Helping Healthcare Scale
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Helping Healthcare Scale
Scaling Veterinary Emergency Care: Jennifer Hanlon on Strategic Real Estate and Industry Adaptation at VEG
Unlock the secrets to scaling a veterinary emergency care network from 40 to 87 locations even amidst economic turbulence. Our guest, Jennifer Hanlon, Senior Director of Real Estate and Development at the Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), shares her expert insights into the company’s strategic growth. Learn how VEG navigates rising interest rates and construction costs by leveraging a unique de novo growth strategy, focusing on leaseholds and strategic real estate flexibility to optimize visibility and accessibility for pet owners.
Discover the vital role of strategic site selection in VEG’s expansion. Jennifer discusses how her team uses Buxton Consumer Analytics Data Insights and traditional on-the-ground research to pinpoint ideal locations, ensuring that customers can easily find and access VEG hospitals. We unpack the importance of real estate choices in enhancing the overall customer experience, balancing square footage, visibility, and accessibility to make every visit as seamless and positive as possible.
Stay ahead of the curve with insights into emerging trends in veterinary services and how VEG is adapting. With a significant increase in non-wellness clinical visits and rising pet ownership among younger adults, VEG is poised for continued growth despite industry challenges. From innovative training programs like the VEG NERD initiative to maintaining a robust company culture, Jennifer provides a detailed look at how VEG attracts and retains top talent, ensuring they continue to provide exceptional care for pets everywhere. Don’t miss Jennifer’s personal journey within VEG, highlighting the importance of strategic site selection, market research, and the evolution of roles in driving the company’s success.
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We have 87 locations, as you mentioned, when we met back in January of 23, we had 40. So our teams have been a little bit busy over here.
Speaker 2:The goal of this show is to help healthcare organizations scale by leveraging real estate strategies and interviewing high-level healthcare executives in order to pull out lessons learned along the way. If you'd like a free site selection analysis from our team, visit us at wwwreuniversityorg and drop us a line.
Speaker 4:Hello everybody, welcome back to Helping Healthcare Scale and I'm your host, austin Hare, and I'm really pleased to welcome our guest for a second time, jennifer Hamlin. She's the Senior Director of Real Estate and Development for VEG, which is an emergency animal hospital, and the first time that she was on the show was in January of 2023, when they had 40 locations, and today, 18, 19 months later, they have 87. So they've seen a lot of growth and, jen, thanks for coming back on the show.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks, austin. Thanks so much for having me. Super excited to be back.
Speaker 1:As you mentioned, veterinary Emergency Group, also known as VED, we are a nationwide group of emergency and urgent care hospitals for pets with a single mission of helping people and their pets when they need it most. Just really quickly about the company we were founded in 2014 and we are the only nationwide emergency veterinary business that grows exclusively through a de novo growth strategy. We have 87 locations, as you mentioned, when we met back in January of 23, we had 40. So our teams have been a little bit busy over here. We have locations across 25 states, including DC, so we hope to continue to expand that.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned, 87 open. We plan to open about 25 per year for the foreseeable future. Some things that set Veg apart from other emergency providers or animal clinics or hospitals in general is that we do not separate people and their pets when they come in for treatment, so customers can choose to stay with their pets through every procedure. So it's a very customer-centric approach to providing emergency care. Our veterinary staff sits on the floor with pets so they can create a calming and less stressful experience Very unique way of providing emergency care.
Speaker 4:A lot higher labor intensive, right More people to make the animals and the customers feel a little bit more welcome.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't necessarily say it's more labor intensive than a typical emergency facility, but I would say the way we provide the care and we utilize the individuals in our hospitals is vastly different.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I think it's crazy how much growth you've done, just given the economic climate. There's been a lot of challenges in the real estate industry. We have increased interest rates, which just makes the cost of capital higher, but at the same time, it hasn't slowed down the cost of land, which has gone up, and it hasn't slowed down the cost of real estate in general, which is related to those things, because the cost of real estate in general, which are related to those things, because it also hasn't slowed down the cost of construction and supplies and labor and it's all just been going up and up. And maybe walk us through what are the challenges? How did you address those challenges? Were there any other challenges? Like, how did you guys navigate this in this over the last two years?
Speaker 1:Sure Would be happy to touch upon that. So I think, before diving into that, it's important to note that we grow exclusively through leaseholds, so we don't purchase any real estate or, at this point, self-develop any real estate. We own our flagship location, which is based in White Plains, new York, but other than that, the remainder of our portfolio is first and second generation leasehold space. With that comes a lot of challenges. As you've mentioned, the cost of construction has gone up considerably. I think the cost of materials rose 50% from 2019 through 2023.
Speaker 1:So there is not a lot of new developments being delivered. The ones that are being delivered are extremely expensive and there's not a lot of markets that can demand that type of rent. So as we go out and we source new availabilities, there's just not a ton of vacancies across the markets that we operate or want to operate in. I think for Q2 of 24, the availability rate across the US was like less than 5%, and then when you get into some of those more niche markets, that just goes down. So a lot of it is being strategic in the types of real estate we want to take, but being flexible as well. When we spoke almost 24 months ago, we probably wouldn't have considered sites that might be a little bit further back from the road, maybe the signage is a little bit smaller. So, being a little bit more flexible with the type of real estate we're willing to take, being a little bit more flexible with our pricing we understand that in an environment like this you're not going to get the best real estate at the lowest price.
Speaker 1:Of course that's the plan, but it doesn't really work out that way. We have tried to utilize the preferred development model but, as we've discussed, the cost of construction has just been so high that it's been very challenging to really make that pencil out. It's not just for veg, it's really for, I would assume, any tenant that's looking for new development space right now. We have had quite a bit of success looking forward into our 26 and 27 pipeline, so new developments being delivered for 26 and 27. So we're starting to see that come down a little bit. People are starting to start developing and be delivering new spaces, but that hasn't really helped us for 24 or 25. So being strategic, being flexible, I think, has really done us a lot of good in getting to that amount of openings that we want.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's crazy, kind of like, how far out you have to go 27, that's three years from now, but that's just how long some of these projects take.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy when we talk about that internally because obviously the real estate and development team here works about 18 to 24 months in advance of the rest of the team. So we're talking 26, 27, 28, and teams are still working on things in 2024. We have to be available and ready and willing to take on space if and when it comes up, because you never know, we might be looking in a market for three years and then all of a sudden, bam, a new development comes up. It's the only thing available. We have to be ready and willing to lease it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think a lot of people or businesses or tenants in particular, just don't quite understand how tedious it is to do new construction development because so many things are outside of your control. You're dealing with the city, you're dealing with zoning, you're dealing with environmental studies and, yeah, it can take several years from the time you decide where you want to go, so the time you actually have your doors open for business.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and we really do take new construction. Obviously it gives us the ability to get our work letter, which is fairly lengthy. So we like new construction because we can build all of that into the deal. But we do have to be cognizant that if it doesn't have approvals and it's not built, we really have no control over when it's getting delivered. So we typically try to roll those timelines, to be pretty far out. If they roll in, great, but understanding that hey, if something's saying it's being delivered in Q1 of 26, it's probably Q3 or Q4 of 26.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's just how it goes. So you mentioned pivoting strategies to be more flexible in terms of taking, maybe, a position or a location that's less prominent in the street and it's like a little bit back. What are some other things that you guys have had to be flexible on?
Speaker 1:Sure. So I think the biggest is the one I mentioned is we are a destination service provider, so no one runs into a Starbucks and then says, oh, look a veg next door, let me run into veg. But they run into Starbucks and they see veg and they say, oh, that veterinary emergency provider. And then when they have that emergency at 3 am, they remember where we are because they go to that Starbucks every single day on their way to work. So ideally we are up on that corner on that road, in the A-plus prime location in every single market we operate in. The reality is that just isn't a possibility nowadays because of the lack of availability, the lack of new construction being built. So what we've done is pivot that strategy to hey, if we can't be A+, can we be A+, can we be A? Can we be a little off that main corner with still decent visibility? Because, as I mentioned, we are a destination provider, so no one is walking into us on their day-to-day, but we need people to know how to find us. So, being flexible with the fact we might not get the A plus corner, maybe we'll get the A minus corner being set back a little further from the road. Hey, maybe that's okay because all the other retailers in that market are set back. I can think of a handful of markets right now where, if you drive it, you're like where's all the retail? It's all set back because that's how the municipality has developed it, so being more comfortable with taking spaces such as that.
Speaker 1:We've also greatly pivoted on our strategy of size. I don't remember where we were square footage wise when you and I met, but at one point we were flexing up quite a bit because that was really the only thing available. Now we've gone the opposite route of flexing down. We're in a kind of a funny square footage. Our typical square footage is about 5,500 square feet. We can flex down to about 4,500. We can flex up to about six, but that doesn't leave us in a great part of the market. We're too big to backfill QSR. We're too small to backfill the Red Lobsters and the Outbacks that are coming on the market. So being able to flex down to 4,500 square feet has given us the ability to take some of those retail spaces that we probably couldn't 18, 24 months ago. And then being willing to flex up a little bit, depending on economics, has also really been able given us the opportunity to be able to take other spaces.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a and that's a lot of square footage. You have 500 square feet and you start to multiply these costs per square foot and it really starts to add up. But in terms of talking about, I think that, yeah to your point, we coach people, our clients, all the time when they're looking for a new space is part of your marketing, right, it's part of your marketing, and so it's like it takes those impressions like over and over again and seeing them there, and so the fact is you pay more to be in a prominent spot, but hopefully you have to pay less when it comes to marketing, right, because people know, like now they're not Googling emergency veterinarian. They're thinking like, oh, there's that place that I went to, like that was right next door, and so they're already thinking about it.
Speaker 1:And so the idea is, yeah, real estate is more expensive, marketing is cheaper and something that's really important for veg, specifically as an emergency VEG provider, or all of the smaller nuanced details about a real estate space that you might not think of that really do make quite a difference, maybe more so than having the A-plus site on the corner. We like to think of ourselves on the real estate team as the gatekeeper to the VEG experience. What someone is experiencing when they come to VEG and that starts before they even make it in the door. That starts when they're trying to find us on the street. If you can't see us and you can't locate us, but Google's telling you that you're there, that's not setting the customer up to have a good experience. Nine out of 10 times, you're coming to us because you have an urgent or emergent issue with your pet.
Speaker 1:So can you see us? Can you find us? What is the access? Look, if we're on the left-hand side of the street but you can't make a left turn, now you have to drive up a mile and turn around. Sometimes that can't be avoided, depending on how areas are built, but that doesn't bode well for a customer with a true emergency when you get two of us is there parking directly near the front door. So we are willing to sometimes make those trade-offs to make the customer experience overall better. And maybe we're not as close to the street or maybe our signage is a little bit smaller, but hey, you can definitely see it and you can park and you can access us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's smart. It just comes with experience. Like I remember I never had heard about the term ride in, ride out as a consumer, not until I started working in the real estate space, and oh yeah, like these types of little things that you don't think about really make a big difference when it comes to the customer experience.
Speaker 1:And they do and same thing with me. I don't think I've ever really thought about it in my day to day, but I've definitely been impacted. I don't want to go to that Starbucks because I know I have to cross the street and turn around. It's not worth it. I'll just drive half a mile up and go to the Dunkin' which is're not going to necessarily leave and turn around and go home because you had to drive up half a mile. But we do really want to be cognizant of setting the customer up for success. So when they walk in the hospital doors they've already had a good experience before they even get into the actual experience of being treated at a bench.
Speaker 4:So again, and then in terms of, like, demographics, analytics, that sort of thing I know you guys are really heavy into that what's?
Speaker 1:your process for identifying those locations. Yeah, so we work with Buxton Consumer Analytics Data Insights platform. I'm not sure where we were with that platform when you and I first connected. I honestly can't remember if we had already onboarded them. We've been working really closely with them for the last 18 to 24 months, so if I didn't bring it up in our last meeting, it's probably because they were just being onboarded.
Speaker 1:Essentially, the way I view our partnership with them and their platform is there's kind of two pillars of data. You have all of your veg data, our open locations, our pipeline locations, all of our customer data, understanding who they are, where they live, and then we marry that with the Buxton data of consumer demographics. So who are people, where are they living, incomes, education, et cetera and, using that platform that Buxton has built out, really understanding who is the potential person that's most likely to be a veg excuse me, be a veg customer and where are they living around the US. I think the biggest caveat I want to make to this is that Buxton is a tool in our toolbox. They have been a fantastic partner to us. They've given us a ton of insights into really who's most likely to get up off their couch and take their pet into a veg, but again, tool in the toolbox.
Speaker 1:We still utilize a ton of boots on the ground and old school due diligence because what we do is so nuanced. There's no one else in the country that does emergency only care and there's no one else in the country that does emergency only care and there's no one else in the country that does it like veg. So, really tapping into our local context, whether that's our brokers, whether that's our veggies, so that's the name for all of the people that work at veg, so that live places, whether that's people in the industry, so it's really more of a holistic approach. It's the demographics, it's the competition, it's the physical real, it's the competition, it's the physical real estate and it's all of the other things that you need to actually be out and touch and talk to people that you can't do from a computer.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, that's a good point. You guys are very unique and so there's no one science fits all. It's always a combination of developing your processes, and we're familiar with Buxit too, and I think we use a lot of census data, which has been a long time since we've had a census. They're having to take 2010 data, project it forward to 2024 and fill in a lot of gaps there, and so you just you have to be able to customize how you guys are approaching these spaces and these site selections. And, on that note, are there certain metrics that you guys look for income, or even I don't know if it matters how many, exactly how many vets there are per population, because you guys are emergency. So is that really not competition or what?
Speaker 1:So it definitely matters to us. So I'll address the first part of your question. We definitely have metrics. We don't necessarily have metrics set in stone. We need an absolute minimum amount of median household income or minimum amount of population or households, but we do have ranges that we look for in specific markets of those different inputs. What Buffson has really been able to help population or households, but we do have ranges that we look for in specific markets of you know, those different inputs.
Speaker 1:What Buxton has really been able to help us to do is understand who our target customer is and, as I mentioned before, understand where they're living so that we can place our veggies potentially in better locations closer to those potential rooftops. It's an art and a science. I think a lot of what Buxton helps us do and it's not Buxton specific. There's plenty of other platforms out there that could provide this. We have personally had a great experience with Buxton. But making sure people unmarry the idea of the platform says this, or the model says this, so it must be right, or the platform says this, it says this, so it must be wrong and really making sure people it's not all about what the platform and the numbers are saying, because we have people that are boots on the ground out there, living, working, breathing these markets. So you have to marry those two things together, even if sometimes they're at odds with each other. There's plenty of times where something is scoring really well on the platform and I'm like I went there, I don't agree, I just don't really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the energy is just bad when you're in person. It's like hard to quantify.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny because we talk a lot about that we don't have a real estate committee in the sense that some other retailers probably do, but when we talk in our real estate committee it's hey, you just have to go there and see it to understand sometimes what the markets especially challenging in markets that are more pioneering or alternative, where it's still being developed, and you can see that when your boot's on the ground. But the numbers in the platform or the demos we're pulling just aren't really speaking to it yet. So we definitely utilize those. The question which I will answer now so does it matter if there's a lot of vets in a market? So something really interesting about emergency medicine that some individuals might not know is we see ourselves Veg as an extension of the general practices in the markets we operate in. So Veg is an emergency-only provider. So we don't do spays, neuters, vaccines, wellness care, dentals, any of that. We are.
Speaker 1:Your dog ate a tennis ball, your cat ate a lily, your dog got hit by a car type of provider. So when your typical vet, so that you take your pet to for all of those other services, is closed, we want them to have a relationship with a veg. So they are referring those cases to veg after hours. So we do look at the density of general practice vets in an area. If there is a lot of people and not a lot of, it might indicate that, hey, there's not a lot of pets here, one reason or another. If there's a lot of emergency providers already in the area, that could bode well, for hey, there's a lot of emergency cases here, so maybe there's enough to sustain a veg. It could bode not well. Hey, there's already so many providers here. Is there going to be enough emergency cases for veg to come into the market as well?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I like that and that makes a lot of sense. It's tangential to a lot of other just general practices, which is a crazy like 5,500 square feet just solely dedicated to emergencies and nothing else. It's hard to wrap my head around that many people just going just having emergencies all the time. But I guess if that's your niche, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly, I live and breathe this and I still sometimes can't wrap my head around the fact that there's so many emergencies happening throughout the US. But they're happening and people are bringing in their pets and we also provide urgent care services as well. So we do the life or death, but we also do the my dog caught its toenail and it's bleeding, or my dog is thrown up one or two times. So we have a pretty wide range of services, but they all are urgent or emergent.
Speaker 4:That's great. So let's pivot a little bit. Talk macro the state of affairs just in the vet space in 2024. How have things changed since the last time you're on the show? Like, what are you guys seeing in the future?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things we've seen in the vet services industry as a whole is that non-wellness services so essentially the types of services that vets provide now account for 60% of clinical visits. So we're seeing that more people are bringing their pets to urgent or emergency care facilities, and US pet spend has increased at an annual rate of 7%.
Speaker 1:So we're seeing that across, whether it's normal pet spend, veterinary pet spend. We mentioned the general practices as well. We are starting to see general practices wanting to keep some of those cases that would typically maybe be referred out to a veg or another emergency provider. But pet ownership is also at an all-time high and is just expected to continue to grow. Two thirds of I think it's 18 to 35 or 36 year olds plan to get a pet in the next five years. So not the same as the COVID puppy boom or 36 year olds plan to get a pet in the next five years. So not the same as the COVID puppy boom. But people are getting pets and they're keeping their pets and their pets will have emergencies or grow old and get sick and will need emergency care at some point.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's interesting, like the, we just saw such an explosion in the vet space during especially like 2020, everything was just so ripe for that. There was like low interest rates and the monetary policy was light, and then when you had the lockdowns, then everybody got a pet. And so, like you combine like this massive demand increase specifically because of lockdowns and then this massive fiscal stimulus at the same time, and so we saw the vet space explode and multiples and acquisitions were going. I heard like 23, 24 times earnings. Now some of these guys, I think, overpaid and now they're in trouble because they just and maybe they anticipated the growth to keep going. Back in 2008, they had the IBG, ybg like I'll be gone, you'll be gone. Mentality was like a lot of those mortgage brokers, they package them up, they sell them to get the commission. They're done. What are you seeing happening in terms of the groups and the consolidators and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:So definitely, as you're aware, definitely a lot of consolidation. We personally only grow through de novo, so we grow, we don't do any acquisitions, so I think there's been a slowdown of the acquisitions as well, definitely of the de novos. We're not seeing a ton of quote competitors opening new emergency facilities, definitely seeing urgent care facilities pop up. I think a function of that might be that after the COVID boom people saw this niche gap of urgent and emergency care. That was really needed during COVID because a lot of the general practice vets couldn't take cases or weren't open. So that's all you could go and see was an emergency or urgent care provider, but definitely not to the scale that it was probably 24, 36 months ago.
Speaker 1:Because, one, the consolidation a lot of those practices have been consolidated up. Two, interest rates things are getting extremely expensive. And three, it's extremely hard to staff in the veterinary industry, which I'm sure I touched upon at some point in our last podcast Maybe I did, maybe I didn't Very hard to staff not just in the emergency facility or, excuse me, emergency industry, but in the vet industry as a whole. So we're not seeing a ton of emergency doctors for VEG specifically come out of school. So we've created our own program where we will take doctors out of school, put them through a six-month intensive, teach them how to be VEG ER doctors and then we can place them around the country.
Speaker 1:So we have created our own pipeline to be able to sustain all of it, that's cool.
Speaker 4:the country, so we have created our own pipeline to be able to sustain all of it. That's cool. So what does that process look like? Like at what stage of medical or veterinary school do you pull them out? Like how long do they have to be there for? And then what's the title after that?
Speaker 1:Sure, it's all of our doctors that go into our NERD program. So our shameless plug for the NERD program, which stands for New ER Doctor. So our doctors that join that program are coming out of their fourth year veterinary school.
Speaker 1:So, they graduated. They are doctors. They apply at some point during their I believe it's senior year If anyone listens to this from our team, I apologize if I'm just not describing it correctly During their senior year they can apply and then get accepted and then they typically will start with us after they graduate and they'll go through that six-month program where we will put them in all different environments. They have case studies and it's really a six-month intensive on how to be an emergency doctor the veg way. So they are fully graduated by the time that they join our program. We also have a alternative kind of to that NERD program where we'll take practicing doctors so doctors that have already graduated vet school and they might be practicing emergency medicine somewhere else they might be practicing general practice medicine and put them through a very similar program to bring them up to speed, be full-fledged ER doctors and then place them in our vetches.
Speaker 4:No, that's fascinating, it's a good strategy too. And then because there's a difference between brands or consolidators facing trouble and then the industry as a whole. So are you noticing that? Let's say how can I say this? Some consolid that aren't consolidated, but more so the consolidations of them not being able to staff their hospitals.
Speaker 1:We know there's doctors out there but no one wants to work for certain providers or certain employers and I think that's where VEG really has a leg up on the industry is. We are extremely well regarded as a emergency veterinary employer and we spend quite a bit of time really building up the culture. Our CEO always says, like culture is everyone's job, it's not just it's not just his job to build the culture of veg, it's everyone that's inside here, whether that's on the real estate team or in the hospitals. And making the company a place that people want to work because emergency veterinary services and this part of the industry is very taxing on individuals, as you can imagine. So making it a place that people want to do and be in emergency care as a career.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. It's important, like the culture is one of the things that it's hard to quantify, especially when you're talking about private equity groups, people crunching the numbers, like figuring out how to make the arbitrage Like. It's very hard to put that culture aspect of it in. It's more of the difference between like an operator versus a consolidator or an arbitrage player, because if you're an operator, you're in for the long haul and you got to do a lot of those things that don't necessarily create a quick ROI but they create long term lasting companies.
Speaker 1:Exactly create a quick ROI, but they create long-term, lasting companies Exactly, and I think we've demonstrated that time and time again. Something such as the NERD program of putting the resources and the time into our new doctors so that not only are they prepared to work at a veg hospital but they feel like cared about when they enter that next phase of their career, because coming out of vet school, they might not have ever worked a veterinary job yet, or at least an emergency veterinary job, for that matter. So really focusing on how do we get people and then retain them? Because in order to grow vet, we need places and people to put in them to operate.
Speaker 4:So the secret sauce that's not so secret, but yeah, so on that level, talking about hiring and recruiting and culture, I know that you're managing teams now, but you didn't always start that way, so I'd love to hear your story like how you got started, like what were your roles originally, how has that grown over time? What are the things that you've learned about, because now you have a whole real estate department that you manage?
Speaker 1:Yes, so a little bit of background. I started with Veg in 2018. So almost at my six year anniversary, wow.
Speaker 1:So almost at my six year anniversary. Wow, it's very exciting. Started in 2018. And the team I initially worked on was branded the business development team, and it was myself and it was our president named David. So I worked with David from November of 2018 through October of 2020. And we were a team of two and, as you can imagine, in February and March of 2020, shit was hitting the fan like all over the world.
Speaker 1:David said, hey, here's the real estate. I have to go essentially manage every single other piece run with this, and I think I learned a lot, kind of just being thrown into it. Obviously, I'd been working with David for 18 months or so whatever that math is so really knew what I was doing, but also didn't know what I was doing because I'd never run a department on my own, was still fairly new to how the real estate process for Veg works because we didn't really have one. It was whatever David and I were doing was the process, so went from a team of one to a team of two in October of 2020, and then essentially just kept scaling from there. We now have a team of six, including myself, that sits on the real estate team, and then we have a team of 12 who sits on our design and construction team that my partner oversees, so they handle designing and building the badges and we handle finding and signing the leases.
Speaker 4:So how have your roles changed as you've gotten more people to help support what you guys are doing? What were your roles in your day to day when you started, versus now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when I first started at Veg, I remember my specific title was real estate analyst and it's really fun getting to work for a startup, because when I did start at Veg, the company was fairly small in terms of our VQ team. So VQ stands for VegQuarters. We are super not corporatey here at Veg, so we dubbed it VegQuarters. So our VegQuarters team was about call it nine or 10 people when I first started. So you wear a lot of hats you wear the real estate hat and the business development hat and on some random days you wear the international recruiter hat because someone needed you to do that research. And then, as we've grown and solidified into what teams are actually doing and what your roles are, I went from being a real estate analyst At one point I was the chief of staff to the president, then I was a senior manager on the real estate team and then I was a director and now I'm a senior director.
Speaker 1:So I've been through the entire zigzag of building my career at Veg and I think the way that the role has really evolved has been out of necessity. We were still growing. We're like, hey, this COVID thing is happening, but we're still looking for sites and signing leases, and that's, I think, when I really came into my own in understanding and setting a clear path for what our real estate process is. I think the best part about this career, though, at Veg, is that I've been able to learn and grow and become more knowledgeable every step of the way. I feel like every single day I'm learning something new, and that's only helped with building a team and bringing more people on. You always want to have people that are smarter than you and can help you grow, and bringing on individuals that have spent five 10 years with other retailers doing this across the country has really helped Veg grow, and it's crazy to see the trajectory of where we're going with the small amount of people that we have.
Speaker 4:So is the hierarchy, or whatever hierarchy or whatever you call it, like the relationship that they're out scouting sites and then bringing to you for approval? Is that kind of the gist of it?
Speaker 1:That's the gist of it. I think something that's really important to me for my specific team at BQ is the empowerment and the ownership of what they do. Yes, of course there's me, and I'm always here to support and ultimately provide approval, which then goes to our CFO. As I mentioned, we don't have a typical it's really myself and the CFO and our president sometimes, and we like it that way. We're able to be flexible and move quickly because we don't have all of that corporate red tape of hey, there's 50 people that need to review this deck. I hope it never becomes that way because we've been able to scale this way because of that. But something that's really important to me is having and giving that ownership and accountability to the team. So we have two site selection senior managers that split the country in half. Their roles are to be experts, not only in their markets and in their real estate expertise, but in the why and the how of why we're going to those markets.
Speaker 1:I think something really unique that's grown over the last six years since I've been at Veg is this has gone from just hey, we do real estate to hey, we do strategic real estate. Anyone can drive a market and look at vacant buildings and say I want to lease this. But the bread and the butter and the secret sauce behind what we do is why do we want to be there? What's the research we've done? And going above and beyond, it's not just oh, the demos look good. We should put a badge here. It takes a considerable amount of time to vet those markets out and that's what the senior managers do. They own that soup to nuts and I'm here to support yeah, I love that there.
Speaker 4:as we're getting close to time to close, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to talk about?
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's anything we didn't discuss that I think we should hit on. I'd say, between the time we met, what was that? 20 months ago or so, almost 24 months ago and now. It's just been such a privilege to be able to work at a company that is growing so fast but has kept its culture and has really given myself and the real estate team the autonomy of where do you guys think we should put these veggies. It has really furthered my career with being given that responsibility and really having to learn a lot of it on the fly. If you asked me two or three years ago how the Buxom platform worked, I'd be like I have no idea what that is. And now I feel like I dialogue with our data team all the time. I'm learning something new every single day and it's been nice to be able to lead a team who can also learn that and bring that to other parts of the company.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love it. And it's like, even though the economy has been relatively good and strong, it's not been without its challenges. It's almost like we had crazy lockdowns which were very hard. You guys pushed through that and then we had it's almost like the recession of the rich, like with the interest rate hikes. It's like a lot of the growth stopped happening. You guys pushed through that and even now it's still hard to do deals. But as we get to the other side of it like if you're looking at 26, 27, you guys are going to emerge as like very strong, like a lot of market share, and so I think that's a great strategy. Like things get tough, macroeconomic circumstances change, but you guys got your head down and you're establishing your presence in the market and I think it's going to pay off for a long time to come.
Speaker 1:For sure. That's always been the goal and we'll continue to persevere through whatever comes our way, until someone tells us to stop.
Speaker 4:What's a good resource for people to reach out, get in touch, learn more about what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1:Yes, linkedin, jennifer Hanlon Veterinary Emergency Group or my VEG email, which is jhandlin at vegvet.
Speaker 4:Okay, great, I'll put that in the end.
Speaker 1:You can put it in the chat.
Speaker 4:Hey, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for your time. It's always a pleasure catching up and learning about the state of affairs.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks so much, austin, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:If you need help finding the perfect location for your practice or you're ready to invest in commercial real estate, email us podcast at leadersreecom R-E, as in realestatecom, or go to leadersreecom and fill out our form. See you next time.