereotyping. I mean I think it's accurate.

Speaker 1: 10:41

And so, and then you put that we're veterinarians on top of that, and veterinarians are perfectionists. You have to be perfectionists, you have to be really hard on yourself in order to get into that school, and then you're thrown out to practice and it's not called the art of medicine, it's called the practice of medicine. So you're not going to get it right every time, and that is a really challenging thing for people like us who have had to get everything right all the time to get to that point. So you lower confidence or you have this self doubt, you have this imposter syndrome, and now you work in a perfectionist mentality.

Speaker 1: 11:22

Yep, and you're working in a commercial world where you're providing a service to somebody who can go ruin your reputation on guilt in you know five seconds.

Speaker 3: 11:32

So and you're going to internalize that I mean to use the stereotype right Because I mean the majority of veterinary students are women. There's a lot more diversity happening in the veterinary community, which is awesome to see. But all of those issues that you're talking about, like I'm married and the things that you're talking about, my wife is not in the veterinary animal health world, but it's the self confidence and perfectionism and you know all the things that are set in society and I think that just amplified in the veterinary community because you're also empaths and you're not not very extroverted, you're more introverted. You'd rather deal with the animals than the, than the clients. Like I'm here for the dogs and cats and kittens and horses and ponies and I have to deal with the people because they pay the bill, but I'd rather deal with the animal. And so you just kind of compound all those things.

Speaker 3: 12:18

You know I wrote a book about insurance for veterinarians and like people are like, oh, you're an author, is like, well, I don't really feel like an author. I'm not. You know, I'm not in Barnes and Noble. So that imposter syndrome, you know that's real. I think to stereotype men have an easier time shaking that off. In a lot of respects. I have imposter syndrome about things, but I think in the industry of the veterinary community it's more prevalent because of all those external societal things that are in place, and so it's harder for women traditionally to say yes to those opportunities and take the risk than it is for men, because we're supposed to take risks and it's ingrained in us from a young age, which is why we have a shorter life expectancy between the ages of, you know, five and 20, because we do take more risk.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah, absolutely, and I think what I learned was one I was desperate the first time I left practice and then a lot of those opportunities I got within that, you know, within the CRO I was working in. One of the most important things was it was actually a woman who was hiring and wanted me to apply for a job that I hadn't applied for, and she, you know, asked me why I hadn't applied and I said well, I didn't think I was qualified. And she said you know, in the future don't ever keep let something you know, you thinking you're not qualified for something, keep you from applying for it. And that was a good lesson for me to learn there.

Speaker 1: 13:48

So, you know, my advice to veterinarians is also one that's life experience. It's like you just kind of gain some confidence and wisdom. And also it's do not be fooled into thinking that you are only trained to be a veterinarian. Everything you do in private practice is applicable to things outside of veterinary medicine. And I mean, if you, you don't, we don't like to be salespeople. Veterinarians hate salespeople. That's what you are a salesperson, because your patient is not going to get what it needs If you can't effectively sell that recommendation to the owner. You don't like, you know managing people, but you manage people all day, every day, whether it's the staff or the relationship with the client.

Speaker 3: 14:33

Or even your vendor relationships with pharmaceutical companies or any of that. So you have to manage all those relationships.

Speaker 1: 14:39

And the other one I say to people all the time too is like you know, if you put on your resume, I can do surgery, like okay, that's fine, most people outside of veterinary medicine are not going to care right. But when you say that you are an effective decision maker in high stress environments, guess what, that's applicable and that's what surgery can be. So it's translating those skill sets into non-veterinary terms makes you really realize, well, oh my God, I could do a lot of things, but then it's okay. But how do you go find that? Next thing that's where I think networking is important. So you said we found each other on LinkedIn. There are not enough practicing veterinarians on LinkedIn, yeah so it's interesting.

Speaker 3: 15:25

I've done some research on that, stephanie. Just where's the marketplace to speak with veterinarians or centers of influence? All of the thought leaders in the veterinary community, whether it's lenders, attorneys, a medical device they're all on LinkedIn, which is where the business world lives. I'm in the insurance world, like every insurance agent in the world insurance company. They're all on LinkedIn. Only 12 percent of surveyed veterinarians or people inside Animal Health are on LinkedIn and 93 percent are on Facebook and Instagram. I think, again, that's the function of the mindset, of their role in society, is the happy picture stuff and putting on your practice owner hat versus just an associate. You have to step up your game just a little bit to be able to network and connect and communicate and build a network around you, whether you own a practice or you want to leave practice or any of those things We've touched on it. What was your biggest challenge? Was it getting out of your own self-talk, self-doubt in your head? Was that the biggest challenge that you had as you progressed through your career after leaving practice?

Speaker 1: 16:36

If I had to narrow it down to one? Yes, probably because I was given so many opportunities that were so valuable and led to the next opportunity that the challenges were. Sure, there were other challenges, but if I had to narrow it down to what's that one thing that really, I guess it was a challenge, it also just depleted joy. I was talking to another friend yesterday about the whole startup experience. If I could go back and redo my career, I would have been easier on myself so that I could really enjoy the moment of what I was learning and how it was going. That little inner voice is a really powerful and nasty beast.

Speaker 3: 17:37

We touched on the imposter syndrome piece, or the I can't do this or my background is not business. I didn't a middling student in high school, not good in English, wrote a book. My mom has a background in teaching and she couldn't believe it, just absolutely couldn't believe it. So the limitations that we put on ourselves and I think you have to get through men don't really mature until they're mid 30s, early 40s. There's a lot of studies and science behind that, where our brains are developing.

Speaker 3: 18:12

Until in our 20s, I think you don't have that life experience you were talking about, where you have to give yourself grace to go through all those challenges and to go through all the education that veterinarians need to do to become a veterinarian, just to be able to go out and practice your profession. Like that life and world experience that you gained through school actually gives you a leg up on the rest of society because you've done that work. And so I think, transitioning for you from some of those things where you co-founded a company, what were you know when you said, okay, I'm gonna leave the research space and co-found a company how was that different than from being an employee, to say, okay, now I'm actually running the show versus just being in charge of departments.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Yeah, that was a huge transition that, you know, hindsight is so, 2020 on. You know, it's a really good example of my life, like if I had known what I was getting into at that time, what I had made the same decision but I'm so grateful that I did, you know, because the amount of life experience and opportunity I got, you know, was just like I never could have imagined. But, yeah, it was transitioning from kind of, you know, being a leader, being a bit of a doer because I wasn't, you know, developing the strategy to, all of a sudden, developing the entire strategy and you know where are we going and hiring the right people and, you know, making the best decisions for our investors and all of that stuff. That was, that was a new world for me, but I think I really enjoyed it because I always said, like I went into veterinary medicine for a lot of reasons, but like I was meant to be a veterinarian because I enjoyed decision making, like I like to be in a position of making the decision because I'm totally comfortable with if I make the wrong one, I will own it and I will learn from it and we will all be better for it moving forward.

Speaker 1: 20:28

But if I. I hate being in a position where someone else makes the decision for me and I know it's not the right decision, but I have to do something, I have to make it happen anyway, and so being starting a company from the ground up really gave me more opportunity to have more control over a lot of those decisions than I had ever had before, and that was a really good place to be. But yeah, it was. It was a big switch from what I had been used to.

Speaker 3: 20:55

So I was actually on the phone with insurance, a life insurance broker, this morning in my local area, and we partner on a lot of stuff and we're actually talking about a veterinary practice that we're going to go work with on a couple items and we both his dad started his business, his life insurance brokerage and my dad started my agency and we, you know. So we're a couple of second gen insurance nerds and who run our business and, just like in the veterinary community, there's a lot of money out there. There's a lot of opportunity. If I wanted to sell my practice right now or my insurance agency there's no shortage to do that I could go leverage my experience into, you know, probably making substantially more money working for somebody else, but at the end of the day, there is an element of being the captain of your own ship and being able to make those decisions. And I said I really don't, I'll take the pay cut to be the person in charge.

Speaker 3: 21:52

And I was in the middle. I told my buddy, chris. I said I was in the military for 12 years and I signed away. I signed away my actual constitutional rights to be in the military and so I don't want to be in that position again, I'd rather. You know, I'll ride the sinking ship down. Hopefully I ride off into the sunset with it, but you know, I think there's a lot of opportunity for veterinarians out there. It was interesting. I just had the opportunity to speak to the VBMA at the U of M and over 40% of the students in the room the vet students in the room these are first and second year, a couple third year students. I said who's going to open a practice or own a practice someday? And, like almost half of the room, raised their hand where I think five years ago that wasn't the case and I think there's a lot more entrepreneurial spirit with the incoming veterinarians out there and the opportunity to say yes to the opportunities that are presented to them is very important.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Yes, I agree, yeah, and I think the VBMA like having that wasn't around when I was in vet school. That would have been amazing. But I think even having an organization like that, that you're developing business minded students, is awesome. I think it's also a. You know, it's impossible for vet schools to teach us everything we need to know, because better you have to learn the science. But then you know, most schools have like one practice management course or whatever and it's like. But the hard part is most veterans who go into private practice like it is business, whether you like it or not. And so I'm happy to see organizations like that going and happy to see more and more support things outside of that schools, you know, through organizations where they're teaching financial literacy and teaching you know more professional development and human resource skills and things like that, because they really are absolutely required for people to be successful in practice. And if they don't have those skills, even if they don't think they want them, if they don't have them, you're just going to reduce professional satisfaction.

Speaker 3: 25:04

Yeah, you're a business owner. You might be a doctor of veterinary medicine, but I own an insurance agency and you own a veterinary practice and they're both businesses and we both employ people and we both have clients and we have a P&L and all those things that you have to pay the rent and do all those things and you can hire a lot of that out, but you've got to do that and so when you're the person at the top, you're making those decisions. And now you're the person at the top of VetLen and you were recently named the president in October. How did that come about and how did that feel, being picked or named as president of a medical device company, specifically in the animal health community?

Speaker 1: 25:43

Yeah, so through my time working at business development, academia and being on the innovation side of biotech and the human side, and then transitioning and starting a company and really looking specifically for technologies that were being developed for human medicine but licensing those rights and looking for an opportunity in VetLen, I kind of established a reputation, at least in some communities and definitely in the Michigan community, for being a veterinarian who can look at something and say whether there's a place in VetLen for it or not.

Speaker 1: 26:21

And so that's how I was introduced to VetLen was because the parent company for that, for VetLen, is developing a product for the human sector and so they had done some animal work and recognize there might be a place for this product. I talked to I don't know at least a company a month, probably maybe even more, of people saying, hey, I've got this product, you know, and I almost always say no, that's not going to work in veterinary medicine for one reason or another. But when I met the group from VetLen, from the parent company from VetLen, I was like, okay, they got something here.

Speaker 3: 27:00

Right. Why did you feel that way about this product or service versus the other opportunities that you were presented with?

Speaker 1: 27:06

Because they had won. The product works and there is a need for it. So it's a device that delivers drug locally up to 30 days and can be removed like a drain. So it's useful for surgical site infections as well as existing infections and allows veterinarians opportunity to treat locally. So that in and of itself was like, okay, the product has a place. But then also it was the research behind it. It's primarily significant amount of funding from the DOD. It's being developed for orthopedic implant infections to reduce biofilm development and to have, whenever there's funding from DOD or they have lots of money, I hear, for funding.

Speaker 1: 27:58

Yeah, when they're trying to do something to help the lives of on the battlefield, the restrictions that occur to physicians trying to treat patients on the battlefield, or what physicians are trying to do in third world countries, for example, that's where human medicine starts experiencing a similar constraints that veterinarians feel, and so the products that are being developed for those sectors often, I think, have application to vet med, and so when I saw that, and then the team is just awesome, the- yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:30

So the people are good, it's a good product, there's a need, they're filling a gap, and so I kind of checked a lot of the boxes that maybe some of these other products didn't have. It really did yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:43

Yeah, and it was just. It was also just the right time I was ready to to go make something happen again.

Speaker 3: 28:50

For the next evolution, and so that's your driving force and what for you personally, taking this role as president of this company at this time in your career, what's the impact and what do you bring to the table and how do you feel your presence there will be able to make an impact and help the veterinary community in your role with this specific product.

Speaker 1: 29:15

Well, I hope that my impact is. I'm pretty passionate about voice of customer, so I believe, when you look at, when you look at who the people are that are leading the companies and making the products that veterinarians rely on, most of them are not representative of the demographic of veterinarians themselves. They're either not veterinarians, they're mostly men.

Speaker 3: 29:39

Why are you describing me Stephanie?

Speaker 1: 29:43

You're providing a wonderful service to the veterinary communities, thank you. But nonetheless, I think and it's true on the human side too, because I was on that side too is that if you can bring the voice of customer into so put it this way startups in like the tech space. They're developing technology application, things like that. They bring market research in so early in that process because they have to make it right for adoption. On the medical side of things, we don't do that. They just develop something that's like oh yeah, this solves a problem. That's really great. We patent it, we develop it and we launch it.

Speaker 1: 30:20

They're not out there talking to MDs or talking to DBMs and saying does this fit your need? Could you do it better? Would you like it smaller? Would you like it bigger? Is it the right color? Is it the right size? How else would you use this product? Do that early on, and then you're actually pulling those customers into the product development process and then you're actually creating something for them that they will use and that's made for them. Veteranians have not experienced that, because we don't get a lot of products made specifically for us. As a veterinarian, as someone who has been in private practice and as someone who has also developed products for veterinarians previously, I believe that Vetlin asked me to come on board because I bring that perspective I am very, very much about. I want to tie my names to products that I know work and they're going to add value because I mean frankly, a lot of my friends are veterinarians, right? So I believe that's the benefit I will bring to the company.

Speaker 3: 31:30

And with launching a product from. So you're in right now. We're recording this December of 23, so you're in pre-launch of the product. So I've out on the website, like I said, doing some research. And for the lay non-veteranarian mind, lizard brain that I have, again kind of the insurance guy, it's basically a medical pouch that gets inserted with a catheter into the site localization and it will deliver antibiotics, drugs, pain meds or whatever it's going to be localized to the site, and so that's kind of what it does, right. I mean just describing the product for our listeners who aren't going to go out and Google Vetlin. It's basically just a and, of course, this is the most medical thing I've discussed on the podcast to date, so I'm way out of my depth of knowledge, but that's basically what it does, right.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Basically. Yes, I mean you're pretty close. It's not inserted with a catheter, but there is a catheter that's exteriorized from that site so that you can basically deliver drugs every day up to 30 days locally.

Speaker 3: 32:38

And what's on the market like this right now for veterinarians to be able to use.

Speaker 1: 32:42

Really nothing. There's really nothing that allows this amount of flexibility to provide the right antibiotic at the right place at the right time for that length of time. So yeah, it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 3: 32:57

So your pre-launch. Now we're recording this December of 23,. Kind of, what's the timeline? You know, magic wand, wave it. Where are you? You know, six months from now, or three months from now, or kind of, where are you going to be in the future with this? And for the veterans listening out there going, yeah, we really do need this. What's the timeline for them to see this?

Speaker 1: 33:18

Yeah, so first quarter of next year, so the first three months of next year, I'm going to be focusing most of getting products in the hands of boarded surgeons and other veterinarians who want to be kind of our beta testers and to get some clinical studies started, because I want to have that data to really support the efficacy of it. And then in second quarter of next year we will have our first product ready for launch and that's the first size product. And we have a program. If you go to our website, which is just vetlandbetleancom, we are giving away one free pouch.

Speaker 3: 33:56

So I saw you do have some clinical trial stuff. You're giving away free pouches, like there's some opportunity, like right now, for veterinarians out there who want to check this out, also some I won't go into the great detail, but we'll have links in the show notes for people to go, for veterinarians to go out and check this out. But there's some grants as well, I think, for research grants that you're going to be giving away as well, correct?

Speaker 1: 34:20

Yeah, we have a few research grants. For any residents that are doing that would be open to doing publishable research with our device. We will provide $5,000 and pouches for that study.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Great. Well, I really enjoyed our time together. We've kind of covered the arc of how to get into vet med being an entrepreneur and hey, here's some medical device stuff that Bill doesn't know what he's talking about on. So thank you very much. I appreciate that. What would you for our listeners out there? What would you leave them with of the one thing that if a young Stephanie branching out, you could give out? What would you tell your other vet students as a third or fourth year student before getting into the veterinary industry as a DVM?

Speaker 1: 35:13

It would be really to think beyond what it is you think you want to do. Do what you want to do, do what makes you happy, learn from everything you do and establish that network, because I can guarantee you don't know what other possibilities you have down the road.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Yeah Well, that's awesome advice. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I'm really glad that we got connected and really glad that you're out there providing resources for veterinarians to fill gaps in their healthcare needs. For you know, I never know. My little cat Louie one day might need a vet land pouch to post-surgery. Hopefully he never needs it, but if he does, I hope your product's out there for him. So thanks so much to you and for joining us today on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 36:02

And, as always, remember to like, share and review the podcast. It helps with our algorithms and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to Veterinary Blueprints. If you have any thoughts, questions or suggestions for an episode, I would love to hear from you and please email me at bill at butlervetinsurancecom. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you could do me a huge favor you know it helps with the algorithm If you can like, share or comment on the post, leave a review. I would love it. Thanks for tuning in and until next time.