WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Dr. Julie Buzby: November 27, 2023

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

WRFH's Abigail Snyder interviews Dr. Julie Buzby—integrative veterinarian and the founder and CEO of Dr. Buzby's ToeGrips for Dogs—about how she went from veterinarian to entrepreneur. Learn more about ToeGrips here.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Abigail Snyder, and today I'm joined by Dr. Julie Busby, an integrative veterinarian and also the founder and CEO of Dr. Busby's toe grips for dogs. We're talking today about Dr. Busby's story, how she went from veterinarian to entrepreneur, and how she took an idea for a product to help slipping dogs and made it into a successful company. Dr. Busby, thanks for joining me here on the station. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Before we talk about your current business, toe grips, we have to talk about how you became a veterinarian. Why did you want to pursue that

career path? What vet school did you go to? Take us through what your life was like as a veterinarian before you founded toe grips. Yes. So I am the kind of person and it's not uncommon who wanted to be a vet from like the age of two. I don't have any other recollection of another career path, desire. And so that was like my singular purpose. I worked with the animals any chance that I could, even though my parents didn't really allow me to have pets. They were very supportive of my career path, but my dad was in the army.

We moved around a lot. And honestly, he wasn't really a pet person. But they let me have a bird. And then I got to move up to an actual mammal and I got a hamster. But I didn't actually have my first. dog until the day that I started my first job on my own, my own little apartment I was paying for myself, and I went to the shelter and adopted a dog. So I went to Kansas State University for veterinary school and was blessed to be able to fast track there in three years to get into

vet school because, like I said, that was my goal. Vet school wanted to be a veterinarian. And one of the interesting things about all of that that worked in my favor is that veterinarians as a whole are introverts and their love for the animals like supersedes everything in the profession for them. And I also obviously have this burning passion for animals, which is how I got here. But I also really love people. And so I'm so blessed that every animal that comes in has a person on the other end of the leash or the other end of the carrier.

And there's that opportunity to build relationships with the people and the animals. So it's like my dream life, actually. Turning to your business, explain what your product, Togrips is and how you came up with the idea. Yes, so I love to brag that it's the most brilliant idea ever because it's actually not my idea.

A client of mine had the idea for the product and made a prototype for his own dog, really not for slipping, but because the dog was like ticking around the house at night on the hard floors. And his wife, who was a technician that I worked with, said like, can you do something about that at 3 a.m. one morning. And he was a third generation inventor. His dad or his grandfather had like invented the plastic bottle with a straw like that when I was growing up, every kid had that played youth soccer leagues. So he knew what was involved. And he very consciously said, I don't want to bring this product to market.

If you think you can help dogs with it, Julie, go for it because he had other passions and he's a brilliant artist and was patenting things in the art world. And so I'm like, how hard can this be? I was so naive and clueless. And I remember telling my husband, like, I think we can do this for $2,000. Like, yeah, let's do this. So that's where the idea came from. I had no idea with lie ahead of me.

And it was definitely one of the most crazy adventures and challenges. Well, I would just say it was the most crazy adventure and challenge of my life because vet school was extremely difficult. But I pretty much knew how to work hard as a student. I had no idea how to, I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. I had no idea how to be an entrepreneur, how to take something from an idea to the marketplace and then to an actual international business. So let's actually talk about that entrepreneurship.

How did you take your client's idea of toe grips and bring it to the market, making it into a company? Well, the first thing I did was start to develop prototypes and beta test. I'm sadly a firstborn child perfectionist. And so I'm like, we are going to make sure this is perfect before it goes anywhere. So we did a year, a full year of R&D on this simple little idea. and I worked with rescues all around the country and veterinary colleagues all around the country

because I had to figure out sizing. We definitely modified the original prototype to figure out the right internal diameter, external diameter, length, and it's a custom engineered material that we use. So it was actually much trickier than it looks and just worked with people all over the country to try to bring this idea to an actual sustainable product

that I could produce. That in and of itself was a crazy adventure and I made so many cold calls where I'm like, hey, I've got this idea. And most of them ended in rejection. But some of them ended in phenomenal leads that I still, 12 years later, do business with. I just talked to a company this week that I'm like, do you remember? I remember I was standing in the parking lot of Chick-fil-A when I called you and said, I need help with this.

And it was a tough challenge. And they said, yeah, we think we can do it. And that guy still works there that I talked to. So from there, the inventor, the actual inventor, very early on, said, start working on your packaging right away. So I did that. And I bartered with clients. So I had a client who had some knowledge of Photoshop, God bless her. And so she and I, I remember New Year's, we spent the entirety of New Year's Day, 2013.

like back and forth on package design. I had another client that very, it was strange that she was even in our small town, but she was a well-known, like, prestigious copywriter. And so she bartered with me for her dogs vet care that took me like three plus years to pay off to do all the copywriting for our website. We hired somebody to actually build out the website. The first version was not pretty at all, but it had good SEO because the copywriter did that. people could find it. Google was serving it up, SEO for your audience that might not know

is search engine optimization. And I learned all this stuff because in veterinary school it said that you learned 40,000 new words. Well, guess what? None of them had to do with SEO, business, metrics. It was like a whole new, whole new world. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Abigail Snyder, joined today by Dr. Julie Busby, integrate a veterinarian and founder of Dr. Busby's toe grips for dogs. Dr. Busby, for people who might hope to follow in your steps as an entrepreneur, what are some of the sacrifices they might have to make? What does it take to get a business off the ground? So give us a behind-the-scenes look at your experience when you were for starting toe grips. Yes, so the two major sacrifices

were money and sleep. So I had children and I was still practice. and still am practicing as a veterinarian. So where do you squeeze like bringing an idea to market in like with a life like that? So I was homeschooling children. I was having children. I currently have eight children. Several of them were birthed during these years. And so I would work when the kids went to bed.

So when they were young and they went to bed by nine, it was great. I could work from like nine to 12. And then obviously throughout the day I kind of like catch as catch can. Like I did what I could when I could. But sadly, as they started to get older and went to bed later and later, that pushed back my bedtime later and later. So these days, I don't go to bed until like 2 a.m. most nights. But I also am blessed with a much different role. In the early days, I did everything.

I was the customer service department. My husband and I were the shipping department. Every department. That's the life of an entrepreneur. So now I'm really blessed with the phenomenal team who has taken a lot of the burden of daily. tasks that take time off of my plate. The other thing is financial. As I said, I thought, oh, like, how hard can this be? Like $2,000, we'll have this thing in the marketplace. Well, that was definitely wrong. And there's a Bible verse that says, count the cost before you build the

tower. And I failed on that one big time. And thankfully, God had grace and still protected us and provided for us. But it got to the point where we had drained all of the time. And we had drained all of our retirement account accounts. I remember my husband sitting down with me and saying, like, we may need to sell the house to continue to fund this. And I literally started the process to hawk my engagement ring because I'm like, I was so sold out for this vision. I, the first, when I saw this product for the first time, in my head, I said, that is a million idea. Now, I don't really tell people that because never was I in this for the money. I thought like this is, I guess what I'm saying is I thought this is like, this is big. This is going to

change the industry. This is going to change the way that I treat my patients. One thing that I didn't mention is that I'm certified in chiropractic and acupuncture for animals. And so my practice really, my patients, for the most part, at this point in my career, at one point, I owned a hospital and saw everything. But at this point in my career, I see mostly senior dogs that have mobility and pain management issues. And as much acupuncture and chiropractic and Western medications and herbs and everything I could throw at them, for sure, it's exciting to see how much improvement can happen with a multimodal approach, but I could never affect the biomechanical problem of slipping.

And so I would say get throw rugs, get yoga mats, because those absolutely work. The dog's natural mechanism for traction is to engage the nails like soccer cleats. And so when they can do that in, like I said, a carpet or grass, obviously, or even yoga mats, they don't slip. But the problem is dogs don't stay on those surfaces. They like to go generally to go lie on the cold, hard floors and then they have to get up off those floors. and that's where the problem is. So toe groups are traction that travels.

So I believed in this idea so strongly that I was all in, as they say. I was completely and totally all in. And in the early days, my husband was supportive. And I couldn't have done it without that support. But I don't know that there were a lot of other people who were in my corner, so to speak, until they started being a part of the beta tester club. And then I really did have a band of support. And, yeah, I would love to talk about our first trade show when it was a modern-day barn raising.

There's an interesting story, like you just said, associated with your company's first major trade show. And what went into getting me there? So would you share that story? Yes. So our website launched in August of 2012. And, you know, we were selling a package of tow grips maybe like every day. And I was so excited because for me that was proof of concept. Someone somewhere in the world was, it was the U.S. at that point, was buying a package of

toe grips. And we actually had a map and we started to map out where they were going and kind of track as the blue was like sweeping across the U.S. They actually sold in Hawaii and Alaska before they sold in the Midwest, which was really interesting to me. But eventually we filled out the entire map. And what I didn't envision, I didn't think big enough was that they started to go internationally too.

And that was shocking to me. I think at this point, we've sold them like 55 countries or something, which is just amazing. And we sell internationally and ship internationally every single day and have international distribution now. So that first trade show in December, so website was to August, in December, December of 2012, our hospital that I worked at doing

chiropractic and acupuncture part-time, had an open house. This is an annual event and I was manning my little holistic medicine table talking about chiropractic and acupuncture and I had two grips on my table. And several of the local drug reps who serve as representatives for the big distribution companies in veterinary medicine were there just as like a favor to the hospital as a way to, you know, just goodwill. one of them was running the grill. Like he was firing up the sausages and hot dogs. And he came over and said,

oh, this is so cool. I have heard of this. And you need to take this idea to, at that point, it was called NAVC. Today it's called VMX. It's the biggest veterinary trade show in the world. It is 15,000 people in the Orlando Orange County Convention Center. I mean, it's absolutely massive.

massive. And I was like, oh, well, tell me about that. And he said, all big products, all new products launched through this show. Like he's saying this matter of factly, and I'm believing every word. And he said, I really, I want to carry this product. You should go talk to MWI about distribution. And I said, why would you want to distribute this? Like, why would you want to go into veterinary hospitals as a rep and talk about this? Like, there's a lot more to talk about. And he said, I am so sick of talking about flea and tick products. Like, this would be really interesting to talk about. So I came home and said to my husband, we've got to go to the show. Now, granted, this is the key interesting point. This big show is in January. It's now like middle of December.

So we had less than a month to pull it all together. I didn't even know if they would have booth space available. They have 800 exhibitors. And I'm like, and most of them I think, well, they do. They buy their booth almost a year in advance. So Monday, that was Saturday. Monday morning rolls around. I call. Do you have any booth space? They have like two. booths left in the entire place and the lady's like and that'll be five thousand dollars and i'm thinking five thousand dollars like i mean every cent was going into just trying to have a product on my shelf so i'm like oh i don't know about that so that was saturday so there was a lady in my life who was a very wealthy client and she was i was seeing her very often she had two senior dogs

And I was seeing her often for chiropractic and acupuncture with these very geriatric dear little sweet dogs. And she would say to me, like, I'm going to give you money. I want to help you. And I would say, I don't want your money. Like, please pay me for my services. Thank you. But in my mind, even though I believed 100% in the product, I didn't believe necessarily in my path to bring the product to market. I knew that the risk of failure was high.

Had I known that the statistics are, I think, 95% of small businesses fail within the first couple years of attempting. Had I known that, I might have even been more daunted. But I did know, like, this is a huge risk. And I didn't want to take anyone down with me. I didn't want any strings attached. If I, if I failed, I didn't want to have to grovel or, like, just feel so terrible that I had essentially wasted someone's money.

So I'm like, no, that's okay. you know, thank you. You're being so generous, but I've got it. And she wanted to just give it as a gift. I'm like, no, that's okay. There was another client who, God bless her, she wrote me a check for $5,000 as an advance in services. So I was seeing her two dogs and saw them often for a variety of things, including just nail trims. I would see these dogs for nail trims practically every week. And so she also knew that at this juncture in my life, I needed funding. And so she wrote me a $5,000 check as an advance in services. And I will never forget her act of generosity and faith.

So this other client, I come home from church on Sunday. And there's a Verizon bag hanging on my doorknob, like the little small miniature shopping bags when you get your new phone. My husband had gotten home from church before me and he had walked right past it hanging on the doorknob. So I took it off and I opened it and in the bag was $10,000 in $20 bills in cash. She had just left it there because I wasn't home. So I immediately knew it was from this client because who else could do that? And so I called her. I'm like, you know, what are you doing?

And she said, I'd rather Julie girl. She called me Julie girl. Julie girl, I'd rather give it to you than the government. So that money. I used to, she wanted it to go to the patent because supposedly the patent was going to be $10,000. That was the estimate that they gave me. It ended up being five times that amount and that's a whole other long story of pain and suffering. But I said, can I just use the money to go to this trade show?

You know, this would be a great opportunity for us to get exposure in the veterinary world. And then I'll make the money back there selling our product and we'll be good to go. the patent money till March. And she said, I trust you, whatever you want to do. So I secured my $5,000 booth. The receptionist and technicians at the veterinary hospital I was working, they had beta tested. Many of them had beta tested the product on their own dogs, had pretty miraculous results. And again, just thinking about the story, it would not have been possible with all the love and support of so many people. They volunteered their time to come with me to Florida for this event. So we're planning.

I order a banner for $80 in the back of the booth. I get us all matching shirts. That was the big financial splurge. I borrow a trailer. I borrow a gigantic screen TV from somebody at our church. And we all haul down there. And I had rented a house because it's off season in Orlando of Disney. And so I was able to get like a five bedroom house for a really good price.

And so we're all staying at this house together. Well, just before we leave, maybe three days before we leave, I get a call from this organization that puts on the show, and they say, we made a mistake. We double sold your booth. And so actually, the way we want to rectify this is we're going to give you a, so somebody else has your space. Sorry, it wasn't available. We made the mistake. But we're going to give you a booth that's twice the size of what you paid for. So that's like literally a $10,000 booth for the same price. And it's freestanding, which is also another massive upcharge,

but it's all the same price because we messed up. So is this okay? Are you willing to make this swap? And I'm thinking, is this a trick question? So I get this gorgeous freestanding booth. With it, I get extra badge tags, which covered the people that were coming because otherwise I was going to have to pay extra for them.

The company that printed my $80 banner messed it up in one small spot. So they printed a second banner and they sent me both of them. So I actually had two banners. to cover the back of this double booth. We get down there. People from my neighborhood,

my church, my clients, they were packing up our product. This was the barn raising. There were so many people helping us. I remember one client coming to my, she pulled up to my curb, and she got out with all of her packing supplies, and she's like, I'm just not cut out for this.

I'm so sorry. She had volunteered to help. I was doing acupuncture on her cat at the time regularly. and she's like, I'm so sorry. I thought I could do it, but I just, I'm not cut out for this. But everybody else stuck with it. And so we took tons of product down. We arrived, we set up, we turned out to be the talk of the show because we just opened

a new category. Like this was, everybody else is kind of there a year after the year. And there we were in our gigantic booth looking the part of a gigantic company, even though it was, you know, all an illusion. But we had passion. And our booth was named, I guess they have a contest of like the best booth every year. We were named a finalist, a top five of the best booth competing with these billion dollar publicly traded companies, which is insane to me. But we had the passion.

So that is how we got down there. And I did not. I was very nervous once I got down there that we weren't going to make that $10,000 back that I promised we would to have for the patent because people were giving away coosies and chapsticks and posted notes. They weren't actually selling product. So I'm like, oh, my heavens, guys, we got to sell. So at the end, when the bell rang and everything closed down, we were just shy of the $10,000 mark, which was a miracle. And one of the volunteers who had come with me, whose dog used toe grips, he bought a package, which of course I would have given him lifetime of free toe grips, but he bought a package just as it was all closing down. So he put us literally for the sole purpose of putting us over that.

that $10,000 mark. So we ended up coming in at like $10,000 and some change, thanks to Frank. So there were so many just little pieces of miracle. I also understand that you had a goal at that NABC conference to land a deal with a large veterinary distributor. Did that happen? Yes. So the guy that was running the hot dog grill, remember he said, all products logs

through the show, the big brass will be there. Like, it's very hard to get your product distributed just to be a little nobody and to talk to, to even talk to the decision makers. So I'm like, okay, this is the path. And he gave me hope that this was the path. Well, in reality, you get down there. I'm seeing all of these booze. I go to these booze and say, we're a new product.

Can I talk to somebody? Like, the big breaths are sequestered away in meetings. Like, they aren't standing in their booth waiting to talk to people like me. So I was pretty hopeless about that. I mean, still happy that we went. There were still a lot of good networking happening. But I'm like, oh, shoot, this was completely not as I thought it would be. But I had my 10-year-old daughter with me at the time. So all the kids were at the house with my husband.

I think they were doing some sort of like citrus tree farm tour. But my 10-year-old daughter came with me to this show. And I didn't ask anything of her. I certainly wasn't, you know, asking her to work the booth. She just wanted to be with mom. So apparently at some point, what I didn't say is at this show, the main reason veterinarians go is that there's tons of lectures and you can get your continuing education hours. And so I had snuck away a few times to do this for some lectures that I really wanted to hear. So at one point I was away.

Apparently the booth was very busy. It was very busy the whole show. And my daughter sees these two guys in suits like standing outside of the booth, just kind of reading the sign. And she goes up to them and says, excuse me, sir, can I tell you about? about toe grips and they're like, okay. And so she gives them the pitch, which I guess she just learned from overhearing it. So a couple months later, I guess it was like March or April, I get a call from the vice president of marketing for this company.

And he says, you know, I'm so and so. I was at the show. I'm sorry I didn't get with you sooner. It's been a really busy first quarter for us. But I just want to let you know that my job at these shows is to walk the floor, look for new products, and to communicate with our current vendors. And your daughter, I've been doing this for 15 years or something, your daughter gave me the best pitch I have ever heard. And we want to do business with you. So at that point, I have to put the phone on mute because

I burst out crying. So their first order was very sizable, tens of thousands of dollars. And we absolutely needed that cash infusion at that point to kind of take us to the next level to keep going with our marketing, with our lawyer stuff, that was super expensive protecting the intellectual property. So just another one of those, I mean, I could go on forever about all the little miracles along the way, but that was another one. Well, lastly, Dr. Busby, as our time here comes to a close, if people are interested in learning more about you, toe grips, or even purchasing the product for their senior or special needs dog, where can they do so? Our website is toe grips.com, T-O-E-G-R-I-P-S-com.

And even if they're not interested in our products for senior dogs, we have a blog that I'm really proud of. There's a team of 10-plus veterinarians working on that. And so we publish two or three times a week. And if you're looking for vetted information about caring for mature and senior dogs, I invite you to check that out. And, of course, we're on social toe grips on Facebook. Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. Dr. Busby, thanks so much for joining me here on the station to discuss your fascinating story.

It's been enjoyable to get this behind-the-scenes look at what getting a business off the ground takes. Thank you. I think the number one thing it takes is tenacity and just a fabulous support system. So for anyone who has a dream, I want to be the first to encourage you that you can do it. Don't give up. You've been listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Abigail Snyder, joined today by Dr. Julie Busby, Integrative veterinarian, and the founder of Dr. Busby's Co-Grips for Dogs. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation

and that you'll tune in again for more special content.