Vet Tech

This Week on the Uncharted Podcast…

Even if you live in the middle of nowhere, can you still provide growth opportunities for your technicians? This week on the podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and Stephanie Goss are tackling a letter from the mailbag from a clinic that just promoted their first-ever tech lead! Congratulations!! As this person is settling into the role, they are seeing and hearing that the tech team feels stagnant in their growth opportunities. They told us there is “no opportunity to pursue VTS in our area” and are wondering how to enrich and challenge techs with career growth. Andy and Stephanie both have ALL the feels about this great topic so hold on to your hats, this is gonna get lively. Let’s get into this…

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TEAMWORK MIND MELD: SETTING EXPECTATIONS FOR TEAM COMMUNICATION with Stephanie Goss

You can overcome your concerns or fears over leading your team through team building/communication/accountability work! The simplest way is to learn about it and practice it within a supportive community. In this team communication workshop, we will cover a series of simple, easy-to-lead exercises that will allow you to walk your team from the very first “getting to know you” conversation all the way through the hard stuff and on to the dream work level of teamwork.

You will leave this workshop with:

• Experience participating in and running communication exercises
• Confidence in leading your team towards building a foundation for better communication and teamwork within your own practices

Join us on Wednesday, June 29 from 8:30 – 10:30 PM ET/ 5:30 – 7:30 PM PT for $99 (FREE for Uncharted Members!) Members must still be registered to attend.

All Uncharted Veterinary Community Workshops are LIVE! You will be able to ask the instructor questions that help you address your practice’s unique problems. This will not be 2 hours of silent screen time. Gear up for interactive, fun learning! CLICK HERE TO JOIN US

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A UVC MEMBERSHIP IS YOUR KEY TO FINALLY GETTING THINGS DONE AND GROWING YOUR VETERINARY PRACTICE.

Episode Transcript

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.

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 tackling a mailbag question from a veterinary technician who is set to become their clinic's first vet tech supervisor. I have to give them a huge congratulations because that is awesome and they deserve a shout-out and recognition. But we are making this episode anonymous at their request and so I'm not going to shout them out by name, but congratulations, mailbag writer, we are so proud of you and we want to see more from people like you. And they ask a great question. And it seems, at first glance, like a very simple one, which is, “My tech team seems to feel stagnant. What can I do to enrich their technicians and foster career growth for them?” Seems like it should be a fairly straightforward question, right? As usual, there's nothing really straightforward when Andy and I start to nerd out and this episode is no exception. Let's get into this.

Stephanie Goss:
And now, the Uncharted Podcast!

Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and my friend, Stephanie blame-it-on-the-juice Goss.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh, now I hear that song in my head.

Andy Roark:
I know.

Stephanie Goss:
How's it going, Andy?

Andy Roark:
Man, it's good. It is good. Steph, I just finished putting final touches today on the online Dr. Andy Roark exam room training class, my exam room communication toolbox, is what it's certainly called. The exam room communication toolbox, which is coming out on June the seventh. It is all of my best exam room stuff that I have lectured on all of the world, broken up into 17 five minute modules that people can share with their team. And like, as part of a staff meeting, they all stand alone. They can do the whole thing back to back to back to back. Somebody can watch it as an individual, but it really shines for groups to watch. And then there's discussion questions on it. I've got my teacher notes, which is how I teach this stuff.

Stephanie Goss:
Sure.

Andy Roark:
And the voice that I want to make, and man, I'm sorry. False modesty. It's real good. It's real good. And so I am pumped. It's done. We are getting ready to launch the whole… We're going to do a big launch rollout. It's going to be $100 off for the first 30 days. And it is-

Stephanie Goss:
Awesome.

Andy Roark:
Man, I got to tell you I'm super proud of it.

Stephanie Goss:
I am super excited as well. I mean, you know me, I love giving communication resources to the team, whether it's the tech team, the CSRs, doesn't matter. I am super excited for this to come out because I think it will be a all of the, I mean, people love when you give this content, it's why your lectures are already always packed. And I'm not saying that to inflate your head even bigger than it already is.

Andy Roark:
No. Yeah. The headphones won't fit much longer and my headphones are stretching.

Stephanie Goss:
His head is literally swelling while I'm watching. But no, I think it'll be really great. And I love giving people solutions because everybody's crazy, busy, everybody's struggling with being short handed. Everybody is heading into the normal summer crazies. And so the ability to have a resource and toolbox like that in your back pocket as manager and pull it out and do it as a group or in team meetings or whatever, that is awesome. I love it.

Andy Roark:
Well, thanks man. I said, I really love it. I learned a ton doing the art charming and the angry client course, which was really well received. But what I heard from people was break it up even more, get it down into five minute increments where we can just pop this thing out.

Stephanie Goss:
Sure.

Andy Roark:
And make sure everything stands alone so we can just use the parts that we want. And so that's what it did. But yeah, I'm super excited about it. I also a huge believer. If you want real change in your practice, you need to educate the team as a group. They need to all see the same thing. They need to talk about what they're doing. They need to talk about what they could do differently or how they could work together, needs to come from them. And so, a lot of the lecturing to one person and having them go back to the practice, it just doesn't move the needle. It doesn't make real change, but getting the team together and doing some stuff like this, and then following up with some discussion of what we're doing and why we do it and how we do it. Guys, that's how teams get better. And so anyway, that I'm a big believer in that. I'm super happy to be rolling this out.

Stephanie Goss:
I am very, very excited. I can't wait to see the awesomeness get unleashed on the world.

Andy Roark:
We're just going to unleash the awesomeness. It's like, Godzilla on Tokyo. It's exam room communication on veterinary but it's across America and Canada. All right.

Stephanie Goss:
Oh man. I love it. How's things going otherwise?

Andy Roark:
Otherwise, it's good. Well, it's the end of your stuff. You know what I mean? Lots of half days coming up and school trips. Hannah had a trip to Columbia, South Carolina, which why wouldn't you go to Columbia, South Carolina. And they left at five o'clock in the morning to get there and in the early morning. But yeah, it's good. It's good. How about you?

Stephanie Goss:
It's same. Really busy. It is still, we had fall spring here in Washington. We got four days of beautiful sunny, like 65 degree weather. And then it started raining again.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. It's raining now here.

Stephanie Goss:
The kids are very sad because they're having an end of the year camp out. They finished school yesterday and they are doing an end of school camp out and they had all these grand plans for sleeping out. The girls had planned to make like a fort on the trampoline and they were super excited and I was like, it is going to rain.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Goss:
They were very sad. But it was just enough that we can all see that summer is coming and it's the best time of the year in the Pacific Northwest. I'm excited. It's good.

Andy Roark:
When things like that happen, do you make the kids come in or do you allow them to make their choice?

Stephanie Goss:
No. I told them I was like, you can do this. I don't care. Be frozen. I was like, I would not want to be cold and wet at 2:00 AM, but go for it.

Andy Roark:
You and I are in alignment on this. That's 100% my parenting is low stakes, painful learning.

Stephanie Goss:
Make your own bad choices.

Andy Roark:
Yes, exactly. It's like, I'm going to set my kids up to make as many bad choices as they can.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Andy Roark:
What a beautiful reaping of consequences. You know what I mean? It's like, but dad we're do the thing and I'm like, you're not going to get hurt and you're going to be miserable.

Stephanie Goss:
Exactly.

Andy Roark:
And I am going to be very slow to get up and come and help you into the house. But yeah, my wife would not allow that. She would be like, no, the weather report says this and we honor the weather report and we would butt heads. And then I would back down because I was too. But you and I are together on this. I was like, this is exactly where I can give you the information and I'm going to allow you to make a bad choice so that you can learn that [inaudible 00:07:05] consequences.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes. I think if I was camping out with them, I would 100% force them to do what I wanted because-

Andy Roark:
Exactly right. Yes.

Stephanie Goss:
No, am I sleeping outside in the rain.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. And your bad decisions should not bring consequences to me. The only reason to this is because I would be comfortably in my bed unaffected by this bad choice.

Stephanie Goss:
Exactly.

Andy Roark:
I love it when we're in lockstep on parenting. That's how you do it.

Stephanie Goss:
It'll be interesting this year. We're going to be in lockstep on today's topic because it's a good one. I'm excited to talk about this.

Andy Roark:
We shall see. We shall see. All right, let's break it out.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. We got a great mailbag question from someone who is a technician and they are the very first tech supervisor that their clinic has ever had, which is awesome.

Andy Roark:
Awesome.

Stephanie Goss:
And they were wondering they are started as they have been like really looking at the team from a leadership perspective. One of the things that they are seeing and hearing is that the tech team feels very stagnant and they said that they feel like there aren't opportunities to pursue VTS or additional certification in their area. And so they're wondering how can they enrich their technicians experience and foster career growth for them. And I just thought that this was such a fun question and I'm really excited to talk through it with you.

Andy Roark:
I love this question. I love it. I love it. I love it. Technician education is something I'm so positive and excited about. Technician rules and practices I'm super excited about. I'm getting ready to write an article. My next, it won't be the next one to come out. But the next one that I write is going to be, I'm playing with the title, but basically I think it's going to be like the futurist technician. And I want to make a case for how we need to treat technicians differently and the different role they need to be playing in our profession than they're playing now.

Andy Roark:
And so I am just going into this, know that I am very pro technician and very pro increasing the duties and responsibilities and compensation of technicians. And so that's where I come from. I really like this. I see, I think a lot about education in general and staff training in general for the reasons that we've talked about. And there are some significant pitfalls. Well, just really let me say easy pitfalls that I see again and again. And so I think we're going to get a chance to just point at those. And so I'm really excited about doing this.

Stephanie Goss:
Headspace, do we have headspace with this question?

Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah. I think we do. I think we do. Just a basic headspace. I think the big thing for me in headspace is think about what is possible. And it's really easy to immediately go, oh, how do we cost? Or this costs too much and we can't do this and we can't do that. And we've all been in meetings where there's a negative person who shoots everything down. And if you're not in the right headspace, you can 100% shoot this down.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Andy Roark:
My advice with things like this is we're going to crack your brain open and we have to let everything get out and spread it all out first before we analyze and criticize. And so don't be quick to say, oh, that costs too much or we couldn't do that. Just give yourself time to think on what's possible. And think outside the box. I would say every clinic is different in what they need, do not fall into the trap of, well, that's not what the other clinics do, or I've never heard of a clinic doing that. I don't care what other clinics do. This is about your clinic and what your clinic needs is different than what every other clinic needs. You have your own little thing going and the people in your clinic, your technicians, they are different people with different strengths and weaknesses and needs and passions than other clinics have. And so don't get hung up on what everybody else does. Really the world is your oyster.

Andy Roark:
And the last thing on staff training too, is look for the win, win. And that's so cliche, but look for how do I grow people and benefit from their growth. And that is very possible to do. I would tell you the secret to my career professional success is that I've been lucky and good at figuring out what people are good at and putting them in a place to do it and to grow into it and to learn it. And I point to you as exhibit A of like Stephanie Goss has so many talents and so many skills, and she's wonderful and just getting to work with you and put you into a place to do what you're excited about and to grow and to learn. And all the training that we've done in Uncharted and things like that. And that has totally come back to our business, to make it something super great and special and spectacular. And I hope that you feel deeply proud of the things that you've done and you know what I mean, and how you've grown, because it's amazing.

Andy Roark:
And so the fact that I can have people like you and Tyler Grogan and Jamie and the rest of the crowd and provide learning opportunities and putting you guys in positions where you get to try new things and grow things, and then you are engaged and you are getting to stretch your minds and your legs and our company benefits from that. That's amazing. That is the ultimate win we're trying to get to.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Well, so I think you and I are totally in agreement on a couple of things. The first one is I think it's funny how you started out by saying, don't pitch in a hole yourself, don't stop the creativity. You have to be willing to dump out all the thoughts and think about in terms of what is possible. And I agree 100% with you. And it's funny, because I read this question and the first thought that I had felt very antagonistic, but it was like, well, you're saying that there's no opportunity to VTS in your area. Well, right there, you're limiting your creativity right out of the gate. Yeah. And so I was just like, this is where we have to take a step back and we have to start from a place of the sky.

Stephanie Goss:
The sky truly is the limit. And we are only bound by our own limiting of our creativity or thought process. And so the reality is when people want something bad enough, they find a way. And I think that is the case certainly in professional development and most commonly what we see there is people not being able to have opportunity or finding opportunity where they are. And so the way that they find that opportunity is to leave. And I think in a small business, it is very easy to think into the black hole that can be fear and let ourselves think about, well, if I don't give them opportunities, they're going to leave. But if I do give them opportunities and they get really good, they're going to leave anyways. And so a lot of us lean in to that fear unintentionally, I think.

Stephanie Goss:
I know I certainly, as a manager had that thought, like I want them to get good, but I don't want them to get too good because I don't want them to leave us. I have been there and thought that about rockstar employees and the reality is that if we really care about our people and we want to continue to get the best out of them, we have to continue to provide growth opportunities for them. Because if you said to me, Stephanie Goss, you can have a lot of creativity in this position and you can get to do a lot of new things and our pay sales that this is the top end of it. This is where the growth stops for you. I would say, great. And I would be excited while I was doing those things.

Stephanie Goss:
And I am the person where education matters to me, personal growth and development matter to me. I always want to be doing something for myself and I'm going to find a way to do that. Whether I'm doing it inside of my job or outside of it and the risk by not providing some of those opportunities within our jobs and within our clinics is that people experience other things. And that's when they see, what else is out there and it becomes easier for them to say, oh, I'm going to check out another opportunity.

Stephanie Goss:
I think fear has a lot to do with this. And so for me, the headspace part starts with don't limit yourself. Don't think that you can't make things happen because like you said, your practice is different than the practice down the street, or you don't have specialists in your area, that is already limiting thinking and that's not a great way to start. And the other piece is I think we have to reconcile that fact and that fear that a lot of us have about losing really good people.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. There's a couple of things. There's the old cartoon that we've referenced a number of times here, but I still love it. It's the one where the two doctors are talking. And one of them says to the other, what if we train these people and they leave and the other guy goes, what if we don't train them and they stay. And I think there's a lot of treat to that. I get bored, you know what I mean? I get bored. I can't do the same job for more than two or three years in the same way.

Stephanie Goss:
Sure.

Andy Roark:
Before I'm just like, [inaudible 00:16:17]. That's one of the things I love about vet medicine is that's why it works for me is because vet medicine's a house with a million rooms. I can keep learning things and doing things and getting new tricks and toys and doing different kinds of cases. And just you can't use the word specializing, but basically specializing and picking up new things that I like to do and that I know about. And I think that is one of the keys to keeping people engaged. The other thing we talk a lot about, I hear all the time now. I can't keep my staff because other people can pay more. And I say, well, compensation is a motivator. It's not the motivator. A lot of people will forego a bit of financial compensation if they enjoy their work. And if they're doing something interesting and they see a path for themselves forward. I tell this story a fair amount as well, but it really spoke to me.

Andy Roark:
I was talking to a veterinary technician who I like, who's a good technician. And she came up to me and she said, I think I'm going to leave the practice. And it was a practice I was working at. And I said, well, why? And she said, well, I don't want to be Sandy. And Sandy is a technician who had been at the practice for like 35 years. She was a surgery technician. And according to this technician, she's like every day Sandy comes in and she does the exact same thing and she's done it for 25 years. And I just can't be that person who does the same thing for 25 years. And that really spoke to me a lot as far as technician development or just ongoing development for everyone.

Andy Roark:
People are not robots. They need some stimulation and if you have someone and there are people who are 100% happy to show up and do the same thing again and again. I'm not knocking those people at all, but there are other people who are not going to be happy in that way. And so I'm not saying we have to force march everyone through training. Definitely not, but we should be open and aware that some people want more, they want to develop, they want to engage.

Andy Roark:
This is the last part of headspace for me is I have a core philosophy of investing into people who want to be invested into and who are willing to put in the work and drive the bus and take advantage of those opportunities. Meaning when we pay for training, they jump into training and they do it. And I go, buddy, you hit me up when you have other things you want to do, because I feel good about the resources that were put here versus other people when you send them to training and they hang out and they go to a couple lectures, but mostly they're on vacation. I go, I don't feel nearly as good about this investment as I do when I invest in the other people.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think it's really important. I've been thinking about this topic a lot because we know that money is not the only motivating factor. And so, it's interesting that this mailbag question came in, because I've been thinking about this a lot specifically in the context of technicians because when I think about the job of being a technician and I think about the technical skills. I never felt, and I don't think I ever felt as a technician, there was not skills and techniques and things out there still for me to learn. I always felt like there was tons of stuff to learn. And at the same time, when you think about what do we do every day in our practice? Well, we see sick patients. We see, well patients, we do dentistry and sometimes we see emergencies.

Stephanie Goss:
In a general and your run of the mill GP, there's surgery, there's sick patients. There's well patients and there's dentistry. And so when we think about those things that we do day in and day out, there is a ceiling for the basic things that we're doing every single day. And so if you looked at me and said, I'm going to provide a growth opportunities for someone to go from unlicensed, no experience to licensed and experience. That's awesome. And I think we all should have that. We should have that laid out. Here's the steps, here's the skills, right here's what you can learn. And where most of us stop is where this question begins, which is what do we do when we have those people who have learned the techniques and the skills, who are competent technicians.

Stephanie Goss:
If you told me this is the end of the road, I would be board AF and be looking for something else. I would be in the camp that these technicians are. And I don't think, there's nothing wrong with that. And yet I think collaboratively when it comes to veterinary medicine, the way that we have looked at it, as long as I've been in veterinary medicine almost 20 years now, the way that I have looked at it and have seen my peers look at it is you become a technician, be really, really good. And then you have two choices. You can become a supervisor and you can go into management, which is a whole other-

Andy Roark:
Which not being a technician.

Stephanie Goss:
Which is not being a technician is a whole other role of wax. Or you can go into industry and also not be a technician and work for a company in some capacity using some of your technical knowledge. But because there wasn't the opportunities beyond that. And then when VTS came to be, it was like, yes, here's an opportunity to continue to expand and grow the technical skills. And it made sense, but why does it have to stop there? And I guess that's the question for me is why are we limiting ourselves to think that can be the only expansion of things? There's plenty of stuff that doesn't have to do with what I'm doing in everyday GP that I might be interested in. And we're going to talk about that I think when we get into how to approach it, but I think a lot of us just think so black and white of like, this is the way that we've always done it, that we really are short changing our people and our teams.

Stephanie Goss:
And I also think it honestly, when we sit back and we're brutally honest with ourselves, do you wonder why we can't hire people to come into this field? If we say here's the self-limit lifespan, this is as high as you can get dollar wise. And these are the skill set that you can learn and that's where the learning stops. That would not interest me. If you were talking to Stephanie, just out of university who was starting all over it. I would look at that and say, thanks, but no, I'm not interested.

Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. I agree. There's a lot there to unpack. I want to point out, I think opportunities present themselves on a spectrum. And I think we tend to think in extremes.

Stephanie Goss:
Sure.

Andy Roark:
And so we think either our practice is stagnant and we do not provide any training or we don't grow, or the inmates run the asylum, you know what I mean? And we're just training. And then the staff does whatever they want. And management has no control because people are just doing new procedures all the time and there's no planning. The truth is in the middle. Of course. I think one of the greatest frustrations, it's funny, I don't know that it's equally frustrating, but it is up there is when there are practices that allow training, but no implementation of said training. And I think that gets really frustrating for people too, is they go and they get the training, but then they're not allowed to do anything that they learned. And at some point you go, I mean, I guess it's a little bit better for me because I know stuff, but I'm not getting to do any of it. I think that really frustrates a lot of people.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think that's where then people look at leaving because you have done the development and maybe someone's even paid for it for you. And you're like, why give me all of this knowledge and then not let me be able to engage with it or use it. That to me is from a manager and practice owner's perspective is where we have to take a step back and look at ourselves and say, why are we bothering? Are we doing it just again, I think when we really step back and are honest with ourselves, a lot of the time those choices are made because people are afraid of losing their people.

Stephanie Goss:
And so they're going partway, but if you only go partway and you don't go far enough down the spectrum, because I agree with you. You can go to opposite ends of that spectrum. And both sides can be a little crazy, but if you don't go far enough down the road, you're going to lose them anyways, because they're going to come back. They're going to be like, well I learned all of this stuff and I'm really excited about it. But when you get told no over and over again about using any of those skills, most people get frustrated and look for an opportunity to use the things that they've learned.

Andy Roark:
And it's scary and challenging to have those training opportunities and have people come back and then say, how do we integrate these things in a positive way? That's not scary or out of control but in a smart way. If only there was a place, Stephanie, if only there was a resource that actually worked with leaders and people who are growing their businesses and developing their people to help them in an ongoing basis as they navigate these sorts of things. I don't know. That would be an incredible thing. Somebody should create that.

Stephanie Goss:
Like a community like Uncharted, is that what you're talking about?

Andy Roark:
Community that, oh. Like a community that is Uncharted. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. But we get to work with people in this stuff. Last thing I wanted to say, yes, you hit on this, but I want to hit it really cleanly here at the end. I think we have a wildly over emphasis on degrees and certifications in vet medicine. Now wait, wait, wait, let me walk that back a little bit. I 100% believe in certified vet tech. I think that we need to have some levels of certification for competency in treating patients. I completely agree with that. What I'm saying is that in our profession, so many people say, oh, you want to grow and develop. That means you need another degree. That means you need to go back to school.

Andy Roark:
And I go, I do not agree with that at all. You can go back to school. That's totally fine. But think about your life and all the things that you've learned. What percentage of that did you get in the classroom? Versus working on things and using your hands and being mentored. It's definitely a path to go down, but I look at people and they're like, well, I need to get a technician specialist and maybe you do and maybe that's wonderful, but the idea that is what advancement looks like in most cases, I don't agree with that. I think we can make our own advancement paths and we can create a lot of opportunities for ourselves. And that's what I want to talk about [inaudible 00:26:56].

Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I'm glad you brought that up because what I do love about the VTS is I hear what you're saying and I agree with you. I don't think it has to be about, let's go back to school and have a formal degree program, because I think that's very shortsighted because that path is only going to fit a certain segment of the population for a variety of reasons. I do very much appreciate when we look at creating opportunities that include formal education, that doesn't have to be a degree program. But that you have solid education and I think that's why a lot of doctors, especially practice owners lean into the idea of, well, if I look at something that has a formal program, I trust their other vets attached to this. Someone has thought this out there's vetted curriculum, and I can wash my hands of it, of the responsibility of administering it and being in charge of it and having to supervise it. But I also know that they're getting some education and I can appreciate that.

Stephanie Goss:
And I think we need to look at creating opportunities like a VTS, but even also simpler than that for people where there is a degree of education. And also we're doing hands on learning and other styles of learning opportunity, like you were mentioning because that is only going to suit certain people and less people than the majority, I think.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. I agree. That's all I got for headspace.

Stephanie Goss:
Okay. Should we take a break here and then come back and talk about, okay. They've talked a lot about how, yeah, let's do this, but where do we actually start?

Andy Roark:
Yeah, they seem to be in favor. Let's move forward.

Stephanie Goss:
Let's take a break.

Stephanie Goss:
Hey everybody, this is Stephanie. And I'm going to jump in here for one quick second, and make sure that you know about a few things that are coming up that I'm pretty sure you're not going to want to miss. But before I do that, I have to say, thank you. Thanks to a generous gift from our friends at Banfield Pet Hospital. We are now able to provide transcripts for all of our podcast episodes. And we have to just say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Andy and I have wanted to make the podcast more accessible. And when we were pondering the idea of how do we make transcripts a thing. Our friends at Banfield stepped up in a big way and said, “Hey, we are striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the profession. This fits with that mission for us and we would love to sponsor it.”

Stephanie Goss:
The 2022 podcast episodes are all now being transcribed and brought to you by our friends at Banfield Pet Hospital. To check out the transcript and find out more about what Banfield is doing to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the vet profession, head over to unchartedvet.com/blog and you can find each one of the podcast episodes and a link to find out more about equity, inclusion, and diversity at Banfield.

Stephanie Goss:
And now there is something coming up that you're not going to want to miss. And unlike Andy, I'm not just saying that because I'm the one teaching this upcoming workshop. That's right. At the end of June, I am teaching a workshop for all of you and I am super pumped about this. This is a workshop that I just had the chance to do with our Uncharted community at our April conference in person. And it is called teamwork, mind melds.

Stephanie Goss:
We are going to be talking about setting expectations for team communication, but goes beyond setting expectations for the team communication. Really, we're going to talk about exercises and things that we can do to intentionally get the team to know each other, get on the same page, because when we're on the same page and we know each other, having accountability conversations is a lot easier to do. If this sounds like something you would be interested in head on over to the website@unchartedvet.com/events, and you can sign up, it is June 29th, which is a Wednesday. It's going to be at 8:30 Eastern, 5:30 Pacific. And it is $99 for people who are not currently Uncharted members. And as always, it's free for our members. I really hope to see you there. And don't worry, we've got lots more coming later this summer. Make sure to save the events page and come on back regularly, because we've got lots of good stuff coming at you. And now back to the podcast.

Andy Roark:
All right. How do we want to get started making this happen?

Stephanie Goss:
I have a bunch of ideas and I'm super excited, but I think for me tackling it, if I was this tech supervisor and this was my first time, the first question that I would ask myself and I would ask my practice leaders, my practice manager, my practice owner is, are we asking people what they're interested in? Because we could throw a ton of ideas at the wall and see what sticks or to your very first point, who are people, who makes up our clinic? Who are they and what do they want? And so there are a lot of ideas and I'm excited to talk about some of them. But for me, it really, the action I think has to start with who are they? What are they interested in?

Stephanie Goss:
And so for me, it's a fact fighting mission because feeling like the team feels stagnant, what does that mean? What specifically are they struggling with? And also beyond what are they struggling with, what are they interested in? Because this is where I think it, you need to do a little bit to figure out who on your team is the person who is like, yes, I want to go back to school. And so you're going to look at options that might suit that. Who are the people that make up your team and what are they interested in.

Andy Roark:
There's three things for me. First one is I'm with you 100% is what are these people interested in? And we should have those conversations. Now, let's talk about how we ask those questions because people really struggle when you say, what are you interested? They're like, [inaudible 00:32:50] veterinary medicine, patient care? And they don't know what to say. And I think most of us, if I just put you on the spot listener right now and said, what are you interested in? You might struggle to give me a response right now in the moment. I like questions like, think about the best days that you've had in the practice. What are those days like? Why are they the best days? Think about the best day that you can remember. What happened that day?

Andy Roark:
And that is a neat way to get people to think about things in the past that they have really liked and then tease out what they really liked about it. And so I think that can be really, what's your favorite case that you can remember seeing and why? And so I like those experiential questions to tease that stuff out.

Andy Roark:
The second thing for me is what do you not like? And what's funny is that people are much better at telling you what they don't like than what they do like, because they know what they don't like. They're like, as you say, what do you not like? And you have to have a trusting relationship with this person that they'll answer the question. But if you have that trust, they'll say I don't like going in the exam rooms with people and I go, okay, I get that. Maybe a treatment room supervisor could be good for a treatment room, floater technician or something like that. I don't like being on the phones and I go, okay, well, scratch that whole communication spot off the list here. And to just try to get an idea of what are they like and what are they not like? And a lot of times they don't know what they like, but they do know what they don't like. And I don't put a ton and ton of weight on it other than it can help me get a general direction of where someone is going.

Andy Roark:
And then the third one for me is what's good for our practice because this is a balance. And so it's good to stop and just look around every way and say, well, where can we get better? And what are we trying to do? And where are we trying to go? And that my friends is where the mutually beneficial situation comes out is when I say, “Hey, Stephanie, you've shown interest in this area and this is an area that I'd like our practice to develop in or where I see opportunities us to develop. What would you think about taking on the training and helping me lead the charge in this direction.” And that my friends is how you get people who are bonded and engage. That's how we set it up so that they are getting the training and then doing the training and retaining the training. Because let's be honest, when you go out and you get trained and you don't actually do the thing, how long do you keep it? It's pretty ephemeral. And it just seeps away after a month or two months or six months or a year.

Andy Roark:
And so they actually get the training, then they actually get to do the thing. And people always ask us, they're like, how do you get buy-in from your technicians? I'm like, buddy, you set this up and you'll get some buy-in because you've got a partner in the project in making this thing what it wants to be. You want to do rehab, let's talk about getting trained as a rehab technician and then starting to see some appointments. Let's talk about what the pilot program's going to look like, how they can probably do some half days of rehab until we build that service up and they're going to work the other half days doing wellness tech work or whatever. Let's talk about the client communication position that we're going to have. Let's talk about our nutritional champion that we're going to set up.

Andy Roark:
Let's talk about our anesthesia lead technician and the role that they're going to have in checking our protocols in the morning, are file safe on all the meds and on all the patients, whatever your practice needs. And that's why it says, every practice needs different things and that's why you can't be like, what do other practices do with their texts? You can find some cookie cutter solutions that way, but really lightning in a bottle comes from you figuring out how do you want your practice to develop because then you are going to be motivated to support the person or the people who are going through the training. And that doesn't have to be an individual person too. I will tell you the best example of training that I ever saw.

Andy Roark:
And this is not a sponsored episode, but it was when [inaudible 00:36:54] came out. And the company behind [inaudible 00:36:57] was pushing it. And they set up a specialist, an anesthesiologist to come to our practice and to talk to us on two different occasions and then to be in the practice for a day while we actually used it in some of our surgery cases. And we all got to see it and they walked us through it. And guys, we changed our anesthesia protocols and we got on board in a significant way that I've never seen before or since. But it takes that hand holding, but all of us were there and we all saw it and we all asked our questions. And then we had somebody there who was comfortable when we tried this. And when we slowly rolled it out with some cases, and we actually made a lasting change, in a really, really short period of time. Some people are like, oh man, that took three meetings. I'm like, that was like two weeks guys. That was like two weeks to get everyone on board with this. That's amazing.

Andy Roark:
But I really think that type of team involvement, boy, you can make changes fast. And the last part is when I say team involvement, I say, making changes fast. I did say pilot program. I think a lot of people try to spin the steering wheel and they're like, we're going to get trained and then we're all going to do this. It's like, no, we're going to get trained and then we're going to start to roll this out and implement and see how this works in our practice. And I like to use that wording with people because I'm not over promising, I'm setting clear expectations. We're going to do this, but we're going to do it in a methodical way to see how it fits in with what we are doing and find its place.

Stephanie Goss:
Well. And so I think there's two things that you talked about that are on my list as well. And the one you were just talking about, I think is why a lot of us are afraid to jump in or jump in without really thinking about it. Because a lot of times when it comes to talking about an area of interest, it can involve needing equipment or setup that has cost. Your anesthesia example is a great one because you can totally pilot it. You can try it and it's going to cost you a couple of bottles worth of drugs. And even if those drugs are a couple $100 a piece, that's still a small cost, when you think about rehab or laser therapy, that's a bigger investment. And so for the leaders and owners for a lot of us, it's scary.

Stephanie Goss:
And we lean into doing one of two things, either not committing until we figure out how to make it work financially, which can have people who are interested in it fall off in the process, because they're like, well, I don't want to wait two years until you're ready to buy a laser because I'm excited about doing this now. Or we jump in and we buy the thing and we don't have a plan. And then when Sarah loses interest after doing it for a couple of months and decides, this isn't what she really wants to do now, I'm stuck with the $60,000 machine that we're never going to use again. I understand why that's a struggle. And I think that's part of having the team conversation and brainstorming and I like the way that you approached it and I would do it very similar, which is trying to figure out what are they interested in? What are they not interested in?

Stephanie Goss:
But also looking at it from the business perspective because I think we have a ton of opportunities that I want to talk about a few things that I've been involved with as a technician and also in practices that I've managed where we have created opportunities for technicians to be in charge of their own futures. But I think having a seat at the table and not just having it be something that the practice owner makes or breaks on their own, it is game changing.

Andy Roark:
I completely agree.

Stephanie Goss:
I mean, being able to voice their ideas and opinions and share, I have been amazed at some of the creativity that has come out of my team when we have had conversations together as a group. And the reality is you guys, our veterinarians are overwhelmed. We have more work than any of them can ever handle. And so why would we not think about how we can utilize the team to support the veterinarians and take work off of their plate because it's not like we have no clients on the schedules and the vets are competing against each other for patients. It hasn't been that way in a long time for most of us. And so why would we not think about what can we do to really leverage and utilize the team to their fullest and support the veterinarians so they can spend more time in return doing the things that they really like?

Andy Roark:
Well, this is why I really like the idea of being an active participant in training as the manager, as the owner. Here's why, because a lot of times what happens, I see the owner or the manager, they sit back and they're reactive. And the team says I would like to get trained on rehab. And the owner's looking at full appointment schedules and no space to do this. And they're like, no, and I'll be honest when you were like the owner worries. They're like, I'm not ready to do this for two more years. And people are going to get tired and leave. And I'm like, I feel that in every fiber in my body, because people get excited and I love the enthusiasm, but I'm like, we are going as fast as we can go.

Andy Roark:
And again, and I'm like, I don't want you to get angry at me. And I don't want you to get burned out and feel shut down and leave. At the same time, I cannot add a rehab service to our practice right now right. It cannot happen. We do not have the bandwidth for it, or the resources for it. Or I don't have the emotion. I'll break down. I do not have the emotional energy and resilience to do this. I have no spoons for those of you who know about spoons, I have no spoons. And so what do we do? And to me, the answer is you weighed into the conversation. And just like we don't like to sit back and tell clients what we can't do. I'm sorry. We don't have any appointments today. I'm sorry, we're not taking new clients.

Stephanie Goss:
What can we do?

Andy Roark:
What can we do? We talk about what we can do. And so I would be looking right now when we're overwhelmed, I would be having open conversations with the team and saying, guys, what do you want to learn that's going to help us be happier. What can you learn? What can we learn? What can we work on that's going to get people out of here better, faster. What can we do to be more productive and to save time by training and growing people to cover holes that we have and make our lives better. And buddy, I'll write checks for that training and they'll put it to work right away. I think it's much easier to bring that into the conversation as opposed to waiting first people to come to you and say, I want to go get my VTS in nutrition. And you're like, this is not a good time.

Stephanie Goss:
And here's the thing, again, this is for me and my own personal experience, I think a lot of that has come from a place of worry or fear, but also the feeling like there's only a limited number of pieces of pie. That feeling of, well, and I'm going to make context for this in just a second, but that feeling of there's only a limited amount of opportunity and so we look at it from that perspective. And so what I mean is I've watched colleagues where they have somebody on their team who is truly a talented technician and they have an interest in ophthalmology or ER, or whatever it is. And they don't provide those services, but there's another clinic in the area that does. And I have watched colleagues approach it from, well, I'm not going to help them get experience if it means going to the other practice, because I don't want to lose them to the competition. And nine times out of 10, they wind up losing them to the competition anyways and so-

Andy Roark:
Faster. Faster.

Stephanie Goss:
Faster. Exactly.

Andy Roark:
Because the competition's like, hey, come over here and we'll do the thing you want to do. And then [inaudible 00:44:48] they go.

Stephanie Goss:
And sometimes, the grass is not always greener. And sometimes people go and have experience and they're like, oh yeah, I was happier over there and they come back. But for me, it's about, I really do think we have to stop looking at it from that perspective and think, okay, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. How can we support these people? And maybe the conversation is we don't have the bandwidth or capacity to think about opening a profit center in practice within the practice right now. I could absolutely see thinking about that as a two year project. And so what can we do between now and then to make you feel supported and work your way towards that journey? Can you go and work at another clinic a couple of times a month?

Stephanie Goss:
Can you go and spend time with the certified rehab DBM who works an hour away? What does that look like? And that's where going back to our question in the mailbag, when they said there's no opportunity to pursue a VTS, why? I live in the middle of freaking nowhere and I employed multiple VTS in my practices. Does mean that they didn't have to do some fancy footwork to maybe get some of their clinical experience because they weren't seeing it every day in their GP practice. But if people want it bad enough, they'll find a way. And so right there, we're putting our concerns and fears on our people and that isn't fair. We should look at it from that fresh perspective and say, okay, what can we do to find that happy medium?

Stephanie Goss:
How do we support you right now if we can't jump into the deep end of the pool. I'm with you, I think we think about how do we support the business right now. But if what we come back at them with is only a self-serving answer and they don't feel like we're actually hearing them and they're included and thinking about it. I think we're going to lose them anyways. And so I think we have to think about, okay, how do we recognize? How do we say, okay, I can't do this because sometimes it does involve significant costs or research or remodel or expansion or whatever. I think most of the people that we work with are reasonable people. And I think if we said to them, okay, let's think through what things would have to happen for that to happen.

Stephanie Goss:
We'd have to get equipment or we'd have to rearrange things, whatever, and say, let's talk this through together. Make them an active participant. In that process I think it lessens the chances that they're going to go looking for that opportunity somewhere else, as quickly as they might, if you said, I can't. And I think a lot of us stop at that I can't because we are also, I think there is a part of us that are very competitive in veterinary medicine and I've certainly worked in hospitals where they're just like, no, I don't want you to do any shifts at the ER, even though you're super interested in ER, and what has happened nine times out of 10, we've lost those people anyways, because they have been interested in it and they want it bad enough. They will find a way.

Stephanie Goss:
And so when it comes to this mailbag question, my questions, I have so many questions about why couldn't they VTS because they don't necessarily, you don't have to have a critical list in your practice. You don't necessarily have to have a boarded dentist in your practice. Do they need to get some experience? Yeah. Do they need to have some letters of recommendation that come from specialists? Yes. But there are ways to create those relationships and foster that and create the ability for them to achieve that without it having to happen solely in your run of the mill general practice. And I think that's where it goes back to where you and I started, which is that we are limiting ourselves and we have to stop it.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. I agree with that. The other thing I would say about the training thing too, as we talk about the VTS, VTS, VTS is I really think that when we do training with our staff, you should start with the end in mind. And the truth is, I mean, the VTS is great and if it works out and it can work out, then that's fantastic. The truth is no one's like, what we need is a VTS? No one says that. They say what we need is to be better and faster anesthesia. What we need to do is we need to have better surgical protocols. You know what we need to do, we need to have a better workflow for making nutritional recommendations and getting pet food in the hands of owner. Whatever. No, one's like, our problem is that we don't have a degree on the wall. Nobody says that.

Stephanie Goss:
Right.

Andy Roark:
And so my response back to them is like, what do we do? We can't get a VTS and I would go, what do you need a VTS for? What can you do that moves you in that direction? Because again, it doesn't have to be all or none. You can start. And I thought your example of what happens when we get the therapeutic laser and six months later, Sarah's like, I don't want to do this anymore. Well, what are some things we could have done to move in that direction and put our toes in the water and start to expose our team to that maybe without going whole hog. Are there ways to do that?

Stephanie Goss:
Yes.

Andy Roark:
Start with the end in mind you, the end is not a piece of paper. The end is the ability to do things, work in an area, expand services, help pets in a new and exciting way. And I go, okay, what other alternatives do we have to get there? And there's often a lot and it could be as simple as a home brewed combination of CE from veterinary conferences that this person's going to go to and online webinars, and you could put together a training program that's going to get them a lot of stuff. And if they love it and they excel at it and we start using it in the practice, then at that point it might be like, “Hey, it's really time to figure out how to get this VTS.”

Andy Roark:
The other part that you said that I think is really true. This is so darn hard. Let me just start by saying, this is so hard. And I have wrestled with us many times, the enlightened view on training the staff is a Buddhist view that nothing in this world is permanent and everything is changing and people are going to change and they are going to be who they are going to be. And you do not have any control over them. And the idea that you are going to control, where they're going to be in five years is ridiculous. And so you should embrace your lack of control and decide that you are going to be a supporter of your people and that you are going to develop people and that you are going to mentor. And you're going to give back to others. This is what I believe. And you should know some of them are going to leave and you should know that some of those that leave are going to come back.

Stephanie Goss:
Yes, yes.

Andy Roark:
And you should know that some of them are going to stay. But I think that a lot of times what happens is, and I have no question. This is how we're wired. We want to believe that there's permanence in life. We want to believe that we have control. We want to have certainty. And if I have a technician whose great, I desperately want them to stay. And so I don't want to train them or invest in, or give them opportunities that might lead to them leaving. And the truth is they're going to leave anyway. Who knows what's going to happen to them. And so the better, healthier thing is for you to decide to feel good about it and to support and grow this person and believe in karma and believe that good things come back around and that taking care of people takes care of you.

Andy Roark:
And that is so hard to do because we all have that scarcity mindset from natural selection of what if there's not enough berries for everybody to eat. Yes. If we all have that baked in, but trying to rise above that and say, you know what, we're going to grow people because it's who we are. And we are going to make this a great place to work. And we are going to be a dynamic practice that keeps getting better and keeps working hard. And when people leave, that's okay, we're going to go on. There's a saying that's morbid, but it's also true, “The cemeteries of London are full of indispensable men.” And it's an old said, it should be indispensable people. But the saying just means everybody thinks that they're required or that we can't go on without this person. I'm like, yeah, you can and you will if you have to. And honestly the sooner you accept that and just go on with your life, boy, acceptance is a great thing. It's a great and calming thing.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, so I think for me where it ends up is like, what can we do? And so I will tell you, and I'm curious to hear what things you have experienced or seen in the practice. But I was thinking, okay, well what can we, as an individual practice offer them? Well, there's the leadership piece. And I think we don't discount that. There are going to be people who have technical interests and want to move into leadership, but like you and I both said that doesn't improve their technical skills. And so if they're feeling stagnant truly in their technical skills, I think we have to hear that. And there are ways that we can offer them opportunities in leadership. There's also ways that we can offer people who have an interest in differing types of responsibility, more responsibility.

Stephanie Goss:
Maybe they're like, I would like to become a supervisor I would like to be in charge of the inventory when it comes to anesthesia, whatever. There are things maybe they want to be in charge of training all of the new people on how to use the lab equipment. We shouldn't stop at thinking about what are some of the responsibilities that we can give them. But for me really thinking about my own individual practice and where can we start, for me it was about figuring out what are they interested in. And then also looking at what are things that we can offer our patients and our clients that will take work off of my doctors. And so right off the bat, there are multiple things that I can think of that we offer in our run of the mill GP that can be run almost entirely by technicians or with very limited DVM involvement if we train the technicians and we get the trust relationship built up with the DVMs on the team.

Stephanie Goss:
Things like dentistry. Our dentistry department, we had someone who VTS, they decided they were going to VTS after running the dentistry department almost solo for years. They came in and they did all of the things and they were super anti about that. You mentioned anesthesia. That's a great place to think about. Where can we give people opportunities? Things like technician appointments, truly thinking about what are we offering through technician appointments and can we develop a service that is going to take some of that work off of the doctor's place. And it's not all or nothing. A lot of these are things that you approach from a baby step perspective and you take it one step at a time and you try it and you see what works and what doesn't.

Stephanie Goss:
But I will tell you, I as a technician, my practice multiple of them invested in ultrasound, which we needed. We were contracting out ultrasound services and our doctor said, this is something we want to be able to have here at the practice, because we're doing enough of them and we can't rely on somebody else's schedule to make this happen. And the paraprofessional staff were the ones who got the training and we got certified and we ran the ultrasound department and we had it sent out and had a specialist review all of the ultrasound, but the DVMs referred the cases and then had nothing else to do with it until it came back to having to talk to the owner about the results. But the text drove that.

Stephanie Goss:
And talk about satisfaction for me as a technician to be able to say, this is a brand new skill and this is something I'm super jazzed about. It was awesome to feel like I didn't have to go anywhere. I could stay in my practice, but I could not only get additional technical skills, but I also could use that to run something myself and feel I was generating revenue for the practice. And from a business perspective, talk about the win-win like they are doing things that they enjoy. And it's also bringing back revenue into the practice.

Andy Roark:
Yeah. I'm 100% on board with that. I think that's a good place to be. I guess my last comment on this for training is don't overthink it. I think a lot of people too think that training involves someone from 50 miles away coming in and talking to your team. I thought your point of you can have your technicians research and put together a presentation and train the other staff. And honestly, that's one it's great for the staff. And two, it's great for the person who's doing the training. It is a massive education, personal growth project for them. The doctors can 100% do training on services that they want to see. I am 100% on board with you as far as technicians doing more.

Andy Roark:
And I don't want to unpack this too much because a big old can of worms, but we do not have enough doctors for the work that we have. We cannot get technicians because the job doesn't pay enough. And I see opportunity my friends-

Stephanie Goss:
Yes. I agree.

Andy Roark:
… to grow the technician role. And I think we're going to be smart about it. And we need to follow the model that the dentist set where the technicians work under the doctor, directly under the doctor. But I believe that we can grow the technician rules so that they have engaging interesting rewarding jobs that pay them a good salary and that it's good for the practices. And that keeps the doctor squarely involved in healthcare and treatment. But we need to march in that direction and I'm worried that if we, as a profession don't, the decision's going to get taken away from us. And it's going to go away that maybe we don't really want. And so that's my thought. I don't mean to light that fire too, to burn too hot, but I do think that we need to be thinking seriously about growing our techs and them putting them to use in a way that's good for pet owners and it's good for the practice. It's good for the doctors.

Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I love it. I would love to hear from our listeners, when we put this out on social media. I'm going to make sure that Tyler or that we ask, what are some of the things you've seen in practice? Because again, this is only the surface, like the five things that we just talked about super surface. There are so many things and I want to see because there are so many practices out there that are being creative that are ahead of the curve on this one. And I think, again, as we said in the beginning, we're limiting ourselves. And so I would say to our listener who wrote in, the sky's the limit. Just dream big.

Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. All right guys, take care yourself. Be well everybody.

Stephanie Goss:
Have a good week, everybody.

Stephanie Goss:
Well, everybody, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for spending your time with us. We truly enjoy spending part of our week with you. As always Andy and I enjoyed getting into this topic. I have a tiny little favorite ask. Actually two of them. One is, if you can go to wherever you source your podcast from and hit the review button and leave us a review, we love hearing your feedback and knowing what you think of the podcast. And number two, if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button. Thanks so much for listening guys. We'll see you soon.