Judy Morgan DVM talks with Jason Barnard about building success in a niche industry.

Judy Morgan DVM is an entrepreneur, Holistic Veterinarian, and owner of Dr. Judy Morgan’s Naturally Healthy Pets. Judy discusses her journey in creating a niche within the veterinary industry, focusing on holistic and traditional Chinese veterinary medicine.

Judy explains how social media, particularly Facebook initially, played a crucial role in spreading her message and building her brand. With her daughter managing the operations of Naturally Healthy Pets, they've doubled the business each year. Starting from a garage-based startup, she grew her business into a multi-million dollar e-commerce platform while maintaining unwavering integrity.

Judy also shares her passion for making a difference in the lives of pets and people, highlighting the valuable legacy she's building. She wraps up the episode by emphasizing the importance of ensuring the legacy of a business by being selective about partnerships and commitments.

What you’ll learn from Judy Morgan DVM

00:00 Judy Morgan DVM and Jason Barnard

01:13 Judy Morgan DVM’s Brand SERP

02:02 Judy Morgan DVM’s Corporate Brand SERP

02:31 Why Does Judy Morgan DVM Say That if She Managed Her Personal Brand Online, Nothing Would Get Done?

03:15 What is Judy Morgan DVM’s Specialty?

03:40 When was Judy Morgan DVM Featured in a National Veterinary Publication?

04:16 Why Did Judy Morgan DVM End up Buying Her Business Partner’s Shares?

05:23 What Was the Key Factor That Made Judy Morgan DVM’s Business Stand Out?

05:27 What Prompted Judy Morgan DVM to Write her First Book in 2014?

06:21 What PR Strategies Did Judy Morgan DVM Use to Sell Her First Book?

06:40 How Much Did Judy Morgan DVM Initially Charge When She Was Asked by a Dog Trainer About Her Fee?

08:20 What Book is Best for the Person New to Holistic Pet Medicine?

08:42 What Initiative Can Drive More People to an E-commerce Website or an Educational Platform?

09:42 What Are the Advantages of Having a Young COO?

11:04 What Strategies Can You Use to Get People to Discover Your Book?

12:11 What Platform is Better for Searching for Things Because There is No Censorship Issue?

12:26 Why is Holistic Medicine Often Ignored or Overlooked on Platforms Like Facebook?

15:48 What is One of the Most Important Things to Do When Growing Your Business in a Niche Market?

15:55 How Does Radical Honesty Help Entrepreneurs Build Stronger Audience Connections?

16:12 How Do Industry Practices in Veterinary Medicine Impact Pet Health and Safety?

16:39 How Does Transparent Consumer Education Build Long-Term Trust in Your Industry?

17:32 How Do You Demonstrate Authentic Passion for Your Business?

18:51 What Sacrifices Do Successful Leaders Make to Build a Meaningful Business Legacy?

20:15 Why Does a Business Leader Need to Be Selective About Interview and Podcast Requests?

This episode was recorded live on video February 4th 2025

https://youtube.com/live/uCm-Om8fbY4

Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:https://www.inc.com/profile/naturally-healthy-petshttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/vAgbmxoiVS4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h6VnuH9JLYJudy Morgan DVM

Transcript from Building Success in a Niche Industry - Fastlane Founders with Judy Morgan DVM

[00:00:00] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy. A legacy we're proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

[00:00:31] Jason Barnard: Hi, everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy. I'm Jason Barnard and I'm here with a quick hello and we're good to go. Welcome to the show, Dr. Judy Morgan.

[00:00:45] Judy Morgan: That's very nice. Thank you.

[00:00:48] Jason Barnard: Welcome. Now, from what I understand, you're a holistic veterinarian.

[00:00:53] Judy Morgan: Yes, I am.

[00:00:54] Jason Barnard: But you're going to talk to us about creating a niche within an industry, educating the people or the users or the audience or the clients within that industry that this offer exists. Holistic veterinary services and building a business out of it.

[00:01:08] Judy Morgan: Yes.

[00:01:09] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. But before we get into that, I'm going to present you with how Google perceives you. And this is Google's Knowledge Panel for you. It doesn't say you're a veterinary service provider or a holistic veterinary surgeon. It says author. And that's because you've written books and it's focusing on the books. So it perceives you to be an author potentially with a topical authority within veterinary services. And that's something we're seeing more and more.

The thing at the top, you see there is AI. And Google's generating AI to explain or to give us an overview of who you are with the photos with the dog, which is delightful, and some information about you. Normally speaking, we would see some facts there on the right hand side. But Google hasn't understood you well enough to give facts about you, such as your date of birth, a description, who your spouse is, and your social media profiles. But I found this, which I thought was super interesting, which is that your company has a really good Knowledge Panel, and it's a Corporate Knowledge Panel with reviews and the social media. And Google's really understood your company, which carries partially at least your name. So have you done any work managing your personal brand online in Google and in AI?

[00:02:27] Judy Morgan: I'm not responsible for that. We have a whole team of other people. If you leave it up to me, nothing gets done with any of that because I'm old enough that tech is not my thing. And that is part of the amazing growth that we've seen in the last few years is getting people on board that know more about those metrics and how to get our brand more well known.

[00:02:53] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. Which is the sign of a great CEO, is somebody who knows what their limitations are and finds the people who know how to do it and let them get on with their job, which is something I'm learning.

[00:03:03] Judy Morgan: Absolutely.

[00:03:05] Jason Barnard: So holistic veterinary services is something you created or did it exist before and you're simply the leader in the field?

[00:03:13] Judy Morgan: It's existed. So my specialty is actually traditional Chinese veterinary medicine. So we're talking about acupuncture. It's been around for 3,000 years. It just didn't get into the veterinary space in America until probably in the 1980s, 1990s. I didn't get into this holistic space until the mid-1990s. Before that, I was practicing traditional medicine, and I was actually featured on a national veterinary publication back in the late 1990s as doing this weird thing, this holistic medicine that nobody knew about, nobody heard anything about.

And so it. It did open a lot of doors because, you know, first I became locally well known because I was doing something different.

[00:04:04] Jason Barnard: Yeah.

[00:04:05] Judy Morgan: Which of course, you get the haters who say, this is voodoo. But actually, my business partner at the time, we ended up. I bought out his share of our practice. It was a. We had two, and I bought out his share because he said, I don't understand the black magic voodoo that you were doing, and I don't think I want to be a part of it. And I said, that's awesome. No problem.

Because I don't want to keep doing what we've been doing with this traditional medicine. And so we parted on friendly terms. Of course, it cost me a million dollars to buy out his share, but we parted on friendly terms, and our practices were only five miles apart, and we practiced that close to each other, sharing clients back and forth for many years. And it worked out just fine because we both had different things that we offered.

[00:04:51] Jason Barnard: Right. Well, that's kind of. For me, there's a kind of parallel between that and what we do, which is black voodoo magic is what people think we do by controlling Google and AI algorithms to represent the way you want. They think, how is that possible? And the other thing is that a lot of people push it away, thinking, I'm really comfortable with what I already know. I don't want to try anything new and different when. When you start to grow the business. Am I right in understanding you did a lot of PR?

[00:05:21] Judy Morgan: Oh, tons of people. Well, what really made my business pop was writing a book.

[00:05:27] Jason Barnard: Right.

[00:05:27] Judy Morgan: I wrote my first book in 2014, and I sort of wrote it just kind of on a dare. It was a Facebook social media group who kept asking a bunch of questions about Cavalier King Charles spaniels, which is the breed that I happen to love. And my answers were different from everyone else's. And they knew I was a veterinarian, and they're like, what are you talking about? And so they. They said, well, you know, you should write all this down somewhere so that we don't. You don't have to keep answering the same questions over and over. And I said, maybe I'll write a book. And I did.

And silly me, I thought, you write a book, everybody just buys it. Uh, no. You. Yeah, there's a lot of PR that goes in, especially when you self publish. You need to be out there pushing and getting people to buy it and understand that otherwise you're gonna sell 20 copies to your friends, and that's that. So that was really what started the push. But amaz, at that time, I owned two veterinary hospitals, and in trying to push that book, you know,