Lisa Grulke and Cat Munson - Animal Center for Emergency and Specialty (ACES) On the Reality of Working in Veterinary Medicine: "You're gonna have to talk with the family that can't necessarily afford to take care of their animal all the time. You're gonna have to lift a 80 pound dog. There's just certain things where we can make your life easier and better financially, but there's certain things that are just part of the job." The veterinary field is a challenging one. For those that are working in the field, you need to work with animals that cannot necessarily tell you what hurts. On the same side, they are communicating with the variety of pet owners. Another significant issue comes down to the money. Many people have left the veterinary profession for other, arguably easier, jobs for similar pay. The veterinary field is a business that requires the love of pets to be accepted as part of the reason you are in the field. Add onto the issue of growing demand as populations climb and pet ownership grows along with it and the declining or typically static existence of veterinary care facilities makes the business of veterinary medicine interesting, to say the least. Lisa Grulke and Cat Munson saw the need, and decided to build from scratch a veterinary practice of their own, the Animal Center for Emergency and Specialty (ACES) in Madison, Wisconsin. They went full in with a new building, new equipment and processes for everything gained through their individual veterinary paths. Listen as Lisa and Cat explain how they got to be the admirable veterinary entrepreneurs they are and how they came to make the decisions they did. The process was seemingly clinical in execution and the result has been nothing shy of amazing. Enjoy! Visit Lisa and Cat at: https://acesvetmed.com/ Podcast Overview: 00:00 Following My Husband's Career Path 06:02 Career-Specific Tracking Schools 08:36 Farm Production Challenges 11:37 Wildlife Conservation Career Challenges 14:48 Veterinary Staff Shortages Escalate 17:31 "Valuing Licensed Technicians' Worth" 20:59 Building Trust Through Relief Work 24:34 Evening Urgent Care Focus 26:34 Demographic Survey for Market Analysis 29:26 Collaborative Emergency Care During Pandemic 33:33 Chemotherapy Misunderstanding Explained 37:14 Optimizing Veterinary Clinic Layout 39:22 Building Transformation Insight 45:24 Networking Through University Program 46:07 Overconfident Small Business Owners 50:46 Relying on Unreliable Fax Machines 55:25 Office Troubleshooting & Cloud Solutions Podcast Transcription: Speaker [00:00:00]: I got into an argument with one of my friends on the playground and said, screw this. I'm not working with people because people are awful. And so then I was like, well, I'm gonna work with animals instead. And I stuck with it. Speaker [00:00:12]: You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link [email protected] we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie, and today we're welcoming, preparing to learn from Cat and Lisa of ACEs Veterinary. So, Cat and Lisa, how is it going today? Speaker [00:00:37]: Good. Speaker [00:00:37]: Pretty good. A little bit tired, but we're good. Speaker [00:00:40]: We're here. Speaker [00:00:41]: Let's start out with foundation. Tell us what ACEs is. Speaker [00:00:44]: So ACEs, or Animal Center for Emergency and Specialty, is a brand new after hours urgent care in the Madison area. We also have oncology during the week. But our primary focus and where it was born from was extending the reach and availability of care for sick or injured pets. Speaker [00:01:03]: All right, does ACEs stand for something? It's an acronym, right? Speaker [00:01:07]: Yep, yep, yep. All right,