Episode #65 – Brenda Andresen

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 on The People of Animal Health Podcast, we are excited to welcome Brenda Andresen, a visionary leader, trusted collaborator, and passionate connector in the pet healthcare industry. As co-CEO of S&A, Brenda brings decades of strategic expertise, creativity, and heart to one of animal health’s most respected agencies. She played a pivotal role in launching the Partners for Healthy Pets initiative, co-founded The Bridge Club, and has shaped some of the industry’s most iconic brands and events. Brenda’s career reflects her unwavering belief in the power of meaningful relationships to drive innovation, impact, and lasting change in animal health. Welcome to the show, Brenda.

I am so excited to be here, and it’s really fun to be on the other side of the microphone, the one not asking the questions, but actually answering them this time. So thank you for inviting me, Stacy.

Yes. And I had so much fun being on Bourbon with Brenda where we were on the other side. So to our listeners, if you haven’t listened to that, be sure to tune into Bourbon with Brenda. Well, Brenda, I have to say that you were one of my most favorite people in the animal health industry. You have the best energy. You just bring good energy. When you walk in the room, I mean, you are just full of light. And I have to say, you’re one of the best dressers in the industry. I think you would be one of the most fun people to go shopping with.

Well, thank you. I have to tell you, you just brought tears to my eyes. I really appreciate it. I try to be a good human. And I know you know, you and I have known each other for years, it’s important to me to connect with people on the level of who they are and who I am for real like that. So I do love clothes, obviously. Be happy to take anybody shopping at any time because it is a passion of mine. But I think it’s really cool when you meet somebody and you just imagine the possibilities of what that relationship can be like. How can you help each other? How can you make each other better? How can you learn something from people? And so I think every time I enter a room, I’m looking for those like, “What’s going to happen now? Who am I going to meet now? What great conversation are we going to have?” So there’s that constant feeling of anticipation.

Well, you’re such a genuine, authentic person, and I’m going to take you up on that because I would love to go shopping with Brenda. And I think that could be a show of its own, Shopping with Brenda.

I’ll see if I can make that happen. That would be a fun one. I would enjoy that.

That would be fun. Well, Brenda, let’s start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

So it’s funny talking about my penchant for fun clothes and things like that. I actually grew up… Not totally grew up. I spent the first 10 years of my life as a farm girl in North Central Kansas. And we had the whole gamut of things. Cattle, hogs, horses, cats, dogs, chickens, bunnies, everything. It was the full Kansas farm thing, I mean, down to the wheat farm also. And one of my favorite things when I was younger was driving our old pickup truck through the fields while my dad threw the hay bales out for all the cattle. Number one, I thought it was super cool to be driving the truck. I could barely see over the steering wheel, which is not probably so different from today since I’m not particularly tall.

But it was just so much fun. I felt so connected to what my dad was doing, and to the land, and to giving back to these animals that, even at that time, I think knew gave so much back to us unknowingly on their part, of course. But I think that connected me to a future of doing something that felt more important than just writing great ad copy or doing good campaigns or something like that. So even in that young era, I thought that was really cool. And I loved writing stories when I was a child, I would do it through the voice of the animals. So my stories would be about something… Life learnings basically, but it was always through the eyes and the voice of an animal. So just see if I can dig some of those out from the archives one of these days and see if they’re actually any good. But it was really happy stories, no bad outcomes. There were no bad outcomes at the end of those stories.

But, yeah, so that’s where I started and went to school at the University of Kansas to study journalism. I always loved writing, always loved the idea of creating, and I was enamored of advertising, especially magazine ads when I was young, I would pull out pages of things that I thought visually just really inspired me or articles of people who were doing super cool things and I really wanted to do that. So I really never imagined I would do that in animal health. I went to KU thinking I would go to Chicago or I would go to New York or someplace like that, but bottom line was the cost of living in there was pretty dang high, and I got offered a job in Kansas City that paid me enough to live, and eat, and start paying off school loans. So it just began here in Kansas City with Veterinary Economics magazine.

Well, you and I have so much in common, and the story about driving on the farm, my grandfather’s dad was a mechanic and he fixed the school buses for the local school, and my grandfather tells these stories. He was 12 years old, and he would have to go and get the school buses and drive them to his dad so he could work on… I couldn’t even see over a steering wheel when I was 12. So just picturing that. But you and I have so much in common because I also have a journalism degree, and one of my first jobs out of college was working in an advertising agency. We mostly did sports marketing type things. So interesting. So tell me about your start. How did you get started into the animal health industry? Tell me about your early days as your career was getting off the ground.

Okay, yeah. So like I said, I thought I was going to do something super cool, right? And then I started looking at jobs and I really wanted to work in the ad agency business, but it just didn’t pay enough for me to afford to live even in Kansas City. So I can’t remember exactly even how I got connected. It might’ve been through the J school with the company that owned Veterinary Economics and Veterinary Medicine. And it was advertising sales, which I’ve always been able to talk to people, so I’m like, “Okay, I can do this. I think I can do that.” I sold cocktails for many years in college helping to pay my way through school, and people kept coming back for more. So that was a sure sign to me. I think that I could do that.

It enabled me to travel all over the United States, which I thought would be really a fun thing to do, and it got me engaged with working with advertising agencies and with companies who advertised, obviously. So it felt like a win-win back then at the time. And it enabled me to stay in Kansas City near my sisters who were still in college at that time, and my mom. So things just happened for a reason, I figured. There’s a reason that I didn’t get some of those agency jobs in Chicago, there’s a reason I couldn’t afford to live there. I fell in love with Kansas City. And being in the veterinary space, I found it so immediately welcoming and people were just kind and willing to give you advice. And that was back in an era when anybody who ran a company or was in charge of advertising was mostly a man. And so it was a scary time, I guess, when you’re thinking about a young woman and you are meeting with these people who have these lofty titles.

But I found people so incredibly generous, and warm, and welcoming, and it’s just funny how you meet people and the next job gets offered by someone you’ve met or worked with, and then the next job gets offered by someone you’ve met or worked with. And that’s how it went until I found myself so deep into this industry that I’m like, “Well, why should I get out doing that?” Then there was a moment in time when I lived in Philadelphia that I did get into the human healthcare side of things a little bit more, working on the development of cancer drugs, specifically breast cancer, and did that for a little while. But coming back to animal health just felt like coming home because of the warmth, because the sense of community, because of all those things that were important to me growing up. I just found it here. And that’s a really long-winded way of answering your question, but it’s a trip down memory lane for me, I guess.

Well, you mentioned your sisters, and I’ve met your sisters, and you have a beautiful family, and you’re very close-knit too.

Yeah, we are. We really are. It’s funny, the two of them both went into the J school at KU and went into ad agency work as well. So one of them in animal health, the other one in fast food. But, again, it’s that sense of community and that sense of being able to spend time with the people that you really enjoy spending time with.

Well, Brenda, your career has been defined by building authentic, mutually beneficial relationships. Where does that drive for connection come from and how has it influenced your path in the animal health industry?

Good question. I really believe it all starts with the fact that I truly love people. I love talking to people. I love meeting people. I love getting to know people. I love figuring out what they love, what they don’t, what drives them. Part of me, if it hadn’t been so heavy science, I think I probably would’ve gotten a degree in psychology as well as journalism at KU because I love thinking about what make people tick, and then it boils down to what makes them human. That’s the authentic part, I think, right? Because we can all go around acting like we’re something we are, aren’t, or we think somebody needs us to be, but when it really boils down to it, we all have this simple human truth within us, and that’s the desire to be accepted and to be liked.

So I think it’s super fun to be those open arms or that welcoming voice to help bring someone into the conversation a little bit along the way. And I think I got that… To the second part of your question, or maybe it was the first part. I think I got that from my mom. My mom was a nurse in a community hospital where it was all hands on deck all the time, and I just remember her being… It was such a tight-knit community, the doctors, the nurses, my mom’s friends, the people who would come into our home, and there was always just such a joy of being around each other. I think I’ve always carried that with me, that to be around people you enjoy being with is just such an intense feeling of joy. It’s just too fun. It’s addictive.

Well, you do such a great job of that, of making people feel comfortable. In fact, when you walk in the room, you have that knack for just making people feel welcome and comfortable and just building those connections. You do a great job of that. And, Brenda, you have helped shape some of the industry’s most impactful initiatives, including the AVMA, AHA Partners for Healthy Pets. What made that project groundbreaking in your view, and what lasting impact has it had?

Yeah, another good question. I am so grateful to have been part of that time in our industry’s history. And it was really truly a groundbreaking collection of companies and not-for-profit organizations from all across veterinary medicine and bringing everybody together to try to solve a common problem, which was the idea of getting more pets to the veterinarian for preventive care. Because you and I both know, having been in this industry for so long, preventive care can help… It can maintain cost, it can make that bond even stronger, it gives you a longer relationship with your pet. And it was just shocking to me to know, still today, why there are so many people who just don’t do the preventive care things that could help with longevity of their pet. But the cool thing about this was coming into those board meetings and having all these important people, high levels of women in organization, people who are making cool things done within their own companies and organizations, having all these people in a room together, there was such a real air of just possibility and optimism that we really were going to make a difference.

So it was a heady time to be painting what could happen for the future of this profession. So I think the most meaningful thing that came away from that was that we could. If we put all of our collective energy together instead of in the silos of my brand or your brand or my company or your company, we can move the needle. And it’s not a cheap proposition. I mean, talking to consumers is an expensive thing to do. Even with today’s platforms, which are much more affordable than it was 10 years ago, it’s still an incredibly important thing to do. It’s an incredibly expensive thing to do. But I still think, today, I feel the possibility that that could happen if we would just try it again and check the egos at the door and work together toward that common goal.

Well, that’s one of the things that I love the most about the animal health industry is it is highly collaborative. You can have different competitors in the same room all working together to find solutions to challenging problems.

Yeah, it was fascinating. I mean, if you’d been able to be a fly on the wall in those meetings, listening to people brainstorm with each other and throw out ideas and really come together, it was… I mean, I get goosebumps now even thinking about it because it was just so insanely cool.

I wish I could have been a part of that. Well, Brenda, as co-CEO of S&A, how have you and Patrick Sweet blended the agency’s rich legacy with a forward-thinking creative strategy in which [inaudible 00:14:49] for its future?

Good God, another good question. So, again, I feel very fortunate that my life has led me to cross paths with some people who have started really, really cool things. And Chuck Stephens, who was the founder of S&A, started his agency with the whole idea that a creative agency wasn’t just about the creative, it was about the partnership you built with your client, and it was about bringing the right kind of creative solutions that were really also smart business solutions and really drove the business forward. So we’re on year 45 now, which is pretty insane. As an independently-owned advertising agency, Chuck is still wholly the independent owner of S&A, and that’s just so unheard of for any agency to last that long, number one, but to last that long as an independent, number two.

So I was really flattered when I was approached to come to work at S&A and help Chuck craft that next generation of what S&A was going to be like. I think Patrick and I have very complimentary skill sets. He’s got a brilliant financial mind. He really understands business and entrepreneurship, and then you bring my experience on the creative side of things and building relationships across the industry and just the insight that I’ve gathered. So I think we’ve been able to take that legacy of what Chuck built, which is still the foundation today, and look at what now, what does the industry need now, how have things changed now, how has pet ownership changed, how has the development of a product changed, and the cost, and the time that it can take to do that, and really put that all on the table together and hire absolutely the most curated group of people to help us make that happen too. And it’s a secret sauce that just keeps on working.

Well, Chuck is a legend, and congratulations on 45 years of being a part of running a successful business. It’s amazing, right? I haven’t been here 45 years to clarify for all of you. I have not been here 45 years, but the agency has.

Yes, that’s what I meant. Thanks for clarifying that.

So, Brenda, you were a co-founder of The Bridge Club. And The Bridge Club really redefined how professionals in this field connect. What sparked the idea for it and how did it evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Oh, so Bridge Club was so much fun. Catherine and I, I think, in our four years together… Catherine was still running the Bridge Club today very successfully and doing some super cool things. But in our four years together, the effort was on bringing people in industry together. I found in my roles that there were all these super cool people in the profession who felt like they hadn’t found their group or they hadn’t found their people, and they had issues they wanted to talk about. They had concerns about the profession, they were growing their own careers. So it started as a smaller scale thing where we got some really interesting people together and started having lunches and dinners together and just sharing our experiences. And it grew into a bigger thing until it became the business, The Bridge Club.

But the idea behind it was to give people a place to come together and share thoughts and ideas and to learn from each other, focused on the profession, of course, as the center of it, but a real place to come and be with other people like you, and to learn from those people, and then hopefully help carry that out into the world exponentially too. So it wasn’t whoever came to one of our Bridge Club conversations, but the idea would be for them to carry away what they had learned or connection they had made and just keep growing that together. So it was a super fun time, and again, I think 291 episodes of conversations are what Catherine and I did in the four years that we worked The Bridge Club together. It was super cool. We were ahead of our time because we were well into this before COVID happened. So we had established the idea of having conversations virtually, which was a new thing at the time when we brought it out.

So we were well underway with The Bridge Club, and then COVID happened, which people are like, “Ah, okay, I can still be with my people through a Bridge Club conversation.” So COVID was… I think it was the confirmation that what we were doing was good and helpful and gave people a place to go and a place to belong, which is so cool. So I hope that legacy is something that lingers long after I’m no longer in the profession, and now Catherine, as I said, is taking The Bridge Club in a slightly different direction, angled more toward the profession, which is really fun to watch and super cool too. It’s a really thing for people to be involved in still.

It has been fun to watch, and I was at one of those earlier meetings in Kansas City when you and Catherine were first getting it launched, and I’ve had the privilege to be a part of a number of the conversations over the years. And you’re exactly right. You were ahead of the times. Well, Brenda, you’ve held leadership roles in both human and animal health marketing. What are some key differences or surprising similarities between the two sectors when it comes to branding and communication?

The key difference is so obvious to me, and it’s the reason I was so excited to get back into animal health. The sense of community in human healthcare does not exist. It just doesn’t. I mean, I worked primarily in oncology, and you would think in a small space like that that you would have some sense of community, but it was a sense of competition more so, and it was a sense of… I don’t want to offend anybody who spent time in this space, but I felt like it was filled with people who are climbing the ladder.

And in animal health, even for those people who are climbing and reaching to achieve, I still feel like there’s a grounded sense of duty or a sense of something bigger and being a part of something bigger that brings us together in animal health. It’s the reason you can walk into the bar at AVMA or VMX or a reception and people welcome you. It could be someone who’s your competitor, but it’s just like there’s an honest warmth that is in this profession that does not exist in human healthcare. Some of the similarities, I think, are the desire to find solutions to what’s killing us, what’s killing us, what’s killing our pets, how can we be more proactive about not getting to the really brutal part or prolonging the time that we get to the brutal part that comes with end of life. So that, to me, I think is a similarity, and I do find a similar passion to find the solutions across both of them.

I love that. I especially love what you said about how this industry has that community, and it really does. I mean, that’s so true. You go to a conference and it’s like having a family reunion every time.

It is. Yeah. I know. I mean, we can never retire because of that. Right? What do we do with ourselves? We’d miss everybody.

I know. I often say, when people ask me about retirement, they’ll just find me dead at my desk one of these days, because-

You and me both. You and me both. I mean, we’ll be walking down the hall of VMX and we’ll just go sit in a corner and [inaudible 00:22:09] over and that’ll be the end. [inaudible 00:22:10].

That’s so true. Well, from dvm360 to your work at Saatchi and beyond, you’ve been part of major brand and event transformations. What’s your secret to creating engagement that actually sticks?

Okay. So that comes back to part of what we’ve been talking about already. It’s like it’s human truth. It’s what drives us as people to want to learn, to want to grow, to want to investigate something. And now I think if we quit talking at people and do more talking with people, we find greater success that way. And in the brands that I’ve had the opportunity to impact, I found that to be true every day. We’re people first, it doesn’t matter what we do for a living, and we absorb content and information as humans first, and then we put on our business hat second. So, yeah, human truth.

Yeah, the people first.

Yes.

Well, you’re known as a strategic thinker and creative force. When a client is facing a complex challenge, how do you guide them toward clarity and innovation?

Oh, this happens all the time. We are so eager, I think, as humans to race to a solution that sometimes we forget to take that step back and really think through what’s really happening here, what is the real opportunity, what is the real challenge, what do I want to happen. So I sometimes say, “We have to figure out where we are, and then you have to figure out where is it we really want to go.” And then what happens in between is the mapping of that place.

So stepping back a second and really thinking quite simply, we are here and this is exactly what’s causing us the problem right now, or exactly the opportunity right now. Dial it back to something that’s approachable, and then where do we really want to be at the end of this road, and then just map it. We can have pages, and pages, and pages of insights, and data, and thoughts, but it’s like, “What does that all boil down to?” That’s, to me, the most critical place to start. And once you start, the path reveals itself, but if you don’t know from where you’re starting or where you’re going, you’re going to be on this long strenuous journey that’s never going to lead you where you really need it to be or where you really could be.

Yeah. That’s really good. Well, Brenda, you’ve served on boards like the Veterinary Innovation Council and the American Pet Products Association. What trends or disruptions do you believe are most exciting or most urgent in pet healthcare today?

I think urgent and exciting are intertwined with each other, to be honest. The thing that keeps rising to the top, and it has for the past several years, is finding that space where veterinary professionals can make a good living, can afford to practice veterinary medicine, can afford to pay a good staff, have a good practice manager who really helps to organize the things, and then make that cost of the care they’re providing something that’s affordable to more than a high-end consumer. We’ve been struggling with that for years, and you can throw AI at it, you can talk about technology, you can throw any solution at it, but I think we’ve got to get to that space where everybody can come to the middle a little bit on that.

And a part of it is how can we keep producing groundbreaking drugs that don’t break the bank for someone to be able to afford, how can we come up with the fact that if an animal needs an ultrasound to diagnose if it really is stomach cancer or something else, to make that halfway affordable, so the person who really wants to be able to find out and make that choice can make it. And it’s not just for the people who don’t have much money. It’s about making it something people can say yes to more readily. So that, to me, is the most exciting, and the most urgent, and the most promising space we can all focus some energy in. Forget the noise, forget all the bells and whistles, forget the problems with consolidation or the opportunities with consolidation. Again, get back to that simple human truth. People love their animals. People want to be able to care for their animals. Veterinary professionals deserve to be able to make a living while doing that. How can we make that happen? I feel [inaudible 00:26:35] getting away from that very simple problem.

Yeah, that’s really good. Well, your leadership philosophy seems deeply rooted in empathy and team empowerment. How do you create a culture where creativity, collaboration, and humanity thrive?

It’s always about the people. It’s always about the people, and it’s about making sure the people feel important, and empowered, and respected. It doesn’t matter if you are the youngest person in a business or the most tenured person in a business. Having that mutual respect and being able to listen to each other and find ways that you can take what each of you know to make into something, to me, there’s just a magic when that happens and it keeps people coming back for more.

I always say, so my Golden Retriever, Wrigley, used to come to work with me all the time here, and she couldn’t wait to get out of the car, and she would run up to the front doors of our office and we’d open them and she would come in and go around and greet everybody in the office just like, “Hey, hey, hey, good morning. Good morning. Good morning,” and that’s the feeling I want everybody who comes to work at S&A to feel. And whether it’s S&A or a board I’m involved with or whatever, I really want people to be genuinely excited to come and contribute. And I think it really does just start with giving them the opportunity to contribute and not tell them exactly how to do it.

Yeah, that’s really good. It’s all about the people, like you said.

It is. Yeah. And it’s the right people too, right? Because there might be three fabulous people who just don’t have the chemistry and don’t connect along the way. So that’s the curation part too. I think it’s finding the right group of people whose chemistry feeds on each other. And then sometimes you get someone who’s supremely talented, supremely talented, but they’re just not great at sharing the limelight or giving opportunities to other people. In that case, it can drag everybody down. So I always say too, I will take desire over talent any day because you can work with desire.

Yeah. Because you can be talented and not have the desire, and that’s what it’s a problem.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Brenda, looking back across your multifaceted career, what advice would you give to someone entering the animal health industry who hopes to make meaningful impact?

[inaudible 00:29:05] on that for a second. We’re all different. Right? So what worked for me and what felt authentic to me is not going to feel authentic to everybody else. But thinking again about how warm this community is and how welcoming, I would say just do it. Forget the fear. Don’t worry about asking silly questions. Don’t worry about being turned down from a few jobs here and there. It just could be that that wasn’t the right space for you anyway. If your heart is here, if your interest is here, just knock on as many doors as you can and make yourself present. Be present. You can’t go hide in a corner and wait for someone to find you. You have got to. I always say, “Be Donkey.” You’ve got to be Donkey from Shrek. You’ve got to get out there and be like, “Hey, hey, hey, hey,” and engage.

That’s good advice. You’ve got to toot your own horn.

You absolutely do. You absolutely do.

What has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the animal health industry?

How much I liked it. How sophisticated this industry is, people I think are shocked. They think they’re going to come from human healthcare or from venture capital and come in and just take this over with their brilliance. And there are a lot of insanely brilliant people in this profession. You layer that with how much they care, how big their heart really is, and it’s just it’s an unbeatable combination. It really is. Yeah. It’s more special than I could have ever imagined.

How have you seen the animal health industry change throughout the years?

We had a surge for a while, and maybe this is still happening, where we started to pay too much attention to what is happening in human healthcare and try to emulate some of those things. And I think to some degree, there are places where that’s helpful and that’s important, but I’m hopeful that we will learn from what’s happening on outside industries, not just human healthcare, and bring in the parts that are right for this profession. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not.

Because it’s so different. We’re not the human healthcare.

We’re not. Absolutely not. And we’ve seen it. You’ve seen this too, I mean, in what you do for a living. Time and time again, people come in with this idea that they’re going to bring what worked for them in a different business to this one, and it just doesn’t. Veterinary medicine has its own unique reasons for being, and you can’t just apply smart human medicine or smart technology or an influx of money and have it make a difference.

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I think it’s very bright. I really do. I’m so excited about the perspectives of some of the young people coming out of veterinary school now. The idea of looking at it, again, as, “I’m a pet owner, what do I need to make me happy and how do I make that happen in my practice?” I find that so exciting and exhilarating. I think the coming together of veterinary professionals with people who own pets is a huge, huge opportunity for the profession that will continue to happen. And as we come together with the pet at the center, it’s going to make for a better experience all around, both for the professional and for the pet owner. So I think it’s part of that coming together. Let’s not draw a line in the sand. I’m the professional, you’re the pet owner. Let’s come together over that common interest and that common desire. And that’s when the profession’s really going to, I think, find its future space.

Brenda, what’s been the biggest challenge that you’ve encountered throughout your career in the animal health industry?

Early on, and I don’t really want to go down this path deeply because I think it’s changed drastically. Early on, it was being a young woman. Truth. True story. This is one of the reasons I, on purpose, learned to drink bourbon, because I saw all those people who I knew could make a difference in my career and who were on the inside of what was happening in the industry, and I wanted to be at the table with them. So I would make my way up to the bar whenever I saw… And I’m not going to name names, but certain people that I thought could be mentors to me or had knowledge that I really wanted to have, and I would order what they were drinking, and it was usually whiskey or bourbon, so I’m just like, “All right, I can do that.” And it worked.

And that’s where the origins of Bourbon with Brenda started.

It really is. Yeah, it became a thing. Yeah.

I never knew that story. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So honestly, I think being a woman in animal health was really difficult for a while. I learned a lot about that. No longer as much the case, but I also think part of that is where it really sparked my desire to find like-minded people and gather with them and start having a tribe of people that you felt safe with and you could confide in, you could help each other grow together.

What are some of the habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success along the way?

Persistence, not being shy, feeling like I absolutely belonged, even if there were indications that maybe I didn’t. I think a lot of it is a belief in myself. This is corny, but I’m going to share it with you anyway, because you and I are friends and everybody who’s listening to this can know it now too. I’ve always found that you have to believe in yourself, first and foremost. So the song that has always resonated with me, there’s a line in the Whitney Houston song, the Greatest Love of All, learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, and I 100% believe that to be true.

Well, I love that. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Don’t be afraid. Again, just do it. Dive in. Don’t worry about what other people are going to think about you. Don’t worry about what your friends think. I remember when I first started really becoming engaged in animal health. I had my job at [inaudible 00:37:06] and then I went to work for an ad agency working on the Hill’s Pet Nutrition business, and they were doing things that seemed more cool than what I was doing at the time, and so I worried about that. That’s part of where dressing maybe started too, because I always really liked cool clothes. I’m like, “All right. I may work in animal health, but I can still wear cool clothes.” So when I would go out to the bars with them later on or whatever, I’d still be dressed better than they were. No matter what cool job they had and what cool agency in town. So I think it’s just don’t worry what other people think. Do what you know is right in your heart.

And you’re really good at that because you’re not afraid to be your own unique self, and you have a great deal of confidence when you walk in the room. You can just see that you’re a confident person.

Thank you. I mean, I really believe not everybody is going to like you, not everybody’s going to want to be around you, but if you believe in yourself and what you bring, you’re going to draw the right people to you.

Yeah.

[inaudible 00:38:14] don’t like you or don’t want to spend time with you, fine.

That’s okay.

Yeah.

Well, what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening to our podcast today?

Gets back to that. Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself. Be true to yourself. Don’t let the fad of the moment or someone who, for whatever reason, has impressed you change who you are. Deep down inside, you know who you are, you know who you want to be. And if you start getting that feeling of anxiety in your chest that you’re being pushed to be something you aren’t or someone you’re not comfortable being, it’s okay to walk away. Believe in yourself.

Such good advice. Well, Brenda, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book that they read that helped them the most. Do you have a key book in your life that’s impacted you the most?

I do, and it’s a short, simple one. It’s Anna Quindlen, A Short Happy Life. I wish I could say it was something super more profound book than that, but it’s just an easy to read little book that every time I read it, it just reminds me, number one, how short life is, number two, we don’t all have it perfectly. Someone may, on the outside, seem as if their life has just been unimaginably wonderful. We all have issues that we struggle with. And at the end of the day, it’s up to us to choose how we’re approaching our life and how we’re dealing with both the great and the horrible that comes our way.

Everyone has struggles whether you see them or not.

Yeah.

Well, 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?

Oh, golly. Golly, golly, golly. Gosh, [inaudible 00:40:03] I feel like I should think of something totally profound, but I think what I will just say is going back to that same thing, it’s like believe in who you are, become who you want to become, don’t listen to the naysayers, but embrace every opportunity to learn from those around you. Reach out to the people you admire and ask them to spend time with you. And then come back and think about what you really want and how you want to be perceived, and map that plan.

There’s so many opportunities, and sometimes they come to you, sometimes you have to go and look for them, but there’s opportunities everywhere and embrace them and learn from them.

Absolutely. And I think one final thought I would say is seek the joy. It’s up to us to make our own joy, and we can either choose to feel joy or not, but why not feel the joy?

Well, I’ve always seen the joy in you. In fact, you know Daryl, my husband-

I do.

… and he said, “I can’t imagine Brenda ever being upset at anybody or having a bad day,” he’s like, “Brenda always has a smile on her face.”

Well, I have had bad days and I have been upset. But, again, I try to find the joy. I try to find the inner good and find the joy, and then always come back to, “Is that making me happy? Is that a good spot? Does that feel good or not?” And I think that getting upset and going crazy, and yelling and screaming just really doesn’t… It feels good every once in a while, but there’s always a good nugget that comes from the situations that are less than desirable in our life. Right? And I do. I walk into every situation thinking it’s going to be a fabulous one. I just do.

Optimistic.

Yeah. To a fault. To a fault, probably.

Don’t ever change. Because that’s what I love about you.

It’s getting a little late in life to change too much now. So I might as well own what it is, I suppose. Yeah. But thanks, Stacy. I appreciate the compliment. This has been so much fun. I love talking with you anyway, so to be able to do it and share it out with your listeners is really fun and very honored that I was invited to do so.

Well, Brenda, thank you for being here. I always enjoy talking with you.

We’ll do it again.

Let’s do it.

Okay.

And I’ll see you in a few weeks.

Yes, you will. Yes, you will, in Kansas City.