Episode #8 – Dr. Zach Mills

Dr. Zach Mills: Well-Rounded Success
Dr. Mills has enjoyed a fascinating career in Animal Health, with experiences ranging from general practice to biosecurity to the military.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. The host of our podcast is Stacy Pursell. Stacey is the leading executive recruiter for the animal health and veterinary industries. She’s the founder of Therio Partners and The VET Recruiter, Stacy has placed more professionals in key positions within the animal health and veterinary industries than any executive search professional, and along the way, Stacy has built relationships with some outstanding people who are doing incredible things to make a difference.

Speaker 1:
The People of Animal Health Podcast features industry leaders, and trailblazers who have made a significant impact or are making an impact in the animal health and veterinary industries. Stacy chats with them to learn more about their lives, their careers, and the unique and interesting things that they have done to contribute to the animal health or veterinary industries. She is here to share their stories with you. Now here’s the host of our podcast, Stacy Pursell.

Stacy Pursell:
Hello, everyone. On today’s show, we are talking with Dr. Zach Mills, who has had quite an interesting career. His career has ranged from epidemiology, to biosecurity to private veterinary practice, to the military and recently working for four leading animal health pharmaceutical companies. Welcome on to the People of Animal Health Podcast, and how are you, Zach?

Zach Mills:
Hey, Stacy, and thank you for the invitation to be a part of this. It’s great to be here. Today is Friday, it’s been a fantastic day, it has been a great week. So doing well, looking forward to an engaging weekend. Looking forward to the conversation.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, and I am so excited to have you with us here, Zach, I have followed your career for a number of years now and I know that you’ve had so much success in your career. I would love to start off at the bottom then at the very beginning of your career. What was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up?

Zach Mills:
I appreciate that. I’ve lived all over but I got my roots right in the middle of the United States and grew up in a small town called McPherson, right in the center of Kansas, and spent my whole childhood there, grew up I was in high school. My parents are from Kansas, and I’ve an older sister and a younger brother and we all went to high school there and we all did our undergrads right there in Kansas as well. So it was great, I grew up a son of an attorney, and it’s a small town, a general practitioner if you will. So an attorney who does a little bit of everything out there and manages and my mother was a trained school teacher but once we started having children, I decided to come home and help raise the kids because we were probably a handful and more than most wanted to deal with there.

Zach Mills:
But it was great growing up there in the middle of Kansas and that really enjoyed and I think it set a very good foundation. I say this, you can get it anywhere, but I think growing up in the middle of America it’s good, wholesome values and I think that we learn things for both coasts, and we learn them from top to bottom, and so we kind of fit in and were able to bring it all in and enjoy that.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, and I’m curious Zach, when did you first figure out what you wanted to do professionally?

Zach Mills:
A loaded question, right? Is it fair to say I’m still waiting to see what I want to do professionally. Show up every day to work and then something you’ll enjoy, you’re never going to have to work a day in your life, it’s been said. I wanted a lot of different things when I was growing up. I looked on law naturally, I think that my dad had a huge influence, continues to have an influence on me. I love that idea of having a good debate based on science and based on the facts and understanding that, being able to teach and having precision around the education. When I started I went to Kansas State University for undergrad and ran through a couple of different majors. I started in pre med and engineering actually. So mechanical engineering, thinking that that was going to lead me to go to medical school.

Zach Mills:
As I moved along, I became disenchanted with engineering I just didn’t think that’s something I wanted to do forever. I love the life sciences, so went to study biology studied language, I had a chance to study abroad, I spent a year in Germany, living in a German town and going to a German university, living in a German dorm. I think that that was a huge influence early on, came back in and kind of pursued that with the life sciences biology background and also, it at the time that there were a lot of things that were going on and potentially changing within the medical and human medicine industry in the end, and there were some things that I just at that time didn’t want to deal with.

Zach Mills:
So I wanted the medicine, I wanted the science, I wanted to be able to put that all together and in veterinary medicine I had that one early mentor, I talked to him Malin Vorhees and he taught me about veterinary medicine, I threw a hat in to the Kansas State and was fortunate to get accepted on the first try there. So going through veterinary medicine, you kind of asked about the career itself, and one of the things I tell people, and we’ll talk about this later, I think too, is that even though you’re trained classically, and one particular thing, either in undergrad or in a professional school, it is really just the beginning of a career and you’re setting a foundation on which you can move in a lot of different directions, and veterinary medicine is one of those careers, you can do so many things.

Zach Mills:
I think, people hear the word veterinarian and it takes them to one thing. But if you look at what veterinarians are doing around the world right now, you can find them in just about every walk of life and that’s what continues to fascinate me about this particular profession.

Stacy Pursell:
That is so true. I have found veterinarians working at human food and beverage companies. Years ago, the head of regulatory affairs for Coca Cola was a veterinarian and the head of quality for Campbell Soup was a veterinarian. So that’s so true. Tell us about your early careers Zach, how did you get started at the beginning of your career?

Zach Mills:
I think one of the earliest parts still, as you wind your way through veterinary school, and you’re looking toward those last couple of semesters and understand what you want to do, and some people are looking at internships, some people are looking at going into private practice. When I was in veterinary school, I was also looking at an infectious disease research shop, working with Debbie Briggs a little bit on some rabies stuff. I started looking to see how I wanted to move from a DVM to a DVM master’s program within that program, but also was really fascinated and through readings all the way along sort of infectious disease, public health. It’s brilliant, a very pertinent topic today but back then, the [inaudible 00:07:02] doctors had gone to Kansas State as well, some military husband and wife thing, sort of looking at the hot zone on these other ones, I love this stuff and found it really fascinating.

Zach Mills:
So I found a program at Colorado State, doing biosecurity, applied [inaudible 00:07:17] successful in that one, and then continued studying that infectious disease area and epidemiology and statistics early on were part of that as well. So that early part was really focusing on school veterinary work, and then I was at Colorado State for three years and then looking at and reflecting, was this what I wanted to do or other things? I hadn’t done any private practice, so I left the university and went into private practice in a seven doctor practice in the Denver area, opened my eyes to what that was, and it was fantastic and was there for several years before I had the opportunity to go open and work with a solo practitioner up in the mountains in a little town called Bergen Park, which is just outside of Evergreen, Colorado.

Zach Mills:
At that point, I thought that this was a career path that I was going to be in private practice forever, I loved it up there, still do. The people, the clientele, the animals, everything up there, but it just made sense that it was also at that time that I started to miss some of the things that I loved about that early part of the post EVM studying and that was being right on the forefront of medicine, the cutting edge parts of things. So I started to look for opportunities within industry, and I would just add concurrently at this time is that I was approached by recruiters from the US Army Reserve, talking to me about what life might be like as a reserve veterinary officer working in the veterinary Corps, and fascinated me.

Zach Mills:
I’ve got a military history in my family, grandfathers and uncles and on down the list and just, it was a rich history and I didn’t want it to go active duty and so the opportunity to be a reserve veterinarian still experience the things in the civilian life but have the opportunity to serve my country. So I applied for and was accepted into the veterinary Corps. Started the application the end of 2002 got accepted in February and signed in February 2003, and so I’ve been in the Army Reserve ever since as well, and so I’ve sort of gotten both of these careers that I’m starting to manage. I’m early in my private practice career and early in my military career, and one thing I noticed pretty early on was that if I was going to be in private practice in purchasing my own practice that it wasn’t going to work out so well.

Zach Mills:
So started looking at going back into some other areas, including back to university or back into something a little bit larger than could in case I got deployed, it was a pretty intense area, if you remember the early 2000s, 2003, 2004. There’s a lot of stuff going on and I think that if you signed up for the Army Reserve, it wasn’t a matter of if you were going it was a matter of when.

Zach Mills:
So I really enjoyed some of the things looking at animal pharmaceuticals and getting on the cutting edge of that, and I looked at that early in my career, but I hadn’t really been that serious about it. But I put it in an application for an opening for an area, technical services veterinarian for Pfizer Animal Health. Pfizer Animal Health is no longer here but they exist as Zoetis. But within that application, as an area vet, it was the longest application process I think that I’ve ever gone for, it was longer to get into that than it was to get into the military but was offered the role there and that was the beginning of really the rest of the career and opening things up.

Zach Mills:
So I accepted that position, it was based out of Denver, Colorado, and I covered an area that included in states and parts of three time zones. So going from a private practice in the mountains to all of a sudden covering everything from Denver up through Bend, Oregon, over to Montana and to the Dakotas and back down in Iowa and Kansas over it. It just changed my life on what was out there and be able to do that and offer that medicine. So that that was the beginning, and so I started that one for several years, and then sort of like clockwork, you can imagine that the next thing that happened is that I got the call up for a deployment and went as a civil affairs veterinarian to Baghdad and served in multi national division Baghdad and MND Baghdad. I [inaudible 00:11:52] as the veterinarians for that particular division, so seven divisions, we split up across the country right there, and I provided the support for the military operations.

Zach Mills:
So I could talk a little bit more about that if you’d like to, but as civil affairs veterinarian’s a fantastic position, and you really get the opportunity, not unlike pharmaceuticals, to be at the tip of the spear of the things that you’re doing, you are the subject matter expert for all things infantry that are going on in that then we report up as the one civil affairs veterinarian to the two star general, who’s there and he was General Hammond at the time and he listens to what you have to say, because this is back to that subject matter expertise. There’s nobody that can replace a veterinarian for what we do and it was a great learning opportunity. It was a pretty hot area at the time, but I think [inaudible 00:12:54] the feedback that we got was fantastic, and it continues to provide a little bit more foundation in the decision making process, helping me to be around people, leading people, being in adverse situations, and being able to understand people in different walks of life.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, I do in a minute want to get to your animal health industry career, but I’d like to talk more about your military career because that is fascinating too. I’d like to know more about the experiences that you’ve had there. What exactly were you doing over there and what was the biggest challenge that you faced in your career in the military?

Zach Mills:
A bunch of great questions on that one. In the military right now veterinarians are found primarily in the army, and with the army there in the active duty and in the reserves. Within those two areas, there’s also veterinarians that we found in the Air Force in public health, but the bulk of them are in the army. I usually tell people that they fall in into the general classes. The Veterinary Corps, what used to be vet comm or veterinary command really oversees two primary missions. One is the military working dogs, and these are military working dogs that are across all services, and so they treat the dogs for the Army, Air Force, Navy, everyone, and even contractor dogs when you’re deployed and more.

Zach Mills:
The other main mission on that one is making food inspection and sanitation. So we work really, really closely in it. It has to go, you mentioned earlier that some of these veterinarians in Coca Cola or other places, and it’s because we’re trained classically in comparative pathology, we can tell good from bad and so we become the DOD, the Department of Defense agents for food inspection and then we become the people that go out and work with the enlisted personnel into on site inspections for sanitation. We do areas where food is produced for the slaughters, catering and everything else, and it’s really it becomes a very large part of the equation because it’s so important.

Zach Mills:
If you think about infectious diseases now and what those can do to really wreak havoc on the troops if the food is unsafe or unsound, and that should start to get sick, removes us from a fighting force pretty fast. So there’s a lot of importance is placed on that. So that’s the one side, that core side. The other side where veterinarians are founded and it’s a much smaller group is really an area that’s called civil affairs, and within civil affairs, it’s a group of army reservists primarily, there are some active duty civil affairs as well, but within that group, these veterinarians are trained to help work and set up civil society, try to get things back up on their feet and rolling again.

Zach Mills:
It’s we’re one subject matter expert in animal health, and we work side by side with others in the medical field, physicians and dentists and the like, and then we also work on our teams, the functional teams, with engineers and people that are in rule of law and transportation and infrastructure, and then we work with our civil affairs teams to be able to go basically anywhere in the country and provide these assets as part of a combatant commanders overall vision to be partners with a host nation, to help to step things up to counter insurgency, and on down the list.

Zach Mills:
So in that area, as a veterinarian, I do preventive medicine and it primarily has to do with livestock medicine, if you’re thinking about dogs and cats out there. They’re not the primary breadwinners in countries of conflict, but herd animal medicine. It might be cattle, might be beef, or dairy. It might be goats, it might be sheep, it might be chicken, it might be the fish, and we become de facto advisors on agriculture as well, because we’re the Department of Defense, we’ve got the ability to move around and we have to be good communicators, we have to communicate to the command, we have to know what we can do to share that, and we also we have to be able to leverage subject matter expertise outside the military as well. So we don’t have to know it all. But we need to know somebody who knows it all, and so we work with people that are the Department of State or USDA, we leverage expertise across universities across the United States, and realistically around the world but the United States universities are our subject matter expertise as well.

Zach Mills:
So it’s a fascinating career allows us to a lot of different things. So in Iraq, when I was there, I was really trying to work to stabilize the area, we also work to identify local veterinarians to help them to come back in, there was religious conflict between the Sunni and the Shia, and so we had to be able to be sensitive to that. Being able to move from really a social society and trying to move them more towards a free market or a capitalism, or something in between where you’re driving the value of the veterinarian until we had to understand how to try to create value within a person and identify that so that there was a needs base for people to call in and being willing to pay for a service. We could do that if we went in working with these veterinarians, and I don’t go in, we civil affairs veterinarians we don’t go in wanting credit, what we want to do is be able to leave and watch somebody be successful.

Zach Mills:
So we never want to take jobs from people, we want to set them up, be successful and if we leave and they’re able to continue on and do it, then we’ve been successful, and so we would work with these veterinarians on doing relatively simple things, and it’s not that they couldn’t do them, it’s just that we had access, we have ability to get the products of the medications, and so we can go in and do deworming, really simple things, vaccinations and simple things, and if we can show that over time, that if you utilize the veterinarian and paid for a service, the value of the meat or the fiber, or the animals in general are going to be increased. So you’re creating value within the animals through the efforts of the veterinarians in being able to leave on that and creating that relationship and I think that we were reasonably successful in doing that. It was something where people asked a lot, did the Iraqis want you there? Did the people that were there was there?

Zach Mills:
I can say that it was my experience that when we went out and worked with them, with the populace and what we were able to deliver, they not only wanted us there, they wanted us back again. It was a very rewarding situation on that. So that first appointment, it was a little bit hot just in after a year of time. It was right at the end of 2007 when I got the notification, showed up in 2008 in January, and I was there for six months and it was a pretty interesting time just because we had that time as well.

Zach Mills:
The surge was starting, things in and around Sadr City and all these words that if you remember that time we’re going on, and so we had to learn how to maneuver in a way that was going to be safe for us, safe for the people that were working with us and safe for the veterinarians, and so we worked really closely with not only our support troops but our allies on the Iraqi Army to create cordons to allow us to work in relative safety in there. So it was a rewarding trip and pivotal in some of the decisions that I make today.

Stacy Pursell:
Fascinating, very rewarding and also very important work too. Zach, you were talking a little bit ago about your transition into the animal health industry and you’ve had these different careers, the military, animal health industry, you talked a little bit about Pfizer and that transition, talk more about that, what was that transition like for you going from the military into the animal health industry, working for a leading pharmaceutical company and then tell us more about that if you will?

Zach Mills:
Yeah, for sure. Moving from private practice into Pfizer, it was sort of day and night and almost felt like private practice was a cowboy operation and all of a sudden we entered the big league on this, and it was something that I hadn’t been exposed to. Even seeing our pharmaceutical representatives, when they would come by, I still didn’t know exactly what they did or how vast it was. But entering into it, the first thing I noticed is that essentially, we had to go back to school, we had to learn not only our products but everybody’s products, be able to go back through and relearn processes, infectious disease, immunology, and the training and the rigors of the things that we had to go through from leadership training, presentation skills, and this first time in that first year, really, where you’re going around and doing shadow rides with other veterinarians and watching them and seeing them, it was fantastic to watch these people who just they can still fluidly move around and talk and what they were doing.

Zach Mills:
You could look at it that at that time, I want to be like that person, I want to be able to say those things. It was so good. I felt like I was okay in an exam room, I felt pretty good at developing relationships with our clientele and working with them on their pets, but this was a whole new world. So it takes a while the investment and the time and the energy of success. It was so good, and so that time as an area veterinarian, you really have to be in the position for about a year before you understand what your job is. Because there’s so many different facets to be able to deliver that. So internal training with the sales rep, external training and delivery of information to veterinarians and private practice across the Rocky Mountains, you’ll run into small animal exclusive, and then you run the mixed animal practices, and you’re learning how to deal with them all the way up. But it’s a pretty vast area to be able to do that, but it’s like it was incredible.

Zach Mills:
So I was in that position and going through my initial training when I got the notification that I was going to be deployed. So I was gone for that amount of time, and I do just want to say that while I was gone, these colleagues that I barely knew at Pfizer were the kindest and most generous people that I knew. They would send things to me, they sent them to people within the team that I was working with. They wrote letters, it’s just so great and I was recognized within our national sales meeting. I didn’t even know many of these people because I just started in the fall in 2007, and being deployed in that January, and yes, recognized by the head of the Companion Animal Division on stage and putting the slide above me, it’s these little things that really let me know that this group cares and these people care about you and what’s going on, and these things matter.

Zach Mills:
So when I came back, I sort of jumped in with two feet and started doing it again and went on with being an area vet for a little more time before a few more opportunities came up. The next one being a pretty fascinating one where it was called a strategic services position. I was a strategic hospital liaison, and so as a liaison, we work with universities and work with specialists and we really try to understand where they are in the thought leader so that we understood how they could influence.

Zach Mills:
That works with me, these skills to this day. One of the lessons I learned at that and I remember Mike McFarland asked me to, he’s like, “Zach, if you’re going through this and if you’re warming up.” At this point just in DVM, how are you going to get If I was somebody who’s in DVM with a masters and a PhD and board certified in this and thinking about that and it was really at that time, really we’re all just people and we’re still just veterinarians, and we really, we want the same thing.

Zach Mills:
So if you can find those common grounds and that common interest, and then you can bring it down to the core, then you can work together to identify how you want to work together to make a difference. That was that initial pivotal place that is just not being intimidated by other people because we’re all on this planet for a pretty finite time, and if we can find that way to work with each other, it’s going to make it a lot better and that was one of my favorite positions, realistically of all time, it was on a team of high performers that were doing the same thing, but they were just a handful of us doing some pretty incredible work and being able to deliver that. So did that position for several years, and then I had the opportunity to apply to lead that a group of veterinarians up in the northeast.

Zach Mills:
So I grew up in Kansas, but at this time I was living in Colorado, and I was covering those 10 states and three time zones as an area that and then I covered in the southeast across Arizona and California and Colorado. I had the opportunity to move with Pfizer up to anywhere really in that region in the northeast and it’s a scary opportunity and honestly, I loved Colorado. So what makes you pull the trigger at this particular time, and I think that and this is one of those life lessons as well is that if you are presented an opportunity to do something along these lines, that opportunity might not ever present itself again, and to not be afraid to say yes, “I’ll give it a try.” If you’re willing to give something a try like that, it can be immediately rewarding and I think that the converse on that is never doing it and never seeing what’s out there, and that’s the easy thing to do.

Zach Mills:
Changes, especially once you’re set in a career in veterinarians, we get set in general, and so to be able to pick up and move, but that those opportunities when they come, don’t be afraid and I would say that you can always go back. Colorado is still there, private practice is still available, I can still go back to Colorado to this day if I want to do it, but opening that up and being able to say yes, I’m willing to go and try one of these things to learn a new part.

Zach Mills:
It was eye opening as well, and once that started, that allowed me to get people leadership under my belt, I’ve done people leadership in the military, but getting it within the pharmaceutical, animal health arena was really important, and it’s one of those things that I think people need to get onto their resumes if they want to advance through industry, and there’s nothing that says that people need to advance if you are an area veterinarian coming in and working in animal health, that’s a great job, and there are people that do and they stay in that job, and they thrive in that job, and they do extremely well in that job.

Zach Mills:
Individual growth and just continuing to be that contributor on those teams. But if you want to try to move up and do different things, there’s a few things that people need to start to look at getting onto their resume, and one of those is people leadership. So I think you need project management and I think you need to have budgetary responsibility or fiscal management, I think you need that. So people projects and money, and if you’re able to do those things, it gives you that leg up so that when people are evaluating you for what you’ve done. You’ve got that experience on your resume.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, yeah. You said some really good things there, and one of the things that you said is be open to opportunity when opportunity comes along. You said you can always go back to private practice in Colorado, for example, but take advantage of those opportunities when they come along. I also like something that you said earlier back, you talked about we’re all just people working together. That’s the same advice my mentor gave me early in my career. I was in my 20s, I was doing executive search, I was supposed to be calling CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, it was a little intimidating, and my mentor said, “Hey, they’re all just people. We’re all people.” So that’s great advice too. You’ve had so much traction in your career. I mean, it looks like you’ve just had success since the very beginning, but was there a point in time where you said to yourself, “I’ve made it in my career.” Or did you feel like there was a time when you really felt like you gained some traction within your career?

Zach Mills:
I think that first promotion. You make it into the company and that’s pivotal, and it’s a very next promotion to put yourself out there and to be vulnerable for that as well and I will say that you’re not going to get selected for every job that you apply for and that happens later on in my career be able to do that, but seeing that success on it as well, and talking with those people, and a lot of my jobs I’ve met and work with most of the veterinary schools, and I’ve been invited to come in and speak with them and with the veterinary students about this exact same topic and letting them know what needs to be done in their careers to start to advance.

Zach Mills:
This is able to walk into those career opportunities is going to serve them for the rest of their lives, but I think keeping that open mind and being willing to say yes to certain things is one of those key things on that and the mentors that help you with that, but I’ve built have a broad network of people as well and I got advice early on that, you’re going to find mentors within your industry, that’s the easy part. The hard part is finding mentors that are outside of your industry. So speaking with people that are outside of veterinary medicine but in pharma, speaking with people who were industry but not in animal health at all, and understanding what’s allowed them to get from point A in their careers to point B in their careers.

Zach Mills:
One of the people that was really pivotal there was Vanessa Mariani, and I put her name out there because when she spoke, I just really wanted to listen to the things that she had to say and she talked about planning your career path, and then working with the right people to make that happen. Making sure that you’ve got mentors that are there and helping to look out for your career as well and helping to see opportunities early on, so that you can start to make those as well but looking for the next few job opportunities that you potentially want, and then looking for the gaps in where you are now and both of those.

Zach Mills:
So when those opportunities come along that you are ready and willing to step out there and get either the experience or the education needed to be ready for either of those, and let people know early on that your career interests involve those. So as the opening comes up, let it not be a mistake ever is that they know exactly that your interests, and so don’t leave it to chance. I will say that I’ve seen this before, where I post a position or somebody on my team will post a position and it’s a fantastic opportunity, and all of a sudden, somebody on the team, and this has been throughout the entire career, will raise your hand and say, “What’s that?” I will always been interested in doing that, and then my response is, “You know what? This is the first time I’ve ever heard that you’re interested in doing this.”

Zach Mills:
So as opposed to those people who’ve been talking about and opening up and building those relationships with me, leveraging that network and getting it out there. So when I forced to speak on my team now it’s, talk to your direct managers, talk to your bosses, talk to those around you, understand what the next two opportunities are so you’re ready for either one. Seek that education and or that experience that you don’t have that gap and if you’re not ready now, you might be ready in six months or a year or two but what is it you need to get done, and knock those out and let people know that you’re there and still interested in doing those things. So that when that opportunity comes, you’ve positioned yourself, you’ve let everybody know, and you’ve built that network too, to vouch for the successes that you’re going to hopefully be able to deliver. So long winded answer on that one.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. The importance of networking you said, building a broad network and let people know that the areas of experience that you want to get because if you’re not letting people know and talking about those things, they won’t know and they may not think of you when those opportunities arise. So let your network know what kind of experience you’re looking to gain, so they’ll think of you when those opportunities come up. Zach, I know that you’ve had massive success. Most successful people also have some low points through their career. Walk us through the highest high and the lowest low of your career.

Zach Mills:
Yeah, interesting on those. The highest highs and lowest lows, and this is, I just got done taking personality profile just this week. So it’s interesting that I’m relatively even keeled and so I don’t get too excited about the greatest things that I don’t get too down about the down things on those. But I think the first massive blow on this was when I was coming out of university, graduate school and studying in really high power programs at Colorado State and then going into private practice and working with a team that was there, and I got along fine with some of the people, got along great with the clientele. But I think that I was still early on in my career and it’s looking at yourself now. A little bit of a know it all, talking back a little bit where you probably shouldn’t, talking when you should be listening, saying things that you maybe shouldn’t say.

Zach Mills:
So I think that these things come with maturity, and I think that if you can learn from others, it’s a little bit less painful. So when it came time to separate that first company, in private practice, it was the very first one that I was with the bigger one and anyway, we just had, it was a great practice, but a difference in vision on where we wanted to be able to go and I got called into my office by one of the owners and associate owner and the associate owner is like, “You know what Zach? You and I get along great, you do a great job of managing up and you do a great job.” But I see out there but you know, just to rub some of the people the wrong way. So there was a lack of emotional intelligence on that I think, and it came down to, do you want to you want us to fire you or do you want to resign? I’m like, “Wow, where did that come from?”

Zach Mills:
But private practice, and that was a really tough conversation. But in doing that, then there’s a little bit of pride in that as well, saying, “I’m not going to get fired from this, I’ll tender my resignation today.” That’s a pretty lonely feeling when you’re out there being able to do that. So I remember that first walk around the block when I got home like, “Whoa, now what?” It was painful and this is one of those things too. I think that most good things that come to people, you have to work hard to get them and work it’s not easy, and so that pain, and whether it’s working out physically or going for a run or going through veterinary school, these things are hard and they hurt a little bit. I think that first one that was a pretty painful lesson. So having to face that first conversation, I struggled with it, but I was able to secure that position up and Evergreen and really that opened up a bunch of brand new opportunities as well.

Zach Mills:
Next life lesson on this is sort of glass half full or glass half empty, and like I say, I never looked back, I’m always looking for, wow, now what do I get? So I remember reading the book Way of a Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman years ago. A buddy of mine, Dan Kellogg recommended it and there’s a parable in there and is a farmer that talks about his son going off to war and how bad it is and he’s like, “Is it bad? Is it not bad?” So it just progresses all the way through, and so just questions of all those things because there’s good and everything that comes from that. So trying to instill that as well on an even keel and looking for the bright side of things, because the opportunity is just on the other side or just around the corner. You don’t have to wait very long, and if you’ve got that training as a veterinarian, and if you’ve got a positive attitude, the jobs, the positions, and if you’re willing to put yourself out there, and if you’re willing to move, really the world’s your oyster on what you want to be able to do if you’re able to build that and deliver a good product.

Zach Mills:
So that’s the low. The highs within the career itself. I think that one, graduating from vet school. I just remember walking across that stage and it’s not that I never envisioned seeing myself there, but since I hadn’t [inaudible 00:38:30] at the beginning of undergrad, and then finished with DVM, that was a pretty good one. Securing the positions, the initial ones. The position for graduate school at Colorado State was wonderful. That first job in Pfizer Animal Health, it was fantastic as well, and then I think that that first role as a strategic hospital liaison, knowing that I can advance within the company, and those are really highs and within each of those, I can look and whether it’s in the military or in the civilian side, it’s being able to help people and make a difference and look back and say that there are tangible things that I know that I hope to contribute to, through a team effort that I’m not seeking individual recognition on, but as a team effort to be able to do these things and individuals and teams and groups in the veterinary profession has benefited because of them.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes. So when we do have those setbacks, those learning opportunities, and then you just have to bounce back and in your career you’ve had so much success since the low point that you mentioned. Zach, over the years, how have you seen the animal health industry as well as the veterinary profession change?

Zach Mills:
Both pertinent and continuing to change. Now, I think there’s some big things that are really on, I think the changes in medicine. The obvious ones are the watching more and more female veterinarians come in and creating a much more diverse profession, but we’re not as a profession diverse enough yet. Studies have shown consistently that no matter what you’re doing, if you got a diverse group and on the team, that your outcomes are going to be superior to those of a homogenous group. So the more diversity we can get in the better, and that’s across every walk of life that we do it. So striving to continue to do that for tomorrow’s even more important. So that’s a big one.

Zach Mills:
I think watching sort of the corporatization of veteran practice as well. Graduating in 1999, and it certainly started to happen then, but it was the rapid growth where you saw the consolidation, veteran practices and purchasing groups and buying groups and really doing in business where you call an acquisition model and trying to streamline on success with those, and that’s still going today and you would never think that there are still more groups coming into it. But there are more and more groups coming in more people willing to buy the competition for this individual practice is going up, and that changes the way that we do things.

Zach Mills:
Then there are certain medicines as well, that I think, are just pivotal whether we’ve done them as well. Certainly, I think some of the pairs through the 1990s in the way that we’ve done those. The isoxazolines recently and updates with monoclonal antibodies and some of the stuff that we’ve done on that as well. It’s just, it’s extraordinary and if you look toward tomorrow, what’s it going to look like, and it’s understanding where veterinarians are, what they need, what the end user. So the animals in the end users, we’ll get to speak on companion animal side with dogs or cats and their owners and trying to do things and put ourselves in their shoes so that we’re delivering products and services that help them to build that human animal bond and make things even better for them.

Zach Mills:
I think that that has come a very long way instead of the animal being a pet it’s now a family member, instead of being in the backyard, move from the backyard to the house to the bed and that bond, it’s not going anywhere. It’s getting even stronger, and one of the things that is so encouraging during the down points of COVID-19 was the amount of animals that were going up for adoption and option centers running out of animals, because they were bringing them in. People saw what the animals were doing for themselves, they saw the ability to help them and deliver things that they weren’t able to do before. So apologies on that. I too have dogs.

Zach Mills:
The it’s going to only get better, and so we’re how do we deliver the products and the services that are going to do the most good for the most animals and most people and make it sustainable and do what’s right by the veterinarians as well, because the veterinarians are the ones that are at the core of what’s going on and making those recommendations and making the decisions and helping to influence things that are going on. So it’s that partnership of being able to deliver all those things for tomorrow. Corporatization is not going to slow down, retail is going to continue to grow, and the diversity is something that we need to support this move forward.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes. Well, you already answered this to some degree, but what does your crystal ball saying about the future of the animal health industry as well as the veterinary profession?

Zach Mills:
You can see that right now with the growth in the public companies, you can see that with the popularity of certain retail and online companies that do extremely well, with people having dogs and cats being part of the family. It’s individualized medicine, it’s individualized care, they treat them extremely well and customized services just get better and better, and the quality of medicine is going to get better. I think you’ll see more consolidation, I think that it’ll be harder to find one or two doctor practices but that’s not bad. Instead of them working 60, 70, 80 hours maybe we can dial that back a little bit of focus on that work life balance.

Zach Mills:
One of the biggest initiatives that our group’s working on and is a concern, I think, for anybody in the industry, and certainly in our company is that up and down, left and right, people see that the veterinarians are having issues with some of the mental health and the stress and not being able to cope with that. So suicide within the profession it’s at dangerously high levels as well and if we can find those root causes we can help to balance people’s lives out and understand what we’re doing within the profession to make it better because it can be so rewarding, but we want to make sure we’re taking care of our own as well. So those are some of the things we need to tackle as a group.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes. Yeah, lots of challenges but some opportunities there too and solutions that we need to find ways to solve. I’d love for you to share with the listeners about the kinds of projects that you’re up to today, Zach, if you will.

Zach Mills:
Yeah. Now, we’ve got projects sort of all over the board. Within our veterinary group right now, one of the things that is a huge focus on for our group, is the colleges of veterinary medicine being able to partner with those. I’ve read long ago, two things of a good leader having a vision and having a transparency to be able to do it. So I’ve got a vision of where I want these people to go and transparency, but I think the future of the veteran profession lies within the vet students of today. So understanding the who select going to veterinary schools are and what their needs are, and how we can help to support them going through because those best students of today are the veterinarians of tomorrow, and we need to be there for them.

Zach Mills:
So projects that help the colleges of veterinary medicine, that help veterinary students are very high on our list. Projects that help to get into products into the hands of customers in the right ways as well, I think that that’s important as well. This sounds very industrial likewise from industry medicine, but at the same time, if we select to put animals on particularly dewormer or parasiticide, we need to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that’s going to be the easiest way for the owners to get those products and to deliver those to the animals and the animals to have that positive experience to be able to do it.

Zach Mills:
If something either is uncomfortable, tastes bad, or is difficult to deliver, in this day and age life is too short, we’re just going to not do those things because we don’t want to deal with it. So we need to make sure that it’s a positive experience and we’ll create that experience as well. One of the things that we’re also trying to do is really working with our veterinarians to deliver some really cutting edge opportunities for continuing education, we want to make sure that we’re at the very front edge of the wave of delivering these things of what they need, in ways that they want it, in small chunks and bites in where and how they can get it in ways that are going to be utilizable, and you can learn it today and utilize it this afternoon or tomorrow.

Zach Mills:
So I’m working with key opinion leaders that are driving it and helping influence the the industry as well, it makes a big difference for us. So those are three areas that we’re working in but there’s a lot of things that we’re doing right now to make it even better but those are three important ones.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes. Well, sounds like you have a lot of variety in the role that you’re currently in, I’m curious, what is the typical day like for you there.

Zach Mills:
A typical day is that it’s an atypical day. I think that that’s fair to say, this is different than it’s been from a COVID standpoint before that, and what it’s going to be like in the upcoming three months, six months, and nine months. Today, it’s get up, come down turn on the computer and I always try to make sure that I have space in my calendar for me, and that’s at the beginning that I set aside the first hour, 7:30 to 8:30 reviewing emails, preparing for the day, understanding where I am, and being able to go with those. Making sure that I set time aside at lunch, to take care of myself and encourage my team to do these things as well. If you sit at your computer all day, every day, it’s just too easy to sit at your computer from 7am until 7pm or longer, and you get at the end of the day, you’ve never been outside, I don’t know what you ate, if you did, you’re eating and drinking in front of your computer as well.

Zach Mills:
So setting aside that time for you to be able to do those things because the works never ending and many other people are putting it in. So those mornings, we do like everybody else, it’s Zoom meetings or Teams meetings, or any of the virtual meetings that seem like they go on forever. The one thing I will stress to people in that is that if you’ve got an hour book your meeting for 50 minutes, if you’ve got 30 minutes book your reading for 25. You’ve got to give yourself some space in there to breathe and to reset mentally to be able to do those things.

Zach Mills:
So as we look forward right now, some of the things as well that we’re really starting to get back into the field right now, our field force with our veterinarians on my team, they’re getting back out and customers are working with the sales reps, and it’s an exciting time and really starting in July 1st we’re essentially unleashing the hounds and we’re going to bet that they’re going to be able to work still with masks and still with the proper utensils, but able to get back out there and start doing the things we did. I think the most important thing, as I look at it as that, what lessons have we learned over the last 400 and some odd days of between then and now that we need to not give up? We simply can’t go back to the way it was because life is not the way that it was nor will it ever be that way again.

Zach Mills:
So I think between those things, if we were able to do those, make those tangible differences, we’ve got the ability to help improve the work life balances of people across the teams, there might be people that were traveling more than they wanted to, there might people that weren’t traveling enough. So this gives us that opportunity to reassess and evaluate the way that we work, how we work, where we do this, to make that engagement for our team even better. We want people to make this the place where they want to work. I want my team to be happy, I want them to come look up and say, “If it doesn’t feel like work, then you never have to work in a life.” We strive to do those things, and so we’ve got a lot of opportunities here but the easy way out, is thinking to go back to the way that was but as we mentioned earlier nothing good comes without a little bit of pain and hard work and that pain and hard work is going to be figuring out exactly that next balance in life for us.

Stacy Pursell:
Yep, that’s some good advice, evaluate, create some space, take a lunch, take some breaks, take some time for yourself. Those are some good daily habits. Zach, what are a few of your other daily habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success throughout your career?

Zach Mills:
It’s going to come down to one thing and that’s just making sure that I try to exercise, I’ve tried to do something outside every day. I run, I trail run probably 95% of my runs are on trails with dogs, get outside. I try to do exercise and to me outdoors it’s a power position, but it might not be for everybody. But I would say find that one thing that recharges you and takes your mind off of everything else and carve out that time and never look back at the end of that day and say, “I wish I would have taken time to read that book, or to go for that walk, or to listen to whatever that was or cook that meal that I love cooking.”

Zach Mills:
Because you then live with regret slowly each day, but if you make sure that you do those things, it recharges your battery and after that little break of whatever you’re able to do then you’re able to come back with 100% of your energy. So for me, it’s exercise to be able to go out there and do that and to spend time on the street with my dogs, love it.

Stacy Pursell:
That’s so good. Take the time, schedule that space for yourself. You mentioned a couple of people earlier back, but what mentor has made the biggest impact on your career so far?

Zach Mills:
I have mentioned a few people with that as well, but I think that every time I’ve come across a boss or my director or manager, and people that I’ve set aside as absolute mentors they’ve all given me a little bit of sage words and advice and you take these nuggets and you package them away because you can’t apply all of them all the time, but you can apply some of them all the time. So, I mentioned Vanessa Mariani and pet balancing our career. I want to mention, Rob Kelley, when I went through our business operations on the cattle side or the livestock side at Pfizer. He gave me some very sound advice on looking at what motivates people and how we want to be able to do that and decision making and weighing why you would do or not do something. I thought that was really important.

Zach Mills:
My military career, look back at John Belfridge he was in ’06, a colonel at the time, right when I came in as a very young lieutenant, he helped me craft my career through the military and I think about the things that he said and did. Wise words from my parents, from my father on work and work ethic and the way that we do things. We can go on and on, but I think that the list is long with those are some of the key people when I think about that. JP Henries, this is an interesting one, was that I went to a boy’s camp as a young lad up in northern Minnesota and continue to work there still.

Zach Mills:
I’ve worked there as a camp counselor for about 10 years on and off, but I still continue to go up and lead our trips there. JP Henries sons, Brian, and CJ and Mike, main one’s, Bruce, as well but they were three main sons. Their words and dealing with kids and helping to make their lives better as well, to be a counselors and a mentor to these kids and being a role model and as an example, that’s one of the things as well too.

Zach Mills:
You’ve never realized at the time that the words that you say and do can make a difference. But those guys, they do that and I think that as veterinarians on my team, and as I hopefully as a leader we’ve recognized when we need to know, and I tell them that I don’t care what your position is, if you’re a veterinarian, then the company is an animal health company you are a leader, and people look to you and they watch you and they learn from you and you’re setting an example, even when you don’t mean to.So we are we’re hoping to mentor people all the time, whether we like it or not.

Stacy Pursell:
You mentioned some advice that other escaped you like Rob Kelley, for example, what advice would you give to the younger version of yourself?

Zach Mills:
Be a little bit more humble at beginning. Be in tune to some of the emotional intelligence things that go on as well. So I mean, there’s certainly early on I would say, from a training standpoint, I would say, as you’re going through your career, try to balance out what you need to get from a business aspect on it. You need to be very fluent in financial acumen, what that means from a finance, from an accounting standpoint, be able to sit at the table and have the conversations. If you are that leader, you need to be able to make sure that your voice is heard as well.

Zach Mills:
Some of the key things in those walk around things are be willing to take a chance, you can always go back and do those same things. We mentioned that earlier on being able to make that move from Colorado. Don’t be afraid to try it because the easiest thing to do is say no, and then you’ll never go anywhere, but if you’re willing to take that opportunity, that chance you will find success on the other side. So I learned from those and try to pass those on to the people on the team as well.

Stacy Pursell:
What other messages or principles do you wish you could teach everyone?

Zach Mills:
This is the characteristics of leadership as well. The military does a very good job with this as well. So integrity, I think is keeping that at your core. Don’t compromise what you believe is right. So I think that, do those, the honesty and the integrity. Be curious. Always ask the question behind the question behind the question, understand the question why people do things and how they get done. Just don’t be afraid to risk some things as well, and I think veterinarians are pretty conservative group just in behavior, and so they don’t naturally want to put themselves out there for failure. But if you put yourself out there on the edge, there’s going to be a safety net there for you as well but don’t be afraid to try that.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, that’s good advice. I have another question for you that I’ve known to ask our guests and that is, we find that most successful people have some idiosyncrasies that are actually their superpowers. I’m curious, Zach, what idiosyncrasy do you have? It may actually be your superpower.

Zach Mills:
I think this is probably one of the things that you probably need to ask the people who are on my team versus asking me what’s idiosyncratic about me, because if you brought my team in and had me leave the room and say, “What’s idiosyncratic about Zach?” They might come up with a whole new list and I will be able to learn from that. But the one thing I guess, that I want people to be able to know is that I’m frank and direct communicator, and that is idiosyncratic in itself. But I also want to be able to set an environment where we are able to give and receive feedback in ways that make our lives better. People, they avoid it because they think that we’re trying to hurt people’s feelings. People are indirect communicators around those and it delays things, and if people never give you feedback to change your behavior, you’re never going to be able to improve, nothing will.

Zach Mills:
So being humble enough to ask for it, and then gracious enough to accept it. If you are so willing to be able to take action on that and be able to look at yourself from the outside and make sure that you’re doing those things. So create an environment where it’s welcomed, show people that it’s welcome, and asked for that permission to give that feedback to them as well because we are our own best friends and if we can’t have that open and frank conversation, then we’re not going to improve, we’re just going to do the same things over and over and over again without change. So I’m idiosyncratic, always asking for that that type of feedback.

Stacy Pursell:
That’s true, because we all have our blind spots and we don’t know what we don’t know, and we don’t know unless somebody gives us that feedback and advice. I read a book by Jack Canfield, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it’s called the success principles and he says, “Feedback is a gift.” He said, “Actively seek out and ask for feedback.” I know some people are afraid to do that because they don’t want to hear anything negative, but unless we do ask for feedback and receive it and look at it as a gift, we can’t learn. So I love that, that’s great advice. I’m curious, are there any books that you believe that all of our listeners should read? Are there any books that you’ve read that you would recommend?

Zach Mills:
I don’t watch much TV, I don’t have cable, I haven’t had it in the house. Jokingly, we have a TV but there’s no furniture in the room, so there’s a disincentive to watch it. So we do other things and one of those things is reading. So all I can say is that reading is going to make you a better person across the board, and I don’t care how you do it. Do things that make you happy but stress that reading is important. So I read a lot and I read a lot every day. I’ve got subscriptions to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, foreign affairs and foreign policy because I believe that the world is larger than the United States itself. Those are daily reads, I check those all the time.

Zach Mills:
I can say that I’m part of a book club with friends in Colorado, still, we have been doing this via Zoom forever. Within that we try to alternate a fiction or two with some nonfiction books, and we’ve gone through with that, and we get one about every six weeks on that. Legitimate discussions and high powered books and some extraordinary opportunities within that, and then just through reading, and I think over the time that I was deployed, I think that I read 26 books, I’ve got several that I just finished now and I’ve got three more that I’m reading. So I think that it’s not one that is out there that’s going to change you, it’s you pull things from all of them and all over the place. I just finished Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential: Understanding the Underbelly of Kitchens in New York.

Zach Mills:
I also finished a book by a medical entomologist called Mosquito and it was fascinating to know what I was getting into about the infectious diseases that a mosquito have done that have painted society. Also, just finished, William McRaven book [inaudible 01:01:49] Navy in the Sea Stories and he just [inaudible 01:01:52] us with some of his experiences across his life, and so those ones I just finished and I have three books on right now. One is Daniel Yergin’s book called The New Map, he’s written several different books on and around oil and fossil fuel, but looking at that [inaudible 01:02:07] those. Now in military, one called knows no one told Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and I’m also reading a [inaudible 01:02:14] that was describing a brutal description of New York [inaudible 01:02:21] years in the ’70s called Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.

Zach Mills:
The lists are big, all I can say is that read things that make you happy, do things that are going to do it but don’t rely on your smart devices and try to get more in there because it makes you have better vocabulary, it brings a joy, it takes you into new world and sets yourself apart. There’s plenty of business books, there’s plenty of books on the teamwork, and how to do all of those things and just explore them. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? You don’t like it, you’re going to set the book down and try something else. Don’t be afraid of it because the gifts that we have within the books are great.

Zach Mills:
I would only add too in today’s societies, don’t be afraid to pick up a hard copy of a book or a paperback, but don’t be afraid to get on an audible either. I think that’s great if you want to run and listen to it, or drive and listen to it and leverage these things, and let’s stretch our minds and grow during the time that we have. So that’s it. I hope it’s not a cop out answer what I’m saying is, I love reading and I love literature.

Stacy Pursell:
I love that. It’s amazing how much time you have to read and do those things when you do turn off the television, you and I have that in common that we don’t turn the TV on in our house, haven’t watched it for years, don’t have time, but it’s amazing how much time you do have when you do turn off the TV. Well, Zach, you have got the mic, what is one thing that you want to share with our listeners, the People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

Zach Mills:
I love that ending, it’s a super clever one. I think that few things. One, the future’s super bright out there. Two, we can never do this alone, we need to rely on those around us and building that friendship and building those inside and outside work to be able to do those things and do the things that make us happy and don’t be afraid to take a chance. If you can do those things, life’s going to be pretty good and I would say that the career in veterinary medicine, it’s limitless and what you can do and if there’s anybody out there that wants to talk about what my career’s offered me, I’m certainly available. I want to be able to help you and provide that guidance as well, but there’s so many veterinarians doing so many wonderful things that you just can’t go wrong. So it’s a great career and I look forward to sort of whatever the next step in veterinary medicine, what it brings me because I know it’s going to be exciting, it will be a challenge, and it’ll be hard and it’ll be rewarding. So thank you for the opportunity.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes. Yeah. So the future is bright and take chances everyone. Zach, thank you so much for joining us today on our podcast. I really enjoyed listening to you talk about your career, you had some great things to say, good stories. Like I said, I’ve followed your career for a number of years and learned so much more in depth about all the work that you’ve done in this great industry. Thank you so much again for being here with us today, Zach.

Zach Mills:
You’re welcome, and thank you for the opportunity.