This time, you the audience, got to Ask Andy Anything! In this special 300th episode of the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast, host Kelsey Beth Carpenter turns the tables on Dr. Andy Roark, interviewing him about his journey from general practice veterinarian to renowned author, speaker, and conference founder. Dr. Roark shares insights into his career evolution, work-life balance strategies, and the importance of a strong team. He also reflects on memorable moments and guests from past episodes, offering a glimpse into the heart and soul of this beloved veterinary podcast. If you’re a veterinarian, technician, or other veterinary professional seeking inspiration and practical advice, this episode is a must-listen.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Uncharted Veterinary Podcast: https://unchartedvet.com/uncharted-veterinary-podcast/
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Andy Roark is a practicing veterinarian, international speaker, author, and media personality. He is the founder of the Uncharted Veterinary Conference and DrAndyRoark.com. He has been an award-winning columnist for DVM360 and the magazine Today’s Veterinary Business. His social media, website, podcast and YouTube show reach millions of people every month.
Dr. Roark has received the NAVC Practice Management Speaker of the Year Award three times, the WVC Practice Management Educator of the Year Award, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Veterinarian of the Year Award from the South Carolina Association of Veterinarians. His greatest achievement however involves marrying a bad-ass scientist and raising 2 kind and wonderful daughters.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host Dr. Andy Roark. I’m not your host Dr. Andy Roark. I have the tables turned on me. My team came to me and said for the 300th episode, we’re gonna interview you for the podcast and so the one and only Kelsey Carpenter is taking over this interview in just a moment and She’s got some list listener questions for me and we have a really good.
I hope it’s a really good conversation. I’m always fascinated at what my team is interested in knowing from me and, and what people who listen to the podcast are interested in knowing. And so we talk a lot about work life balance. We talk about getting everything done. We talk a lot about what it means to actually work for me and, and what the, the Uncharted, Dr.Andy Roark team does and things like that. It’s, um, I, I, I don’t know. I hope you guys find it interesting. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of a look into my life, and kind of what happens behind the scenes over here. But, um, anyway. Thanks a lot guys for listening to 300 episodes. I can’t believe we got here and, and the support has just been absolutely incredible.
And so anyway, man, that’s enough for me. Let’s get into this episode
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: (singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Welcome, everybody, to the Cone of Shame podcast. I’m your host, not Dr. Andy Roark I’m Kelsey Carpenter, and we’re here today for the, drumroll please, 300th episode of the Cone of Shame podcast. This is a very, very special episode, and why is that, Dr. Andy Roark?
Dr. Andy Roark: I was informed by my team that I would not be hosting this episode. I would be answering questions.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Absolutely. So we have a very special guest on the episode today named Dr. Andy Roark. Don’t know if you’ve heard about him. You may have heard his name in that jingle you just listened to. And today what we did is we went to the Dr. Andy Roark social media and newsletter and we asked all of you out there in the audience, what do you want to ask Dr. Andy Roark for the 300th episode of the Cone of Shame? And I’ve gathered these questions and yeah, we’re going to turn the mic over to Dr. Andy Roark to you this time and ask you some questions, Andy, here on the receiving end this time.
Dr. Andy Roark: I, I am ready.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: And so, for people who don’t know you you’re a practicing veterinarian. You’re the founder and owner of the Uncharted Veterinary Conference. You host the Cone of Shame podcast and co host with Stephanie Goss, the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. You just recently completed your first successful as our team has called it, get up, which is also known in the athletic world as a muscle up?
Is it a muscle up?
Dr. Andy Roark: Muscle up. Yeah, yeah.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Proud of myself for even getting that far with that.
Dr. Andy Roark: Good job. That was good.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Is that a pretty, is that a pretty decent bio for you? What’s a fun fact people should know about you as part of your bio?
Dr. Andy Roark: As far as my bio let’s see, I have, I have a lot of hobbies. Yeah, I, I like to try new things and I have a lot of hobbies and my wife is a college professor and she’s brilliant and definitely the more impressive of the duo. And I, I, I mentioned that cause I talk about her a lot on the podcast and then I have two wonderful teenage daughters and you’re like, teenage daughters are not wonderful.
And I will say for their dad, they are.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yep, yours are pretty wonderful. Yours put a special touch..
Dr. Andy Roark: I feel really lucky. I feel
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: You are, and we especially love your daughters because they are responsible for sending out all our new Dr. Know It All games that people have been ordering and they are so on top of it. I love it. They’re
Dr. Andy Roark: awesome.
They take, they take shipping the Dr. Know It All card games to people very, very seriously, and they really on the ball. And so I yes, it is, it is a job that they are very proud to have. I love that they can be teenagers and have a job in like packing and shipping, and that they, they do a good job.
But I was, you know, of course you’re worried like, are my kids gonna take this seriously? And people, you know, people want their games and I want them to have a great experience. And boy, they, they really have shown up and just a way to make me proud. And so if you got a Dr. Know It All Card game in the mail, you know, that my daughter’s packed that for you with love and sent it to you.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yep. I’ve got mine sitting right here on my desk, so. Well, let’s jump into it. We are uh, asking you questions again that came from the Dr. Andy Roark and Cone of Shame audience, which is really exciting. And I have the honor of presenting those questions to you. And so let’s kick it off. With the fact that here we are on the 300th episode of the Cone of Shame podcast.
How did we get here, Dr. Andy Roark? How did you go from a general practice veterinarian to now having hundreds of episodes of podcasts, numerous veterinary conferences, writing, all types of speaking, all types of stuff. How’d we get here? Okay. Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark: I did two episodes earlier this year, one was with Dr. Sarah Boston and one was with Dr. Sam Morello, and they both talk about changes in their career. And they both kind of said the same thing, which was that they are, they’re both perpetual ladder climbers, which means they’re always, they’re not messing around.
They always want to be improving in what they’re doing. And for both of them, they both had radical changes in their career. And I really asked him about like, how did you decide to put this thing down and do this other thing. And they both said they never really decided to put something down. They always found something else that they were excited about, and they kind of went that way.
And when they said that, I saw myself in them very much, which is why I had them on, because I was kind of looking at, you know, how do you sort of reinvent yourself, and how do you grow? And so the best piece of advice I give to vet students is, is, my advice for them is figure out what you like to do and figure out how to do more of it and figure out what you don’t like to do and figure out how to do less of it. And that’s that’s really been my career the whole time.
I never had a master plan I just I knew that I liked to write and I knew after I got invited to do some presentations. I enjoy it. I enjoy telling stories. I really enjoy sharing ideas and trying to help people and encourage them and especially if they have a problem and I can give them some insight from the outside because i’m not so close to the problem. They, their eyes go wide and they’re like, ah, you’re right.
That’s what I should do. And they, they, they know it. I just, I love that. And so it was never this big. I’m going to put down what I’m doing and do that. Everything was incremental for me. And so that’s sort of what I would say to people who are like, you know, I’ve been in a general practice vet or a technician for years, and I want to start doing something else for me.
I never bet the farm on anything. I always. I just started doing other work at night and on the weekends. And I know that’s a lot, but I, it’s work I love and I was excited about it. And then when I was like, okay, I’m convinced that I can keep doing this. Then I went from four and a half days at the clinic down to three and a half days at the clinic and, and I, and I cut my salary, you know, like I told him, like, Hey, I’m going, I’m cutting 18%, you know, of my hours.
And my expectation is that you’ll cut 18 percent of my pay. And, you know, and they were like, okay, well, it’s great. It saves us some money. And they were at a place where they, they were, you know, they weren’t super busy. And, and, you know, they said, it might be if, if you want to come back, we’ll put you back up and if it, will you help us out if we get shorthanded sometimes?
And I was like, sure, you know, yeah, I can short term jump in and cover and, you know, do stuff like that. And I always kept a really good relationship with the practices that I was working at, and they were always supportive of me. And so that, that’s really how it is, but it was never a grand gesture, you know, risk everything.
It was always start, make sure you like doing it, make sure that there’s opportunity. And when you build that up, then gently start turning down some of the other things you do. And I’ve gone through periods where I’ve gone back to practice and practice full time. And I’ve gone back down, you know, down to when I didn’t go to practice for a couple of months, you know, there was probably a year or two back in
2016, 2017, 2018, I probably did a dozen days out of the year in the practice. And then, you know, back up and back up now, I’m probably at 75 days out of the year, a hundred days out of the year or something like that, not that much, probably 75 days a year, something like that.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: That’s fascinating. It’s funny. That’s one of the best lessons I ever learned from you personally was I’ve had a couple of scenarios that I’ve come to as what come to you as one of my mentors with and you’ve often told me you don’t need a master plan. You need a direction and an idea and some foundation, but you don’t need to know what the plan is two, three, four, five years down the road.
I don’t need to know how the podcast is going to progress for the next decade. You know, you have to have a strong idea and the passion for it. And you always told me what is the worst case scenario. It doesn’t work, and what happens? You go back to what you were doing. If you leave on a, on a good note, or if you step back on a good note, people will take you back.
And that’s definitely been true. That’s one of the best lessons I’ve, I’ve definitely learned from working with you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Good. Yeah. Don’t, don’t burn that bridge, but yeah, you’re spot on. I always say, you know, have something that you’re working on now and know what you want to do next. And beyond that, I’ve never had a plan that’s held up. I’ve had great, grand aspirations that have never, never gone anywhere. I think you should always be making a plan.
I think you should have a plan. I think you should hold onto it really loosely. And I always loved that saying if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. And it’s just because I had so many plans that just did not. Did not have any chance of actually happening when we got into it, but boy, they sounded great when I said them before the time.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Absolutely. Well, and I want to ask you about how you decided on sort of what the Cone of Shame podcast was going to be about because I distinctly remember the years ago when we started it, you started the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast first. And then I remember you coming to our team and saying, gang, don’t freak out.
Dr. Andy Roark: Everybody freak out.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I want to start a second podcast
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: We all lost it. And then we, we calmed down and we thought, okay, maybe this would be a good idea, but what made you start the second podcast?
Dr. Andy Roark: I love the first cat podcast so much. I loved it so much and I wasn’t getting to do exactly what I wanted to do. It was never about any project I take on. It’s not about the project. It’s about what am I trying to do? And so I, I have, I mean, I have imposter syndrome like everybody else. I’ve got a lot of imposter syndrome.
I’m a, I’m a general practice doctor. I’m not the smartest clinician that you’re going to find by far. And that probably comes through in my interviews of the smartest clinicians that you’re going to find. But, you know, I, I had the insecurity too, of like, I don’t, I don’t know. I want to, I wanted to make something that people would enjoy listening to.
And I don’t want to sound dumb and you know, all those sorts of things, but I genuinely want to learn. And also I don’t like podcasts where two people get on and they both act like they’re experts and they’re educating the masses. Like, I don’t, that’s not how I want to learn. I want to, I want to hear somebody who’s struggling his way through it.
Genuinely ask the questions that he wants to know. And so I’m like, I’m just going to take that mantle and lean into, into that. I. I put off a podcast for a long time because I couldn’t imagine it in my head. And that was a mistake that I made. And then I could imagine the Uncharted podcast. I was like, I’m going to have a wingman, which always makes things less scary.
And I think I see a lot of people now who are starting to do speaking and presenting, and they’ll put them in pairs. And I think that’s a good thing because it’s never as scary when you’re, when you’re putting yourself out there with someone else. And so. I got, I got Stephanie Goss to do it with me and she’s such a great conversationalist and, and she’s so fun and funny.
And she’s one of those people who draws humor out of me. Cause she’ll start giggling
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: was gonna
say, it doesn’t hurt that she laughs at your jokes, that’s a good
Dr. Andy Roark: well, she’ll start, yeah. She’ll start laughing at my jokes and she’s got this giggle and I will. Try to make her laugh more like whether it’s not even intentional. I’m like, well, we’re going to keep this going and I will just, and then she’ll giggle more and it just, it’s this positive reinforcement loop that gets me going.
And so we, we have a great time and she’s just so easy to talk to. And so, and the format is. It was and is so people would ask us a management question and then we’d answer their question and then I didn’t have a worry about is this useful? It’s like no they asked a question clearly It’s useful because they want to know and so we’re gonna we’re gonna do this thing And after I did it for a while, I thought this is great.
I understand it. I’ve got confidence now. I always want to make the resources that I want to have. And like I said, I am, I am an, an average clinician. I think, I think I’m very good relationship builder. I think I’m very good with clients. I hope I’m very good with teams. I think I am, but I am an average clinician when it comes down to the medicine.
And I thought about how I like to learn and the way that I wanted to learn is an informal way. I like to laugh. I like to have fun. And I really wanted to mirror the conversations that I have with other people in the doctor’s office when I go, Hey, Kelsey, I got this case and this is kind of what I’m looking at.
And that’s always how I really learned the best in practice. And I really loved learning from my colleagues cause I’m asking them for their advice and their perspective. And some of them I agreed with immediately. And some of them, I just, I don’t look at cases the way that they do. And that’s not bad, but I always learn something.
And so once I figured out, you I would like this podcast to exist and I did not hear anything like that and I had done the thing with Stephanie. I’m like, I know I enjoy this. I know what’s involved in making it. I think I’m going to sort of stick my toe in the water and try it. And so, and so I did. I also had gotten my butt kicked a number of times trying things and it just crashes and burns.
And so my tolerance for failure was pretty high. And I was like, we’re just going to do this. I think I even probably said at the beginning, welcome to season one. Because, because that way if it’s stunk and no one listened, I would just be like and that’s the end of
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: And that’s it!
Dr. Andy Roark: we’re going to take a break and then yeah, and it wasn’t like yeah, I would be like that there, these are the 10 episodes we planned on no failure
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Limited, it’s a Netflix limited series.
Dr. Andy Roark: as 100%.
It was a limited series the whole time and I’m stopping not because no one listened,
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I
Dr. Andy Roark: because I wanted to. Exactly. Always set yourself up with an escape hatch like that, like, Ooh, we’ll start with season
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Perfect. But no, I love what you say about I’m the same way. I often, as a veterinary technician, I saw myself as pretty average medical wise. I thought I was quite good with people. The people side of it and the pets. I’m often the person who’s like, I’ve got this question and I think it might be dumb and it’s in the back of my head, but I’m too scared to ask it.
And then you go and you ask it for me on every episode of the podcast and, and that is helpful. Yeah, but I think that ties me into another question that we got from our audience here. I say are because it is my podcast now.
Dr. Andy Roark: You sing the theme song! Like, we didn’t mention that, you were the It’s you that sings the theme song!
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Speaking of, that’s one of my most memorable moments of the Cone of Shame podcast was being terrified to write my first jingle, and you put so much faith in me. And then I remember the very end of the jingle, I had to record that, like, I’m not kidding, 27 times I had to say, with Dr. Andy Roark because it’s really hard.
To say your name in a way that like phonetically comes out without sounding dumb and in like a very tight music window, that was a challenge, saying your name perfectly. But oh, sorry, go
Dr. Andy Roark: I hired you, I was like, Kelsey, I have, I have unique challenges for you. Do you, are you sure you want this job? And you were like, I’m up for unique challenges.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I was like, how about we do one season of me working with you? We’ll see how it goes.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, it goes three. Yeah. Three months
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yeah, but that ties me into another question that we had is why is it called the Cone of Shame?
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I made a YouTube show, which was supposed to be for pet owners, and it was, it was a comedy pet, it was a comedy show. I, I do improv comedy, and I had other comedians that would come over, and I would show them the scripts, and then we would kind of do a read through on the scripts, and they would Good pitch jokes and we would laugh together and and come up with with jokes to go in it. So it’s actually written like a like a sketch show. And I want it to be educational for pet owners and stuff for that and I put it out and it did well I mean some of these Some of these episodes that got 300, 500, 000 views.
It was a ton of work. It was a ton of
work to make it and Yeah, it was it was really hard to write the scripts and then filming the way that we did it was really grueling It just it took a lot out of it and it was one out of me and I was one of those things where I I really after about six months or so.
I was like this is killing me. This is It’s really taken a lot of time and it was not work I really enjoyed. And that’s kind of what I learned about myself is I love pet owners, but the idea of, of making educational content for pet owners, it does not light my fire. The way that making stuff for to support vet teams does. I just vet people are just my people I just I just love them and I just I want to work for them and pet owners are great I do like pet owners, but I’m I they’re just not my people in the same way where i’m like yeah, i’m gonna i’m gonna stay up at night and work on something for you. And so anyway, but I I did love that show and that name was perfect and we had a logo for it with the cone on me and it was just I thought it was really funny. You And so that was, honestly, that was when I learned the thing about seasons because we just started making them.
I really, in hindsight, I wish I’d made season one. I wish we had done 10 episodes and then put it down for three or six months. And then I probably would have picked it back up and done 10 more. And I probably could have kept it going, but I didn’t. I was like, we’re doing this every week and it just burned me.
It just burned me out. And, but boy, I learned, I learned from that. But anyway, I, I just, I love that branding. I love that logo. I love that, that kind of goofy feel. The Cone of Shame for me, I, you know, when I have guests on, especially we have like some of the best guests in the world, as far as like, these
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Oh, my God. Yeah.
These people
Dr. Andy Roark: are credentialed like 87 different ways.
And just, they literally wrote the textbooks that I used in vet school. It is incredible. And. And the nice thing is I want them to come in and know what they’re walking into. And so it’s hard to be like, you’re on the Cone of Shame Podcast. Don’t take yourself too seriously. And you know, they, they, I think they get, I think if I called it like veterinary insights, people would show up with this sort of different attitude.
It’s like, look, buddy, this is the Cone of Shame. Like if, if, yeah, if you want to, if you want to have a margarita while you’re here, you can, it’s, it’s recorded virtually. You just make it yourself.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Exactly. No, it’s true that I remember our beloved friend and coworker, Maria, asking at one point, because she does a lot of work on the podcast, talking about, why is it the Cone of Shame? And I remember you kind of phrasing it as, you know, I don’t mind being the one to wear the cone of shame and ask all the questions that, you know, you want to ask but you maybe feel uncomfortable doing.
And I love that, yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: That is the other part of it, too. And that is true. It goes right back to this thing of, it’s kind of an inside joke for me because I knew at the beginning, I did not want to be on a podcast where I pretended to be an expert talking to other experts to educate the masses. I just, as condescending, I mean, I don’t want to dunk on other people doing it.
And people really don’t like to look dumb. And I get it. Cone of Shame. Part of it’s for me is like, you know what? I will ask the stupid question. Sometimes, I genuinely don’t know and I feel like I should know. And sometimes I’m like, I have a pretty good inkling here, but this feels like the obvious next question to, to be complete.
And so I’ll ask, I’ll ask the dumb question, but it is the cone of shame. And I use that as a reminder to myself to ask, ask the silly question or the question that makes you insecure. And honestly, I’ve, the feedback we’ve gotten has always been wonderful. And I, I am amazed that we, you know, we get like 10, 000 people a week, listen to the podcast.
It’s, it’s insane.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I’m not surprised though because I do, I heard this thing recently and it was something along the lines of there are no unique messages. If you think about all the minds in the world, like the messages have, the ideas have all been had. But there are unique messengers, the way you portray the message is unique, and I think that is very true because the things we’re covering on this podcast are not necessarily unique, they’re not necessarily all novel ideas, but it’s the way you ask the questions, and it’s the way the guests are asked.
bottle this incredible information in their minds into such a consumable presentation that it makes it so that I, as a veterinary technician, can listen and learn something a CSR could listen and learn something a pet owner could listen and learn something a fellow veterinarian can listen and learn something.
I think that’s what’s valuable about it. But another big question that we got numerous. This is, this is the one is, okay. You’re doing all this. You’re doing two podcasts. You’re doing numerous conferences. You’re speaking. You’re working in the clinic. You have a whole family. You have a dog. You have all this stuff.
How do you balance it all? What is the Dr. Andy Roark secret to balancing it? And still having a life as well outside of it all.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I if there is a secret, it’s not sexy. It, it is, it really is. It is. It’s being intentional and I, I live out of my calendar and I don’t know how else to live, but if it’s not on my calendar, I generally am not doing it. And, and that’s, that’s not a flex, but that’s just, just true. I am intentional.
And so I was at the clinic this morning. I got up, I set the alarm so that I could get up and walk my dog. And eat my breakfast and see my kids and get to work. And so I did that. And someone else reached out to me yesterday and said, Can you talk? And I said, I can call you from the car when I come home from the clinic.
And I put it on my calendar to call him from the car. And so then I went to the clinic and I did not mess with my other stuff. I was head down. I, when I am on the floor, I want to be on the floor. When I am there, I am not trying to do other stuff. And I think it’s a big thing. I don’t believe in multitasking.
And so I, I am there, I am going to be head down on what I am going to be present with the patients. I’m going to be present with the team. I want them to have my full attention. I just feel I have tried to multitask and it made me miserable and it did not help me. And so I am there and I am head down.
And then I got out, I made the phone call on the way home. I had a one 30 phone call lined up with our team. To plan content for Uncharted in the first quarter of next year. And everybody was there. There was a shared Google documents. People had already put their ideas of what they were excited about for our, for our member community in there.
And we went to work on it. I finished that phone call 10 minutes before I got on to this podcast with you.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: With me. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: and, and here we are at, yep. I am, I’ve got a podcast after this that I’m doing that I’m excited about. And then I’ll be done at 5 PM at which time I will cook dinner and then at seven o’clock I take my daughter to dance class.
And so that’s like, and again, that’s, that’s how it is. And I am, I am, I am stacked pretty regularly like that. But that, that’s really the thing. The other, the other part I’ll say too, cause this is a thing that, that I just, it’s important for me to say for a long time. I worked, I just, I just worked really hard.
I like to work. I have a strong work ethic. But I, I, I really struggled with, with just working all the time and so anyway, I I put family stuff like I said take my daughter to dance that’s on my calendar So that and and I treat it like I treat being at the vet clinic like those are of equal weight to me. Yeah, like it’s just a big thing.
I, you know, I, I, I go to the gym, I go to the gym at 6 a. m. And it’s just because it fits into my day, but I’m in, I’m in bed. 930 comes around and I’m, I’m, I’m in bed. But, but I scheduled things, I put them in. Here’s the big thing. And I really, if there’s one thing I could make veterinarians here or people in the medicine here, take your vacation time and put it on your calendar now for next year, for 2025.
Go through your calendar and block the time on your calendar you’re planning to be on vacation. And if you’re like, I don’t know where I’m going to go, then start blocking some long weekends. And here’s, here’s the thing. You can move those blocks around on your calendar. If you plan to take a long weekend, the first weekend of March, but then they need you at the clinic, move it to the second weekend of March.
But don’t delete it. And ultimately, your calendar will fill in around these blocks, and then you will have that vacation time on your calendar, and I want you to be just as present on that vacation time, that time for you, as you are when you’re at the clinic. I want people to vacation as hard, meaning as focused, as intentionally, as when they go to the clinic.
And it’s not easy as you think. And this is from a guy who went three years and didn’t take a vacation early in my career, and that was a mistake. That was a mistake. And so anyway, that’s one of the big things for me is that I learned is if you’re going to just keep the hammer down and kind of work, I have to take care of myself and I do that by looking ahead a year, blocking my time off.
And sometimes I’ll block, I’ll block a week off with no plans to do anything. And ultimately, I will, I will go, I’ll go camping that weekend with my family, or I’ll, you know, I’ll, you know, I’ll, I’ll do, or I’ll do a staycation. I’ll, yeah, I’ll do something. I will, I will do I will enter a Kung Fu death
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: There we go.
Dr. Andy Roark: Or, or I’ll clean the house and do all of the crap that I always say if I had time I would
do this and then I just do it, yeah, so that’s
my best answer. I try. You
are?
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Kelsey Beth Carpenter: You know, I see on your social media comments from people all the time. I wish I could work with you, Dr. Andy Roark and I will say as someone who gets to work with you, not in the clinic, but still what’s beautiful about how you run your own life is as a leader, it sets an example for the rest of us in the team.
And you really respect that for the whole team. You don’t just apply it for yourself. And when we show up to meetings, we are all very present, you know, but we also very much respect each other’s time off and we very much believe, and you have set this culture for us of time off is time off, time on is time on there, you know, they don’t need to overlap.
We can send each other some pictures of our vacations, you know, but we’re not working when we’re off and that being so present and and intentional about that time, I think it has, it has trickled down to all of us, which, which I appreciate.
Dr. Andy Roark: I talked to a young practice owner recently. He’s in Uncharted. And so he was one of the practice owners in Uncharted. And he’s young. He’s got a young family. He’s got a young practice. So it’s about, he’s only been the owner for about a year or two. And he sort of bought it just, just that time ago. And his philosophy on leadership was one that I used to have, which is, I want to set an example.
So he was the first one in the building and the last one to leave, and he saw as many appointments as any other doctor, you know, and then also managed the clinic, and he’s got young kids at home, and he’s a year or two in, and he’s like, this is not sustainable, and I, I, I was so glad he said that because it was, it was, it was like, look at my younger self.
Kelsey, I, I’ve tried to, reimagine for myself what it means to be a good leader in my mind, and I don’t buy anymore the idea that a good leader is the first one is the first one to arrive in the last one to leave. I think the good leader models the behavior that he or she wants to see, and so for me, it’s more important that you
put yourself on the floor and then be fully present on the floor and work the way that you want other people to work. And if you’re on your phone and you’re kind of goofing off or whatever, then that’s the, that’s the, that’s how you want other people to behave on the floor. And so there’s that. And then I think you should model the behavior of blocking yourself off
to step away and do things that the team needs that are not involving you in the exam room. And then you should model the behavior of going home and being present with your family. Because if you’re, if you’re not, then again, it always sort of sends these mixed messages. But to me, that was a way of taking my aspiration of being a quote unquote good leader and putting it into a framework that made me want to be a leader.
Michael Miller, Dr. Michael Miller, who’s been on the podcast before, and he, this is one of the things he said on the podcast. He was like, as leaders, we’ve often done a good job of modeling a job that no one wants to
have. We’re like, look at me sacrificing everything. Don’t you want to be a practice owner?
Don’t you want to be a, someone in a leadership position? The answer is no, we we’re modeling this horrible position. We don’t know what else was to have. And so I tried to be, I tried to get away from that. It’s taken time. And again, I can say that now that I’m older, when I was, when I was young and I was really worried, the wheels were going to fall off.
I’m sure I was harder to work with. You were there the whole time. You, you would know, have I gotten easier to work with as
the years have gone on?
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I plead the fifth. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. No, actually, no, you were really the first person I ever worked with where I saw that you would say, okay, guys, I’ve got a hard stop at the end of this meeting because I need to go to pick up my daughters from school. And I remember that being so shocking because when I joined your team, I was in a place where I was a lead technician at work and I had my email, my work email linked on my phone.
I was checking it 24/7. I was showing up around the clock and then you modeled a completely different way for me, but it very quickly became clear why it worked, which was that when you get to go pick up your daughters from school, it’s it. It charges you back up so that then tomorrow when it’s time to get back into work mode, you’re ready to be a hundred percent there.
And I’ve experienced it myself now where I’ve started having very clear weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, I do not work. And I noticed that when I come back on Monday, I am like feet on the ground, ready to go. And I see now why it works. And so it has helped me a lot. Absolutely.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you said that. That is true. And again, when the pandemic hit and everybody’s working themselves to death, I made this video about the troops who are tired. I got a lot of feedback on it. That was very positive, but, but it’s true. I think that’s the way to look at a lot of this.
I want my team to accomplish as much as they can accomplish. But part of accomplishment is working hard and then resting and recovering. And you have got to have that mindset as, as a leader, as a manager of people, if you just bear down on people, you’re going to break them, you’re going to wear them out and you’re going to break them yourself included, but really playing chess instead of checkers is looking at your team and recognizing how to strategically rest them, meaning I set a good culture, I model the work ethic that I want to see And then I cycle off and I rest and I come back so I can model that behavior again. And it’s, it’s, it’s funny. You can see how, how people push themselves and then you’re just, you keep going, you know, you, you’re there, but you’re grinding it out.
And the truth is in, in my experience, I can make up for lost time if I’m rested, if I’ve had a break. I can be efficient and I can be nice. And every time that you’re tired and burned out in practice and you hurt somebody’s feelings, and then you have to go back and sort that out. That sort out time, that’s a penalty for you not being your best earlier.
And so the more I can take care of myself so that I avoid making those types of mistakes that I then have to clean up. The more efficient I can be. And so honestly, for a lot of people, I think that they could be off the floor more than they are and, and make that productivity up.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yeah, and, and use the time off the floor better. I think back to when I was in the clinic and I would take my lunch break and on my lunch break I would check all of the like Dr. Andy Roark and Uncharted social media posts and then I would check like my work email and then I would get on Slack and send some messages and then I’d come back to work.
After my hour lunch break and I’d be like, I’m exhausted, you know, because I didn’t actually take a lunch break But you mentioned the team earlier and that was another question. Who is behind you on this podcast? Project what kind of team do you have supporting you?
Dr. Andy Roark: Again, I have a great team. I do a lot of different things. So we talked about, we have, we have this card game, which is kind of a weird side project that just makes me really happy and I love it. And so I’ve got this card game and then we have uncharted and we do conferences, we do live events, we do lectures and workshops.
We do a lot of consulting. We work with a lot of corporate hospitals on training their leaders, their Medical directors, their practice managers. And then we also do the podcasts and social media and things like that. So we have a bunch of different stuff that’s, that’s going. Our team doesn’t really fall into your traditional jobs.
And that’s by, that’s by design. I’m just, I’m not that way. I’m, I’m, I don’t follow the rules very well. And so people are like, well, Kelsey is in marketing. I’m like, no, Kelsey is in these six things, well, she’s in these six things that she’s really good at, and they don’t all fall under marketing, but we’re, and again, I know that doesn’t work at scale at a big, big company.
We’re not a big company. We’re a company of less than 10. And so I can have people kind of working across our company. We also run what’s called a flat organization, which means aside from me. There’s not a lot of people who are other people’s bosses. We have an executive director, but other than that, I really don’t like people to be other people’s bosses.
I like us to be, we’re colleagues, we’re teammates. I expect you to use your grownup voice and your grownup words to communicate. What you know, what you need and where you are. And then somebody shouldn’t have to be your boss to get you to help them. You should help them because we’re in this together and we’re a team and again. There’s upsides to that approach and there’s downsides to that approach but it’s just philosophically.
It’s always meant a lot to me So anyway in our team i’ve got i’ve got you who designed you designed our cards you made what’s the You did what’s on my scrubs the doctor know it all, game the the the box that it comes in is all kelsey’s beautiful creative art. She sings. She sings the theme song on this podcast she does a lot of my social media stuff And so if you especially that for dr Andy work almost all that stuff is kelsey she and I work together on that stuff But she she’s so wonderfully creative and so kelsey’s kind of got this type of stuff and and then you get tapped for things like interviewing me on the podcast and stuff like that.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Here we go. I get to be a podcast host as part of my job. That’s pretty cool.
Dr. Andy Roark: We’ve got Maria Partita who does she’s kind of our podcast coordinator and guru. She involves the scheduling. She handles the sponsored episodes and the advertisements. She comes up with great ideas. It’s hard to explain all of the things she’s done as far as making the podcast and streamlining that process and then like when she’s not doing that, she’s also a CVPM.
She’s a lecturer. She does consulting with me and Stephanie Goss. She is a rising star as far as being a management speaker in vet medicine. And just, so she’s there. Dustin Bays is a friend of mine who does the actual editing and processing of the podcast. And now he’s, he’s basically full time at Uncharted as well.
And he does our video editing and our podcast and so Stephanie Goss was my co host over Uncharted and she helps me over there. And that’s, I’m sure I’m probably forgetting somebody, but that’s, that’s just the, the core group that works on the podcast. Oh, and Tyler Grogan helps us with our marketing and our newsletters and, and things like
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: And she’s got a lot of hands in the Uncharted podcast. And so, yeah, we’re all
Dr. Andy Roark: She’s more with Uncharted.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Now that you really lay it out that way, I realize how abnormal that is. That, like, every member of our team is involved in the podcast in some way or another. But in that way, it makes it such, like, a collaborative project, which is pretty cool that we do that.
Dr. Andy Roark: Super cool. Well, I wanted to work in a really collaborative place when I do that. And I’m also, I’m, I’m a big believer in the simple philosophy that You get the most out of people when you put them in a position to really use their strengths. And if you can, I’ve also come to believe too, that just because something is a weakness of mine doesn’t mean it’s a weakness of other people’s.
And just cause I don’t really enjoy something that doesn’t mean other people don’t enjoy it. You know, I’m, I’m, I don’t like organizational stuff, administrative stuff. And we’ve had other people on our team who just live to put things in order to make sure all the boxes are checked and everything is organized.
And buddy, I, I’ve got, I’ve got work for you. Come, you know, like they, and, but put them in a place to thrive and then, and then they just do. So it is, it’s really that for me, I don’t, it’s funny, the, the. The hard part is, and you guys have all been through this, we continue to try new things. And when we try new things, everybody kind of has to adapt and find their role in those things.
And that’s always a rocky process. And I think everybody wishes I could say, Kelsey, you’re in charge of marketing. Here is this thing. And you would just know what you’re supposed to do
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Right.
Dr. Andy Roark: This collaborative way. It is slower and it requires slowing down at the beginning. But my belief is that the ultimate outcome is better.
We get a superior product. We get to work in a way that’s energizing for us, where we are collaborating, creating, remembering what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. And so anyway, that’s, that’s how we’ve always run the company. And it’s I don’t regret it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I’m, I’m pretty, I’m pretty happy about it myself. Now a quick fun question for you is, because you do seem to have a lot of projects going on, people want to know, what does Dr. Andy Roark, what kind of coffee do you drink?
Dr. Andy Roark: What kind of coffee drink? Oh, I’ve talked about this. I made videos.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: What fuels you throughout the day? Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. I made videos. My wife got me an espresso
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Oh, right.
Dr. Andy Roark: About two years ago. I drink espresso. And I get it from Amazon in big, unground bags. Whole bean bags, baby.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I love it. Now, okay, what I’m personally really curious about is like, if I took you to Starbucks, if I was like, let’s go on a walk, let’s go to Starbucks. What’s the Dr. Andy Roark Starbucks order? You’re at Starbucks. What’s the special drink order? I want to know. Like, are you a Pumpkin Spice girl? Tell me the truth. Okay.
Dr. Andy Roark: no, it’s such a letdown. I go, I’m crotchety in weird ways. And I refuse to learn the Starbucks language.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: So you say, I want a large, and they
Dr. Andy Roark: I want a medium, I said, I want a medium coffee. That’s what I’ll say. And they’ll go, do you want something in it? And I was like, some cream and that’s it. Like, that’s what they get from me. I want a medium coffee with cream
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Wow. If anything ages you, it’s that.
Dr. Andy Roark: I know. I know of, I have these strange things I rage against and that’s one of them. So dumb. It’s a revolution. No one cares about with me, but yeah, I am super easy to, I have this we joke about Starbucks and I don’t, you’ll remember this one of another thing I rage against is when we put on a conference and I have to buy coffee for the attendees and I buy it by the gallon and it costs me literally a hundred dollars a gallon of coffee.
And my team is like, let’s get Starbucks orders. And I’m like, Just bought 7,000 worth of coffee and they’re like, but it’s not a frappuccino, and I’m like, I just, I can’t, I just can’t, like, they, they have to do it secretly because I just, like, I will crumple to the ground in frustration.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: One day, I’m just gonna show up and hand you like whatever the most extravagant like Caramel frappuccino with cold whip oat milk Bronze, I don’t know how that works, but I’m gonna get you something with whipped cream on and that’s for sure change your life
Dr. Andy Roark: It will, okay.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Okay, so we’ll kind of wrap this up. I could ask you questions for days.
We all could but As we close out this episode, are there any? Especially memorable moments, episode, guests, memories that you have from the past 300 episodes of this podcast. I’m putting you on the spot here. You gotta think through 300 episodes.
Dr. Andy Roark: I’ve had a lot of them in great, but there’s always the first one. And so Dr. Sarah Boston, who is a surgeon, an onco surgeon, talk about brilliant. She’s an onco surgeon and also a standup comedian and a really funny, really good standup comedian. She was my guinea pig for the podcast.
And I, we, I had her on cause she wrote an article about emotional blackmail in vet medicine. And I was like, That’s it. I’m talking to her. And that was the first podcast that we did and we put it out like two months before the next episode would come out, but it was completely recorded on Skype. It was just, it was a disaster.
But, but other than what we talked about, which was great and it got. So much attention and so that was the first thing that I was like, we did one swing and one hit and I was like great.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Oh, I remember, was that the episode that I feel like the title was, Are We Bad People? Wasn’t that it?
Dr. Andy Roark: That was it was either that one or or a follow up.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yeah, one of us,
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, are we bad people also did really well? there’s been some some episodes We’ve done that have been really funny. I when I interviewed Gabe Matthews, the paranormal investigator for Halloween last year.
And, and I read to him I read him real ghost stories from vet clinics that people sent in, and then I got his breakdown. I did like a, how do you treat that case with Gabe Matthews, the paranormal investigator. He sprayed me with I don’t know, some sort of incense that just, it didn’t come out for days.
I stunk. That was funny. I thought the April fool’s episode Cono de Peña when I announced that I had been doing Duolingo and we were going to be switching to Spanish. I thought that was hilarious. It did nothing. I don’t think people got it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I know, I think we we unintentionally got some people’s hopes up. People really have
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, exactly. Some people were like, I, yeah, some people were, were really excited.
Then I was like, I feel bad because I’m letting these people down. That was great. The when we were doing the four eyes save lives stuff and we’re talking about that suicide and I got to host Dr. Tracy Whitty who was rolling out this new research on the impact of access to lethal means on suicide. in vet professionals that felt really important to me at like a deep personal level and getting to getting to talk to her and have her talk about her research that was just getting published in a way that I thought was really accessible.
That felt like really important work when I interviewed Dr Julie Levy on the black market cure for fip. This was well before it got conditional approval In the usa and like it people were getting it through a facebook group, but it was saving cats lives That was that was the most popular episode we ever did.
I mean it had You know, it had I mean five figures in place for that episode. You But that that also felt really important in the number of people who who shared it and who said oh man This saved my my pet’s life. That that was big for me. There was There was another one just as a personal one. Dr. Ashley Bourgeois is a–
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I love her.
Dr. Andy Roark: She’s she’s She’s great. Um, the Derm Vet, she had this experience. She talked about caregiver burden because her young child and I remember what’s happened. She was at a conference and then her young, her young child was diagnosed with leukemia. And suddenly it was, it was It was a fight for life.
And and she talked about that experience and she’s still there. She’s still seeing appointments. She’s making social media content and sort of talking about dermatology and educating, and she’s carrying this burden behind the scenes. And, and so she, she came and she talked about she came and she talked about about sort of her journey.
And that meant a lot. And, and then the last, the last ones I’ll say is I’ve had so many people I can’t list but there are these people who are at the top of their field and they are so smart that their clinical genius has just bled into the way that they think and they talk and I would ask them a question and then they would tell me a story.
And I’m like, why are you telling me this? And then I would realize that they had just given me this huge gift of knowledge. And, and like my, my mind would be Dr. Doug Mater is one of those for me. He’s someone I really, I just admire him. He’s an excellent writer, which I really like. He’s got a book called the Vet at Noah’s Ark.
Which was really cool, but but he. He’ll start answering a question and then he’ll tell you all the history kind of around the question and he’ll tell you who discovered the answer to the question and in what species they were working when they did and it’s just his knowledge is so deep It’s just it blows my mind.
Dr. Tim Evans is a toxicologist parasitologist at University of Missouri. And he, I didn’t know him and, and, and, and someone put me in touch with him. And he did this, like, name that nephrotoxin episode with us.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Oh, yeah, that was a great one.
Dr. Andy Roark: He was so funny. He was so funny and his knowledge was so endless. And if I had let him, he would have talked for the rest of the afternoon.
But he was anyway, there’s just people like that of it’s their style and they are so excited about what they know. And you just realize this person could talk to me for a year.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yeah, you could do a whole season on them.
Dr. Andy Roark: This guy, I mean, they could, you could, you could get your whole, you could throw residency done with this one person, but anyway, and we just had a number of episodes like that that have been absolutely amazing.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Yeah. Fabulous. Well, I just want to share with you my own experience has been that an unintended positive from this podcast. As you know, I went through some health issues, which forced me out of the clinic before I was ready to leave the clinic. And I would say the cone of shame podcast is probably the one thing that has made me feel the most involved in veterinary medicine still because I still get to know what are people talking about. What’s the new drug that’s coming out? What’s the specialty that we’re really focusing on right now? What are the issues that people are talking about? What are we seeing coming in the future? Getting to listen to this podcast has made me feel like I still get to be a part of this veterinary community.
And that’s a very special gift. And I, I feel it’s probably safe to say I’m not the only one who it’s had that effect on. So thank you for 300 fabulous episode. Thank you. And thank all of the incredible people who have been part of this podcast. So.
Dr. Andy Roark: Thanks. Thanks to everybody. Who’s listened to 300 episodes. You, you guys are, you guys are amazing. I said, I love this thing. I, I think I would do it if nobody listened, but it’s, but, but listens are really nice.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Absolutely Now, to end this on the typical cone of shame podcast style Dr. Andy Roark, where can people find you?
Dr. Andy Roark: You can find me on this very podcast. Yeah. Yeah, you can find me and Kelsey Carpenter collaborating on Facebook even the TikTok these days at Dr. Andy Roark and Yeah, that’s, that’s it. Check out, check out Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. If you are in a leadership position and you enjoy hearing my voice you’ll hear a lot of it over there.
I mean, Stephanie Goss we’ve got, we’ve got 300 episodes over there, just fixing hospitals. And so anyway, I, I do love that.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Andy Roark for being my guest on my podcast, the cone of shame today only. And I thank you all for listening. Thank you all for submitting your questions. This has been a fabulous episode. I hope you all have a wonderful morning, afternoon, evening, whatever time it is where you are and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
Dr. Andy Roark: Hey, thanks everybody.
And that’s what we got guys. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in. Uh, 300 episodes is, again, I feel just so fortunate and grateful and I feel fortunate and grateful to have, uh, people like Kelsey Carpenter and the rest of my team, uh, in my life.
And so anyway, it’s just, uh, it’s been, it’s been a great, it’s been a great run and I’m looking forward to keeping it up. So anyway, guys, take care of everybody. Talk to you later.
