Episode #48 – Dr. Henry Yoo

Blueprint for Success
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Henry Yoo, a trailblazing Veterinary educator, consultant, and international speaker. With decades of expertise in preventive medicine, hospital management, and AI in Veterinary practice, Dr. Yoo shares insights on leveraging technology and teamwork for success.

Stacy Pursell:
Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States, and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche.

For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights the incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guest, you’ll be sure to learn something new and every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Henry Yoo, a highly accomplished veterinarian, educator, and healthcare strategist. Dr. Yoo holds a DVM from SNU, an MSC from the Ohio State University, and an MBA in health care strategy from Case Western Reserve University.

Over his distinguished career, Dr. Yoo has served in various capacities, including as medical director at Animal Medical Care Center, senior consultant at Infinity Medical Consulting, and director of international affairs at AI for Pets Inc. Henry was just appointed Pacific Rim Asia director for Fear Free.

With a global footprint, Henry has lectured extensively on veterinary medicine, telemedicine, AI, and hospital management contributing to veterinary education in the US, China, and beyond. He’s been recognized with numerous accolades, including Best Managed Veterinary Hospital by DVM Journal. Today, he joins us to share his expertise on the future of veterinary care, technology’s role within the profession, and much more.

Welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast, Dr. Henry Yoo. We’re so excited for you to be here.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Hi Stacy. How are you?

Stacy Pursell:
I’m doing great, Henry.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Good.

Stacy Pursell:
I would love to start off at the beginning.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Sure.

Stacy Pursell:
What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Oh, simply put, I grew up in a little farm. I had a privilege of being awarded by the government… It was in South Korea. You are talking 1960s. Korea was a very poor country and they had to import a lot of cows from overseas. They didn’t have any milking cow, so some government contract had one of the hundred cows was assigned to my farm, our farm, family farm. I had a privilege of having a milking cow. So, that’s starting of my veterinary career maybe. So, I became one of the best milking person.

When I milk the milk from the cow, it was very fast and people loved. I was in competition. So, that’s probably the first step I got into animal activities. But my hope was studying to become a veterinarian or the healthcare specialist in WHO. That’s why I came to the Ohio State University, 1973, from Korea.

So, anyway, when I registered at the master’s program and I called Geneva to just find out if there’ll be any space open for any veterinarians with a master’s degree in preventive medicine, they said it’s going to take three, four years for them to have the opportunity. So I’ve been waiting. By the time they called me, it was four or five years that I finished my MBA, I mean my master’s, and I was in PhD program, and also got involved in private practice in Ohio.

So, by the time they called me for a interview, I went for a interview, but financially it was not matching my requirement. And also, I was already in clinical clinical activity, so I wasn’t able to join them. But I still continued my epidemiology and preventive medicine work at Ohio State. So here we go, that I just got into further into veterinary clinical and technical areas. So, this is how I got started.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that is so interesting, Henry, and you have such a diverse background in veterinary medicine from academia to consulting and leadership roles. How has your career evolved over time? I’d like to learn more about your career story.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Well, when I got into preventive medicine, I was very interested in infectious disease and as I go into infectious disease, but also was doing herd animal help that you are dealing with two, 300 cows in a farm instead, of course we treat individual animals, but we look the whole herd as a patient. So, we call it population medicine.

So, I’ve been involved in herd animal health and especially in the aspect of preventive medicine. I found out there are a lot of preventive medicine activities in nutrition and the vaccination and parasitology. But another aspect of preventive medicine, early detection of the problem through baseline blood work and dentistry and behavior, some other activities was kind of lacking in. So, I decided to develop some preventive medicine area that affect small animals, so I decided to build a thing called five steps of preventive medicine.

That’s kind of new structure, new strategy in preventive medicine looking at early stage of a disease prevention, patient pet parents education, and the baseline study of the blood, and anything related to the tumor cancer, of course, nutrition, giving a treat to the pets, which is nutrition components, endo/ectoparasite, dentistry, behavior. Putting all together, I made the thing called five steps of preventive medicine. I studied using it small animal medicine when I was teaching at Ohio State, and the response was great. People loved it and people did not… At the time, I’m talking probably early ’70s, pets went there because they were ill and sick and the vaccination was the meager effect.

But if I look at an animal with a breed… there are always breeder-specific disease. Dachshund, they have their own problems, spinal issue, they do have a thyroid issue. Pekingese, they have their own medical issues. German Shepherd, they do. So, early detection or prediction of this disease and educating the client pet parents became very important part of it.

So, when I went into the preventive medicine with a kind of strategic decision, I decided this might be a new field that I can explore. So I went to medical school and I learned how the medical schools are conducting preventive medicine strategy. As a result, I got in touch with human medicine MBA program for the healthcare strategy. So, I think as a veterinarian I kind of delved into more specific infectious disease, early stage prevention, which gave me the opportunity also going to bioterrorism area, which is another in-depth preventive, medicine, in-depth infectious disease. Then moved on to healthcare strategy. End up dealing with some government decision in the general population medicine.

So, I think I have a little bit of a versatility in my profession, in my specialty, I guess. And also, that gave me the opportunity to cross over to human medicine. So, that’s how I went to Case Western Reserve University where Cleveland Clinic was, I mean very heavy-duty cancer research area. So as a veterinarian I had quite a bit of exposure to a different aspect of veterinary medicine too.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, your career has been very diverse. And, Henry, I know that you’ve been a consultant for major veterinary hospitals and corporations. What are some of the key challenges that you’ve observed in the veterinary profession and how can practices address these to ensure long-term success?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Stacy, this is a biggie. This is one of the area I was having a little bit of headache, but in a plain term, majority of the practice are underperforming. I can see, I don’t want to cut down any practices performance, but if I look at most of practice, the clinician’s power and the clinician’s knowledge is underutilized. They end up becoming a highly paid technicians. Of course, there’s a very fine-tuned the clinicians are exercising their leadership, but many of them are not just doing what we were taught at school.

When I look at the success of a hospital, and as a leader I look at the three, I call it three Ps. First, people. There’s people factors, try to make the people more dedicated in what they do and they’ll be into more progress for the next step. Second P is called, I call process. So dedicated people always will look for the process that is better than yesterday, the process tomorrow is better than today. Third P is product. As a result of a dedicated people through the efficient process, they end up making quality product.

So as a leader, they have to watch all these three elements, but without people, without dedicated people, you are not going to create efficient process then, as a result, quality product doesn’t come. So, when I go into the practice, I really look at this three Ps, what kind of tools they are to make the people go to the next highest step of involvement to create efficient process, and as a result, quality the products comes out.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that makes so much sense.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Am I making some sense?

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, the people, the process and the product. That makes so much sense. Well, Henry, you have held various leadership roles including your current position as CEO of Infinity Medical Consulting and company. How do you approach leadership in such a rapidly evolving field like veterinary medicine?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Well, this is continuation of the previous question on the leadership too. Majority of the directors of the practice I visit for consulting want me to look into their finance first, most likely. Which is okay, but finance is only, I try to explain, finance is only the result of fundamentalism. It is not the purpose of you. If you become highly motivated clinician for the high quality medicine, then finance will come naturally.

So, I usually bring up three questions to them. Number one question, not only the director of the hospital, all the staff, doctors, as well as a manager, technician, I usually ask, “Do you know what veterinary medical oath indicate? Give me two important wordings is in there.” To my surprise, they answer probably about 40 to 50% right. That’s really amazing. Even though everyone took a veterinary medical oath, they end up saying, “Well, do no harm to the animals and do the best the care medicine.” Which is not wrong, but it’s not really what the veterinary medical oath tells us.

Number one, pain and suffering of an animal is, right, our responsibility. That means when someone calls in says, “My dog has a pain, I don’t have money, what should I do?” I kind of checked with about 200 veterinarians how they answer, 95% of them say, “Well, we don’t take care of them. Just go to the Humane Society. We are too busy. This is not your dog, we’re not going to take care of it. You don’t have money, we are not in charity organization and go to Humane Society, animal shelters.” Which is wrong actually. To me, veterinary medical oaths make it very clear that’s our responsibility.

So, when we see an animal calling in, coming in with the pain and suffering, that’s my responsibility, no matter they have the money or not. What happens after that, after their pain and suffering is taken care of, that’s another story. But the one who really understand how to take care of this initial problem, they usually have a solution for the second problem too.

Second important thing in veterinary medical oath is very important, public health. When animal comes in with a problem, the animal is taken care of, that’s not the end of it. We need to inform the clients, the one who brought an animal in, explain this is genetic components. Even though I’m not a physician, I’m not going to treat you, but I want you to know this is a result of our test, make sure this test is given to your physicians, clinician, pediatricians, OBGYN. So in the practice I go consult, they always have them make a record. And the result of a test like a giardia, coccidia, parasite, and some other infectious disease, bacterial disease, all the result or culture sensitivity test result should be printed out, give it to them and say, “Look, I don’t know your physician, who they are, but this is result. When you go to the physician, take this documentation to them.” I got a lot of phone call from pediatricians saying, “Thank you very much for that information.” So veterinary medicine is really into one health activities, which our veterinary medical oath is indicating.

So the second important thing is on animal advocacy, when animal comes in, animal is either ill or they’re under the influence of epinephrine because when they have a pain, natural phenomenon, adrenaline comes in covered there, and the pain and [inaudible 00:17:48] symptom of being under stress. But we, as a veterinarian, we have to be spokesperson for the animals because animal cannot say where they’re ill, where they’re sick. So, we needed to educate the client, telling them significance of this pain and discomfort from this disease ailment.

A lot of veterinarians tend to feel that, “I don’t want to argue with them, I don’t want to tell them the importance of this blood test. They’re not going to pay for it. Why should I tell them?” But it is our job to be the spokesperson for the animal and either diagnostic treatment, which is very crucial for the life longevity, the safe recovery of the animals. Even though they say no, it should be recorded on our medical record saying this was a recommended, probably was decline by the clients. As a result, the clients are aware the importance of this animal advocacy, potential pain and ongoing pain. So, we try to educate the clients through the animal advocacy.

Third components that many veterinary hospitals are not keeping, recommending the best medicine. We tend to measure depth of their pocket by looking at how they dressed, what kind of car they’re driving. “Oh, she’s not going to pay for it. She came here many times, she refused the blood test. We’re not going to tell.” It shouldn’t be that way. Every animal should be properly taken…

This is how I approach the people, client, “Mr. Jones, I don’t know how wealthy, how poor you are. That’s not my concern. My concern is your baby. I’m going to tell you what is the best medically that is in the textbook.” So, I feel good I recommended everything because… So, give all the list of items to them so make sure they know what is the best for their animal care. And also, in that case, most people may feel guilty, “I don’t have that kind of money. I’m not going to go through that.” That’s fine. I understand that, but I did my job, “I wrote that information on your record, so it is officially part of our medical record. You can always come back, get the procedure done.” At that point, you can see the people, they were nodding their head, “Okay, I understand I don’t have money, but I may bring the money back later and get it done.” So I feel good as clinician, and I feel good it is written on that record and I was properly educating the pet parents what is the best medicine.

So, again, going back to number one to three, veterinary medical oath, animal advocacy, the best of medicine. If we continue to practice on this principle, I think that the first group that get so impressed, our staff… I just got back from Abu Dhabi last night and I have a little bit cold in my throat, so I may not be able to speak well, but forgive me for that.

Stacy Pursell:
Oh, you’re doing fine. And I know you told me you got in late last night, so I know how it is when you’re coming back from a trip. There’s a lot going on.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Thank you. Thank you.

Stacy Pursell:
So, appreciate you being here, and sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. But you sound great.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Yeah, I can-

Stacy Pursell:
That last thing you said, you’re really talking about the spectrum of care.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Well, those are the… Again, when I practice all this with the three principle, the group that gets so impressed is the clients, but the most important clients of mine are the staff. I heard from some of the staff, “Dr. Yoo, I’ve been in this business 20 years. I’ve never seen anybody talking of veterinary medical oath, animal advocacy, best of medicine.” But those are the things you were taught at school we’re not putting into action. So, those are the principle of a success of the hospital, and staff would become our ambassador. They become the best of clients, and they are the one telling the clients that we work as a team.

I think that these are fundamental things that make our team become a real successful team to educate the client. So client education, I hear a lot about veterinary hospitals saying client education is important, but clinicians don’t have time to do that. We are so busy doing surgery, we are so busy doing prescription and the diagnosis. We need to depend on the staff to be able to do client education, but they have to be also trained and educated. So it’s kind of step-by-step work. Without staff involvement, there’s no client education. They’re not going to be-

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah. I think have to be intentional about it.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Absolutely.

Stacy Pursell:
There has to be… Going back to your process, there has to be a process for that.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Yeah. Deliberate and intentional process of educating the staff, and then the staff will be so happy about their importance in the practice as well.

Stacy Pursell:
Henry, with your extensive experience in telemedicine and AI, can you explain how these technologies are transforming veterinary practices and what are the biggest opportunities and challenges they present?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Stacy, that’s a great question. I was lucky enough to be able to work with the physicians during the pandemic time, COVID-19 time. At that point, I worked with the Kaiser Permanente. At that point, the rate of the telemedicine and AI usages were less than 40%, 30-some percent. Now, after the pandemic is over, 2024, their recording is about 80 to 85% usages. Really jumped up in the usages of telemedicine.

Of course, first time, there’s a lot of questions that, “Is it accurate and are they going to take the jobs away from physicians?” I can explain you that that concern is legitimate when we are not properly educated. Of course, at that point, it was not perfect until we go through all the process and continue to develop system through the learning curve process and physicians that have done it. Eventually we’ll get through the one deep learning and machine learning process. The more cases we put it in, the more higher sensitivity specificities goes up. That this is what physicians has done, in veterinary medicine, there’s a lot of different ways we can approach this one now, but I think overall, it’s much less than 5% of usages in telemedicine compared to physicians who are far, far behind.

One of the major question I get from veterinarians, “Is it accurate to use and safe for the patients?” Of course, it may not be as accurate, but if you don’t use it now, go through the learning process, deep learning and machine learning process, we’re not going to get any result. Look at the computer. When I was at Ohio State, we used the computer for the school system. It was in 1982 and someone blamed me, “Henry, computer is for the IBMs, for the banks, why do you need a computer in veterinary medicine?” Look at now 40, 50 years later, there’s no one who’s not using it. I think that this AI telemedicine is going to be going in that direction.

Another question I get a lot from the veterinarian, “Will that take our jobs away?” Answer is yes or no. If you don’t use it now, you’ll be replaced by these doctors who is going to use it In that sense, yeah, they will replace your job, but actually if you get involved, you are going to be in the middle center of that learning curve. So, you are going to be really specifically doing a favor to yourself to the veterinary medicine as well too.

So, I really feel that veterinary medicine is so behind when we compare to physicians, but guess what? The new graduates coming out of school from 2024, they just graduating, they’re going into job market, they’re working out there. They had, 95% their education was through digitalization. So, they are so prone to that, they’re waiting for that. So, it’s going to get worse if we don’t use it now, and we will fall so behind. So, I encourage anybody who is kind of hesitating to get into this digital equipment called telemedicine, AI, and app utilization for their diagnosis, eye problem, skin issue, gait analysis, which can be all done quickly, more accurately.

And I will encourage them to start with the very simple ones, like even video conferencing. That’s the first stage of the telemedicine. Then you put one or two app components in there that becomes the telemedicine and the AI components. So, I really think that veterinary medicine has to put more attention to the potential growth of telemedicine and the AI components.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, Henry, you have worked extensively in China and other countries helping develop veterinary education programs. How does veterinary education differ internationally, and what can the US learn from these global experiences?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
That’s another good question, and I started going… Actually, I was born in Harbin, mainland China. So, I wanted to always go back to China and see how they activate the veterinary medicine. I was so startled to find out there are about 100 veterinary school in China. I’m saying 100, 100. But when I went there, studied their education structure, the level of our veterinary school with about minimum six years to seven years curriculum, there’s only 30 veterinary school. The other 70 were actually veterinary technical school.

But China’s government doesn’t want to give any differentiation on that because this country really are geared toward the farming. So, anybody who graduate from school, even the two years, they go to farmland and do the acupuncture, [inaudible 00:29:55] doctors, they also get the DVM. So many Western professors, Westerners go there, “Oh, I went to vet school and did it. They don’t know anything about veterinary medicine.” Actually, you went to a different school, so still there are about 30 different schools that is about our level of not maybe as complicated as ours, but the educational system is very similar to us, that AVMA has secured.

So, I’ve been going to China since 1997. At that time, there’s hardly no cars, I can see any cars. Everybody is moving on bikes. So, I went to one of the veterinary school. The best veterinary school at the time is called the China Agricultural University, and I don’t want the people get misled by the world of agriculture. Any university, even though there’s no agricultural component, Chairman Mao wanted to name them agriculture university because agriculture was so important. So, some medical school, human medical school is under agriculture university. So that’s kind of things that we have to understand.

But anyway, to make long story short, China was so behind at the time. But now with the modern science, AI components, increasing technology, now they are approaching us very closely, and technology-wise, they’re catching up. But still they have a lot of catch up to do in software part. I explain in my lecture, veterinary medicines, there are two components. One is piloting or technical components. Anybody can learn if they spend time. But navigation part, which is a moving target, ethics, morality, and working together with the people, being open-minded, so this hardware technology, software part has got together.

China is very fast in catching up with the technical component, which is hot air. In airplane is, I call it piloting, but navigation part is very lacking in. So, we just made one big convention this year in March, 2025, in Kunming, we’re going to have about 10,000 veterinarians coming to learn navigation part, hospital operations and management. So this is another thing I’m activating in China.

So, to answer your question, yeah, I’ve been to China for the last about thirty-some years. I’m the one who built the Chinese Veterinary Medical Association when it was not available, 2010. 2011, I made a veterinary medical license examination. So, as a result of that, now officially veterinarians are licensed from then on. So, yeah, I put a lot of different structure to make the veterinary profession more representing in international market.

Stacy Pursell:
Now, what can the US learn from some of these global experiences?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
I think from what I have done in the past in China, when I went there first most of the veterinarians were saying, “Oh, China’s so behind. Why do you go there?” There’s nothing you can do when their science is so behind. So I kept on going there, explaining what we do. I introduced AVMA structure to China, veterinary medical licensing exam.

Now, China is sending at least a five to seven veterinary student to USA for them to be fully… They will get DVM degree from USA schools. We have some contract government to government. So, they go back to China, begin to teach them. So. I think the world is becoming one, so it is important for us to get involved rather than making some judgment how they are. We just go in, learn from them. People are people, they’re pet loving people. And if we consider 15 to 20% of a Chinese population has as good a GDP as we do in the USA, so at least those people can afford to pay for the money for the pets.

And also, they’re the highly educated people. So, by having some relationship with the China, it’s 1.3 billion people and big market. So, even though I’m not making money out of China, but I go there, help them, and they connect the Chinese people to the USA industry. So, by having more dedicated veterinary and younger generation veterinary going to overseas, we can show, we can share what we have, and we can also learn from them in terms of attitude.

One of the company called Mendeley became one of the largest veterinary equipment company making monitoring device, anesthesia machine, and the monitoring machine. So, they are visible in any international show because they started only 10 years ago, but they became the largest of veterinary manufacturing industry of the world.

Stacy Pursell:
Henry, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
You know what, to be honest with you, there’s not much a surprise other than the fact that we are in severe shortage of veterinarian. That happened for the last five years. And really, as a… I’m a business analyst, I decided to why this happening. So, I talked to AVMA and the AAVMC, I think the lifestyle hasn’t changed. We are seeing about 3,000 veterinarian a year retiring. But people over that age retirement, they are the one who is working 60 hours a week or even more.

So, it is compatible to full-time equivalency, one person retiring is at least one and a half percent retiring. So 3,000 retiring actually is 4,500 retiring. So new graduates coming out, but there is a majority, about 80% of them, are now the woman. Nothing wrong being a woman, but their physiological condition and all the practice pattern is quite limited. So, even though we have about 3,500 coming out of school, actually by the time they come to the practice, we have only 2,000 actually working full-time capacity.

And many of the new graduates are now trained to work only three days a week or four days a week, which is totally what we were not used to. So, if you minus 2,000 out of 4,500, we are having about 2,000, 2,500 missing every year. So, AAVMC statistics shows by 2035, I guess, we still have about 30,000 veterinarians deficit.

So, that’s a kind of surprise to me. We didn’t prepare, we didn’t get prepared for this one. But that’s what’s happening. That’s why there’s so much things happening to build a new schools, bring more veterinarian from outside. That’s not even a surprise to me. But the progress of veterinarian medicine, it’s continuously going and this is all what we expected. So, the question is how we resolve this veterinarian shortage issue. That’s why there’s a school building, bringing more veterinarians, [inaudible 00:38:56] program and the PAVE program. There are so many things. I don’t know how much AVMA is really looking into this matter to make this one resolved in few years.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
My son is veterinarian. My daughter is a physician. She’s a cardiologist. So, I see both of them, and actually my daughter wanted to go to veterinary school too, but later on she decided to go to MD school. My wife is in psychology, and so all we are in medicine. So, I’m kind of comparing all of us within the family.

And my son is so happy being a veterinarian. Myself as being a veterinarian, so happy. So I think our future is continuously growing. I read the report for the next 10 years, the veterinarians are now going to get replaced by AI, even though AI is coming in, so the jobs are secure. But with the human-animal bonding expansion, is a feel-free expansion, and the animal behavior activities expanding, I think at veterinary medicine, it will be very stable. And I don’t see any downfall of veterinary medicine, even though there are a lot more students coming out of school.

I just read the AVMA report, and some of the people have the report, there’ll be abundance than veterinarians in 10 years and there will be overabundance. So, I don’t think that’s the case it will be. But I remember when I was teaching at Ohio State, 1970, middle of ’70, we were building two or three schools, Wisconsin and Tufts, there was a lot of repercussion from the veterinarian not to build it. That was, what, about forty-some years ago, but there we are in severe shortage. So, someone really had to look into the statistics, but I don’t think there will be overabundance of veterinarians in many years down the road. So this-

Stacy Pursell:
I don’t think there will be either. I agree with you. Well, Henry, what advice would you give the younger version yourself? Especially as you look at when you were starting out in your career and you’re looking back, thinking about your career, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
I cannot tell them too much about what they should do, but I can tell them what worked for me as a veterinarian. I had my acronym called I carry cup, C-U-P, I’m always consistent. Yesterday, today, tomorrow I’ll carry very consistency in what I do. You, I carry my urgency. If someone asked me to do something, I tell them that either I can do it right now. If I can’t do it, I’ll let them know right away instead of procrastinating, delaying.

But the most important thing is P, passion. Either I do it right, I tell them I cannot do that. If I’m doing it, I do with the passion. So, I tell… Professionally, I say I carry a cup of a tea, T-E-A. T-E-A means when I go to the hospital, give a consulting or my own hospital, technical things are such an important thing, but technology can be educated not only to me, but to the entire staff.

But most important thing is a T-E-A application. I’ve seen a lot of veterinarians. A lot of clinicians, “I know I heard about it”

“Have you done it.”

“No.”

So they’re not really engaging. So, I carry my cup of tea with this attitude. I think as a veterinarian, I was a very successful. I’m not talking only financially, but I’m very confident in what I do. When I go out and give a lecture, talks, I get continuous requests from the [inaudible 00:43:50]. They need my knowledge, my participation. So, if they carry their own, it doesn’t have to be cup of tea for them. Anything they can make to make themselves a trademark and make themselves, they should have some sort of principle over their life that mine happens to be cup of tea.

Stacy Pursell:
I like the cup of tea acronym. Well, Henry, some of our guests say that they have had a key book that they read that really helped them along the way. Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
I do have some visual issue, so I normally get a audio recording. So, Seven Habits of Successful People by Steve Covey, that impacted me so much, and it was about 20 years ago I read that. So, as a result, I was able to follow what he has done so much. So, that was still probably… I mean, if someone hasn’t read that, and I still recommend in my lecture to have a younger generation read that book.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Henry, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of the People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Well, again, I can talk so many different things, but any organization I go, I look at the three Ps. What kind of people are working there? Are they really dedicated? Then are they really looking into efficient process? Tomorrow is better than today. This procedure continues to grow. And in veterinary medicine, I made a thing called the value chain. As the clients comes in, go through about 18 process, all these values of their service are increasing. So, by the time they go home, they really feel the maximum value. The last P is products. There are two different product. One product is something tangible. They can feel it, they can carry it, they can put it in pocket, pay the money. But the more important P, product, is emotional acceptance. They feel, “Wow, I never seen that.”

You cannot charge for that. But that happens to be more expensive, more precious actually. Once they drop their jaw, “I never seen this kind of a service. Wow,” they will never forget about you. So, still carry your three Ps in your heart. Look at the people aspect, look at the process aspect and product aspect. That’s probably what I’m going to tell anybody comes near me.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that is such good advice, Henry. Henry, thank you for being here today and talking with me-

Dr. Henry Yoo:
[inaudible 00:47:07] Stacy.

Stacy Pursell:
… on the People of Animal Health Podcast. I enjoyed hearing your stories.

Dr. Henry Yoo:
Thank you, Stacy. All righty.