How a Passion for Pets Became a Pet Business With Impact

Amy Castro_Host00:00

If you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming you're a pet lover, but have you ever thought about taking your love for pets and turning it into a business? If the answer is yes, then this episode is for you. We're going to hear from an entrepreneur who turned her passion for animal rescue into a thriving software business and get the inside scoop on how she made it happen. So stay tuned. You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets. We also share inspiring rescue and adoption stories from people who've taken their love of pets to the next level by getting involved in animal welfare. My name is Amy Castro, and I'm the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue and a columnist for Pet Age Magazine. I've rescued thousands of animals and helped people just like you find the right pet for their family. My mission is to help pet parents learn all the ways that they can care for, live with and even have fun with their pets so they can live their very best lives and their pets can, too. Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk. I'm your host, amy Castro. 

01:09

My guest today, Lizz Whitaker, was drawn to making a difference for animals in need. From her first rescue dog to starting her very own rescue, her commitment to saving as many animals' lives as possible never waned. In running her own rescue, she reaLizzed how incredibly hard it was to manage the day-to-day operations that made a rescue tick. The record-keeping, the paperwork and even just processing adoptions became overwhelming. So what did she do? She picked up the phone and called over 400 rescues across the country and asked them what they needed out of technology to help save more lives. And from those phone calls a new company was born Pawlytics. So, Lizz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today. I've been excited to have you and I think I mentioned this in our kind of pre-recording conversation and in your intro. I told folks about you know the phone calls that you made to over 400 rescues and I'm pretty sure we were one of those. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest02:05

Very much so. Yeah, I vividly remember yours because you guys were so nice to me and so kind and I remember you guys being so enthusiastic about answering all of my questions and it was such a helpful part of the process. 

Amy Castro_Host02:17

And that's great. And that's kind of the same way I felt about you is that you know you get sales calls all the time but it didn't feel like a sales call. It really felt like somebody that was truly interested in knowing what we did in rescue and obviously had some knowledge about what we do in rescue but really caring about making our jobs easier. So I did allude in the introduction that you did have your own rescue, but share with us a little bit more about what gave you the idea to start Pawlytics in the first place. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest02:44

Yeah, totally so. Pawlytics came out of a series of failed ideas. You know, I think my background of working in animal welfare is a really important piece to the entire story. Ever since I was a little girl, I was absolutely in love with dogs and cats, and when I could first go to the library, I remember checking out a book about animal shelters, and that's where I learned that we were actually euthanizing dogs and cats and animal shelters. You know, as a five year old I always thought, well, that's where they go to get adopted and find forever homes, and I'd never considered the other side of what happens when they don't get adopted. 

03:19

And so at that point in time, literally as like a five or six year old little girl, I remember finding my passion in life was feeling this destiny to help dogs and cats that were homeless and living in shelters or that were in the foster animal care system. 

03:34

And so my entire life really was me working at animal shelters, growing up in high school and then, when I decided to come to Nebraska for college, starting my own student organization where we worked with every single animal welfare organization in the state of Nebraska as well, and then from there I decided to try and start my own animal rescue, and so I got to be essentially my own customer for Pawlytics, before I even invented Pawlytics, and I was running all the paperwork around, you know, making sure everything was up to specs for Department of Agriculture while making sure that I was cleaning, paying attention to animals, reading through all the adoption applications and making sure that everything was in order for the animals as well. 

04:14

And so I remember, at that point in time I was still working with other animal rescues in the area and I was also the one doing all the paperwork for them, and I thought there has to be a better way to do this, and so I wanted to gut check myself and make sure that I wasn't the only one in animal rescue facing this issue, and so I started doing my research, and that led me to seeing that there were some options available, but they looked a little bit antiquated and out of date and I thought maybe these solutions are great. 

04:39

And so that is when I picked up the phone and called 400 rescues and shelters across the nation and started just asking questions about what their processes looked like behind the scenes of running the rescue. You know what their admin processes looked like if they were using spreadsheets to track the animals and where they felt like they were losing time. And you guys were one of those calls and you shared so much with me and that really helped lead me to the full ideation of what Pawlytics became, which is management software for animal rescue and animal shelter. But we really try to focus on the foster based animal rescues that don't have that brick and mortar location that's open to the public, and then we also focus on smaller, smaller rural based animal shelters who don't have that tech team that can help them set up a really large enterprise level technology. 

Amy Castro_Host05:28

Yeah, and obviously there's such a wide range of shelters and rescues out there, like you said, small rural ones. You know, we're kind of physically sort of rural but we are right outside the fourth largest city in the country. But we're still a pretty small rescue and we had looked into software before but either, like you said, it was either antiquated or clunky or, on the other end of the extreme, it had a lot of features that we didn't necessarily need, especially at the size that we were at the time, and it was very cost prohibitive at the time. Is that kind of what you were, what you were finding, as far as the feedback that you got or from the groups that you spoke to? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest06:03

Yeah, I think, honestly, the most common word I heard in all 400 of those calls was the word antiquated. So immediately, just from drawing from that conclusion, I knew it had to be Pawlytics, had to be user-friendly, easy to use, and I really wanted it to be similar to all the apps that we all use in our day to day. You know something similar to how you log into Facebook and you just have this inherent Knowledge of how to use it, because the buttons are big, it's clear what you're, what action you're taking, it's clear, kind, of, how to get to the next step of the thing that you need. So, immediately out of the gate, I knew that it needed to be incredibly easy to use. 

06:39

On top of that, yes, price was something that was coming up a lot, especially with the foster-based organizations, and I think what's interesting is that it's easy as a software company or really a business in the animal welfare space to Look at those large animal shelters that are doing the 40,000 animals a year and say I want to build something for them. But when you actually stop to look at the numbers, you'll find that the industry is dominated by these foster-based, by these quote-unquote small foster-based animal rescues that are actually the ones taking on the hardest cases from the shelters, right, they're taking the medical cases that have heartworm so that they can put them in a home for the six month long treatment. They're taking the cats that have FIV or FIP, right, and they're the ones putting in the cost towards their treatment. And so Because I was running a foster-based rescue and because I was surrounded by foster-based rescues, I was just seeing such a large gap in Opportunity for these rescues to have technology to empower their work, and so cost, I knew, was something I needed to figure out how to make affordable for any size organization. 

07:46

And so that's when we landed on the $1 for every adoption revenue model, because that way it works with the organization. As you guys have an adoption fee coming in, you know that $1 of that is going towards your technology cost right, and so we wanted it to be affordable, so that even the smallest groups doing the 20 adoptions a year, had technology to help aid in their cause. 

Amy Castro_Host08:09

Yeah, I know that was a huge factor for us because we run Relatively lean in the grand scheme of things. 

08:15

I mean, if you look at our year-end tax returns, you know the money that came in is gonna be between one and five thousand dollars of the money that went out, because we just Raise what we need and so every dollar does count. 

08:28

But the difference between having a well, not only just having software, versus what we were doing before, which was paper Files in Kelsey's Kelsey's office, and then, you know, not everybody has access to it to having a software program, that I can be sitting at an adoption event and Somebody asked me well, what's the status of so-and-so? I Can't keep track of all these animals anymore. I don't even know who so-and-so is, but I can get into Pawlytics and boom, boom, I can, I can tell you whether they've been adopted, whether they're still available. So I know that kind of leads me to my next question. Well, and I think that to me is a huge benefit, is the accessibility of the information wherever you needed. But how else have you heard, or what do you feel? Obviously, as the creator, are the key benefits to shelters and rescues that are using Pawlytics? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest09:18

Yeah, I think the key benefit is one first and foremost, streamlining your operation. You know, like you said, you're typically working in teams of two or more people, because Coordinating animals and all the people that are involved in running an animal rescue operation especially because these are nonprofits you are going to be working with a lot of people that you need to keep on the same page and to have these workflows that everybody understands. Okay, this is where I go to access this information, this is where I go to put in this information so that the next person down the line of our Assembly to get dogs out the door, cats out the door, so that they know what to do, and so, definitely, streamlining those processes to because we are your database. You know we're gonna do all the heavy lifting of Sending data where it needs to go. So, most animal rescues, the goal is to get these pets adopted. Unless you're a sanctuary or a TNR Exclusive organization, the goal is to get them adopted, and so we'll do all the heavy lifting on the front of getting them listed on pet finder and adopt a pet calm. 

10:15

So Pawlytics can act as their one source of truth. Once they enter the information there, their pets are gonna show up on adoption websites that they can be found by these potential adopters. Second to that is that even after the pet gets adopted, we continue to follow it through by registering the microchip for the adopter and for the animal rescue, because when that transition happens, you don't know if the pets gonna not know that they're going home with this new loving family, they might try to run away, they might get scared, you know, there might be an accident that happens, and so it's so incredibly important to have that microchip registered the second that pet gets adopted. And so Pawlytics can do all of that for the rescues without them even having to think they're just going in adding these pets, adding the adoptions, and Pawlytics is doing all this extra work behind the scenes on their behalf so that they can Really stay focused on the animals and on making sure that they're making these really good matches to families and helping families that are maybe struggling with an adoption as well. 

11:12

You know, I think we all have this fairy tale idea that people go home with their dogs and it's just this beautiful, happily ever after. But, as we know you know, being people that have lots of dogs in our lives that Sometimes it doesn't feel as smooth. Sometimes you have a little bit of that remorse or that regret of oh my gosh, what have I done? And it's really important that the rescue team and representatives are more available and Clear-minded to be able to focus on handling those problems and getting solutions in that way, versus dealing with registering microchips and Entering a dog and three different websites for adoption and all these things that are really mundane tasks that literally technology can do for you. 

Amy Castro_Host11:53

I know for us for sure, it's been a huge time saver with the additional features and benefits, because we used to have a specific volunteer designated to taking all of those pictures and profiles and uploading them to the various, like you said, the three or four different websites you have to put them on, and then other volunteers that were entering other paperwork, another volunteer that's doing microchips, and so to have that taken care of has been hugely helpful for us. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest12:21

Yeah, no, I can imagine even just having a place where it is all stored in one centraLizzed location, because we've even we saw, when I was doing those 400 phone calls, I saw every which way that people were running rescues or running shelters and it would be where, you know, the adoption team was using a whole different set of technology than the fostering team, or the dog team was using different apps and tools and processes in the cat team, and so it was really hard in those instances for those groups to be on the same page, understand what animals they had in their care, where those animals were at, what medical had been done or vetting had already been done or what hadn't been done, and, like you said, being being able to be somewhere, say at the dentist, and having you know a potential adopter asking you questions about an animal that maybe you're not as familiar with, because as your rescue grows, there's going to be animals you don't get to meet or be part of their process one for one on or hands on, and so, yeah, like you said, it's a huge time saver, and that really was my angle, because so many people who work and rescue or volunteer in rescue have day jobs, you know, and so they're sacrificing their evening hours and weekends to these animals, and so I really wanted to make a product to kind of honor animal rescuers doing all this work, because I was one of those people as well. 

Amy Castro_Host13:35

Yeah, and it really is a juggling act. I think people don't sometimes understand that, like I was finding it interesting when people call us because we do have a phone number and we do answer the phone and a lot of rescues don't have a phone number, it's an email address, and it may take several days to hear back from somebody and people get a little bit aggravated about that and it's like you don't reaLizze that probably 90% of those rescuers are working full time jobs and then trying to do this nights, weekends, on their lunch breaks, things like that. You know, we're all just kind of doing the best we can and when we can have technology that streamlines that process, so much the better, for sure. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest14:12

Yeah, exactly. 

Amy Castro_Host14:13

So you had mentioned to me and I just wanted to make sure to get this in because I thought this was interesting in our previous conversation that Pawlytics is a benefit corporation and I had to go look that up because I had never heard of that. What does that mean and how does that kind of impact your business model? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest14:28

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up. I feel like I do not get to talk about it as often as I would like to, but yeah, so, Pawlytics, when we started the business, when I started the business, I knew that it was a mission oriented business. I knew that the reason that I was starting it was because I knew and I believed that animals had inherent value and that the people that were opting to do this work, often for free, had value in society as well, and I really wanted to create something that always maintained that mission at the forefront. On the other side of things, I wanted to be able to grow it as big and rapidly as possible, with the support of people who maybe weren't as interested in the nonprofit side. Right, because we can always leverage the tools around us to further our mission. 

15:15

And so, as I went searching and deciding like this was a business that I wanted to pursue and a career that I wanted to pursue out of college, I thought, all right, so what is step one? And that's registering the business. And I looked at all my different options and when I found benefit corporation or public PBC, public benefit corporation it was that perfect blend of exactly really what Pawlytics was trying to do, which is you're supposed to prioritize your profits alongside your purpose. And so, because I knew I wanted to grow Pawlytics to be as big as it possibly could be, that maybe one day it would even grow beyond me leading it I wanted to make it hard for anyone who was involved on the business side to remove that mission aspect. 

15:56

And so, when it comes to being a public benefit corporation, all investors, business partners, teammates, employees, even customers we look for people who are aligned in the mission aspect. 

16:09

First and foremost, we make decisions exclusively first on if they're going to impact animals or the people who are doing the rescue work, or even the animals after they go home to their new adopters to make sure that they are able to maintain a really solid quality of life as well. 

16:26

And so being a public benefit corporation gives us the room to look at the purpose of why we exist first in every decision that we make, and it means that everybody that's involved with Pawlytics, from the customers to the investors, is aligned in that mission as well. And so it's been a wonderful decision moving forward that I made early on, just knowing that that mission was always going to be at the forefront of everything that we do, and so it's a very special kind of classification, and I think we're so fortunate that it's something we get to talk about so much, because we find that we are aligned with our customers, we are aligned with our business partners, we are aligned in our investors that the animals are the priority, and the people willing to do the work to save the animals, who really never signed up to be the janitors of the animal world, are also the priority. 

Amy Castro_Host17:13

Yeah, yeah, and I think as somebody who, for my paid gig, does consulting and training in the corporate and other businesses. But a lot of corporations, a lot of people have missions and values and they like to make signs and put them on the walls. But as we've seen obviously in the news over the years various cases that have come up people, it's just something on the wall, it's not something that people are actually living, and so to really make that part of your practices but make it part of the structure, so that will always be part of the practices, I think is something that was very appealing to me and something that I think people would say hey, this is a kind of company that I would want to support and be a part of, for sure. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest17:57

Yeah, and I think growing up I always assumed like, oh, I'm going to go be a lawyer and make a bunch of money and then I'll open up an animal shelter when I'm retired and I'll go run that, and I think that narrative really shifted for me as I figured out wait, I can just start a business that is helping animals like that. 

18:15

That is our output, that is our inherent good that we put in the world is that the product literally allows animal rescues to save more animals than they could prior If they were using some sort of paper system or some sort of fractured or disjointed system. Pawlytics is literally outputting that more animals are getting saved. And so when we were looking at becoming a benefit corporation, you know, we did have the option to say, hey, let's just donate 1% of our profits. And it's not to say that those options are bad, it's that it wasn't enough for me. You know, 1% is one thing, but what if, in every dollar we made, we knew that something on the other end of that was having a better outcome to their life than maybe they would have, you know? And so to us that dollar per adoption. 

18:58

It's not really just money coming into us. We look at it as like, wow, that's another animal that got to go home, that that had a live outcome, you know. And that's really impactful when we're looking at our numbers, because we're not just looking at revenue, revenues and output of really any business you create, and it really doesn't matter what kind of business revenues always an output. As a result, for us, we get excited, and why my team gets out of bed every day is because we know that every day that we get up and we answer emails, we help people with applications, we help people debug things inside of our own software, that means more animals are going to get saved on the other side of that and that's really why we do this and why my team gets up every day and does what we do. 

Amy Castro_Host19:37

Yeah, I mean. I can't imagine anything more inspiring than to know that you're getting paid in lives saved. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest19:44

Yeah, exactly, I mean exactly. 

Amy Castro_Host19:46

It's pretty incredible. So we've been talking about software and we've been talking about the impact on rescues and you know, I do want to get to any tips you might have for other people who are animal lovers to start a business. But for those people who are not necessarily thinking about starting a business and they're a pet parent, why would a pet parent care that somebody uses a software like Pawlytics? Because I've seen the extremes where you know pet parents getting even adopted from a municipal shelter and they get literally no records of anything that's been done to that animal. It's like, oh yeah, it's had its vaccinations or whatever, everything's done, it's good to go, and so that's where the records. And how do we have that? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest20:27

Well, yeah, I think that's a really wonderful question and I think you hit the nail on the head that, again, accidents happen when we're dealing with live animals. This is not the luxury of, you know, being footlocker, where you're selling product that sits on a shelf and that you have the time to pause and fill out the paperwork, because the thing sitting on this shelf isn't going to go anywhere, it doesn't need to be fed, washed, clean, walked, you know. And so there is this lack of luxury when it comes to working in an animal shelter or even at a foster-based rescue, where the thing that is being transferred in ownership is alive, and it is really a health problem, a public health problem, if this pet is not up to date on their vaccines. It can also be a problem for the animal if they're getting over-vaccinated right, because vaccines are great. 

21:14

It really helps animals stay protected from disease and possible infection. But there is a problem when it comes to over-vaccination, right, and that's where we're seeing some animals at their vaccine sites, you know, maybe getting tumors or other issues popping up. And when you're sending a pet parent home with no paperwork and they take it to the vet, the vet has to do their duty to the public health part of things and re-inoculate the animal, because there is no guarantee. 

Amy Castro_Host21:38

Yeah, you're starting all over again. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest21:40

Exactly. 

21:41

And so not only does that over-vaccinate the animal, it becomes a burden now to the new pet parent, when we're already in a time of financial stress across the nation, and that they're paying now for more vaccines for their pet that really should have come to them already vaccinated, vetted, et cetera, and may be aware of some maybe known health issues. And so it's important to have these checks and balances for the organization so that mistakes don't happen. I mean, even from the perspective of a shelter who transfers animals to rescue, so that they can further vet them and get them prepared for their new home. You know, we've seen shelters that were just so overwhelmed and really at no fault of their own, but so overwhelmed that they're handing the wrong stack of paperwork to the rescue, and so now the rescue is like, oh my gosh, I didn't even get the paperwork of all the pets that we pulled when we already know such limited information on them. And so you know, when you're looking at adopting from somewhere, you're already going to be adopting a little bit of a question mark, because that just is animals they can't tell us their history. 

22:38

And two, we don't always get the luxury of getting to peer into what happened throughout their lifetime, and so every drop of information that you can send home with a new pet parent, that's accurate, is going to really prepare them to give that new pet in their family the best long term quality of life, and they're really going to be able to start them out on some good decisions when they go to see their vet, when they go to purchase products, when they go to even begin training, say, a new dog that they have adopted. So, yeah, the software aspect is, I think, unbelievably important and it's not, you know, you're right, it's not something that people are really aware of, that they should be looking for. 

Amy Castro_Host23:16

Yeah, and I know we've seen, you know, in our rescue we've seen the results of not having those good records. 

23:23

You know from shelters that and this is kind of a pet peeve of mine the heartworm test on intake and, granted, the expectation is that the animal is not going to be there very long. 

23:36

Sadly, it's either going to go out the door with a rescue or it's going to go, sad to say, out the door in a garbage bag because of the sheer volume of animals. Yeah, we've taken in several animals that heartworm tested their negative. Well, when you look at when they were tested versus when we picked them up and then suddenly they're heartworm positive because this is Texas and our animals are basically getting infested with heartworm on a daily basis with, you know, with the mosquitoes that we have. And then another case recently where we took in three puppies from an older lady who had adopted a dog and was told the dog was spayed. Well, the next thing, she knows the dogs had six puppies and you know she was able to find homes for three of them but not the other three. So we took them in and we're in the process of as a matter of fact, I've got to meet and greet for two of them this afternoon at two. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest24:26

Oh, my goodness yeah. 

Amy Castro_Host24:27

You know, and that's a little bit extreme, but I don't think it's really unheard of, I bet you it happens a lot more than I'm aware of. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest24:35

Yeah, no, I think that's it's really great examples, heartbreaking examples. And you know, I think we're also in an era where, especially when it comes to large dogs, we are in a crisis, right Like it is October of 2023 and we are actually in a crisis when it comes to animal sheltering of large dogs. We're having higher intake of large dogs than ever before. We're having higher euthanasia rates of larger dogs than ever before. It is at no fall of the shelters. This is not to vilify the shelters. It is, like you said, the sheer volume that cannot be kept up with. 

25:07

And I think, when we're in this era where we're actually now competing more with actual breeders I mean literally, this is the first time in the last five years where the keyword search term of adopt a dog is one for one is equal with buy a dog. 

25:23

That's the first time in five years. Adopt a dog has always ranked higher than buy a dog on Google and for the first time in five years, they're the same. And I think, if we're going to be competing with breeders, you know why do people go to breeders? They go to breeders saying, well, I'll get to know the entire history of my pet, right, I'm really purchasing it out of the womb. And I know the parents, I know this and that, and so if we're competing on that level, the more information we can arm adopters with so that they can kind of have that same feeling of being satiated with knowing their pet as they bring it home and knowing their history of their animal as they bring it home, that's going to be a competitive advantage, when now is more important than ever that we are really getting these dogs out of the shelter as best as we can alive. Yeah. 

Amy Castro_Host26:09

And that's an excellent point. I hadn't even necessarily thought about that, but you're right. I mean the tide has definitely shifted a bit from being super proud that I've rescued a dog to being super proud that I've purchased a golden doodle, schmoodle, poodle, whatever, that. 

26:25

I've some kind of oodle along the way and, yeah, it's definitely been quite a change. One of the things that I've been impressed by well, one of the many things, but from Pawlytics is you're constantly innovating, like adding new features. The ability to automatically upload to these various websites where animals get advertised was not there when we originally started. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest26:52

And I know. 

Amy Castro_Host26:52

one of the more recent ones was your pet-cademy partnership and I think that is going to be a game changer for rescues from the standpoint of providing a level of follow-through or support after pet adoptions. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest27:08

Yes, I absolutely love and adore that partnership. You know, again, we're fortunate that we do get to pause with our partners and really kind of comb through what their purpose is and what their mission to the animals are Again coming from that standpoint of us being a benefit corporation. And so when we met pet-cademy, it really felt like meeting us our own right. Like this is somebody who really has always been in it for the animals, and the founder of pet-cademy also founded Rescue Walk, which some people might be familiar with, but it was an app on your phone that you can download and as you walk it'll donate to whatever animal shelter rescue you wanted to donate to. Oh, wow, so this is someone that I knew was in it for the animals from day one. 

27:48

Very, very similar stories, and so from that standpoint I'm like, okay, I definitely want to see what technology has been invented here, and what we found was that the technology is for rescues to basically have this behavior team extension to their organization, where again, we've talked a lot today about how busy rescuers are in taking care of the animals that are actually in their care and dealing with the people side of things. And so once a pet goes to their adopter or goes to a foster home. Now you've got this added responsibility of well, the adopter and fosters probably going to have questions Again. We're giving out animals that we don't always know exactly their history. We don't know how they're going to react in certain situations. We don't know if they maybe picked up a bug in transport and now they're going to have some tummy aches and, you know, some poopy results out of that. 

28:37

So, the adopters and fosters tend to have a lot of questions every time there's a new pet in their house, even if it's a seasoned adopter or foster, because every animal is unique, every situation is unique, and so pet Academy steps in and acts as the behavior team for any shelter and rescue. 

28:54

They've got behaviorists on their team that help provide answers to the adopters and fosters for the rescues. The rescues do get to read the messages beforehand and they get to approve it to make sure that it's in line with the way that they believe that they want to train animals in their care. And what they've seen is that the return rates for the groups that are using pet Academy have just substantially dropped. I mean, some of them have dropped in half in terms of pets being returned because of these issues that adopters and fosters felt that they weren't, you know, qualified or really well equipped to handle. And again, when we're in this crisis, especially when it comes to large dogs, now is more important than ever to throw every resource at the adopters to ensure that they're keeping the pet so it doesn't end up back at the shelter, where, again, we're so inundated and the numbers are so high we can barely keep up with them. 

Amy Castro_Host29:43

Yeah, and that's such a huge point. I mean, one of the things that we pride ourselves in our rescue is having a lifetime return. Most organizations you know some organizations have that. Some it might be 30 days, whatever it might be, or it might not be at all, because even if I wanted to take it back, I don't have the space. 

30:01

And I also think, you know, between that challenge and then also the challenge of adopters almost panicking or not really giving things time, it's like you know 24 hours they're wanting to read. I mean we've literally had things returned in 24 hours and it's like this cat's not moving enough. It's like, well, I told you she was laid back and doesn't do a whole lot, and you kind of saw that when you came to visit. But they start freaking out and you know, sometimes you can talk them out of it, sometimes you can't. It is labor intensive having those phone conversations and those follow ups, and so, again, another thing that Pawlytics has, you know, again created a partnership with pet catamy to take that burden off of our plate but still be there, and because I think that support and that follow through is so important for adopters, like you said, I mean, it's just the education is what keeps pets in homes and that's why we doing this podcast is, you know, to keep pets in homes for sure. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest30:53

Yeah, no, exactly, I think that's in line with our thinking about it, and an added bonus out of it is that, you know, when a pet gets returned to an animal rescue and my rescue, we feel this way as well it's hard to not feel like it was a failure. 

31:06

It's hard to not feel bad for the animal. You know, even if the animal is like, oh, I went on a fun vacation for 24 hours, you know that really might be their perspective, but so in it almost inadvertent or accidental way, by preventing more returns were actually also helping the animal rescuers mental health, you know. I mean, this is a really tough industry. To volunteer your time to and to come out of it not feeling awful some days is really difficult, and to sometimes feel like, oh, I messed up in that placement and how did I not see that before I sent the animal home there. You know, and it really is not our faults, right, we're all doing the best we can, like we said earlier, and so every extra resource and every extra helping hand we can have towards helping new pet parents keep their pets is going to help the animal rescuers as well, so that they don't want to throw their hands up in the air and just quit, because truly animal rescuers like are the heroes right now, just trying to keep animals alive. 

Amy Castro_Host31:59

Yeah, and some of us think about quitting every day. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest32:02

Oh my gosh. I mean yeah my Facebook is full of that. I mean I'll scroll every day and I see some new animal rescuers saying I got to quit for at least a year. I have to stop because my mental health is just dwindling. 

Amy Castro_Host32:13

It can definitely be a lot. So what are some of the new features I noticed on your website? There were a couple of new things that were coming soon, and I know you're constantly innovating Anything you want to share with us so we can get excited about it. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest32:27

Yeah, so we've been really excited about a new it's not so much a feature but a new service that we have been hosting for people, which is actually website development and hosting, and that has been so fun to help animal rescuers really build out their brand online more. And actually, you know, prior to me starting Pawlytics, I was an SEO consultant, and so it's been really fun to kind of lean back into what I was doing prior to Pawlytics, or at least what allowed me to get here. So that's helping animal rescues build their websites. We really try to act more as their full IT team now as well, and it's been really nice for rescues because it is our full-time day job. You know, a lot of rescues are lucky in that they'll find a tech volunteer who says I'll make your website, I'll set up your emailing service, I'll do this and that. But you know, volunteers get tired and have their own lives that inevitably take over, and so it's been a wonderful service to extend to rescues so again they can kind of take that deep breath and feel okay, Pawlytics has this, I don't have to stress about harassing a volunteer and burning that bridge or anything along those lines. 

33:28

We have also been working on adding pet listings to the websites, and so animal rescues will be able to showcase their own adoptable pets directly from their Pawlytics database right onto their website. So, again, another place where they're not going to have to manually enter more pets. And then we were able recently to upgrade a lot of our donation features, and so now rescues can have more more donation features within Pawlytics where they can see what animals are people donating for, what causes, what campaigns really pushed that needle. And so, yeah, we've been really, really gung-ho about upgrading a ton of different features and adding some new services as well. Where we saw gaps in the industry Anything that we can take over, where there were volunteers in place of doing it, or anywhere we can streamline those volunteer hours Then the goal is for rescues to be able to maximize their human capital, and so any place we can kind of take off their plate in the technology realm that's where we have chosen to sit in. 

34:26

This ecosystem of saving animals is really what we're going to be doing, and so, yeah, it's been so fun and so wonderful to get to add new services and upgrade some of these features and to watch the results of it as more rescues are able to lean in and use more of those services and to watch them come back to us a week after starting to use one of our new services and saying like, wow, we've just saved so much time. Or wow, we've raised more money because of this donation widget on our website. 

Amy Castro_Host34:52

Yeah, the time saving is huge. I know we're constantly struggling and juggling, but for sure when it comes to time. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest34:59

It's funny because, you know, Pawlytics was invented back in 2019, the initial version, and when I was first building it before I was not a tech person at all. I was very late adopted to tech, and so when I was deciding that I was going to start a tech company, I was like, okay, how am I going to show an engineer or developer what I want? And so I sat down on my kitchen floor and had this huge stack of just white printer paper and I drew up all the screens on printer paper and would go around and show it to animal rescues and they would. I would make them pretend to like click on the screen with their finger and flip to the next page and be like, okay, and then it does this, is this what you would want it to do? 

35:35

And it's just been so funny because engineering something is hard, building something is hard. It always takes infinitely longer than you think it's going to take. You know, in year one you think, oh, I'm going to blow up and we'll be global by year two, you know. And so it's just funny to watch as the things that I invented in my mind or drew on a piece of paper four or five years ago is still in the process of coming to fruition, and so it's been a fun, sometimes agonizing process. You know. To watch Every time we release a new feature, it's like the four year old version of me is like getting really excited every time just to see how it's going to be worked in the world and to think that even people across the globe are using and benefiting something that came from inside my brain is wild. It's wildly exciting for me. 

Amy Castro_Host36:21

Yeah, that's, it's got to be, it's got to be for sure. So on that note, kind of the last thing that I wanted to hit on here, if we've got pet lovers, pet parents, that are out there listening and they're thinking, gosh, you know, I wish I could do that, I wish I could take my love for animals and turn it into some type of business, what would you tell them if they were sitting here talking with you right now? 

Lizz Whitacre Guest36:42

So I think I am no different than anybody else. I am exactly one of the pet parents who listens to this podcast, in way that my origin story of all of this, you know, aside from being obsessed as a child, was really due to one one animal. It was a dog I had adopted when I was in eighth grade. He was only with me for two and a half years. His name was Rex and that was my heart dog. You know, I just loved and adored and endeared this dog so much, and when he passed away, that's actually what kind of drove me to look at. Wow, you know, there's probably more Rexes out there in shelters, and how can I help other people find their Rex? 

37:19

And so when you are loving your animal and finding out that you're solving problems for your particular pet, you know, and it's something that you're feeling very passionate about or makes you feel fulfilled even, it's great to kind of step back and look around and start asking of the people around you, or making those 400 phone calls of who else is having this problem, who else loves their animal and wants to solve this problem for their animal, to make their lives of more quality, happier, healthier, whatever that looks like, and I think why I was able to pursue this is I was able to kind of break the cultural construct in my head that doing good and making money had to be exclusive or separate right Once I started to understand and really believe in my soul that no, you can do both. 

38:04

You can make money, you can build a giant company that's exclusive purpose is to do good in the world. Once I really had my sureness in that fact, I was able to pursue Pawlytics and I was able to better gut feel for advice from mentors or investors or other people or business partners, and I was better to, you know, decide what paths I wanted to go down and what risks I wanted to take, always with keeping the animals in my mission in mind. And so, to anyone that's listening, that's like you know, I was able to do this for my pet, and maybe there's other owners out there that are facing similar issues. There's one, to start asking questions of your community Is this something that other people are facing? And two, to allow your passion and that feeling of fulfilledness to carry you through and to really own and believe that you can make money and do good in the world. And those can be the same thing. 

Amy Castro_Host38:58

Yeah, I think you made some great points there. 

39:01

I tend to be a predictor of business failure. 

39:04

I know this is terrible to say, but I've seen and it used to be sort of a joke when you'd be driving along and you'd see a business that pops up, a little store or something like that, and you say to yourself, yeah, I give that three months and it's because the piece that's missing. I mean, the passion is so important in any business, but the need has to be there as well, and I think that's like, if nobody hears any other advice, your advice to reach out to other pet parents do they have the same problem? Everybody's looking for problems to be solved, and if you can solve my problem, I'll pay for that. But you've got to make sure that what you have to offer is a problem that has enough people that have the same problem, that are willing to pay for it, that are going to support a business, and if you do, you're going to be successful and the passion is what will carry you through. But it's that balance. I think that's so, so important. I'm so glad that you said that. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest39:59

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the hardest thing I faced along the way because Pawlytics was the fourth business I had attempted to start and this is the one I'm still, fortunately, able to pursue today. But it was a lot of failures and what I learned by the time I started Pawlytics? I didn't even actually name Pawlytics. For the first 12 months, as I was putting together my business plan, as I was doing those 400 phone calls, I was referring to it as the rescue software, because I was so tired of breaking my own heart when the business wouldn't work out. 

40:31

And I became so obsessed with the brand and the potential of where these things could go that, finally, by the time I hit Pawlytics, I was mature enough to understand that I was actually more invested in the problem than I was the solution, and what that means is that I really didn't care what the solution was Like. 

40:50

I said I'm not, my forever was a tech person prior to starting Pawlytics, and so the fact that I'm running a technology business is quite surprising to me, honestly. But it was that I was so obsessed with I'm going to solve this problem and I really don't care how I solve it. And so that's what landed me on technology, because it started as an animal rescue and then it transformed into trying to open up a cat cafe, and then that transformed into my last tech company, which transformed into Pawlytics. And so once I was able to kind of surrender to whatever the solution may be which you know the market would really decide for you I was able to see that yeah, I'm going to find a way to solve this problem, and I do not care how it gets solved, as long as it is helpful to people and animals. 

Amy Castro_Host41:34

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, wow, Lizz, thank you so much for all of your number one fabulous advice and insight into not only starting and running a pet business, but I think that the key to the whole thing is that desire to have an impact and to, you know, to help animals. That just kind of carries through in this whole conversation. So I really appreciate you being here with me today and with all of us and sharing your journey and information, and thank you so much for taking the time. 

Lizz Whitacre Guest42:10

Yeah, thank you, amy, for having me today. Thank you for the wonderful questions. I love getting to share my story, I love getting to talk about Pawlytics, being a benefit corp and I love, you know, speaking about shelters and rescues and, like you said, educating the public, because we are all in this together for the animals. 

Amy Castro_Host42:27

That's right. That's right. And so for all of you that are out there listening I know that we do have shelter and rescue folks that are listening Make sure you check out Pawlytics. I know we use it. If you want to call us at Starlight Outreach and Rescue, I'll get Kelsey on the phone. I'm the cheerleader for Pawlytics. She knows all the ins and outs and will tell you about how awesome it is. 

42:47

And for you, pet parents that are listening again, if you've got a dream, match that dream with a problem that other people need to solve and you know you too can start a pet business. 

42:59

And, if nothing else, when you go to adopt, make sure that the organization that you're adopting from has those good records and good record keeping practices, whatever those might be, so that you are getting all of that helpful information to do right by your pet moving forward. So thank you all so much for listening today to another episode of Starlight Pet Talk. Thanks for listening to Starlight Pet Talk. Be sure to visit our website at wwwstarlightpettalkcom for more resources and be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss a show. If you enjoyed and found value in today's episode, we'd appreciate a rating on Apple, or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, that would be great too. Don't forget to tune in next week and every week for a brand new episode of Starlight Pet Talk, and if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a big hug from us.