When Pets Are Family: Rethinking Employee Benefits with Airvet's Brandon Werber

Welcome to The Stretch, the podcast where we explore how organizations push beyond traditional thinking to meet the needs of a changing workforce. Today we're asking, what is a family when it comes to employee benefits? For many employees, pets are the heart of their family and their emotional well-being, but most benefits really haven't caught up. Our guest today is Brandon Werber. Brandon is the CEO and founder of AirVet, the first telehealth platform for veterinary care and one of the first on-demand health care experiences. How do we know we consider pets as family? There are literally twice as many households with pets in the house than there are with children, and that gap is growing. We're going to talk about why should it be part of a benefits package that an employer offers. So when a pet benefit actually removes barriers like cost and access and time, employees use it at risk. We're going to look at the benefits and the rates that will eclipse almost every other benefit in a portfolio. And we'll get into the importance of covering all pets as a member of a family. And if your family employees consider a person, an animal, a cousin to be their family and what I consider their nucleus, then that's the family. And it's not for us to say what is a family and what's not a family. So Brandon, welcome to The Stretch. Thank you for having me, Kevin. I'm excited to be a guest today. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you. Now, obviously, we've known each other for a little while. And maybe before we jump in, a fun icebreaker. So tell me about your pets. So I am a very partial to bulldogs. I love the smushy face breeds. So English bulldogs, French bulldogs. And then I love pugs too. They have a pretty special place in my heart. So the smushy face breeds. We are on our fourth French bulldog right now. So we had French bulldogs way before they were popular. So we're going to talk about the smushy face breeds. And they're very popular. We've had them for about 25 years now. And I just, you know, we've had other breeds too. Labs are amazing golden retrievers. But I find my Frenchies just have a very special place in my heart. There's just nothing like a Frenchie. I love it. I love it. So I think I've shared this with you, but we have a golden retriever now. Prior to that, we were a beagle family. And my wife knows that if I could have it my way, I'd live on a farm with like, I don't know, 30, 40 beagles and just have them run around the yard all day. But. They're known as the howlers, the howling breeds. Yes. In fact, I just learned a stat or a comment, beagle pain syndrome. It's not real, but they're apparently dogs that experience pain differently than any other breeds. Maybe we can get into that later in today's episode. Yeah. It's like a man with a cold. That's right. Yes. Yes. Of which I have one now. Perfect transition. So, Brandon, like I said, we've known each other for a little while. I've been super impressed with what AirVets, what you've all done and how you're experiencing benefits, you know, on behalf of, you know, sort of the extension of what a traditional family looks like. So why don't we start there? I would love your perspective on the definition of a family and how is that changing in the realm of benefits? Look, I think it's a great question and it sounds like an obvious one, like what is a family? But the reality is families come, in my opinion, in all shapes and sizes. And I think it's true. Sure. Different makeup centered around what I believe it's just who we care for and who we care about. We don't get that answer by being prescriptive. We get it by listening. We get it by following trends. Everybody would look at a family differently. Everybody has a different type of family. So whether you're married with kids, married without kids, but you take care of elderly parents or somebody else in the family. I know my wife grew up in a huge family where all the aunts and uncles all took care of everyone else's kids. It was almost like a village. And for so many families, their pets, they either have pets and children or pets and no children. And that's their family. So I just look at a family as like, we listen. If your family employees consider a person, an animal, a cousin to be their family and what I consider their nucleus, then that's the family. Sure. It's just for us to listen and be receptive to those differences. Yeah. So Brandon, I love that. And I also, you know, my orientation in my role and throughout my career has always been the employee, right? And sort of the more traditional family and how that has, you know, touched benefits in so many different ways, things like family forming and fertility. But I would love your perspective on how have employees, especially as you were bringing AirVet to market, how are they signaling that that pets really are part of the family? And it's sort of, I won't say a deviation from the traditional family, but an expansion for how we define what a family is. Absolutely. So I like to think of that always in like three buckets, right? How do we hear things? How do we see things? It goes back to trends and connecting dots. So I've always kind of lumped it into behavioral, financial, and cultural, right? And the way employees need or ask for things, or as those things change, it's usually in one of those buckets. So I look at behavior, for example, not surveys, but what are they actually doing, right? So they're burning PTO days to take a sick pet to the vet, not because they forgot to plan, but because when a pet gets sick and we don't expect it, it really feels as urgent as having a sick child. I have three boys who are six and under, and a fourth, finally, a girl on the way. And I remember the first time Mason, who's now six, who's my first, it was like 11 o'clock PM. He had like 103.5 and nearly 104 fever. And it was like, it was absolutely manic. I didn't know who to call, what to do. I wanted to rush to the ER. My wife's like, calm down. Let's just call the after hours line. And so I called the after hours pediatrician line. And you just get an answering machine. You leave a message. And in 40 minutes or so, like a doctor on call called back. But those 40 minutes, I mean, it feels like a lot of work. It feels like a lot of work. It felt like a lifetime. And I was panicked the entire time. Yeah, absolutely. And it was really no different when we're talking about our pets, right? When they're sick and we can't get care for them. We don't know if it's an emergency. Should I be rushing to an ER? It really feels like that. So it feels urgent and it's all encompassing. So they're going into financial debt over unexpected vet bills. They're distracted at work, losing sleep. And they're showing up just mentally checked out when something's wrong with a pet at home. And they don't have an exact care plan. So that's more of like the behavioral side of like, what are we doing? What does it feel like when we have a sick pet? Some insane stats that most people don't even believe because it's so insane to hear. But U.S. pet spending. So this goes into behavioral, cultural and financial is really what do people care about? Well, what are they spending their money on? And that tells you what they care about. Sure. And the U.S. pet care industry. So without this context, if I were to ask you just what do you think we should be doing? What do you spend every year on our pets? What would you say? Per family? Just just total in the U.S. U.S. pet spend. Oh, my goodness. And you're like, this is an interview question, Brandon. I would say the whole the the industry spends or, you know, we collectively spend $50 million. So a few years ago, we were at $90 billion a year. Just in the U.S. I was off by a few zeros. Just a few. Last year was about $150 billion. Wow. And by 2030, which is scarily only three and a half years away, it will be over $275 billion. And that's just domestically. So it's a quarter trillion dollar a year spend. And that spend is skyrocketing. So that goes to the financial side of what we're spending, the way we're humanizing our pets. And now and some will laugh at this and some will say, yeah, pet trusts are now legally recognized. In all 50 states. Wow. So people are leaving money and instructions for their pets in wills. So that's pretty wild. And it just shows that humanization. Right. How do we know that people consider their pets family? And then the clearest signal from AirVet's lens is utilization. So when a pet benefit actually removes barriers like cost and access and time, employees use it at rates that will eclipse almost every other benefit in a portfolio. So where are people spending their time? Where are people spending their money? And from a benefits perspective, the utilization tells the story, right? If we're scratching an itch or solving a pain point or not. Yeah. Well, hearing about pet trusts and people leaving money for their pets, I didn't realize I could actually think about being a financial manager just for pets. Like, I could exclusively manage beagle money. So maybe you and I can talk about that offline. Absolutely. I love the thread that you were pulling on around sort of stress, because again, this is near and dear to my heart and sort of how we think about the holistic employees. So you talked about financial strain. You talked about talked about anxiety. And it's so well put. Right. Because the whole employee is how our clients, how employers throughout the United States really think about sort of enhancing the lives of their members. And so the extension is not just to mental health and EAP benefits, but veterinary care is sort of a fascinating way to look at it. And I'll even share, many of us have experienced pet loss Right. So we previously have lost pets and it impacts you. Right. And and the days, you know, after losing, to your point, an extension of your family is it's very painful. And so to being able to recognize that emotional stress and anxiety is a powerful thing for an employee to recognize and their employer to support. I agree completely. And it's one of those awful inevitabilities of parenthood is there. You know, our that what people always say is they're they're a part of our lives, but we are their entire life. Sure. And knowing that at some point we're going to have to say goodbye is devastating. We actually are unveiling both palliative care on AirVet and grief counseling. So when people are asking the question, when do I know it's time to say goodbye? Right. Because a lot of the time, not all the time, but a lot of the time it's a decision we have to make, which is different. And knowing when to make. And how to make it and when it's time is one of the hardest decisions we will ever make as pet parents and being able to talk that through, not in a 15 minute vet appointment, but being able to talk to somebody for hours and multiple times if we need to, until we're comfortable and confident is it's a massive value add for for people emotionally. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a great transition because we've established pets are part of family. It's very important for employers to sort of recognize how we can support members of what the modern family looks like. Yeah. Okay. a little over 50% of households, the families included pets. Today it's 70% of all households in the country include pets. And over the next three and a half years, that'll be 83%. So there are literally twice as many households with pets in the house than there are with children. And that gap is growing. So when we talk about, you know, why should pets be included in, you know, a family support strategy or caregiving, it's because we're not talking about 18 or 20% of the workforce, right? We're talking about the overwhelming majority of the workforce and growing. And about 97% of all pet families said that they consider their pets to be a core part of their family, 97%. Right? So it goes back to listening. How do we know they're part of the family? Well, look at the growth rates and listen to them. They're literally telling us that their pets are part of the family. Well, and it's amazing too, because you think about more traditional health-focused benefits, for example, you know, only certain people are going to have knee replacements or hip replacements, right? But you're- You're talking about a level of universality that impacts so many people and so many families. Exactly. Exactly right. So when we think about the benefits, the financial stress, the emotional stress around caring for their pets or stress when we're not able to care for them or access care, and we can alleviate that stress, we're not talking about a small segment. We're talking about nearly the entire workforce. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. So Brandon, I think I've exhausted many of the questions I wanted to ask you. And I hope our listeners have come to sort of learn a little bit more about what you're doing, because again, you all are doing super cool things. But there's one last question I'd love to ask you. What is the most surprising thing you've learned about maybe employees and their pets? I'm sure you have lots of fun stories that your clients have told you, but maybe what's the most surprising? You know, one thing I have found really surprising is there's a sentiment, and I think maybe it's just because of the old guard of 25 years, what benefits for pet families have looked like and what opportunities they've had. And I think it's just because of the old guard of 25 years, what options have been out there and how they've been delivered that we seem to have been really accepting that certain benefits are just low utilization and really low utilization. And somehow, because that's all that's been around, the industry as a whole was just very accepting of like, oh yeah, pet benefits, ours, we've had it for X amount of years, it gets 1% enrollment or less, but that's what everybody gets. So we're at table stakes. I was really surprised that there were companies, people out there that were saying, hey, what does that tell us if 99% of the workforce is not using the solutions that we're offering? But then whenever we ask them what they want, in this case, they say they want pet benefits. So we roll out certain, you know, a voluntary pet benefit, let's say, and then nobody enrolls. But for 25 years, we just kept launching it. I think I was really surprised that somehow everyone was just okay with that because that was the expectation. And when we rolled AirVet out, we just, the delivery, I think, was so different, where it was employer paid, so it's free for all pet families. So we've removed all cost barriers and access barriers. We don't exclude anybody, right? So there's no exclusions on one thing or another. It's all pets, not just cats and dogs. So we've done iguanas, we've done a live birth of goats on AirVet. We do chickens. We've done a tarantula, bearded dragons, geckos. Because, like, it kind of goes back to what you said before, like, what's a family? It's not for me to say if you have a cat or a dog, you're a family, and you get this great benefit for pet care. But if you have a bearded dragon or a spotted gecko, you're not a family. And unfortunately, you don't get access to a benefit for a pet family. So when we rolled it out, it was from that surprise, right? And we said, we've got to do this differently. And that's why the enrollment and utilization we see, I mean, even in year one as an average, is double digits. And for many clients, set utilization records, like next to health insurance. For many clients, we're the highest utilized benefit they offer. Yeah, that's amazing. And if our listeners click on the link below, you'll be able to see the birth of those live goats. No, I'm just kidding. That must have been a really interesting process to watch. I have a million questions for you, but I won't ask them. Luckily, I have it. I didn't watch it. But it was actually a two-hour visit that went on. Wow. Yeah, the doctor stayed on and walked them through delivering the goats for the entire delivery. Wow, that is amazing. That's a great story. It was wild. But you've used AirVent a couple of times, right? I have. Unfortunately, no live goat births yet. But we'll see what 2027 has in store for me. It's mostly contact dermatitis and food allergies. Of which you have helped with both. So they've been fantastic. So Brandon, this was a ton of fun. I loved chatting with you as always. But more importantly, having our listeners learn a little bit more about AirVent and what you're doing. Well, I appreciate you having me on and getting to share a little bit about what we're so excited about and supporting pet families. That is a passion of mine. I grew up in a house with 15 cats and dogs. And my dad's a veterinarian. So this is very much a labor. It's a labor of love and getting to provide the same kind of unlimited care that I was always spoiled with with my dad. I just picked up the phone, called my dad, never had to think about access or cost. And I just wanted everybody to have that. So it's been a lot of fun. And you found a way to scale it. So again, thanks, Brandon. Appreciate it. Thank you, Kevin. And that's it for this episode of The Stretch. As the workforce changes and expectations are rising, meeting people where they are means that benefits need to be more exclusive, flexible, and connected to everyday life. Thank you so much to Brandon and the AirVet team. Thank you for listening. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please follow The Stretch and share it with a colleague who's thinking about the future of benefits. We'll see you next time.