Episode #60 – Dr. Stacee Santi

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 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 guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to The People of Animal Health Podcast. Today, we are joined by Dr. Stacee Santi, veterinarian technology entrepreneur, author, and industry changemaker, a 1996 graduate of Colorado State University. Stacee spent more than 20 years in small animal and emergency practice before founding Vet2Pet, a client engagement platform later acquired by Vetsource.

She served on multiple advisory boards, led as president of the Colorado VMA, and was named Educator of the Year by WBC. Now she’s amplifying her impact through her book, Stop Acting Like A Girl and community efforts like the Street Dog Coalition. Welcome, Stacee, to The People of Animal Health Podcast.

Thank you, Stacy. I always like that we have the same name. It’s easy.

I like that too. We spell it different ways.

Oh, I know. We can thank my mother for her strange way.

Yours is C-E-E and mine is C-Y. Well, Stacee, let’s start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

I grew up in a really small town in New Mexico, Clovis, New Mexico where my parents lived, my grandparents lived. I had aunt, all my cousins, great aunts and uncles. So it was a really small town, an ag town, and my parents both worked for the railroad, which had a big presence there. And I had a pretty great childhood, pretty nice.

And then I went to undergrad at Texas Tech University, which was just 90 minutes or 90 miles away, and I thought I’d hit the big time because they had a mall and different restaurants and stuff. And I got out of there and I went to Colorado State University and then I knew I’d made it because they had mountains and stuff and I’d never been around that before. So it was pretty exciting.

Well, Stacee, when and why did you decide to become a veterinarian?

I don’t even know. I was about six, I think. I just always wanted to be a veterinarian. I honestly can say I never considered any other option, and I feel very blessed in that regard because I know that’s not normal. I have so many friends and kids and nieces and nephews that struggle with trying to know what you’re supposed to do.

And I can’t relate to it because I just always did know I love animals and I felt like I had discovered a secret universe on the planet when I got to realize that, oh, these creatures live in our world. I think I’ll be with them forever.

I love that. Well, let’s start with your origin story. How does a practicing veterinarian with 20 years in the trenches end up founding a tech startup that eventually sold for millions?

By accident, I would say is the number one answer there. I was working at my practice in Durango, Colorado, and I’ve always been a pretty big stickler for a good client experience. I want the pet owner to feel good and understand what we’re doing together. I want it to be a team sport, me and the pet owner helping the pet.

And I’ve just always been very keen on trying to build out a great experience, whether that’s giving discharge instructions or follow-up care or explaining things in a way that the pet owner can understand. And so it was around 2010 and I had this idea. Well, it started out a frustration, most ideas do that. I was going into the exam room back to back one afternoon and I was telling the clients, “Okay, it’s time to get your summer heartworm prevention.”

Because we’re in a mountain town, we only do it April to October. And I said, “Let’s get you your six pack of HEARTGARD.” And every single person that day had said, “Oh, Dr. Stacee, I still have some left over from last summer.” And I thought, okay, you bought the medicine, so you obviously intended to use it, and then you just didn’t. And I started asking myself, why are you not given the medicine?

But I didn’t have to look too far because I myself can’t even remember to give the medicine to my own pets, and it’s because I couldn’t remember. And it was about that time I got a push notification on my phone from Domino’s Pizza that made me think, maybe I do want a double pepperoni pizza tonight for dinner. I hadn’t thought of that.

And I just had this idea that wouldn’t it be cool if I could send a push notification to my clients just like Domino sent to me, but instead of pizza, I would remind them to give their heartworm prevention that day? And I thought I could send it on the first of every month and then basically it could carry me around on their phone in their back pocket, and I could be really helpful to them.

So I just thought, well, how do you send a push notification? I really had no idea. And it turns out you need an app. Well, how do you get an app for your business? So I Googled it and I literally Googled this guy in San Francisco who I later came to know quite well.

He was building apps for small businesses like hairstylists and automotive dealers and realtors. And I said, “Can you build one for a vet?” And he goes, “Yeah, I can.” And that’s how it got started. He built me an app, he got me in the App Store and I could send a push notification and it was awesome. It was so awesome.

Well, Vet2Pet was a game changer for veterinary practices. What was the biggest challenge you faced in taking it from concept to a company?

I think in partly it’s a blessing and a curse when you don’t know what you’re doing. I literally didn’t know that you could raise money and strangers would give you money to start a business. I didn’t know that. I bootstrapped the whole thing using my vet job to fund that. I’d get a customer and I’d say, “You could pay month to month, but if sign it for a year, I give you a little discount.” And then they’d sign up for a year and I’d have a whole $900 to spend for the next customer.

But the thing I really didn’t know is that it isn’t just about building a great product. You’ve got to market and sell and do all the things that I… I like marketing okay, but I absolutely hate selling, and I had to figure it out. I had to learn how to do it. I didn’t have enough money to hire it all out, so learned to sell the product through public speaking.

I had to push myself to learn how to stand up in front of people and speak so I could speak at the NAVC and the Western and try to get the veterinarians to know what we were doing. It’s like once they knew, they were excited to subscribe and become customers, but it’s the whole marketing and sales that was harder than I ever thought it would be.

Well, Stacee, you’ve described yourself as an accidental entrepreneur. What did you learn about leadership and innovation the hard way that you wish other veterinarians or aspiring founders knew?

I think the big thing is that you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be good enough. And if you spend too much time trying to be perfect, you’ll one, burn a lot of money that way, and two, constantly be disappointed because you just can’t attain it. So I find that most people on my team in the veterinary practice or at my technology company were such perfectionists. We all were.

We really wanted to do the best job, and it kills you at some point. And you have to just say, “No, we got to ship it. It just needs to be good enough.” And I think once you get to that mindset, it’s really a nice place to be because you get to let yourself off the hook and you get to say, “I’ll come back later and make it perfect, but today it’s good enough.”

And then the other thing I learned is you can’t do everything at once. You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to tackle first and you got to get good at prioritizing. In fact, I’m a big Game of Thrones fan, and I know you’re not showing the audio of this, but you can probably see it. I have a metal sword on my wall that says, “Not today.” That’s from Arya from Game of Thrones.

I keep that where I can see it when I’m on calls because people ask me to do stuff; customers, the team, the clients. And I would say, “I want to do it, but not today.” And that just helps me to set reasonable expectations for myself so I don’t become a total workaholic, which I do suffer from that. I’m a recovering workaholic.

I like that. Yeah, I see that, the not today sign. Well, your book, Stop Acting Like A Girl, and I laughed the first time I saw that title and I loved it. But your book, Stop Acting Like A Girl tackles outdated expectations for women. What motivated you to write it and what’s the message you hope women take away from it?

During my career, it’s been predominantly women that I’ve worked with. My veterinary class was majority women. All my jobs being a veterinarian have been 80 to 90% women working side by side in the trenches. My technology company, mostly women. But then when I went to sell my company or at my practice when we got acquired by corporate, and I’m interfacing as the practice manager or as the medical director with the mothership, it’s mostly men.

There were some women in there, but they were few and far between. And I thought it was odd that our profession is mostly women, yet we can’t seem to trickle up to the top very easily. It should be the same proportion, I thought. And I started paying attention to, what do the women do that are in those leadership seats? How are they carrying themselves? How are they conducting business? What are they saying and doing and how are they behaving?

And it’s very different than a lot of us that were down in the trenches. And it just so happens around this time, I was thinking about this, I was doing performance reviews for my team at Vet2Pet, and it’s all women. And I would say, “All right, let’s talk about your salary. What do you think?” And they’d say a couple of things. One would be, whatever you think or what can the company afford? I don’t know, or, I’m not sure, I’m just happy to be here.

And at this time, I was searching for a VP of sales for my company, and I was at the end stages of negotiating with this really qualified guy. He was great. And I had saved my money so I could hire him and I had a figure attached to that salary, and he was pushing me for more money. And I was thinking, wow, that’s pretty bold of you. And I was trying to figure out how I could turn things so I could afford him.

And it just hit me this irony that I’ve got great, great people on my team that can’t ask for a raise and then I’ve got this person I haven’t hired yet that’s pushing me. And I sent every one of my employees home that day and I said, “Come back tomorrow and answer this question like a man.” And they said, “Whoa.”

And they did. They came back and they said, “I need X amount of dollars more.” Or, “I want this kind of PTO or whatever.” And I think that is what prompted me to sit down and write a blog that day called Stop Acting Like A Girl. This was like eight or nine years ago. And I just hit those points, here’s a list of things that girls do that sabotage themselves. Then-

Stacee-

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was going to say that as an executive recruiter working with candidates to place them in roles, I see things too. And one of the things that I see women do is talking them out of jobs that they’re qualified for. In fact, I had one today, she said, “Well, what if it doesn’t work out?”

This company is offering her a promotion and a raise and just an incredible opportunity. And she said, “What if it doesn’t work out?” And I see women talking themselves out of things that they’re qualified for because of fear, where men are often chomping at the bit saying, “Pick me, pick me,” even sometimes when they may not be qualified for the position.

Absolutely. That is a common theme in women, and I think there’s been studies on it that show a woman won’t even apply for the job if she doesn’t have all the prerequisites fulfilled where a man will if he has 80% of them fulfilled. And it just goes back to gender norms, I think, which is why I titled the book Stop Acting Like A Girl.

Because when I told my me mom that I wanted to be a veterinarian, when I told her this when I was in high school, she thought that was horrible. She said, “That is not something girls do, Stacee. Girls can become secretaries or nurses or teachers. Or if you really want to push yourself,” she said, “I would think you should consider to be a hairdresser in Amarillo.” And it turns out that was her dream that she never got to fulfill because it was too far out of the box.

And I said, “Well, maybe I’m not going to act like a girl, me mom. Maybe I’m going to do what I want.” And it turns out when she saw me become a doctor and get my career going, she was so proud of me. And it was just like for her, she didn’t see it as a possibility because you look at her generation, it wasn’t a possibility. It wasn’t easy, and it hasn’t been easy.

There are just norms in place that women, we model our mothers, our grandmothers, and we’re coming along, we’re getting there, but we haven’t had all that much time at this workplace life. I think it was even in the ’80s where they finally allowed married women to be flight attendants because the male passengers enjoyed it better when the flight attendants were single. So there’s just little things like that. Not being able to get a credit card till the ’70s, and that isn’t that long ago. That is in my lifetime.

That’s in my lifetime too.

So I think we’re still learning how to do these things. But the people you’re talking about, the women that you’re helping place in jobs, they’ve got to be more aggressive. They’ve got to ask for it. They’ve got to identify it and ask for it and stop letting themselves get in the way.

That’s a good point. Stop keeping themselves from getting in the way. Such a good point. And I feel like we could talk for another hour on that topic alone. Well, Stacee, having led during the 2008 recession, and again, through building a startup, what’s your philosophy on managing through uncertainty or chaos, whether in practice or business?

When the recession hit and then the pandemic hit, those were pretty big times for me. I was a pretty new leader at my hospital when the recession hit and we were building things at Vet2Pet when the pandemic hit that weren’t going to be… I think we were building out a big fancy reminder system to drive more visits, but that’s the last thing the vets wanted at that point.

So when there’s chaos like this, it has always served me well to go back to basics. And basics are being nice to your customers, listening, talking, being accessible, being kind, treating people the way you would want to be treated, if that means giving you a refund for the service or whatever it might be. I’ve always had luck by just pause, pump the brakes, we’re going to go back to the old way things used to be done where we’re just good old-fashioned nice to people. And I think that still rings true today.

Yeah, I wish there was more of that. Well, you’ve worn a lot of hats; veterinarian, CEO, podcast host, advisory board member, educator, and you’ve got your sign behind you saying, “Not today.” How do you decide what to say yes to and how do you stay energized across so many roles?

Well, maybe I have some undiagnosed ADD. That is a very good possibility, I think. I find myself, I’ve caught about a 10-year focus on something usually. For my career as a veterinarian, I started to burn out probably about 15 years into it. I needed more. I’ve just got to have an outlet for some of my thinking. And Vet2Pet, I took it as far as I could take it before it. When things stop becoming fun, I want out. I want to go try something else.

So right now, I’m at a pretty lucky spot in life where I sold Vet2Pet. I can do pretty much whatever I want or nothing. And I just am saying yes to things that make me happy. And I’m also trying very hard to develop hobbies and develop a purpose outside of veterinary life because I haven’t been very good about that.

So when things come across my desk that seem like, wow, I would love to spend time doing that, I say yes. And when they come across and I think, oh, that seems like I’d rather be put in a medically induced coma, I work very hard to say no. And that’s hard for me. It’s hard for me to say no, but I’m getting better at it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

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I’ve heard you say that workflow and client communication are key to veterinary practice success. What are some of the common mistakes that you’ve seen clinics make, and how can they fix them?

There’s a lot, I think, going on right now. I really do wish practices would get back to the basics on a lot of this, but one of the big things is not talking to clients in plain English. You’ve got the jargon, you’ve got the technology. And here I am, built a technology company, and I’m saying this, but you still have to be a real person and you still have to talk to people and be kind and say it in a way that they can understand.

And I think a lot of times, for me, I know it’s happening because every time I go to a barbecue or anywhere in my little town, I will run into people and they’ll ask me to re-explain things to them, and these are things that their veterinarian has told them. You think they’re listening, but they’re only getting maybe 50% of what you said and within a week they aren’t even remembering that much of it.

So I think veterinarians could always remember to speak in a way that the client is… Use the lingo that resonates with them and make sure they’re hearing. And also, you’ve got to make sure after they leave that you’re still communicating with them. The other thing that’s totally gotten out of hand if you ask me, is the cost of veterinary care. It is absolutely ridiculous. And I don’t know, it scares me now to see how crazy it is.

Yeah. Well, Stacee, now that you’re working with Street Dog Coalition, it seems like you’re reconnecting with hands-on care in a really meaningful way. What’s that experience been like for you?

It’s been really good. Actually, I’ll have to put it up there with one of the top three most fulfilling things I’ve done. We put up a tent at the soup kitchen here in town, and we take care of the animals for people that are homeless or on the fringe of homelessness. And it just does reinforce you to know how much animals mean to people in all walks of life. They mean so much to people.

And there’s a feeling of panic and desperation when you can’t take care of the thing you love so much, which goes back to cost of care. And it’s been really nice to be able to just help people get the basics because I didn’t know this, but if a pet doesn’t have their shots and their spay neuter done, they can’t get into the Section 8 housing. They’re refused.

And these people are not leaving their pet. They are not leaving them. I have never given more obesity talks than I have at the free clinic. And I thought, we had all this food donated, we were ready to give out dog food, but no way, they don’t need it. They’re giving their food to the pet and their suffering, and it just goes to show you how important pets are to everybody.

Yeah, so true. Well, Stacee, you co-host two podcasts; IVETSOHARD and The Accidental Entrepreneurs, and you have a new podcast, Everyday Wonder Women. What drew you to podcasting and what have you learned from having these conversations publicly?

I started the first one, IVETSOHARD to help promote my company, Vet2Pet, and I really enjoy doing that one with Dr. Caitlin DeWilde and Dr. Crista Wallis. And mostly I love doing podcasts because I get to hang out with my friends and talk. And then I did The Accidental Entrepreneurs with Dr. Ira Gordon. And it’s just fun for me to hang out with colleagues and talk and hear their stories.

And the new one I’m doing now is Everyday Wonder Women, and I’m realizing that everybody has a story, it’s just whether or not you know it. And it gives me an opportunity to meet new people and listen and ask questions in a way that they tell me stuff that I don’t know that they’ve told too many people. So I like it. It’s pretty fun.

Well, you have already accomplished a great deal from founding a company to authoring a book, but what’s next for you? Is there a new project or vision you’re excited to pursue in this next chapter?

Oh, I wish I could tell you something exciting, but to be honest, I am just working on recovering from my workaholic problem and I’m working on my golf game, so maybe I could beat the 75-year-old ladies in my golf group. I’m also learning how to swim. I’ve never really learned, so I’m trying to do laps at the pool and not drown. I’m working on my garden. I’m doing some writing for Today’s Veterinary Business and my podcast. And mostly, Stacy, I’m trying not to work so much that I wake up one day and my life’s gone past me.

Well, I hope he’s not embarrassed that I say this, but my husband can’t swim either. He’s never learned how to swim. So that’s one of his goals too.

Yeah, I’m tackling the things I always wish I could have done because something happens when you turn 50, you realize, oh crap, this isn’t going to go on forever. And I don’t think you think that way when you’re younger. At least I didn’t. But now I see, wow, I think I better do these things.

Yeah, no, I think that’s so important. Well, looking at your career up to this point, what’s been the most surprising thing to you as a veterinarian during your career in the veterinary profession?

You mean what’s happened in the veterinary space?

What’s been the most surprising thing that you’ve seen in the veterinary profession?

Probably the advancement of all the diagnostics. It’s really advanced. And sometimes that’s a good thing and a bad thing, because I think when these advancements come, you take advantage of them as a veterinarian because they serve a purpose. They usually help your patients in some way. They either help them live longer or fight a disease better or be in less pain.

There’s just so many more things you can do that I think that’s where the cost is coming from as well, that at some point you end up not being able to do the main thing you set out to do. So I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve seen that surprised me. I thought the ivory tower had a lot going on in 1996 when I graduated, but now the veterinary schools are doing all kinds of stuff that is so cutting edge.

What does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

I don’t know that my outlook is so positive at the moment because I think my experience personally being acquired from a private practice and going corporate was the regimented fee increases that we were taught to place on the fee schedule. It was non-negotiable. It was either somewhere around four to 7% you put on every year. Sometimes you could split it up and do half in the spring and half in the fall.

But I remember being worried that there was going to be a ceiling to this, and how can we keep doing it and it just keeps going? And I think we’re reaching the ceiling and I think the corporate model has got some flaws in it that others are paying the price for.

Well, we’re starting to see that visits are dropping.

Yeah. It seems like pet ownership is becoming only for the people that have. It’s for the haves and the have-nots can’t get in there very well. So my crystal ball tells me we got to shake it up. And I know people are trying, and I know they will because the profession’s very resilient, But I think private ownership’s going to make a big comeback, and I think the corporate’s going to get their gut full and see that they’ve hit the ceiling.

Well, Stacee, we all know that successful people have habits that allow them to achieve success. What are some of your daily habits that have helped you to achieve success along the way?

I usually try these days to, and even when I was working, I get up really early and I like quiet time before emails start coming in or the phones start ringing or whatever. I am a morning person and I’ve come to realize that about myself. I cannot think clearly or I just… Even in college, I couldn’t study after nine o’clock at night. I’m like a battery, I just die then.

So I have to do my hard stuff in the morning. And once I do that, and maybe it’s a hard email I’ve got to write or a problem I need to think about, I do my most successful critical thinking, I think, right when I wake up. So giving myself that time has been helpful for me.

What’s been the biggest adversity that you’ve dealt with throughout your career?

The biggest adversity or?

Adversity.

Adversity. Probably just trying to do too much, I guess. I just want everybody around me to be happy. I want all my employees to be happy and fulfilled. I want my family to be. I think just stuff that a lot of us women, we’re nurturers and we want everybody to be their best. And sometimes that’s just a tall order and impossible. So once I could adopt, we just have to be good enough, I got a lot better.

Well, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Well, I would say don’t take yourself so seriously, don’t forget to have fun. Here I am, 54, trying to start some hobbies up and it just kills me. I wish I would’ve done that when I was younger. I wish I would’ve taken more time, more vacation time, more weekends. I just felt that I needed to serve my clients so much and they needed me. And I think that’s a mistake in my thinking. I think they would’ve probably been okay without me. They would’ve figured it out, and I could have still had a life.

Well, I know you know how to have fun because I remember before you sold your technology company, we were in Vegas during WVC, and you put on this function for your company, and that was the most creative event that I’ve seen. And I can’t remember what you called it, but I remember you picked us up in limos, you took us to this mansion, and you had this party out by the pool. And what was that called? Do you remember?

Well, it was our Mr. Meowgi Mansion.

Mr. Meowgi Mansion.

And we had a mascot for our company. Here’s a good example of the girls on the team wanted to buy this huge mascot, a Disney-style mascot of a cat with a sword and we’d call him Mr. Meowgi. And it was like $3,000, and I said, “You’re crazy. We’re not doing that.” And they kept on, they had secret meetings behind my back, they made these pitches to me and they didn’t let up. They were relentless. And so I did it.

And they were so right. He was so fun. We built so many marketing things around him and made dancing videos and funny things. But that was his party, the Meowgi Mansion. And see, that’s what I’m telling you. I just love giving great experiences and making people happy and surprising them with things they might not normally get or come to expect from a business. So that’s one of my favorite memories.

That is one of my favorite memories of you because I remember thinking how creative this was, how generous you were with that event that you put on and invited so many of us and it was so much fun. Well, what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening today?

I think the big thing is you’ve just got to figure out what you want in life, and you’ve got to go for it. Just go for it. Why not? And you think, maybe I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I don’t have the right resume for this, or I don’t have the right background for this. I’m here to tell you, that doesn’t matter. Here I am. I started a technology company. I know nothing about it.

If you’re willing to learn and you’re willing to be curious and you’re willing to put yourself out there and ask for help, there’s so many people that helped me along my career. So many, I can’t even tell you that. I would call them up and say, “Hey, I’ve got a question. Can you tell me how this works or that works?” And they would. I rarely ran into somebody that wouldn’t help me.

So if you want it, you can do it. And just ask yourself, why not? Why not me? Why can’t I do it? Because all the people that you think have so much more that you’re looking up to that founded Uber, that founded all the cool things out there, that bought their own practice and sold it for millions or whatever they’ve done, they are no more special than you are.

There are so many generous people in our industry that are so generous with their time and willing to help, like you said.

Yeah. I remember when I had to learn how to public speak, I was terrified of that like almost everybody else is. I reached out to Karyn Gavzer. She didn’t know me at all. She took my call, she met with me, she helped me. And just little things like this all along. You’ll find people that want to see you succeed. Almost pretty much everybody wants to see you succeed. I’ve learned that. And the people that don’t, they’re few and far between, and you know who they are, and you just need to get rid of them. They need to go away. But everybody else is rooting for you.

So true. Well, some of our guests say that they’ve had a key book that they read that helped them along the way or impacted them in their life. Do you have a key book that’s impacted you the most? I’d love to hear that story.

Yes, I do. It’s a little book. It’s called Confidence. It’s called Building and Living with Confidence by Barbara DeAngelis. It’s an old book. And I found this book at Barnes & Noble the day after I killed my first patient. I was so distraught and so upset, and I was 26 years old, and I thought that was the end for me. I thought, here I’ve got my job I wanted my whole life, and this is what’s going to happen? I’m going to kill animals by making errors? It was so devastating.

And I went to Barnes & Noble to find a book that said, “What do you do when you kill your patient?” And there wasn’t a book in the self health section called that, but I found this book called Confidence, and I have read it at least 100 times, if not more. I give it to everybody I know. And it’s just a nice little book that reminds you that you get confidence by making mistakes and you get better with failure. And every time you fail, it’s a kick to go up higher. And I think a lot of people, me for sure, needed to be reminded of that many times in my life.

Such good advice. Well, Stacee, 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?

I say just believe in yourself and go for it. Really ask yourself that thing that’s holding you back, that thing you wish you were doing, maybe it’s asking for a raise, maybe it’s asking for promotion, maybe it’s changing fields, just ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And usually it’s not going to be as bad as you thought.

And if you can go do something else and not burn bridges, you can always come back, you can always retreat back to where you were before. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know. And I think regret is probably one of the biggest things you don’t want to have in life.

Yeah, because sometimes that worst case scenario, when you say, what’s the worst thing that can happen, usually doesn’t happen.

It usually doesn’t. And you got to be mathematical about it and say, “Well, what are the percentages of this bad thing happening to me?” And sometimes we’re catastrophizing what could go wrong, but as much time as you spend thinking about what could go wrong, I would say spend that same amount of time about thinking about what could go right.

Well, it’s like my candidate today, she’s got fear. And she said, “What if it doesn’t work out?” And I said, “But what if it does work out? What if it’s amazing?”

Yeah, that’s the right mindset. What if it does work out?

Yeah. Such good advice. Well, Stacee, thank you so much for being here and talking with me on The People of Animal Health Podcast today. I enjoyed our conversation.

Oh, thank you, Stacy. I’m so glad to be on your show, and hopefully I’ll see you in Vegas at another fun party one of these days.

I look forward to it. Thank you, Stacee.

Thank you.