Reinventing Pet Care And Saving You Thousands - Joe Spector

prove.

On this episode, Joe Specter, the individual who did a billion dollar exit at him, talks

about how Dutch is saving hundreds of millions of dollars for pet owners all over the world through telemedicine. What it's like to go up against a market that doesn't want you there, who he established to challenge you, but all that matters is that you're in service to your clients on the highest level.

At the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to leverage pain into systems and turn those into profits as he builds another empire. The show starts now. All right, well, welcome back to the show. Joe, I'm really excited to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So for the four or five people who don't know who you are, you've done some pretty radical things.

“Can you kind of give everybody a debrief of who you are and what you've done?”

I'm currently the CEO and founder of Dutch, where the leading telemedicine player for pets for health care and prior to Dutch, I was one of the co-founders of Hems and Hurs, which is a direct to consumer health care company that I helped start and take public at a $1.6 billion valuation. So you've done two things, you're saving animals and you've done a billion dollar valuation.

That's, it's insane.

There's a lot of people who can never get to make 100 grand, let alone a billion.

It's a wild thing. What are some of the things that you've run into because to do that, people are listening to like, "What? Did this with light? How did you get to a very dollar valuation?

What are some of the lessons you ran into that people can kind of implement today?" Well, first of all, it's at the start, making sure that you're working on that you feel that the world needs it and really being honest with yourself. Because sometimes you could find a cool project, but the reality is it's not really scalable and you're a none of one.

So you have to be honest. The other thing that I learned, and this is from now 15, 20 years of failure before Hems

“came to be, which is a, you need to, if you're going to build a venture back business,”

it's a very relationship-driven market and it takes years and years to build relationships, credibility and trust for a VC to give you millions of dollars in any kind of funding. And the other thing is, of course, execution. And what does execution mean? It means often perseverance when it comes to failure.

It means being able to quickly iterate and pivot, which can often be hard because there's you go involved, there's lots of time that went into a project and it's been able to kind of give that up and potentially starting all over again. And it's being creative and taking a new approach, it's dealing with a lot of nose, so having a lot of thick skin.

So it's a lot of things that came to be for, you know, about Hems launched, it was a lot of blood sweat and tears and learning that got us to that place. So people talk about this all the time, like, oh, this is what happens in business. This doesn't happen in everyday life, and I would like to tell the audience, the amount of failures and iterations we've had just in doing this podcast between power outages,

between cameras overheating, between headphones, they'd be redone, just we've been trying to do this for so long and what I've loved about this dynamic is you can see your experience showing up here as well. Were you just pivoted?

“And I think people undermine, they don't understand how powerful the pivot is.”

Can you give me an example of a pivot, either in Dutch or in Hems where you've had to pivot on the spot because I've seen you pivot just in talking to you now for the podcast where, oh my god, it's already put us so into it, where you've had to do it in business, where people can kind of relate to it and say, oh, well, that's a pivot, the years are kind of the steps on how they do that.

Well, both at Dutch and Hems, we went through periods where we were basically failing. We were not acquiring customers, even though there were millions of dollars in VC dollars at play. Hems, we were in stealth mode for about a year and the time was called club room. And we wanted to just quickly see if there's a product market fit.

And so we were just shipping something that looked like crap and marketing something that looked like crap, but we thought, is there a spark there?

And the reality is there wasn't, and it fits the added shit in, shit out.

market is huge and we were going to come at it in a new way. What we realized is the thing that was going to make it special is making these issues destigmatized and building trust.

And so we doubled down, we raised $5 million in venture capital and shut everything down

and started all over again with brand new photography, marketing, packaging, doctors, customer service team that was going to delight customers. And when we did that, that's when things really took off. We went from, I remember we launched in November of 2017 and by a month later, we raised capital at a $200 million valuation, just off of being live for one month because things

took off so fast. Walk me through that process of, okay, we have this thing. That's somewhat working. I'm going to burn it all to the ground, rebrand it, repackage it, and go with it even though I've taken VC money and I've got millions of dollars about, how do you convince your

team of that? How do you work with your team with that? How do you get through that process because that's a terrifying thing to do. So, hey, remember this thing at your bill that you love, yeah, we're getting rid of all of it.

How do you do that with your team? How do they survive that? But still, it feels, it has a feeling to me of when you jump off a cliff. And you hope that no stones get in the way and you land in the water. And it is a feeling of, well, like why would this work later if it kind of didn't really

work now? Correct.

“I think it's a combination of a, I have no choice, like what else I'm going to do.”

And a really strong belief of the future is better that this alternate state is so much better. And an insight that you had of by the current state didn't work. And I think the team is kind of the people who are there in the early days, it's like it's the crazy people.

And they're so crazy that they're excited and willing to try a couple more times before they give up. So how do you, how do you attract those people? Right? So because we, and we've talked about this before that there's different type of people

who come in your orgs and you and I both know from building businesses, some people stay, some people get told to leave and some people know what we're talking about, the reason season lifetime. What do you find the people that are going to be willing to be crazy with you and go down this road with you?

It's hard. Partially, it just depends on people as backgrounds often, you know, if someone's been in a stable job for a long time or if they need a stable paycheck, that's probably not the right kind of person. At the same time, there's no rules.

I've been surprised at Dutch, we hired someone who came from Walmart, you know, a huge company with a huge org and stability written all over the company. And she has been a rock star. She was in her bones made to be a startup leader.

So like I said, I say one thing, but rules are always meant to be broken and then of the

“day, you just have to give people a chance, you have to be honest with them of what to”

expect. And I think it's kind of like dating where, you know, in the first five minutes, you'll kind of know, you know, they're writing, it'd be crazy or if this is not for them. And they'll know as well on the other side. Yeah.

And then what do you do when you make a hire and you thought initially and what you use a dating example? Because my grandmother used to say, you know within the first three weeks. And if you don't know, you know, that's what you're saying. Sure, the thousand percent right, a thousand percent right in business and employees, it's

kind of that same thing, you know, there's companies that have policies that like listen, we'll pay you to go away if you think within 90 days, if you stick, we'll pay you, please take the money, go away.

What do you do when you think you've hired that rock star, that amazing person like,

yeah, this is my person, it's amazing.

“And they end up being kind of pupu kaka, what do you do?”

How do you deal with those iterations? How do you pivot on the employee level?

People look to you as a leader, you know, how do you react in these tested situations where you're tested. And then, of course, people have families and a whole, you know, their whole situation. I definitely think, you know, who's, it's really my wife who has made me the most ruthless

“in this, which is just a, you have to prioritize this company, Dutch, because this company”

has investors, this company has all these other employees who, to the risk. And so you have to consider doing right by them as well.

And I, for me personally, I do give, I want to give people second chances, which I think

comes, are my own personal experience where I feel like I often didn't get second chances. And I wish I did. And so I, I think I give people chances, but up to a point. And like you said, I think the 90 day mark is a really good point. And at some point, it's a win-win for both sides, because if they're not ready to lead,

to exceed for what they were brought on for, it's not going to be great for them in a year. And I think the other atage, I don't think I've ever regretted that I let someone go. And if anything, I think another common atages, you know, I wish I had done this earlier. Correct.

I agree. I think I wish I had done this. There's not a single person I've ever had to fire, because it's just been fire and letting go. There's budget cuts that happened sometimes.

But I never fired, remember, and into that.

I remember there was a situation where there was someone I was deeply care for. I was like, this is this person who had been with us and she's got a family and her husband and I know her husband and I know her kids and I was like, oh, they're going to be so hard. And then I had my VP sit down.

It's okay. Great. You're worried about Susie. We'll be a place name. Susie's kids.

What about these 15 other people in their kids?

Do you not care about their kids?

And this person's going to poison the ship. And having that pivot, it's hard. It's really hard. But if you're trying to scale and do what you're trying to do, sometimes you got to do that, which is heartbreaking.

Now, the next thing people are going to ask is, you know, you're penetrating in, you're a new brand, you're doing this bit with Dutch or with him's, what marketing, what approach,

“what how do you get in and penetrate a market that fast?”

Because everyone's like, oh, I just need to go take pretty pictures. It's so much more than that. What are the things that most people don't understand when you're launching a new brand that they're running into this issue? So again, both of these brands are on the consumer side.

And they actually have really two interestingly divergent tactics with him's, the tactic was to kind of be slightly cheeky controversial in order to get attention. And I don't know if you remember, but we had this giant penis cactus ad that we ran in the New York subway, and that definitely, and New York has so many journalists and investors, et cetera, that live there.

So that campaign, I still feel like people come up to me and recall it, and that got a lot of attention. And then for, and I think the other kind of tactic a lot at times that we used is like FOMO, which is, you know, if you lose your hair or if your penis doesn't work, you know, you're not, you're not going to have the best life.

Right. What's interesting is when it comes to peck care, that type of FOMO marketing doesn't work. People don't want to see sad pets who are, you know, in a giant rash or, you know, ruined by flea and tick infestations, like no one wants to just see that, and we tried, and we saw

how much that doesn't work. People want to see happy, uplifting pets, like they don't want to see sad pets. So that's a whole different, I do think with the other thing that's different with Dutch young being uplifting is that pet owners love talking about their pets.

“And I think that has been our advantage is for people to see how Dutch helped save the”

money and having those real conversations play out. And it's not something hymns can really, like people don't really want to talk about, you

see and that's not something people want to really talk about.

And so with Dutch, we get this benefit of how much pet owners love to talk about their pets, and people want to care about it. So it's been their two different tactics, but their tactics I would say that try to break through the noise and get people to identify for me, you know, I have, I'm bald, so I identified with hymns on that front as a hair loss customer, and I think other guys do too.

And then on the Dutch side, I think lots of pet owners identify with those pet issues and that creates a human connection with the brand on that side. I think the purpose of being signal versus noise being the lighthouse amongst the fog is

“it's super important, but also understanding that understanding your niche, right?”

Like there's not going to be a lot of people want to talk about the wee, they're not going to show you pictures of the phone, of the wee we're not working, or they're hair falling out. But they're going to show you pictures of their dog, they're going to show you pictures of their cats, they're going to show you pictures of their fur babies, and the protection of their

fur babies, and tying into that. One of the things we were talking about before we're recording is there are some challenges, like there's some challenges when you go to market, there's going to be industries, and industrial norms, or things are in the industry that kind of push back, and without going into too much detail, what do you do when you run up against the fact that, hey, we've

done it this way for a hundred years, you're a disruptor. We talked about this offline where, because we're both old enough to remember when Napster and lime wire and MP3s came in to play, and Lars from a tonic lost his mind, and there's these huge lawsuits and Senate hearings, and all this stuff about now, you can't do this,

“you have to destroy the industry, and then Apple came in and said, yeah, for a hundred”

bucks a month, or sorry, for $14 a month, we're going to give you unlimited access to all the data, or you could buy songs for the 99 cents, and the market changed, and what do you do when the market's changing with or without the old guard coming with you? How do you run into that? How do you survive some of those hits?

There's a quote from Mark Cuban that has resonated with me, and he said, there's going

to be always people who hate you.

You have to find the people who love you and focus on them, and in this case, it's really finding the people who love you, it's the customers who are saving money, or oftentimes having seen a vet, like since the pet was born, and those are the people, and those are the stories that you want to focus on, because if you focus on all the people who hate me, or you hate me, I would be so depressed, and I wouldn't be able to get out of bed,

and then at the same time, if you focus on the people who love you and the stories where we saved millions of millions of pets and gave them care, then that's the thing that I'm like, oh my god, I'm Friday, I'm ready to rock and roll, and you've had a build for them, and you've got to spread the word of those stories.

“Yeah, I think having spoken to customers that you've had done the research and what we've”

done, and even our first call is being able to see how much you absolutely love the animals,

how much you absolutely love the pets, and the pet owners are always the side effect,

like we just want to take care of the animals, everyone I'm spoken to talks about how Dutch just is in love with the animals, and the pets that even aren't there, so when you get the same sayers, it's like, I'm going to help the altis animals and give them a voice. One of the people I was talking to, he's like most people, he's got a huge family, he's

got his kids, he's got multiple pets, I think he's got cats, he's got dogs, he's got all these things, and he couldn't get in to see the vet. So he went through and I'll let you tell this story of how he did this, walk me through how Dutch works, and I can tell you the result of this, of why you liked it. But how does that experience, how did you decide, how does telemedicine work differently

for animals than it does for pets? Definitely, and we get this question so many times people will say, my dog can't talk, so do I chase him around the house with a laptop, like, what do I even do? And this so much of Dutch came from me building hymns, as well as then my own personal experience with my dog Eddie and seeing how this can be connected, and then now bringing

it to life. Most of our customers, as well as on the other side, are veterinarians, are using

quite mobile, and what's awesome is that the dog or cat is at home in their natural environment,

“we get about 2/3 of our calls at night, and that's when she goes down, because it never”

happened, it's kind of nine to five, it always happened that night when everything's closed,

and most of the, you know, you got home from work, and you finally realized that, you're all because of rash, or there's some good coming out there ear or their eye, and you're just like, shit, what do I do? And up until Dutch, most people either kind of were like, okay, I'm going to lay low until the next day and see if I can get in, or I'm going to take my dog to urgent care, and that's going to cost me a fortune plus, like I, you

know, I had this experience sitting a parking lot for four hours, until it's your turn to come in, so it's just kind of a night nurse and audio either side. And so what Dutch is, if you go to Dutch.com, you're able to, with the same day, get on a call, just like the one we're

“having right now, and there's a real human veterinarian, and again, I think in this world of AI,”

where we're used to now chat bots, but you get a real human who has our vets have an average of 15 years of experience, so you get a real human who, for whom most of the time, 90% of the time, our vets can solve this issue, and they're like, oh, yeah, it's this, like I had something I was going to with my dog one time, I swear, I thought he was having a seizure. He was like convulsing, I, and it kind of went away, and then it came back, I literally was about to grab him to do the

same song and dance with urgent care. I got on a Dutch call, and the vet was like, oh, um, this is reverse sneezing, and she showed me videos, and it's like nothing, it's like totally common. I would have

never known that. She just saved me, like again, half my night, a thousand bucks, and I was able to

go on Dutch, same day talked to a vet, and she was like, this is nothing to worry about, this is what it is, and it's so, and we now get to see this over and over again, thousands of times where people can talk to a vet, and most of the time, get their issue addressed, and have this massive piece of mind. I'll say that the thing, because a lot of our videos are recorded, and I'll watch them, and almost like a fourth of the time, the person on the other end is in tears,

in tears, because their pet is getting care for the first time. Like that is the coolest thing ever. I mean, I've, you know, and all these other ventures I've done, I don't think I've ever had like this level of intense emotional connection to what we're doing and how awesome it is, as I've had a Dutch. It's interesting because when we talk about what's proven, and what works over and over again,

we talk about always going out for the pain, and you hunt the pain. If you're going to do a

marketing, if you're going to scale, you always want to hunt the pain, and one of the things I spoke to other people that I've worked with you, the pain of having to, and you skipped over it so quickly, they're doing the call in their home. You don't have to take the dog, you don't have to take the cat, put it in a cage, drive it somewhere, we all know what it's like when animals go to vet, they freak out. They're not happy about this, and the screaming, and the yelling, and somehow they

know it's certainly about. So they know the difference between the dog park and going to the vet. So you're adding all the stress, and then when they get back, they end up pissing their shit in and your shoes, which happens because they're mad at you, there's not any of that, and I think we've all been on FaceTime calls with animals, and the animal just doesn't react, it doesn't even know that it's there, so it's like whatever, it's just mommy daddy's just on the phone right now, so it's

“something to tell. So going through that process has been important, but I think the pushback”

to people get when they do this is like, yeah, but you're not talking to a real vet, or if you're not in the office, you're not getting real care, or this is going to cost me more, because in my world with telemedicine, because of I grew up in Florida, I lived in Florida, every house in Florida has mold. It is what it is, and with the nose the size of mine, it means you get scientists, you know, chronic sinus infections. So I was going, and I'd go in, and I have to pay each and every

time to get the same medicine, each, and I might just give me the antibiotics, until I was smart enough to move out of the house, luckily my dog and I that I used to work with, we used to do triathlons together. So I would just call the office, and I'm like, yeah, you know the rather, okay, nobody will, you don't have to come in, don't worry about it. I know that how it works

'cause A, it's not safe, but B, I'm just going to click click with my health care provider,

and it's done. I don't, anything about telemedicine for dogs, and I know you're going after pets, and you're trying to help them with this, because you focus on people's pains when you're stealing. If it was a pain of you, we didn't work, or you didn't have any hair, or the focus

“of I think my dog's gonna die, 'cause it's doing reverse coughing, or reverse sneezing,”

but it's actually, you know, it is what it is. Having that ballgame, when someone goes in and meeting the pain is one point, giving a solution that works is another point. How do, how does someone know and how do you teach a market that they're getting XYZ level of care? What is that care compared to going into the office? In some ways, it can be better, because it's happening faster, and it's happening where the alternative often is that people do nothing. Like I was saying,

there's a statout there that 75 million pets have completely delayed getting care because of cost, or the friction of going in. So oftentimes, and that's in the subcoming pet report. It's not a question of like, oh, is it? Of course, sometimes it's better to come in, but oftentimes,

the reality is what people do is they do absolutely nothing, and doing nothing is definitely worse.

In terms of the solution, you know, the other kind of insight I had is that, there's a lot of shit that happens to pets, and they live shorter lives, so it happens more frequently. So we might have someone that, well, they, something, and now they're vomiting. But then that same pet probably needs to be on flea and tick, or half the households have two or more pets. So if one gets a rash, the other dog gets a rash, or one gets flea and tick,

the other gets flea and tick, and all this massively, massively adds up. And for a lot of these conditions that people come to Dutch, they're pretty common conditions. Again, it's like an allergy. You see

“redness spots, flea and tick, you know, you see, you see that. So there's just, I think there's a lot of”

things that are low hanging fruit where telemedicine can really do magic. Of course, there are many things like a vaccine, a wellness check-up, if the animal is bleeding, like we should obviously, you know, telemedicine will not solve those issues, but there's a lot of things that people completely ignore, and that's where telemedicine can shine in bridge the gap. So how do you, there's two conversations I want to have, the difference between kind of

telemed and that in person vet, but more important the tactics of this, because I want to give the people who are doing remote work, because you brought up AI, things are changing dramatically. How do you process through, and what are you using to make sure that things are secure?

“Like, how do you, what's software to use? Are you using AI at all? How do you doing these things”

to make sure these things are secure, and how did you set up these systems in your org? Because I, let's say I'm not going to need to talk about it, some pets, because I'm not going to need to talk about it, because you're pets. But I am recording these phone calls. I am rolling in AI pot out versus a regular pot. What is the software you're using? How are you integrating AI into this? Are you so many questions? So we, you mentioned that you've built your own EMRs. I've built

my own EMRs. We built our own EMRs. We built our own EMRs. We built our own EMR electronic medical

record for Dutch, and part of that was we're iterating way too quickly to rely on a third party

to do these things. And so anything related to security is going to be built in house. In terms of AI, man, every week, every month, there's a whole new level. So we had started to really use AI to save on all the administrative tasks that that's we're doing. So before call and after a call, a typical that would spend about 30 minutes in getting ready for the call, taking all the medical notes, sending emails to the customer, and now basically AI does that.

We do the human spot checks it before it actually goes out. But it took 30 minutes worth of work and made it less than five minutes. And it's also more accurate because it's typical that has, you know, let's say, 10 visits. And by the time they're doing all there, right upside

They get a notification much quickly in a summary of the visit much quickly. And then it says the pet, the vet, a bunch of time. So that's kind of been the first use of AI going forward. I think what's awesome is we now have had almost a million telemedicine appointments, interactions on our platform. And so the level of data we have is incredible. And that's going to really start to connect the dots on outcomes and also just create an opportunity for that pet parent to really understand the

health history of their own pet. So there's lots of old things that we're going to be launching

with AI going forward that I'm excited about. So two things when you mentioned AI that you always

have someone check it because people don't understand that AI doesn't mean artificial intelligence.

“It means always incorrect. So you have to have that human to kind of babysit and keep an eye on it.”

What software are you using? Because people are looking at like, hey, I need to use this as well. Are you are using cloud or using open-claw or using chat GPT? What are the stuff are you building in your house? How much of the stuff are you doing on your own? We've played around with a couple things just because I think things are changing so much. We have played around with OpenAI and Gemini and Cloud. And right now kind of clawed as the flavor of the month. But I think we're still playing

around with um, interesting kind of all the different two LLMs that are out there. And I think

that's a good idea of. Yes, because a month ago I was all in on codex and I was like, I'm doing this on codex and then I found managed and I was like, ooh, I was like, this is faster here.

“I'm like, okay, well, this one does this well. So yeah, I think it is a free for all for right now.”

It's very much because we are both older. We remember when the internet boomed and there was all that and people were jumping around for different companies and doing all that. I think it's it's having that adaptability. So I think we're going to try this and maybe, well, maybe OpenAI is going to be better later and then maybe clock into this and there's going to be this moving thing whenever it goes into it. So back to the conversation that we have with Dutch

and back to telemedicine. One, I do telemedicine through my insurance company and it's the only thing I can relate to because I don't have pets and I call up, it costs me nothing because it's part of my plan and then I just drive over to wherever I get CBS Walgreens or whatever it is

“for my stuff and then I get my drugs and like any drugs, what is it like in the pet world?”

Is it, you know, what is this, is it more costly? I mean, how does this work? In pet, it's all cash. Even less than 3% of pet owners have insurance but even when you do, it's reimbursement model. So it's effectively 100% cash pay. So every dollar that you pay is a dollar out of your pocket. So, you know, typically you're going to pay anywhere from 50 to a hundred dollars for the visit per pet. So again, if you have more than one, you're, you know, that's double

triple the cost and then you're going to pay for any kind of blood work or x-ray wellness, etc. So a typical visit can easily start to add up to several hundred dollars for the client and that's money that's going straight out of their pocket with Dutch. Our membership is about a hundred dollars for a year for up to five pets with unlimited calls. So it is the deal of the century. Yeah, I don't understand how you guys say in business because everyone I know who has pets

calls 700 times to their vet because they're dog. It's the first thing that's ever happened to that dog in the history of dogs and they think it's their parents. It is what it is. It's like newborn kids. They're super protective and it's harder because the pet can't talk. How do you say in business

when it's a hundred dollars for a year for unlimited calls? It's incredible value and it's the

power of telemedicine. So like I mentioned earlier with AI, our veterinarians can be quite efficient. It's a typical in person exam. Maybe you can do like one pet every 30 minutes. It's very high touch. Whereas there's lots of things that are done before and after and that's automated and doesn't require the best time. And so the actual call lasts about 10 minutes. Everything else is pretty automated. So there's a way to really drive down costs. And then the power of telemedicine, we don't have

to pay rent. We can have people living in parts of the states that have a little across the living.

So they pay a hundred bucks for the year, which is wild. What about the cost of fleeing ticket medicine? Do you, is there a markup on that or the same cost as if it's at the vet? How does that work? How fast do they get it? I don't know if they have Walgreens for pets. I don't know

how that works. I've never thought about it. Yeah, so by the way, that is like that was super

eye-opening for me. Like you cannot get animal prescription products. There's not a Walgreens CDS

“for an animal RX. The only way you can get it is if your vet gives it to you, which back to”

you have to spend money to spend time to see that, that in person, or like a mail order pharmacy. And actually what's awesome with Dutch is once you have a visit, if you're getting medication, then the order goes straight to a mail order pharmacy for a fulfillment. What a lot of people don't know. If you're getting your order from some other mail order pharmacy, they might take almost a week of back and forth between them trying to contact the vet, trying to get the prescription,

trying to get the authorization. And so all that time is loss and it's frustration for the pet owner. With Dutch it's seamless. As soon as you have the call, if there's a prescription,

it goes straight to shipping, basically. And you'll get it in like two to three days.

And in terms of markup, first of all, we have a price match guarantee. So if you find below a lower price, we'll price match it. Our goal is to, you know, drive happy customers. So it we're not built for, you know, massively marking up our medications. So a limited call, same prices they've ready to do. Now let's talk about the fact that this isn't Pupu Kaka in on vets, that you've got vets that work with you. And there's vets on your board. And there's

about to connect with you. When, if I'm doing this, when would I go to see a vet versus when what I do tell them about something like, what's the divide? Is it when there's blood coming out of the animal? Or how do you, what's like the clear divide for most pet owners? So there's not necessarily black and white. I mean, of course, if your pet is bleeding or

“hasn't been eating or drinking or hasn't urinated or, you know, they're limp, like you should”

go to urgent care right away. And even if you get on a call with a Dutch veterinarian, they would probably tell you the same thing. Where it gets gray is, and again, I think it's not an either or decision. Because like I said, 90% of the calls are happening on mobile. So if you want to race to urgent care and the therefore an hour while you're being waited to be seen, you can join Dutch and see if you can talk to a vet faster and sooner. So it can often be an end. And then there's

so many things like fleeing tick medications or like I was mentioning a rash. Those are things that you can go to Dutch as a place to start. And then the veterinarian could tell you, okay, this is something we can start on. Or, you know what, you need to go see someone in person.

So there's lots of times where Dutch can be kind of the first step. Doesn't have to be the last

step that can be the first step in getting care. So it sounds like it's an end thing. If my animal is acting up, I would literally just be face-time while I'm driving, pointing at the dog. And they're

“going, "Here you go, as you're driving in." It sounds like it's an end thing. So I think we, I think we”

get what Dutch is. I think we get wide Dutch works. The next steps are, how do you scale this as someone who scaled things before? What are the topics that, if you're a business owner right now, then okay, he's got a product market fit. He understands the pain. He is signal versus noise. You know, we've gone through all those things, we've broken it down. These are the proven formulas to do it. A lot of people have that, but they can't scale. They can't get to where you are and

what you've done. So to take it, that 30,000-foot view, you know, zooming out because, you know, I hope that audience is listening going, okay, he's really done his homework. He really knows what's going on. Now, how do he scale hymns? How is he going to scale Dutch? How does this go forward? Because they're different brands. They're different targets. There's different verbiage that you use. You know, there's different staff expectations. How are you managing all of this

all at the same time to get to that next level? Both at hymns and at Dutch, it is about creating

But there is this aha moment that we needed to communicate to guys to say, you know,

you don't have to lose your hair. Like, there is an FDA-approved treatment that the hair loss medication works 85% of the time. Like, if you start it in your 20s, like, it is tested. You will not lose your

“hair. It's incredible. Or hyagra, like, biagra works. And so I think a lot of times, guys didn't”

realize that this is something that they can have access to. And then furthermore, that they can have it from a trusted source at an affordable price. And so if you like mapped that out for them, that was the big unlock for hymns with, like, oh, shit. I don't have to lose my hair. Like,

can you believe that? And I don't have to spend $10,000 to keep my hair. It's only, you know,

like, $10 a month. Like, it's super affordable. I would say it's a similar lesson with Dutch, which is often times, I think pet owners, again, I think we're in the earlier stages now, where I think pet owners are like, we were saying, oh, is this something that even a televet can do? Because I grew up thinking, you know, something's wrong. You go to a vet and person. And so it's really creating this unlock by sharing stories to say, you know, what? Someone had a rash. And that was fixed for this

hundred dollar membership. Or someone had fleeing tick. And they got really affordable fleeing

“tick medication in two days. And it didn't cost them an arm and a late. So I think the more people,”

again, it's having that same go unlock of people understanding, oh, yeah, these are like the use cases. And this can save me, like, several hundred bucks. Oh, that's awesome. For this, I'll use Dutch, I'll use telemedicine. So when you're dealing with staff, that's spread all over the place, because you're having them in different locations. That is a culture design that that's new, right? You know, I guess, and it blows me away that COVID started six years ago,

but this is normal for us now. We're just in this, this world of everything's remote, as a founder, as a CEO, how do you build that culture? How do you unify a group that some of

them are never going to meet in person? How do you scale that? Well, I will say one of the things

that most driven by is results, like one of our values of Dutch is being in your not words. And we have lots of pretty transparent dashboards where we know how different parts of the business are performing. And we know the owners of those different parts. So that kind of transparency and accountability, I think is certainly the biggest guru ever. Of course, I think there's also emotional connection. And we do that on a weekly basis where we kind of come together live. But I would say

it's a lot of it's over communication. We have a weekly update email. And then there are for some of the most meaningful stats. There's like a daily communication on that. So it's that transparency and the communication that serves as the glue. How do you do you guys have events where you get

“together? Do you fly everybody out? Do you have corporate events? Because that's what we have found”

with with our stuff that we run, the remote environment. They need to be in the same room around so we need to have the treats, which normally is just an excuse to give them way too much pizza and beer. But they love it. But so they're going to go put you on an island. You're all going to get some Bert. We're all going to laugh at each other. Here's some pizza and beer. Enjoy the moment. Are you finding those type of huddles to be something that you guys are doing as well?

Absolutely. And my CFO hates it. We definitely have those moments once a year where the whole team gets together and we try to be super, what's the word? We'll still have those, like this last time we had it in Zasalito, Ruba in a coach to make it meaningful. But we also had an outstanding cooking class. So it's kind of that combo of still work and some play when we're all together. We have found that the work is in quotations when we do these events. We're going to work.

have that because we have found with the people who work remotely. They want to have the autonomy.

“They don't want to drive any more traffic. They don't want to spend the time. They hate it.”

But they also want the connection. But they don't need the connection as much. So finding that balance has been really interesting for us. So we've got to carry it. We then have this stick. So let's walk through the stick. You've had a, you know, this is beyond the 90 days. You've been dating for a while. All of a sudden this employee for whatever reason, a purple dragon came out of their mailbox. Whatever the reason is isn't executing as well. And this is a core person in your org.

This person is now needs telemedicine themselves. They are no longer viable. And they are a sickness to your org. How is a founder do you deal with that? And is it different when you deal with an lower level versus a higher level? Well, I think, I think the higher the level, the more impact they're having to the rest of the organization. And for me, I try to lean into being curious and understand the why. And it could be who, you know, are they set up for success in terms of

what they're doing? Who is their manager setting them up for success? Are we reporting on the right metrics? And like you were saying at some point, I tried to then the day measure things simply by results. And that kind of makes it a little bit more black and white and takes the emotion out of it.

What I do tries to make sure I've conveyed that the results are being missed that first. And then

at some point, you just have to make that decision that this person is not helping the organization

“forward. And that's kind of when you have to make that tough call. Yeah, I think the important thing”

there is it's not a motion based. We're doing this but results based. Like, here it is. This is what's going on. It's black and white. Is this working for you anymore? And I think that has been the open-ended question that I've used for years, which is, is this working for you? And nine times out of ten, they're like, no, I'm like awesome. What does it look like if this was working for you? And they'll give an answer that probably doesn't serve your org that you follow up with another

open-ended question, which I'm okay about how does that work for us in our org? And then they'll get to the point where like, you know what, I don't think this is a fit for us anymore, but you know it, I don't think this is a fit either. So getting them from a result space versus an emotion base is huge. I'm going to talk about one more thing, which is the emotion-based stuff of, you've

done a billion dollar exit, my friend. Most people have never done that. Walk me through that experience

of what you wish you knew when you were building the org from the beginning versus what you were doing now. Like, okay, God, this would have made this exit more achievable and faster if you had done these things. First, we're in kind of the moment that we bring the New York Stock Exchange Bell is just like a pinch me moment for anyone. I remember, you know, going a college in studying business and I think I thought, okay, maybe once in my lifetime, whatever, like if I'm still like

y'all get to do that, and so that was super cool. And I think some of the things I'm changing are things I'm taking into Dutch, which is I'm trying to surround myself with people who not only can

“execute, which is important, but also people who overall make me happy, because I think there were”

moments when if it's simply, it's kind of like the reason why I became an entrepreneur in the first place. You know, I started my career at JPMorgan as an investment banker thinking that, you know, money is

the most important thing and I was miserable. And what I love about being an entrepreneur is the

end result right now making customers happy. But I also love the making a sausage with my team and being in the trenches iterating when potentially with things are going wrong or, you know, boring gasoline on fire when things are going great. And I think there were many times at hymns where it was, it was a tough environment. I should say, and so I think that's kind of one of the things I'm taking into Dutch of making it more fun and leaning into those moments and

running myself with people who are a lot more positive. So I think that's a huge change.

bigger than you've ever imagined. One of the most inspirational entrepreneurs Elon Musk has these

grand visions that seem crazy like going to Mars and then surely one by one they become reality.

“And I think to your question of what could we have done better and faster at hymns is to be even”

crazier in our dreams. And I think that's definitely something I've taken into Dutch is to dream crazier and bigger earlier than to feel like, oh, I can't do that right now or I don't believe I can do that. And by the way, I think with the power of AI, there's even more reason to be thinking big these days in order to scale in order to enter new categories. There's just so much that we're seeing the power of AI that what we can do and it's allowing us to dream bigger than we

ever dreamed before. Yeah, I also think one of the biggest things and this is important is you

“you've tied this to a mission we were actually in service to others and I think that's why we're here”

for all of this that's the reason we do this but you've set up an environment where it's a hundred bucks for the whole year for unlimited calls and that's going to protect you from having, you know, again, we talked to one of your customers that came in that says, listen, I don't think my cat had the house. That alone, I would pay a bazillion. I got immediate results. I didn't have to wait two, three days. It's take out your phone, pulling out your animal and being able to do that

and have price match guarantee, so I'm not paying extra money for this. And what he loved about it was because, you know, you're taking, I think you had four or five animals, four or five different visits and they have to go and then they have to have follow-ups. The amount he's like the amount of money, I say just on that it just makes sense. He goes, but more than anything because in his environment, his spouse gets worried. The ability to pick up the phone and say, what's that doing?

And then having the vet go, that's a cat, that's normal. Just like with your dog with

“with Eddie, that's normal, that's what dogs do. I think having the the function of your business”

be driven by a goal of being in service is huge. So I guess the question that I have is, you know, Joe, if people want to track you down and people want to find out more about this and they want to

either scale to a billion or God. I never want to go to vets for the basic stuff. And the big

stuff we are pro vet. Let me give them the references. We are pro vet, but we're also more pro pet than we are pro vet and this is one. How do we protect the parents as well? How do we do that? How do people track you down? What's the best way to get hold of you? You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Dutch.com. I do think kind of like you said, you know, this podcast and your listeners are all about things that are proven. And I would say,

you know, if you can create something that is faster and cheaper and a widget or a service that's

better, you will never go wrong. And I think as entrepreneurs, it's making sure that you have a

passion and you are potentially an expert to execute on that. But you will not go wrong being faster, cheaper and better. I appreciate it. Joe, more than you can possibly understand. This is amazing. Thank you so much. You're coming on faster, cheaper, better. That's it. Joe built a billion dollar company and a telemedicine platform for pets by staying obsessed with that formula. Pivot without ego. Dream bigger than you think is possible and build with people who actually

make you want to show up. We'll catch you next time.