VMP 278: How To Actually Reimagine Veterinary Care With Dr. Cody Creelman

Brandon (00:00:00) -  Welcome to the Veterinay Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your vendor. Practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. I hope you're having a wonderful day. Today's episode we have Doctor Cody Creelman, founder of Fen Vet, the Cow Vet Extraordinaire. He's been on the podcast many times and today's episode is full of really awesome information. we talk about all kinds of topics, including what it's like to launch a second location, what it was like launching his first location, how to recruit top talent, how to retain top talent, and then how all of that relates to marketing. It is a fantastic conversation and Cody is really transparent. He is, I think, very, very insightful and, really approaches this from a unique perspective. I love getting his takes on the vet med in general, because he's not only a fantastic operator, and I mentioned that he has two small animal locations, he's got a large animal location as well, and so it's just really cool to see him grow.

Brandon (00:01:06) -  And I can't imagine where he will be in five years because he's doing amazing things. So this episode is full of great info. and I think that everybody can apply something and get some nuggets of insight from him. Before we begin, we have a sponsor for this episode. Picture this. It's the end of a long day, and as a veterinarian, all you want to do is go home and pour your favorite evening drink. The only thing standing in between you and that pinot is mountains of medical records. Introducing Happy Doc, a hand-held AI assistant designed specifically for veterinarians. Happy doc integrates with your PIMs and automates Soap notes with our AI technology so that you can keep your focus on patients and their owners. All you need to do is press, record and let Happy Doc do the rest. The result is happy doctors, happy technicians, happy owners, and an overall happier practice. Get more time back in your day and discover the difference Happy Doc can make for you and your practice. By scheduling a time for a demo at HappyDoc.ai that's happydoc.ai.

Brandon (00:02:13) -  Without further ado, here is the interview with Doctor Cody Creelman. Thank you for being on the podcast Cody, I appreciate it. You are now. You're definitely the most frequent podcast guest that I've had. Although Michael surely has publicly claimed that he's he's gone in for your record for Michael Shirley.

Cody (00:02:33) -  I've never heard of her.

Brandon (00:02:35) -  She's just he's a pretty he's a pretty cool guy. But, you should meet him someday, for sure. but, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I was just saying, I don't remember when the last time was that you were on the podcast. It was probably more than two years ago, I think.

Cody (00:02:52) -  I can't even remember the days and weeks and months and years fly by.

Brandon (00:02:58) -  Definitely. Well, so as of time of recording this podcast, you have three practices now. I know that you were maybe almost at one or you were at one last time we spoke, so know for sure.

Cody (00:03:10) -  Yeah.

Brandon (00:03:12) -  Things have changed a bunch. And for people who don't know you, which I'm sure is almost nobody, people know you far more often than they know about podcasts.

Brandon (00:03:20) -  So if you could just describe yourself, which is probably difficult, and your background in veteran medicine.

Cody (00:03:26) -  No, I'll keep it brief. So I'm a veterinarian up here in Alberta, Canada. I've been practicing in Alberta for the last 13 years. I had a former career where I was solely a Corvette and also a mixed animal practice consolidator, and then from there in 2019 is where I decided to take the plunge and build out a modern vet clinic brand called Fen Vet. So currently we're three locations. One is a mixed animal practice. one is a strictly companion animal practice. And our most recent endeavor has been, equine reproduction. So over the past three years, we've built out three clinics where a team about 50 people, 11 or 12 veterinarians total. And, yeah, that's just I love building clinics. I love putting teams together. I love, reimagining the vet care experience.

Brandon (00:04:24) -  That's you definitely have reimagined it. And I think that everybody says vet care reimagined. and seriously, every website, and I think do that Fen vet probably has launched like a specific trend of vet care reimagined practices out there.

Brandon (00:04:41) -  Definitely like I've seen them and I think like, oh, I think they're probably talked to Cody, when they were starting up, for sure. So when you say vet care reimagined, what do you actually mean by that? Yeah.

Cody (00:04:52) -  So this all goes back to 2013, I think. I had listened to a Ted talk of Guy Kawasaki, and he was talking this famous Ted talk about paradigm shifts. So if you typed in paradigm shift, Guy Kawasaki Ted talk, you guys would be able to watch it. And it was really the first time that it came into my my mind about this concept of paradigm shifts amongst businesses and their inevitability that every industry that has ever existed in the history of mankind at some time will end up getting disrupted by some new innovation or thought. And I always love this example because it's just so incredibly clear to me. in that, in that talk, what we hear is an example of the ice industry. So the origins of the ice industry, you have the man, the men standing out on the lake, with their big ice saws, and they're cutting ice.

Cody (00:06:03) -  And that's how the ice business worked. There was thousands and thousands of people employed just cutting lake ice and transporting it all around the world. So you could have a little ice box. And then there was somebody, some smart engineer, who decided to run ammonium through pipes in a factory, and you could make ice in a factory. And there was a group of people standing out on the lake saying, like, nobody's ever going to buy that factory made ice. My ice is the freshest in the cleanest ice in the world. And what happened? Nobody's cutting ice on lakes anymore, right? You've had a complete disruption. And I'm passionate about veterinary medicine and things like that are important for me to think about. So I was always thinking like, oh yeah, there has not been a paradigm shift that's happened in veterinary medicine. The, the, the business that we know it is really only as old as the 50s or 60s. Right. Like before that, I would say that veterinary medicine was kind of, you know, artesian right.

Cody (00:07:09) -  You had these craftsmen in these individual houses think of like the James Herriot era. Right. So you'd have 1 or 2 vets living in the house that they practiced out of. And then in the 60s and 70s, that's kind of where we've seen the modern, you know, take of, of veterinary practices, multi doctor practices, but we haven't seen any sort of change or disruption in that business model that for its entire history. And I'm sure it's going to happen at one point. My thoughts around it were I really want to be a veterinarian and a practice owner for the rest of my life, and if a paradigm shift happened, I might not have a career anymore. So the best chance that I could think of to make sure that I can keep doing this career was the cause of the paradigm shift myself. The best way to be on the right side of the curve when the shift happens is to be the one that implements that shift. That was the mindset. I've been thinking about that for over a decade.

Cody (00:08:12) -  so it came natural to me when we were going to put together our own vet clinic brand of like, we're not going to do it the way that everybody else does it. We're going to think for ourselves from the very first principles of business and of medicine and of science and technology. How do we launch a vet clinic? What should it look like? for the year that we actually live in. Right?

Brandon (00:08:38) -  Definitely. It totally, totally makes sense when it comes to you being different. how much of the experience, like, are you actually thinking about and how detailed are you getting so that when some like, like, tell me what your thoughts are just from a general principle standpoint.

Cody (00:08:58) -  So one of our core strategies so our mission is, is as you stated, and I do hate how many clinics have that mission. Right. But it doesn't really matter who has it and who doesn't. It's who executes on it. Right? So that's all that matters at the end of the day. And that's also why I'm also so transparent, because like I, I've told all my secrets, I've got no secret recipe.

Cody (00:09:23) -  I've said everything I could possibly say about everything that I do on the internet. most people just aren't going to execute on it, right? And that's just human, you know, human nature. So based off of our mission, we have three core strategies. the first strategy is a seven star customer experience. The next strategy is amazing practice culture. And the third strategy is innovation of thought. So when it comes to that seven star customer experience, I got really obsessed with this because I viewed it as a blue ocean within our industry, an area where nobody within veterinary medicine is truly obsessing over. So I did a thought experiment originally of what would a 11 star customer experience look like? What if? What would it look like if you absolutely and literally rolled out the red carpet for pet parents? Like, what could that look like? If you had a $100,000 budget per pet, per appointment to spend on experience? So you would have, you know, a, a drone helicopter show up at the person's place to pick them up, and you would roll out a red carpet and you would carry the, you know, the dog on a throne.

Cody (00:10:38) -  And there would be, you know, the most expensive caviar and, and champagne, and you would land at the vet clinic and, like, on and on. You could go crazy when you're thinking like, what would the most extreme experience in the world be? And then what's a five star customer experience like? What is you know, what if I say that to the industry, what do they they think that means. And it's it's kind of just status quo in my opinion. Right. So I came in to the vet clinic. It was relatively clean. The people were relatively nice. The it was fair value priced. And my pet got a diagnosis and got better. That's fine. Right? That's a five star customer experience. You got everything that you thought that you wanted from a vet experience. But what we wanted to do is what's in the middle. What is a seven star customer experience look like? And that's what we obsessed over. So in that, what does it look like? It was right from the first touch point.

Cody (00:11:37) -  We have thought about as much as we possibly could have. Right. right? So website design interaction with our virtual client care coordinators. Do you what do you hear when you call Fen vet? Do you hear hi, is this an emergency? Can you please hold? And then you go on to static, you know, staticky, hold music for 3.5 minutes until somebody addresses you. Or do you talk to a person right away? Hi, this is Fen. How can I help you? And then you get to ask your question, and then you get off the phone, and then when you walk into the vet clinic, what does that experience look like? What does it smell like? What does it look like? we have a curated scent, right? We we obsess over cleanliness. We have a completely, reimagined veterinary clinic design and a very high end bougie aesthetic that three years ago, nobody had considered this. It's almost standard now to have a fini like clinic, that that exists when we design a vet clinic.

Cody (00:12:45) -  But, three years ago, nobody thought outside of the box in terms of, oh, this is what a vet clinic should look like. What about waiting rooms or waiting rooms? Good for a customer experience or not? What about the dog food that you see when you walk into your local vet clinic up on a wall? is that good for customer experience? Is that part of the seven star customer experience? Who do you talk to when you first walk in? That's why we have virtual client care coordinators. because there's no phones in our vet clinic. When you walk in to our clinics, you're instantly greeted by a smiling client care coordinator that starts your appointment right then and there. You get a weight on your dog. You go into the exam room, they welcome you. They make sure all your questions are asked. They offer you an espresso or sparkling water. they let you know that the Wi-Fi password is puppy kiss because it makes you smile. Like that is the level of detail that I'm talking about when we've curated customer experience.

Cody (00:13:45) -  That and much more. Right? That's just like, yeah, as much as I can talk about in four minutes. Yeah.

Brandon (00:13:51) -  Well, that that's amazing. I love the I didn't know you had a friend sent. Well, I didn't remember I'm sure I, I've heard you talk about that, but there's something about like scent and memory that is just so like you can think about scents like if you've ever been on Pirates of the Caribbean, like the first thing you think about is the smell of it, right? Like everybody who's been there knows exactly like you smell something similar and it takes you back immediately.

Cody (00:14:15) -  So this is this is even crazier. So yes, from a psychology standpoint, 100%. But what we ended up doing is we hired this like alchemist of of scent. Right. This person who then took our fan scent, which was specifically curated based off of, you know what? What does luxury smell like? What does trust smell like? the short answer is sandalwood and sea salt.

Cody (00:14:46) -  Okay. So so that's that's, you know, that's the funny smell. So we took our curated smell and we got this alchemist to make a fur freshener and a Fen vet shampoo, a dog shampoo that is scented to the same scent as the vet clinic. So we are making our patients smell like our clinic, and imagine that connection for that human when they walk in. And there. Their vet clinic now smells like their pet. Imagine all the good pheromones and hormones that are floating around your brain when that hits you. It's like walking into your grandmother's kitchen after ten. Exactly right. Yeah, that connection is the most powerful. So we took that, and we're making their pet smell like us. Like, how much more powerful could you have in terms of that love of your pet and love of your vet?

Brandon (00:15:41) -  Definitely. You should sell candles for sure, because that would be hilarious. Awesome. And I was just thinking to, Have you ever been to the Aria Hotel in Vegas before?

Cody (00:15:52) -  I've walked through it.

Cody (00:15:54) -  I don't know if I really fancy.

Brandon (00:15:56) -  It's amazing. And they actually do the scent in there, too. It's a black orchid. I just looked it up, but I subconsciously I noticed that that place has a scent. It is wonderful. And it smells fancy. Like as you're walking by all the Louis V like high end retail stores. They use that, they pump it in there so it doesn't smell like cigarette smoking casinos and beer. It's like you're it's super amazing. So that is just so cool. So that level of detail is incredible. And so when people say Vecchio reimagined, it is being reimagined. And there's not just like people say hello when they come in. and I love that you did the 11 star experience. Another thing that I thought of when you were talking about that was a guy named Alex Ramos, who I love, his books and his marketing. He talks about if you had to charge like $20,000 for your like $500 product, what would you have to include to get it to a level that people would pay for it? And then what are the things that you could keep in there and still charge $500? And so then it'll make it like even better from a practical standpoint.

Brandon (00:17:03) -  because I'm sure that Fenwick could do a $20,000 like, luxury package, and that would be really cool to test out.

Cody (00:17:10) -  yeah, we've. Well, so I've considered it right to do a, let, let's just say $12,000. Okay. Let's say $1,000 a month in terms of this, this wellness package. Right. Like what would that specifically include? so you can it doesn't take very far for you to think like, okay, so there's a VIP exam room, right, that has extra bougie dog treats, an extra bougie human treats. And there's a towel warmer that's fan centered. And when the pup walks into the VIP exam room, like you do at a Japanese restaurant, when you get the warm, wet towels that you get, your dog's paws cleaned off by these scented, warm, moist towels and that you have these, you know, these things that that that are exclusive, like you have an exclusive access to a specific person at the vet clinic, your own VIP concierge for communication.

Cody (00:18:18) -  And there's, strategically booked, same day sick or wellness appointments for these VIP customers, I think. I think it's brilliant. I think there's definitely something there. I've always thought that the that the funnest part would be when somebody checks in who's not part of the fan first class experience, and the client care coordinator gives them a little wink and says, I've got a great news for you today. You've just been upgraded to the fin first experience.

Brandon (00:18:52) -  That's amazing idea. Yeah, yeah. When you when you get upgraded to first class, you feel like you won the lottery, you know? And so that would be amazing. definitely. That's that's awesome. I hope that you do that. That would be amazing. That would be very, very cool. and as you were talking about that, I was thinking, actually, I do know somebody I'm not going to name who they are, but they were they had a client that came to them, flew across country to go to them because they were an expert in their field, and they wanted them to fly back out to their house from the East coast to Southern California with on their private jet, and they would pay anything, and they had a house for them to stay at.

Brandon (00:19:30) -  They're like, can you come and do this procedure for us, for our two dogs? And so they did it a few times, but the problem was that they were wanting to text back and forth all the time and be available like 11:00 at night. And so they said, I just can't do this anymore. I don't like being on call 24 seven for these people, but those clients exist for sure. So it's interesting to think about what you could do. Yeah, and.

Cody (00:19:51) -  It's not just that. I'll give you another example. so I was doing an appointment recently with a, a golden retriever that was five years old, and it was just a wellness examination and vaccines and deworming. Right. And the client was very happy, was very supportive of any of my suggestions, which were standard suggestions. Right. A vaccination deworming fecal test. Right. Client was. Yep. Absolutely. You talk about flea and tick complete compliance. No problem. Right. And then I mentioned that one of my veterinarians, Doctor Lauren, also has a golden named Harley.

Cody (00:20:35) -  And Doctor Lauren is obsessed with her Golden as well. Like, you could tell that this lady was just absolutely obsessed with their dog. I said, Doctor Lauren actually goes and gets, routine abdominal ultrasound on Harley every six months because she's really worried about hemangioma, sarcoma and other tumors. and the client looked at me with, like, eyes wide, being like, that's an option. I'm like, yeah, of course that's an option. And she's like, well, nobody's ever told me before. And it was kind of like this moment of like, I thought this client was being really compliant because I'm not going into every appointment with every golden being like, well, actually I do suggest every six months, like, I know that's overkill and you're going to be spending, you know, $3,000 a year. But like, if you wanted to do everything. So then she was just like, she opened her eyes and she was like, what else are you not telling me? I'm like, well, have you heard about genetic testing? And she's like, yeah or no, I have not.

Cody (00:21:33) -  Like, what's that about? So then I went into that and then Brianna said that by the time I walked out of that appointment, I booked $1,200 worth of bloodwork, genetic testing, and then also follow up abdominal ultrasound. This client was so hungry for everything I could throw at them, but I'm not offering that as a standard thing. So back to your example. Like, why wouldn't you, as a vet clinic, pick a price that made sense for you to have a veterinarian on call 24 hours? Like, I know that's really hard, but I got some vets here that if you were saying, hey, do you want to be on call for $1,000 an hour? tonight they would say yes for sure. There's a there's always a price, right? I would say yes for $1,000 an hour to be on call over every night. Like, of course you would.

Brandon (00:22:25) -  That's that's really good to to think about too, because. Yeah, you said of course that's available. But there's like you just don't know what you don't know.

Brandon (00:22:32) -  and so people that are in the, in the industry assume that everybody knows, but clients don't know. I don't know when I work with you guys all the time. I didn't know that that would be a good thing to do. And I do ads for people that have ultrasound. So, you know, it's important that you think about this, talk to people that that don't know regularly and continue to like, expand your ignorance into what people don't know, because so much of what you do is assumed that everybody understands what goes into it. But honestly, nobody knows what goes into it unless you're for sure.

Cody (00:23:04) -  Yeah, for a marketing standpoint. we never go to, like, what does the customer who really wants everything, what could we do for them? Nobody ever approaches marketing that way, right? Like. I'm not saying that's an AI necessarily an ideal customer. It is just a customer. Right? It's this customer segmentation. And that customer exists and is pretty common. And I don't see anybody, putting out, you know, education or pieces of content that said, like, here's the things that we could suggest for the pet owner who wanted to do everything.

Brandon (00:23:49) -  Definitely. That's that's super smart. Well, one thing that I'm curious about specifically in your ownership role and expansion and all of the things that you do. So how how has it been for you transitioning from being Cody in private brand or personal brand into Fen Vet? And how has that journey been for you in terms of, like figuring that out and applying like you, you still have Cody Tillman page, right? You have fin vet. I think that the content is very well aligned now. And, I think both of them do a great job still. So how was that process for you, and what are some of the biggest lessons that you learned in in that? Yeah.

Cody (00:24:36) -  I think the biggest self-reflection that I've had with the personal brand is that it is very hard to do and to maintain and to, you know, pick what you're trying to functionally do. And the biggest transition for me is that, like, I've just had to be an operator and I don't really have time to be able to do anything else but the things that need to be done.

Cody (00:25:03) -  So I'm still happy to do social media, but all of my posting, both on my personal page or on the fan bedside, is based out of necessity that, like, I am sure there's a part of me that loves that connection and loves all the altruistic things that, you know, doing social media posting can do, inspiring others on and on. But like, I've come to the realization that I need a big incentive in order for me to, you know, activate social media marketing on my personal brand. so a, you know, recent example, I'm hiring my hiring strategy, utilizing my personal brand. And my clinic brand has been spectacular. And I think 90% of the content that we put out to the public in terms of our Instagram stories, in terms of our Instagram post, in terms of my own personal brand is 100%, aimed at not filling the books as a vet clinic. It's creating a sphere of influence of potential future employees that are following that story and understand that story, and that's translated into a massive ability for us to hire the most spectacular talent possible.

Cody (00:26:21) -  we don't have a veterinarian shortage. We don't have a technology shortage. We have a waiting list of 28 veterinarians locally that would love to work for our hospitals. that's what a lot of our social media has created for us. So I think that's the kind of biggest lesson learned over the last 3 or 4 years is I think I was utilizing social media because I didn't feel like I was doing enough in my career that I wasn't moving or growing forward, that I needed to do something to grasp this opportunity. That's that's, you know, my privilege and and my, you know, my life. now I'm so busy just creating and maintaining an actual business that I don't have time for vlogging, even though I wish I did do it because I like it.

Brandon (00:27:21) -  Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you were good at it and it took a long time and a lot of time to get good at it. But I'm sure that those skill sets now just really, cross over a bunch. And so I'm like, oh my goodness.

Cody (00:27:35) -  It's it's changed. It's literally changed my life. Every, every ounce of effort that I ever put into my own personal brand has literally changed the course of my career by orders of magnitude. That you would have no idea, right? Just the the phone calls I get and the connections that I get and the, the the benefit of having the veterinary industry follow our story and this cool stuff that you get to do because of that and the companies you get to connect with and the people you get to connect with and the things you get to do and the vet schools, you get to go and and speak at and on and on. Oh my goodness. Worth every second. It's hard. Right? but but then on the flip side, right, like, I've got all that I can handle right now in terms of, of my time. So I don't need to add another layer on on top of that. maybe I'll get bored maybe in two weeks from now. everything will finally feel like it's in control running three hospitals and I'll start putting out vlogs.

Cody (00:28:42) -  I thought about it today. I ran in, I honestly thought about like my day yesterday was pretty cool. I was at the horse barn all day. my day today is going to be super cool. Like I should do it and then I didn't.

Brandon (00:28:56) -  We? That's totally. I'm curious to see what you think about your content. Your content has shifted a bunch, right? Which makes sense as you change, like your content changes. But do you think that the foundation that you built is, still carrying the momentum, or do you think, okay, so I was curious, like in terms of how you're connecting with audiences now, is it the the execution of fan that is like driving more of this demand? Or is it like the like when you launched the personal brand, you got flooded, not the personal brand. When you announced fan, you got flooded with people be like, how can I work for you, Cody? But now that you have fan and it's cool and it's what you said, it was like, that's really cool.

Brandon (00:29:42) -  So are people trying to line up to work with you because of Finn or because of your personal brand or. Oh, yes.

Cody (00:29:49) -  For for that. It's definitely because of Finn. Right. That, if we haven't maintained that amazing reputation across the industry. because it was just me and and smoke and mirrors then like that would have evaporated a long time ago, right? Yeah. So there's no question that that continues. And then it's also like the sphere of influence around that. Right? So it's, you know, the technologist that is interested in being a technologist and is watching the fan page and then they're following the technologists of fan that and then watching their personal brands and connecting to their specific stories, like, that's the most powerful, right where you have this like, this, this ecosystem sort of, you know, spreader event that happens where, the deeper you get down the rabbit hole of figuring out what fen is, the less important I am, and the more important the actual business is.

Cody (00:30:47) -  Like, I'm just the gateway. Sure.

Brandon (00:30:50) -  Absolutely. And when it comes to, you know, content creation and and brand. How did you feel when. So how much are you actually doing versus how much is your team doing. And we'll start off with that. So how much is your team doing versus you.

Cody (00:31:06) -  Yeah. So the function of what this actually looks like is I created a master document for my marketing team to utilize. basically going through the entirety of what we are and the story that we want to tell. so, like, who are our people? What are our core values, what is our strategy? What is our mission? And, and delve into that, into more detail. So that's our base marketing strategy, this master, manuscript that exists in terms of like here's here's 40 things that we are. Let's just tell that over and over and over again in different ways from different perspectives for the rest of time, because that's not going to change. Right. And I think that's the most important thing about us is this authenticity that exists, that when people decide to go down a rabbit hole, they're going to see a specific story.

Cody (00:32:06) -  And then when they come into clinic, they are going to have that completely, reinforced that. What you see is what you get, that even if you came in as a skeptic, it's going to be reinforced. We truly are just completely transparent in terms of our social media. And I asked that all the time. Right. Like when I go into an appointment, I'm grilling my clients If they're a new customer. Like, how did you find me? How did you find this vet clinic? What were the steps? How did you you know, how did where did you go? How did you figure us out? What has been that expectation? Like I'm always grilling new customers as to, you know, how how they ended up here today and how they're feeling after their appointment. Right. Like, did we execute on that, which is so important, right. Yeah. For the for our team, what we do is so we have that and then we have a marketing meeting every Tuesday, and our team is based off of, just a widespread group of us across the three clinics.

Cody (00:33:10) -  We've got PTAs, we've got technologies, we've got client care coordinators, we've got virtual right. And we're all discussing if there's anything specific that we should be advertising for in terms of that immediate need. Do we have a pet event coming up? Do we have a vaccine clinic coming up? We've got a discount. We want to promote. and how are we going to promote it. So so based off of those like immediate needs, we sprinkle those throughout the core, which is our story. Right? Last week we didn't have any specific things we were trying to in quotes, sell besides ourselves, right? Besides selling our brand organically.

Brandon (00:33:50) -  Doubling. and when you think about content strategy in general, do you have a set rule for how much is promotion versus how much is trends and just fun and things?

Cody (00:34:00) -  No, no set rule. I just like, set this unattainable goal for my team every day of 70 posts a day across all platforms, and they never reach it, and I know they're never going to reach it.

Cody (00:34:15) -  But the goal is post as many as possible, as many things as possible. I don't know if so. Like recently. Here's just some examples completely. team driven from different two different people. There was no, push for me. There is no idea generation from the team, just empowerment of two team members from two different clinics. One was, baby horses. It's on our fin vet and on my recent page right now, it's just a bunch of really cute videos of horses. Yeah. that are at our vet clinic that just, like, makes you smile. That was just a team members idea. And that goes back to that master manuscript of just tell our brand. Right. Tell our brand story. What we are, what we do, how we do it. Do that over and over and over again. And another team member recently just posted one on a day in the life, and she took the whole day. She, was just like showcasing an inside look of what we are.

Cody (00:35:17) -  that's it. Over and over and over and over and over again. From an organic marketing standpoint, like content creation, tell our true, authentic story in as many different ways as possible, from as many different perspectives as possible. Is the goal.

Brandon (00:35:33) -  Amazing? So I don't know if you've listened to Gary V's new book at all. Have you been listening to that?

Cody (00:35:39) -  No, I haven't got to listen to that one yet.

Brandon (00:35:41) -  So it's really good. The audio is great because he he goes off script a bunch, and I'm sure that if you listen to it, it would probably be very similar to your process because he'll be talking about a strategy and they'll be like, I'm going off script now. I'm going to call somebody. Call somebody like, we need to get this sign in this location, because I think this would be a good strategy. So just get that done. And so like creates ideas and things. How much are you actually like sending out ideas and implementing.

Cody (00:36:06) -  Know for sure.

Cody (00:36:06) -  So, all of those different things and we've talked a lot about like the digital side, but like we're super big into activation of local, events, activation of local businesses. Like, right now there's a dog friendly brewery that's a block away from my downtown location. It's called Four Dogs Brewing. It is a dog friendly, based story where this guy, the brewer Vince, had five dogs that passed away over a year time. And to heal himself, he created a brewery. and he named a different beer after every one of his dogs. Right. Just like this incredible story. Right now, sitting on tap is a fan vet. Mango sour. that that that only relationship built that for us, right? Yeah. we're a good neighbor, but we sort that out, right? I slid into his DMs. I said, I'm a local veterinarian, and I love what you're doing, and I'd love to just have a conversation. I do those types of things, pushing those types of, you know, relationships, lawn signs.

Cody (00:37:16) -  We do lawn signs. We do flyers. We do, you know, farmers markets. I was just at an office building that was a couple blocks away, where over a two hour period, we got invited. They were doing this, like, dog friendly happy hour thing at this super fancy, huge oil field based, office building. So we show up there. I don't know what I'm going to do as a vet. So I take my Baku diary station and I get a bunch of bento boxes, like from Amazon. And I stand there and I've got a big screen TV showcasing, you know, the digital media side of us, right? We put together this really nice video that showcases what we are. And then I'm just standing there in my scrubs with one of my lead, RVs asking people, hey, are you a cat person or a dog person when they walk by? That's my favorite.

Brandon (00:38:11) -  That's such a good opening, open ended question. Yeah.

Cody (00:38:14) -  Oh, I can I can get anybody to talk based off of that question.

Cody (00:38:18) -  You know, when you go through a trade show and the vendors are just sitting behind their desk and like, sharks.

Brandon (00:38:23) -  Waiting for some bait to swim by? Yep.

Cody (00:38:26) -  For you to take a pen. No, I'm the guy out in front. I'm like the sham wow guy. I'm like, hey, Mrs.. Are you a cat person or a dog person? I can I can seal the deal based off of that. you know, that question. And then I'm like, hey, would you like to build a bento box? And they're like, how? Yeah, of course. How much is it? No, it's free. Build your own bento box with dog treats. and at the end I'm going to help you do it. And we're going to establish a relationship as we build this out. And then at the end, I'm going to determine whether or not your your dog or cat needs a dental exam or a nail trim. Right. Two very low cost things for me to execute at my clinic.

Cody (00:39:07) -  Right? If you've got a senior dog or senior cat, you're getting a free dental exam card from me. And if you've got anything else, you're getting a free nail trim card for me. So they've now I've introduced myself, we've had a conversation, we've built rapport, and now I have that, you know, that final here, walk into my clinic. and I'll provide you value. And a bento box made out of dog treats. The cutest thing in the world. So, like, that's not social media related at all. But we're very into that type of marketing, too.

Brandon (00:39:42) -  That's amazing. When you were talking, so Gary was talking about, when there's the stop sign, that's a busy intersection where people have to wait a long time in, in the city. And so he's like, I want to put up an urban poster with texting because people are on their phone at the stop sign waiting to go. But when you're talking about that, I thought you should put in, QR codes in the bathrooms of, like, the bar and things, because people got to go to the bathroom and it says, like, scan to win a prize from Fen vet or something, and And then like a roulette wheel pops up and they win either free nail trim or dental exam for free.

Brandon (00:40:11) -  And then they feel like they won something. And it's you got captive audience in the bathroom. They're on their phone. Guaranteed, right? Like, absolutely. They're probably going to go in there. That would be so funny to just test our way of bathroom stickers across the city. I think that would be amazing. you should definitely try that. anyways, so I think that's that's all really cool. now I noticed that you. So you're a big fan of YouTube and YouTube's been great to you. How had it been in creating those high production videos, in your opinion? Like how has that worked for Fenn in your opinion? I'm curious to think for sure.

Cody (00:40:52) -  So in retrospect, what I think doing these like fan webisodes where I'd have a videographer come in once a week and to be able to like, showcase, a behind the scenes look of what a vet clinic is, is like, I think has had a lot of value for a certain subset of the population. And that's our perspective employees.

Cody (00:41:15) -  I get that all the time that when people are interested and I'm having a tour, in a chat with a with somebody who is interested in us, they almost always bring up that they went down the webisode, rabbit hole and I get that quite a bit from clients too, but mostly with these prospective employees where they're trying because we all do that. It's human nature, right? You're you're going to apply for a new job. The good ones, the good people that you want to hire, they're the ones that are obsessing over this new role, trying to garner any piece of information they could possibly use to increase their success. So they're, you know, they're consuming as much information, as much content as possible to prepare for this interview. And and if they find those webisodes, they go down a pretty deep rabbit hole, right? Like then you are hooked and you really see and get excited to to want to work at this, you know, at this vet clinic. So I would say that's been the primary value.

Cody (00:42:15) -  The thing that I didn't expect or didn't want to think about is like the me factor from a video perspective, right? Like I didn't recognize how much, the success of those longer form videos depended on my own personality. that's a huge portion of it.

Brandon (00:42:39) -  I think that's the context of YouTube, though, in general. It's it's the platform to.

Cody (00:42:43) -  Follow the story of a person. Yeah. And that the friend that webisodes do not do that. They're a great window in. But we connect to those people.

Brandon (00:42:56) -  Definitely. that's I think, yeah. The platform. And also because the channel was established, maybe it would have been different on another channel too, and it would have generated the audience that was more relevant to that versus the one that was established, because you have all those old videos that are doing better and continuing to get engagement. So channels are very specific like that for sure. so when it comes to I'm going to change gears here a little bit because this is a question that I hear about.

Brandon (00:43:23) -  I'm sure people are asking a bunch because people have been setting up practices pretty successfully. You know, in general, starting up new practices, things are going pretty well. But I think the natural tendency is go from 1 to 2 or 0 to 1. What has been the hardest? Which has been the hardest? Was it harder to go from 0 to 1, or from go to 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 practices?

Cody (00:43:44) -  so for me, so far, 1 to 2 was horrendous. launching one, there was a few different things that were, I guess, important in that, just the timing within the veterinary industry, right? Yeah. you know, at the height of the pandemic, we're the only practice in town that had open doors we wouldn't do curbside. so we just had this, like, meteoric rise. we started with a very small team because I was expecting not much to happen. And, you know, even now, based off of our initial projections three years ago, we're supposed to have around 33,500 clients that are first location, and we have 12,000, right? That's what happened.

Brandon (00:44:36) -  That's amazing. That's crazy.

Cody (00:44:38) -  At that location. So I didn't expect it to completely replicate itself again with the second location. But we got behind the eight ball with our construction project. I had a build out from hell. I was seven months delayed. I had hired the whole medical team, you know, before the the prospective opening day that was supposed to be in December. I had everybody hired in October and November for this opening day, and I didn't open until May, and I refused to lay off great people, and just need to hire them again. A few months later, I, I believed in these people. I respected these people. I really sacrificed a lot to be able to keep the wheels on and to keep these talented individuals engaged. We had to do a lot of things to make that work that were really uncomfortable. I spent a lot of my own money to make that work. I opened up our Airdrie clinic seven days a week. I added additional nights we like overloaded the system in terms of things we could see.

Cody (00:45:53) -  We were saying yes to everything, to keep all of these people working and active and and to try get to get some semblance of profitability. Yeah. opening this second location, once everything was said and done right, I had too many staff. Right. hired way too early for what the rise was going to be in terms of our customer acquisition.

Brandon (00:46:23) -  The market was very different at the time.

Cody (00:46:25) -  Covid was over. This was a downtown location. This is a very different demographic than what I was used to. So this is where I had to, as you know, turn my eyes back to marketing. For two years, I didn't even think about marketing. Really. not the way that I look at it now. we turned on, unlocked the door, and turned on the open sign, and it was. All we could do is get through the work every day, as many clinics experienced. And then I had this experience happen. Right. We've got three full time equivalent veterinarians, three, RV client care coordinators, hired Tas, hired virtual client care coordinators.

Cody (00:47:07) -  Hire had a full hospital ready to go, and it was low. So I had to look at where am I. Bottleneck. Right. looking at my looking at my website. looking at online booking, looking at, where my references are coming from, looking at Google AdWords, looking at our marketing strategy, looking at, you know, those those signs, looking at business activation. I've learned so much about marketing, both digital and and traditional forms, that I would have never had to learn if it was as easy as the first one. Now, number three, the the fen vet. Equine reproduction. It might be even it it is. It was even easier than the first one. This one has been preposterously easy. I did the buildout, bootstrap the buildout. Paid for it myself. we have two full time veterinarians and one part time. We have a pretty limited support team. that practice is just bananas filled to the brim. We don't have space. I've got 50 horses standing there today.

Cody (00:48:22) -  We. We've filled up every single pen. We are bursting at the seams. It is extremely profitable. we haven't marketed at all for that one. We just open the door, and that one worked.

Brandon (00:48:37) -  So when it comes to thinking about opening, do you think that you would do more of the the same in terms of, location, like they're very different locations and then demand for services, right. I think large animal is in demand. In most markets They're just not great experience. And that's like a vast overstatement, right? Like there's a great people doing cool things out there. But most markets are dying for large animal vets. that from what I've seen, like if I have a large animal vet that's running ads, it is easy right now. so do you think the next one that you do. Are you going to be more focused on choosing, being, like, more choosy within the market? Are you going to go suburban? Are you going to set up like a plan that is consistent for each location and like a niche within demographic service, or do you really want to get fin like diversified across, you know, every potential market?

Cody (00:49:37) -  So I'm very grateful we did a downtown location.

Cody (00:49:40) -  And maybe just to touch on that, what I've learned about the downtown locations are that they are very much, there's a bandwidth issue when it comes to marketing, right? In a suburban marketplace, people are always looking for like, what's the new restaurant in my in my neighborhood, what's the new grocery store? What's the new liquor store? On and on and on. Right. whereas downtown, there's just so much going on. There's just so many events and activities and businesses. And like, people's bandwidth is just is only so big. So you have to continually reintroduce yourself. the other thing with the downtown location that I've, that I've recognizes is the the population is transient, right? You've got younger people who are coming down who are living and wanting to experience that downtown lifestyle. And then they move to the suburbs. right. And then you've got a new crop of people. It's a constant turnover over and over and over again. So you have to continually, reintroduce yourself. What I recognize, though, is with the downtown location, I'm always going to be grateful we did.

Cody (00:50:46) -  A downtown location is now what we're seeing, these transient customers that that came in as new customers that have moved away are still coming back to us. because they and I asked them, right. And they're like, no, there's no way that we could they're driving past, you know, 20, 30 hospitals to get to us. Yeah. They're saying there's no way we would ever consider any other clinic. Like, you guys are literally the best. So of course we're going to drive back downtown to continue. So that's going to, you know, that's going to pay dividends in the future. Right. To so I think that's good. But the next vet clinic will definitely be suburban again. for our demographics, a little bit older demographic millennial. oh. That hurts to say that the.

Brandon (00:51:38) -  I know, man, I feel the pain. We're old now.

Cody (00:51:42) -  and and just kind of like a downtown adjacent. from a geographical standpoint, I think for me, just being on the other side of the city is important, right? Just so I spread, you know, the brand across Calgary, fairly evenly distributed.

Cody (00:51:59) -  This also ties into my future plans of having a 1020 four hour hospital. So I would really love to have, you know, these strategically located general practices across the city. feeding into a centralized, fen two four concept, which I can't wait to unleash on the world. So, yes, like, at the end of the day, the only thing that I really, really love doing within veterinary medicine, is, is continued, execution on what we're doing. Right. I think it is important. I think it's important because it piques my interest. I think it's important because I truly have very happy team members who are obsessed with and obsessed with what they're doing and wouldn't consider going anywhere else. And my customers, right. I love building a hospital, opening the doors, watching customers come in for the first time and being exposed to the brand. And they're just like, oh my God, I had no idea that it could be like this. Yeah, that's what I want to do. So I will build another hospital the first second.

Cody (00:53:05) -  I can justify it from a cashflow perspective because like, what else am I going to do?

Brandon (00:53:10) -  Yeah, definitely. That's that's awesome. And when you're talking about that, I was thinking about this recently because there was a group of seniors in high school in a suburban area, and for their senior prank, what they did was they made a sign at a print shop on and it said Trader Joe's opening like May 2025. And they put it on a vacant building and like everybody in town, was so excited that the Trader Joe's was coming finally. And it was their senior prank. And so, it just goes to show, like, I think there's definitely something to it. And like in suburban, when you see that coming soon sign people are get excited about it, you know. And soon it'll be vet coming soon and people will be so excited like.

Cody (00:53:48) -  It's ever that I should. I bet you could in Canada, you could draw more of a buzz if you did a fake sign that said Chick-Fil-A coming soon.

Brandon (00:53:58) -  Oh man. For sure. Same thing in and out of Chick-Fil-A. That upset about it definitely. Definitely be hilarious. well, thank you so much for your time and insights. Cody, I really appreciate it. It's been so cool to see you, struggle through all this stuff and, you know, come out with an amazing, smile on your face. Like, I learned a lot. Yeah, well, you're really inspiring, and I appreciate it, man. Always, always great. And I know that the industry really appreciates you, too. So thank you very much, my friend.

Cody (00:54:33) -  No problem. He ran.

Brandon (00:54:34) -  In great.

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