Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Vet Tech Built an 8500 Monthly Side Hustle in Telehealth Triage
Transcript
- Lucas: So Maria's a veterinary technician at a large animal hospital in Denver. Ten years in, she's doing intake, triage, assisting in surgeries, educating pet owners. The usual intense vet tech day. Luna: And she turned that into an eight-thousand-five-hundred-dollar-a-month side hustle doing remote triage for a pet telehealth startup. Lucas: Exactly. The company is called VetTriageNow — it's a platform where pet owners pay thirty-five dollars per call to speak to a licensed vet tech for ten to fifteen minutes. The tech assesses urgency, gives basic advice, and directs them to an emergency vet if needed. Luna: So Maria's basically doing the same triage she does at the clinic, but from home, in the evenings, on her own schedule. Lucas: That's the core insight. She's not learning a new skill. She's taking a skill she already has — one that's undervalued in her day job — and selling it directly to a market that needs it. The clinic pays her maybe twenty-eight dollars an hour. With VetTriageNow, she's effectively billing her time at the full thirty-five-dollar call fee, which works out to around a hundred and forty to two hundred and ten dollars an hour if she can keep calls moving. Luna: But wait — doesn't she have a non-compete with her hospital? Most clinics make you sign one. Lucas: Great question. She did have a non-compete, but it specifically prohibited working for another veterinary clinic within a twenty-mile radius. VetTriageNow is a telehealth platform, not a clinic. Her lawyer — she paid four hundred bucks for a one-hour consult — confirmed that remote triage for a non-clinic entity fell outside the scope of her non-compete. That's a critical detail for anyone in healthcare looking at a side hustle. Luna: Worth every penny of that four hundred, I'd say. Lucas: Absolutely. So she starts — this is early 2025 — and within three months she's averaging fifteen to twenty calls per week. Each call is ten to fifteen minutes, and she logs in three to four evenings a week, plus Saturday mornings. That's about eight to ten hours of billable time per week. Luna: Which at thirty-five dollars per call, assuming about one and a half calls per hour, gives you around fifty-two to seventy dollars per hour. But she told you she nets eighty-five hundred a month? Lucas: She does, but that's not all from VetTriageNow. The platform pays her fifty percent of the call fee — so seventeen fifty per call. At seventy calls a month, that's about twelve hundred and twenty-five. But she also offers paid written follow-ups for five dollars each, which many owners opt for, adding another three to four hundred. The real money came after she built a reputation on the platform. Luna: She started her own thing on the side? Lucas: Exactly. She created a profile on a site called PetExpertConnect — think of it as a marketplace for pet advice. She offers thirty-minute video consults for forty dollars. She gets about twenty to twenty-five of those a month now. That's another eight hundred to a thousand. Plus she started a small subscription Q&A service — ten dollars a month for unlimited text questions. She has about sixty subscribers, so another six hundred. It all adds up. Luna: So she's diversified beyond a single platform. Smart. But I want to go back to something — the liability piece. If she gives bad advice and a pet gets hurt, who's on the hook? Lucas: She carries her own professional liability insurance — it's about three hundred and fifty dollars a year through a group plan for vet techs. VetTriageNow also has a corporate policy that covers their contractors for work done on their platform. But for her own PetExpertConnect consults, she's solely covered by her personal policy. She made sure of that before starting. Luna: That's a lot of upfront homework. Non-compete check, lawyer, insurance, platform research — this isn't a passive income story. Lucas: No, it's not. And honestly, that's something we hear a lot from listeners who've started successful side hustles. The preparation phase is real. It takes focus and a few hundred dollars in legal and insurance costs. But Maria's case shows that if you have a licensable, portable skill — especially in healthcare — there's likely a remote market for it that you haven't considered. Luna: And the market is growing. Pet telehealth is projected to hit something like six billion dollars by 2030. Owners are getting used to virtual vet visits. Lucas: That's right. And the barrier for vet techs is lower than for veterinarians — techs don't need a state license to practice across state lines in most cases, as long as they're working under a supervising vet. VetTriageNow has a staff veterinarian who reviews all triage notes, so that covers the legal requirement. Luna: So someone listening who's a vet tech, or maybe a human nurse, what's the playbook? Find a platform? Check your non-compete? Lucas: First, inventory your skills. What do you do all day that someone would pay for separately? Triage is a classic. Second, check your employment agreement. If it's ambiguous, spend the four hundred on a lawyer. Third, find a platform that matches your credential level. VetTriageNow is just one example. There are similar ones for human telehealth, for dental triage, even for mental health support. Luna: And if the platform doesn't exist? Could you start your own? Lucas: That's a bigger leap, but some people do. There's a story of a dental hygienist who started a subscription Q&A service for post-procedure care. She charges fifteen dollars a month and has a hundred subscribers. So it's possible. But Maria's path — using an existing platform to build a reputation and then layering on your own direct offerings — that seems more replicable. Luna: Speaking of replicable — we should mention that this show is ad-free and listener-supported. A small group of regular listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's what keeps these episodes coming. Lucas: Yeah, it's a pretty direct relationship. If the show has helped you think about a career move, that's where you can support it. No pressure, just good to know. Luna: Alright, back to Maria. What's the biggest mistake she made early on? Lucas: Underpricing her own time. When she started on PetExpertConnect, she initially set her rate at twenty dollars per thirty-minute consult because she was nervous about getting clients. She got plenty of clients, but she was burning out for low pay. After three months, she raised it to forty, lost maybe a quarter of her clients, but her income went up and her hours went down. Classic pricing mistake. Luna: I think a lot of freelancers do that. You undervalue yourself until you see the demand. Lucas: Right. And the demand is there. There are more pet owners than ever, and they're willing to pay for convenience. Maria's story is a perfect example of taking a skill from a low-paying institutional setting and repackaging it for a direct to consumer market. It's not easy, but the blueprint is clear. Luna: So for our listeners — if you have a clinical or diagnostic skill, whether in vet med, human health, dental, whatever — this is worth exploring. Start small, check your legal stuff, and don't be afraid to raise your prices. Lucas: And if you want to hear more about how Maria navigated the platform algorithms and built her first five regular clients, that's in our extended interview on the Fexingo website. For now — if you're a vet tech, your side hustle might be one non-compete review away.