Episode #53 – Ryan Leech

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 Ryan Leech. Ryan is a leading veterinary industry consultant, speaker, and podcast host. With more than seven years at the helm of First 100 Consulting, Ryan has helped veterinary businesses navigate market challenges and scale successfully.

His experience spans key roles at Digitail, Galaxy Vets, and Veterinary Integration Solutions. He also hosts The Bird Bath, a weekly podcast covering the latest trends in pet health. With the wealth of knowledge in sales, business strategy, and veterinary innovation, Ryan brings valuable insights to the animal health industry and veterinary profession. Welcome to the show, Ryan.

Thanks for having me. That was an impressive guy. I don’t know if I’ve met him, but that’s a pretty good intro.

Well, we’re very glad to have you today here, Ryan, and how are you doing today?

I’m great. I’m happy to get to sit down with you. We always get to see each other at every conference. You probably go to even more than I do. But yeah, it’s great to get to spend some time and dig into this.

Well, it’s always great to see you at conferences, and I’m glad that we have this time here together, and I would love to start off at the beginning, Ryan. What was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up?

Yeah. So that’s a great question. We’re taking it all the way back. So I’m from, I claim, Texas as much as possible, but I was born very briefly, very quickly in New Jersey and got to Texas as fast as possible, but mostly grew up in the big three here in Texas, so Houston, Austin, and I live in Dallas now. So a lot of time in Texas. Yeah. Grew up mostly Houston and Austin. Really enjoy both of those cities. Really enjoyed Austin a lot, but found a wonderful home here in Dallas. My wife and I met at SMU, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas and just stayed. It’s a great city to be in. So we enjoy it. Yeah. Love being here.

It is a great city. I get to Dallas about four or five times a year. It’s only about a four-hour drive from where I live, and I grew up in the Houston area. So we have that in common. Well, Ryan, I am curious, how did you get into the animal health industry? Tell us about your beginnings.

Yeah. So I got into animal health accidentally, I would say. So I have a pretty long background of doing sales and then started working with startups, and led sales teams and built sales organizations, and then founded my consulting business, First 100, which started as sales consulting for all types of startups. And the goal there was that I found a special niche to be able to take startup founders, primarily technical founders, that were stuck on the sales floor and allow them to transition into executive roles while building out a sales team for them.

And so, I did that for quite a few companies. I did that for gas delivery companies, private airlines, craft cocktail companies, and all sorts of random different verticals, but anything that was a startup, and then I met the team at Hippo, Hippo Practice Management Software, and started working with Sam Razor, who was the founder there or one of the cofounders, and they had that exact issue going on.

They literally were on two floors. The sales team was on the first floor and the rest of the company was on the second floor, and Sam was stuck on that first floor. He couldn’t spend time in his office leading the company, because he was spending time running the sales department. And so, I came in, and just my first thought was, “Well, I can sell anything, so this shouldn’t be too hard.”

And the veterinarians and the clinics and everybody absolutely just beat me up, and they did a really good job of making sure that I learned that you have to be engaged and understand the importance of what’s happening in the space to be able to participate in it, even if you’re selling software in the space. And so, yeah, I absolutely loved that. I loved the challenge, and I ended up going and working full-time with Hippo and led sales and marketing for them, and have stayed in animal health ever since then.

Well, I know that you’ve had a successful career so far spanning business development, strategic partnerships, and consulting in the veterinary profession. You just talked about what led you to focus on veterinary businesses, but what unique challenges do you believe the veterinary profession faces compared to some other industries?

Yeah. So a lot of my time selling in the space was in the software and the technical side of things, and I think there’s a real interesting persona that happens within a vet clinic for the decision-making. And a lot of times, I think the things that drive veterinarians to be so successful in practicing medicine are not the same things that make a great businessperson, and which makes it really tough sometimes for them to be able to say, “I understand medical outcomes. I understand the hands-on approach of taking care of animals and providing high-quality care.”

But what I learned, especially right off the bat with Hippo, was I looked at it as, “Okay. We have a very clear ROI. If you switch your PIMS from a server-based PIMS to a cloud-based PIMS and you can better account for your appointments, better inventory management, and you don’t have mischarges on billing, you have a clear ROI on switching to the software.”

To me, in my brain as a businessperson, that’s not a conversation really. It’s, “Here we go. You can spend this money, and you can make more by doing it.” But the challenges that are faced within the veterinary clinic are so many different personas and personalities and motivations and drivers of what got people to where they are in the space that a clear ROI pitch or story doesn’t exactly translate into a meaningful transition for someone to do something, and that’s what we see across a lot of the portions of the industry.

I mean, you’ll see the difficulty of staffing rural clinics, and you’ll see where people might say, “Hey, there’s a financial motivation to be able to move to a rural clinic, because the government’s going to pay off my student loans.” But I don’t want to do that. That’s not the lifestyle I want, or just things like that are tough.

And coming from prior to the animal health space with VC-backed startups, it was very, very clear in those worlds of, “We’ve given you this massive pile of money, and we need you to make it into an even larger pile of money, and whatever needs to happen between those two steps is exactly what needs to happen to do it,” where animal health has much more compassion and feeling to it, which is what I love about it.

Yeah. That’s what I love about it too. Well, Ryan, at First 100 Consulting, you provide critical market insights and strategic guidance. What are some of the biggest trends shaping the veterinary space today, and how do you help businesses stay ahead?

Yeah. So it’s a good question. There’s a ton of trends. And every week on my podcast, that’s what I hit on. I cover every trend and try to help people weave together the nuanced differences of… I’m just thinking as we’re recording this. General Mills released their quarterly earnings report that was 5% down, but at the same time, Mars is doing a $32 billion acquisition of Kellanova, which is Kellogg’s snack brand.

So you look at that and you might say, “Okay, Ryan, you haven’t mentioned anything about animal health.” But then you dig one layer deeper and you go, “Well, General Mills owns quite a few pet food brands,” Blue Buffalo primarily, and then Mars, as everyone that’s listening here knows, has a very big impact on that. So the shifting tides in consumer trends on salty versus savory versus sweet snacks affects the bottom line of the owner of Banfield clinics.

So those are the things that I think are really interesting, which is how I like to look at trends. Now, if you look at what are the things that are truly affecting, day in and day out, lives within the clinic, I think, obviously, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about technology. The pace at which AI development is happening in the industry is massive.

I was just reading the AVMA’s Economic State of the Profession Report, and 75% of practices have a PIMS, practice management software, but that means 25% don’t, which is wild, which means that they’re using paper records. I don’t have the number in front of me, but I believe it’s around 22 to 27%. That small of an amount are using any sort of telehealth, telemedicine, teleconsultation, tele anything.

Yet, when you sit down with a bunch of people from within the industry, they’re all talking about, “Oh, telemedicine, this…” And so, there’s things that are progressing in our industry, but that the adoption rate and the adoption curve of the pace at which people are taking these things on is significantly smaller than what we, that don’t practice medicine every day, look at and think about.

So I think there’s massive green fields for people to be able to implement and introduce new technologies, the utilization of AI, everything from scribing to radiology to predictive analytics, and much more medical capabilities are going to be pretty big for that. And then I’m really interested to see where the new universities all pan out. As giving a shout-out to The VET Recruiter, as I like to pronounce your company, you know more than anyone, right? There is a lack of veterinarians.

I won’t put words in your mouth, but I’ll put words in my own. I believe there’s a lack of veterinarians for jobs, and I think, additionally, there’s a lack of jobs that those veterinarians want to work in. And we’re working on trying to introduce new universities, but we’re seeing continuous issues with the accreditation for things like University of Arizona, having difficulty with NAVLE scores.

We’re seeing Kentucky, with Murray State not getting the state funding that they’re expecting. We’re hearing people talk about a solution to a shortage that has a lot more steps involved in it than just saying, “School, yes, open, boom, new DVM.” So those are the other things, I think, are going to be really interesting on the trend front to see.

Yeah. All of those are so interesting, and we could go down so many different paths talking about each one of those. Well, Ryan, you previously co-hosted Consolidate That! where you explored-

I did.

… veterinary practice consolidation. Given your experience, what are the pros and cons of consolidation for independent veterinary practices?

Yeah. So Ivan Zak and I did that show together for almost three years, and I’m eternally grateful to Ivan for getting me into podcasting. When he and I met, he was doing the Veterinary Innovation Podcast with Shawn Wilkie, and he said, “Hey, do you want to do one about consolidation?” And I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And it’s funny. As you know, doing a podcast, you have to pick a topic that there’s going to be enough to talk about on the second week, let alone the third year, and we found that there was a ton to discuss.

Primarily, for the show, we discussed and talked with all of the C-suite from the majority of large consolidators, and it was a wonderful opportunity to just dig in about what different groups were doing, how they viewed things. I believe that in its purest form, the consolidation of veterinary practices is a net benefit for the industry.

Now, there’s a ton of ways. I mean, and you could say the same thing for any theoretical idea. Capitalism could be, but then you have issues of any sort of theory, always has the implementation. And I think that when done properly, consolidation allows the people that work in clinics to be able to focus on the things that they’re passionate about, receive great compensation for that work, have the support to be able to pursue that as well as higher ideas and means and desires while still allowing the industry to continue to thrive.

Now, in its worst form, you have practices that are sold to groups that don’t have a desire to participate in the animal health space, don’t understand the compassion drivers or the care of the people that are doing the work, and think of this as a place where their money they made from dental can now go into animal health, and then they can take that and leave and run to med spas with it and leave us holding the bag. So not all consolidators are good. Not all consolidators are bad. They are the predominant force for small animal medicine, though.

And what I like to say about companies, say JAB, for example, they have a lot more money than I could ever hope to see in my life, and I try not to bet against them too often, because they have a lot more analysts looking at a lot more details than what I do. And so, if you actively engage with consolidators, you have a much better outcome of your participation in the space. It’s like people that don’t vote. If you don’t vote in an election, you shouldn’t be the one complaining about the outcome of the elections.

So true.

But if you participate in your politics and in anything that you want to influence, then you have the right to have a voice to talk about it.

Yeah. Such good points. You mentioned a lot of things there, talked about the good and the bad. You’ve worked with companies like Digitail and Veterinary Integration Solutions, both at the forefront of veterinary technology. How is AI and data analytics changing the way veterinary businesses operate?

So I think if you’re not using AI for something at least once a week, you’re missing out. I was at an event recently where the head of go-to-market for OpenAI was talking, and he read a tweet or I guess an X, or whatever they call it now. I’m not a tweeter or user of that, but he said, “We have 18 months until the normies catch on.”

And he was saying, “This is something that everyone will be using, and it’s going to continue happening. And so, if you’re not embracing or at least experimenting with some utilization of AI for your business, you’re going to be caught out.” And it doesn’t mean, especially in a medical sense, that you should be expecting an AI tool to do medical diagnosis. No one should be trying to build a robot to hand a scalpel to and go out for lunch while they’re having surgery done.

But I was writing a proposal this morning for a client, and I had all my ideas, and I had all the things I wanted to say, and I could have sat there for a couple hours and formatted it and put it together. But instead, ChatGPT has written and seen all my other proposals that I’ve done. I fed it the bullet points of what I was looking at, and I said, “Prepare this with this thing, this context. Put these together.” Took that, put it into my own words, polished it then, and really sat down and made it exact, but I saved two to three hours of proposal time by doing that.

So I think within the veterinary clinics, we’ll see that as well. I think people should use what I call the gateway drug, which is AI scribing. So if you haven’t tried an AI scribe, you should. They all have a free trial, and it’s a wonderful way just to see what some of the capacity of large language models are.

Yeah. Such good points. Well, your current podcast, The Bird Bath, highlights breaking news in pet health. What are some of the most surprising or impactful stories you’ve uncovered so far, and what trends should pet owners and professionals be paying attention to?

Ooh, most impactful stories. The funny thing about doing… This is my first time doing a news podcast. I listen to the news a lot, which is what got me excited about it. But one thing that’s funny is you don’t get to make the news. So you kind of have to roll with the punches, and some weeks aren’t as busy as others, which add to an interesting place to be able to find those stories.

I’ve been really interested in following the activity and the acquisition of pet insurance brands. That’s something that I find pretty curious. I don’t have an answer of what exactly is going on, but there’s something there, and it’s something that… Keeping a pulse on that is really interesting. Obviously, I love when there’s a really large deal with a lot of zeros that happens, because it makes for fun headlines for people to see the amount of spend.

And the other trend, if someone were to just look for one maybe warning or thing to look out for that I think is happening that I don’t know if our industry, specifically the veterinary industry, has seen is the massive size, and control maybe is the right word, or maybe it’s the wrong word, but the influence, I guess, is the right word, that pet care has on vet care.

And if you haven’t sat down and really thought about the difference between pet care and vet care, it’s a really fun… If you’re nerdy like me, I guess fun in that sense, but it’s a fun exercise to really think about, where does pet care exist? Where does vet care exist? Pet care is 10 times the size of an industry that vet care is, and the vet care space is growing even faster than vet care.

And if you are on the veterinary side and you’re not actively engaging in the dialogue in the pet care space, you are setting yourselves up for a potential to be left behind, and you’re setting an opportunity where the conversations that are happening around nutrition or access to care or breeding, or anything that happens in pet care, is not going… They’re not asking for permission from vet care to do things. But if you work actively to participate in pet care, you do have a chance to have your voice heard, and influence and continue to hold that stellar position in animal health as a whole.

Yeah. Such good information. How would you encourage people to do that, people in the vet space, to really know what’s going on in pet care?

I know a great podcast that talks about it, self-plug, but there’s PETS+ magazine, which is an online publication. I think, following what Hill’s does, Hill’s does a really nice job of bridging those two worlds. If you follow the KC Animal Health Corridor and the things that they’re doing, they do an interesting job there, which also includes ag health or agtech, or anything to that space.

And I think when you see an article about food or a new startup around a mobile app for your dogs, don’t just breeze past it and say, “Oh, that doesn’t affect what I do in clinic,” because there was data, and I need to remember where the survey came from, but pet owners are currently… And someone can fact-check this, and we can put an asterisk on it later. Right? But pet owners, when surveyed, were more likely to check with an AI assistant about the potential issue with their pet before calling or scheduling an appointment with their veterinarian.

That is so interesting. How do you think that profession, I don’t know what the right word is, should deal with that?

Well, I think creating tools that put the veterinarian input into those sort of AI tools that the pet parent… We all had Dr. Google forever, and now we all have Dr. ChatGPT. So that’s never going to go away. But if you look at on the human side of things, the counterbalance to Dr. Google was WebMD. Right? “Hey, you can go here and get a bunch of articles, and someone might tell you to stick onions in your socks if you’re sick,” or you’ll go to WebMD, and it will tell you, “Hey, you might have some of these issues going on. Consult your doctor.” Right?

We need to be able to stay on top of that for animal health as well. So when you do see a company that’s coming out with a pet parent communication tool or an AI tool that gives guidance to pet owners, look at what is happening on the veterinary side of things. What’s their board look like? Who’s participating in that? And offer to participate in those sort of things.

It’s very similar, I think, the growth of what we’ve seen for fresh food delivery. There’s still a large number of fresh pet food delivery companies that don’t have a veterinary nutritionist on staff. They have either a veterinarian or a human nutritionist that consults with a veterinarian, but they don’t have a veterinarian nutritionist on staff, and that’s been a big push by a lot of people to say, “If you’re going to be making recommendations for pets, you need to have a veterinary nutritionist.”

And by doing that, we can hold these companies accountable for including and participating with it. What we shouldn’t do is just say, “Oh, they’re bad for animals. I would never recommend it.” Well, unfortunately, the pet owners aren’t coming to you for recommendations, because the Johnson Family Clinic isn’t running a Super Bowl ad.

If you need a veterinary nutritionist, you can come to me, and I’ll help you find one.

There you go.

But I’m still focused on thinking about the onions in the socks, because it never occurred to me to put onions in my socks when I was sick. So maybe there’s somebody out there that actually does that.

I will tell you, somebody… And they’re probably listening. I had a cough forever, and she was like, “You need to put onions in your socks.” And I was like, “That’s crazy talk.” And I googled it, and there were a lot of articles about putting onions in your socks if you’re sick.

Wow. Does it work?

I did not do it, but hey, if you did and it worked for you, good on you.

Never thought about that. Well, Ryan, your work with Galaxy Vets focused on improving workplace culture and preventing burnout. How big of an issue is burnout in veterinary medicine, which we know that’s a pretty big issue, and what solutions do you think are most effective?

Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge issue. It continues to be an issue. The thing that we were working on at Galaxy Vets, which Ivan and the team are still working on and pushing forward to bring to the market, they’re expanding in Canada and expanding in the U.S. again now. The things that we found in research on what causes burnout and what can help prevent burnout was, one is the difference between continuous education and continuous learning.

Veterinarians, I always like to ask them, any vet that I talk to, “When did you decide you wanted to be a vet?” And as we all know, it’s so common for them to say, “I was six,” or “I was three,” or “I was two.” And that was a goal that people worked towards for decades. And if they then graduate from school and go into a clinic, and it’s, “Here’s a syringe. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine.” And they’re going, “I’m not practicing medicine. I’m just doing rote work.”

I think we found, through some of the surveys that we did, through the burnout surveys that we did, that that lack of challenge can be very demoralizing and can cause burnout. So creating opportunities to medically challenge your doctors is a big one. So for Galaxy Vets, we were looking at the opportunity to do load management to allow veterinarians to work in a surgical center one day a week or something to that effect where they could really practice medicine.

And if you think of cooking at home, I’ve got two little girls, we don’t cook the most interesting stuff anymore. I love cooking. We don’t cook the most interesting things. Right? Chicken fingers are not that exciting to cook in the air fryer, and that can sort of kill your passion for something that you really enjoy. Still cooking and making food and whatever, but then if I have that time where my girls are out of the house or my wife is like, “Hey, I’ve got this interesting piece of food,” or “I saw this recipe that was interesting,” and you’re really going to get into it and experiment and taste different things and try different things, and that can reignite that passion for you.

And I think it’s the same thing for people that are practicing medicine. If they get to see a unique procedure or learn something new and not just do a CE course where they sit down and someone talks to them, and they’re just counting the hours off, I mean, everyone’s seen it at a conference. Someone that’s in one and logged into another one virtually on their phone now, and they’re, “I got four hours and 14 minutes.” And you’re going, “Yeah. Great. You didn’t learn anything.”

So I think that’s a big thing. Plus, I think the flexibility of giving people where they can work is big. We’ve saw a rise in relief DVMs in the past year. We’ve seen that people, especially younger generations… I’m no longer young, sadly. I’ve recently come to that realization, but I still think of myself as young, and I like working all different places. I work from home, but I like going to the coffee shop. I like sitting in bed maybe in the afternoon and working on my computer.

People want to be able to have flexibility to do these different things, or to go to the kids’ soccer games. And if you can provide that flexibility with telemedicine or allowing cloud computing software so that they can head home early in the afternoon and do their notes, hopefully they’re using an AI scribe, but do follow-ups and things like that from home, because they wanted to get home and see their kids earlier. I think those are the ways we can help tackle burnout.

We just launched The VET Recruiter Relief, because our clients and candidates were asking for it. So we just launched that this year.

Yeah.

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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 U.S. Ready to take the next step? Visit thevetrecruiter.com today. That’s thevetrecruiter.com. And now, let’s get back into the episode. Well, Ryan, with advancements in telemedicine, AI-driven diagnostics, and pet insurance models, where do you see the future of veterinary care heading in the next, say, five to 10 years?

What I like to look at is the European market, specifically the UK. So if you want, my crystal ball is British, and I think that’s where we can see what some of the things that have happened overseas are what we… If you look at eight years ago in the U.S., that’s what was going on today in the UK. You know what I mean. We’ll figure it out.

The UK is ahead, I believe, on where they’re going in veterinary medicine. And so, that’s a thing that you can look at. Now, the one thing that I don’t think that will be a crystal ball is pet insurance. I think there’s a fundamental flaw in the way that pet insurance policies are written in the U.S. that will keep them from being able to grow their property policies as opposed to health insurance policies, and that could be an entire podcast for several hours that we could dig into.

I do think we’re going to continue to see consolidation of practices. We saw the merger of MVP and SVP to make one of the second-largest or third-largest groups in the U.S., and one of the largest ones in the world now. I think we’ll continue to see groups buying other groups or merging with other groups to create larger consolidation groups, because it financially just makes sense. If you can have one CEO instead of two CEOs, you save yourself a good amount of money.

So I think we’ll see that. I do think that the younger generation and the newer DVMs are going to be embracing technology at a much higher pace. They didn’t get one computer, and that was the computer that they’ve had for their entire lives. They’re used to these things being cyclical and updating things and looking at new things.

And there’s going to be a large, and already has been a large generation of DVMs that are retiring, that were practice owners, that were the decision-makers in a lot of these practices that are now going to be handing that over to either a corporate group or a seasoned practice manager or a new associate DVM. So I think that’s where we’re going to start to see the time shifting.

If a new company wants to enter the veterinary space, whether in software, pet health, or services, what advice would you give them for successfully breaking into the market?

I would tell them to call me, because that’s my consulting business. So I’m happy to work with anyone that wants to come into the space and understand what’s going on. And I think the advice, I’ll break it into a few factors. One is that the United States veterinary market is extremely close-knit. It’s a massive, massive industry, but the degree of separation across the space is two to three people. It’s like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in animal health. It’s three degrees of Mars, probably.

And so, it’s extremely important when you enter the U.S. veterinary market to be a sponge and to be open to participation in the space and not overly bullish on, “Well, this is what we did in dental,” or “We know what we’re doing,” because I did that, and I got my teeth kicked in by front desk staff at vet clinics. And so, I do think that the willingness to learn and understand the compassion that drives the vet space is a key factor for long-term success for a company.

The other thing, I think, is that you do need to think outside the box a bit. If it’s a software company, there’s a massive stranglehold on the data that’s held within practices through practice management software, and understanding either how to create a narrative that’s engaging for a PIMS to want to work with your solution or an engaging way to grow your business without that PIMS data are two big ways that software companies need to tackle that.

And also, talk to a lot of pet owners. Talk to a lot of vets. Don’t just think that because you had a bad experience or a different experience at your one vet, or your cousin has a cat and said that they had something happen, that that’s going to build an entire company for you, because people have been tackling a lot of these issues for an extended period of time.

So one of the things… I mean, it’s not my favorite part of the day, but I do sit down with some new startups and look at the product and go, “Here’s six other companies that you need to google and look up.” And a lot of them haven’t heard of their primary competitor, because they didn’t look at the space in the depth that that’s designed.

They didn’t do the research.

Yeah. And it’s because a lot of companies that are in the animal health space, especially that sell to vet clinics, are very, very targeted in their marketing in the sense that an average consumer is not going to run across an ad for yourself. Right? You don’t want Bob from down the street to get an ad to be a tech at a clinic, because that’s not your target demo.

And so, a lot of people go, “Oh, well, I have a dog, and my clinic doesn’t offer a way to text directly with the veterinarian. I should create a company for that.” And you’re going, “That’s here.” And someone can do it better. There’s room to improve it. But if you haven’t looked at PetDesk, PetsApp, all the native solutions, Weave, everybody else, you’re going to be really surprised when you go to your first conference.

Yeah. That’s so true. Well, Ryan, what has been the most surprising thing to you so far during your career in the veterinary profession?

I think one of my favorite… I don’t know. The most surprising thing… It’s a great question. I do love how close-knit the community is, because I do think that people that come into and stay in veterinary medicine for an extended period of time are just wonderful, wonderful people. I think of Bob Lester a lot, because I was talking with Bob one day at a conference, and I was like, “Oh, what did do you bring?” He goes, “I mean, I’m just here to see my friends.” Right?

And it’s funny, because now after seven years of doing it, it’s like, “Yeah. I enjoy going and seeing my friends and seeing people that I genuinely enjoy spending time with.” And my first job out of college was selling used cars. And for anyone that was my coworker there, I like some of you. But mostly, we were just competitors with each other, even at the same company.

And it’s really refreshing to be able… I think about the Veterinary Innovation Summit, VIS, in Kansas City when I was working for Digitail. I was sitting in a session, and I was sitting there with Digitail as the company I worked for, and I was sitting next to Caleb Frankel, who’s the founder of Instinct, and Conor Guptill was at Shepherd at the time, and Sam Kaplan from Provet was sitting there.

So it was four PIMS that were all competitors, but we were all sitting on the same row together, listening to someone talk about a topic, and we were going, “Do you guys do that?” “Oh, yeah, I do that. Yeah.” And we were all competitors, and we all went back and took something different from that, but I really loved that camaraderie of wanting to improve the overall goal of providing high-quality care for animals.

Yeah. That’s so good. Well, what are some things that you’ve seen change in the profession during the time you’ve been involved?

Obviously, growth of additional consolidation. I was lucky to see some of the pre-consolidation of Banfield clinics when they were switching from in PetSmart to freestanding locations, and I just thought, “What’s going on here?” And this was as I was just beginning in the space and seeing that that has grown. I think that’s been really interesting to see the scale of who is still doing it, who’s doing it well.

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s been really interesting. I always like seeing the new medical breakthroughs. I have been really enjoying following what Loyal is doing with their antiaging. I know that’s not going to be the right legal term, and they’d probably flag me for calling it antiaging, but what Loyal is doing for quality of life and longevity for animals and for canines is really cool to see. Yeah. And there are so many smart people doing really, really smart things that it’s just fun to see what they’re doing.

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

It’s got a little jagged line in it, and it can either be a spectacular one if you want optimistic, great crystal ball, or there’s one that’s really cloudy and not as much fun, and I’ll give you both of them. One, I think that the generation of pet owners that the millennial and Gen X and Gen Z pet owners that are coming up and having more animals and having them longer are continuing the humanization of their animals. They’re continuing to spend on their animals.

I would never think to leave my dogs outside overnight, which was a very common idea for previous generations of pet owners, and I think that care for and growth of the human-animal bond is just going to get stronger as people are waiting longer to have kids, as there’s continuous fractures in our society. I think the ability to hug your dog always has a special place and continues to be really special for people. So I think that’s a great spot.

The cloudy side of it is that the increased utilization of e-commerce, online platforms, on demand, now, now, now, that we’re seeing for so many services, that I’m upset when I go to order something on Amazon, and it’s not there same day or next day. And if we don’t grab that by the horns and really stay on top of it as a veterinary industry, we will find that veterinarians are a necessary check mark to get what pet care is requiring to deliver what they want.

I was very disappointed a week ago when Amazon didn’t have my brand of dental floss.

I know. What are they doing? Right? I was disappointed that they didn’t have a… I ordered a thing to hang a swing in my front yard. Sure, it’s been sitting in my garage for two months, and I finally got around to wanting to do it, but they delayed it till the afternoon, and I was like, “No, I was going to do that in the morning.” But yeah, it’s like we’re getting very demanding. And I’m not saying that vets need to be 24/7 on call, but we need to give opportunities for pet owners to reach a licensed, qualified expert in a way that is scalable and sustainable.

Well, I always order my dental floss on Amazon, and they didn’t have it last week. So I found it on Walmart.com. So I went there and ordered it instead. So I don’t know what Amazon is doing there.

Apparel. It’s a tough life. There are champagne problems in Tulsa.

That’s right. Well, so now I want to pivot, because this podcast, we’re talking to people that are successful, people that are doing interesting things, innovators, and all successful people have habits that help lead to success. So, Ryan, what are a few of your daily habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success throughout your career?

I read every animal health news story every single day. So that’s one thing that I do, and that’s why I started the podcast, because I would give that advice to people, and they would say, “That’s unreasonable to do.” So that’s why I started the podcast. So I just try to filter out the important ones for people. But I do read a massive amount of press releases and news, because the things that surprise people were in a press release six months ago. So I think that’s really important.

I should have more good habits. I drink way too much coffee, which maybe comes through when I do a podcast. I don’t know if it’s a habit, but it’s something that I’m very diligent about, is that I will always get on a video call or a Zoom call, or go have coffee with anybody that wants to, because I really do think that… There was an entrepreneur that I knew that he said that good entrepreneurs should be switchboards, and they should just be connecting people and putting people in touch with each other.

And so, I’ve really taken that to heart. When I worked with private plane companies, if there was someone that said, “Hey, I want to learn more about private planes,” I’m like, “Great.” If I can’t answer your questions for you, I will connect you with one of my friends that can. And I think that I don’t go into that with the intention of it being like, “Okay. Well, this person knows someone else that I need to know.” But just, I enjoy it, and I think it’s a good way to help others be successful, which ultimately leads to a successful industry, which grows things in general, and I think maybe that’s probably a habit that I really like to stay on top of.

Relationships are so important, especially in this industry. Well, Ryan, you’re still young. I know you mentioned you’re getting older. You’re younger than I am.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Happy birthday one day early.

Thank you.

What has been the biggest adversity that you’ve had to fight through up to this point during your career?

Oh, there’s a couple things. So on a personal side of things, my wife and I tried to have our daughters for several years, and went through every single possible fertility thing in the entire world. And so, it’s probably not something that a lot of husbands pull out, but there’s not many resources for men to be able to talk about the impact that trying to have kids has on themselves, emotionally and for your family and everything like that. So that was a big thing.

Luckily, we’re so fortunate now we have our two daughters, one that we had with a surrogate, one that my wife was able to carry. And so, I have my daughter. But, I mean, that’s an extremely trying time that’s consistently really challenged a lot of things. And then I think professionally, it’s one of the reasons why I do consulting. I have a very tough time seeing something that’s not efficient or running well and keeping my mouth shut, which anyone that knows me probably would say that they’ve seen that happen with me.

And so, I’ve done a lot of different jobs, and I’ve worked at a lot of different places, and I’ve always found that that’s why I love consulting. I guess maybe it’s the summary. Right? People bring me in, and my job is to help them find things that aren’t going right or going well, and point it out, and harp on it, and try to come up with solutions, and figure out ways to improve things.

And then if I see that something is wrong with the marketing department, looking at that, or seeing if the software is not loading quick, bring those sort of things up. And so, that’s probably professionally one of the bigger struggles, was finding the right fit for how my brain works and how I view things that could be long-term and beneficial. And so, yeah, those are the two answers.

Now people are paying you to listen to what you have to say.

Yeah. Yeah, versus saying, “Okay. Just quiet down. Go into your own Slack channel. Leave us alone.”

What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

The younger version of myself. Well, I would buy Amazon stock, but the other thing I would probably say is I probably would have gotten into startups earlier. I think I probably would have encouraged myself to… So this is a tangent story, but I’m 6’2″ maybe, 6’3″. I was this height when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve always been tall, and I played basketball.

When you’re tall as a kid and you play basketball, they just make you the center, and they never teach you to dribble or pass or shoot or anything like that. They just tell you, “Get the ball. Put it back in there. Rebound, put it back in there.” When you stop being the tallest and you end up being a point guard height, you don’t know how to shoot or dribble or do any of those other things. And so, I think when you’re really good at something, people will pigeonhole you into being that person.

This sounds braggadocious, but I’m very good at sales. And so, for a lot of times, I did sales careers and sales jobs and just sold things. And I think that had I looked at it when I was younger, I would have forced myself into operational roles, learned more of those type of things that happened to allow there to be a broader breadth of knowledge to be able to come in sooner so that I could see the bigger picture faster.

Yeah. No, that’s good. What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone?

People care a lot less about you than you do.

That’s good advice.

I mean, you could say it other ways. For business, no one cares about your business as much as you do, or for having coffee spilled on your shirt. No one cares as much about that coffee on your shirt as you do. So once you sort of figure that stuff out, I think it makes it easier. I have to remind myself that for the podcast, like, “Gosh, I have a weird voice. All right. Whatever.” People care less about that than I do, and just move on and keep going with it.

I’ve always said you have a radio voice.

I have a face for radio. I don’t know about the voice, though.

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

I like to read, but I don’t like to read business books too much. I like to read murder mysteries. And we can go down a whole murder mystery rabbit hole if you want, but I do a lot of learning through YouTube and short-form reading. So I think things that I would look at is like Marques Brownlee, is a YouTuber who talks about technology. He’s got a really approachable view of looking at different things in that sense.

Yeah. And I think instead of a book, I think it would just be the idea of like, “If you want to learn something, you can go on YouTube and learn it.” And so, that’s what I did. My wife and I renovated a house, and I had a leaky pipe somewhere, and I was like, “Okay. Well, just go on YouTube and type in the words.” And I think that’s probably what I’d recommend to people, that you can teach yourself pretty much anything.

My son learned how to vacuum from a YouTube video. I asked him to vacuum the house, and I noticed that he was not going to the very edge of the carpet right when it hits the tile, and I said, “Why are you stopping before it hits the tile?” And he said, “Because when I watched the video on YouTube on how to vacuum, that’s what they said to do.” I said, “I’ve been vacuuming for many years. I never knew that.”

There you go. And see, I can’t vacuum. I’m not good at cleaning. So I guess that’s the other advice I would give. If you’re not really good at something, outsource it.

Yes. And I have outsourced that now for a number of years, because I don’t have time. Well, Ryan, 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?

I would love for everyone to listen to my podcast. Obviously, if you’re listening to this, you probably like podcasts. So The Bird Bath, I come out with an episode every Tuesday morning. We’ve never missed a Tuesday. So every single week, I’ll bring you the top stories in the animal health space in less than 15 minutes. And then if you’re looking to better understand some of the things you hear on the podcast or understand trends, or elevate what your business is doing, you can always find me on any platform. I’m not hard to find, and I love working with people in the consulting business to try and drive them forward, or if you just want have coffee or chat, just send me a message, and I’m always happy to connect with people.

If you listen to Ryan’s podcast, you don’t have to read all of those many articles, because he reads them for you, and he consolidates them into about 15 minutes. That’ll save you tremendous time.

Yeah. Well, thanks, Stacy. Yeah. I love doing it. So that’s the bottom line for me.

Well, thank you for being here. It’s good to see you, and I’ll look forward to seeing you at the next conference.

You know it. And thank you for having me, and I will see you, and congratulations on the launch of your new platform.

The VET Recruiter Relief, and we also have a new job board called Vetevate.

Yes. Congratulations on Vetevate. I’m very excited to see that.

Thank you. Thanks for coming to our launch party in January with the party llamas. Did you have a good time?

Oh, I had a great time. Whenever Stacy invites you to a party, go. She has llamas. She has fire-breathers. She has tacos. She’s got everything. So go.

We had a great time.

It was great. Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for having me on the show. It’s always great connecting.

Well, the thing about Vetevate is that it allows practices to be able to showcase themselves through video and in photos versus just a dry listing with words. So we launched that this year, and I’m very happy that you were a part of our party, and then we might do another party this summer. So if we do that-

I’ll be there.

… you’ll have an invitation.

All right, Stacy. Well, thanks for having, me and have a great rest of the day.

It was a lot of fun. Thank you, Ryan.

Bye.