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Pumpkin Spice Vet Care

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A reminder for anyone who wants to break the monotony and re-engage their team

I’m going to admit it right here: I’m a pumpkin spice guy. Even more, I’m a Fall Season Guy. I love the changing leaves, the outdoor activities in crisp air, and the warm clothes I get to wear after the humid South Carolina Summer. It makes me happy to smell cinnamon and sandalwood when I walk into stores, to drink apple cider and to get pumpkin pie for dessert. I just love all of that… but you know what I love most? A limited-time break from the established norm.

Let me be honest for a second. I don’t REALLY care about apple cider. Cinnamon flavored coffee is fine, but I wouldn’t drink it every morning. If I had crisp weather for a few consecutive months, I’d be more than ready to escape to a warmer climate whenever I got the chance. You get the point.

I love the fall theme because it brings new experiences, it’s only around for a limited time, and it has distinct activities tied to it that I enjoy (even if only in small doses). I think this is important because one of the greatest challenges we face in the marathon that is modern veterinary medicine is keeping ourselves and our teams engaged.

If you’ve been leading in vet medicine for more than a year, your team has already heard your pep talks. They know your passion, purpose and your “why.” They know what standard of care is expected and they have shown up day after day after day and delivered it. So now, when their motivation is flagging, how can you get them to re-engage and look at the work we do with fresh eyes?

I think we can draw some inspiration from those of us who love the fall.

Sometimes the best way to breathe new life into something well known is to switch up its theme. Just think, how many stores, products, books, streaming shows, escape rooms, putt-putt courses, and magazines change their look and feel for different seasons? How many stores throw down to decorate for Christmas? How many restaurants, coffee shops and breweries change up menu items for pumpkin time? Even Crossfit gyms and spin classes roll out special workouts just for holidays! Why? Because themes (seasonal, holiday or other) are fun ways to get people to re-engage. The fact that fall will soon be over makes me more excited to try fall flavors and do fall activities because the stakes are low (e.g. if I don’t like pumpkin bagels, they won’t be taking up space on the grocery shelf for very long) and scarcity is high (I might LOVE pumpkin bagels so I better get them before they are gone!).

So what do themes look like in veterinary clinics? Simple. They have the fun parts of whatever theme you are injecting tied firmly to the educational piece you want to re-prioritize. Think of Halloween with a focus on (black) cat health, fall with a focus on senior pets, spring with puppy love, Valentines with heart health (I’m serious! Think heartworms!).

Changing up themes in your practice can be fun. It can shake up the appearance of the clinic where you and your team spend a good chunk of your life. It can give your staff meetings a new focus and provide opportunities to try new educational and therapeutic programs. Most of all, it’s a way to break the grind that so many teams find themselves in. 

Don’t do themes in your clinic for the clients (although they will appreciate them), do them for your team. Do them for mental stimulation, to break monotony, to make things fresh, and to give people a different daily experience. Inject some pumpkin spice into your clinic, or some Halloween horror, or some peppermint and wintergreen… Keep practice fun, and keep it changing with the seasons.

Sometimes Things End

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Not everything we do has to last forever.

I recently sat with a crying practice manager. She works at a small clinic with a single veterinarian who is the longtime clinic owner. He’s relatively young, has young children, and is dying of a terminal illness. My heart broke for her. She has been lining up relief veterinarians when she can, and the owner works when he is able, but that is becoming increasingly irregular. Practices nearby have begun running new-client specials, and she sees this as targeting her clinic’s pet owners (and maybe it is).

During our talk, she asked me how she could keep the clinic going. I didn’t have an answer, and talked to her a bit about how sometimes there isn’t anything for us to do other than to keep walking. When there are no choices to make, sometimes we hike in the rain.

Later in our conversation, I told her a lesson I have personally learned but never really shared before. It is that sometimes things end, and that’s okay. It’s not failure, it’s just that everything has its time.

For most of my life, I subconsciously believed that success inherently involves building. Being successful means growing or advancing. Staying in the same place was acceptable only in the short term, and stopping meant failure. A business that closed had died. A hobby that ended was quit. A project that got discontinued had failed. 

I did believe that failure was okay, as long as we kept trying things. However “endings” and “failures” were definitely synonymous in my mind.

The thing in my life that made me question this belief was improv comedy. Every Friday night I would take the stage with a group of friends to try to make strangers laugh. We would pour our hearts into creating something hilarious for ourselves and for the audience, and you know what came of it? Absolutely nothing. 

The shows were generally very fun but no one recorded them and even if they had, improv is no fun to watch on a screen. It lives exclusively among the people who are there, at that moment. Have you ever heard someone trying to explain what happened at an improv comedy show? It’s like hearing someone describe a dream. It obviously means something to the person who experienced it, but it’s an awful story to sit through.

Relatedly, the shows never “went anywhere.” We were not trying to get bigger gigs, to travel, or to get on TV. The theater we used was tiny, so it wasn’t possible to increase the number of tickets we sold. There was no “next step” other than to come back the following week and try to make an entirely different group of people laugh just as hard.  

As someone who always felt that success meant growth, I struggled with this reality. How do you succeed when there is nothing left of what you created?

I asked the founder of the comedy theater this question and he had an easy answer. “Success comes in the joy of creation.” His idea was that beautiful things are temporary, and sometimes we create valuable experiences that are not meant to last. This was a hard concept for me to get my head around, and I wrestled to truly internalize it for years. 

Now, I see it in the pets that grow old under my care as a veterinarian. There is no beloved family pet that will live forever. They will all come to us, bring us joy, make our lives richer, and then they will leave us. Their lives can in no way be seen as a “failure” because they came and went. The same is true for so many other things in our lives.

It will be sad if this tiny clinic cannot keep its doors open, and my heart breaks for this tiny team, the doctor, and especially for his family. However, the good they did in the world and the experience they created for pets, clients, and each other should not be forgotten. We would all be lucky to work in a wonderful place for five or ten years, or to have a clinic like this in our community. The fact that it might not last forever is a reason to be sad, but never to feel like a failure. 

I don’t want this manager to give up hope. I also don’t want her to live with a belief that she failed because a wonderful chapter in her life and the lives of others came to an end that she has no control over. Sometimes we have to consciously decide to accept changes that are beyond our control. In those instances, I think Dr. Suess gave the best advice, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

Eventually, the Numbers Have to Work

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I was talking to a 4th-year veterinary student recently, and he was telling me about the starting salaries his friends were signing on for with their first jobs. Figures in the $150,000 range were not uncommon. [I’ve heard anecdotally about salaries hitting $200,000 for new grads in some metropolitan areas]. This may not sound like a shocking amount of money for a veterinarian to make in a year, but we’re talking about graduates who have zero experience working as doctors and who presumably would like some support and mentorship from their fellow clinicians as they grow.

A few weeks ago, one of my friends who owns a veterinary practice mentioned to me her frustration about not being able to afford to hire a new graduate veterinarian. She said “I know practices are throwing a lot of money at new grads, and there’s no way I can match it. I don’t know how I’m going to hire now or in the future.” I have heard this concern voiced many times in the last few years.

We are living through a period of unprecedented change in our profession. Never before has money flowed into veterinary medicine the way it is coming in now, and that money is making a lot of things quite wonky. I think a lot of people are starting to believe that this “magical money” will become the new normal in our industry and that the old rules of economics have gone out the window for good. Well, at the risk of being the child who points out the emperor having no clothes, I think it’s important to state the truth that seems to be getting lost: Eventually, the numbers have to work.

Business is challenging… but it’s not complicated. You have to spend money to make money. Ultimately, you need to make more money than you spend. If you do this, you get to keep going. If you do not, you go out of business. Sometimes companies are able to go a LONG time without making more than they spend, but eventually… the numbers have to work.

I do not blame any veterinarian for being smart and negotiating when it comes to his or her salary. What I’m about to say is not a condemnation of anyone. In fact, I respect people who are willing to see opportunities in a time of change and take them. That said, the flow of money into our profession is not charity. It’s an investment, and the people behind it intend to get a nice ROI on their money.

In the last few years, we have seen businesses that were willing to spend tons of cash to buy up practices. Now those practices are willing to spend tons of cash to staff the practices they bought. These decisions are not being made for any reason other than the belief in an even greater upside in the coming years. One way or another, the wild spending phase we are seeing is going to end and the “where’s our return on investment?” phase will begin.

When that happens, veterinarians are going to be asked to account for the salaries they have agreed to. The strings in our contracts will be pulled tight. After all, there is no world where a venture capitalist is going to lose money paying a veterinarian’s salary over the long term and be fine with it. As the “where’s our return on investment?” phase approaches, I think it’s important to remind both veterinarians and practice leaders of a few things:

  1. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is — Be wary of any agreement that doesn’t seem to make sense for both parties, even if you appear to be benefiting.
  2. Money is important, but so are other things — Workplace culture, developmental opportunities, and work-life balance all matter… a lot.
  3. Times change — This is a once-in-a-lifetime period of change in the profession. Don’t expect it to last much longer.

To my new graduate friend: I hope you’ll find a job that offers you a good salary which you will be able to grow to support. More importantly, I hope you will end up in a place that fills your cup, appreciates you, and develops you to be the person and doctor that you aspire to be.

To my practice owner friend: I hope you hang in there and continue to do all you can to make your practice a great place to work and visit. I hope you recognize all that you would have to offer the right young doctor, and that you keep pushing to make your practice one that can support new doctors and staff members going forward. I have faith that the right person will eventually cross your path. 

It’s an exciting time to be in veterinary medicine, and there are so many opportunities coming from the radical changes in our industry. Whether you are thrilled about the opportunities being offered or terrified of the shifting landscape, I hope you’ll try to keep at least this one thing in mind: Eventually, the numbers have to work.

The Olympics are Good for Vet Medicine

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I don’t fall in love with the Olympics every four years because the games showcase famous athletes at the height of their careers. I swoon for the regular folks who step forward out of obscurity and shine. It’s the people who could live in our neighborhoods, shop next to us in the grocery store, and bring their pets into our clinics that hold me in rapt attention. In these athletes, I see people in my community… and I see people at their best. 

Did you know that Morelle McCane, the US boxer, funded her trip to the Olympics by working as a birthday party clown, daycare supervisor, and mailroom worker? Team USA canoeist and gold medalist Nevin Harrison had to put her education at San Diego State University on hold so she could train but she kept her part-time job working at a bar. And let’s not forget the now mega-famous college student Stephen Nedoroscik (aka Pommel Horse Guy) who showed up in Paris to do just one gymnastics event… and COOKED. I cheered my cheeks off for that guy even though I had never seen him before in my life.

It’s not just the athletes who shine during the games either. When Maggie Steffens, three-time gold medalist and captain of the USA’s Olympic women’s water polo team, posted on social media about how she and others on her team were working two or three jobs to be able to support themselves, the legendary hype man Flavor Flav decided to sponsor the team! He said he is a “girl dad and supporter of all women’s sports” and he wants to “have their backs.” I did not have Flavor Flav bringing a tear to my eye on my 2024 bingo card.

The superstars we all know are impressive, and I wouldn’t want to take anything away from them and their amazing accomplishments. For me, however, it’s the joyfully crying families in the stands that grab me. It’s the babies wearing ear protection, the beaming fiances with mascara running down their faces, and the mothers who (for some reason) are wearing heart rate monitors so we can see them hitting 160+ bpm while their grown children are tearing down the home stretch. It’s the hugs and tears… the respect and sportsmanship. 

The Olympics are magical because they have the power to make us feel connected to the athletes (and the families) who go there. They remind us that we are all capable of incredible things and make us believe it could be, in some alternate universe, us out there. The games show us the greatest athletes in the world and remind us that they are people just like we are. In this way, the Olympics unite us.

So how is this good for vet medicine? 

One of the hardest parts of veterinary medicine is deciding day after day to assume the best about people. It’s a challenge to see ourselves in the people who are having their worst day ever. It takes a toll to work with people who are rude, angry, ashamed, dismissive, or afraid. It becomes easy to harden our hearts, roll our eyes, and decide that we just don’t like humans.

Veterinary medicine has an unfortunate habit of showing us people at their worst. The Olympics are good for us because they show us people at their best. The games remind us that the people who bring their pets into our clinics may be capable of amazing things. They may be overcoming great obstacles, chasing a dream, working multiple jobs, developing talents we’d never guess, or supporting a growing family or aging parents. Yes, the humans in front of us may be struggling right now, but we share their humanity.

The Olympics are good for veterinary medicine because they can lift up the human side of the human-animal bond and remind us that our work helping families is as meaningful as helping their animal companions. Yes, the Olympics may come with an extra serving of cheese these days, but they are still magical if we choose to let them be so.

Did You Realize Life Required This Much Engagement? I Didn’t.

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I don’t know where I got the idea that the point of younger life was to set yourself up so that older life ran on autopilot, but I was pretty sure this was how things worked. It’s not that I didn’t think life would be challenging after the age of 40. It’s just that I thought the important decisions would already be made and thus I would be able to just kind of go through the motions without stressing too much. When I was in my 20s, it certainly looked like that’s what middle-aged people I knew were doing.

At some level, my understanding was that if I got the education, spouse, children, house, pet(s), etc then I would kind of be set until it was time to downsize and move into a retirement community. Then I could REALLY just go with the flow. Dinner at the cafeteria, scheduled social time, a coach/helper for bathing… Talk about coasting!

Anyway, this anticipated period of going with the flow has not happened at all. It turns out that, regardless of what we do or accomplish, life is always going to require our full attention. Whether it’s navigating the US healthcare system, dealing with a complete change in your workplace management structure, or battling a local homeowners’ association, our full and active engagement in this life appears to be both mandatory and continuous.

I’ll be honest here. When I graduated from veterinary school, I knew I would need to keep up with advances in medicine to stay competent at my job as a veterinarian. That didn’t seem like such a big investment on my part in exchange for having a livelihood that I enjoyed and found meaningful. Again, I thought I’d kind of done the hard part and, after getting some experience, I would be able to kind of just… keep on keeping on.

Today, I am not just keeping up with new advances in medicine (and boy howdy there are a lot of them!). I’m also trying to:

  • Leverage new AI technology to help make up for being shorthanded
  • Advise veterinarians on how to advocate for themselves to the venture capitalists who want a 10x return on their investment
  • Talk to clients who have shot right past learning from Dr. Google and gone on to passionately educate themselves with 40-second TikTok animal influencer videos
  • Raise wages for support staff while keeping pet care affordable

Remember when the answer to the question of “What do I do if I’m shorthanded” was simply “hire someone?” What a simpler time. I just assumed things would kind of stay like that.

I’m not saying all of this to complain. I’m honestly not. I love vet medicine and the life it’s given me. I genuinely find the challenges I listed above to be interesting and worthy of our attention. I just didn’t think the profession (and life outside it) would require my full attentiveness every day after 15 years of practice. I suspect I was not alone in this delusion.

I’m pointing all of this out now for two reasons. The first is that I know I’m not the only person who has been secretly wondering when the cruise control part of life would be starting. If you have had these thoughts and decided that you must be doing something wrong since you still can’t take your hands off the wheel, I want to tell you that you are not. Practice (and life) are never going to be “hands off,” even if other people make it look that way. You are probably doing just fine and should be proud of yourself for how you are handling everything. You are not failing because things have not gotten easy. You are making your way through an interesting life, and interesting lives are apparently averse to letting us relax for very long.

The second reason I’m bringing up the idea that life was supposed to get easier is because the expectations we set for ourselves matter. Nothing makes a hectic day in the clinic more draining than going in and hoping for an empty schedule. The same is true in all aspects of our lives. If we anticipate being challenged and engaged, the days fly by and we feel proud of what we have accomplished. When we instead think we are supposed to be relaxing, hectic days feel like a slap in the face.

The lesson for me has been to give up the false idea that life is a big climb and then a steady downhill toward the retirement home. Most of us mid-to-late career people are working as hard and making as many challenging choices as we ever have, and that’s not going to change. It turns out we chose the path of an interesting life, and that means a life requiring our active engagement day after day.

We might as well get excited about doing a job (and having a life) that keeps us on our toes because that, it seems, is what we are in for.

The Three Most Wanted Traits in a Vet Professional

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Last week I asked a group of about 30 medical directors to do a thought experiment with me. I asked them to imagine that their hospital was going to hire someone and that they get to request one characteristic or attribute for the new hire to have. I broke them up into small groups and waited to hear what mixture of traits the five groups would come back with.

Well, they didn’t come back with much of a mixture at all. Amazingly, they all returned with basically the same short wishlist. 

Here it is:

  1. Strong communication skills – An ability to listen and articulate clearly what was needed
  2. Positivity – A refusal to slide into the common trap of focusing on the negative
  3. Adaptability – A willingness to change what they are doing without six follow-up meetings

No one asked for super-intelligence, high technical acumen, or surgical skills. They didn’t request that this person be able and willing to teach others, generate large amounts of revenue, or even take work off the shoulders of the medical director. No one asked for a willingness to work overnights, mediate staff conflict, or treat every client like gold. 

If you are someone who wants to continuously improve yourself, or even if you are just someone who wants to be highly valued, I think these three requests are both instructive and encouraging. After all, these three attributes are well within our control as individuals and can generally be demonstrated if we just decide to do so. All we have to do is commit.

Communication

We all know becoming a good communicator can take a lot of time and effort. It’s a skill made up of a lot of other skills, and thus it’s not something we can just “switch on” with immediate success (although a little effort can go a long way). Still, focusing on our communication skills (especially the listening part of communication) is something we can all decide to do. If you want to dig deeper into this skill and want some guidance, I would humbly recommend the Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate as a fantastic place to start.

Positivity

It’s fascinating that positivity has jumped to the top of the wish list for so many people. I asked one of the medical directors why she thought this was a trait that the entire group seemed to agree on and she said “Because it’s so easy to slide into the negative.” Every day, we have countless opportunities to get angry, cynical, or resentful. We can take the road to negativity when clients no-show, run late, or bring an extra pet. We can get upset when the front desk schedules an extra appointment or when they turn that appointment away. We can be disillusioned by clients who don’t seem to know anything about their pet’s health and by clients who have studied the teachings of Dr. Google extensively and have strong opinions about what their pet’s care should be. 

There is no end to the opportunities for us to embrace negativity during our days. The unwillingness to take those opportunities has become something truly special. In a world where so many people around us have decided to marinate in justifiable anger, choosing optimism has come to mean a willingness to be contrary. Keeping a positive attitude takes discipline and grit. It is not easy, and I suspect that’s why it has become such a sought-after attribute. Still, if you want to be a more positive person, there is nothing holding you back from becoming that person today.

Adaptability

Every day we are told that protocols, routines, and systems make good practices. While I think there’s a lot of truth to this, I also believe we can take our desire for structure and control too far. Illness and injury are completely disinterested in our protocols, schedules, and plans. Priorities change, people act irrationally, equipment breaks down, and supplies go on backorder. Thus, the ability to “roll with it” will never go out of style.

Being adaptable means being willing to let go of both routine and the feeling of control. It also means being able to take feedback, change our behaviors, and reset expectations about how we thought our time was going to be spent. 

Like being positive, being adaptable isn’t as easy as it sounds. Change is an innately painful process, and being flexible means being willing to endure this pain. Being adaptable is, however, a choice. It is a decision we can make right now that can make us better at our jobs and more valuable to our patients and teams. 

Becoming our Best Selves

It’s reassuring to know that what it takes to be appreciated is often within our control. Being positive, adaptable, and a good communicator requires effort and discipline. We have to show up and decide to do these things day after day, even when we are tired or have great reasons to take the day off. Still, we have the power to become a better version of ourselves and this transformation doesn’t require advanced education, access to fancy equipment, or the permission of anyone else. We can just do it, and we can start right now.