Ep 13: Guest spotlight Beth Green, CEO Vetmedux

Discover the inspiring journey of Beth Green, CEO of Vetmedux. She takes us through her remarkable transition from veterinary publishing into a leader of tech innovation in this field.

As the brains behind Clinicians Brief, Beth's tale is one of pioneering spirit and ingenuity, turning a stack of unread journals into an essential resource for vets everywhere.

Her company's strategic acquisition of Plumb's Veterinary Drugs is just one highlight of how Vetmedux has become a staple in every veterinarian's toolkit.

Special mentions:
Caleb Frankel
Indu Mani

Chapters

• 0:04 From Print to Digital
• 16:20 Beth's story
• 20:40 What advice would you give entrepreneurs?

Transcript

Ira: 0:04

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

Stacee: 0:41

Alright, guys, we're in for a special treat today. We have the CEO of Vetmedux here with us, Beth Green, and I have known Beth for quite a while because I was so fortunate that she was one of my advisors on my advisory board for Vet2 Pet. And the way I got to know you, beth, was I was looking around for advisors and our friend, Martin Traub-Werner, said "you have to meet Beth Green. She's a badass and she's going to help you build this company. So I said I would be honored to meet her. Do you think she would meet with me? And then I reached out to you and you said yes, and it's been amazing because you yourself have quite the company.

Beth: 1:32

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you, yeah, and, by the way, I heard that I should meet you too, because I heard there was this amazing veterinarian who's this incredible entrepreneur, who was building this incredible product, and so it was. Yeah, it was mutually exciting for us to connect.

Stacee: 1:52

Yeah, match made in heaven. Yes, for sure. So tell us, let me just fill in our listeners. Brief Media, Plumbs, Plumbs Pro, Clinicians Brief. All of this is yours and you recently rebranded to Vetmedux and you've got some exciting news that you're going to share here at the end. But to get started, tell us a little bit about how you got your idea and how you got started with your company.

Beth: 2:24

Yeah, that's, I think, a great story. I was working for a company then called Veterinary Learning Systems. Veterinary Learning Systems was a publisher and they produced the compendium on continuing education, Veterinary Technician magazine, the Equine Veterinary Journal in North America. Then we're also very integral in helping our founder was in helping start NAVC. So during my time with them, I noticed that every time I went into a veterinary hospital and went into the office of the veterinary, there would be this huge stack of journals I'm familiar, yeah, and when you're publishing a journal, you're like, oh my goodness, this is. You always wanted yours to be on top, and so when I began, there was a time I decided to take some time off and raise my two children. They were about a year and a half a part, and so I took some time off and went back and did my MBA at that time, and so I was forced to or a marketing class, develop a new product and then a marketing plan.

Beth: 3:43

And so I kept thinking, okay, what kind of a product would I build? And I felt, wow, that was a problem I saw years ago in veterinary hospitals. How would I do that? And so, just happenstance, I met a pediatrician who at the time was doing reviews of all the current pediatric literature and then putting it on at the time this tells you how long ago on cassette tapes. So the people I know, yeah, so the people could listen. If you're a pediatrician you can listen to those on the way to the office and back and stay up to date on all of the current pediatric literature. And I did some work with him and I thought, wow, what if we built something like that in veterinary medicine? So I began going to the medical library, began meeting with veterinarians, eventually doing focus groups, and just listened, just listened and put together a journal that had everything that they said they wanted. It ended up being wildly successful.

Stacee: 4:51

That was that. Clinicians Brief, right? Was that the name of it when you first started?

Beth: 4:56

Yeah, it was Clinicians Brief. Yeah, we never changed the name and we've changed our company name multiple times, that right. But yeah, Clinicians Brief was always Clinicians Brief and we partnered, took the idea to the North American Veterinary Conference conference and so for the first nearly decade and a half it was the official journal of the NAVC. It was a great partnership for both of us along the way. But, yeah, the publication just really resonated with people in the industry and continued. As we saw reading habits begin to change. When we launched it there were websites at that time, but they certainly the internet and the amount of information available on the internet and the user experience was completely different than what it is now. So it was still a print centric world.

Beth: 5:57

A couple of decades ago, which seems like a century ago now that was our first product and then, about 10 years in, I realized I said wow, it's really great that we have this successful publication that people love to read and would always send us great, great notes about a particular case that had helped them. They'd say I got the journal on Wednesday and on Friday that case walked into my office and here I was prepared. So it was always great to hear those kinds of comments. But a decade later I realized that a veterinarian doesn't have to read Clinicians' Brief every day to be successful. What is the essential kind of information that they need every single day? And in most cases, every single case right. And so Indu Mani was on our staff and she said oh well, you know that would be Plumbs. She said I think we should go talk to Dr Plumb. So I began looking at Plumbs and, of course, I had was very familiar with Plumbs. Every time we looked at doing a formulary on our website, every time I talked with somebody about what formulary they use whether it was a university or someone they'd say, oh, we use this one, but you know, it's just not as good as Plumbs. And I kept hearing that over and over again.

Beth: 7:29

And so Indu said well, I know Dr Plumb. He was in charge of clinics when I was doing my residency at Minnesota and introduced me to him, and so I proposed to him that he let us take his legacy of Plumbs and build a digital platform with it. And one of the questions he asked me was exactly how many of these have you built before? Well, none. But here's why. Here's why you should trust us and talk to with him a little bit about what we have done with Clinicians Brief, and he certainly had had the vision a while ago that wouldn't it be great if I could take you know, all of this treatment information in Plumbs and connected with diagnostic information or case reports or you know broader content?

Beth: 8:27

I think he must have trusted Indu. He must have I don't know figured he was going to take a wild bet on me and we built the product. What year was that? NAVC of January 2015. So it's been nine years now and you know, today we have over 38,000 individual subscribers to Plumbs and, of course, corporate sponsors, a lot of pharmacies, some of the big chains we have in our nationwide. We have subscribers in, I think, 130 different countries and anyways, though it's yeah, it's really great to see how that product is grown, and I remember one time speaking to a veterinarian who was a young associate to see year or two out of school in a 15-doctor practice in Australia and she said do you know how much time that you have saved me not having to run through that practice and figure out who had the book?

Stacee: 9:33

Exactly. There was always just one, maybe two books, if you were lucky, and then when you get a new addition, I graduated when it was a red book, and then they released the green book, and so you're always like I want the green one, though. Who's got the green book? Well, you can have the red book. This weird conversation going on.

Beth: 9:54

Right, yeah, it was a big deal every year to figure out what color the next cover was going to be, and apparently the original one was orange. It's not the first addition, but the original hand-done one I think that he put together because they called it the orange virus, because everybody wanted it one. So I have yet to see one, though I'm dying to see one.

Stacee: 10:22

So you met with Dr. Plumb. You got your meeting through mutual connection and you convinced Dr. Plumb to let you turn this thing digital and then you just went for it. Then what happened? You've got people like easily, like this was easy to adopt, I would imagine, because people knew the product and now it was just now able to get it on their phone. Were you just at that point content or did you decide there's more for me to do?

Beth: 10:57

So we launched it in 15 and then it was already 16. The end of 16 we said what? What is next? And so we said Up- to-D ate. You know, Up- to-D ate is you so widely in human medicine and I had a friend of mine who was an author for up to date and so it was very familiar with how that process worked and how widely used it was. My own GP used it and what is it? I don't even know. Up-to-D ate is? It's a diagnostic and treatment platform for human physicians. I can't remember how many you know tens of thousands of subscribers they have right now, but mainly for GPs.

Beth: 11:39

So anyway, we wanted to build the Up- to-D ate, if you will, for veterinary medicine. So that was the next phase and we had looked at you know, is there somebody else out there that already has a written, written format like Plumbs that we could adopt to to digital and didn't find anything that our veterinary team would approve of that we didn't have to make lots of edits to to get it in the format we needed. So we decided to build the content from the ground up. So which is is not the it's not the easiest thing to do, but certainly the path that we've been down. And you know I was talking with a couple of pros, subscribers and at VMX that you know. He said I'm in this every day and I need to get my my techs in here too. How do I do that? So we got him set up to to get all of his techs in there as well.

Stacee: 12:38

So anyway, you're just digitizing everything.

Beth: 12:42

Well, and it's the way, it's the wave of the future, right? We? You know, and I think we see that in veterinary medicine it's still lags, you know, behind how they've embraced technology in the human market and you know they've had maybe some other factors like health insurance and things like that, that have really pushed that much, much further in human medicine than it has in veterinary medicine. But we're on the cusp of those changes coming, you know, in the next couple of years, right.

Stacee: 13:16

Yeah, for sure it feels like it's getting really fast all the sudden, doesn't it? Right, it does so. Last week you made a huge Vetmedux that has been acquired by Instinct. To tell us all about that. We want the inside track here.

Beth: 13:35

Okay, well, so the inside track. Yeah, yes, the big news is I got a demotion. I'm no longer president of Vetmedux! But yes, we got acquired by Instinct Science. And when I was getting ready, you know, to embark upon this journey of building the digital version of Plumbs, I often tell Indu Mani, our Chief Scientific Officer, Indu, I wish I would have gone to veterinary school, even if I wasn't going to practice, just so I had, you know, the perspective and the insight right. And so I knew that I had to have somebody that really understood workflow in a practice and understood the problem of how to build this, you know, to make it right. So, for instance, one of the big things that we heard from vet, our nurses, is that they would work in a practice and everyone would write their notes in the book, right, and then whoever owned the book would leave and go to a different practice and they took the notes with them and they were devastated. And so we're like, oh wait, we can fix that, we can fix that With digital right, that we can keep notes, you know, even have your subscription changes, so. But I needed somebody who understood that, and so I was introduced to Caleb Frankel back then and I say that I eventually borrowed him from practice for a couple of years to come and really become our Director of Development and Business Development. So he worked with us on Plumbs and then we, you know, again as we began to think about building up to date, and then he was even then saying we've got to fix this problem of having a better PIMS or EMR in this market. Right, and we knew that too, because we had done some research, trying to figure out what were the things that veterinarians looked up every day in practice to make sure that as we were building this, we were addressing what was really happening in practice. And I remember the research company came back to us and they said, "hey, forget about that up to date thing. Could you build an EMR? Because everyone, everyone, dislikes the one they're using. And so we didn't embark on that. But Caleb eventually did, you know, left Vetmedux and at the time Brief Media and went on and developed Instinct Science then. So anyway, and have done a really good job in primarily specialty, emergency and university clinic settings. So anyway.

Beth: 16:20

So, as we began to look at the next step, you know where is technology going over the next couple of years? And making sure that essential information is there when you need it, right and the right information in the right place. And so we know that, even with Plumbs and with the Pro information, it needs to be integrated right into workflow. And then, when we connected back with Caleb and found out that our purpose was to care for care takers you know the veterinary caregivers and his his was also the same thing. You know how many times do you find somebody in business when you're looking at coming together, where your North Star is exactly the same? Yeah, so, and of course, our team and staff already knew and had very high regards for for Caleb.

Beth: 17:19

So, yes, this, we think, is a really great move for us. It doesn't prevent us from working outside of you know, other systems in and working with other other clients, other, you know, pims clients, etc. We want Plumbs to be everywhere and Caleb and his team are very committed to that. So, anyway, so, yes, I'm, I'm excited and and it's great, I think you know, as an entrepreneur, you've, I know I have likely experienced that it can be lonely, sometimes right, like one day something happens and you're like we're killing it, we're amazing, and you're, you know, you're really excited. And then the next day something else happens and you're like, oh my god, we're gonna go out of business. And those are the two extremes.

Beth: 18:17

I'm talking vastly in between, right, you know, because you tell yourself stories that you know that may be a little bit more dramatic than they really are, and so it's. It was really great for me to come back and Caleb's expertise and, first of all, he's a veterinarian and even though I might still I don't know someday go to veterinary school, he, he has that perspective and he's done a really great job of building both a culture of innovation but also phenomenal service of people that are just highly dedicated to, you know, to doing what they do best, which is caring for their clients and the and the subscribers that they do have for their instinct products. So, yeah, I'm super excited and it's really great to be back kind of dreaming, innovating and getting ready to see what we can build next.

Stacee: 19:16

Well, it's a great story and I know everyone's just going to want you to reassure us. And nothing's happening to Clinicians Brief, and nothing's happening to Plumbs, because you have mastered two products that veterinarians absolutely can't live without, yeah, and I think you know I laugh about really wish and I had gone to veterinary school.

Beth: 19:38

But sometimes I wonder to Stacee if that wasn't part of what help make it good, right? Is like I had to rely on somebody else to tell me. I had to listen so intently right to somebody else describing the problem for me that you know who knows. And then I had the right people on the team right. So I have incredible people, people like Indu. She was a subscriber to Clinicians the very first year. And so it's been great to have great people you know that have been a part of that along the way, including Caleb right that helped build that out.

Stacee: 20:22

So, yeah, wow, it's just great. You deserve all the success.

Beth: 20:27

Oh well, thank you. Thank you, it'll be fun, yeah, so the only thing that will change with those two products is that they're going to get better.

Stacee: 20:36

I like that. Well, I want to ask you a final question before we wrap up. What advice would you give an entrepreneur that's up and coming?

Beth: 20:48

Wow. Well, first of all, I think it relates back to the story that I just said, and that's that, know what your North Star is right? What is it that you're passionate about? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? And don't ever lose sight of that, Because and I'm sure you can attest to this, being an entrepreneur it's a marathon, not a sprint, and I know in those early, especially the first year, I was fueled by adrenaline.

Beth: 21:25

You're so excited about everything that you're doing. I lost 10 pounds. I lost 10 pounds because I was so fueled by adrenaline that I would forget to eat. You know, oh, my gosh, yeah. And so, anyway, that finally got itself worked out and I no longer have that problem.

Beth: 21:43

And the other thing to do is don't let someone come and tell you you have to do it this way. I see you know you've got, if you say true to who you are and you definitely you know you want to talk to everyone that you respect and admire to get insights into what works and what doesn't work. But there's no one way to do it, and each of us have different skills and passions and ways that we conquer the world on a daily basis, and so those are the things that you want to stay true to is doing what you do best, and I love it. I think several years ago there was a friend I know, a female veterinarian, who decided she was going to become a practice owner, and she told me the story about meeting with a consultant and she laid out her plan here's what I'm going to do and her husband was in business, so she had run everything by him. She met with the consultant and he told her you cannot do this, this is not the way we do it.

Beth: 22:54

This is the model that works. You will fail. And I remember her telling me that she went home and she talked to her husband and rethought everything and she said no, I think I'm a reasonably smart person, I think I've gotten good. And so she went out with her plan. She was wildly successful. She was in the black, I don't know month two, month three, went on to hire specialists, et cetera. And so I throw that out, not because I mean I'm sure that there were other models out there that worked, but it didn't mean that hers wasn't going to work. And so I think you have to be true to who you are and, like I say, not forget that, north star, but keeping focused on where you want to be in the long term will change, I think, how you do things on a daily basis.

Stacee: 23:43

So great advice, really, really great. Thank you for sharing, and I'm going to twist your arm and see if you will join me for one more episode and take a shot with me at spinning the wheel of starting questions.

Beth: 24:00

I've always wanted to do like wheel of fortune.

Stacee: 24:03

Yeah, it's like wheel of fortune.

Beth: 24:04

It's like a wheel of fortune of veterinary podcasts. Yeah, it's exciting of course.

Stacee: 24:10

Ok, well, let's spin the wheel and we'll see what our question will be, and then you guys can join us for the next episode to hear the answer. Ok, here we go, I'm going to spin the wheel. So the question is "how did you find your business partner?

Beth: 24:31

Oh wow, that is a great questions, Stacee.

Stacee: 24:38

We'll see you next week and you can hear best answer in my answer. See you guys. Thanks for listening to the show today.