Episode #38 – Emmitt Nantz

Trusting the Process
Emmitt Nantz, with nearly two decades in the Veterinary field, has worked at Banfield and Galaxy Vets, improving operations and satisfaction. Holding an MBA, Six Sigma Black Belt, and Project Management Certification, he co-founded Inventory Ally to optimize Veterinary inventory management, reducing costs and streamlining processes.

Transcript

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

For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights the incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you will 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. On today’s show, we are talking with Emmitt Nantz. Emmitt Nantz has been part of the veterinary family for nearly two decades and is driven by a personal mission to make the veterinary domain better. Emmitt spent 12 years working at Banfield, starting out as a single-site hospital manager. Having majored in agriculture business management, he expanded his education to include an MBA, a black belt in Six Sigma, and a project management certification.

Emmitt applied these learnings at Banfield and later as a chief operating officer at Galaxy Vets, where he created large-scale operational improvements for the entire group with a focus on improving employee and client satisfaction. In pursuit of his passion for workflow optimization, Emmitt honed his expertise in a critical area that often plagues hospitals’s bottom lines, inventory management. He co-founded Inventory Ally, an all-in-one cloud software designed to help veterinary professionals reduce inventory costs, streamline processes, and save time. Welcome on to The People of Animal Health Podcast. And how are you today, Emmitt?

Emmitt Nantz:
Hi, Stacy. Thanks for having me. Yeah, having a great day today so far.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, good. I am so excited to have you here on the show today. I’d love to start off at the very beginning. What was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up, Emmitt?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, sure. So, I was born and raised in Eastern Oregon in a little town.

Of about 300 people called Imbler. And so, I grew up farming and ranching, very active in 4-H and FFA, and in a small rural community. But those are some really strong foundations for me, especially with FFA, learning some leadership, public speaking. Different skills associated with that it really gave some confidence, so.

Yeah, I grew up there, and then I went to Eastern Oregon University, that then turned… Or it was Eastern Oregon State College, it turned to Eastern Oregon University, where I earned my undergraduate degree in agriculture and business management. And at the time, I thought I was going to stay within the 4-H culture, but then life took me on an adventure, and I moved to Portland for a little while and worked in some different positions, and continued to pursue a career. It was more of a windy path, but just taking advantage of opportunities that came along.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, I’ve learned that most people’s careers take more of a winding path and not so much of a straight line.

Emmitt Nantz:
Correct.

Stacy Pursell:
Can you share a bit about your journey and what inspired you to enter the veterinary field nearly two decades ago?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah. So, two decades ago, I was working on a startup company that I was trying to take advantage of an opportunity with some people that I’d met that purchased a small vegetable processing facility. So, I was managing that, and I was also participating in an executive MBA program offered by University of Oregon. And it so happened that the startup didn’t work out, but in my MBA program, I was peers with Dr. Kerri Marshall. And Kerri Marshall was one of the early contributors to the Banfield organization, and when the opportunity came to find a new position, Kerri said, “Hey, you should check out Banfield.”

So, I wasn’t pursuing veterinary at the time, but it was an opportunity to apply for a role at a hospital in the Portland area. And I got that role and found that I really enjoyed it. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve found that I really love about the veterinary profession. And it was fun because I was able to apply my business and process skillset to a business that was really focused on service and it had a passion behind it about caring for pets. And the people within that hospital just really opened my eyes to what this profession looks like.

So, I’ve been with it for 20 years in different roles and providing different things, but have never lost that… I’ll often say, “I’m passionate about people who are passionate about pets.”

That’s what I’ve found my life pursuit to be.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, I love that. And I’ve known Kerri Marshall since 1999. I remember going to visit with her. I had a meeting with her in May of 1999 in Portland, Oregon, at one of the original Banfield. It was actually pre-Banfield. There was PetSmart Veterinary Services, and there was VetSmart. But I’ve known her for many years. She’s one of my favorite people in the industry.

Emmitt Nantz:
Yes, she’s a wonderful person. She’s been a close friend of mine for that 20 years too. And she’s taken a different path, and I’ve taken a path, but we’ve always stayed quite close and just exploring this industry that’s had all kinds of turns and pivots and growth over the last couple of decades.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, it has had tremendous growth. I’m curious, what were some of the key challenges you faced when you first started as a single-site hospital manager at Banfield, and how did you overcome them?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, a great question. When I first started, I actually started in a hospital that was considered mature at the time, it wasn’t a lot of upside potential, but after joining and working with the partner doctor, we saw a 30% growth in the year that I was there. So, we’re able to show that there was quite a bit of upside potential. And what I started to uncover there, to what I found over time to be my skillset, is there’s a lot of waste and redundancy in the processes.

There’s a lot of reactive work that’s done within veterinary hospitals, and if you’re able to identify it and improve it, your capacity for growth and customer service, and revenue generation, all of those start to improve simply by reducing and eliminating the barriers to providing that care. And that tends to lean more towards creating predictability instead of being reactive, automating things. So, that’s what I found early on in that first hospital was just make things easier.

Proactively work on making things easier, and the whole team works better, the hospital does better, and your clients and pets are happier. So, that was some of the initial piece. As I continued my career at Banfield, I took on another location and applied some of those concepts from day one. It was a brand new location, and I actually won an award for being the fastest-growing hospital at Banfield at that time, when they had 600 locations. So, I was able to repeat some of that learning, see success, and then I’ve built off of that as I’ve continued my career.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, how did your background in agriculture business management and your education and business and project management influence your career path?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, well, it became a merging of experience and training, if you will. So, I started with the agriculture business management because I was comfortable with 4-H, FFA. I raised pigs. I did an internship in Japan on a pig farm. I actually worked on a 30,000-acre cattle and sheep ranch in Central Oregon for a while. So, really have my roots there, and that’s why I pursued agriculture business. But the business part of it is really where I started to continue to grow and apply my abilities.

So, then I went to the executive MBA program and continued to hone some of that business management side. And as I applied that at Banfield, I was offered the opportunities and I naturally took on the opportunities to start to improve process at a larger-scale. So, practicing it at a given location, repeating it at that second location, but then moving into the headquarters, which I was fortunate enough to live close to, I was able to join the operations team at Banfield headquarters and start to work on large-scale process improvements. And it was just a labor of love. It was, “How can I solve things?”

I found that I really like data, I like dashboarding, but I’m able to apply that type of information operationally, so real life. And so, I can take the experience in the hospital and work with the data, and start to marry some of that stuff together to show insights on opportunities. And then, that’s what started to lead towards… While I was at Banfield, I started to pursue my project management certification and my Six Sigma certifications because I liked the data and I liked the process, and it just allowed me to continue to pursue that passion.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, so you answered my next question, which was, “What motivated you to earn a black belt in Six Sigma? And then, how has the certification impacted your approach to workflow optimization in veterinary practices?”

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah. Well, I’m going to stay within the Banfield era for a minute because that’s where I started to get those and apply those skills. And so, I did a large inventory management solution at Banfield that I rolled out through that network over a decade ago, and we were able to start to apply some of the early learnings, and then I started to get some of these certifications in education, and we applied it to another large-scale improvement project that was really focused on workflow, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, those types of things where I could really start to measure some of the improvements and the benefits.

And so, managing the project but also measuring the results from a Six Sigma improvement type of design really allowed me to apply those skills and move forward. And what that led to that project actually led me to a company called Smart Flow, which was a digital workflow optimization software that was a small startup. And I joined that as the COO/CFO and was able to help build business structure around a really phenomenal software product.

So, I could continue to use the skills and the training, as well as the experience at Banfield, to start to do beyond Banfield and more larger-scale improvements. And that led to an IDEXX position as we exited the software there, where again, I was able to level up and start to lead a large team and apply a lot of these same concepts, remove barriers, remove redundancy and waste, and just make things easier.

Stacy Pursell:
Is that where you met Dr. Ivan Zach?

Emmitt Nantz:
That’s right. I met Dr. Zach when he was running Smart Flow. And I tried to bring Smart Flow into Banfield at the time, actually. Was unsuccessful getting it there, so I decided I’d go join him and we’d take it to the entire market, and that was a lot of fun.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, during your tenure as chief operating officer at Galaxy Vets, what were some of the most significant operational improvements you implemented?

Emmitt Nantz:
Sure. Well, after selling a Smart Flow to IDEXX, I spent three years there managing software onboarding implementation for customers, Cornerstone, DVMAX, Neo, Smart Flow variety of products. So, I chose to leave IDEXX to rejoin Dr. Zach to kick off the company Galaxy Vets, and the idea there was Galaxy Vets is an employee stock ownership design. So, being able to maintain ownership within the employee structure of the organization so everybody can benefit from the opportunity to acquire and improve a network of hospitals.

I joined that as a co-founder and COO. And yeah, the goal there was to be able to take the aggregated learnings from that entire career we’ve just talked about and apply it to hospitals in a way that’s really focused on recognizing that veterinary medicine is a service business, and the way it is successful is if your clients come back and they refer the friends and you have the capacity to say, “Yes.”

So, as you grow, you’re able to accept that growth and that you’re always providing good service. And so, the way I translated a lot of what I’ve learned over time is you’ve got to focus time and effort operationally on removing the barriers to providing good service. And if you do that, your team is happier, your clients are happier, your patients are healthier, and your business is healthier.

So, that’s what we started to really do at Galaxy Vets, was that idea of, “Where do we start and focus our time and attention so that our team can provide exceptional service to the clients? And if we do that well, we’ll grow and be successful.”

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I know that inventory management is a critical issue for many veterinary hospitals. What specific problems did you notice in this area that led you to co-found Inventory Ally?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, so we kicked off Inventory Ally, and I really focus there because of a number of things. But the big reason for the timing of Inventory Ally is we’ve seen a lot of consolidation within the veterinary industry over the past decade or so. And that consolidation was driven in large part by arbitrage opportunities. An arbitrage is just the ability to buy a single location for, say, 10 times EBITDA but be able to sell it as a group at say, 15 times EBITDA, plus or minus different numbers there. But the idea is to consolidate and grow.

And so, there’s a lot of outside capital that was really driving consolidation. It created great opportunities for our hospitals to sell and be rewarded for their investment in the businesses. But what we found in the last two years is that bubble popped, if you will. So, those multiples started to decrease, and what happened is the valuations of these consolidated groups started to retract. And the only way to offset that valuation in really in the idea of increasing your EBITDA, because these valuations are multiples of EBITDA, and EBITDA being earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, or, in other words, [inaudible 00:15:21] essentially profit.

So, when you break that down a little bit more, you need to increase your EBITDA to offset some of that valuation loss. I recognized that revenue at the top line is a little bit difficult because year-over-year visits started to be negative, especially post-COVID where we had a lot of growth in visits. Pricing, which is the other component of your revenue generation, was also somewhat exercised, not a lot of upside potential there. So, revenue is going to be a lever that was hard to pull to improve EBITDA. Your largest expense is labor, and as we all know, labor is very competitive in the veterinary space.

There’s still a bit of a mismatch associated with supply and demand, and so it’s difficult to pull that labor cost on the P&L to improve EBITDA. Well, the second-largest expense is cost of goods sold. And it’s something that I recognized, and in partnership with my co-founder, Nicole Clausen, is that a lot of hospitals really struggle with inventory management. And the root cause of that is we have technicians and CSRs who are employed to focus on patients and customers, assigned the task of inventory management. That’s not their expertise. It’s not even their primary role.

And what we find is for the most part, they’re focused on not running out of stuff. It’s a reactive replenishment design, and it leads to a lot of excess carry, which causes frustration, it causes waste, and, in general, cost of goods is just not managed well and so it’s inflated, which means there’s an opportunity to improve that if we can make a better process.

And so, that’s what Inventory Ally’s all about. We take that history that I’ve got as far as process improvement software, veterinary space, you apply it to a big opportunity to make improvements, whether you’re a consolidated group or you’re an independent practice. And you can really start to make the job easier to save time as well as save money and improve valuations. So, that’s why we brought Inventory Ally to life when we did.

Stacy Pursell:
So, Emmitt, can you provide some real world examples of Inventory Ally’s impact?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, certainly. One of our early adopters, which is a great example of it, they were running just under 29% cost of goods sold, for example. And they adopted Inventory Ally, and within about three months, they had dropped that down to just around 20% cost of goods sold. And then, over the course of the following number of months, they ran right around 21%, and that was a two-doctor GP practice. And they dove right in. It optimized their inventory, and it just helped them manage much more predictably than reactively. So, it made their job easier while improving their performance.

Other hospitals, there’s a large referral hospital where we improve inventory turnover, and we make it simple for the team to do that. Well, they had $400,000 of inventory on the shelf, and we automatically just reduced that to $300,000. So, there’s $100,000 of working capital, you’ll have freed up that they could reinvest elsewhere. But the biggest benefit we like to focus on is we just make their lives easier. Most hospitals go from four to eight hours a week managing inventory to less than an hour, and we continue to add automation and functionality that’s going to try to drive that down to 10 or 15 minutes once a week, and they’re good to go. Well, that’s [inaudible 00:18:42]-

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that’s pretty significant. Yeah.

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what are the biggest misconceptions about inventory management in the veterinary profession, and how does Inventory Ally address these?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, I appreciate that question for sure. One of my SOAP box topics is around inventory budgets. What we see… Because it’s complex, I’ll back up just a second with we’re a service business, and what that means is we’re not like retail where we buy a product, sell a product, replace the product. The math isn’t that easy. We consume a lot of stuff in the hospital. We use things in inventory or in service packages like a spay, neuter, or dental, or other procedures. And the math’s not always straightforward.

So, the data in the PIMS is always incomplete because it’s not managing soft goods and whatnot, and it’s inaccurate because it can’t actually deduct inventory accurately. Not with the way we do business. So, where we’re going is the only way to really manage the inventory originally is to set limitations on how much you can spend. So, they put a budget in, and it’s a goal to just restrict spend. Well, that puts the inventory manager in a position where they have to decide what they’re going to run out of and what they’re not going to run out of.

But what we all know and recognize is there’s a lot of seasonality and there’s changes in demand month-to-month, year-to-year, and even dependent on what doctor is working when and providing what services. So, the biggest misconception that I try to tackle with Inventory Ally is this idea that you can set an artificial budget because it’s actually restrictive and it’s not allowing the hospital to operate and meet customer and patient needs, and it’s just focused on financials.

So, the way Inventory Ally tackles that is that we optimize inventory turnover to meet the demand of the hospital. We make sure you have enough and not too much that reduces your cost of goods, but then it gives insights to the real levers of cost of goods, which is your margins, are you charging enough?

Your sales mix, your services versus your goods. Redundancy in your formulary. Blink. Those are all things that are really driving cost of goods, that are opportunities within every hospital specific to their type of sales. But if we just artificially apply a limitation on spend, we’re hurting the business, and we’re hurting the people, and we’re hurting the pets. So, that’s one of the big things that I’m trying to tackle is, “Let’s optimize inventory for the business, not just restrict spend and try to manage the P&L.”

Stacy Pursell:
And that makes sense. Well, Emmitt, as someone deeply passionate about improving employee, client satisfaction, what strategies do you believe are essential for maintaining a positive work environment in veterinary hospitals?

Emmitt Nantz:
Well, at the risk of being repetitive, I want to just double-click if you will, on the idea of the people in veterinary medicine consistently know their why. They’re here because they want to be. It’s not for the compensation, it’s not for the… They love providing care to the pets and taking care of them. As a business around that idea, being able to provide good care in a way that customers come back and refer their friends will make the business successful.

So, what’s really important is that we enable our professionals to provide that service and that care. And we have to continue to remove the barriers and the frustrations associated with that. That makes our customers happy. That makes our patients healthy. That makes our doctors happy. That makes their team happy. And that therefore makes our business healthy. So, we have to continue to really drive, not a top-down, restrictive type of design, we have to do a bottom-up enablement design of allowing people to live their why and getting things out of the way that prevent them from doing so.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for Inventory Ally and your vision for the future of inventory management in the veterinary field?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, so we’re shifting the way the inventory is managed. I was talking a minute ago about the way PIMS manages it, which is incomplete and inaccurate, but some of the best that we’ve got. So, what Inventory Ally does is it shifts it from using transactional data to try to manage inventory to using order history data and predictive analytics to guide your replenishment to accommodate all of your consumption, whether you sell it, or you use it in the hospital, or something else.

So, that’s the basis of what we’re doing is we’re reinventing how inventory is managed not only in veterinary hospitals but all service type of locations that consume and sell inventory. And so, what we’re moving towards and my vision of this, is we continue to enhance our predictability, our machine learning and AI type of overlay. We are able to then create high predictability on what you need, how much you’ve used, how much you should order, who you buy it from. And we can start to automate inventory replenishment for these hospitals.

And that just continues to pursue that that I just mentioned the strategy is, “Let’s let our team focus on patients and clients, and let’s remove the barrier of inventory management by automating it and making it simple. That way, they can focus and grow their business, and they’ll save money that they can reinvest in themselves.”

That’s my vision. That’s where we want to go.

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

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, the most surprising thing… Well, originally it was, and I mentioned it before, but originally the biggest surprise to me was how passionate collectively veterinary professionals are. They really know what they’re doing, and they live that why, and that’s where I was able to settle into, “Let me help them.”

Again, that statement of, “I’m passionate about people who are passionate about pets.”

I live to make their why better. And that surprised me early on because I had never worked with a group of professionals that collectively had a common purpose as much as we see here. Over time, what started to surprise me was the opportunity that a lot of people have taken advantage of to leverage that passion for their own financial growth.

There’s a bit of a disconnect in some places where we continue to leverage and pressure the labor component of this as it’s an expense, not an investment opportunity, not a return on investment type of thing is where if we really treat the people that provide the service well and we enable them, we can be very successful financially as a business. But I’m surprised with how consistently I continue to see that mismatch of investment in the service delivery through the people, where I think there’s a ton of opportunity and it’s a group of people that get out of bed in the morning because they’re doing it and why they’re doing it.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, because the happier the people are, the better they’re going to deliver the service, and everybody wins.

Emmitt Nantz:
Absolutely. And again, if you deliver good service, your customers come back, and that’s a foundation. And they’re going to refer their friends because you do a great job, and that’s going to be your growth. In the end, that’s how we succeed in the veterinary hospital.

Stacy Pursell:
Exactly. Well, how have you seen the veterinary profession change over the years since you’ve been involved?

Emmitt Nantz:
Well, it’s almost a bit of a cycle. So, we’ve talked a bit, we’ve gone through independent ownership into a large consolidation. We’re starting to see it start to pivot back towards independent ownership, and I love seeing that. I don’t have any qualms with the idea of consolidation. There were some really good exits. People that have worked for a long time that were rewarded for the businesses that they built, and some really good opportunities. We’ve seen some fantastic improvements in softwares, and processes, and marketing, and all kinds of great stuff that comes from really some of the aggregation of the industry.

But I also like seeing, now that, as we pivot back towards a drive towards independent ownership to balance the marketplace, we’re retaining a lot of that benefit that we saw from some of that growth and consolidation too. So, I’ll use Inventory Ally as a great example. Inventory Ally, the concept of it, was born out of a collective of hundreds of hospitals originally. The idea of, “How can we see incremental improvements at scale?”

And now it can be applied towards independent locations that are going to make them more beneficial. And our big drive at Inventory Ally is, “How can we save you money so that you reinvest in yourself? Save time and money to reinvest in yourself.”

So, I love seeing how we’re pivoting back towards opportunities for independent ownership and successful business management that way.

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

Emmitt Nantz:
Well, I don’t see it shrinking. The growth rate may retract a little bit, but it’s still on a good tear year-over-year. We’re in a little bit of a dip, but it continues to grow. And pet ownership, pet… Not even ownership, pet relationships continue to pivot more and more towards family members versus pets in the traditional sense. So, the demand is certainly there, and I like seeing where we’re headed as far as the innovations within the practice.

A lot of the successful practices are learning that that focus on customer care can coexist with good operations and profitability so that you can invest in a team, you can have a great team, and everybody can continue to live that passion, and that why. So, as I look in my crystal ball, while it might be a little fuzzy, I really like what I think I see of shifting back towards a focus on the patient, a focus on the customer, but in a business design that’s still very successful for independent and small groups.

Stacy Pursell:
What has been the biggest adversity you’ve had to fight through during your career in the veterinary space?

Emmitt Nantz:
The biggest adversity. I’m not sure if it really qualifies as adversity, but something that I’ve had to work through quite a bit is some assumptions that are brought from retail space and applied to the service space is how I look at it. Because we’ve had a lot of leadership and other things that come into the veterinary space as a service profession, but their experience, like field leadership and such, comes from more of a retail environment. Coffee sales, different things to that effect. And some of those philosophies that might work there, which is really constrain your costs and maximize throughput, will work when you’re doing COGS, you’re doing the units that are going through.

But when you’re dealing with people, it doesn’t necessarily work as well. And people get burnt out, they get frustrated. And then, you have what we’ve seen in the profession on the negative side with burnout. So, I think that part of that adversity is just trying to figure out how I can apply data and process to offset the idea of trying to benefit the P&L, the way that people are looking to do through some of those constrictions, but doing it in a more constructive way that applies to taking care of people and still delivering some of the financial improvements. So, that’s overall arching what I’ve found my entire career to be around offsetting. Enable success without a heavy hand.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, that’s good. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah. Well, the advice I would give my younger self is to do what I did. So, not necessarily what most would maybe say, but I love my career. I really enjoyed being part of large organizations and part of startups. I’ve loved that I haven’t locked myself in at the very beginning, saying, “This is what I’m going to do. This is where I’m going to be at this time in my life, and this is what my profession’s going to look like because I got a degree in it.”

I’ve gone with the flow, I’ve taken advantage of opportunities, and I’ve had highs and lows. We had a successful exit. I’ve also been flat broke a number of times, but I wouldn’t change any of it. I really like that I was comfortable and confident enough to take advantage of opportunities that were high-risk but very rewarding and fun. So, I would say, “Do that again, even if it takes you down a different path.”

Stacy Pursell:
What message or principle do you wish that you could teach everyone that’s listening to this podcast today?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah, great. It’s within process improvement. It sounds like it’s a profession. It sounds like it’s an expertise, but it’s really not. It’s really just about incremental adjustments by taking a step back and looking at a process end-to-end, and saying, “Where’s the problem? Why are we frustrated? What can we do about it?”

And make small, incremental improvements day-to-day, week-to-week. Because over time it becomes aggregated, it becomes great solutions. There’s a tool that I built that I’ve used quite a few times, and I put it through the veterinary profession because I call it my SOAP tool, where we just talk with the team and say, “What’s something we want to fix? What’s a common problem we have or a pain point that we have?”

And then, just to hear your subjective. Look at it. “What’s going on?”

Get feedback from the employees. Get feedback from the team. “What’s causing this problem?”

Then take an objective look at it. Collect some data. Look for things that are factual versus opinions. And for that objective cause. Assess it. Diagnose what the actual issue is. Then put a plan together and execute that plan. Make it small. Something you can do within a two-week cycle, not a two-year cycle. Do small increments like that, and just continue to repeat that process.

That’s what I really want everybody to do, because I’ve gone into a lot of hospitals and any businesses, for that matter, and I can see these barriers and these bottlenecks, and the frustrations, but everybody just continues to do it that way anyway. And I’d really like to have people just take a few minutes and tackle a problem and do it small, incremental pieces, and then over time things get much, much better.

Stacy Pursell:
That’s good. Well, some of our guests say that they’ve had a key book that they’ve read that really helped them change their mindset and their approach to success. Do you have a key book in your life-

Emmitt Nantz:
Yes.

Stacy Pursell:
… that has impacted you the most? I’d love to hear that story.

Emmitt Nantz:
I do, and if anybody’s heard me on other podcasts they’re going to think I’ve only read one book before, but it’s called The Goal, and it’s by Eliyahu Goldratt. And what it does is it introduces the theory of constraints and the theory of… So, like I said, I’ve got [inaudible 00:34:42] Six Sigma background, Lean Six Sigma project management, those types of process improvement designs. But I always come back to the theory of constraints.

A very simple read. It’s an awesome book, and it’s very applicable in any type of a situation, but essentially what it does is it says, “Anything you do consistently is a process.”

There’s a beginning, a middle, an end, and the components in between. And one of those components in the middle is the bottleneck. It’s the constraint of the entire process, and when you focus on it and you improve it, the whole process increases its capacity, but something else becomes the bottleneck and the constraint. And so, then you jump to that. And so, if you keep doing that over time, your whole process gradually continues to grow and improve.

When you apply that to veterinary medicine, for example, I like to think of the doctor as the constraint. I think we can only do as much as the doctor can do, even if you have a whole bunch of team around it. But oftentimes, what I’ll see is that that doctor is doing things that others could do. And so they’re decreasing their total capacity by doing things others could do, whereas if they let it go, their capacity increases and the entire team’s capacity is lifted. So, great read. I really like it. And it’s very applicable to what we do on a day-to-day basis.

Stacy Pursell:
I’ll have to check that out. Well, Emmitt, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you’d like to share with the listeners of The People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

Emmitt Nantz:
Yeah. I think I’d sum it up with a lot of what I’ve leaned into is the passion in this space is palpable, and it’s worthy of enablement. So, we should all take the time to… While there’s frustration and there’s burnout, and there’s a lot of negatives, there’s so much positive behind what we’re trying to achieve collectively. And if we can really just take the time to try to benefit and support each other and remove the things that cause so much frustration. Really look for the root causes of it. Look for the things that are causing that problem. It can be very easy to say, “I’m really mad because I can only spend 12% of my revenue on inventory.”

But if you take the time to go, “Well, what’s the desired outcome is actually to improve cost of goods.”

Work with people, work with Inventory Ally, or myself just to even think through things and say, “Well, how else could we achieve that? What are some better ways to try to achieve it? And why are we trying to achieve it?”

You become part of the solution and really start to continue to help everybody within the profession, within the hospital improve it collectively. So…

Stacy Pursell:
But what I love-

Emmitt Nantz:
It’s not that hard. I like it.

Stacy Pursell:
What I love about this profession is how collaborative almost everybody is. It’s one of the things that attracted me to this profession 26 years ago is there’s so many people that are willing to help and willing to collaborate and solve problems together.

Emmitt Nantz:
Absolutely. Nobody really sees others as competitors. We’re all trying to do the same thing, and there’s plenty of pets to go around, if you will. We have a common passion and that willingness to help each other, and learn from each other, and share best practices. It’s great. Absolutely.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, I love that. Well, Emmitt, thank you so much for being on The People of Animal Health Podcast today. It was great to have this time with you.

Emmitt Nantz:
Well, thank you so much, Stacy. It was great to be able to share some of my story, and if there’s anybody listening that I can help, even if it’s conversation or otherwise, just let me know. I love what we do.

Stacy Pursell:
Thank you, Emmitt.

Emmitt Nantz:
Thanks, Stacy.