July 8, 2024 • 26 mins
Have you ever wondered how to market effectively to a niche audience? In our conversation, we uncover grassroots marketing strategies tailored specifically for the veterinary medicine field. We offer practical tips for enhancing engagement through traditional marketing tactics and providing educational support to make your product indispensable.
Is trade show marketing still relevant in the digital age? We tackle this question by exploring creative ways to make a splash at trade shows and build lasting connections with potential customers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stacee (00:40):
Good morning Ira.
How's it going?
Ira (00:42):
It's going pretty well.
How have you been?
Stacee (00:44):
Pretty good, pretty good .
So I've been working with astartup company and I wanted to
get your opinion on it.
I knew we were going to betalking and I had like the most
interesting conversation withthis engineer team today.
And you know, here's a company.
They got amazing idea, superamazing.
(01:05):
They have been working on itfor a while with an engineer
firm which ended up doing crappycoding.
And not like they don't knowwhat crappy coding is, they're
just founders with great idea,right, and how do you even know
like the coding is bad?
(01:26):
It's almost like how would youknow the spay was botched if the
incision looks fine?
Ira (01:34):
So I, you know, I would say from my experience, crappy
coding is sometimes in the eyeof the beholder.
Stacee (01:42):
The beholder of the phone using the application.
Let me give you an analogy thatI've been through.
Ira (01:49):
But if you've ever hired an attorney to work on a document
for you and then you ultimatelymove on and you have a different
attorney, look at the work theprevious attorney's done.
They always say they have tostart over, right, and that the
previous work is, you know, justnot appropriate or relevant or
you know whatnot, and they can'tfix it.
(02:09):
They have to start over, right?
And often the same is true whenyou go from one engineer or
engineer group to another.
I think they're just.
They do things differently,they use different languages and
they're comfortable doing andfixing things when they're built
the way they like them right.
Stacee (02:28):
Yeah, and then there are situations, I guess, where it
is shoddy work.
Ira (02:34):
I'm absolutely sure that that's true too, and especially
when you have a non-technicalfounder that hires a random
person or firm and tries to sortof provide their spec to them,
but they don't necessarily knowenough about the tech and how.
The tech and the vision need tosort of align, and so
(02:58):
somebody's going to do theirbest to sort of interpret what
they need, and often they don'tdo the right thing the first
time.
Stacee (03:05):
Well, that's where this company is actually.
They've been working so hardand now they're at a point where
it's not good enough.
To be honest, it's not going tofly in the market and it's
nearly like we're almost thereto launch.
It's like we're almost there.
We're almost there.
We just need to do a littlemore.
(03:26):
And this morning the engineersaid to me he doesn't want them
to become a victim of the sunkcost fallacy, which kind of
reminded me of when I'm in LasVegas and I'm playing blackjack
and I've lost, you know, 10hands straight and you start
thinking like just one more hand, one more role, I can get on, I
(03:51):
can turn this negative into apositive and everything will be
fine.
Ira (04:01):
And then you realize it's a trap when you go back to your
room with no more money.
It is, yeah, a strong cognitivebias.
I'll use a family example.
But, like you know, if you popthe family in a car and you know
, drive three hours and pay abunch of money to go someplace
and everybody's miserable, youjust can't give up.
right, like you're, like this isnot working, like we should go
home because nobody's having agood time.
(04:21):
Instead, you think about thefact that you've invested so
much time and money into thisthing and you have to sort of
see it through, even ifeverybody's going to be
miserable and nobody's gettingyou know good value at this
point in time.
Stacee (04:36):
You're like, we're going to Clark Griswold this where do
you think you're going?
Clark Griswold (04:51):
Nobody's leaving .
Nobody's walking out on thisfun old-fashioned family
Christmas.
No, no, we're all in thistogether.
This is a full-blown four alarmholiday emergency.
Here we're gonna press on andwe're gonna have the hap, hap,
happiest Christmas since BingCrosby tap danced with Danny
f-ing Kay.
exactly, oh, man, and yeah, Imean absolutely seeing the same
(05:15):
thing happen in business overand over, where you've invested
time and money and an idea thatjust um isn't working and you've
got to decide whether it'sfixable or whether you need to
go a different direction or evengive up altogether.
And I think the more time andmoney you've sunk into it, the
harder it is to come to termswith the fact that maybe you had
(05:39):
a bad idea and maybe you didn'tspend your money well this is
where a lot of people are eithermade or broke right.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's not always a matterof like you did it bad.
I mean, sometimes the only wayto do something is to iterate
right and to sort of start andbuild something and then fix all
the things that aren't working.
(05:59):
And if you could look at thecompleted project once, it's
great and say, well, if I had todo it again, would I have taken
all these steps?
No, probably not.
But you learned a lot of thingsalong the way and maybe that
was the only way for you to getto that end point, based on what
you knew back then.
Stacee (06:17):
Yeah, it's kind of like you got to think of it as like
money paid to the university oflearning.
Ira (06:35):
What is our question for the day Stacee?
Stacee (06:47):
The question of the day is how did you start marketing
your company, which is a reallygood question, because for
almost everybody I've talked to,that's starting a company.
They always ask me I've gotthis great thing, how do I get
it out into the world?
Ira (06:58):
Well, at the risk of dating myself a little bit, we
launched our company around 2006.
So Facebook was small, googleAds was not like a thing.
Right sort of focused on ourrelatively niche sort of core
(07:23):
user base, which was junior vetstudents, and we tried to get
representatives at each schoolright, and so we had some
success, just kind of reachingout through our network, because
we were not that far out ofschool and we also attended the
(07:45):
student veterinary symposiumcalled SAVMA, and our goal there
wasn't necessarily primarily tosell a bunch of subscriptions
to people, but hopefully to findstudent reps.
And then, once we had them, wewould help them to do this, but
they would put on like a sessionwhere they would talk to their
classmates about all the thingsthey need to know about board
(08:06):
exams how do you sign up forboard exams, how much does it
cost, what's the format of boardexam, you know, just kind of
like stuff that they should know.
And then, of course, includingthat, it's like how can you
study for board exams?
And there's this new thingthat's now available that we um,
that we built Right, and sothat was kind of the core of how
we tried to get the message out.
We also, of course, uh,provided food at those meetings
(08:28):
because, um, starving vetstudents, the best way to get
them to go anywhere is to feedthem.
And we, you know, sent a bunchof you know posters and flyers
that they could post on thecommon areas where you're
supposed to do that stuff at theschools.
And so that was our approach.
I think still would be a goodapproach if you were to do it
today, but you would do thatprobably, and some of those
(08:49):
other things.
Stacee (08:50):
Yeah, I think you're talking about like finding out
where your key customerscongregate and hang out, and you
have to go there and hang outand you have to go there.
Ira (09:09):
I think that, and then also this notion that you need to be
kind of communicating with themabout their problem and the
things that they're worriedabout and thinking about as sort
of a primary message and andthat potentially sort of you
know, the solution that you haveto that problem can can be part
of that, but but it shouldn'toverwhelm the primary message,
(09:30):
because nobody's looking foryour product if it's new, right,
but they hopefully areexperiencing a problem that your
product can help them solve,and so if you can provide them
with a more comprehensive reasonto listen um related to their
problems, then I think you canbetter engage them than you know
, sort of just letting them knowthat there's a solution.
Stacee (09:52):
Yeah, and I, over the years I've worked with some, had
the privilege of working withsome great marketing people, and
that is what they've taught meis you've got to lead with
marketing people, and that iswhat they've taught me is you've
got to lead with.
What's your pain?
You know what is your problemthat you're having right now
(10:13):
that you need a solution for,instead of I find that you tend
to forget about that part of theconversation and just lead with
your solution.
But when you can really leadwith, you know you are at the
end of a very expensive andtime-consuming journey and
you're probably worried you'renot going to pass your boards
and get your license.
Ira (10:32):
Yeah, I think we had the benefit, or, if I were to give
myself credit, the insight tosort of provide a solution that
you know really felt like acritical need.
I don't think we we talkedabout sort of my, the oxygen,
aspirin, jewelry, sort ofparadigm Stacee.
Stacee (10:52):
Oh yeah, we did yeah.
Ira (10:53):
So you know it's so good.
So, yeah, the idea is, you know,if somebody has a problem and
there's a solution, is it oxygen, you know, like something they
need to literally sort ofbreathe and survive, or
figuratively, probably, and isit aspirin?
You know they're in pain andyou can alleviate that pain.
(11:14):
Or is it jewelry, somethingthat's nice to have and looks
nice but isn't really sort of,you know, alleviating a key
point of pain, but isn't reallysort of alleviating a key point
of pain?
And I think we found ourselveswith a product that was
somewhere between oxygen andaspirin, which is, you know,
those are the places that youreally want to be and to have a
great value proposition most ofthe time.
Stacee (11:35):
Yeah, that's so good.
I love thinking of it that way.
It helps.
You really know if you have agreat idea or just a good idea.
Ira (11:44):
All right.
Well, how about you?
What did you do to try tomarket Vet2Pet?
Stacee (11:47):
Well, I, as usual, had no idea how to market a company
at first.
I was literally just trying totell people about my product to
see if they would like it.
That is where I started.
But what ended up happening iswhat I would consider more of a
grassroots approach to marketing, which, in veterinary medicine,
(12:08):
I think you can pull this offif your product is pretty good,
because we're a small enoughindustry really, with all of our
connections through ourclassmates and colleagues and
state associations and so forththat if you can get some you
know key customers using yourplatform that feel excited to
(12:32):
tell others about it, you canstart growing.
And so I kind of took thatapproach and I also decided I
didn't do a lot of Facebook.
I certainly didn't do a lot ofGoogle ads, although maybe now I
would have done those things,but it was earlier, before that
was that popular and I think youknow engaging those key
(12:58):
customers and just like checkingon them all the time and making
sure they stuck with it, so youcould build some evangelizing
people to go out and tell others, was kind of how I approached
marketing, and I remember Ithought my goal would be to get
(13:20):
an ad in one of the veterinarynews journals like DVM 360 or
one of these journals they wereso you know.
These things came to me everymonth and I always looked at
them, or eventually looked atthem when they as they would
tend to pile up on my desksometimes, but it was a way to
reach the audience and I calledthem and it was going to be like
(13:43):
$10,000 for a one page ad withone run.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I hadno idea it was that expensive
to advertise.
So, yeah, I took more of agrassroots approach until
eventually I could go to a tradeshow and we should probably
talk about that for a little bit.
Did you ever go to any tradeshows?
Ira (14:06):
Yeah, we went to a bunch.
Turns out something I'm no goodat them.
Stacee (14:10):
They're miserable.
They're so miserable and I'm sonot a car salesman.
I mean, I would hate when I'dgo to trade shows and you'd see
them try to grab you out of theaisle, lure you by saying where
are you from, how's your daygoing?
And it was always a trap and Iknew it and I hated it.
(14:30):
So I would be at my booth juststanding quietly for someone to
approach.
Ira (14:37):
I know, when I walk around those trade shows, the last
thing I want somebody to do is,like you know, try to grab me
and talk to me.
And when I'm in a booth, thelast thing I want to do is do
that to somebody.
So I'm terrible at it.
I just stand there hopingnobody talks to me.
Stacee (14:52):
We ended up winning at the trade show thing, or finding
our definition of winning is wewould just gamify the whole
booth and try to have fun withpeople and not force them to
learn about what we were doing,and I liked that approach a lot.
It felt more like me.
So one of my ideas early on isI found these paper clips at
(15:15):
Office Depot, and in a littlebox was like 10 different animal
paper clips which were so cute.
They were so cute and of coursethey're fitting for
veterinarians.
So I thought, well, we couldgive these away at the booth as
the swag.
But it was very expensive.
I think it was like $10 forthis little box, so essentially
(15:37):
like a dollar paperclip, whichis not affordable.
So I went on Alibaba and I foundthat you could order 30,000
paperclips for like a thousanddollars.
So I ordered all thesepaperclips and I still have a
whole bunch of these paperclips,but we would try to give them
(16:00):
out and we found that they justgot all globbed together, as
paper clips do, in a giant wadof animal paper clips.
So we came up with this idea werented a table at our booth and
we put the glob there and weinvite people to go head to head
(16:20):
and we have a contest to see ifyou could find all 10 animals.
And if you found all 10 animalsfirst, you won the prize, which
was basically nothing.
We would just hug you and highfive you.
But it was fun.
You got to keep the paperclips.
People really liked it.
Ira (16:39):
You still have a bunch of them.
Stacee (16:41):
Oh my God, I do yeah.
Ira (16:42):
I have a whole attic full of that kind of stuff, yeah.
Stacee (16:47):
So I don't know, marketing's a funny thing.
It can eat your wallet upreally quickly, so you have to
think about what you want to getout of it, and trade shows used
to be like where everybody wentto sign up for stuff, but I
don't think that is how theywork anymore.
It's uh, that changed probablyabout seven or 10 years ago.
(17:11):
Once you can buy stuff online,you don't need to go to the
trade show to buy it, so yourgoal at the trade show is to, I
think, get your name out thereso people can start to recognize
you.
Ira (17:26):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think lots of people look atit as sort of a place to just
kind of gather a bunch ofcontacts that have potential
interest in what they have tofollow up with and the like, and
that probably works a littlebit.
Follow up with and uh and thelike, and that that probably
works a little bit.
Um, but there is also just alike if you're not there, you
(17:47):
know you people, you wonder ifpeople think you still exist
because it seems like you'resupposed to be there.
Stacee (17:53):
Yeah, the other path I took I don't think you took this
path was with distribution.
Ira (17:58):
Oh yeah, we never really worked on the distributor side
of things, yeah.
Stacee (18:07):
Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation we should
probably have is the pros andcons of working with the
distributor because, like anyrelationship, it's got its big
ups and some of its downs.
But I worked with Patterson andthey did.
I must say they were key ingetting the word out for our
(18:28):
product.
Ira (18:29):
Yeah, we worked a little bit with, you know, the schools
themselves as sort of a you knowthey would purchase a big, you
know swath of subscriptions andthen provide them to their
students.
Stacee (18:40):
But that had pros and cons too, but very different
than sort of sort of you know,really working with the
distributor as you describedyeah, well, I think the key
takeaway here is find yourpeople and try to connect with
them in whatever way makes sensefor your product, but go where
the people are and then youmentioned, um, yeah, getting
(19:02):
some of those early evangelists,and I think that that's just
extremely critical, right?
Ira (19:13):
I think once we add students using our product that
liked it, all the students thatcame after them would ask them
what did you use to study andwhat worked best, and how did
you do X, y and Z?
And if you've made those peoplehappy and they're gonna say, oh
, like, yeah, you should usethis product, like that does the
selling for you, which is great.
Nothing better than having acustomer selfie.
Stacee (19:34):
For sure that's the best , well cool.
Well, let's hop over to thispart of the program where we're
gonna share our favorite tip,trick tool.
Inspirational quote what's onthe docket for you this time?
Ira (19:46):
I got one, but it's pretty bad, pretty cheesy and nerdy and
not very creative.
Stacee (19:54):
Oh well, now I'm very excited to hear it.
Ira (19:59):
All right, I can't imagine that there's anybody out there
that is not aware of the toolthat I'm about to share.
But I have become a very, very,very big fan of Microsoft Excel
.
It is worth it to become asmuch as you can sort of a power
user of the spreadsheet.
(20:19):
And it seems super boring andnerdy at first to be like a
spreadsheet guy, but I lean intothe nerd anyway.
But it's pretty cool to be ableto take a data set or a set of
numbers and actually do a lot ofdeep dive analysis and to
(20:39):
automate all that.
All that.
And you know we had anexhaustive database of everybody
that ever used our product andyou know information about where
they came from and how they did.
And we could look at it everywhich way in Excel and create
charts and graphs and all thosethings as we needed.
So I'm sure everybody's awareof it, but I would say it is
(20:59):
worth spending time to get goodat it.
I would say it is worthspending time to get good at it.
Stacee (21:03):
Okay, well, I have a question on that.
What is the use case or whywould you use that over what I
would consider?
The more simpler tool is theGoogle Suite, Google Sheets.
Ira (21:17):
So Google Sheets is really a great tool.
I mean I would say they havepretty much stolen everything
they legally can Microsoft Excelright and applied it.
It's great for collaboration.
I, because you know I starteddoing this before Google Sheets
(21:42):
was you know the product that itis now?
This before Google Sheets wasyou know the product that it is
now.
Yeah, I sort of learned andsort of became comfortable in
Excel but can actually do I meanI'm not really like a true
super user of Excel like somepeople that I know, the finance
guys but you know, foreverything that I do in Excel,
you pretty much can do it inGoogle Sheets and it's not a lot
different.
(22:02):
So it's it's a great tool too.
Stacee (22:06):
Yeah, I know I always use Google Sheets and it's not a
lot different, so it's a greattool too.
Yeah, I know I always useGoogle Sheets because it's a bit
maybe for the novice type ornot the super user.
But when you get to theaccountants, they don't like
Google Sheets, they want Excelbecause it has all the advanced
formulas and I mean that isamazing to watch a power user of
(22:27):
Excel build a spreadsheet.
It is mind blowing.
Ira (22:32):
And I think this might not be true, but I think that when
you get to having like a reallyhuge data set right Of you know
tens of thousands, hundreds ofthousands or millions of like
you know cells that are filled,yeah, having that all as sort of
you know a file on your desktopin sort of an Excel piece of
(22:53):
software, is a lot easier tosort of navigate, get where you
want and have things work fastthan using sort of you know
Google Sheets in the cloud.
Stacee (23:02):
Yeah, so probably the key takeaway is Google Sheets
are for beginner to moderateusers and Excel is for the pro
or the ultimate nerd.
For me, my tip of the week isalso, I would say, rather boring
(23:22):
but important, and somethingyou might forget about doing as
the founder or CEO of yourcompany, and that is you must
always be evangelizing the painthat you're curing for your
customer, because, while itmight be really strong in your
brain, the people around youtend to forget why they're there
(23:45):
, and they it's.
You get into the daily grind andI find that you've got to
figure out how to weave thisinto almost every team meeting
or, you know, conversationyou're having about customers,
where you're constantly saying,well, what is the pain our
customer is in and how are wehere to help them, and kind of
(24:06):
adopting a little bit of aservant mentality, servant
leadership, where you're puttingyour customer first but you're
talking about it all the time.
And I've went so far I don'tknow if you can see this picture
on my wall like we'd have ourteam meetings and at every team
meeting in person, which wasusually once or twice a year, we
take a team photo and I'd havea big mat made for the photo and
(24:33):
I would ask every team memberto write down why they are on
the team, and this helped usreally focus on our purpose or
our why we are working so hard,and I just always thought that
maybe that helped us keep themoon in the window for where our
(24:54):
rocket ship was going.
Ira (24:57):
That's great, especially important for a person that's
motivated by the things I'mmotivated by, which are sort of
innovation, building things, andmore on outcomes than people.
You know, having a reminder ofthat focus that this is the
(25:17):
problem that our company isabout and about solving, and to
use that as kind of your Northstar of what, what sort of is
guiding your company.
Because, to get back to sort ofsunk costs, like you can spend
a lot of time and money buildingcool stuff, but if that cool
stuff isn't really addressingthe problem that your company is
(25:38):
all about solving, you may besinking those costs into
something that's not going toreally pay dividends.
Stacee (25:44):
Yeah, totally All right.
Well, let's spin the wheel andsee what we're going to be
talking about next week.
Ira (25:50):
All right.
What did you decide on thepricing of your product?
Stacee (26:03):
You mean there's a strategy to that?
Ira (26:06):
I was going to say I think we just guessed.
Stacee (26:08):
Yeah, it'll be a short episode!
Good morning Ira.
How's it going?
Ira (00:42):
It's going pretty well.
How have you been?
Stacee (00:44):
Pretty good, pretty good .
So I've been working with astartup company and I wanted to
get your opinion on it.
I knew we were going to betalking and I had like the most
interesting conversation withthis engineer team today.
And you know, here's a company.
They got amazing idea, superamazing.
(01:05):
They have been working on itfor a while with an engineer
firm which ended up doing crappycoding.
And not like they don't knowwhat crappy coding is, they're
just founders with great idea,right, and how do you even know
like the coding is bad?
(01:26):
It's almost like how would youknow the spay was botched if the
incision looks fine?
Ira (01:34):
So I, you know, I would say from my experience, crappy
coding is sometimes in the eyeof the beholder.
Stacee (01:42):
The beholder of the phone using the application.
Let me give you an analogy thatI've been through.
Ira (01:49):
But if you've ever hired an attorney to work on a document
for you and then you ultimatelymove on and you have a different
attorney, look at the work theprevious attorney's done.
They always say they have tostart over, right, and that the
previous work is, you know, justnot appropriate or relevant or
you know whatnot, and they can'tfix it.
(02:09):
They have to start over, right?
And often the same is true whenyou go from one engineer or
engineer group to another.
I think they're just.
They do things differently,they use different languages and
they're comfortable doing andfixing things when they're built
the way they like them right.
Stacee (02:28):
Yeah, and then there are situations, I guess, where it
is shoddy work.
Ira (02:34):
I'm absolutely sure that that's true too, and especially
when you have a non-technicalfounder that hires a random
person or firm and tries to sortof provide their spec to them,
but they don't necessarily knowenough about the tech and how.
The tech and the vision need tosort of align, and so
(02:58):
somebody's going to do theirbest to sort of interpret what
they need, and often they don'tdo the right thing the first
time.
Stacee (03:05):
Well, that's where this company is actually.
They've been working so hardand now they're at a point where
it's not good enough.
To be honest, it's not going tofly in the market and it's
nearly like we're almost thereto launch.
It's like we're almost there.
We're almost there.
We just need to do a littlemore.
(03:26):
And this morning the engineersaid to me he doesn't want them
to become a victim of the sunkcost fallacy, which kind of
reminded me of when I'm in LasVegas and I'm playing blackjack
and I've lost, you know, 10hands straight and you start
thinking like just one more hand, one more role, I can get on, I
(03:51):
can turn this negative into apositive and everything will be
fine.
Ira (04:01):
And then you realize it's a trap when you go back to your
room with no more money.
It is, yeah, a strong cognitivebias.
I'll use a family example.
But, like you know, if you popthe family in a car and you know
, drive three hours and pay abunch of money to go someplace
and everybody's miserable, youjust can't give up.
right, like you're, like this isnot working, like we should go
home because nobody's having agood time.
(04:21):
Instead, you think about thefact that you've invested so
much time and money into thisthing and you have to sort of
see it through, even ifeverybody's going to be
miserable and nobody's gettingyou know good value at this
point in time.
Stacee (04:36):
You're like, we're going to Clark Griswold this where do
you think you're going?
Clark Griswold (04:51):
Nobody's leaving .
Nobody's walking out on thisfun old-fashioned family
Christmas.
No, no, we're all in thistogether.
This is a full-blown four alarmholiday emergency.
Here we're gonna press on andwe're gonna have the hap, hap,
happiest Christmas since BingCrosby tap danced with Danny
f-ing Kay.
exactly, oh, man, and yeah, Imean absolutely seeing the same
(05:15):
thing happen in business overand over, where you've invested
time and money and an idea thatjust um isn't working and you've
got to decide whether it'sfixable or whether you need to
go a different direction or evengive up altogether.
And I think the more time andmoney you've sunk into it, the
harder it is to come to termswith the fact that maybe you had
(05:39):
a bad idea and maybe you didn'tspend your money well this is
where a lot of people are eithermade or broke right.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's not always a matterof like you did it bad.
I mean, sometimes the only wayto do something is to iterate
right and to sort of start andbuild something and then fix all
the things that aren't working.
(05:59):
And if you could look at thecompleted project once, it's
great and say, well, if I had todo it again, would I have taken
all these steps?
No, probably not.
But you learned a lot of thingsalong the way and maybe that
was the only way for you to getto that end point, based on what
you knew back then.
Stacee (06:17):
Yeah, it's kind of like you got to think of it as like
money paid to the university oflearning.
Ira (06:35):
What is our question for the day Stacee?
Stacee (06:47):
The question of the day is how did you start marketing
your company, which is a reallygood question, because for
almost everybody I've talked to,that's starting a company.
They always ask me I've gotthis great thing, how do I get
it out into the world?
Ira (06:58):
Well, at the risk of dating myself a little bit, we
launched our company around 2006.
So Facebook was small, googleAds was not like a thing.
Right sort of focused on ourrelatively niche sort of core
(07:23):
user base, which was junior vetstudents, and we tried to get
representatives at each schoolright, and so we had some
success, just kind of reachingout through our network, because
we were not that far out ofschool and we also attended the
(07:45):
student veterinary symposiumcalled SAVMA, and our goal there
wasn't necessarily primarily tosell a bunch of subscriptions
to people, but hopefully to findstudent reps.
And then, once we had them, wewould help them to do this, but
they would put on like a sessionwhere they would talk to their
classmates about all the thingsthey need to know about board
(08:06):
exams how do you sign up forboard exams, how much does it
cost, what's the format of boardexam, you know, just kind of
like stuff that they should know.
And then, of course, includingthat, it's like how can you
study for board exams?
And there's this new thingthat's now available that we um,
that we built Right, and sothat was kind of the core of how
we tried to get the message out.
We also, of course, uh,provided food at those meetings
(08:28):
because, um, starving vetstudents, the best way to get
them to go anywhere is to feedthem.
And we, you know, sent a bunchof you know posters and flyers
that they could post on thecommon areas where you're
supposed to do that stuff at theschools.
And so that was our approach.
I think still would be a goodapproach if you were to do it
today, but you would do thatprobably, and some of those
(08:49):
other things.
Stacee (08:50):
Yeah, I think you're talking about like finding out
where your key customerscongregate and hang out, and you
have to go there and hang outand you have to go there.
Ira (09:09):
I think that, and then also this notion that you need to be
kind of communicating with themabout their problem and the
things that they're worriedabout and thinking about as sort
of a primary message and andthat potentially sort of you
know, the solution that you haveto that problem can can be part
of that, but but it shouldn'toverwhelm the primary message,
(09:30):
because nobody's looking foryour product if it's new, right,
but they hopefully areexperiencing a problem that your
product can help them solve,and so if you can provide them
with a more comprehensive reasonto listen um related to their
problems, then I think you canbetter engage them than you know
, sort of just letting them knowthat there's a solution.
Stacee (09:52):
Yeah, and I, over the years I've worked with some, had
the privilege of working withsome great marketing people, and
that is what they've taught meis you've got to lead with
marketing people, and that iswhat they've taught me is you've
got to lead with.
What's your pain?
You know what is your problemthat you're having right now
(10:13):
that you need a solution for,instead of I find that you tend
to forget about that part of theconversation and just lead with
your solution.
But when you can really leadwith, you know you are at the
end of a very expensive andtime-consuming journey and
you're probably worried you'renot going to pass your boards
and get your license.
Ira (10:32):
Yeah, I think we had the benefit, or, if I were to give
myself credit, the insight tosort of provide a solution that
you know really felt like acritical need.
I don't think we we talkedabout sort of my, the oxygen,
aspirin, jewelry, sort ofparadigm Stacee.
Stacee (10:52):
Oh yeah, we did yeah.
Ira (10:53):
So you know it's so good.
So, yeah, the idea is, you know,if somebody has a problem and
there's a solution, is it oxygen, you know, like something they
need to literally sort ofbreathe and survive, or
figuratively, probably, and isit aspirin?
You know they're in pain andyou can alleviate that pain.
(11:14):
Or is it jewelry, somethingthat's nice to have and looks
nice but isn't really sort of,you know, alleviating a key
point of pain, but isn't reallysort of alleviating a key point
of pain?
And I think we found ourselveswith a product that was
somewhere between oxygen andaspirin, which is, you know,
those are the places that youreally want to be and to have a
great value proposition most ofthe time.
Stacee (11:35):
Yeah, that's so good.
I love thinking of it that way.
It helps.
You really know if you have agreat idea or just a good idea.
Ira (11:44):
All right.
Well, how about you?
What did you do to try tomarket Vet2Pet?
Stacee (11:47):
Well, I, as usual, had no idea how to market a company
at first.
I was literally just trying totell people about my product to
see if they would like it.
That is where I started.
But what ended up happening iswhat I would consider more of a
grassroots approach to marketing, which, in veterinary medicine,
(12:08):
I think you can pull this offif your product is pretty good,
because we're a small enoughindustry really, with all of our
connections through ourclassmates and colleagues and
state associations and so forththat if you can get some you
know key customers using yourplatform that feel excited to
(12:32):
tell others about it, you canstart growing.
And so I kind of took thatapproach and I also decided I
didn't do a lot of Facebook.
I certainly didn't do a lot ofGoogle ads, although maybe now I
would have done those things,but it was earlier, before that
was that popular and I think youknow engaging those key
(12:58):
customers and just like checkingon them all the time and making
sure they stuck with it, so youcould build some evangelizing
people to go out and tell others, was kind of how I approached
marketing, and I remember Ithought my goal would be to get
(13:20):
an ad in one of the veterinarynews journals like DVM 360 or
one of these journals they wereso you know.
These things came to me everymonth and I always looked at
them, or eventually looked atthem when they as they would
tend to pile up on my desksometimes, but it was a way to
reach the audience and I calledthem and it was going to be like
(13:43):
$10,000 for a one page ad withone run.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I hadno idea it was that expensive
to advertise.
So, yeah, I took more of agrassroots approach until
eventually I could go to a tradeshow and we should probably
talk about that for a little bit.
Did you ever go to any tradeshows?
Ira (14:06):
Yeah, we went to a bunch.
Turns out something I'm no goodat them.
Stacee (14:10):
They're miserable.
They're so miserable and I'm sonot a car salesman.
I mean, I would hate when I'dgo to trade shows and you'd see
them try to grab you out of theaisle, lure you by saying where
are you from, how's your daygoing?
And it was always a trap and Iknew it and I hated it.
(14:30):
So I would be at my booth juststanding quietly for someone to
approach.
Ira (14:37):
I know, when I walk around those trade shows, the last
thing I want somebody to do is,like you know, try to grab me
and talk to me.
And when I'm in a booth, thelast thing I want to do is do
that to somebody.
So I'm terrible at it.
I just stand there hopingnobody talks to me.
Stacee (14:52):
We ended up winning at the trade show thing, or finding
our definition of winning is wewould just gamify the whole
booth and try to have fun withpeople and not force them to
learn about what we were doing,and I liked that approach a lot.
It felt more like me.
So one of my ideas early on isI found these paper clips at
(15:15):
Office Depot, and in a littlebox was like 10 different animal
paper clips which were so cute.
They were so cute and of coursethey're fitting for
veterinarians.
So I thought, well, we couldgive these away at the booth as
the swag.
But it was very expensive.
I think it was like $10 forthis little box, so essentially
(15:37):
like a dollar paperclip, whichis not affordable.
So I went on Alibaba and I foundthat you could order 30,000
paperclips for like a thousanddollars.
So I ordered all thesepaperclips and I still have a
whole bunch of these paperclips,but we would try to give them
(16:00):
out and we found that they justgot all globbed together, as
paper clips do, in a giant wadof animal paper clips.
So we came up with this idea werented a table at our booth and
we put the glob there and weinvite people to go head to head
(16:20):
and we have a contest to see ifyou could find all 10 animals.
And if you found all 10 animalsfirst, you won the prize, which
was basically nothing.
We would just hug you and highfive you.
But it was fun.
You got to keep the paperclips.
People really liked it.
Ira (16:39):
You still have a bunch of them.
Stacee (16:41):
Oh my God, I do yeah.
Ira (16:42):
I have a whole attic full of that kind of stuff, yeah.
Stacee (16:47):
So I don't know, marketing's a funny thing.
It can eat your wallet upreally quickly, so you have to
think about what you want to getout of it, and trade shows used
to be like where everybody wentto sign up for stuff, but I
don't think that is how theywork anymore.
It's uh, that changed probablyabout seven or 10 years ago.
(17:11):
Once you can buy stuff online,you don't need to go to the
trade show to buy it, so yourgoal at the trade show is to, I
think, get your name out thereso people can start to recognize
you.
Ira (17:26):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think lots of people look atit as sort of a place to just
kind of gather a bunch ofcontacts that have potential
interest in what they have tofollow up with and the like, and
that probably works a littlebit.
Follow up with and uh and thelike, and that that probably
works a little bit.
Um, but there is also just alike if you're not there, you
(17:47):
know you people, you wonder ifpeople think you still exist
because it seems like you'resupposed to be there.
Stacee (17:53):
Yeah, the other path I took I don't think you took this
path was with distribution.
Ira (17:58):
Oh yeah, we never really worked on the distributor side
of things, yeah.
Stacee (18:07):
Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation we should
probably have is the pros andcons of working with the
distributor because, like anyrelationship, it's got its big
ups and some of its downs.
But I worked with Patterson andthey did.
I must say they were key ingetting the word out for our
(18:28):
product.
Ira (18:29):
Yeah, we worked a little bit with, you know, the schools
themselves as sort of a you knowthey would purchase a big, you
know swath of subscriptions andthen provide them to their
students.
Stacee (18:40):
But that had pros and cons too, but very different
than sort of sort of you know,really working with the
distributor as you describedyeah, well, I think the key
takeaway here is find yourpeople and try to connect with
them in whatever way makes sensefor your product, but go where
the people are and then youmentioned, um, yeah, getting
(19:02):
some of those early evangelists,and I think that that's just
extremely critical, right?
Ira (19:13):
I think once we add students using our product that
liked it, all the students thatcame after them would ask them
what did you use to study andwhat worked best, and how did
you do X, y and Z?
And if you've made those peoplehappy and they're gonna say, oh
, like, yeah, you should usethis product, like that does the
selling for you, which is great.
Nothing better than having acustomer selfie.
Stacee (19:34):
For sure that's the best , well cool.
Well, let's hop over to thispart of the program where we're
gonna share our favorite tip,trick tool.
Inspirational quote what's onthe docket for you this time?
Ira (19:46):
I got one, but it's pretty bad, pretty cheesy and nerdy and
not very creative.
Stacee (19:54):
Oh well, now I'm very excited to hear it.
Ira (19:59):
All right, I can't imagine that there's anybody out there
that is not aware of the toolthat I'm about to share.
But I have become a very, very,very big fan of Microsoft Excel
.
It is worth it to become asmuch as you can sort of a power
user of the spreadsheet.
(20:19):
And it seems super boring andnerdy at first to be like a
spreadsheet guy, but I lean intothe nerd anyway.
But it's pretty cool to be ableto take a data set or a set of
numbers and actually do a lot ofdeep dive analysis and to
(20:39):
automate all that.
All that.
And you know we had anexhaustive database of everybody
that ever used our product andyou know information about where
they came from and how they did.
And we could look at it everywhich way in Excel and create
charts and graphs and all thosethings as we needed.
So I'm sure everybody's awareof it, but I would say it is
(20:59):
worth spending time to get goodat it.
I would say it is worthspending time to get good at it.
Stacee (21:03):
Okay, well, I have a question on that.
What is the use case or whywould you use that over what I
would consider?
The more simpler tool is theGoogle Suite, Google Sheets.
Ira (21:17):
So Google Sheets is really a great tool.
I mean I would say they havepretty much stolen everything
they legally can Microsoft Excelright and applied it.
It's great for collaboration.
I, because you know I starteddoing this before Google Sheets
(21:42):
was you know the product that itis now?
This before Google Sheets wasyou know the product that it is
now.
Yeah, I sort of learned andsort of became comfortable in
Excel but can actually do I meanI'm not really like a true
super user of Excel like somepeople that I know, the finance
guys but you know, foreverything that I do in Excel,
you pretty much can do it inGoogle Sheets and it's not a lot
different.
(22:02):
So it's it's a great tool too.
Stacee (22:06):
Yeah, I know I always use Google Sheets and it's not a
lot different, so it's a greattool too.
Yeah, I know I always useGoogle Sheets because it's a bit
maybe for the novice type ornot the super user.
But when you get to theaccountants, they don't like
Google Sheets, they want Excelbecause it has all the advanced
formulas and I mean that isamazing to watch a power user of
(22:27):
Excel build a spreadsheet.
It is mind blowing.
Ira (22:32):
And I think this might not be true, but I think that when
you get to having like a reallyhuge data set right Of you know
tens of thousands, hundreds ofthousands or millions of like
you know cells that are filled,yeah, having that all as sort of
you know a file on your desktopin sort of an Excel piece of
(22:53):
software, is a lot easier tosort of navigate, get where you
want and have things work fastthan using sort of you know
Google Sheets in the cloud.
Stacee (23:02):
Yeah, so probably the key takeaway is Google Sheets
are for beginner to moderateusers and Excel is for the pro
or the ultimate nerd.
For me, my tip of the week isalso, I would say, rather boring
(23:22):
but important, and somethingyou might forget about doing as
the founder or CEO of yourcompany, and that is you must
always be evangelizing the painthat you're curing for your
customer, because, while itmight be really strong in your
brain, the people around youtend to forget why they're there
(23:45):
, and they it's.
You get into the daily grind andI find that you've got to
figure out how to weave thisinto almost every team meeting
or, you know, conversationyou're having about customers,
where you're constantly saying,well, what is the pain our
customer is in and how are wehere to help them, and kind of
(24:06):
adopting a little bit of aservant mentality, servant
leadership, where you're puttingyour customer first but you're
talking about it all the time.
And I've went so far I don'tknow if you can see this picture
on my wall like we'd have ourteam meetings and at every team
meeting in person, which wasusually once or twice a year, we
take a team photo and I'd havea big mat made for the photo and
(24:33):
I would ask every team memberto write down why they are on
the team, and this helped usreally focus on our purpose or
our why we are working so hard,and I just always thought that
maybe that helped us keep themoon in the window for where our
(24:54):
rocket ship was going.
Ira (24:57):
That's great, especially important for a person that's
motivated by the things I'mmotivated by, which are sort of
innovation, building things, andmore on outcomes than people.
You know, having a reminder ofthat focus that this is the
(25:17):
problem that our company isabout and about solving, and to
use that as kind of your Northstar of what, what sort of is
guiding your company.
Because, to get back to sort ofsunk costs, like you can spend
a lot of time and money buildingcool stuff, but if that cool
stuff isn't really addressingthe problem that your company is
(25:38):
all about solving, you may besinking those costs into
something that's not going toreally pay dividends.
Stacee (25:44):
Yeah, totally All right.
Well, let's spin the wheel andsee what we're going to be
talking about next week.
Ira (25:50):
All right.
What did you decide on thepricing of your product?
Stacee (26:03):
You mean there's a strategy to that?
Ira (26:06):
I was going to say I think we just guessed.
Stacee (26:08):
Yeah, it'll be a short episode!
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