Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Autumn Fanning.
Dr. Autumn, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I saw the need for a full-service house call veterinary practice in 2010 and started Vet’s Here in my hometown of Santa Ynez California. When the business first started it was myself and my brand new full-service mobile vet vehicle, with one technician to help. I leveraged leases and loans to get started! This business has now grown to 4 mobile clinics, 4 doctors and 3 regions including Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties and Northern Los Angeles. Our company has combined the intimacy of having a veterinarian visit your pet in the comfort of their home, with all of the benefits of modern medicine.
I spent nearly seven years perfecting the model of the house call practice, including bringing on associate veterinarians and creating the infrastructure needed to run multiple vehicles from one site. I was fortunate enough in 2017 to secure funding from some private investors to begin our second site out of Newbury Park. I went from small business owner to CEO of a growing startup, while still keeping one foot firmly in the practice of medicine. The vision for our company is to have trucks to cover areas across the country to give access to this type of care for as many pets and pet parents as possible.
My entrepreneurial story will only give you part of the picture. While building this business I gave birth to two premature baby girls, who are now a happy and healthy 7 and 10 years old. I also have two step-children (9 and 11) and a partner with as much entrepreneurial drive as myself. I have learned to attempt to balance my career with my large family. Anyone who has both of these amazing and complicated pieces to their lives will tell you the balance tips the way it needs to at any given moment. I give myself permission on a daily basis to be where I need to be for who needs me the most. That could be a child, a patient, a partner, an investor, or an employee! The fact that my children have the opportunity to watch their mother and step-mother run a successful company is one of the best parts of my efforts. I truly believe our company has many more places to go and animals to help, I look forward every day to seeing where the next door leads us.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The pun is not lost on me here. There has been nothing smooth about our road! Making the decisions to expand always lead to those moments of entrepreneurial trepidation as you watch funds leave to hopefully help you make more funds! The days of the entire business resting on only myself as a doctor morphed into sending what I had spent hours and tears building out with a doctor that I was handing the keys to my livelihood to. Then making the leap to bringing on non-veterinary partners to facilitate taking a small business to the next level.
All of these decisions represent both my bravest and most vulnerable moments. There have been pets we couldn’t help, months where business was down and there was worry about making payroll, ill employees we all needed to help hold up through trying times, pivots we made that didn’t work, relationships built and lost, trucks that broke down and shut down business, times of elation and times of burnout. The crazy thing is I would do it all again and I keep at it knowing the next even larger challenge is around the corner.
We’d love to hear more about your practice.
The benefits of house call medicine are several-fold. Reduction of stress to pet and owner not only increase the likelihood that animals get the care they need but actually improves the medicine that we can provide. An animal who is comfortable in their own environment will show symptoms that will not show up in the stressful clinic environment. Myself and my other veterinarians are also able to assess the animal’s home environment and diagnosis, such as poisoning or injury have been discovered simply by being in the animal’s home!
Our vehicles have the capability to take x-rays, perform ultrasound examinations, run lab tests and even perform anesthetic procedures such as spays, neuters and dental cleanings. The procedures are performed in the pet’s driveway and the pet is able to recover in their own bed at home! Owners are never far from their animals and the animals do not have to wait in a noisy scary veterinary clinic on procedure day! Our attention to pets is also more focused. When we are at their home they are the only animal we are working on, unlike in the chaos of a larger veterinary clinic where a doctor might be tending to multiple animals and owners at one time. Other house call practices have limited capability if they are running out of a car. This can compromise care, or cause animals to have to go to a clinic at times they really don’t need to, simply for lack of equipment and resources.
We are currently the largest house call veterinary company in the country that has our capabilities! We have clients who will never go back to a traditional practice and tell all their friends we have not only the best kind of care for pets, but the most competent and caring vets. It takes a special doctor to be a good house call veterinarian and we find them and give them all the tools they need to do excellent medicine at home.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
There are many! Dr. David Jensen- Dr. Jensen took me under his wing at 15 years old. I spent hours with him helping him care for the horses in his practice. I was love-struck with the profession and he nurtured my dream. I will never forget how proud he was when I brought that first truck over for him to see. He got out a video camera and said we have to preserve this moment for when you have a fleet of these.
Dr. Manuel Himenes- My first boss, the one that broke me in. He spent so many hours teaching me how to apply all that I had learned in veterinary school.
LynDee Rankin- My mother has helped me run this business from the first days all the way to the present. From answering false alarms in the middle of the night to doing the books, to managing HR issues it quite literally would not be here without her.
Ross Rankin- My father is my first strategic analyst and advisor. To this day I call him to discuss the next steps. He has run multiple companies over 40 years. People often ask me where I got my business education, I am not the typical veterinarian when it comes to business. The answer is my dining room table. My childhood was filled with the discussions that come with owning and running your own business. I listened.
Steve Badelt- My thought partner and the other entrepreneur in the house. Those dinner table conversations of my childhood now happen over a glass of wine in the kitchen as we debate the successes and failures within his company and mine. Better decisions get made when it is not only the founder of the company making them.
All of my staff- I was told by a wise man once (a dentist friend of the family) that the way to be successful in the business of medicine is to have other medical professionals working for you. This business could not exist without the smartest and most dedicated people I have ever met. They have put their faith in me and this company and that weighs into every decision I make.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vetshere.com
- Phone: 888-838-2738
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vetshere/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vetsheremobile
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/vets-here-santa-ynez
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