Episode #67 – Dr. Andy Roark

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’ll 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’s guest on the People of Animal Health Podcast is Dr. Andy Roark, a practicing veterinarian, international speaker, author, and media personality, who has dedicated his career to strengthening the veterinary profession. He is the founder of both DrAndyRoark.com, and the Uncharted Veterinary Conference platforms that connect and empower veterinary professionals worldwide. Dr. Roark’s popular videos, articles, and podcasts reach millions monthly, offering both insights and inspiration. He’s a multi award-winning educator, columnist, and advocate for veterinary teams. Above all, he’s a passionate leader who believes in the power of community connection and kindness in veterinary medicine. Welcome Dr. Roark to the People of Animal Health Podcast.

Well, thank you for having me. I will tell you, I did not write that introduction, you came up with that. And it is absolutely wonderful. Being a connector of the profession. Anyway, what a lovely, lovely welcome that is. Thank you for having me.

Well, Andy, I’m so glad to have you here. We have known each other for a long time. And I would love to start off at the beginning, what was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up?

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. My dad was a small town general surgeon. And it was one of the family doctors, if you will, of the area. He had his own little surgery center. There’s two hospitals there, and so he worked at the hospitals, but he also had his own little place. And he had a couple of nurses that helped him at his surgery center. I think that established, for me, one, the impact that he had on the community and what it means to be a healer, and just a doctor, but also the way that he worked with his support staff and the way he treated them. And he created this place where he did good work.

It was funny, I was talking to somebody recently about what kind of a doctor he was, or what I learned from him. And I’ll never forget, he did a lot of surgery for the Amish community that was outside of our town. And they didn’t really have any money and they didn’t have any insurance or anything. But it was funny, they would need surgery in their community and he would do it. And then they would do something like… He’s an avid gardener. We had these beautiful wooden gazebos or gliders and swings, and the Amish community built them, and that was how they paid for services. And my dad would just barter with them, and so they would do these things. And I think I learned a lot about what it means to be a doctor, and the purpose of the work and the impact on the community, and things like that from him.

And I grew up in a town with my mom and my brother. And he’s four years younger than me, but he was my best friend most of my life. And he is now as well, we talk on the phone almost every day. It was a good childhood. I love North Carolina. I live in South Carolina now. It’s very much my home.

Well, you’ve worn many hats, veterinarian, speaker, author, media personality, and founder. How do you balance it at all, and what continues to drive your passion for this profession?

Yeah, I’ve always done a lot of things. It fits my personality quite naturally. I tend to be a distractible ADD type person, and I get bored pretty easily. And so, I’ve done these things, but it’s never been… Now, when I’m honest I’ll say it’s never been really intentional of I’m going to do this and then I’m going to do that, and then I’m going to do this other thing. And I have never decided I’m going to stop doing X and start doing Y. I’ve always just decided that Y was very interesting and I wanted to do more of it, and I would just go in that direction.

Everything has grown on itself. And I’m one, I find things I’m excited about and I jump into them and I learn a lot. And it’s funny, once you take an opportunity and you work on it, other opportunities that you never could have seen or that wouldn’t have been available to you, they open up. I always tell people, I think doing strategic planning is really, really valuable. And strategic plans themselves are usually pretty worthless. The act of thinking about what you want or where you’re going, what the objectives are, I think that’s really, really important. But it almost never really worked out for me. In the truth of life, the world changes, context changes.

I was thinking recently, I was at a conference and I was asking myself, what am I doing here? Do I have enough things scheduled for me? Am I doing enough to justify being here? And then I realized, I have made a number of things happen in my career for myself, which is good. But at least that many things have just fallen into my lap where I was in the right place. And I had worked on developing a reputation for working hard and doing good work, and then other people came to me with things I had never thought of and said, “Would you consider giving this thing a try?” And I thought, “Sure, I’ll give it a try. We’ll figure it out.” And that’s been the story of my career again and again. As far as-

You’ve been open to opportunities.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I like to try new things. I think I have a history of saying yes and then figuring out how to do it. And I think a lot of people… I think if I had to know exactly what I was doing before I said yes to an opportunity, I don’t think I wouldn’t have had many opportunities in my career. Most of my things have been saying yes and then getting to work to learn what I need and talk to the people who could help me and figuring those things out.

As far as keeping it in balance, that’s always been a work in progress. I pay attention. I think I’ve done a good job of paying attention to what my life is like. And I think my priorities tend to stay in order. My family is the most important thing to me, my wife and my children. And I want to be a good father and husband, and I want to be a good friend. And I think I’ve done a good job of keeping those things in line. And so, when I feel work creeping up and I start feeling like I’m not having opportunities to be there for my kids, or if I start missing things with my family. My wife and I, we have a good marriage and good open dialogue about, how are you doing? How am I doing? Are there ways that I can support you? Are there ways that you can support me? And my wife is good about communicating and saying, “Hey, it feels like you’ve got a lot going on, and you’re traveling a lot and things, I just want to check in.”

And I understand what she means with that. And she is checking on me. And also, she’s indicating she’s starting to feel friction around being gone too much or being too head down and work. And I try to make adjustments, because that’s my commitment to her. And it’s funny, I’ve found a lot… When I was young, I would decide I was working too much, something like that, and I would be frustrated that I couldn’t immediately stop working. Because you can’t. But I came to understand that I could make adjustments, and it would take about three months for them to take effect.

But if you’re doing a lot of work, if you’re traveling or doing things that you don’t really want to do, you might not be able to affect those things today. But almost no one’s going to give you a hard time if you go onto your schedule and you go out three months and then you start making some changes, or start putting some blocks in there and saying, “I’m going to be unavailable at this time,” or “I need to make a change. Starting at the beginning of the year, I’m not going to be able to do these things.” If you reach out in the future, people don’t tend to mind so much. It’s hard to change things right in the moment. But once I figured out that I really do have great control as long as I can hold on for a couple of months, that was the key for me.

I tend to gear down, and then I get a little bit bored and I want to do a little bit more, and I pick up more. And at some point I probably end up over committing, and I recognize the signs of being over committed, and I start saying no and I start trying to make some space. And after a couple of months things start to slow back down and I catch my breath. And it’s cyclical. I associate it with, it’s not work-life balance so much it is the tides of the ocean. Where there’s definitely high tides and sometimes there’s low tides, and they’re not always the same length of time. But that helps me feel okay when I’m in high tide, and it also helps me feel okay when I’m in low tide. It’s like, oh, high tide will come again, I have no doubt.

I like what you said, because we hear a lot about work-life balance. I like tides of the ocean. Because I like to think of it as work-life integration.

Well, I think that’s true too. Some of it’s about workload. When you graduate from vet school and it’s your first year as a doctor, I don’t know how you balance that. You’re probably going to work a lot. And honestly, you want to because you’ve got these skills, but they’re soft. They’re nebulous, you haven’t really used them. And there’s so many people who come out and they come out of vet school, and vet school is exhausting. And then they’re working really hard in their first year of practice and they’re like, I’m failing. I thought that I would get out and life would get easier. I would say, no, this is just high tide. It’s going to be a year or two. You’re going to be much more confident in a fairly short amount of time. And you’re going to be able to get things organized and really start to have the schedule you want.

But that beginning part, I don’t how you avoid just leaning in and putting in a lot of time and effort at that time. The same thing when you have children, and you and I have talked about our kids before. When you have young kids at home, I don’t know where the off switch is. It’s just, that’s going to be a wild time in your life. And the good thing is it’s going to pass. It’s going to be, you’re going-

There is no off switch when you have kids.

Yeah, yeah. But it gets easier. It gets easier. And there’s times where your kids need you a lot, and there’s times when they’re much more self-sufficient and they don’t need you or need your immediate attention all the time. But it’s a fluctuation. And it’s just, you’re not doing it wrong when you end up in periods where you’re really working hard, I don’t think. I think you need to pay attention to where you are and make sure that you’re working hard when you need to work hard and then leaning back when you need to lean back.

Yeah, but it won’t be… There’ll be times of your life where you’re just going to work hard for a year or two. And there’ll be times when you have a lot more control about what you’re doing. The tricky part is actually not feeling guilty. I’ve found when I have a low tide period or when I’m not working as hard as I used to, that was the hardest part for me to learn.

I’m about to enter a new phase of my life, I’m sending my youngest child off to college on Monday. It’s bittersweet. I’m excited for him. I don’t know how I’m going to feel about being an empty nester, because it’ll be the first time in 25 years I won’t have any kids at home.

I can’t wait to see how you feel about it. I think about that a lot. My oldest is a senior in high school and my youngest just went to high school. And Stacy, I am really tight with them. When COVID hit, they had virtual school for two years. When I wasn’t at the clinic, I worked from home and they worked with me, and we got to be very tight. We are very close. And I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like just to have one, but then to be an empty nester. I do sometimes, when I think about the future, I wonder what’s going to happen in my career, what I’m going to want to do. I’m confident that when the time comes I’m not going to sit around and mope. I’m going to look at the free time on my hands and figure out something to do with it. And I don’t know what that is, but I am excited to see that part. But also, I am nervous about my kids not being around. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what your experience is like.

Well, my husband and I have been taking dance lessons this summer. Our first dance class was, we learned the Polka. The Jenny Lind Polka dance. And true story, my husband and I have been married 29 years, it’ll be 30 years next June. And we had never danced before together. I grew up dancing, ballet, tap, jazz, et cetera, but he would always say, “I’m not a dancer.” This summer, the Tulsa Historical Society put on their social media that they were doing these ballroom dances, and you could sign up. We signed up and took some lessons over the summer, and it was so much fun.

That’s fantastic. I was telling somebody today, I was talking to a young doctor and I said, “What are your hobbies?” And she was her early career, and she had some hobbies. Mostly, she said she spent her time cleaning her house. And I said, “I really think it’s so important to have hobbies.” I think it’s so important to have things that you look forward to, even if it’s just you looked forward to during the week. I think that that’s an important part of being a balanced person and being happy. Too many of us don’t really have anything we’re looking forward to or that we’re excited to get to at the end of the day.

Oh, I agree. That’s so important. Well, Andy, I’m curious, what inspired you to start the Uncharted Veterinary Conference, and how has it evolved since its launch in 2016?

Oh, wow. It started for a couple reasons. There’s two major reasons. Number one, by 2016 I had been speaking for eight or 10 years at that point, and going to conferences and things all over the country and all over the world. And I had some strong beliefs about what makes a really great conference. And I thought, I think these are the attributes that really matter. That’s what I think. And I wanted to see if that was true. And so I had my own beliefs about what makes a really great event and I wanted to do that. And I really love being at these events and getting to know the people, and all of those sorts of things. I thought I had some good ideas and I really wanted try them.

The other thing is, I always lecture on management and leadership, and things like that. The problem with most conferences, and the way they’re set up, is they’re all one and done events. Meaning, everybody comes together and there’s a lecture on, say, management of hospitals. And everyone shows up and you lecture to them, and then they all get excited and then they go home. And there’s two pieces of that that I don’t really like. The first one is people come, and you as the presenter, you have to start at the 101 level because you don’t know what these people know coming in, and they’ll be all over the board. There’ll be some people who are very business savvy, and there’ll be other people who just got promoted into the role and they need to learn the basics and they’re desperate for that. And so, it’s very hard to cover content that’s not the entry-level content.

And I’ve just been doing it long enough, and like I said, I get bored. And my idea with Uncharted was that we would meld together an in-person conference with a virtual experience so that we could do some teaching, and then virtually we could follow up and build on that teaching. And that’s really what I wanted and what I was trying to do. My wife is also a biology professor, and she really studies pedagogy, which is the science around learning. And I really believe that… I think lecture is fun, but I really don’t think it’s the best way for adults to learn. I really think that active learning, problem-solving, case studies, discussion groups, roundtable discussions, things like that, I think that stuff is so much more powerful in helping people really understand and also retain what they’re being taught.

I wanted to make that happen. I had visions about what that learning part would look like. And the ability to make it so that people who were really business nerds like myself, they didn’t feel like they were going to a conference and getting the 101 level stuff, but they were engaging in a way that let them talk to other people who were really invested in it or had a lot of knowledge. We might have a base-level discussion, but then if I can pair these people and put them together at groups of people who were in similar positions or similar stages of their education development, then they can work together and really get a lot out of the conversations and things. That was the two drives there that came together for me to make me want to do that.

And when we started out, it has worked great. The pandemic was a huge change for us, because Uncharted was growing really well and we were doing events, and more and more live events. And after the pandemic, all of the live events were shut down. For about a year, a year and a half there, there really wasn’t a lot going on. And the hotels had laid off a lot of their staff, and suddenly people decided it was okay to have live events again. Then everybody’s trying to have them. All of the people who were going to get married and waited until after the pandemic, they’re all trying to get wedding venues. And all of the business meetings, all of the industries are suddenly trying to get venues to have these meetings, and the venues don’t have any staff. And so the prices go shooting up because they’re trying to give bonuses and attract more people. And the prices of having live events just absolutely soared. And they never came back down once the venues figured out that people would pay these prices.

And again, I think that’s across industries. I was talking to someone who is in construction, and he said that happened with steel. During the pandemic, the cost of steel went shooting up. And then once those steel manufacturers realized that people would pay those prices, there was no incentive for them to lower them and prices, just stayed up. The cost of live events has really soared, and that has led us to really change the model and how we do live events, and piggybacking off of other events and things like that. We still continue to work on that and try to figure out interesting ways to have the events. The opportunity to work online has opened up entirely different pathways that I never imagined.

Honestly, it’s funny. Most of our work at the Uncharted Conference right now comes from working with corporate practice groups or with a group practices. And what they found is, let’s say that you have seven practices, and so you have seven medical directors and seven practice managers. Well, getting them to travel is very challenging, but I can drop in. We’ll pick a time, and then I will take all seven of your practice managers and all seven of your medical directors, and they will meet with me and my team. And I will give them case studies and I will challenge them, and I’ll have them work on problems. And they’ll get to know each other and they’ll get to know me, and we can do education that’s customized to their practices, their problems.

And we can make it happen where they can be at work and they can pop on and we’ll do a two-hour block, and then we are done on time and they are back into the clinic with minimal downtime. And that has just taken off. And now I work with groups. Honestly, I work with groups as far away as Asia. We’ve got a group in Hong Kong and Singapore and Thailand that we work with. That virtual aspect has really just exploded. It’s always evolving, but it’s been a wonderful journey.

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DrandyRoark.com has become a hub for the veterinary community. What was your original vision for it, and did you expect it to grow into what it is today?

The original vision for it was quite different, and you have to remember where we were in history. The DrAndyRoark.com website got started in about 2010, 2011. And I started to write for it a little bit. Over the years, I started to write for it more and more. At first it was just a little pamphlet that let people know that I was doing speaking. And if you’re thinking about hiring me, here’s some information on me. But then I started to write some more, and that was driven by social media. And it grew really rapidly. And I had this idea, once I got social media to start to really grow, I had a much bigger presence than almost anybody else in the vet industry as far as talking to other vet professionals. I saw all these other people who were veterinarians and veterinary technicians who were so smart and they had these interesting things to say, but they had not invested all the time into building a platform that other people saw.

But what they had to say was so valuable, Stacy. And so, the original idea for DrAndyRoark.com was, I will give these people a platform, and we’ll build something that is a platform for ideas and information and encouragement and positivity in the veterinary world. And it would be this open type of platform. And I hired an editor who would just edit. People would submit. And we would take open submissions if people wanted, but we had regular writers and they would submit, the editor would clean their stuff up. And that was the exchange was that they would provide the content and I would have somebody who was really great look at it, clean it up, make sure that it looked really, really good and everything, and then we would push it out to our social media channels with them as the recognized author and everything.

And it worked quite well. And boy, that really started growing. And I really loved that. I like to read, I like ideas. I like the fact that people would write on our website and it would get a lot of visibility and they would write some more. And then someone would reach out to them and say, “I’ve been reading what you’ve written. Would you like to come and speak at our conference?” And the person, they were so thrilled. And we got to support that person and give them this platform that they never would’ve had at the beginning, and then they could go on. And they were so many people who are out now lecturing all over the world. Some of the biggest voices in vet medicine now got their start writing over on DrandyRoark.com. And every time I see them in the room, it’s huge and it’s full of people taking notes.

I’ll see them after it’s over and they will say, “Remember when you asked me if I would write something for your website?” And said, “Yeah, I do. I remember that. I knew you had great things to say. I saw your talent.” And it makes me proud to… They did this with their hard work and everything, but I am so grateful that I could play a role in others finding their wisdom or finding their knowledge and just, I don’t know, being able to learn from them. I was all about that, and I really loved it.

And then the world for me and DrandyRoark.com radically changed in 2016. In 2016, we had the presidential election, and that was when Trump won the election the first time. And that was when fake news was a term that was introduced. And there were allegations right around the election that there were fake media stories being released all over the place. And there were. There were bad actors that were creating just completely false reports and publishing them as what looked like news sites or as blog posts of things. And it was just a pile of false information that was coming out in social media, especially Facebook, which was where we had our largest audience.

It was allowing people to share those stories, and they were going viral and they were catching on. And until that point, Facebook had been a huge supporter of what we were doing. The Dr. Roark web page was very popular on Facebook, and Facebook had really helped drive a lot of our growth. And then overnight, Stacy, Mark Zuckerberg came out and said, “We are deprioritizing article content. We are deprioritizing links to external websites.” And in a matter of one week we lost 40% of our web traffic. And just one week after the election, and it was really a week or two after the election, it turned off like a spigot. And it went down 40%. And then by the beginning of 2017, it was down 60% from what it had been.

And again, it really was a very popular site and a big hub. And if you look at where social media is now, nobody shares links back to their own website anymore. That’s just, the algorithms have decided that’s not going to happen, and they just crushed it. With that, unfortunately, that was the end of us being able to put together a platform for other people to write and really to be this… I thought it was so cool. I really loved it. This hub of creativity and writing and idea sharing. It’s gone on in that I still like to write and I am more committed to it now. It’s funny, I’ve had resurgence in the last year or so. I’m really committed to longer form content.

I worry about what TikTok and things like that do to our brain. I worry about the short attention spans that we’re getting. I’m personally interested in understanding things that take longer than 15 or 20 seconds to understand. I think nuance is important. I think understanding context around ideas and challenges, I think that’s important. I think not everything is a meme or a bullet point or a pull quote. I really do believe that. And in the last year we’ve seen more and more data coming out about shortened attention spans and the impact that this micro content that we’ve leaned into is having. And I’m seeing a resurgence of long form content. I’m seeing more people writing. I’m a big fan of Substack these days. I like for people to share their ideas that way. And so, we continue to publish the newsletter, which is basically what’s on the DrAndyRoark.com site. But I write something for that website every single week.

Every Friday my newsletter comes out and I write something fresh. I have something that has just come out today, it’s a note for anyone who’s worried that the new generation doesn’t want to work hard. And I think it’s a neat article. Yeah, I am committed to still writing. I still think it’s the way to share complex ideas. And I think the world could benefit from a little bit more complexity and a little bit more nuance. I hope that DrAndyRoark.com will keep going that way, and I hope that there’s a resurgence of reading. I would love for that to be true. And if there’s not, I’m still going to keep writing on it. And we get tens of thousands of people every week who read those posts, those articles, and so there’s definitely a group out there that enjoys them. And I’ll keep writing for those people.

When you talk about fake news, and I’m concerned about the fake news now that we’re in this AI era. I was just on a webinar earlier today, it was a training for executive search consultants. And the presenter said, “There’s more content online today written by AI than written by humans.”

Really? I could see more content being produced today, but I can’t imagine… The total content on the internet? You think there’s more from AI than from humans?

That’s what this presenter said today. He said, “There is more content written by AI online today than there is content written by humans.”

Well, I have seen a noticeable increase in the amount of email that I get. And I see a ton of articles on LinkedIn and things like that, and I’m pretty confident that people use AI to generate a lot of that content. My worry is that there is just so much noise in the world. When everyone can crank out articles and content at the touch of a button, who’s going to read all this stuff? And how do you find the stuff that’s actually worth reading? I think that’s an interesting question. People are smart, I think they will adapt their behaviors. I believe that. I’m not sure where it’s going to go. But I think for veterinarians and for vet professionals, we are entering a crisis of trust. I think trying to get people to recognize that you’re a real human being and to hear what you are saying when they’re so many other narratives and so much other content and noise coming at them, I think that’s going to be the real challenge for our profession in the next five years.

Yeah, I think that is a challenge for the profession. And how do you think that’s going to play out? What do you think is the answer there?

What’s the answer there, huh? Well, I think that it’s going to be messy. I think that it’s going to be messy. I think AI is generally going to be a real positive for our profession. I really, really do. I am not an AI maximalist. Meaning, I do not believe AI is going to answer all the problems. I don’t believe AI is going to be a panacea. I really don’t. I think, from a getting stuff done perspective, I really love the AI scribe, Stacy. I’ve used a couple of them. I am a big fan. They make me much more efficient in the clinic. They take away my least favorite part of the job, which was writing up my medical records, and make them just so much faster and easier. I appreciate the extra ideas. I like it when it adds differentials or things I might want to consider.

I don’t see a downside to that. I like it. I think it’s vital that we don’t become reliant on it. I think it’s really, really important that we all continue to insist on using our own brains. This goes back to what I was talking about about long-form content. Your mind is a muscle, and if you don’t use it, it will atrophy. And if you just let AI tell you what to do, you’re going to be nothing but a pair of hands. And your capabilities and your competence, they’re going to deteriorate. And I do not want that. I am committed to not letting that happen. And at the same time, I see the benefits of AI. I really think that the future for the savvy veterinarian is utilizing AI to make their life easier and to get better patient outcomes while being adamant about maintaining your own skills, your own knowledge, your own mental strength and acuity.

And what that means, is sometimes you’re going to be selective about how and when you use AI. And don’t become that person who outsources every thinking task to AI, or your mind is atrophy. I think internally that’s key. It’s funny, I was talking to somebody recently, and they were so positive about AI. It’s going to help us communicate with pet owners and it’s going to be able to handle phone calls and do phone calls, and it’s going to send emails. And I said to them, I was like, “Listen, if and when AI is able to do those things, you do realize that every business in every industry is going to have these same thoughts, right? And they are all going to try to utilize them, probably at the same time. And so your accountant, your dentist, the people who might protect your house, the rental car company you used the one time, the place you bought your automobile, they are all going to be leaning into this super easy technology.”

And Stacy, it goes right back to what we talked about before. Where you go, you have not seen noise yet. I think that people, they’re going to react. They’re going to tune those things out. They’re going to figure out how to filter those things. And I don’t really know how useful it’s going to be. I think my friend is not wrong in those capabilities, I think they are true. I don’t think that people are going to be thrilled about getting AI phone calls from every company they’ve ever dealt with. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Anyway, I am less clear on what that looks like. My real hope, Stacy, for the profession and for society, and for where we’re going, and I think that this is a key for continuing to be happy. I think the future is going to be utilizing these technologies in a limited and intentional way, and leaning very much into old fashioned eye to eye, shake your hand, interpersonal communication.

I really think that standing in the exam room with the pet owner, looking at them in the eye, asking them what their objectives are for the appointment, how things are going, what’s important to them, what they’re worried about, and really listening to them and building a relationship with them, I think that connection is going to probably get more rare for a lot of people. And I think it’s going to be more valuable. And I think if you want this job to stay rewarding and you want to be an effective veterinary care provider, I think your ability to really connect to people at a human being level one on one, I think that’s going to become more and more and more important.

And again, everyone will talk to you about scale and how many people you could reach with AI and technology. But I think that those relationships, the technology relationships, I think that they’re getting cheaper. I think that they’re less fulfilling for people. I think we might need to slow down to go fast in the future. That’s what I think.

Well, those are some great points. And it ties back… Well, I think veterinary medicine is a relationship business, and I think it ties back into the trust thing you were saying. How do you bring trust back? What would you say to that comment? How do you bring trust back?

There’s a lot of different ways to build trust. I think trust is the cornerstone of everything we do. I think everything that the vet professional does, there should be a thought about, does this gain trust for me or does this lose trust for me? And I really think that if you truly prioritize gaining trust, it will guide you in practice. And I did a lecture yesterday about working with cash-strapped clients, people who come in, they have limited financial resources. And the first step is you build trust with this person. You don’t know how much money anyone has in their wallet. You shouldn’t know that. You shouldn’t try to guess that. Every person who brings you their pet, they should get your full attention, they should get your respect. They should get good open-ended questions from you. They should get your best attempt to try to understand what their priorities are, what they care about, what they’re afraid of, what their needs are, and to build that trust.

And if you work to get people to trust you, they will share things with you. They will tell you where they are. They will tell you what their needs are. They’ll be honest with you about what they’re able to do and what they’re not able to do. And as long as you continually act in the way that’s going to maintain the trust this person has in you, one, I think you’re going to get to a really good place. I think you’re going to be able to advocate effectively and ethically for pets. I think that people are going to come back and see you again and again, and you’re going to build that clientele. But the other thing is, I think that you’re going to enjoy your job. I think you’re going to feel like you’re doing work that’s meaningful and you’re doing it for the right reasons, and that you’re taking care of people.

I think that trust is really important. I think that the trust is going to be harder earned in the future than it’s ever been in the past. I think in the past, 20 years ago, if you wore the white coat and walked into the room, you had a good amount of trust because people had decided that they believed in the institution of medicine, and veterinarian medicine specifically. They believe that doctors were smart and they should be listened to and they should be respected. And I don’t believe that… I don’t know that that trust exists.

I think we’ve seen a falling trust in institutions regardless of what they are. That’s law enforcement, that’s higher education. It’s CEOs, it’s elected officials. Unfortunately, it’s doctors and nurses and it’s veterinarians. I think the base level of default trust that used to exist, I think it’s much lower than it used to be. But the process of building trust is still the same, you’re just going to have to do it. You’re not going to be able to take advantage of built-in institutional trust like you used to, you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. You’re going to have to build trust by yourself with this other human being.

Well, Andy, your style is known for being fun, real, and incredibly human. How do you think humor and authenticity help connect with veterinary professionals in a meaningful way?

Well, I think that anytime that you’re trying to build a relationship with somebody, anytime you’re trying to share knowledge, you’re really doing two things. You’re sharing information and you’re trying to resonate. Information is the information I want to give to you, but the resonance is how that information hits you. How do you feel about it? Does it feel correct to you? Does it resemble your life experiences? Does it make you believe that the person sharing the information knows what they’re really talking about, or that they understand you and your position? I think we all want to feel understood, Stacy. I think we all want to believe that the person that we’re talking to sees us and really does understand how we feel. And I think that the authenticity, I hope what comes across is I try to genuinely see the vet professionals. Those are my people. Those are the people that I really care a lot about. And I want them to know that I see them and I understand where they are. And so, some of the ways that I talk about things, or even humor.

One of the nicest compliments I think I’ve gotten is that someone years ago said to me, “You know what your gift really is, Andy? Is that you are able to be positive about our profession in an authentic way. And it doesn’t feel like you’re just saying false things or you don’t understand how it is. It’s obvious that you do understand how it is, and you’re also being positive. You’re being honest that this is a great job, but it’s also a really difficult and challenging job.” And I feel that people are much more willing to hear what you have to say and consider your ideas if they believe that you understand their position. I think that with the authenticity, I think communicating to the people that I care about that I get it. I get it. That’s always been important to me. And I see a lot of things that are written, and you think this person does not know what it’s really like. I think in order to really be considered to be influential, I think that people have to see you as authentic.

As far as the humor, I know that people are busy, and I know that attention spans are short. And it’s funny humor. Humor is a good way to catch people’s attention or to entice them to hear what you have to say. There’s an old line in comedy where you say, “Comedy is great, make them laugh. And while their mouths are open you can stuff the truth inside.” And I’ve just found that humor and comedy are a really good vehicle to communicate ideas in a way that people will hear them and consider them. Those are the two things that… I guess when I think about authenticity and humor, that’s how I think about them.

But it’s also just, I don’t know, it’s what I like to read as well. I like to laugh. I think we make a lot of choices about how we choose to experience our days, and I try to choose to experience our days in a positive way. I choose to laugh about the hardships as much as I can, because there’s still hardships. There’s an old saying, it’s something around, if it’s raining, you can take an umbrella or not, but either way it’s still going to be raining. Something like that. It’s that thought for me. It’s always just been what people have resonated with. And they come back and they tell me that what I said was helpful to them, or they’ll remember the humorous part about it. And I figured out, yeah, I know these people are busy. I know they have a lot going on. And if I can make them smile and I can make them laugh, they appreciate that. And then if I can tell them something and it feels authentic, then they’ll consider it.

It’s choices. You choose to have a positive, good attitude about things.

I try. Yeah, I definitely do.

You once said, “If the internet were a city, DrAndyRoark.com would be the bar where vet teams go to unwind.” What do you think the veterinary world needs more of right now, online or offline?

Offline. 100% off. 100% unmitigated offline is the answer. Yes, it is offline. And again, I say that as someone who’s online a lot. It should be offline except for the Dr.Andy Roark newsletter that comes on Fridays. You should log on and get that and log back off. I think it’s offline, for the reasons that we talked about, Stacy. I talk to so many vet professionals, and there are so many people who they are so plugged in. And Stacy, I don’t believe that we evolved to consume a 24 hour news stream. I do not think that our Stone Age caveman, hardwired brains are set up for that. I do not think that we have evolved as a species in order to handle clickbait and these emotional attention seeking media outlets that they’re trying to get our attention all day long. They’re trying to distract us and get our attention.

And I think it’s exhausting. And I think there are so many things that we have no power over. We have no power over. And if we consume those things and worry about those things, I just don’t think that we as people have the bandwidth to live in that constant five alarm fire space and still be happy people. And again, everybody’s different, so I don’t want to speak for anybody else. And some people maybe don’t feel that way. I think limiting what we take into our minds as far as what we’re going to worry about, I think that’s important. I’m a big believer in saying, what are the things that I can do something about? And I want to be aware of those things, and I want to do what I can do, and then I want to try to go on with my life. Because otherwise it’s just, there’s too much stress around too many different things.

And I think a lot of us struggle with that. I also think that interpersonal connections and relationships are a big part of finding meaning and purpose in our lives. There’s been some research that’s come out recently, and I can’t remember the name of the study, but it was out of Harvard. And they looked at these Harvard graduates, over 100 years of graduates, and how these people evaluated their lives. And they looked for all the different correlates and what matters, and being married, how much money you have. And what they found was really the only thing that correlates to a really good life in the person’s eyes are, how many friends do you have? Do you have good… You don’t have to have a… I take that back. It wasn’t how many friends do you have? It’s, do you have a few good, deep, meaningful relationships? Do you have some people who would really come to you and help you if you needed them? Do you have those people in your life?

And it’s scary how few people have that these days. And it’s really hard to have that. It’s so easy just to stay in our phones and to go and see appointments. And in between the appointments we’re scrolling our phone instead of talking to the people that we work with and really getting to know them as human beings. I just think that if we all stop looking at digital sources, and then also if we stop looking at national and international trends, I think we’d be happier.

In vet medicine, it’s been inching phenomenal recently because I feel like there’s so much awareness around what is going on in the industry. And people say, “Oh, corporations are buying up all the practices. And there’s private equity and they’re doing these things. And patient visits are dropping and prices are soaring. And pet owners can’t afford this and it’s terrible.” And those are the things I’m interested in as well, and I talk about them on my podcast and things like that. However, it has been interesting because people will say those things to me and they’re clearly upset. And I would say, “Do you see this at your practice? Are your prices going up at your practice?” And they’ll say, “No, we haven’t really raised our prices in a couple of years.” And I’ll say, “Do you feel like there’s more pet owners right now that can’t afford care?” And they’re like, “No, I can’t really. Honestly, I don’t feel a difference.”

And it’s funny, we’re told that these problems exist. And they do, they’re not made up, don’t get me wrong. But it’s interesting about how we hear what’s happening across the industry and we say, this is bad for us and we internalize it. But when you go into your own practice and you work with your pet owners who know your names and who have kids who go to school with your kids, it feels very different. I don’t know, I think that’s important. I think that we need to work on the things that we actually have the power to affect, and try not to live our lives in existential fear about sweeping multinational trends or even national trends.

I understand that economic circumstances are different in San Francisco than here, but I don’t practice in San Francisco. I practice in South Carolina, and we have enough problems in South Carolina. I am not living in bliss, I can actually focus on the real problems that are here, and that gives me plenty to work on and to try to address to make the world better. Those are enough problems. Anyway, that’s where I am.

I think that ties back into media, because we were inundated with media all day long. And there was a recruiter that was worried about soybean prices in China. This recruiter doesn’t even work in the soybean industry. Somebody asked her, “Well, do you even work in the soybean industry?” She said, “No.” And they said, “Well, that’s not going to impact you.” But we’re so connected, we hear all the stories that happen all over the world, and we think some of these things impact us. And some do, but they all don’t. And that’s why I had to turn the news off years ago. I still know what’s happening in the world, but I go to bed much more peaceful now than stressed out by listening to the nightly news.

No, I’m the exact same way. And trust me, the news finds you. If there’s something really significant happening, you don’t have your head in the sand, you will be aware of the big things. But I’m with you. It was funny when I really came to realize how much being constantly aware of all these things, it was just nagging at me. And I decided at some point I was like, I’m not going to do this. And I really detached from news and news consumption, especially checking the news multiple times a day. And it took a little while, but over time I just became a much happier person and a much less stressed person. I think that’s been really helpful.

Andy, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

Oh, I actually have to think about this one for a second. What has been the most surprising thing to me? I’ll tell you the most surprising thing. Here’s one of the most surprising things. I grew up in North Carolina, as I said, and my father owned his little surgery center. And I really thought independent practice ownership was what I was going to do with my career. And that’s really what I wanted to do. And I really love the idea of veterinarians owning hospitals, and that’s important to me. I want to support that and make sure that that continues to happen. And when I was coming out of vet school, there were not a lot of corporate practices. There were a few. Banfield had grown to a pretty decent size by the time that I was coming out, and VCA was there, so there were these corporate practices.

But it was funny, and I wrote about this recently. I came out of school in a time when people were like, “Ooh, Banfield, you don’t want to work there.” Or that’s corporate. And that was just what was said in the hallways and how it was. I will be honest and say that when I started my career, I had a negative opinion of corporate practices. And I thought, this is the evil empire, or this is not a place that I would ever want to be. And the thing that has surprised me the most is, especially over the last five years, I have worked with a lot of corporate practices. And this sounds so simple, but it is so true. The people that you know who work in the independent practices that you know, the veterinarians, the front desk people. You know what I mean? The funny technicians, the grizzled front desk person who’s cynical but really wants to help the pets.

Those same people are in the corporate practices. I had friends that I went to vet school with, and I knew them really well. And then they took a job and they went to work at Banfield. Did they become radically different people? Not at all. Not even a little bit. They’re the exact same people. And even the enthusiasm, the spirit. I talked to a young practice manager who was in this big corporate group, and she had been promoted into practice management. And Stacy, she was so proud. She was so proud of her practice. And she wanted it to do well, and she wanted to take care of the people that were there. And there’s no difference, no difference between her and the young practice manager I see in the independent practices, they are the same people. They are the same good people who want to do good work. They’re trying their best. You know what I mean? They care about the pets and the people. And those, when you go into the hospitals, those are the people who are there. They’re the exact same people.

I hear all of these conversations still about the independents versus the corporates, and I just can’t hardly get my head around that anymore. And I was really surprised by that. I thought that those were significant divisions. But again, it’s the difference between the national and the local level. At the local level, when you’re looking at a hospital, there’s almost no difference between the independent and this corporate hospital. The people are good people. They have dreams. They’re working for things. They want to do the right thing. It’s just the differences are minimal. And then people say, “Well, corporates do these bad things.” And I’ll say, “Whatever your bad thing is, I promise you I’ve seen independent practice doing it.” And whatever the great thing about independent practices, I promise you I’ve seen corporate do that as well.

I really think that dividing practices, for most reasons, division of saying this, well, that’s a corporate practice as an independent practice. For most things, Stacy, I have been most surprised by how little that stuff actually matters when it comes to how it feels to be there, how it feels to work there, what the desires are for the practice, what the values and culture are of the practice. You just can’t put them into two buckets and think that you’re going to get wildly different experiences. In my experience, and I think a lot of people probably still don’t believe me when I say that, but that’s true. And I didn’t believe it early in my career and I just didn’t know it, but I have been convinced.

One thing people don’t realize is how the corporations have brought money into the profession, and part of the impact is on individual salaries. Because I just started this month, my 29th year, recruiting in the animal health industry and veterinary profession. And I was here when veterinarians were getting paid $25,000 a year in salaries back in the 1990s.

And I’ll never forget, I was working with a veterinarian in a private practice in Dallas, Texas. She’d been out of school for five years, and her salary was 25,000. She had no benefits, no paid time off, no CE. If she wanted to take CE, she had to pay for it. She had also pay for the time off. Had to pay for her own uniform, didn’t get a uniform allowance. And I placed her with a corporation that paid her $50,000 a year, and she called me in tears and said, “You’ve changed my life today. I feel like I have won the lottery.”

Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s amazing. Could you imagine that, 25,000, no benefits, anything, and then all of a sudden to double that. That totally probably changed the way that she lived. But no, I think you’re right. And again, I work at an independent practice, you know what I mean? At Uncharted, we work with a lot of independent practice owners. A lot of independent practice owners. And I think a lot of what corporations have done for our industry is very, very good. I think about before, Stacy, vet medicine has its challenges. It does. However, Stacy, I love it. And I’m bullish on vet medicine. Veterinarians have never made salaries as nice as what they make now. We have never made more money.

True.

We have never worked shorter hours.

True.

We have never been less likely to have to take call. We have never had better benefit packages than we have now. We have never had work-life balance. We’ve never had this much vacation. We have never had this much CE budget. We’ve never had this many options for CE. We’ve never been able to jump on in the middle of the day and watch CE lectures. We have absolutely never been able to pull up electronic sources. When I started in practice, every clinic had a library. Every clinic had a library. And we don’t have libraries anymore, it’s all available online. We can access just incredible wealth of knowledge. We can watch videos of any procedure we want to see before we do it. Stacy, none of that stuff was real 20 years ago, and we have all of it now.

I understand that medicine has some problems. Oh, man, we got a lot of great things. Our support staff has never been paid anything close to what it’s being paid now. The salaries of the support staff, how great does that feel to be able to be a doctor and to work with people who make an ends meet, who can support themselves? And again, we have ways to go, but it has never been better than it is now. I think a lot of people don’t like to hear me say that because they think that when I say, “Look at what we can pay support staff now compared to what we used to,” they say it’s still not enough. And they’re right. And I’m not advocating for saying, look, we’re done, mission accomplished. But can we just for a moment acknowledge the upward trajectory of our industry and the upward trajectory of the quality of life of people here?

And say to people, like you have helped make that happen as well with your work in recruiting and hiring and matching people to jobs. And helping to assess the industry and say, what do people need to be attracted to these new jobs? What benefits do they have, and what would they find attractive? And what’s going to work for them and also work for the companies that want this talent? Anyway, I feel like we’ve done a lot of things well, and the industry has really benefited well more than it has suffered in the last 10, 20 years.

We’ve come a long way with the compensation packages, benefits, paid time off. There’s so many opportunities. There’s never been a better time to be a veterinarian. Andy, what does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Oh, man. I’m positive. I really am positive. I think that we’re going to continue to have conversations about affordability, accessibility of care. I think that costs are going to continue to go up for pet owners, and that’s going to cause some friction. I think that’s going to cause some challenges. I think that’s something that we’re going to have to really work on. At the same time, I think that a lot of technology and a lot of innovation are going to be really good for us. I think that artificial intelligence is going to make for more educated pet owners, which can be frustrating in the exam room, but I think it’s going to be better hopefully for pet health. That’s what I hope. I think that we are going to be able to get more efficient in practices. I think we’re going to be able to have technological support for the parts of our job that we don’t really like to do. I hope that our practices are going to get more efficient.

I talked to a practice owner who started using an AI scribe and she timed everything that she did, and she shaved seven minutes on average off of her appointment time. I’ll tell you, I probably save five minutes per appointment using AI scribes. It’s just, I think that there’s things like that. I think it won’t be long until we have AI that’s been trained on really good medical sources, of vet medical sources, and we’re going to be able to get some advice and insight really well. I’m super excited to see artificial intelligence when we can tie it to actual case outcomes. Meaning, we’ll be able to say, when we did these treatments, ultimately these pets lived X number of years longer, versus we did these treatments and they were put to sleep a couple of days later.

And Stacy, there’s the ability for us to be able to start calculating what outcomes might be based on the different treatments that we do, which is incredible. I would really love to know… Yes, we may have research on what outcomes we can expect with the gold standard. I would like to know what outcomes we might have with a silver standard, or the bronze standard. Is this a reasonable low-cost outcome for someone who cannot afford an MRI? What does that look like? And we’re starting to see some of that stuff come out, but I think the potential for that is really high. I think overall, what we’re going to be able to do…

I look at monoclonal antibodies, like the parvovirus monoclonal antibody, even librela, things like that. We’ve got these new drugs that are just amazing. They’re almost magical in what they can do. It’s not that they don’t have side effects or problems, but guys, we’re unlocking new technologies that are just going to make treatment so much better, and just more effective. Overall, I’m really, really happy about that. Like I said, I think keeping cost affordable is going to be the thing that we’re going to have to wrestle with, but I think our ability to do good in the world is just going to continue to go up.

Andy, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book that they read that helped them in their life or in their career. Do you a key book in your life that’s impacted you the most?

Oh, boy, that’s impacted me the most. I read a lot. I read a lot. Let’s see. There were different books. It’s funny, there were books that impacted me a huge amount at the time of my life, but they’re not necessarily my favorites now. Some of the ones that really meant a lot to me at certain times. There was a book by this guy named Herb Cohen, called Negotiate This!: By Caring, But Not T-H-A-T Much. And it’s a book on negotiation, but this guy tells wonderful stories. And honestly, I think that book really affected my style as a storyteller. And if you like audiobooks, get it on audiobooks, because he’s got this thick New York accent and he reads it himself. It’s so great. Anyway, but early on that book made me think I could do anything. And when I started trying to convince people to let me do speaking and writing and things like that, and I had read that book and I used those tactics, and it worked for me.

Yeah, I thought that was a hugely useful book. There was a one called Never Eat Alone, which is a networking book. Which, again, it was by a guy named Keith Ferrazzi. And I did not like Keith Ferrazzi, I thought he was an arrogant jerk. I think he comes off as a jerk in this book. However, the tools that he talks about, about how to meet people, how to present yourself in a way that will make people want to engage with you. Or to present people in a way where you don’t show up as parasitic, like you’re just asking for things, but you’re bringing value to them and saying, “Hey, this is what I’m trying to do. This is how I could maybe help support what you are doing. Could we collaborate?” That stuff was a real game changer for me too, and also given me some confidence to start to network.

And I think between those two things, I think I read both of those around the same time, and it was the very beginning of my career. But those two books put together probably gave me the tools and the confidence to meet people, to let them know what my aspirations were and what I was trying to do and what was important to me. To hear what they wanted and what they were trying to do. And to try to figure out ways that we could collaborate and work together and help each other. I think that probably those two books had the biggest impact on my career.

Andy, 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? Maybe you’ve got some advice for our audience.

Yeah, this has been a wonderful chance to talk. You guys have heard my positivity about the profession. I think the profession is… I love our profession. It is a challenging profession, but I think that it is a great profession. I really enjoy it. I want to encourage people… I want to encourage people to try to lean into the work itself. I think that’s important and I think it’s one thing to be reminded of. If can find joy talking to pet owners, if you can find joy putting your hands on the pet, if you can find joy spending time with your team and knowing them as people and laughing together, you will have a good life and you will have a good career. And that’s what really matters.

And too many of us think, I need to get out of here at the end of the day so that I can have some fun. I need to get these appointments done so that I can make sure that I get to relax, or do whatever. I need to get my schedule sorted out so that I’m working less. None of that stuff is wrong or bad, but if you can enjoy actually just doing the work, I think that’s really the meaning to all of this. And so, try to be present in the moment, try to be engaged with the actual doing of the medicine, I think that you’re going to have as good a time as you can have.

Well, Andy, I always enjoy our conversations. You’ve had some great advice today for our listeners. You’ve had an incredible career. You’re doing amazing things. Keep doing them. And thank you for being my guest today on the People of Animal Health Podcast.

Absolutely, Stacy. Thanks for having me.