Episode #45 – Stith Keiser

Empowering Practice
Stith Keiser shares insights on empowering Veterinary practice owners to enhance team dynamics, client care, and profitability. As an adjunct faculty member and industry leader, Stith also discusses rural practice strategies, professional development, and his passion for building sustainable Veterinary legacies.

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 guest, 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. On today’s show, we are talking with Stith Keiser. Stith Keiser is the Chief Executive Officer for Blue Heron Consulting. His team of coaches collaborates with new and seasoned practice owners alike to improve their lives and the lives of their team members while enhancing client experience, building sustainable practice profitability, and elevating the quality of care for pets. In addition to his role at Blue Heron Consulting, Stith speaks internationally at veterinary conferences and writes for a variety of veterinary publications. He also collaborates on the development and delivery of professional development curriculum at several veterinary schools where he serves as an adjunct faculty member.

He served through Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on a task force working under a federal grant to explore and design strategies for successful, rural veterinary practice ownership. His passion for our profession extends into his role as managing partner and a handful of privately owned, mixed and small animal veterinary practices. In partnering with veterinarians hungering for successful practice ownership and wishing to build a legacy, Stith contributes to team development and leverage, operations, financial management, and general strategy. In his free time, Stith enjoys spending time with his wife, a small animal veterinarian, adventuring in the outdoors with their daughters, dogs, and horses. Welcome onto the People of Animal Health podcast, and how are you Stith?

Stith Keiser:
Thank you, Stacy. It’s great to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this for the last few months since you first put this opportunity on my radar. So I’m doing great and excited to be here. How about yourself?

Stacy Pursell:
I’m doing well. So excited to have you here. I know that we’ve known each other for a number of years through Vet Partners and through the veterinary profession. I’ll always enjoy our conversations and admire the work that you do for our profession, Stith.

Stith Keiser:
Thank you.

Stacy Pursell:
I would love to start off at the beginning, what was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Stith Keiser:
I grew up on a small farm in south central Kentucky. My dad was a veterinarian, which is relevant for our conversation today. So while I am not a veterinarian, veterinary medicine has been a part of my life since really before I can even remember. Dad started off as a mixed animal practitioner, primarily ambulatory and some of my earliest memories of veterinary medicine were bouncing around in the truck with him and he was going out in the middle of the night to pull calves. And he eventually transitioned from mixed animal practice to small animal general practice.

And so as I grew and was able to just pay attention a little more and notice things, I kind of watched him make that transition from mixed to small. And then he ultimately had just a few small privately owned hospitals here in the central Kentucky area. So I’ve been in veterinary medicine in one role or another, whether it’s scooping poop or being an assistant at the clinic since a very young age. So veterinary medicine’s has always been a part, kind of who I am. And then outside of the veterinary component of things, being on a small farm, we raised cattle, had a few horses, so agriculture was just kind of part of what it meant to grow up here in kind of rural Kentucky.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, it’s been part of your life since the beginning.

Stith Keiser:
Yes, ma’am.

Stacy Pursell:
Can you tell our listeners about the mission and vision behind Blue Heron Consulting and how your team collaborates with veterinary practice owners?

Stith Keiser:
Absolutely, Stacy. And kind of the origin story of Blue Heron is a bit unique in that I never set out to be a consultant. I knew I wanted to do something in business. So I went to college, got a business degree. And my first job I landed as a hospital administrator at a practice out in Colorado. I knew I did not want to work for dad. Dad’s a mentor, a great guy. I just didn’t want to be the boss’s son and have that weight or expectations or people not like me because I was just the boss’s son.

So as soon as I graduated from college, I moved out west, took a role as a hospital administrator at a seven-doctor mixed animal practice and did that for a bit. I ended up working with the American Animal Hospital Association. I spent about five years with them. I had a small company that I sold to them. And in my time with them, I really got into the academic realm of things. And so it was my job to work with either student chapters or sometimes the actual kind of curriculum committees to help design, develop, and implement professional skills curriculum.

So I did that for about five years and through that experience, Stacy, I kind of hit a point where I feel like here I was in all these schools talking about leadership, or communication, or practice ownership, or financial management, and while I had lived some of that as a hospital administrator, here I was trying to prep people that wanted to be honored for being successful and I hadn’t ever actually worn that hat. And I was several years into working with AAHA when I was approached by a veterinary student at a school where I had been teaching for several years, and she asked me about partnering with her and her husband in a small rural mixed animal practice in Nebraska.

And I didn’t have any money really. I mean I just was living on a paycheck. So we ventured down this kind of path of ownership and she and I went to the bank. We got a loan and we ended up partnering in this hospital. And I kind of felt like everything I had been teaching had come to a head in a kind of a cool way. And that here I was finally as a minority owner getting to take what I taught and actually apply it day in and day out in the practice. And I really found my passion, because I was able to help her accomplish her dream of ownership. When she approached me about partnering, she said, “I know nothing about business. I know nothing about operations. I really don’t like the people side of running a business.” And that’s why she wanted me to come try to lend a hand.

So I did that with her. I did that for a few years. The goal was help somebody get entrenched, get them set up, and then let them buy me out. I never wanted to be a big consolidator and own a bunch of hospitals. And so we did that, had a lot of fun. We were fairly successful. She bought me out and then kind of randomly, I had another student approach me by a similar opportunity. Never promoted it. I didn’t have a business where I was doing this. It was just kind of organic, word of mouth. So I did that a few times, Stacy.

And then getting back to Blue Heron, I finally hit a point where I realized my passion and I still love teaching, as you noted. I still do some teaching. But what I love about teaching is being able to take what I learned in the hospitals and then offer it in an academic setting. And I wanted to do more of that. I wanted to be more involved in hospitals. And I looked at private equity and decided that was not the right model for me. And I’m not knocking it. I think there’s some pros and cons to it, but it wasn’t the model I wanted. And that’s really where Blue Heron was born.

I wanted to have a larger impact on more practice owners, either current practice owners, or aspiring practice owners. And I realized that I just didn’t have enough money to be able to get involved in enough hospitals individually to have the level of impact I wanted to have. And so we started Blue Heron. I started with a buddy of mine back in 2015 because next year it’ll be our ten-year anniversary with the company. And Blue Heron’s mission has stayed the same for the last 10 years, is to improve the lives of veterinary medicine, or sorry, to improve the lives of veterinary professionals. And that’s what we do.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, congratulations, Stith on your ten-year anniversary.

Stith Keiser:
Thank you.

Stacy Pursell:
How do you balance improving client experiences, enhancing practice profitability, and elevating the quality of care for pets in your coaching approach?

Stith Keiser:
That’s a great question. And one of the things that I feel like makes this unique is we are not the consultant that comes in and says, “Hey, we can help with only conflict management, or only with inventory management, or only with operational efficiencies.” Our whole approach is based on understanding what drives the owner of that hospital or the aspiring owner, if they’re going to do a startup or an acquisition, kind of what their why is, why they were called to veterinary medicine, what kind of legacy they want to leave. And then how they define success.

And that’s important to us because the tools that we use as consultants are going to vary based on how that specific owner defines success in their hospitals. And what I’ve found from now doing this for 10 years is that most owners, when you talk to them about what success looks like or why they got into ownership, it’s going to boil down to one of the things you just mentioned. Sometimes they want to be able to practice kind of their own standard of gold medicine, whatever that may mean to them. Other people get into ownership because maybe they’ve left a toxic hospital and so they’re really focus on the culture of their hospital.

Other veterinarians may have left a practice where they felt like clients were just a number. So their big focus is client experience. And then certainly you get the owners out there that, I wouldn’t say money is the only driving force, but as owners, they realize they’re making an investment. They want to return on that investment, so they want to have a profitable practice. And so when we go into a hospital, we start with them. And then internally at BHC, we kind of have this, we call the four pillars. And our four pillars that we use to guide our consulting are the client experience, culture, quality of care, and then financial health.

And so we believe, and I think we see this fairly frequently, that whatever the top priority is for the owner, that’s where we start. And if we take care of offering and delivering that hospital’s definition of best medicine, whatever it may be, if we focus on that, if we focus on taking care of the team, training them, leveraging them, if we focus on offering an optimal client experience based on how that hospital defines an optimal client experience, then the money’s going to come in. And so the financial part’s almost the easiest part for us because if we can address the first three things, whatever order or priority they fall for that individual client, the money’s going to come in, then we just have to be good stewards of that money from an expense management perspective. So they’re really all pretty intertwined, I guess is the long-winded answer to your question.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, client experience is so important.

Stith Keiser:
Yes, ma’am.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you’ve spoken internationally and you’ve written extensively for veterinary publications. What are some key trends or challenges that you’re seeing in the veterinary field today?

Stith Keiser:
A couple of these I think probably anybody in either your or my shoes would probably say some of the same things. I’m not sure they’re incredibly unique. The work you’re doing through the Vet Recruiter around staffing, I think that continues to be a challenge. It seems like it may be getting a little better in some areas of the country. What I mean by better is a little easier to find qualified candidates. But I know there’s still great demand for those exceptional candidates. And again, that’s something you live day in and day out. But staffing is definitely something that I think we all talk about, we all see a lot of writing about. And I think for just cause.

Maybe a little bit less obvious, because I think we all feel the staffing pinch at times. I’m really intrigued with the whole AI movement right now. I am not a tech person. I do not pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but I’m seeing both through Blue Heron clients as well as my own private hospitals, we’re trying to figure out is it worth jumping on the AI bandwagon because you don’t want to follow a trend just because it’s a trend, but how can we use it to improve efficiency? So whether it’s AI around scribes for helping with records, we’re doing that. I know several firms out there that specialize in AI scribing now.

I think doing send outs for reading ultrasounds or RADs, I know there’s some AI components to that now and a lot of research being done around the accuracy of human versus AI. And I think probably an ideal world is a combination of both. As well as just general efficiencies for owners and administrators in hospitals. So I don’t have all the answers around AI, but that’s something that I’m certainly focused on trying to learn more about and figure out how hospitals can use it.

So those would be a couple of big ones. The mid-level provider, that’s a hot topic right now. I know the AVMA has a stance on that. Colorado, I think has passed that proposition. Don’t quote me exactly. It sounds like it may have gone through. I know there’s a few veterinary schools now, LMU in particular has a mid-level provider program. And without wading into whether I think it’s good or bad, I think it’s intriguing to watch and I think that it’s going to impact the profession. Don’t know if it’ll be good or bad. I see pros and cons. But I’ll be curious to continue to see that develop.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah, I agree. It’s going to be interesting to see how that develops. Going back to the topic of AI, I’ll introduce you to my son. He’s attending the University of Oklahoma. He’s a junior and he’s a computer science major and he’s got an emphasis on AI.

Stith Keiser:
Oh, neat.

Stacy Pursell:
And he’s doing some work in the veterinary profession right now that has to do with AI. So I’d be happy to make an introduction. I can’t begin to understand it either, but he has a very good understanding of it and he uses it on a daily basis.

Stith Keiser:
I would love an introduction. I would love to pick his brain. Like I said, I’m very much in drinking from a fire hose mode, so I would love to chat with him.

Stacy Pursell:
I’ll introduce you.

Stith Keiser:
Thank you.

Stacy Pursell:
He says these things and I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s like he speaks other language.

Stith Keiser:
You and me both.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah. Well, can you share more about your work with veterinary schools and the development of professional development curricula? How do you see this impacting the future of veterinary education?

Stith Keiser:
I love the work that I, and we, get to do in veterinary schools. To be transparent, it’s probably not much of a business model just because academia doesn’t always line up well with that from an adjunct perspective. So for me, it’s not the business component for Blue Heron. Really, it’s a way to give back and it’s a passion of mine. When I first got into this profession, I graduated in ’08, and there were very few schools talking anything about business. So BBMA has certainly, kudos to that student run organization for paving the way there. And a lot of schools have since jumped on, I think, a positive bandwagon of trying to incorporate some professional skills. So I love it. Schools do, I think for the most part, do a really good job no matter what school you go to.

They do a good job of turning out clinically competent veterinarians. And I think what most of us have probably seen for a while, and I think it’s being emphasized even more with some of what’s going on in the market right now, you got to have your clinical skills, don’t get me wrong, but what’s going to really separate, I think a good veterinarian from a great veterinarian, is not the clinical skills in a GP setting. It’s going to be the communication skills, the leadership skills. And by leadership, I don’t mean you have to be a practice owner or a medical director, I mean just being able to lead your staff or be a leader in the exam room.

Basic business understanding. I don’t think there’s any harm in associate veterinarian knowing how to read a P&L, but that may or may not be beneficial for them. But understanding the basic economics of veterinary medicine, I mean, everybody’s working for a salary I’m assuming, and that salary has to be generated by doing something. And so I think being able to help students understand that regardless of where they end up in veterinary medicine or what model of compensation they end up taking. At the end of the day, they’re responsible for producing, at least in clinical practice, they’re responsible for producing some amount of income to justify their salary.

It doesn’t matter if they’re paid on straight salary or pro salary or straight production. And so trying to help them kind of understand really their responsibility from a business perspective on what they have to be able to do production wise, and then how they’re going to do that. Stacy, you and I have talked about the AVMA has the earns versus turns definition kind of applying to practice. So an earns based practice is probably going to be a lower volume, higher touch, therefore probably higher ADTs, more thorough medicine. And that’s kind of the earns model. Or a turns model, which is going to be likely a higher volume, lower touch. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad hospital, it’s a higher volume hospital.

And I think either model can work. But where I see a lot of veterinarians become uncomfortable or unhappy is when they want one of those two models and they end up in a hospital that’s the other way around. So I think helping them understand either model can work, and it really comes down to what style of medicine you want to practice, what kind of support staff you want to have around you, what kind of role you want to have versus your support staff have. So I just love being able to maybe kind of raise the veil a little bit and let them kind of see behind the scenes so they have the information they need to have those communication skills, have those leadership skills, and then to make an educated decision as to what type of practice model they want to end up in.

Stacy Pursell:
Communication skills and leadership skills are so important and I think it’s good for people to have an understanding of how the business works.

Stith Keiser:
Yes, ma’am.

Stacy Pursell:
Well Stith, your involvement with the Colorado State University task force on rural veterinary practice ownership is fascinating. What were some of the strategies that you helped develop?

Stith Keiser:
This was a lot of fun. It’s the only federal grant I ever worked under. And I’ll give the administration at CSU, Melinda was the one really spearheading this, so she took the brunt of dealing with the grant piece of it. But certainly all of us that were involved in this committee had to do our own grant writing work as a component of the overall grant. So that was an interesting experience. But to really, I think to answer your question, the grant had several different focuses. So my specific focus was around kind of the economics of rural veterinary practice.

I think there’s sometimes I feel like there’s a stigma that you can’t be successful in rural practice. So we were trying to figure out can you be? And I believe the answer is absolutely yes. I’ve been in, again, rural practice myself. So I think the answer there is a resounding yes, you can be successful in rural practice. And then how do you be successful? So we were able to interview a lot of hospitals all over the Rocky Mountain West, and it was primarily focused on the Rocky Mountain West because CSU was the one with the grant.

But we interviewed a lot of hospitals. We also were able to get a lot of financials. So it was kind of neat because we’d interview the hospital, kind of learn their story, hear about their business model. We’d ask them about their staffing and how they leverage them. We’d ask them about their equipment. We’d ask them about their services. And then a lot of them were kind enough through an NDA course to actually share their profit and loss statements with us, their production by providers. So we were able to kind of marry what they said about their hospital, and what they said about their model and how successful it was or wasn’t, and then actually have the financials in hand to be able to kind of go through and look for trends.

And so at the end of this project, we basically, similar to what the AVMA does, their economic report, they have their efficiency work that the AVMA has done, and you’ll see that in the economic report. We did something similar focused specifically on rural practices. And it wasn’t just mixed animal rural practices, it was small animal, mixed animal, large animal. And we really kind of were able to come up with a hypothesis at least, of having the hospital’s financials, these hospitals were objectively successful. And we didn’t just look at the financials, we did look at other culture-based studies and some statistics. We looked at some client experience type things.

So very similar to the four pillars we talk about a BHC, I don’t think that financial health is the only metric for success. But so working through all that, we were able to kind of say in rural practice, these models tend to work best and we define working best as having the highest scores across, again, the culture of the client experience, the patient care, as well as the financial health of the hospital.

Stacy Pursell:
So it’s a myth that you can’t be successful in a rural practice.

Stith Keiser:
From my experience, absolutely a myth. I will say, Stacy, I think it is difficult to have the James Herriot model of hospital, being a solo practitioner and trying to do everything. Those were the hospitals that tended to “score less”. And it wasn’t because they weren’t bad people, they didn’t have a bad mission, but trying to be a solo practitioner with minimal staff on a shoestring budget trying to be everything to every client, that was hard financially. It was hard on staffing, staff retention, compensation benefits to be less in hospitals like that.

I’m not saying that there’s not people out there doing it successfully. I think that there are. But generally speaking, it seemed like rural practices that were able to have a couple of veterinarians were then able to staff more appropriately so that you were able to leverage your team, let doctors do what doctors are trained to do, let your support staff do what they’re trained to do. Client experience seemed to be better just because availability and accessibility. And I think the patient care, at times, was better simply because it was more of a team-based approach to medicine versus one person who may have been perfectly competent and smart enough to practice great medicine, but it comes down to hours in the day and man or woman power to get it done. So we did kind of find that, that multi-doctor hospitals tended to do better across all the categories we’ve been talking about.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that makes sense. Well, Stith, you have participated in a variety of veterinary career networks. What advice do you have for new graduates entering the veterinary profession?

Stith Keiser:
That’s a great question. It’s probably going to sound a bit repetitive to the question you asked about why I enjoy professional skills. And it goes back to if you’re smart enough to get into veterinary school, you’re smart enough. You’re going to learn the clinical skills. And again, I’ve been in pretty much all the veterinary schools throughout my career, so I know there are some nuances, distributive model versus traditional. I know some schools get some spay neuter experience a little bit earlier. So I do realize that not all veterinary schools are exactly the same from a curriculum perspective on the clinical side.

That being said, I think that no matter where you graduate from veterinary school, you’re going to come out with a pretty good clinical foundation. The advice I give students is do that, of course, but really spend the time learning the things we’ve been talking about today, Stacy, the communication, the leadership, the basic economics of veterinary medicine, and trying to get into hospitals that do that. I see a lot of students, their externships or preceptorships or whatever they’re called in different schools, they focus only on the clinical piece. And I think you certainly need to focus on the clinical piece as well. But I think trying to find hospitals where you can learn some of those other skills just makes you so much more of a valuable candidate, because you’re a more well-rounded candidate.

So I think actively seeking out opportunities to hone some of the non-clinical skills is critical. And then networking, you mentioned Vet Partners. I’ve both been able to be members of that, and I’m not necessarily plugging Vet Partners specifically for vet students one way or the other, I think it’s a great organization. But just networking, going to AAP or AABP meetings if that’s your interest area. But trying to seek out networking opportunities where you have the opportunity to meet with and learn from other professionals that are doing what you want to do, so you can learn from them, their successes, their failures. It doesn’t mean you’re going to have the same successes or failures, but I think learning other people’s stories and what has and hasn’t worked for them allows you to make a more educated decision as you kind of plan your own path.

Stacy Pursell:
Good points. Stith, can you discuss the importance of financial literacy for veterinarians and how your work with the AVMA’s Economics Advisory Research Council has influenced in this area?

Stith Keiser:
Absolutely. So I spent, it was a couple years on the AVMA’s Economic Advisory Research Council. I’m no longer involved. I don’t know if they even have it anymore, at least the group that I was a part of. It was pretty hot there for a while and everybody was looking at the debt-to-income ratio. I think it’s important for a couple of reasons, Stacy, I think one, just look at the debt-to-income ratio. And again, AVMA just released their new report, earnings are up, which is awesome. The debt-to-income ratio is getting better, which is encouraging. That was one of the big things AVMA was focusing on. So I’m really glad to see that.

So I think there’s the personal financial literacy, understanding what it means to come out of school with $250,000 or $400,000 of student debt. When I say understand what it means, what it means day in, day out from a budget perspective, what you can and can’t do, what kind of house you can or can’t buy, so that you don’t overextend yourself even more. So I think there’s the personal side of it really, which comes down to budgeting and making sure that when you’re applying for jobs and negotiating when you’re producing in a hospital that you know kind of what your bare minimum is to live whatever lifestyle you want.

And then I think there’s the financial literacy on more the professional side. One of the thing that’s really cool about the professional skills classes we do is we’ll go in and it varies some by school, but I always ask, I’m usually teaching third years. I usually ask them by show of hands who wants to be a practice owner. And again, it varies by school, but in most schools it’s probably a quarter to a third of the class will raise their hand. And then by the end of the spring semester or the two-week elective however it’s structured in the school, as they learn more about the potential benefits of ownership, it’s neat to see students kind of open their eyes to, “Hey, maybe ownership doesn’t mean the old model of working a hundred hours a week and being burnt out and hating your life and hating veterinary medicine.” That there are actually some sustainable ways to own a hospital that can also have some financial benefits, not just for the owner, but for the staff, for the patients, the clients. So I really enjoy that piece of it as well.

Stacy Pursell:
There’s so many different models now.

Stith Keiser:
Yes, ma’am.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession up to this point?

Stith Keiser:
That’s a tough question. I think two things, off the cuff here. One’s a positive, one’s a negative. The positive is, like you, having been this profession now for a few years, I love how close most of this profession is. I love that for the most part, we want to support each other regardless of our roles or letters after our name. I think for the most part, the profession really feels like a family. And you can find support, you can find mentors, you can find people that do what you do. You can find consultants. And so I just love that for the most part, we want to help our colleagues in this profession. So I love that.

And that’s been a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t sure with however many veterinarians are out there now. I just read the AVMA report. I think there was 118 or 20 or something like that, thousand that were part of at least AVMA membership. So it’s still a fairly decent sized profession to still have that feeling of familiarity and feeling like you’ve got somebody in your corner is pretty neat.

On the more negative side, I’ll say is I continue to be, and I’m part of this as well, so this is not me pointing fingers, disappointed by how slow we are to adapt and change at times. I feel like as a profession, we don’t change until it is basically forced down our throat and it’s either go out of business or lose all of our staff or whatever it may be until we finally are willing to look at doing things differently. I will say in the last couple of years, Stacy, I feel like publications today, Veterinary Business, I know you’re an author for there, And I also do a little bit of writing. And I’m seeing more, I think, proactive articles in there. And so I think that our profession is shifting some and realizing we can’t always be in reactive mode and we have to be a bit more proactive. But historically, I’d have said I’ve been a little bit disappointed by the pace at which we adopt change.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, I also like what you said about how the industry supports each other and how collaborative it is. I just started my 28th year in the veterinary profession in August.

Stith Keiser:
Congratulations.

Stacy Pursell:
So in August I completed 27, and now I’m in my 28th year. And that is so true. This is such a collaborative profession. What does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Stith Keiser:
I’m optimistic. I am not smart enough to tell you exactly what the crystal ball is going to say. I know there are people that are worried about consolidation or people that are worried about just the saturation of veterinary services. I don’t even say veterinarians, but just veterinary services in some markets. I know there’s concern about supply demand of veterinarians. And Stacy and I have had that conversation that have been conflicting reports for years around that. I finally see in the last week or two, a new report came out and I think maybe from Brackey with the AVMA. I think jumping on that one.

So I know there are some things that make people nervous. The mid-level provider makes some people nervous, excites some people. But ultimately, the reason I am optimistic is because I do think that as a whole, we are incredibly passionate about what we do. Most of us feel like we’ve been called to this profession in some way or another. And so while I fully expect that there’ll be some challenges, I know right now the national trends around revenue growth and new client numbers are certainly not what they were post-COVID. You’ve been doing this now for 28 years. I’m not quite there, but not too far off.

This goes through cycles. And I don’t get too nervous when the cycles happen. There’s going to be some downturns and some upturns. But I think people love their pets. People are willing to spend fair prices for their pets. And I think we’ll have to continue to work on what that pricing looks like in a way that keeps it affordable for clients, while also allows us to take care of all the responsibilities we have as owners. But I think the future is bright for veterinary medicine.

Stacy Pursell:
Good. I’m glad you’re optimistic about it. Stith, outside of your professional work, you enjoy spending time outdoors with your family and animals. How do these personal experiences influence your professional philosophy and approach to veterinary practice management?

Stith Keiser:
That’s another great question. There’s a lot of talk around wellness and wellbeing. Again, I think rightfully so. That’s also going back to financial literacy. That’s another huge reason, Stacy, I’m a fan of financial literacy. If you look at the wellness and wellbeing reports, usually the top two things contributing to negative wellbeing are related to financials. And a lot of times people want to separate them. And I’m also not saying that all wellness or wellbeing and other different things, they do not come down strictly to money. But a lot of the people that are unhappy in their jobs are unfulfilled. They’re working more hours than they want to because they have debt to pay off.

So anyway, kind of a sidebar there. But on the wellness piece, for me, the outdoors are kind of my reset button. Family time, being outdoors, I think allows me to have that reset. And I’ve been doing Blue Heron now for, again, I said 10 years and been in the professional longer than that. I can honestly say I’m still as excited to go to work every day as I was when I first started. And I think that’s part of it, is having that balance outside. And I think a lot of it, the personal activities, again, growing up in agriculture and we live on a farm today, we still have some animals here today. I think some of the work ethic and appreciation for animal husbandry certainly translates over to what we do day in and day out.

So to me, I’ve always personally struggled with the word work-life balance because I don’t know if there’s ever really a perfect balance. I think there’s times when it’s more professional heavy, more personal heavy. But for me, they’re so closely intertwined that I’m kind of able to recharge and refuel and feel fulfilled whether it’s just the personal time or the professional time.

Stacy Pursell:
Yes, I like to call it work-life integration instead of work-life balance.

Stith Keiser:
I think that’s a much more sustainable term. Yes, ma’am.

Stacy Pursell:
What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Stith Keiser:
There’s so many pieces of advice I’d give the younger version of myself. I think probably two things. A lot of where I am today has very little to do with me and more about the people I have surrounded myself with: friends, mentors, colleagues. And I think early on I kind of wanted to prove that I could do it and kind of blaze my own path. And I don’t think I was an arrogant jerk. I really don’t think I was that. But also probably had a bit of a chip on my shoulder and kind of felt like I needed to do it all on my own. And it was a longer, harder, slower road than being able to surround myself with people that are able to prop me up to support me, to challenge me, to tell me when they think I’m going down the wrong path. Not that they’re always right or that I was always right, but you need, I think, that challenge in your life.

So surrounding yourself with the right people is something I would’ve done earlier in my career. Not that I had the wrong people, I didn’t have have a lot of people surrounding me outside of some great family support. So I would’ve done that. And then I think, secondly, I’m fairly risk-adverse and there’s times I probably missed some opportunities, not because there was a rational reason not to do it, but simply because I was scared of what failure might look like. And I do think there are some opportunities we should pass on. Some of them will be failures. And so this is not me saying just say yes to everything out there, but I wish I would’ve pushed myself outside of my comfort zone a little bit more often early in my career.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah. Well, that’s good advice. What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone?

Stith Keiser:
I think a lot of what we’ve talked about from the financial literacy to everything we talked about around professional development to the two cents I just offered on the advice I’d give to my younger self. I think those things, I guess one other thing I’ll add is I think sometimes as a profession we blindly follow our passion, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this here in a second, Stacy, because you may very well disagree. I see a lot of people that blindly follow their passion, our profession that are now burnt out and hate our profession.

And so I do not believe in the advice of just follow your passion, you’ll be happy. I think you follow your passion, yes, but it has to economically support what your needs are and the lifestyle you want to live. And so that’d be something else is, “Sure, pursue your passion, but pursue your passion with eyes wide open to make sure that you can have the lifestyle, have the work-life integration, and have the financial success that you need.” Otherwise, passion alone, I think is kind of like a flame and it will burn out if all you have is passion.

Stacy Pursell:
Yeah. My husband has a former co-worker whose husband had a good sustainable job and he had a wife and kids, and he followed his passion into the music industry, or no, it was art, it was not music, it was into the art industry. Got a PhD in art and then couldn’t get a job. So he followed his passion-

Stith Keiser:
Right.

Stacy Pursell:
… but his passion was not economically sustainable. Not that there aren’t successful people in the world of art-

Stith Keiser:
Sure.

Stacy Pursell:
… but that’s an example of someone following their passion and it’s not sustainable. So some of our guests have had a key book that they’ve read that helped them to change their mindset and their approach to success. Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most? I’d love to hear that story.

Stith Keiser:
Good To Great by Jim Collins is one of my favorite books just because of the philosophy behind it. I use the hedgehog concept from that book, which actually kind of goes back to the passion comment. For those that aren’t familiar, the hedgehog concept is… I suggest this for every single veterinarian I talk to, whether you’re an associate or outside of clinical practice or an owner. The hedgehog concept is kind of the confluence of what you’re passionate about, like we just talked about. It’s also what you can be the best at, not the best in the world, but the best in your world, the best in your market. And it has to drive your economic engine.

And that’s kind of helped guide me several times, because there’s things I was passionate about, but they didn’t do the other two things. Or there were things that maybe I was pretty good at, but they didn’t do the other two things. And so the Hedgehog concept from Good to Great is, again, something I use still in teaching and personally.

I know you asked for one book, but a couple of other ones come to mind. The Seven Habits of Highly Success or Highly Effective People by Covey, that’s a great book, both personal and professional. And that’s one that I reread every few years because as my life changes, I take different things from that book. So I like that one a lot. I just started reading as of yesterday, I’m actually doing this with one of my hospital managers. We’re reading Radical Candor. I’m not far enough in yet to say what I’ve learned from it, but it has come highly recommended to me by several colleagues, and I’m excited about, at least what I understand is the gist of the book.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Stith, 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?

Stith Keiser:
First and foremost, a thank you to you, Stacy, for the opportunity to be on here. And a thank you to our listeners. I know that there are several podcasts out there, and anytime someone takes time to listen, it means something. So a big thank you to anyone who wants to listen to this. If anyone has any questions for me, you are welcome to reach out. I love having conversations with colleagues, so feel free to do that. And otherwise, Stacy, I love what you’re doing here. I’ve listened to quite a few of your podcasts in preparation for this one. And I think it’s neat to pick professionals within our industry with different career paths and different walks of life, and kind of be able to showcase all the different and fun and fulfilling ways that you can make a career in this profession.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Stith, thank you for being here today. I enjoyed our conversation.

Stith Keiser:
Likewise. Thank you.