Today we’d like to introduce you to Deana Sellens.
Deana, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I have been very lucky in the fact that I have had a lot of mentors over the years help me get to where I am. I started out in retail and was lucky enough to get transferred all over the place. I picked up basic business through that experience. I wanted to get out of retail so I took a huge pay cut to start answering the phones for a credit card processor. I worked my way up there and ended up a Vice President at another processor. I was also transferred all over that company where I was able to pick up experience in risk management, accounting, etc.
Throughout my career, I volunteered with risk management industry groups and various animal welfare organizations. I was the President of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators, Gulf Coast Chapter. After 9/11 the industry came together and competitors worked to combat terrorism.
It has always bothered me that there is very little business sense and almost no collaboration in the animal welfare industry. It is run on emotion which does not sustain a business. I could be sitting in the room with 4 major US banks who can all work together to combat a problem, but you can’t put 2 animal welfare people in the same room without them fighting.
I had started a website called the Charity Workshop to try and get some collaboration going between the different groups and different charities. It was going very well and someone in the humane industry saw my website and asked me to speak at a conference. I drove up to Dallas to do my talk. This just happened to be right after Fix Houston went bankrupt. I ended up getting in line at lunch behind Emancipet. They were talking about all of the cool things happening in Austin.
I sat down by a lady and just went to ranting about how bad Houston was and the spay/neuter clinic went bankrupt. She looked at me and said, “You seem awfully passionate about spay/neuter. Why don’t you open a clinic?” I said, “I’m a fraud investigator. I would not have a clue how to do something like that.” She said, “What if someone was to show you?” I said, “I guess. Who are you?” Well, she was with Petsmart Charities. 6 months later, she called me and told me to get to Dallas for a workshop. I looked at the business plan and decided I could do it.
I set up under another animal welfare organization which turned out to be a big mistake. We got the clinic up and running but 3 of the 5 board members had zero business background…absolutely no clue. At the 3 year mark, they thought they would save my salary and fire me. They hired a convicted felon to run the clinic and 3 months after that they bankrupted it.
I was not going to do this again, but I just knew they would never be able to run the clinic. I decided to call some donors and I put together a business plan. A friend of mine had a FEMA trailer they had been using for a spay/neuter clinic. They had closed it a year or so earlier and were not using it. I raised the money and we bought it. Petroleum Wholesale allowed us to set up on one of their properties for a couple of years in our little FEMA trailer.
We outgrew the little 800 square foot trailer and moved into a 3,200 square foot building 2 years ago.
We have since seen a significant decrease in the number of animals entering into the Montgomery County Animal Shelter. We got the ordinance changed to establish a community cat program, we have partnered with the Magnolia School District to bring spay/neuter into the high schools, we have established a mobile spay/neuter set up, we partnered with Lonestar College Montgomery to put together a collaboration venue for those interested in animal welfare, we established a robust cat adoption program which adopts out over 1,000 cats and kittens per year, and we are now hitting more than 1,000 spay/neuter surgeries a month!
I don’t make the money I did working in the banking industry, but I get to have my cat sitting on my desk and I get to see the numbers of animals being killed for no reason go down. We are at a turning point. People want to do the right thing by the animals. I know we can get to a NO KILL community!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. Being fired from the last clinic and seeing it bankrupted was devastating. I learned a lot and I firmly believe what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!
Any small business growing at the speed we have grown struggles daily. We opened our doors in February of 2013 with 5 employees. We have almost 30 employees now.
Our cat sanctuary flooded last year which was a huge struggle. We rely on the space to get cats and kittens ready for adoption. It took 3 months to get it back up and running fully.
Please tell us about Texas Litter Control.
Texas Litter Control is a 501c3 public charity.
Texas Litter Control is a high quality, low-cost spay/neuter/wellness clinic, adoption center, pet food bank, and shelter support program for companion animals and their owners. Our mission is to eliminate the suffering of companion pets by preventing animals entering into shelters in Harris, Montgomery and surrounding counties in Texas by:
a.) educating the public on the importance of spaying/neutering and proper pet health care;
b.) providing a low-cost solution available to the general public for spay and neuter and basic wellness services;
c.) providing adoption options for fully vetted pets to the public;
d.) providing alternative solutions such as healthcare, food and other basic needs to pet owners considering surrendering a pet to a local shelter, and
e.) mentoring other animal welfare groups to open clinics in other under-serviced areas.
We use a common sense approach to save as many animals as possible. We are known for very unconventional solutions to problems.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I actually did get to start over so with Texas Litter Control there is very little I would do differently.
The first clinic I started was a different story. I would not have aligned with people not familiar with a small business. I would have ignored about 50% of what my mentoring group told me. I knew things were wrong, but the group was looking out for the Vet, not the business.
Pricing:
- Community Cats Spay/Neuters are $55 for Harris County Residents and $40 for Montgomery County Residents
- Owned Cats Spay/Neuters + Micro-chip are $80 for Females and $55 for Males
- Dog Pricing is by Weight – Spay/Neuters + Micro-chip start at $105 for Females and $95 for Males
- Wellness Visits are $30
Contact Info:
- Address: 24950 Spring Ridge Drive #B Spring, TX 77386
- Website: http://www.texaslittercontrol.org/
- Phone: 832-510-7622
- Email: Reggie@TexasLitterControl.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TexasLitterControl/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/txlittercontrol
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
