Meet Jennifer Le | Small Animal Veterinarian and Business Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jennifer Le and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jennifer, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Growing up, I always had a desire to start my own business. The idea of creating and building something from scratch was intriguing to me, probably because my dad, who was a mechanical engineer, had his own mechanical engineering services firm.

When I decided I wanted to become a veterinarian, starting and owning my own veterinary hospital was definitely one of my goals. I didn’t get into veterinary school when I first applied, so after graduating from undergrad in 2009, I decided to pursue my MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship, Management, and Marketing.

I started veterinary school in 2011, where I met my husband, who is co-owner of our veterinary hospital, A Couple of Vets, with me. We unfortunately worked at a toxic work environment following graduation in 2011. We finally left after almost 2 years and started doing relief work around the Houston area, so we got to see how many different hospitals function and what we wanted and didn’t want in the future at our own place. After a few years of doing this, we decided in 2019 that we wanted more stability and the freedom to practice the type of medicine we wanted as we were restricted by what was available at the practices that we provided relief at, so our journey to creating a practice of our own started in 2019.

What should our readers know about your business?
The journey to owning our own practice was definitely not easy. As mentioned, my husband and I worked at a veterinary hospital upon graduation that had a very toxic environment. Needless to say, we were micromanaged, overworked, underpaid, and literally told that we were not taught correctly at veterinary school. When we initially left and started doing relief work, instead of doing it on our own, we decided to go through a service that helps us find hospitals that are needing a contract veterinarian. Unfortunately, we were also treated poorly by this company, and decided to leave after 3 months. This is the moment we decided that we never wanted to work for someone again, so we started our own veterinary relief service.

At the end of 2018, after almost 2 years of providing relief work, we connected with a real estate agent that specialized in finding spaces for veterinary hospitals. He was from Dallas and it was very apparent when we first met with him to look at properties that he did not know the Houston area at all as he showed us many spaces that were not in ideal locations. We became discouraged after this, however, Michelle Hunt, whom we met at one of the veterinary hospitals we were providing relief work to as she was a sales representative of Henry Schein (now Covetrus), connected us to a local healthcare real estate agency, Xite Realty. We signed the contract for our lease space in April 2019.

When I say the whole process was difficult, we were literally riding the struggle bus, more so than most. The actual store front, which is the building in which the lease space is held, was not yet built. The landlords for the space were supposed to have had the entire shell built by the end of Summer 2019 so that we could start building the inside of our space, however, construction did not start on the store front until December 2019 and was promised to be finished by January 2020, however, it did not get done until March 2020. Then, the pandemic hit as our construction team was about to start building on our space.

Construction was slowed down tremendously as only a certain number of people were allowed to be together at the space at a time. In addition, materials for building were harder to access, so a project that normally would have only taken 3 months was stretched to 4-5 months. When our space was finished, our landlord’s property management team kept telling us that we would be having our fire inspection so that we could open by 8/24/2020. This did not happen as they had not finished aspects they needed for the fire marshal to even come out. We had already hired employees and started training them 8/10/2020. Then, we found out that the landlord did not build the shell correctly and we had water go into our space due to rain. We were finally able to get a fire marshal out for inspection at the end of September 2020 and officially opened September 28, 2020.

We couldn’t have made it through the challenges we faced without having a strong start-up team that had our backs every step of the way. We also couldn’t have made it without the understanding of the employees we hired as well. They all took a pay cut from the jobs that they were at to come to work with us. In addition, they did not have full-time hours for about a month and a half until we were able to actually open.

Through this whole process, we have learned that even when everything seems to be falling apart or they don’t go as planned, it all ends up working out the way it is supposed to. Sometimes you just have to let go of your expectations of how it should be and roll with the punches. Having the right people around you when things go sideways is important.

We always like to tell people that our hospital is a hospital full of “rescues.” We met the majority of our employees when we were doing relief work. They were also in toxic environments and were actively searching for new opportunities. We wanted to create a community of kindness that not only celebrates successes and milestones but also uplifts our employees, clients, and patients during the hard moments in their lives. Our tagline is “here for you when life is feline ruff.” “Here for you” is everything that we stand for, as we are here for the client and the patient. No matter who might be having a bad day, our compassion extends to everyone. Your pets already believe you are a superhero. We want you to believe it too.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’m a huge foodie, so I would take her to a bunch of restaurants, that’s for sure! Our veterinary hospital is located in Springwoods Village, which is a great area and sits in between Spring and the Woodlands. City Place, which is right across the street, houses the main Exxon campus, is always hosting events for the community.

Common Bond, which serves pastries, coffee, and light eats is one of my favorites! I love their pistachio croissant!

Star Cinema Grill – Springwoods is my husband and I’s go-to date night spot for good movie and good food. It is beautiful inside! Bloofin Sushi off Grand Parkway in Spring is also a frequented date night location.

I have a 2 1/2 year old son, so we frequent a lot of children’s indoor and outdoor playgrounds, including Cheeky Monkeys – the Woodlands, Oh Toodles in Conroe, Kanga’s – the Woodlands, Cosmic Air in Humble, Bounce N Play in Houston, and Northshore, Teddy Bear, and Bear Branch Parks.

RIDE Indoor Cycling – Hughes Landing is a great place for a bomb workout and community! I just celebrated my 800th RIDE with them.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I definitely want to recognize my parents, especially my dad, Minh Le, whom our veterinary hospital is dedicated to. Both of my parents always supported me and encouraged me to do whatever it was that I was passionate about. My dad instilled in me a love of animals, a spirit of entrepreneurship, and a mindset of hard work and dedication. He actually told me I fulfilled his dream of becoming a veterinarian. He, unfortunately, passed away in 2016 from lung cancer, but he is still very much an inspiration and driving force for me in everything I do.

I want to thank the University of Houston, where I received both my undergraduate degree and my MBA (Go Coogs!). Not only did I receive help financially from them through scholarships and fellowships throughout my undergraduate and graduate careers, I also met so many people along the way that either supported me or provided me life lessons and made me who I am today.

I also want to thank all of the amazing professors, clinicians, residents, interns, and technicians that we got to learn from at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine. They are the reason we are the veterinarians we are today.

Our start-up team was absolutely amazing. These individuals helped us acquire the space for and build our veterinary hospital and includes Xite Realty (Blake Johnson, Patrick Valentz, and Helena Jenkins), J.A. Greene Construction Services (Jonathan Greene, Paige McDonald, Jim Harrold, Christian Sevillano, Morgan Miller), Bank of America (Alexandra Kohrs), Covetrus (Vince Hranicky), Elanco (Russ Pol), Idexx (Jacob Lively, Sandy Meissner, Christo Mintchev, Bill Mullen, Kim Cormier, Emily Dallas), Zoetis (Matt Marietta), PSI (Carin Ponder), One Way Solutions (Andy Kim), AVMA PLIT (Trevor DeVries), North Star Financial (Kelly Hugghins Neely), LaRue Law Group PC (Patrick LaRue), Hearst Media (Thomas “Tommy” Legg, Andrew Green), VFX Signs (Ty Taylor), and our accountant, Karl Martin. We especially have to thank Michelle Hunt, who connected us to Xite Realty to start this process.

Website: https://www.acoupleofvets.com

Instagram: @acoupleofvets

Linkedin: @acoupleofvets

Facebook: @acoupleofvets

Youtube: @acoupleofvets

Image Credits
Audra Oden Photography and Paige Beitler Photography