Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet, welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. I am really, really pleased. To have Tanika Hall on the webinar today on the podcast, Tanika is the CEO of Zudoc, so we're gonna explain what Zudoc is down the line, but Tanika, really pleased to have you on, Tanika hails from America, but the product is, is available in UK and America, we're gonna talk about it in a bit more detail in a bit, but first of all, Tanika, tell us a little bit about The journey, you've had a fascinating journey, you are a.

Really, really, really young entrepreneur when you first got started at 16. Tell us what that, company was all about. All right, so I first started my entrepreneurship journey at 16, as you just said.

Me and my friends got together and decided to start a magazine. So the magazine was called Hot 24/7. It's in the archives if you want to find it because we, we stopped it.

So what we wanted to do was start a magazine to show fashion and all this stuff, because, you know, we're little kids in New York, and that was what was important to us at the time. What's really funny is that we didn't understand how to trademark. So what we did was we put our idea in an envelope, sealed, and we mailed it to us, you know, mailed it back certified to us so that we have that information.

Because we just didn't, you know, we didn't know how to, trademark and do things like that. With that journey, we actually got to meet some really cool people. We met Rock Nation.

We went to the offices of Baby Fat because we were profiling them in our magazine, and I think we got to meet Jay-Z as well at the time. It was, it was just a fun time for us. Yeah, brilliant.

And then what was the next adventure after that? You are also, obviously the company is a tech company, but you are a, a female developer, which again you get into trouble with stereotypes. But it feels as if it's still a very male orientated profession from what I see, so.

But I think it's a real strength then if you have somebody, you know, a woman coming in, bringing completely different skill sets as well, we, in fairness we have had a couple of female developers and they were excellent, as you would expect. But what, what do you think is the kind of advantage and how have you found that as a, as a female developer in the tech world? So I think a couple of things, right?

There's a certain way that people underestimate you. I've been underestimated a lot in a lot of rooms. Like, people assume that I just don't know what I'm talking about.

But then you're able to To show them, you know, that you are very skilled, you're well skilled, and when you leave those rooms, a lot of times they have a better view of female developers. I also think female developers tend to have better customer service. I think as a woman growing up, you learn how to talk to people, because you're forced to, you, you're, you know, you, you're kind of forced to have that good customer service as you grow, right?

Before I was a developer, I actually worked in a store. You know, like, as a, like a store attendant, and then I worked as a help desk person. So you develop those, those customer service skills before you actually do the dev.

And then when you do the dev, you have to look at the people that you're developing for as your customers, right? And so you, you start that process of, OK, these are my customers. I need to be nice to them.

I need to make sure I'm not condescending. I'm not, speaking down to them. And so that skill set, I think more women have that skill set of not talking down, not being condescending.

And so it helps because at the end of the day, yes, we're developing. Yes, we're writing code, but we're writing code for a customer. You're always writing code for a customer, and so that customer service should always be at the forefront of everything you do.

I really like that point because, and I'm gonna say something quite unkind, which is unlike me, but I'm gonna say it anyway, so some of my experience with web agencies and web developers as I've had the last 16 years' experience with webinar vet is that the trust is really low. Because they often overpromise and underdeliver and and my little line is that er I place web developers, slightly below pimps and politicians in my trust levels. And you know politicians you can imagine are pretty low at the moment across the board aren't they.

And, and, and I think the point you're making is. Sometimes also I see web developers who are trying to be so clever showing their skills, but not really creating a journey that a client can understand. And if you need to be having a degree in computer science to actually navigate the site, then you know what's the point.

So I think it's a, it's a really good point that you're, if you've got that mindset of thinking about the client all the time, you're going to be successful. Yes, you have to, you have to think about them because how is their experience? How are they going to experience your product?

Actually, I was talking to a friend of mine, and he was saying there's a product that he's using, and it's failing like 10% of the time. And so he's going in, he's talking to like the developers, like the people that own the product, and he's like, it's failing 10% of the time. I can't use this like this.

And rather than Them talking to him and saying, you know, let's look into this and let's, let's see what's going on. Let's, you know, let's trace it. They're just like, it's not a problem, you know, it's not a problem.

And that's really a bad way to do business. That's what I think. If even one person said something failed, I am researching it.

Yeah I'm like what happened, where did we go wrong, where is the disconnect, you know. Well it's just great intel customer, intel, the customer is telling you this bit isn't working, you haven't had to find that yourself, they've told you, you know then you can get rid of that bug or change that journey or, or whatever, so, Obviously, web developer and. Maybe we can skip from other companies, we've now got Zoooc and I think that was born out of a frustration you had in finding a vet for a sickly frog, so maybe tell us a bit about that story.

Yeah, so a couple of years ago, my daughter is completely obsessed with like exotic pets, so frogs, rats, rabbits, turtles, all, all manner of things. And we actually had a frog. It was one of, I think it's like a green frog, I don't know, regular pet frog.

And this pet frog started acting really lethargic. We didn't know what was wrong with the frog. We were just like, oh my God, what is wrong?

But I, of course, as a pet parent myself, any, any animal, anything that's under my roof is being taken care of, period. And so I was like searching the internet, calling vets, calling different vets, calling different vets. Do you take frogs?

Do you take frogs? Do you take frog? My frog is lethargic.

I need somebody to see this frog. Eventually I got to one vet that said, Oh, this particular vet that's like 45 minutes away, they actually will see the frog. And I was like, Perfect, great.

Called the vet, made an appointment, and was able to, you know, take the frog to them. But it's just, I felt like it shouldn't be that hard for me to find care for my frog. It should not.

I shouldn't have to chase it. And not everyone has like the time, bandwidth or energy to chase like that, right? Yeah, I was gonna say that you were obviously very, you know, trying your best to do the best for the frog, but there would be other people who'd go, we've tried a few people, we just leave it now because nobody's gonna look after it.

So, so how did you then develop that into something that would be useful not only for the pet owner but also for the vets and, and vet techs as well? What I did was I created a very simple access layer. So the app, it is an app and a website, they're very easy to use.

That was the first thing I needed. You can search very easily, you click, click, search wherever you live. The infrastructure on the back end allows vets to be able to.

Put hours, prices, opt in and out of certain things. So, the vets are able to book, like, set up a booking directly through the site. They can set up tele triage through the site.

So if they want to go ahead and offer that service wherever they are, I think especially rural vets where people live so, you know, far from the vet, they can go ahead and set up tele triage, and then they can see their patients that way. Like, you don't need to come to the vet if you're an hour away, if we can just look at the, have eyes on the animal and you talk through the symptoms, right? We can go ahead, especially if you already have a relationship with that vet, they can go ahead and prescribe from there.

And if you're all the way in the country, far away, you can still get care for your vet. And that was very important to us while we're building is access for the vet to the pet, and for the pet to the vet, but very simple, very easy, and they don't have to create their own infrastructure. I mean America is a massive country compared to the UK so it's very, it could be an hour, 2 hours to visit your local vet and I think, I used to talk a lot before the pandemic about every business needs to be a digital business, you know, so you should have a presence on, you know, Facebook, you should be able to book appointments without having to get on the phone.

And was broadly ignored until the COVID pandemic hit and that tiny little virus was much more persuasive about saying well what happens if we're all stuck inside and we can't get out and life still needs to go on, so I think as terrible as that time was, there was definitely learnings that came out of that that have helped us. You know, with companies like your own to be, to be more open to those and, and to see them as, as a really useful thing for society. Exactly, and I think what I also am very passionate about is that it stays within the vet clinic, right?

I'm not competing with them. I don't want to compete with them. I want to support them, period.

I think a lot of the other telehealth tele triage vendors are outside the vet office, outside the vet platform, and I want them to stay within that vet and the profits or the care to stay within that vet. I want that to be that continuation of care across. And I think you know from a Royal College perspective.

It's that animal under your care and it's the definition of what that is. If you've never seen that animal before physically, you know, if they've got a vet practise somewhere else, you know, we, we talked a lot, you know, when I was practising about second opinions or super sessions, so, you know, obviously you have a sick frog, I look at it, I can't really come up with anything, you're not very happy with my service. Of course you should be able to go somewhere else for a second opinion.

And if you are then much more happy with that vet because they're an amphibian specialist, then obviously you should, you know, you should have that ability to transfer across. But there has been certainly in the UK and I imagine in America as well, an etiquette between vets that, you know, we would pass on the notes that we had from the frog, so that the other vet doesn't have to go through all the same stuff we've done, saves you money, but I think it's the right ethical way of doing it, so. Having telehealth within your own practise allows you to keep that loop, closed up, doesn't it, they're not having to go somewhere else, you know, to see somebody.

And one other thing that we're developing as well is where the pet parent can also like the notes obviously from tele triage gets are kept. In their file, but they can also take pictures of their after visit summaries when they get them, and they just roll in as well. So they always have that information for their pet moving forward anywhere they go.

So if they travel from the UK to America. And they're with their Shih Tzuzu, and something happens to the Shih Tzu, they can give that information to the American vet. Easy.

Yeah, brilliant. Where do you see the future, where do you see the other things developing from the, the platform? So we have the travel concierge which we're moving to the UK within the next, I think, 2 weeks, where we're going to, you know, help pet parents get their pet wherever they're going.

So they have us as their partner with that. And then I, I hope to expand as we go. So I do want to expand to other countries and be connected across those countries as well.

I think the other thing, although it's maybe slightly controversial, but it's very much accepted within the world now is that whole power of reviews, so you know vet practises, having that ability to review to get an idea of, you know what customer service is like, how we, they felt when they went to see us, we, we kind of say that all vets are of a similar. Standard and quality which is, you know, impossible, I'm not a very good orthopaedic surgeon, you know I, my specialty was dermatology so people came to see me with a leg problem, you know, with a can't do that, I would be going hm you need to go to see, you know, somebody else, John Innes or whoever, who's good at fixing legs, he was our, one of the professors at Liverpool University, whereas dermatology, you know, I felt very confident doing so it is, Also I think from helping the client is getting an idea of what the specialties are there, this person looks after frogs, this person is really good with orthopaedics, this person's really good at dentistry, so that review system I think is really helpful as well that I know you're developing. One idea that I did have, there's something in the US they call US News Reports.

Have you ever heard of it? It's like a review system where they, they rank like cancer care, like the top cancer doctors, the top paediatric doctors or something like that. I was thinking about doing something similar with Zudoc, but I'd have to collect a lot of data in order to do it in parcel, which is fine.

I I'm a developer. I can do that, but it's just something that would have to be in the pipeline at some point because I do want, if, if you want, if you need cancer care for your chihuahua, you can find the best cancer doctor without having to go through a lot of hoops, right, within the area that you're or within the whole country, you know, I mean, if my, I have a schnauzer, if something happens to her, I will. Go to Portland if I have to.

It is as simple as that, but not everybody has that option, obviously, but I would. Just obviously in the UK we've had something called the CMA which is the Competitions Commission. Is that happening at all in America or what are your thoughts on that process?

So that process does not happen in America. America is a lot more disjointed. Each state has its own rules for everything.

I wish they could do a national review of some sort, because I've been talking to a lot of pet parents about their experiences. And the biggest experience, just like I think the CMA started was cost, right? They're like, why is cost so different here and there and here?

So one thing that Zodoc does help with is that you can put your costs on the website. And I think that's a part of what the CMA is looking at, and costs for particular services. You can go ahead and put it on the website yourself, and then you're completely compliant, which is great, because you, you know, you have to, I think some vets are now worried about compliance with that part.

I think the only part that I don't want to say the only, but the part that I'm concerned about is the prescription meds, because I think a lot of times prescription meds is a place that we're getting some profit in the vet space, and going to the online pharmacies, but I think Within our site, we can make it so that you can automatically prescribe to those online pharmacist and get a kickback. I'm pretty sure we can do that. So we can find a way to make sure that you are still profitable, right?

You're still getting your needs met regardless of what's going on with the CMA. And I think that transparency is very important, you know, if people see a vaccine, you know, for distemper and Parvo and lepto and there is a huge difference, you know that is a fairly straightforward procedure, whereas obviously fixing a cruciate, if you have the best surgeon in the country, he will charge more than I would charge and you would be better going to that surgeon, yeah, to that vet than having a dermatologist try and do it. Yeah, and I think it has changed, but you know, if you went back 10 years when I finished practising, as vets we are quite obsessed about price, we're not necessarily the best business people because we love animals, we want to do the best for the animals, and so we were obsessed about price, but then whenever surveys were done, It would be cost would be quite low down the list, it wouldn't be the first thing, it would be more, you know, I see the same vet, I trust what the vet does, practise is lovely and clean, it's not dirty, etc.

Etc. These are more important things. I think perhaps now with prices rising, you know, cost has risen, the cost of living is rising period, so.

So, so you know, to actually at the same time running a practise is expensive, so it's also getting that message across to pet owners that, you know, if your dog comes in and it's in for 3 days and we've got really expensive kennels, we've got nurses looking after them all, you know, 24 hours, there are those costs that and that's our fault if we're not explaining it very well, so we need to be better at communicating price and so on. I think so. I was like talking to this lady and she was like, there's a national chain here that I won't name their names because I'm not going to name drop for anything, but she said she went there to do a spay and they were charging $500 but the vet down the street was charging $50 and she was just like, how is it so different?

That makes zero sense. Like they're a national chain, but you know. It's what happens when they come.

Yeah, and I think you know it can be too cheap as well because if you're doing, you know, that sort of operation that is a pretty involved piece of, you know, abdominal surgery, which requires a lot of skill. So sometimes the cheapest is not necessarily, and I think that's where the reviews come in, right? So having those reviews of these procedures and things.

On the site will be helpful because then they'll know, yeah, just because it's cheap doesn't mean you're gonna get the best service, but just because it's super expensive doesn't mean you're gonna get the best service at the end of the day, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, we'll work through it. Tanika, it's been great speaking to you. I'm really looking forward also to seeing some of the team at BBA Live who will be there.

Obviously, depends where people are listening to the podcast, we are recording this in early May. BVA Live is is mid June, so it's about 6 weeks away. I know you're not coming over, but I'm looking forward to meeting Melissa and some of the, she's wonderful, the crew, and I just wish you great success with the business, it sounds really interesting, I think that connection, communication is so important, you know, even those of us who, you know, I think I'm quite a good communicator, and then, I talked to somebody once and think they're gonna get the message, it is about repeat, repeat, repeat, but getting that information out there as you're doing, you know what the practise specialises in, how to make it easier for the clients to make the right decision is massively important and so thank you as a, Member of the profession for for making our lives a bit easier and, and things I love that, that's wonderful, thank you, and it was nice meeting you as well, you guys have a great day.

Great to meet you Danika, and thanks everyone for listening, I hope you've enjoyed it too, and I hope that we will see you on a webinar or a podcast very soon. Take care and have a great rest.