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Practice ownership

Playing Nice With Your Competition – What’s the Point?

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast Episode 207 Cover Image

This week on the podcast…

This week on the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice manager Stephanie Goss are tackling a question Andy was asked about working together with our (local) competition. A manager in a rural/remote area is wanting to connect with other managers. It seems the veterinarians in the area don't all get along and see no reason to work together. These managers are looking at it from a different lens and wondering “Isn't there a point to us working together?” better yet, they are asking “how do we explain this to the vets who don't agree with us?” Let's get into this…

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · UVP – 207 – Playing Nice With Your Competition – What's The Point?

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Episode Transcript

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This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Hey, Stephanie Goss. You got a second to talk about GuardianVets?

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. What do you want to talk about?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Man, I hear from people all the time that are overwhelmed because the phones never stop ringing.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm sure you hear from these people as well, like our caseload is blowing up and the doctors are busy and the phones just don't stop.

Stephanie Goss:
They never stop. That is a true story.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm amazed by how few veterinarians know about GuardianVets. This is a service where you have registered technicians who can jump in virtually and help you on the phones. You can flip the switch and GuardianVets can jump in and take some of the load off the front desk and they can handle your clients and get them booked for your appointments and give them support and it really is a godsend.

Stephanie Goss:
Pre-pandemic, it was amazing to me how many people hadn't heard about it for after-hours call help. But at this point, I can't believe how many people don't realize that they are offering help during the daytime as well which I would think right now is a huge benefit to practices because everybody is shorthanded, everybody is drowning in phone calls. And so, we talk about it. We've talked about GuardianVets a lot on the podcast and every time we do, we always get somebody who says, “What is that?”

Dr. Andy Roark:
Guys, if you're not familiar with GuardianVets, if you think that you could use some help on the phones or up at the front desk, check them out. It's guardianvets.com and if you mention our podcast, me and Stephanie Goss, you get a month free. So check it out, guardianvets.com.

Stephanie Goss:
Hey, everybody. I am Stephanie Goss and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are answering a question that he got sent about playing nice with your competition. It is from a manager who lives in a small town, rural environment and is wondering what the benefits are of getting to know the other managers in the area. The doctors involved in their practice and the other practices don't seem to get along, don't seem to care, don't seem to want to get along, and they are looking at it from a different perspective and wondering, “Is there a point to playing nice with our competition? Are there benefits if I work together? because I like the manager at this other practice over here and I would like to get together and pick their brain about some things. How do I go about doing this?” I'm going to tell you, this is an episode where I get really excited because this is my jam and I can't wait to talk about this. So let's get into it.

Speaker 3:
And now, The Uncharted Podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and Stephanie Fight Like A Title Holder Goss. That's a song. It's punk. I've been listening to a lot of punk rock music recently. I have just been feeling like an anarchist recently and I listen to Rancid Radio on Amazon Music.

Stephanie Goss:
Stop it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I'm serious. I missed a trick when I was young. I should have been into punk music. I love it. I love it.

Stephanie Goss:
The mental image I have in my head right now of Andy Roark as a punk is amazing. It is a job for Jen Galvin's photoshopping skills because it is an amazing mental picture. I need to just enjoy this for a second.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Blue mohawk and a thick nose ring, like a big ring.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, I was imagining a nose ring. I was imagining some eyeliner, black, ripped clothes, safety pins. Oh, it is a good mental picture.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I could have… I'm serious like-

Stephanie Goss:
Stop it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
There is a pathway in my life… It was a door never opened to me. My parents never showed me that door and I didn't have punk rock friends. I think I was 10 years too late for punk rock. I hit high school in 1991 and I think if I had hit high school in 1981, I would've been counterculture, I think.

Stephanie Goss:
I can't.

Dr. Andy Roark:
The band 311 was just blowing up and I saw a show they did in this little community center and there was a mosh pit and it was so great. I was like, “I've never done this before but I really enjoy it.”

Stephanie Goss:
Oh my gosh.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I can see through the multiverse. There is a… Not this-

Stephanie Goss:
There is a punk Andy Roark.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm still punk rock veterinarian because I don't see that changing. So I've got a chihuahua that also has a mohawk. I would get a Chinese Crested with a Mohawk-

Stephanie Goss:
Oh stop. Oh my god.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Stick it to the man.

Stephanie Goss:
That's amazing. Okay. Add that to the pile of facts that I did not know about Andy Roark.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
This is a mental picture. I'm quite enjoying this. Thank you for starting off the afternoon like that.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I discovered the band NOFX. I'm not sing you anything that they sing-

Stephanie Goss:
I actually know NOFX. Okay.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That was a new discovery for me. I was like, “This is music I was unaware of.”

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. I kind of like it. I kind of like-

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think it's what I'm going to do with my 50s. I've got a couple years before I get there. I think when I turn 50, it's going to be like, “I'm starting over. Leather and chains.”

Stephanie Goss:
That's so funny. No. Okay. So now, I have to know, what was the musical choices of Andy Roark, the teenager, the actual high school? If you weren't listening to NOFX back then, what were you listening to in the '90s?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man. Probably my favorite band in high school was Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out, the best album ever. I love it which is why I could also say, I can 100% say punk rock Andy Roark given how much I enjoyed Red Hot Chili Peppers like there's-

Stephanie Goss:
Were you allowed to actually have the CD or did you have to get it in secret because your parents wouldn't-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh no. Well, I had an underground pipeline of music. I listened to a lot of gangster rap like I was N.W.A, Ice Cube. I had all of that stuff and… Exactly. I'm like, “Oh, punk rock.” Actually, punk rock might have been a better fit for me but we went with N.W.A and Ice Cube and I had a great time and enjoyed it.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay.

Dr. Andy Roark:
So anyway. Yeah, that was it.

Stephanie Goss:
I like it. I like it a lot.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Who knows? Maybe if I get to go around the world again, I'll go a different direction next time.

Stephanie Goss:
I like the multiverse punk Andy Roark. That is a mental picture that's not going to leave me anytime soon. I like it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh. That's good.

Stephanie Goss:
All right.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. What do we-

Stephanie Goss:
Well, speaking of high school, we got a great message from someone who is a manager and they're a manager in a rural or more remote area and they've had a lot of practices in their area who have had transition. It was kind of all of the vets who were getting older and been in practice a long time and now, all of a sudden there's a lot of young whipper snapper vets buying the practices and/or corporate practices that have come into the area.
And so, the doctors have some animosity between clinics. There's not really a friendly vibe in the area that the clinics get along and there are managers in these clinics who have not been a part of any of that drama and who are looking at how can we connect with each other. How can we work together and have relationships, good healthy relationships with our competitors?
Gosh. Gasp, right?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
How do we have relationships? Particularly, in a small town environment that are good. How do we play nice? But also, it asks a bigger question of like, “What's the point?” Because that was one of the questions that their owner doctor asked, “What's the point of playing nice with our competition?” and I just thought this was such a great fun question and I have some ideas having been come up as baby manager in a rural environment like that. So I have some thoughts but I thought you would have some thoughts on this as well.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, no. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I think the questions of… So this is an old-school problem, right? I've been hearing about this for a long time about our competitors. I don't get the feeling that this is much of a thing with the new school owners and managers, right? I think it was much more, when there used to be single vet practices and I think when there were smaller towns or when there was overlapping call areas, I feel like there was a lot more competition.

Stephanie Goss:
Sure.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I feel like now… I mean, the truth is like, if you are the practice manager at Banfield, do you have animosity for the practice manager at NVA eight miles away? You shouldn't.

Stephanie Goss:
No.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That's ridiculous. The impact that person has on you is nothing but they have a lot of shared experiences with you and other people don't have those, right? Being a practice manager is a lonely job because there's no one else in the hospital, generally, that has the same experience you have.

Stephanie Goss:
Right.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And so, there's a lot of benefits to being able to say, “Hey, friend of mine who generally knows what I do for a living in my job, I really appreciate you to validate the scenery or possibly give some advice to me,” or, “We're out of an item that we need and it's going to be three days before we get it. Can you cover?”

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And so, for me… Anyway. I think a lot of new school owners, especially people in corporate practices, I don't know that animosity exists but it definitely does in the old-school crowd. I've always thought it was ridiculous. I think it was ridiculous in the old-school crowd. I'll tell you, just from a headspace standpoint, the first thing is like, “Who's your competition?” and people would say, “Oh, the guy down the road,” and I would say, “No. It's inactivity on the part of the pet owners. That's your competition.”
Your competition is not… It's not, “I'm not going to get to see this pet because they're going to go to someone else.” It's like, “No. You're not going to see that pet because that person's not going to get off the couch and bring their cat to the vet. That's why you don't see pets.” And so, when you look at it like that you say, “What I lose to another veterinary clinic is just so tiny compared to the pet owners not bringing their pets in, us not booking recheck appointments, us not scheduling follow ups, us not working up cases.” There's so many other factors that are holding you back from practicing the medicine that you want to practice. The guy down the road is such a tiny, tiny piece of any sort of obstacle you have.

Stephanie Goss:
But it's so funny because I think about it and I think about almost, really, every practice that I ever worked in, even the ones that ultimately had great relationships with our peers in the area, there has always been this mentality since I started in veterinary medicine to a degree and I agree with you. I think it was much more strongly expressed by the old-school crowd because I remember starting in veterinary medicine where it was all about everybody else is our competition and you are spot on. Even back then, if we zoomed out for a hot second and looked at it, they were not actually our competition. They had a different culture, a different clientele. It was not competition but that outwardly was definitely expressed by leadership in veterinary medicine much more prevalently than I think that it is now.
I would argue with you. I think even now there is… I talk about it with managers all the time where there is this single-sided view of other practices as our direct competitors. When you start asking questions as I do, I'm like, “Tell me what their practice is like.” It's like, “They're not actually competition.” I think if we zoom out, most of us could probably count on one finger the number of true competition that we have in our little practice radius, right? But most of us have other practices and even if they're completely, radically, polar opposites of us as a practice, there is still this prevalent thought in veterinary medicine that everybody else who is a colleague is competition.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, so I get it. I understand. I still don't get it. I thought I'd get it. I just don't. I understand. I think there's two things that traditionally have led us to have practices that see each other as competitors and we don't talk to them or we don't talk about them and we don't work with them, whatever. So there is-

Stephanie Goss:
Or we talk about them and it's all negative.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly. There's scarcity mentality, right? So little behavioral psychology. It's the idea that winter is going to come and I'm not going to have stored up enough food and I'm going to die of famine. That is the caveman mindset. And so, it's scarcity mentality is you see someone else who's doing the thing that you are doing and you say, “Oh my gosh. What if I don't get enough to support myself and I starve to death?” and that's scarcity mentality which you can see from an evolutionary standpoint, having those thoughts is probably motivating for you to get out and work hard to harvest the fields. Do you know what I mean? So that you and your family can live on and make more babies and stay alive and do the evolutionary thing that you're trying to do. I get that. So that's scarcity mentality.
The other one is zero sum thinking and a lot of people look at the world as if you get something, that means that I lost something or the potential for something. If you get ahead, it means that I somehow got farther behind and that's even just all the way to keeping up with the Jones's. I knew some people who will be like, “Oh, you moved into a bigger house. Now, I feel offended because in order to keep up with you, I have to move into a bigger house,” and you go, “Golly. That's a weird construct that only exists in your mind but here we are.” And so, that's zero sum thinking. If the other veterinary practice down the road gets something, does something, succeeds in some way, then I'm falling behind and I'm saying, “You're falling behind in a game that only exists in your mind. It's not real.”

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Yeah. In-

Dr. Andy Roark:
So-

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, go ahead.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No. So those are, I think, are the traditional drivers of why this division has existed.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think for me in my own personal experiences in working with the practice owners that I have, both of those things, scarcity mentality and the abundance mentality, those two things put your finger right on why they were thinking the way that they were, right? It's like if this client doesn't come see us and they go see the team down the street, then we're not going to be able to make payroll, right?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
The reality is that client better not be the only thing standing between us and not making payroll.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
That should not be how we're running our businesses but that's how we let ourselves think and I think the reason that I loved this question and for me, the question was, “What is the point of playing nice with our competition?” I think that for me, I'm super pumped because to me the point is, there are so many more benefits to having relationships and having a community in veterinary medicine than there are real potential losses when it comes to our clients or to our standard of care or who we are as a clinic.
Like your point, really, the scarcity mentality, most of the time doesn't happen. That's not how life actually works. Most of us are not running… Our business is on that razor edge where that one client or even ten clients that go see our competition make or break us as a practice. But the things that come from having a community and having collaboration, all of those benefits, those actually can make or break us as a practice. And so, I'm super excited to talk about it from a headspace perspective because the benefits, to me, far outweigh the risks here. I think that's what I would lean into in terms of trying to explain or get my boss who might not be onboard, onboard with what those would be, is to lean into the benefits.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really it. It's a cost benefit analysis, right? So you say, “Well, what is the cost of collaborating?” and we said, “Do you believe in zero sum thinking? Do you believe in a scarcity mentality? Do you think that you're being hurt by this person doing this work?” It's even more eye rolling to me right now is because… I know this is regional. So many practices, I was going to say most, but so many practices are as busy as they can be or as busy as they want to be-

Stephanie Goss:
They have clients coming out of their ears.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly. I can 100% empathize with people who are wary of their “competitor” when there's not much work to do, when things are slim. As far as staying busy I would say, “Oh boy. Having a client or two every week go down the road, that does hurt when we are really trying to hang on and have enough to do.” I just don't see that as people's reality today.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, I think that goes back to the point you made earlier about the older school, the older generation and I think there is validity there. I think part of the reason of that is think back to when you and I started in veterinary medicine, the majority of our patients now are members of the family and they're getting care in ways that they never did when we started in veterinary… I mean, I remember starting in veterinary medicine, our family dogs, they didn't live in the house. We had a backyard, the dogs lived in the backyard. Now… I mean, my mom's dogs share the bed and sleep under the covers.
The shift in the last 20 years in veterinary medicine has been great. And so, I remember starting in veterinary medicine almost 20 years ago and there were plenty of days where the phone didn't ring and we didn't have clients coming in because we saw a lot of backyard pets and we saw a lot of farm animals. And so, we were seeing emergency cases and abscesses and we see all of that now but it was really, really different because the relationship that we had with our pets and with animals as a society was radically different even just 20 years ago.
And so, I think about why that might be prevalent in that older school generationally and I think that's part of it because we experienced those droughts from a business perspective and not having clients come in the door. And so, there were plenty of times where those clients leaving could have made the difference between being able to pay payroll or not. But I think, I said it and I didn't mean to say it in jest because I think the point is now for most, to your point, most practices are in a place where we're booked weeks out. We can't get the clients all in the door. And so, that environment doesn't exist now for most practices the way that it did back then.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I agree with that. I'll also say this and I can say it because I'm a vet and I love veterinarians and you guys know I love veterinarians. Veterinarians traditionally are some of the cheapest people that I've ever met in my life and I'm in it. Stephanie Goss is laughing because I also have a frugal streak and-

Stephanie Goss:
A mile wide.

Dr. Andy Roark:
A mile wide perhaps but I am a veterinarian to my bones and we are some cheap ass people and I get it, right? Because you come up and you're like, “We got to make it work.”

Stephanie Goss:
It's the only way you survive vet school, is being cheap.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. They're like, “Did you have an ultrasound machine?” “No, I just listened with my ear,” like, “I don't need an ultrasound machine.” I even have vets who are like, “You use a needle one time? Pansy,” like, “Back in my day, we shaved metal off the surgical table and used it for scalpel blades. We wore a barrel with straps, that was our surgical scrub that we wore.” It's like every veterinarian I know lived through the Great Depression in their mind but like, “Okay, I love it,” but that is our people. We are traditional people which means the idea of someone going somewhere else and us not getting that $32 for a physical exam from 1981, that's hard to bear.

Stephanie Goss:
Right. It matters. Yeah. No, I agree with that. Okay. So I want to move us a little bit from headspace to-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Do you want to talk more about… Let's talk about some other money-saving steps that we can take in the-

Stephanie Goss:
No. I don't but I want to talk about benefits. The benefits of collaboration is part of the headspace but it's also a part of the action here so how do we get to doing this? I want to talk about that because this is my heart, this is my jam. I love collaboration. It's part of what I love about Uncharted but I have loved it from the very beginning and I think…
So for me, the headspace piece of it and the advice for these managers is like, “Okay. You may not ever be able to get your practice owners onboard because they may be the veterinarians Andy was talking about who were like, “I wore a barrel for my surgical scrubs,” right? They may not get it but do they have to?” and the answer for me is a resounding no. I can still create a community and I can still drive those relationships independent of what they think and are doing and there is very much a benefit to doing that because I will tell you, my local community forging those relationships with the other practices in my area has saved my butt more times than I can count.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. So let's take a break here and then when we come back, what I want to do is I want to talk about… Okay. Joking aside, how do we articulate the desire to work collaboratively with other practices to our higher-ups? And then, regardless of whether or not they go with it, what does that mean for us as individuals because we can do what we want with our lives when we're not clocked in and we can talk about that and what that looks like.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. I love it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
What's inbounds and what's out of bounds? So let's take a break and we'll come back.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Hey friends, it's Stephanie, and I'm jumping in here for one quick second because there's a workshop coming up and it is one of the last ones for this year of 2022 and I want to make sure that you don't miss it because it is coming to you from my dear friend Maggie Brown-Bury. Maggie is a former emergency veterinarian who lives in Newfoundland, Canada. A few years ago, Maggie made the decision to make a change and she moved out of ER medicine into being a relief veterinarian.
I remember Maggie telling us within weeks of opening up her schedule, her whole first year was booked. And so, we asked Maggie to come and do a workshop for how to get the most out of the relationships that you build as a practice with your relief veterinarians because more and more practices, as we face the veterinarian shortage, are struggling with needing to have relief doctors on their schedule maybe more regularly than we would have previously.
Maggie's got some great ideas after working with a ton of different practices on how you can leverage that relationship and set yourself up for success, set your relief veterinarian up for success, and set your clients up for success. So if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, head on over to unchartedvet.com/events and find all of the information about the workshop and how to sign up. I hope to see you there.
And now, back to the podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. So let's talk about communicating this up the chain, right? So we're in a vet practice and we are interested in having a more collaborative relationship with the enemy, the competitor down the road. Basically, simple cost benefit analysis is generally a pretty solid way to go here. The question you're going to get is, “Why? Why would we collaborate with them?” and I think you should just honor that question for what it's worth and say, “Well, what are the benefits of us talking to these people?” I think the idea that there are drawbacks is pretty hard and I think that as we're so busy, I think there's even less room for people to be like, “Oh, but think about how we're going to get hurt.” I think you need to think about what is the benefits of having this open relationship?
I would tell you just as a general philosophy and then we'll get into some specifics. Guys, I look at the workload the vets have, I look at the labor shortage, and I don't see it going away. Now, pet owner spending habits might change and there's some interesting data about that and we can talk about that. But for the most part, there's no magical surplus of veterinarians that are going to get dumped out into the profession anytime soon or certified vet techs or honestly, there's no reason to think that hiring is going to get significantly easier in the short term.
And so, we've got our hands full and the work is not going to stop. And so, really, one way I look at it is us, as veterinary professionals all in this together, trying to meet the needs of our society for pet healthcare and that's how I look at the world. You know what, guys? I like that view. I like to believe that we're all in this together. I like to believe that everyone who listens to this podcast, we're on the same team and I care about you. I really do. I want you to be successful and I want us to be successful and I want us to come together and take care of the pets and the people that we see. I just tend to look at our profession as us doing good in the world and I like to minimize us sniping between each other and just say, “Hey, we're all in this together. Let's be in this together.” And so, philosophically, that's where I like to start.

Stephanie Goss:
I think I love that because the reality is we're not competitors. And so, if we let go of that scarcity mentality and we start from a place, “What are the benefits?” We start from that place. First thing, what happens when you do run out of rabies vaccine? Who do you call? There's just the pure benefit of being able to say, “Hey, help me out. I'm in this spot,” and that has saved me more times than I can count. Whatever it is from our… I have even gone to another practice and borrowed their digital dental x-ray probe because a patient bit down on ours and it was going to be six weeks before we get the new one, right? That is some serious mojo. Could you imagine not doing dentals for six weeks with our current caseload but that practice was like, “Well, we only do surgery two days a week, so the other three days a week, you guys are welcome to use it.”
Obviously, if anything happens, we would take care of it and pay for it but we kept being able to do dentals for six weeks while we waited for our new probe. So that, in and of itself, number one, is a huge, huge benefit. But the other piece from the competition perspective, which you brought up, Andy, I think is really important is that we're not going to be the right fit for all people. And so, let me tell you how awesome it is to be able to refer needs that clients have that I can't meet to other places and be able to give them a name and a number and say, “You should call over here and see what they can do for you.”
Whether they offer procedures that we don't, they have an ultrasound machine and we don't, or it's just a matter of, “I have a client who is particularly cash strapped and they're looking for a vaccine clinic environment.” If that's not something that I offer but it's something that another clinic in town offers, why would I not tell them that's the option for them and help them get care for their pet? If I can't provide it or if it doesn't meet our needs as a clinic and who we are, why are we thinking about it from a competition perspective and not thinking about it from the perspective of, “Let's help this client get what they need,” or, “Let's help this patient get what they need.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, the future of vet medicine is fragmentation. That's what I believe. I believe that the days of us all doing basically the same thing in each of our practices, those days are over, friends. That means we are going to have high end, white glove, expensive practices. We're going to have specialty practices. We're going to have emergency practices. We're going to have middle of the road practices. We are going to have middle of the road, high communication practices and we're going to have middle of the road convenience-based practices that get people in and out and turned around and are super flexible. We're going to have low cost spay and neuter clinics. We're going to have just low cost clinics that focus on accessibility, access to care, things like that. We're going to have mobile vets. We're going to have house call vets. We're going to have hospice vets. We're going to have ultrasound. We're going to have acupuncture, holistic veterinarians.
Everybody's doing different things and I think that's going to continue. I think it's really interesting. I'm excited about it. But if you think that this fragmentation is true and that practices really are segregating out into different areas and moving into different niches, then it just opens up the idea of, “Hey, we should communicate because we're doing different things.” It opens up that more and further reduces that feeling that we're competing. And so, I really like what you're saying.
Oh, we had a practice down the road from ours and it was a one vet practice and they were very much focused on accessibility and affordability of care. Their doctor went on vacation one time and the relief vet fell through somehow. I don't know how that happened. It was never made clear to me how it happened. But hey, there was no relief vet. And so, that person went on vacation and told the front desk to send them down the road and they started sending their clients to us and we got more one-star reviews that week than we had gotten in 20 years and it's because those were not our people. It was not our clients. They were not looking for what we were doing. I'm not bashing them, they were bashing us. I'm not bashing them. We just did not provide the service that they wanted at the price that they wanted but our clients who come to us were very, very happy with what we do and how we do it.
That is the thing in my life where I really crystallized in my head, these people were very happy with their vet and these are not our clients and we don't want these clients. It's not bashing them, it's just they don't want what we are selling and they don't want what we're doing.

Stephanie Goss:
I think the honesty about that is really great. So my practice, when I first moved to Washington, a really small town and there's our practice which is a large multi-site practice and there's another one doctor practice in town and it's an older school veterinarian, small practice, like you said, they're focused on convenience and cost for the clients. So two radically different models but that doctor didn't do surgery. And so, their process was to refer their surgical patients to us. But unlike you, the conversation that they then had with their clients was, “I don't do surgery because there is a time and cost associated with all of this. And so, when you go over there, you are not going to pay my prices. You're going to pay because they have surgeons on staff and this is what they do.”
And so, the clients were still, sometimes you have that, very different models, and there were still clients that were displeased but by and large, the majority of the clients who came over were prepared for that and they were willing to do it because there was a collaboration between the two clinics and that's the kind of example… Their clients weren't our kind of clients and if they were like, “Hey, we really had a great experience here,” we would have some questions for them about whether it was a good fit to continue the relationship or not but it was really, really nice to be able to know that we could provide that service and not have a veterinarian who had clearly defined boundaries and was like, “I don't want to do surgery,” not have to feel like they have to be all things to all people because we could work together.
For me, that is a perfect example of why this can be a huge bit of it because it allows you to do the things that you want to do and also lean into not having to do the things that you don't necessarily want to do because there usually are people out there who want to do those things.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And so, if you buy into that, you start to see the benefits of having these connections, right? So the big things for me, there's too much work to do. I'm starting to push for referral to other GPs and people are like, “That's heresy,” and it is heresy. It is the sacred cow. We've talked about this before on this podcast a number of times but like, “Look, man. If you've got…” I've noticed I'm starting to say, “Look, man,” a lot. I'm like, “Look, man.” It's like-

Stephanie Goss:
Are you leaning into your '90s punk?

Dr. Andy Roark:
I guess so. Anyway, look, man, if you have more work than you can do and people are getting angry that they can't get in to see you, it makes sense to refer clients away. It does. Now, I would start by not taking new clients. If you haven't done that yet, that's the easy thing is try to retain and service your current clients but send new clients away. But referring to other practices, it's like, “We're not taking new clients. We're unable to get people in. If you need to get in sooner, here are two other practices that are nearby that we recommend,” and send them to practices that you would recommend. Again, it's that scarcity mentality of, “I can't send work away.” I was like, “You can't get all of your work done. You're going to burn yourself and your people out.”
At some point you say, “I've got all the business that I can do and I'm going to take good care of the people that I have coming in. And then, I'm going to send the other people away and I'm not going to lay awake at night. I'm not going to feel guilty or angry about it. I am going to take care of the people that I'm going to take care of.” People say, “But we're not as profitable as we need to be,” and I would say, “You cannot do any more work. If you're not as profitable as you need to be, you need to figure out how to cut your costs or increase your prices and those are the only two options or increase your efficiency,” but a lot of people who have pushed their efficiency as far as they can, at some point, just wanting to see more patients doesn't make it possible.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think for the other piece of this and I'll be honest, I was really lucky to have exposure to this collaborative environment in private practice from the very beginning of my career in veterinary medicine but I will also say that my belief in collaboration got even stronger when I worked in corporate practice because now, I had the benefit of a built-in community that private practices don't have. I have the ability to call my sister clinic eight miles down the road and be like, “Hey, we're really shorthanded today. Can you guys spare anybody? Can you send them over?” and that was a game changer. And so, for me, it made me think a lot about the relationships that I forged early on in private practice and how as we grow and as veterinary medicine changes and as we continue to have more clients than we can handle and not enough staff, that is not something that's going away anytime soon.
The ability to band together as small groups of practices, whether we're independent private practices or corporate practices, is really, really powerful to be able to say, “Hey, I need help here.” Whether it's borrowing equipment or borrowing team members or, we've talked about this, I think, and I've told this story on the podcast, but I had somebody that I interviewed and I really, really liked them. They were not a fit for my clinic and my team but I thought they were a great candidate. And so, you want to talk about heresy, I called up another manager and I said, “Hey, I interviewed this person today. They are not a fit for our team but I think they might be a really good fit for your practice. Can I send them over to you?”
It was another independent practice. There was no connection. It just was a manager that I knew from my local manager's group which is why I think this topic is so important. I called them up and I said, “Hey, would you like to interview them?” and they hired that person and they stayed. They are still at that practice years later and it felt so good. It felt good to help out a colleague but also, it was such a game-changing experience for me because I got to help another practice but it was the first time I felt in private practice where it didn't feel like every man for himself.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. The last point that I want to make on this as far as collaboration between practices, collaboration on high level is one of the critical takeaways that people need to remember is you have got to build the bridge before you can walk on it which means you cannot wait until your dental radiograph probe breaks to make a friend. That's not going to-

Stephanie Goss:
Right. It's not going to work out well for you.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. You need to have that relationship in place. And so, when the practice owner says, “Why should we talk to these people?” and you say, “Because one time Stephanie Goss's… Their dental radiograph probe broke,” and he's like, “But our radiograph probe is not broken.” You could say, “But-

Stephanie Goss:
But the day will come-

Dr. Andy Roark:
“If we don't have that relationship when it happens, we are going to be out of luck. And so, you have to build…” That's a phrase I've used for a long time is, “You have to build a bridge before you can walk on it,” which means you have to make relationships with people when you don't want anything. Because if you make relationships with people only when you want things, that's not a good look and it doesn't feel good. And so, that's a big part of it for me.

Stephanie Goss:
The last thing… I'm so glad you used the bridge analogy because I think you have to build it before you can walk on it and you also should not burn it to the ground. I'm going to say it for the person who asked this question, they were saying that it feels like there's animosity between some of the practice owners and I will say, the point, part of why it matters to build collaboration and play nice with our competition is because veterinary medicine is smaller than the smallest community.
We are closer than six degrees of Kevin Bacon, you guys. The reality is everybody is connected to somebody else, especially in small towns and that is important. When you burn those bridges, man, it is spectacularly flaming and you don't want to do it. And so, even if you don't like the person on a personal level or you don't like their medicine or the way that they run their practice, there is still benefit in being professionals and looking at it as, these are our colleagues and we should be able to have relationships. We should be able to come together and share things whether it's the vets getting together in having radiology rounds and talking about cases or doing case rounds together. Those are things that you get the automatic benefit when you're in corporate practice.
We had lots of… I went through a period where I had a bunch of new grads and I didn't have enough experienced doctors to help train them but collaboratively in our local area, there was plenty of mentorship available. The ability to send one of my new grads to participate in case rounds or radiology rounds with another clinic was a huge benefit. That doesn't have to only exist in corporate medicine.
My very first practice that I participated in veterinary medicine at was a small town. There was three vets in town. We literally were all on the same road, one at each end of town and one in the middle. They're all private practices and those vets got together once a month and did radiology rounds so that they could help pick each other's brains and pick apart the experience that comes… We had one vet who was older and who was very experienced and those younger vets got to take advantage of picking his brain and the medicine that he had seen in his career.
It wasn't that they weren't looking at each other like competition, they were looking at how can we help each other and how can we grow and get that without having to go call up a boarded radiologist or go to a CE that's two hours away? We leaned into the local community and I think that's something that a lot of people often think about it solely as a benefit of corporate practice and something that we can't do.
This is where I would be happy if somebody said, “But Stephanie Goss told me I can.” You do not just have to be in corporate practice to make this happen. You can make it happen in private practice and I think though, the why it matters and why I love this question is because you can do it on your own. This is where you can lead the charge from within the team.
Now, obviously, if your practice owner is not onboard, you might not get to go on the clock and meet with other practice managers for lunch once a month. That might be off the table but there's nothing stopping you from saying, “Hey, we're going to get together once a month in the evening and talk about what's going on in our practices and pick each other's brains about some things.” There is nothing stopping you from furthering yourself from a professional development perspective and I will tell you that the fact that veterinary medicine is so small and it is such a close-knit community, I can't tell you how many times that kind of networking and remembering the fact that I don't want to burn those bridges has really been helpful and impactful in terms of my career and growing myself.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. I think I've just benefited throughout my career from my connections more than anything. It's people who show me what's possible. It's people who talk about what they're doing and I go, “I didn't realize you could do that.” I've just had so many beneficial conversations and it's also people opening doors for me and people saying, “Hey, there's an opportunity for… I know this person who is unhappy where they are and they're looking for another place to go and your practice is a happy practice and has good culture and I thought maybe they might be happy. Would you like to talk to them?” Those things don't happen if you live in a silo and people don't know you. There's so many of those little benefits. The one thing that I want to say is, you can be connected and you can benefit from connections and you can talk to a lot of people and still maintain some level of confidentiality for your practice.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's important because I can imagine business owners saying, “Andy and Stephanie are saying you can just go and tell them everything that's going on in your practice,” and I'm like, “That's not what we're saying.” There's some common sense to it about what you can share. But in general, you can avoid sharing details that would be damaging to other people's reputations or make them feel bad or would make your practice owners uncomfortable or things like that. That's not hard to do. Just speak in terms where you say, “I want to protect people's privacy and I still want to have these relationships.” Those things are totally manageable. You just have to think about it and then be intentional about the questions that you ask and how you engage.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think the last question that got asked by the person who reached out was, “Where do I start?” I think you can want the end goal to be I would love to have a local area manager's group. I think that's a fantastic goal and I'm a huge advocate for that and I ran our local one for years. It didn't start out that way. It started as a group of people who were like, “Let's get together for lunch,” and it was a one-time thing. And then, it was like, “Guys, this was so fun. Let's do it again,” and it very quickly became a once-a-month thing.
And then, we started having some structure and then we started talking about could we tie some CE to this and could we get some speakers to come and talk to us and it grew from there but it didn't start there. If you want to start there, if that's your end goal, that's great too but it doesn't have to be giant. You don't have to overbuild it. It can start with, “Let's go have a cup of coffee. Let's go have lunch. Let's have dinner,” right? Let's just pick each other's brain. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can start small.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I like it. All right. Cool. I think that's great. I think that's some good… Hopefully, that's good insight for people. Hopefully, it gets people some permission they need to make those connections and just start to grow their network.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I like it. It was clearly my jam.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, definitely. Cool, guys. All right then.

Stephanie Goss:
All right. Have a great week, everybody.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Take care, everybody.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, everyone, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in again this week. As always, we love spending time with you. Before we go, I just wanted to say I am getting so excited to head to Greenville. We will be there for our Practice Owner Summit which is happening December 8th through 10th. This is a giant, giant thank you. Shoutout to our sponsors for helping make this event happen. This is one of my favorite events of the whole year. It is so much fun.
If you are going to be there, I can't wait to see your face. I have all the hugs for everybody, including our sponsor friends. And so, I just want to shout out and say thanks to Royal Canin, Hills, CareCredit, IT Guru, and Chronos for making this event happen. Take care, everyone. Have a fantastic week. Be kind and we'll talk to you again soon.

Practice Manager Seeks Fun Veterinarian for Work Marriage

This Week on the Uncharted Podcast…

Practice manager and owner Jenn Galvin joins Dr. Andy Roark to tackle a tough question from the mailbag. If you're a practice manager who wants to find a new veterinarian business partner, where do you even start? In this episode, Jenn and Andy talk about setting expectations, maintaining relationships throughout the current hospital, growing and using your personal network, and achieving cultural alignment with someone you just met. This episode has all the drama of a reality dating show (not really, but we talk a lot about how business partnership is a lot like life partnership)! Let's get into it!

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · UVP – 194 – Practice Manager Seeks Fun Veterinarian For Work Marriage

You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Our Guest

Jenn Galvin is a spreadsheet-loving Veterinary Practice Manager with over 20 years of experience in the field. Growing her hospital and helping her team succeed through hard work, positive leadership, and humor is what gets Jenn up in the morning. She's an introverted “inventory nerd” that loves bratty beagles, dungeons and dragons, and the outdoors. She loves sharing the mistakes she's made, and the things she's learned, with other hospital owners and managers so they can grow their hospitals, teams, and themselves! Jenn will be talking about writing better job ads at the upcoming Get Sh*t Done Shorthanded virtual conference! You can save your spot here!

Got a question for the mailbag? Submit it here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag


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Thank you to our sponsors! To learn more about this week's sponsor, GuardianVets, check out their website HERE.


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Episode Transcript

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This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to The Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. Guys, I got a great one for you today. I am here with my good friend, the one and only Jenn Galvin. I'm bringing Jenn Galvin in. She is practice manager and co-owner at Advanced Animal Care in Fort Mohave, Arizona. It is a great practice. She is amazing. They have a great culture and they are doing great things. I am bringing her in because she is equipped to answer this question I got in the mailbag more than anyone, definitely more than me, and I am thrilled to have her here. Guys, I have a practice manager who is going to be buying into the practice from a veterinarian who's retiring. The original plan was that this veterinarian who owned the practice is going to retire and the practice manager and the associate vet were going to buy together as partners.
Something has come up. The associate vet can no longer buy in. The practice manager still wants to go forward, but they need or feel that they need a business partner. How do you find that? What do you need to look for? How do you talk about this? Where can this go wrong? Guys, I hope you're going to enjoy this episode.

Meg:
And now, The Uncharted Podcast.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and not Stephanie Goss, but the one and only, Jenn Galvin is here with me today. Guys, for those of you who don't know Jenn Galvin, she is a dear, dear friend of mine. We talk pretty much every week about life. We play games together like board games and nerd games, D&D stuff, things like that. We do all the nerdly things together. She is a dear friend of mine. She is a teacher at Uncharted. She runs, with Stephanie, our inventory workshop. She does our financial dashboard workshops. She has a workshop coming up at our Get Shit Done Shorthanded conference, which is a virtual conference in October. Jen, you are doing your workshop. That's hiring based on culture, right?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. It's using your culture as an advantage in your job ads and turning them into something that's actually going to get people that you want in the seats that you need on your team.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I love it. And also, when we were laying out the content for the conference and everything, it's how you can compete in a super crowded field where everybody is looking for talent. It's to say, “What's special about your practice? What is your culture? What are your values? What do you care about? What makes you unique?” and then how do you really use that to hire? I had Jason Szumski on the podcast a little while ago, who I love. He's on about two weeks ago. I love that guy. He's actually doing a presentation at GSD about what new grads want when they're being hired. He started laughing at one point. He said, “Your mentorship is what new grads are saying they want and you look at the job ads and every single job ad says it offers mentorship. And you go, look, when everybody says it, nobody's saying it.” So anyway, I'm really excited about what you guys do. You guys have a phenomenal culture at your practice. You are a co-owner with Dr. Erika Cartwright.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. Dr. Erika Cartwright.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I know. I completely had a brain fart there. I was like, “Dr. Erika. Oh, god, what's…” and then I was like, she does CrossFit and if I forget her name on the podcast, she's going to break me.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. She can bench you, Andy, so.

Dr. Andy Roark:
She totally can, so yeah. I'm like, don't mess this up, Roark and then I was like, Cartwright, yeah. So Erika Cartwright is amazing. You guys have such a fun practice. I will never, ever, ever forget. You really made an impression on me. The day that we became friends was when you and Erika showed up at the Uncharted conference in your dumb and dumber suits. One of you has a powder blue, three-piece suit and a top hat and the other has a neon orange three-piece suit in it, suit and tie [inaudible 00:03:57]. I was like, I think I just found my friends. I found my friends forever-

Jenn Galvin:
That was a lot of fun.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… and then some.

Jenn Galvin:
Now, we just have to try to up that every year, so that's going to get interesting as the years go by.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, we're going to need more insurance at Uncharted. Okay. Well, thanks for being here. You are here because I need your help, because I got a great question in the mailbag that I really, really like. Honestly, there's no one else in the entire world that I think is better suited to answer this question than you are. So let me break this thing out. I'm going to grab it. It is right here. Are you ready for it?

Jenn Galvin:
I am. Shoot. Shoot it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, perfect. I am a practice manager and currently own with the managing veterinarian who's approaching retirement age. Our plan was for myself and our current associate to buy the practice together fully next year. Unfortunately, our associate's going through a tough divorce and no longer wants to purchase the practice with me. I am now looking to find what I call a business marriage, and this is when you came into my mind, to find a veterinarian that wants to become an owner with me. My question for you both is do you have any recommendations for veterinarians and managers owning together and how to navigate that? I have found that in my current partnership that having both a veterinarian and manager as owners really allows us to lean on each other and have support. All right. So that is when you popped into my head, business marriage. What makes it work? Actually, do you want to go ahead and start to talk about Advanced Animal Care and how you came to be an owner with it and what your partnership with Erika, the veterinarian, looks like?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. We had the fortunate circumstance of working previously together and so we got to know each other a lot. I think just like other relationships, you have to know who you're going to partner up with. Because we came from another hospital where we knew each other and knew that we would work well together, we were fortunate enough that when the opportunity came to buy a practice together, we knew this was going to work. Our personalities mesh really well. Here are the things that are important to me and this is what's important to you and do those things align? For instance, if staff appreciation is not high on my partner's list, that's not going to be a good match for me because that's very high on my list. So I think you have to have aligning goals and beliefs and culture though. If those things don't match up, that's going to be a bummer.
A lot of those boxes were checked for both of us and I feel like we were very lucky to find each other. So we purchased the hospital, worked 24/7 on getting it built up. We bought it on April Fools' Day, which that still makes sense for Erika and I. We opened July 25th in 2012, so we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary, which we're very excited about.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Congratulations.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. It's been really great. I can honestly say every year, it just gets better and we understand each other better and we work on it. It's just like any other relationship, you have to work on it. It was funny. She sent me a text this year on our anniversary and she said, “Happy 10-year anniversary. Yay, we still love each other,” and it's true because I've seen those go sour.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, totally. I think that's a whole other podcast. We'll see if we can touch on it today. You guys do love each other because you take very intentional steps to continue to be good friends. I'm going to try to touch on that in this episode because it's something that you guys do that I've thought a lot about. I think you've got so many things figured out there. Okay, here's how I want to do this. I want to turn this around to you and say, okay, Jenn, you've been through this. It's Jenn Galvin in the multiverse and in the other multiverse, there is no Dr. Erika Cartwright. You are going to have to find a doctor that you are going to partner with to own a vet practice. You have that realization. I want you to walk me through how you would go about doing this.
So start in a headspace place and let's always start with headspace. How do you get your thoughts aligned? What are realistic expectations? How are you going to get yourself into a place where you say, “Okay, I have to do this. What am I thinking?” Then I'm going to push you into make me some action steps of how you would go about finding this partner for you based on the experiences that you had.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. Obviously, I would panic first because this person has every-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, of course you panic.

Jenn Galvin:
… right to panic.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yes.

Jenn Galvin:
Have that moment. Get that out of your system. Get that all out first, then actually think about what do you want this person to be like. What are you looking for? If you don't know what you're looking for and you're just out there like, “I need a vet. I need any vet. Any vet will do,” that's bad. Avoid that.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That's desperation.

Jenn Galvin:
Right. Let's not get desperate. Get all that out of your system and then really think about what boxes does this person need to check, and that has a lot to do with your own personality, because you don't want a clone of yourself. That's a terrible idea. If I had to work with me every day, it would be awful. I couldn't work with myself. I think in our partnership, we have a lot of aligning things where we believe the same things, but we do not have the same personality type.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's important, yeah.

Jenn Galvin:
It is very important. Erika is an extrovert. I am an introvert. I am softer with the team and she drives. She wants to go, go, go and I'm the one that steps back and says, “Maybe we should just pump the brakes.” So I think you really need to see, who am I? What kind of person am I and what do I expect out of the business and my team? What things do I see in the future? How do I want to grow and what do I want a partner to bring to that? What puzzle pieces need to fit in? Maybe this person can look at the current partner that they have and make that list of, what do I admire about this person? What good things do they bring to the partnership? What things do I wish I could change maybe about… Maybe don't show them that part of the list, but-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, keep that to yourself.

Jenn Galvin:
What things do I maybe wish I could change and tweak? I would start there, honestly. That's where I would start is who is filling this role? What do they seem like? What's their personality like? What skills do they have? That sort of thing.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I like that a lot. I love the fact that this person used the term business marriage because I do take a lot of these things back to a relationship level and say, “This is going to be your partner. They are your business partner. That's what they are.” Just like a relationship partner, we should stop and be like, what are the deal-breakers for me? What am I looking for? It's not someone who's exactly like me. I think that I completely agree, that's not a good partnership. A good partnership is complementary people. I really believe that. I love how you said it. It's aligned beliefs with complementary skills.
I think my wife and I share very similar beliefs about what's important in life and what makes a good life and we are very different people, but we have that same north star. I think we've been successful in Uncharted because me and Stephanie and Jamie and Ron and the rest of the gang, we share a north star and we're all very different people, but we're all looking at the same thing as far as what we think is important and how we make a difference in the world. So I go back to this. I really like that idea of going, what's important to me?
What I'm taking from you as well is I think you have to know what your beliefs are and what do you care about. You said we have to have the same goals and beliefs and culture thought and staff appreciation and staff support. If that doesn't matter to you, we're probably not going to get along because that's a key driver for me. So I think those are really important. Would you make a deal-breaker list? Are there things before-

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… you even talk to someone, you'd be like… Yeah? What would be your deal-breakers? Because I need to get my head around what a deal-breaker would be that I would know going in. I'm sure I would see it immediately and be like, “No,” but I'm trying to think of what that would be like.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. If you have somebody that if the staff gets paid, that's enough. I shouldn't have to do extra things. Staff appreciation's way high for me. You have to laugh. If you were the super serious, for me, I can't work with somebody that is the hammer that we don't laugh. We don't have fun. This is serious thing because vet med is serious enough. So big sense of humor is really far up there for me, so that would be a deal-breaker. Somebody that definitely works hard when you are an owner. It's different than being just a DVM. It's different. I was support staff for a lot of years and you think you know what ownership is like. You don't know it until you do it and you know how it's different when you own it. It's your baby and I think that's going to be difficult.
It's different when you go into a partnership together and you build something from the ground up. I think something this practice owner and manager has to be wary of too is you're bringing somebody into that baby, so just keep that in mind. So I think having somebody that's flexible. It's that rigid personality that would be a deal-breaker for me in that situation.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think one of the big things for me that I think about these days is practice style. I think that there's a lot of different ways to run a practice, but I think you and your partner need to be aligned. Meaning, are you a white-glove, high-touch practice or are you a high-volume, lower cost practice? They're not better or worse, they're just different animals. If I'm trying to be white-glove, high-touch and you, Jenn, are trying to be, let's keep prices affordable and get them in and get them out, we're just going to have a fundamental difference about what we're trying to do. You can't run a business when the ultimate goal you're trying to achieve is polar opposite from each other, so I think that's really important. I really like your idea. I think one of the things that's weird here that makes this a little bit harder is our manager who's writing to us.
They've already got a practice. When you and Erika did it, you were starting a practice and I could see that if we're going to go in and we're going to figure each other out and we're going to attract people that fit with our vibe. There's an existing thing here and so we got to bring somebody who fits with that culture. A lot of it goes back to what your core values are. I think if you don't know what your core values are, one of the quick exercises I really love is, think about the employees that you have or the people that you work with or the people in your life who you would love to clone. If you could clone them and put them to work in your practice, you would take over the world. Once you've made that list, I want you to think about those people and then I would say to you, what specifically do they do? What are the characteristic or traits that you really love about them?
And that, my friends, are often your core values or at least you're starting to get into the realm of your core values, because the things that you admire in these people are enough to say, that's the person I would clone. That's something that you care about. So for me, work ethic is a big one and I think that you pointed that out too. I think my own personal hell would be a partner with someone who was not as invested as I am or did not want to work as hard on the thing as I do. It's that classic, imagine doing a group project when you're the one who does all the work and the other people hang on, except it's your life. That's how I feel about that. I'm like, that can't happen.

Jenn Galvin:
Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I would lose it.

Jenn Galvin:
And I was that person in high school chemistry who did the diorama myself or what because I just wanted it done right and everybody's like, “Just let her do it. Whatever.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
That's my wife 100%. She will carry the load and I'm like, I'm partnering up with her and I'll carry my share, but I want to be with somebody who would do that. Integrity is one of my core values. I don't want to work with somebody who's going to have shaky integrity. I think it's really hard to figure that out. I think you try to vet these people as best you can. It's a small profession. You're about to make a big commitment. I would try to ask around and see what you can learn about people in an ethical way, of course. We're not going through their trash. That's frowned upon apparently, I found out, and so we're not doing that, but things like that. What are your core values? All right. So that makes sense to me. Anything else in the headspace where you're like, okay, I get it. I'm looking for values alignment. Some people are going to ask, how do you know if they align with you on values? Let me ask you that. How do you determine that?

Jenn Galvin:
You're never going to 100% know, so let's just put that out there, because you don't know anybody truly until you are with them. We all have the honeymoon phase with new hires. We've all done the like, “This person's going to fit great,” and then three months later, you're like, “What was I thinking? They had me fooled.” This goes into next steps, but if you can network enough and find out, “Hey, who has this person previously worked with?” I'm going to talk to those people and see, how was it working with Dr. whosy-whatsy?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, yeah.

Jenn Galvin:
You know what? How did they make you feel, I think is an important question to ask, not just, yeah, they gave great vaccines and did a good spay. Great. Okay. How did they make the people around them feel is going to tell you a lot more about, how are they going to make my people feel? How are they going to make me feel? So I think you have to really dig and ask other people that have worked with this person because you're not going to know. You're never going to know until it's you in that seat with this other person that you're now sharing a big chunk of your life with. There are weeks where I spend more time with Erika than I do my husband. It's just the way that it goes sometimes. You're not going to know until you're in it, but I think there are ways that you can figure that out, at least get a good feel from others that have worked with that person.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I like that a lot too. I love that you're saying that. You're not going to really know. I think one of the scariest things in life is when you're like, I'm going to make this big commitment and hope that it works out. I always find that to be terrifying. The other thing I found though, is that I can generally avoid those situations if I really try to. I think anytime that you're like, “I hope this works out. Let's go,” that's very rarely really required. Go back to marriage, for example. Unless you're getting married on a reality TV show, you've got the potential to try this out for a while. I must be honest. I lived with my wife for two years before we got married. I think we were both, let's see how this goes. We got a dog together. My mom was like, “Are you sure about this?” and I was like, “Yeah.” That's pretty much when I knew we were going to get married. We got a dog together and I was like, “I really love this dog. I guess-

Jenn Galvin:
I'm not going anywhere now.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… I'm getting married to this woman. I'm not going anywhere now.” But I had a long time to warm up to that before we actually got married. So the takeaway is get a dog with this person. No.

Jenn Galvin:
No.

Dr. Andy Roark:
The nice thing about having an existing practice is, is there a pilot program?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Is there somebody that we can talk to about why don't you come in and in 90 days, we're going to start to talk? We're going to revisit this and if you still think you want to do this partnership thing, then come on in and if you don't, then that's okay. I think using the time that we have now to get somebody in and now talk to them openly, because what you don't want to do is bring someone in. They're there for 90 days and they're like, “Oh, no, I never wanted to be an owner. I just want to punch out at 5:00 and go home,” and you're like, “Oh, I wish I'd known that 90 days ago. I would still hire you, but I would not be sitting around waiting to see how you felt.”

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
So yeah, I think that's really insightful. That's a benefit that you have when you're not starting up because you've already got a practice, so can we pilot this thing?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I also don't like to set these things up because you can imagine being the person coming in. You're the vet and you're brought in and like, “Maybe you can be the part owner here. We're going to watch you like a hawk and see how you do.” That's really weird too. I think I would frame it as you come along and then at 90 days, you're going to see how you feel and you're going to talk to me and I'm going to see how I feel and I'm going to talk to you and this has got to work for everybody. I don't like the idea that this is some interview where the current manager has the power and the new person is begging. That's not how I want to do a relationship. We're both coming together to be like, “Hey, how is this for you and how's this for me? This is how I feel and this is how you feel and let's continue on or let's not.” I like that.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. They have to date for a while, I think, is if you're going to do an analogy about it. I think if you have somebody that is willing to not know your practice, not know your people, not really know you, but they're going to come on and be your partner immediately, that tells you a lot about that person. That's scary.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that's true. Yeah. It is funny when you put it that way. Yeah, that's a rather bold, possibly impulsive person that I would have questions about. Yeah, that's really insightful.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. If I got a phone call from a vet that said, “Hey, you want to come partner with me out in Florida or something?” I would not just say yes to that. If that was on the table, it would be like, “Oh, how about we do six months of just me being a practice manager, feel out your practice, see if it's a good fit and then…” I think that's a really smart way to do it, is just put them in a role of associate and date for a while and see how that goes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It sounds ridiculous when you say like, “Oh, this person would come out and just be our partner.” I see that stuff all the time. I'm not kidding. I see a lot of people who are like, “Hey, come and run this practice and be a co-owner with me.” I 100% see those offers all the time and they never feel good to me. I'm not going to say they don't work out because there's probably people out there who's like, that's exactly what I did and it was great. It has always skeeved me out a little bit for whatever reason. I've always felt like this doesn't feel good. I'm much more of a, let's take this slowly and figure out how to move in that direction and make sure everybody's okay before we lock ourselves in.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Cool.

Jenn Galvin:
Andy, do you want to take a break maybe?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Let's take a quick break and then we'll get right back and we'll talk about action steps. Where do we go from here?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Hey guys, I just want to jump in here real fast and give a shout out to Banfield the Pet Hospital for making our transcripts available. That's right, we have transcripts for The Cone of Shame Vet Podcast and The Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. You can find them at drandyroark.com and at unchartedvet.com. This is part of their effort to increase inclusivity and accessibility in vet medicine. We couldn't do it without them. I got to say thanks. Thanks for making the content that we put out more available to our colleagues. Guys, that's all I got this time. Let's get back into this.
All right. Let's get back into this real quick. We've talked a bit about what we're looking for. Let's get in some action steps to help this guy out. So we've got our practice manager and he is looking to bring somebody else in. Let's talk about some action steps. We've thought about what's important to us, what our values are. We're bonding on the north star. We maybe like to take it slow and try this out and see if we can set up a system to date a little bit before we throw into a work marriage. I like all of those sorts of things. Where do you start to solidify this, Jenn? How does this turn from ideas about what would be good into action?

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. I think once you know who you are and what you're looking for and you know what that other person looks like, I think you really have to put yourself out there. It's going to be hard. I don't know if this practice manager is an introvert like myself, but you have to get out there. I think networking is going to be a huge part of finding someone. We all know trying to hire a veterinarian right now is super difficult, and so that alone is going to be a barrier for this person. I know that from coming to Uncharted and going to different conferences, I've met a lot of people and I tended to put myself in a little bit of an introvert box because that's who I am, but I think in this situation, you have to get out there and you have to start rubbing elbows, getting to know some people and then start putting your feelers out and just have some honest conversations. I think it's time to be brave and say what you're looking for.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Jenn Galvin:
You can't just wait to see. If I sit in my practice and put an ad out, I'm sure somebody will answer, but that's not going to work in this situation.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I completely agree. I love that. I think you're totally right. I think a lot of people would sit back and maybe send some emails or put an ad out because that's how you find people. I agree with you. I'd push back strongly against that and say you have a unique opportunity for a veterinarian and what you can't do is sell yourself short. Hopefully, you have a good clinic, a good culture. It sounds like you do, but there's a lot of vets out there who would love to be an owner and they especially love to have a partner and there's a lot of us who don't. This is scary to be a practice owner alone, but I would totally be a practice owner with a partner, especially someone who has experience running the practice who's done it for a long time, who's not green like I am, as someone who's never owned a business, let's say.
I think you've got a really unique and interesting offer. I think mistakes that people make is they don't put themselves out there. They don't go to the local vet conferences. I say local. You can go national. Honestly, people would probably travel for a position like this, but at least the local stuff, and get out and start to talk to people about what you're doing and what your hopes are. It's a small profession, guys. People are networked. Ask people, especially people that you respect. When we were looking to hire an executive director of Uncharted, the way I started was I went to people that I admired the most in this industry and said, “Hey, I know this is probably not a position that you're looking for,” because they're generally farther along in their career.
I said, “This isn't a position that you are looking for, but I really need this person and this is what's really important to me. Is there anyone that you can think of who you think I should talk to or reach out to?” and I got such a great list of people who said, “Well, these are people that I would talk to.” Ultimately, we ended up with just rockstar candidates and got an amazing, amazing executive director. But that's how I started, because I don't know. It was in an area. Our executive director is an operations person. It's an area that I don't know all that well and so I had to ask other people, “Who do you know who could run an organization that's [inaudible 00:27:36]?” and we found it and that was great, but it was really that this is what's important to me. This is what they would be doing. Do you know anyone that you would recommend?
I just found that to be the most effective thing I've ever done as far as going in, not knowing people myself, hardly, and still coming back with really great recommendations of if you haven't looked at this person. And it turns out, I even knew some of the people, but I just didn't know that there would be something they'd be interested in. So anyway, I like that a lot, going out and rubbing elbows. I think that makes a ton of sense, but you can't be a shrinking violet. You can't be a wallflower about it. You really do need to put them out.
I also think that that's a whole lot easier to do when you settled on this onboarding pilot trial program, because then it's not like, “Oh, my God, what it is…” It's like, “Hey, is there anyone who wants to come along?” I'm going to talk to a number of people and then we're going to bring some people in and try them out and see if the partnership might work and take our time and go from there, but that would be a path to ownership, not in years, in months, potentially. I like that a lot.

Jenn Galvin:
I really love what you were saying about don't sell yourself short because this practice manager, if they know that end of it and they can say, “Hey, I have your back. You can practice medicine and you'll still own a clinic and you'll still have input and you'll still be able to do all these great things that you don't have to do yourself because you've got somebody that has your back,” that's huge and I think that's really appealing to the veterinarians that want to own and work. That's huge to me. Erika and I talk about that a lot. I don't know how people do this by themselves. It is really scary and it's stressful, and to have that other person that you can lean on, I think putting it out there and saying like, “Hi, I've got half the load. I'm going to do this part. You're not going to be stuck by yourself doing this. You can be an owner and I have your back,” that's a huge thing you can put on the table. So I love that you were touching on that.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I think that you're totally right. How many veterinarians out there would love to own a practice? When they think about practice ownership, what they're really thinking about is the client experience and the patient care and things like that, but the whole business thing is a big, scary black box and that's a lot of veterinarians. That's why I say you can't sell yourself short. This is really a neat opportunity to come in to affect the culture, to make the practice what you want it to be, especially on the medical side and do the things that you're excited about without the scary part of business if it's a scary part to you, and I think that's true for a lot of vets. One of the things I want to put on the action list, and I think people assume this, but I just want to call it out really clear, there's some behind the scenes work that you've got to do as well.
I want to keep my relationship with the current owner good while we go through this process. So if I can keep the current owner around and engaged and on board with me working on this, bringing someone in, trying them out, being flexible, not feeling threatened. And you're like, “Why would they feel threatened? They're retiring.” People are weird. You know what I mean? And people get worried about when I leave, what are they going to do with my baby? There's still some real emotions and stuff, and so I would make sure that I'm keeping that relationship strong and trying to include that person while also controlling where we go and what we do, but making sure they feel heard. They don't feel discarded or cast out or cut off because they do have the potential to make things really hard on you before they go.
So keep them in. Keep them involved in the conversation. Ask them for advice that those are just basic things of… And there's all the benefits that come with it, but it prevents some of those hurdles of the person who's headed out the door, torching the place as they go. Again, I'm sure this person would never do that, but there are people out there who would. The other thing I would say is I would keep this current associate who's going through a divorce. I would keep him or her in my thoughts as well. I would also try to maintain that relationship because that would have to be hard, especially I would ideally probably like to keep this other associate. Maybe they wouldn't. I don't know. Maybe they want to be a two vet practice. That's all they want to be. I don't know, but if I want to keep this other associate again, I'm going to invest some time into this conversation. I want to be really supportive.
I think this would be emotionally hard for that person who is like, “I was going to be the owner and now I've had this crappy thing happen in my life and it really sucks.” I've not gone through a divorce, but I know people who have, and none of them recommend it as a fun hobby that you should pick up. So I think that that would suck. How bad would that suck is you had this-

Jenn Galvin:
Hell, yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… big plan and you go through divorce and then not only are you dealing with divorce, but you're also not doing this thing that had been your plan. That'd be freaking awful, and so be compassionate to that person, but also mostly because I want to retain that person and also when I get another owner in, I want our previous associate to be supportive and not to be jaded and angry. All those things are just keeping balls in the air and keeping relationships strong to make us ultimately a better, stronger practice in the future. Anyway, you can't control other people, but-

Jenn Galvin:
And that associate, they may change their mind maybe in a year-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Totally.

Jenn Galvin:
… or two. If you've burned that bridge or they felt segregated or that there's hard feelings there, maybe that will take that off their plate, but maybe in a year or two, I don't know how long this other doctor that's retiring is going to stay on in this situation, but maybe that associate will change their mind. The other thing that I thought of as you were talking is maybe these people are a good source of networking. Maybe the doctor that's retiring out, maybe they have a really great relationship with the local VHMA or maybe they know other people that they can introduce you to. Use those people. I know if I'm leaving here, if I left my partnership, I don't want to just walk away and be like, “Best of luck finding a practice manager. Good luck to you.”
I'm going to help find that replacement, at least in the channels and places that I can do that. Maybe that's somebody that this practice manager can turn to and say, “Hey, I know you're looking to retire. Do you have ideas? Do you know people? What thoughts do you have?” and maybe that's somewhere that they can turn.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I suspect I could say how I would feel if I was going out retiring. I would feel some type of a legacy there or I would want some sort of a legacy. I don't think that's too arrogant to say-

Jenn Galvin:
No.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… because you would like to feel like you have an impact that lasts beyond the time that you're gone.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think everybody wants that and so I think keeping that person there is really important. One of the other things I think is understandable if you are the manager bringing someone in, and that's why I see this a lot, I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they float an offer like this to a veterinarian and they're like, “Come in. This other person is retiring at some undisclosed time in the near future and then you will have an opportunity to be the owner assuming everything goes well.” That sounds like a really fair offer and a truthful offer and everyone's intentions are good. I counsel veterinarians all the time to turn that deal down, all the time. The reason is because the veterinarian, this is where we have to put ourselves into the shoes of the person who would be the partner, if they come to your practice because of an ownership opportunity or potential ownership opportunity, that's what they're coming for. I have seen too many vets dragged along, strung along with this carrot that keeps getting pulled away.
It's like, “Yeah, I'm totally going to sell to you. I'm just not ready to retire yet, but soon I'm going to,” and I've seen people just feel very, very resentful that they imagine they'd be a practice owner in a year and a half and it's five years and it's still not materialized into a contract. I see that a lot. I think what's fair to the veterinarian is to be up front and say, “This is the timeline that we're working on. This is what we expect the retirement to be. This is what our grace period, our trial period's going to be. At this point, we are going to make a decision. I'm not going to string you along. I'm either going to say, yes, let's do this or I'm going to say, no, let's don't this.”
But if I was the vet coming in, I would very strongly push for that to say, “Is it a three-month trial? Is it a six-month trial? How long are we going to try this for before you say, ‘Yes, we're doing it' or ‘No, we're not'?” And we sign a contract saying that this is our intention and we're moving forward. Because I don't want to come in and get strung along under promises that some point, I will be let to know that I can now become an owner. So I would push hard for that clarity if I was coming in. I just think it's something that the manager should maybe expect as they make a plan.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah, 100%. They can talk to their legal counsel and get that written up so that everybody understands this is the layout. This is what we're doing. Again, I think that setting expectations from the beginning is always better than trying to catch up later, so make sure everybody is on the same page. Even the employees, when you think of those guys, don't leave your support staff flapping in the breeze not knowing what's going on. They're going to see, okay, one of our doctors is retiring. What does that mean for us? Are they going to have to fire half of us? Employees can spiral way out, which I think it's important-

Dr. Andy Roark:
And they do.

Jenn Galvin:
They do.

Dr. Andy Roark:
They do.

Jenn Galvin:
They absolutely do, so I think it's important to think of who is affected by this and who needs to be kept in the loop and know what's going on.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Well, those clear expectations as well. I push this back to the other relationships in the practice. I think having that expectation of, hey, we told this person they were going to be the owner and they're coming in and we have this agreement about how this is going to go, I think that that can be valuable if our other associate who has backed away starts to feel resentful or starts to come back and go, “You know what? I think maybe I would like to do that.” I would like to say, “Hey, we brought this other doctor in and she's got this agreement and this is what we told her was going to happen. So the door right now is closed for that.”
You should know that before you fall in love with the idea or start to think, hey, now that I see how this is going, I think I would like to be involved. Maybe we could have three partners instead of two, it's good to say, “You know what, buddy? That's just like a great idea. I'm sure you'd be amazing at it, but we don't have that option because we set these expectations and this is what's in writing.” The same thing with the current owner and that actually may end up being the hardest part of this, is in order to really do this in the way that we're talking about with clear expectations where people feel good, I need to have a commitment from the current owner about when they are going to step away because what I can't do is have the current owner who's like, “I'm going to do it soon.” It's like, “I need to communicate what the timeline is for this other person to come in and move into an ownership position, which means I need to have a timeline from you for when you're trying to transition out.”
I think what I would probably say to the owner is, “This is what I need in order to keep the practice going. I would play to what is good for the practice owner who's leaving is you want a legacy. You want a smoothly running practice. We want to get the best person in here. I need to have this clarity so I can attract that person and build a good footing.” The other thing I think I'd probably say for the current owner is, “This doesn't mean you have to leave. You can be a part of what we're doing, but you do need to transition out of the owner position so that we can move on. We'd love to still have you here and have you around in the short term, at least, depending on how things go, but we'd love to have you around, but you do need to set an ownership transition plan and a timeline so that we can hire for that.”

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. I think maybe you have new grads that want to step into the ownership role, but that's tough. You're right out of vet school and that's scary time, but you want to own your practice one day. Maybe the other owner can stay on and that can be part of that agreement, that they're there to do the mentorship thing and then they hand the whole thing over. There's so many ways to do it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Right. I love that idea and that also might affect your timeline. If you have a new grad who comes in who says, “I'm here. I want to get mentored. I would like to own the practice in a year and a half or in two years, I would like to take ownership.” I think that's a fair deal, and a lot of times, I think a lot of new grads would say, “I want to be an owner, but I really want to focus on getting this medicine down. If I had two years to really just see cases and work and integrate myself into the culture, then I think I could pick this owner thing up.” Honestly, I'd say that's probably pretty much your perspective to have.
Really, if you got another vet who's been out eight years and they're like, “I'm ready to go. Let's come in, figure out if this is going to work and I'll take over or I won't and I'll move on,” that's just a different timeline. It's not right or wrong, it's about what the person needs. So it's just good conversations. The current owner can really help you out by being supportive of how this transition looks and that transition is going to depend on the person who's taking it. Awesome. Do you got anything else to add to this, Jenn?

Jenn Galvin:
I could talk about vet med for hours and hours, but I think we've covered a lot of it. I think just really defining what you're looking for and being honest and open with all of the people, that's going to really be a huge thing. Get out there and network the heck out of yourself and your practice. Go to vet schools. Talk to grads that are coming out. Talk to your reps. Talk to your [inaudible 00:41:34] rep and your Patterson rep and whoever. Talk to those people. They know a lot of vets. They talk to a lot of people. You have to put yourself out there and now is not the time to be shy.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I'm glad you said reps. I should have mentioned that. I mentioned that a lot to students over to veterinarians looking for jobs. Your industry reps are in all the practices and, especially the ones who've been around a while, they tend to know the gossip in the practices. They know who's happy, who's not. They know who has been standing in line. They own a practice for a long time and is really frustrated because they're not getting the opportunity they were promised. They tend to know things like that. They tend to know who's really popular with the staff, but is not currently an owner or an upper management or medical director. They tend to know that stuff. I don't think that's dirty pool, I think that's just saying to these people, “Hey, you see a lot of practices. If you see anyone that you think would be a fit for this specific role, let me know.”
I think it's different if you use those people to try to hire support staff or things like that, but this is you're looking for someone to run your hospital and it's a narrow role. It's one job position. I don't see that as a negative as well. Anyway, that's the thoughts. I want to do a shameless plug for the Uncharted community here. Jenn Galvin, you've been with us a long time. You've received the Founder's Award, which is the one award that we give in Uncharted for people who are other members have said, “This person helped me more than anyone else. They made the biggest impact on me and they didn't have to.” So you have received that. It's the highest honor that we can bestow and you have gotten it. You were one of five people who have gotten it in the five years that we have been in existence. What is your favorite thing about the Uncharted community? Why are you part of it?

Jenn Galvin:
Oh, man. There are so many things I love about our community. I think that we are real with each other, is probably that is my favorite part, is that no one is going to make you feel like you're a crazy person or a bad person. You can just put your stuff out there and say, “Hey, I need help. Here's my thing.” Even if you yourself are embarrassed of that thing, I don't know all the things, nobody does, but you can go to our community and say, “Hey, I've got this issue or this is the crazy thought I'm thinking. What do you guys think?” and you will get all of these people that, “Hey, I've been there. Hey, I dealt with this. Hey, you're not crazy. You're not on an island.” That is my favorite thing is that we are real with each other and they are genuine, kind, wonderful people that will help you. You just got to ask for it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, man. Thanks a lot for being here, Jenn. I really appreciate you.

Jenn Galvin:
Yeah. I love being here. Anytime.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, guys. Take care of yourselves. That's it, guys. That's what I got for you. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Thanks again to Jenn Galvin for being here. Guys, if you want to check out Uncharted or the Uncharted community or the Get Shit Done Shorthanded conference, head over to unchartedvet.com and get registered to join the community. Check out our online conference if you want, if want to go that way first. It is October 6th through the 8th. Go ahead and march yourself off at the clinic so you'll be able to participate in what we're doing. Our conferences are super interactive. This is not sitting and watching webinars. This is hands-on working on your own business type stuff. Gang, that's what I got for you. If you got a lot out of this episode, please share with your friends. Feel free to write us an honest review wherever you get your podcast, all those things that people ask for. Gang, that's it. All right, I'm done. Take care of yourself. Have a great rest of your week.

The Path to Practice Ownership

Do you dream of owning a veterinary practice? The right guidance can help you reach your goal. Watch the discussion below featuring Dr. Andy Roark and Sarita Vora, senior loan officer at Live Oak Bank.  [Read more…] about The Path to Practice Ownership

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