Today we’d like to introduce you to John Dillon.
John, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up in Evanston, went to the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and studied in their College of Business.
After graduating I was a former project finance/investment banking professional and spent close to 6 years out of Singapore and then LA working in various roles before formally taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.
The startup journey so far has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I feel blessed that to be doing something I am so passionate about and to be challenged every day.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We started with hardly any money, had no clients nor any background in the industry, no proven path to market because the telehealth concept was new in the veterinary space. Suffice to say my friends and family thought I was nuts. Forget about outside investment!
Despite the challenge, I was convinced that there was a clear need for after-hours pet care and that both pet owners as well as their veterinary hospitals would love our service.
To get things moving, I had no choice but to do the sales myself. I would go door to door to veterinary hospitals with a box of Dunkin Donuts trying to convince the receptionist to give me 5 minutes with the hospital owner to pitch our value proposition. That was horribly time consuming and the doctors were often too busy to meet. Then I would try cold calling. Then I tried email drip campaigns. Then I tried social media. I tried everything and nothing seemed to work!
Finally, I had one hospital manager that was willing to meet with me at Barrington Animal Hospital. I made the 1hr+ drive and had various phone calls before she and the owner finally agreed to give me a chance on a trial basis. I will forever be grateful for their support since that first client quickly turned into 5 hospitals, then 20, then 50 etc.
We now manage over 100 hospitals all over the country after-hours and are quickly growing. We have an unbelievable team of professionals that keep pushing to make us a better organization I am honored to work alongside with.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about GuardianVets – what should we know?
GuardianVets allows veterinary hospitals to offer after hours triage care to their clients.
If you are a pet owner then just imagine something being wrong with your pet at night or weekend and that your veterinarian is closed. You are not sure whether the issue is an emergency; you love your pet a lot but they can’t speak and if you call the emergency room they will often simply tell you to come in.
That’s where we come in: you just call your veterinary hospital as per normal and our team of veterinary doctors and nurses will help you understand if the issue is an emergency or not. If the issue is not an emergency, we can help you schedule an appointment. If it is an emergency, we will direct you there and make sure the documentation/communication is facilitated.
The service is completely free to the clients of the veterinary hospital.
Our whole goal here is to allow the veterinary hospital to provide continuous client care as well as build a deeper and closer bond with their clients. Hospitals benefit by keeping non-emergent business in-house, by providing better client service and by maintaining work life balance.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Not sure there is one formula that is the recipe for success but here are some things I think have helped us avoid failing as a business so far:
- Manage your cash: I’ve seen a lot of startups raise tons of money early and burn it like crazy desperate to become the “next big thing”. Their business plans make bold promises to “transform/disrupt X multi-billion-dollar industry”, all have graphs that exponentially go up and to the right, they assume they can keep raising money indefinitely often don’t have a firm grasp on their unit economics or realize what impact the fundraising may have on their governance/future exit scenarios. I think there is such an obsession with “scale” that many lose sight of the fundamentals.
- Develop grit/work ethic: A lot of my friends that don’t live in Chicago often ask, “how do you deal with the winters there?” They don’t realize that the brutal winters make the city so amazing during the spring and summer. But you have to tough it out. Business can be like that. I also read this quote once (paraphrased) that I think is 100% true: “I’ve seen many sorts of people that are successful, but I have never met a lazy one!”
- Learn how to listen: as a startup founder the impulse is to get emotionally invested in your solution and to think it’s perfect. No one wants to hear their baby is ugly. Even worse is when you have some initial success and then get confirmation bias which leads to innovation slowing down because you think you already found “product market fit”. This can make it hard to listen to criticism from clients, from team members, etc. Even if it sounds cheesy, we constantly ask our clients and our team “how can we get better” and “what else can we do to make this an amazing experience”. If you listen, the market will guide you.
- Do what you say you’re going to do: If you say you’re going to pick up every phone call for a hospital, you better do it! Business is rooted in trust and once you screw up the little details, all the bigger ticket items are put into question
- Fail Forward: Failure is inevitable. I think it is almost necessary to make a lot of mistakes as a startup. But if you deliver what you promised and still make an honest mistake, communicate that with your clients and show how you improved/will learn from it, there is a good shot they may forgive you and will continue to do business. Live to fight another day and use the failure as an opportunity to get better.
Contact Info:
- Address: GuardianVets
900 Chicago Ave Suite 104
Evanston, Illinois 60202 - Website: https://www.guardianvets.com/
- Email: contactus@guardianvets.com
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