Episode #70 – Dr. Albert Ramudo

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 in 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 we are joined by Dr. Albert Ramudo, an accomplished, strategic executive veterinarian and animal health industry trailblazer. With more than 20 years of leadership in global operations, product development, regulatory affairs, and portfolio management, Dr. Ramudo has driven innovation at some of the world’s leading animal health companies, including Zoetis, Virbac, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Nutramax. His career spans from clinical trials and regulatory compliance to building infrastructures that transform organizations. A United States Army veteran and recent distinguished alumni award recipient from Michigan State University, Dr. Ramudo brings unique expertise at the intersection of science and business. Dr. Ramudo, welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast.

Thank you for having me, Stacy. It’s kind of weird to hear it just like that, but thank you.

Well, I’m so glad to have you on the show today, Albert, because we have known each other for probably 20 plus years or longer. But today, I would love to start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Very humble beginnings. I grew up in Miami, Florida, primarily with my grandparents. That brought me up and it doesn’t look anything like I used to look like before. I mean, there used to be yards and fences and now it’s pretty much like a concrete jungle, but Miami’s gotten pretty busy. But very humble beginnings. Hispanic family from both sides and just a humble part of Miami.

Now I know a little bit about your family’s background because we’ve talked about it over the years and how your family came to the United States. Do you want to share that story?

Sure. It’s an interesting story because it’s a story of, I think of perseverance and tenacity. Grandfather came over with my grandmother when my mother and aunts were very young, six, seven years old, because of a political upheaval in Cuba, they decided they didn’t want any part of that, so they came over to this country. But one of the deals was, if you are allowed to leave Cuba, you have to leave all your worldly possessions behind. And so the story that I was told by my grandfather many, many years ago was that when he got to the airport at Miami International Airport, he reached into his pocket and he realized that there was nothing there. And so he asked one of the people that were there, the luggage handlers, he goes, “Hey, do you have a quarter or something that I could borrow?” And the guy’s like, “Yeah, here. Sure.”

And he goes, “Why?” And he goes, “Because I don’t want to feel like I have nothing in my pockets.” It was just one of those things. So you come in over from a foreign country, you can’t speak the native language. You have your wife with you, your three kids with you, and you’re starting over and all your worldy belongings were repossessed before you left the country. That takes a little bit of courage and dedication and to come over here and start over. He was a business owner in Cuba, three factories that he ran, manufacturing, a very popular brand of cigar to come to this country, and about three days later were washing dishes at a hotel because that’s what you could do.

And then from there, he progressed. He was caught spying on the chefs. One day he was there and they were… “Why are you spying on the chefs?” And he’s sitting there taking notes. He goes, “I want to learn. I want to be able to provide for my family, so I want to learn how to cook.” And he goes, “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” They brought him under his wing and they trained him to be a professional chef, and he became the head chef of one of the major hotels down in Miami Beach. And it’s kind of a success story to start from the ground up. Just again, humble beginnings and charge forward, never relinquish.

Wow. So and why did you decide to become a veterinarian, Albert?

That is also a funny story. So my family, I told this story at the commencement speech at Michigan State. I said, “You only had three or four choices. You had to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, outside of that, an MD. Your family just didn’t give you very many options. Pick one of those three, that’s what you’re going to be.” And so that’s what I was going to do. I was going to go to medical school, I was pre-med in college. I took the MCAT and all that other good stuff. But then towards the latter half of my career at the university, I was in the med tech program. And part of that program is doing blood analysis and all kinds of things that you would do in the laboratory. And one of my friends at the class, she used to work at a vet hospital and she says, “Hey, we need some help doing blood collections and doing processing the blood for these animals on the weekends.

We’re really, really busy. We’d be great if you want some more experience if you can come and help.” I said, “Absolutely. I love animals. I’m happy to come over there.” And the rest is history. So I went from an environment which I was forced to be in, very sterile, the office, I’m sorry, the hospital environment over to a veterinary hospital where you were allowed to do pretty much anything that you wanted to do or were able to do as much more free spirited. You were allowed to do dermatology, cardiology, radiography, I mean, whatever you wanted to do, you were there to be able to do it. And that to me, that freedom and that ability to really expand your knowledge beyond just very specific specialties, which seemed to be the trend and is continuing to be the trend on the human side. That wasn’t a limitation on the veterinary side. And I fell in love with the work and the rest was history. I never applied to the human medical program, but I used all my credentials to get into veterinary school and never looked back ever since.

Well, I’d love to learn more about those early days. So after you graduated from veterinary school, what was your first job?

First job, well, I took my job application right there on stage. I was sworn into the US military on May 5th, 2000, the day I graduated from veterinary school. And I was reporting into active duty by May 9th at Barksdale Air Force Base down in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was something that I felt like I wanted to do. I thought it would be a great career move coming out of vet school to do something a little bit non-traditional as opposed to going straight into practice. This was like going into practice, but you have some other obligations and some other duties that again, was intended for me to expand my horizons. And it worked out. I mean, it was something that I never regret to this day. I loved it every day that I was in the uniform and would never take it back. It was fantastic.

And then from there, where did you go?

Well, from there, the way that the military operates is wherever you came from, they’ll ship you back there, right? So I was actually on the other side of the country. I was in California, and by that time my son had already been born, my first, and then it was, “Okay, so if you’re going to get out of active duty and join the reserves, we’ll move you back to your home of record, which was Florida.” So we packed up, we moved down to Florida, and the intent was to go back into practice. That’s what we were going to do. And I was waiting to take the jurisprudence exam and for whatever reason at that time, something happened between the people who administer the test in the state of Florida.

They shut it down. They weren’t administering the test. And so while I was sitting there waiting to take the test, I came across this opportunity to work for a company that no longer exists, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and it was a clinical research investigator. I had no idea what that was, but it sounded really interesting. And so I put in the application, about three days later, I got a phone call for an interview, and the rest was history. After that, which then ultimately became Pfizer, they moved us up to Kalamazoo, and that started the 20 plus year career in industry starting in 2003.

And that’s what I met you when you were at Pfizer back in the early 2000s. So you began your career as a veterinarian, you worked in practice, and then you later transitioned into global operations and product development. I’m curious about how did you bridge the gap between science, business and leadership?

The scientific part actually was new to me. I didn’t really appreciate what the intent of my role was when I first started. So that was a little bit of a learning curve and the learning curve now, I pretty much recite it in my sleep, but back then it was just like, “What is good clinical practice? What is this clinical study thing?” I thought it was more of a laboratory setting. It turns out it’s all been done in veterinary hospitals around the country.

So it was a vertical learning curve there for me, and I had to humble myself. I came from the military as an officer, fairly high ranking, and then go into this line of business. And one of my supervisors there, I never forget what he said to me. He goes, “Just remember, you’re coming in as an officer, but you’re going to come in now as a private, you’re going to start all over again and you’re going to learn this from scratch.” And so to me, it was a humbling experience. I learned a lot. I had to be a bit more flexible in my thinking to be able to accept that new paradigm. And from there, it just grew.

Well, you served as a US army officer before entering corporate life. How did your military experience shape your leadership style and problem solving skills in the pharmaceutical across the animal health industry?

Yeah, so that ties into the latter part of your question, which I didn’t answer, which is as you progressed in this, you realize that it’s not about just about practice, that it’s about practice and operations. And so project management started to become a buzzword in my mind about how to be able to structure the work in order for you to be able to complete it. At the time, I didn’t even know what a Gantt chart was, never, that was not even something that I ever used. But now I saw its utility and its applicability, and then I also saw the business side of it. There’s a lot of moving parts here, and they’re all very expensive. And so how to budget, what is a P&L? I didn’t even know what a P&L, right? So those are the things that you started to have to learn out of necessity to be able to speak the language.

You’re in meeting rooms and you hear all these terms and you’re like, “What are they talking about?” So in order to gain your vocabulary, you’re going to have to expand your knowledge. And so that drove the operational capability and that also drove the business acumen. And so from a leadership perspective, industry is not as command and control as it is in the military. In the military it is straight up command and control. But in the military, you learn one thing in a hurry, which is don’t take things personally. So you may get reprimanded or they may say something by a high-ranking military person, you just salute smartly and move on and don’t take it personal.

So I think if there’s one lesson that I took from the leadership in the military is that, and then the adaptive leadership capabilities, how to judge the individuals that work with you in terms of their skillset and how much interaction you’re going to have to have for them to do, what it is that you need them to do. If they know what they’re doing, then you can leave them to their own devices. If they need a lot of handholding, then you can realize that and do that so you don’t set them up for failure.

In one of your roles, you were tasked with building an internal veterinary clinical development capability from the ground up. What were the biggest challenges and how did you overcome them to create a pipeline of new drug development projects?

Well, I think the most difficult part of that whole process, you know the operational steps, but how to stand up those pillars within an organization that normally doesn’t do this and normally doesn’t do it within the species that you are working with. So the organization works with a two-legged variety, the humans, and they have their own lingo and they have their own processes. They have HIPAA, which we don’t have to deal with necessarily. So to stand up something like that in an organization that’s not really familiar with how animal health operates was quite difficult.

So more than just the operational pieces, it was finding similarities and then identifying the differences and then filling the gaps that are left behind by those differences to be able to stand up the infrastructure that you need in order to do the studies. Something as simple as a clinical trial agreement that’s too long, 20 pages long, it’s fine, and it’s everyday practice for the human side. But when you give something like that in the same language and you give it to a veterinary practitioner, you’re like, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t even know what half of that means.” So those are the things that have to be put in place in order for you to be successful, and those are the hardest things to actually put in place.

Well, you’ve led regulatory affairs teams at multiple global companies, including Virbac and Boehringer Ingelheim. What do you see as the most critical elements for successfully navigating the complex landscape of FDA, EPA and USDA regulations?

I hate to use the cliche phrase, but it served me very well, which is seek first to understand and then to be understood. And so for me, it’s before we start criticizing the agency’s perspective, any one of those bodies that you mentioned, why don’t we start to understand what their positions are and maybe why? And then we can formulate an argument or some other strategy against that as opposed to having that be purely confrontational or adversarial from the beginning. And so to me, seek first to understand, then to be understood is one of those things that really kind of played very well and appreciated by the agencies too. Because once you have more frank conversations with them, you’ll realize that there’s issues that you don’t see that they see every day that’s causing them to apply whatever pressures they may be placing in front of you. There’s plenty of room for negotiation, but just listen first and see what they say and then make a counter proposal as appropriate.

Well, that’s a smart move. That’s good advice. And then, Albert, MPI Research, you spearheaded project reboot to revamp enterprise wide IT networks and launched a new project management office. How do you balance innovation with the need for compliance in such a highly regulated environment?

Well, it certainly wasn’t easy. The IT piece was actually very straightforward once you understand the language, and that was another vertical learning curve for me too. I mean, I loved IT. I’ve always been sort of a IT person as a hobby, but to get into an enterprise mindset and understand what the costs and the logistics and the downtime possibilities, all that was really a learning curve there. But for me, the most difficult part was the project management piece because that’s more where your compliance, I mean, you have compliance issues within IT, but they’re very well-defined and your party 11 requirements are there. So that’s very circumscribed and you can see what that is and the steps that you need to do to get it done. But the operational piece was really difficult. And so the chore was to create what I used to call the game of Tetris.

So if you’ve played that game, you understand, you get all the little puzzle pieces falling from the top, and your goal is to lay them all out at the bottom so that they all touch each other and disappear. And so the calendar was the Tetris board and the studies coming in from the sponsors were the puzzle pieces that were kind of falling from the sky at multiple speeds. And so our task was to design a project system that understood what areas, what equipment, what rooms were occupied, what the talent, because sometimes the talent was the limiting factor. Veterinary ophthalmology is a very niche specialty, and one person can only do so many exams. And so we had to understand what the facility limitations were, what the capacity was, and what was being utilized by other studies so that we can give new sponsors visibility into available dates. Once the soonest date, you could start my study.

And so the system that we designed captured multiple variables that fed into the study, compared them against the stuff that was being utilized in other studies, and then said, “Okay, based on the analysis, you can run the study here, here and here.” And the sponsors loved it. And so we went from a 70% occupancy closer to a 90% occupancy after we stood that system up, because again, it played a very good game of Tetris and allowed us to really maximize not only the facility but the people. So actually overtime actually dropped considerably because the work, instead of going from feast to famine, a lot of overtime and then very little, it actually leveled it out. And so it created a much more predictable scheduling for the different groups.

Well, now you’ve worked across animal health at a variety of different companies. What major trends do you see shaping the future of veterinary medicine and animal health innovation globally?

One thing that I was hoping would get more traction is a lot of the work that we do is in animals, unfortunately because it’s required to be done in animals. And so one of the things that I’ve seen is a little bit of a push, actually a lot of a push to figure out alternative methods that are arriving at the same conclusion. Are there different technologies that we can utilize to gain the conclusions that we would normally ask of a laboratory setting so that we don’t have to use animals in some of the testing? And so I think that’s a pretty notable trend that I’ve seen happening within the industry. Of course, it’s very expensive because you have to be able to tie that information back to the more traditional approaches, and whoever does that first paves the way for everyone else. So everybody’s kind of reluctant to be the first cavalier group to charge it at hill, but once it’s crossed, I think that’s going to be a major shift in the nature of the work that we do.

Hey, everyone, we are interrupting the episode briefly to talk to you about today’s sponsor. This episode is brought to you by The VET Recruiter. The VET Recruiter is the go-to executive search and recruitment firm in the animal health industry and veterinary profession dedicated to connecting exceptional employers with high caliber candidates, with a deep understanding of the animal health and veterinary profession, and a vast pool of talented candidates, we make the hiring process seamless and efficient for the animal health and veterinary employers who have critical hiring needs. If you are an employer in search of top talent or you work in the animal health industry, or are a veterinarian ready to take the next step in your career, look no further than The VET Recruiter.

The VET Recruiter has placed many of the industry’s top leaders, from CEOs to COOs, to chief veterinary officers, to VPs of marketing and sales, and heads of R&D and chief scientific officers. We have built sales forces for many leading animal health companies and have placed more veterinarians in clinical practice than any other search firm in the US. Ready to take the next step? Visit thevetrecruiter.com today, that’s thevetrecruiter.com. And now let’s get back into the episode. Now, you’ve managed teams ranging from small specialized groups to hundreds of employees. What do you believe are the key traits of high performing teams in research and development and regulatory affairs?

I think the most important thing for groups like that is to set up the right structure at your immediate reporting level and identify those leaders and then identify clear roles and responsibilities and let them do their work. As long as you know that they know what they’re doing, try not to meddle into the day-to-day, let them do their work, and then if there’s problems or issues they can come back to you, set up a regular tempo of checking in to make sure that things are tracking as you would expect. But the best… And I’ll use MPI as an example.

I had a very strong leadership team, and they all knew their roles and responsibilities. We had clear goals and objectives that were defined, and I said, “If you want this end result and you want to exceed your expectations for your performance review for the year, this is what I would expect.” We both agreed that, yeah, that’s a stretch, a very high stretch, but if I achieved that, then I would give them the marks that they fought for. So they were motivated to do the work. I trusted them to do the work. It was a fantastic team.

Albert, you have consistently been brought in to rebuild or create new infrastructures from regulatory groups to data management systems. What is your process when you’re asked to fix what’s broken in an organization?

Well, the knee-jerk reaction is always to assume that it’s broken. That may be somebody’s perception, and what I’ve learned is that there’s probably a reason for the way it is the way that it is. And so the first thing I try to do is say, “Why are we doing it this way?” And then understand where it feeds into and why sometimes you get the answer, “Well, this is just the way we know how to do it. This is the way we’ve always done it,” and that’s it, right? There’s nothing else. Maybe it’s a lack of perspective. They haven’t seen it done any other way. Other times I’ve been surprised that there is a reason, another business reason that things are happening the way that they’re happening. And then… So it’s not what’s right in front of you. You actually have to go to a different department or a different group to unravel some of those things that they’ve created in this group in order to fix the problem over here.

And then you got to be careful because people don’t like change, especially in corporate America. Some of the folks that have been there for a while, they do it the way that they do it, and this is their area and they don’t like to change. And so one of the hardest things to do in addition to just the technology, that is the easy part. If it is a technology solution, if it’s a process mapping exercise, that’s also pretty easy. You can do all of that stuff. The hardest part is getting those people that have been doing it a certain way and get them to the point where it becomes their idea, their idea that this is something that we should be doing. That’s the art of it, and that’s the hardest part of it, is everything else kind of falls in place after that. But once you show them the light and they say, “Albert, this is what I think we should do.” I’m like, “Fantastic. Let’s do it.” It becomes easy. That’s the hardest part.

Well, there is an art to that. Well, Albert, this year you were honored as the Distinguished Alumni Non-Practice Award Recipient by Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Looking back, which accomplishments stand out most to you personally and professionally?

Well, we’ll start with the personal piece. I think from a personal perspective, I think the easiest thing to do, and this is something that I want to make sure we kind of dive into later if we could, it takes a little bit of courage to get out of your comfort zone. Coming out of the military, I was just focused in on practice. This is what I was going to do. If it wasn’t for the fact that that testing agency was on strike and they were administering the jurisprudence exam, we may not even be having this conversation today because I probably would’ve gone to practice. And it was a little scary to come out of practice and go into industry and go from… That person told me, “You’re going from an officer back to a private again, and you’re starting over.” So I think that is the biggest thing to consider, and making that leap is… So from a personal perspective, that took a lot of courage.

Maybe I was young and just not that wised up to it, but I had no appreciation for the difficulties that were ahead. So have that courage. And then from a professional perspective, I think one of my biggest accomplishments professionally was probably the generation of that very complicated and very involved project management system. That took a lot of time from a lot of different professionals, and even folks that have done this in the past were saying, “Wow, this is 3,200 projects a year is a lot to sort through and to have the system do what it needs to do.” And then you had to bring IT on board. You had to bring the process on board, you had to bring the operations people on board. So it was just all the different areas were affected, even the pathologists.

And so we had to consider basically the entire organization as an organism tracked by certain key variables and then have the intelligence that we put in. There was not artificial intelligence, but at the time it was something that was leading to that to make decisions around availability of space. That was really quite tough and was way outside of my comfort zone outside of vet med, for sure.

Well, for more junior veterinarians or animal health professionals aspiring to move into these roles like global operations, regulatory affairs or product development, what advice would you give to them?

I think it’s the same advice that I would give to myself, a younger version of myself if I came across, just have the courage to not fall back into your comfort zone necessarily. Coming out of vet school, looking at the curriculums of the veterinary schools today, it’s very clinic focused. I mean, they’re basically trying to train you for success to be a practicing veterinarian, which is fine because that’s the whole purpose of the school itself, is to teach you the physiology, the medicine, to be able to be a successful practitioner. However, I would say if you’re not sure that you want to go into practice, practice especially after the 2020 era has changed as a lot of things have changed, it’s not the same that it used to be. The hours that the clinics are open, even the way that the clinics operate. Some of these clinics I remember used to be heavy into boarding and so on and so forth.

Now they don’t even do that anymore. So post 2020, everything has changed. Vet med has changed significantly. And so if you’re a little nervous about going into practice because of some of those changes, don’t be afraid to look at other options. For example, when I was interviewing people for a position that I had open at one of my previous positions, they were a veterinarian for NASA, and they were doing the work in the animals here and then translating the results to what it would be like in zero gravity. I mean, that was fascinating. So there’s a lot of other opportunities out there. Try not to become myopic and just focus in on what’s in front of you. There’s much more behind the scenes.

Well, you mentioned that you’ve seen changes in the profession. How have you seen the veterinary profession change over the years that you’ve been involved?

I think just in general, this is just a general observation. My generation and the generation of the veterinarians that I was influenced by as a much younger version of myself, it was a 50, 60 hour a week tempo. So you would see clients all morning, and then you were recovering patients in the afternoon and you were making follow-up phone calls. So it was not an eight-hour day. It turned out to be 10, maybe 12 hours a day sometimes. And that was okay, and that was something that people just… That was the normal. I don’t think that’s the new normal today. I think people are a bit more focused on work-life balance. And so what tends to suffer is the availability of veterinarians and staff to the general public. So what I’ve seen now is a general starvation of availability of veterinary services in some areas, which is surprising. I never thought that would be an issue, but it has become an issue.

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

Most surprising thing. I think for me, it’s the degree of continued innovation. At some point, it’s all relative to your time, but at some points you’re looking at the vet med space and you’re like, “Well, we’ve addressed all the major problems. We’re done. We’ve got everything covered.” And then two years from now, something comes up to market and it blows your mind. You are just like, “Wow, we didn’t even think about that.” That was right in front of us. And so to me, that’s the most surprising thing is that just when you think you got everything licked, there’s something new that pops up, somebody creates some new innovation, and now you’re tackling a problem that you didn’t even think of before. So that’s been probably the most surprising part for me.

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

Well, again, after the 2020 pandemic, I think veterinarians have become, I think, a little bit more aligned with their human health colleagues on the human side. I think now they’re calling veterinarians healthcare professionals. That was something that lingo just never rolled off anybody’s tongue up until very recently. And so I hope it doesn’t go down the insurance route where everything is a bit more prescribed, kind of like what it is on the human side. I hope that we don’t continue to see some of this consolidation that we’re seeing in the vet practice arena because I think something is lost in that consolidation. But I think that’s inevitability. I think there’s going to continue to be consolidation not only in industries, but also in the vet practices. And it seems like there’s more specialization is now as well too, as opposed to veterinarians just being pure generalists and willing to tackle different things, that I think is starting to go away and it’s starting to become more human-like that referrals are much more common, at least that’s what I’ve seen.

Yeah, I would agree. Well, now I want to pivot my questions to focusing more on you. And I’m curious, all successful people have daily habits that contribute to them achieving success. What are a few of your daily habits that you believe have allowed you to just achieve success along the way?

Well, I think first thing in the morning, just, I know it’s kind of a trivial thing, but make your bed, right? First thing you do, just make your bed in the morning. It’s quick, it’s easy. Do it right, and it just instills that sense of pride right away. So you get up and it’s instinct. You just make your bed, make sure it’s nice and crispy, and that sets the tone for the rest of the day. And I think physical fitness is also a big thing. I think it’s often overlooked. It definitely gets more difficult with age, but I think incorporating a rigorous and continuous physical fitness program into your daily routine makes a big difference in your demeanor and the way that you tackle your work. So I do follow some routines, and that’s another thing that’s helped as well too. So get up at a certain time, try to get up at the same time every day.

So make your bed in the morning, but try to get up if it’s six o’clock, at six o’clock, if it’s 4:45, it’s 4:45 in the morning, get up, make your bed and do what you need to do. And then try to do it every day the same, whether it’s Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, and try to maintain that routine. To me, it just creates that tempo and that beat so you’re not crushed on Monday because you were up late on Sunday night or something like that. So I think routine, exercise and then quick wins as early in the morning as you possibly can.

Yeah, that’s great. I’m the same way. I cannot stand. That’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and then I’m go drink a glass of water. That’s the second thing I do. What has been the biggest adversity that you’ve had to fight through during your career?

Change, change, managing change. I mean, people make industries out of managing change. I forgot what the name of the company was, but it’s like change management certification. But that’s really an uphill battle. Not so much in the military, but definitely in corporate America. And I think more now ever than before. I think people of my generation were a bit more accepting to change. It’s like, “Yeah, this happens.” But now that’s not the case. I think people are a bit adverse to change. And so change management to me is one of the biggest challenges. Not the science, but just operating in that environment and managing change, which is required, often driven by the science is tough.

What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Never quit. Just keep going. I think perseverance is a big thing. And there have been times when if I look back, I’d say, “I’m just going to throw in the towel.” And I think that the best advice I could give to myself is don’t. Success usually occurs after failure, so expect it. That’s going to come first, and it may come many times until you’re actually successful. So don’t quit.

And Albert, what message or principal do you wish you could teach everyone listening to our podcast today?

Specifically to vet med or just in general?

In general or for the industry, you pick.

For the industry, I say what I would tell them is that we need to be the voice and the advocate for those that can’t speak for themselves, which is the ones we represent as veterinarians. And so never forget why you’re here. And it is to be the advocate for those that can’t advocate for themselves.

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

Oh, let’s see, a key book. There was a book that was written, I have to think back about the author. I can’t remember his name right now, but it was called, You Can’t Hurt Me. And it was a book by a former Navy SEAL, David Goggins. There you go. Sorry. David Goggins wrote the book, You Can’t Hurt Me. And a former Navy SEAL. Fascinating story of what he was able to accomplish. Overweight, just struggled with life, even as a young kid. And then going from being horrifically out of shape and actually broken to a man who would run ultra marathons and actually for a short period of time held the world’s record for the most number of pull-ups.

He was in the Air Force TACP, then he became a Navy SEAL. It’s just his accomplishments are just amazing. And then only later to find out that he actually had a physical cardiac defect in his heart, and he actually had to go to surgery to get it fixed. But that was only after he had already accomplished all of the other stuff, which is fascinating. So David Goggins kind of inspired me quite a bit. When I read that book, I put that book… I read it in two days, and when I put it down, I was like, “Never quit. Just keep pushing.”

That is a fascinating story, and I love that. Never quit, never give up. Well, Albert, 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?

Before I drop the mic, is again, we have a huge responsibility to our pets and to those that they can’t speak for themselves, own that responsibility. Make sure you do the right thing. Don’t make shortcuts when it comes to safety or efficacy. Pay attention to what it is that we do. We have a blessed position within society to care for animals. We should embrace that, and we should really be good stewards of that responsibility.

Such great advice. Well, Albert, it was such a pleasure to have you as my guest on the People of Animal Health Podcast today. Thank you for being here.

Thanks, Stacy. I appreciate it. Thanks.