Episode #81 — Dr. Vernard Hodges

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The Vet Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers.

The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. Today, I am excited to welcome Dr. Vernard Hodges, who is a veterinarian, entrepreneur, author, and community leader, a graduate of Fort Valley State University and the Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Hodges practices veterinary medicine on everything from Koi to camels at Critter Fixer Veterinary Hospital in Bonaire, Georgia. He’s also the co-star of Critter Fixers, Country Vets on National Geographic Wild and Disney Plus. Beyond Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Hodges is a ranter, real estate investor, bestselling author and founder of initiatives dedicated to education, ownership and expanding opportunity within veterinary medicine and beyond.

Dr. Hodges, I’m so excited to welcome you and have you here as my guest on the People of Animal Health Podcast today. And how are you today?

I’m fantastic and super happy to be here.

Well, Dr. Hodges, let’s start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Grew up in rural Georgia. When I say rural, it is rural. Oftentimes when people think of Georgia, they think of Atlanta. I probably grew up about an hour and a half south of Atlanta. One of those red clay Georgia dirt roads that you often hear about. I always had a love of animals, especially fish. I lived, I would say maybe close, well, let’s just say close enough to ride my bicycle to the local Flint River. So I would go down to the Flint and collect turtles and all kinds of things. And I’ve just always been drawn to animals, especially aquatics.

Well, when and why, or at what point did you decide to become a veterinarian? What led up to this decision?

So I always liked the aquatics. I enrolled in a local college of Fort Valley State and majored in fisheries, biology, and the hope of being the next Jacques Cousteau. But as I started to look at my path and look at the things I wanted to do, I had the option of possibly pursuing, I interned at SeaWorld and some other things, and I was possibly thinking of going aquatic route. But then I was like, I think I like doing stuff with all animals. I always love making animals better. So I was like, maybe I’ll be a veterinarian, I can be a fish doctor and do other things.

So veterinary medicine has been amazing and it gives me the chance to do the best of both world. I get to do surgery on fish, Koi, you name it. I’ve done on surgery on all types of fish, as well as Moray eel. But veterinary medicine has been amazing and I love working on all animals.

Well, your career spans everything from Koi fish to camels. Was there a moment early on when you realized veterinary medicine could be this expansive or did that vision evolve over time?

I didn’t know it was as expansive as it is. Like I say, growing up in rural Georgia, oftentimes you are exposed to dogs and cats. You read about possibly working on fish and camels, but who would’ve ever thought there was a camel in Georgia? So it’s kind of expanded over time. There was a time I had no clue what an axolotl was, never seen a one and never heard one. But I’ve done surgery on many axolotls and treated them. So it’s kind of been a mission that has evolved over time.

Critter Fixer Veterinary Hospital has become both a community staple and a national brand. What do you think made your practice stand out enough to catch the attention of National Geographic?

We do a lot of talks with kids and adults across the world. And one thing I always tell them, do the right thing when no one is looking. I had no clue, idea, or plans to ever be on anybody’s TV screen. So when they reached out, it definitely caught me off guard. But the thing is, you just always have to do the best you can. I mean, we all have not great outcomes, we all have different things, but it’s how you handle them. We all face adversity as veterinarians as humans, but it’s how you handle that adversity and how you treat people. And I guess they kind of from afar watched and just looked at socials and kind of watched how I treated, interacted, and the rest is history.

Critter Fixers: Country Vets has now aired five seasons. How has being on television changed your day-to-day work as a veterinarian, if at all?

It definitely has changed. We get people calling from around the world, and emails from around the world, we’re in 73 countries. So I was at a meeting at VMX and this lady walks up and she say, “I watch you in Israel.” And then I had another one say, “I watch you in Dubai.” And it kind of catches me off guard, but you get opportunities and different things and a chance to interact with other people. But at the end of the day, I’m still just a Georgia country boy. So it all comes back to the roots.

You often describe yourself as a Renaissance man, balancing veterinary medicine, ranching, real estate, and media. How do you decide when to go all in on a new venture versus staying focused on what you’re already building?

Great question. As I look back over this 25 plus year career, obviously you do what you love and veterinary medicine and animals and people are something I love. However, you don’t know success is coming. I mean, there were some lean years where I was worried about keeping the lights on. And as I started matriculate and looked, I often would find myself learning about different fields, different traits, different ways to change my socioeconomics, because for a better word, I was poor. How can I change my socioeconomics?

So I kind of started dabbling in real estate. One of the things I’ve often heard, I didn’t have an uncle or aunt or anybody or mom or dad who could say, “Real estate is the way to go.” I just would read. And initially I would go down to Books-A-Million and I didn’t have really a lot of extra money. So I would just go in there, have me a cup of coffee and read and learn those different things. So that’s where the real estate book kind of started.

As we kind of got a little bit further in our career, we would always go out to people’s ranches. I was always noticing, it was a dream. Man, it would be great. Besides going out to treat these animals on someone else’s ranch, maybe I can one day have a ranch. I didn’t even think it was possible 20 years ago, but as things kind of progressed, we had an opportunity to buy 250 acre ranch in a county over. And it was, okay, we can raise our own cows.

So dabbling into different things, I won’t say it came natural, but I think it almost came out of necessity. I didn’t know what it meant to have multiple streams of income, I had no clue. I thought you got a job, you went to work, you got paid. But as it turned out, I was just kind of hedging my bets. I loved animals, I wanted to farm, I wanted real estate, and I wanted to write a book and tell my story. So it kind of became learning about multiple streams of income without even knowing what I was doing. It was just more, hey, the old folks used to say, “Don’t ever put your eggs in one basket,” and that’s kind of what I was doing.

That’s what my mother used to say when I was growing up, don’t put your eggs in one basket. Well, the Critter Fixer cattle company and your real estate portfolio are major businesses in their own right. What lessons from veterinary medicine carried over into ranching and real estate?

Definitely with ranching. I mean, as I’ve increased my medical skills with cows and my business acumen, you look at the needs and the necessity. As we started ranching and doing different things, today when you go to the grocery store, meat, it has definitely increased in prices. Now, I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a magic ball and didn’t know that steak prices and beef prices would go through the roof. It kind of was the perfect storm. But just kind of putting myself in that situation to start a cow calf herd, and then as we kind of got more cows and we have and are still benefiting from the increased prices. So it’s definitely taking the business acumen and applying across. It’s no different from when you talk to your local drug rep. You definitely want to buy as low and buy that right amount and do that.

As far as the real estate, time is the key. And I tell people oftentimes, they’ll ask me like, “Man, how many doors do you have?” And I have over 200 doors. And I was like, I bought one, I bought a house and I was like, “Okay, let me learn about single family houses. Let me learn how to buy a house and rent it.” I had no clue. All I knew I had red books, but I know that there were opportunities. I think I bought my first house maybe 20, 21 years ago. As I got a little bit better, maybe I bought three or four. And then just like business here, when you first start, maybe you’re going to have two employees and then as you experience some success, you look up and you got eight. And then I think we got 50 here now.

But same things as scaling in real estate. Then I bought a duplex. Then I bought my first multifamily, which was 14 units, which needed a total remodel. And so the same way you learn how to spray a dog, you’re like, “Okay, I’ve done my first spay.” But then you’ve done it and you do some other things and you get faster, your time goes on. Same thing, when you buy 14, obviously you multiply your rental portfolio, but this place needed remodeling. I had never bought 28 and installed 28 toilets. So as you go into your vendors, you’re like, “Okay, I need 28 toilets because I need two for each one.” So you learn those things, a little different from changing one.

And so as you kind of learn and veterinary medicine, get faster at that space, same thing in real estate, you take those experiences and you learn how to multiply and it usually works out if you work hard.

That makes so much sense. Well, your book, Bet On Yourself: From Zero to Millions clearly resonates with readers. What was the hardest personal lesson you had to learn before that title truly became real for you?

Sometimes I often tell my young daughters, the big thing is you don’t know what you don’t know. As I dabbled in different things, I became pretty successful at real estate. Obviously the hospital was growing. So I mean, I read the books and I got caught in that dot-com bubble. So you start investing, you start taking the profits from one place and you put it in another. And everything at that time was saying, throw it all in the stock market. That is one of my biggest, I am glad it happened. That’s one of the few things that kept me up at night. It hurt, it was scary. Thought I’d never recovered from it.

Everything I pretty much had earned in business and in real estate, I put it all in the stock market and I thought I was killing it right before the dot-com bubble. Literally, you could have taken a dart and thrown it at any company and it was going up. I thought I was a genius. I thought this would last forever, not having any experience in the market. I just thought, man, this is easy money, like taking candy from a baby.

And then when it popped, it popped. And not having the experience, I wasn’t smart enough to sell. I thought everything would go back up and it didn’t. And one of the biggest things, a lot of the dot-com companies went bust, which means I lost everything. I can remember going from a seven-figure margin account down to figuring out how I was going to pay back almost 100K. And this was losing and betting and then margin. So margin, if you don’t know, is when you borrow money to sell stocks. And when it goes to zero, you lose it all. So I lost it all and then some. So I had to figure out, work out a plan to pay them back. And so I was starting, here I was maybe eight, nine years in my career thinking I knew it all, I ended up starting from below zero. And that was tough.

So that taught me listen, I don’t know it all, be smart enough to invest in things you know about. So that’s why I kind of went heavy into real estate, because I knew it. I could touch it. I can tangibly kind of watch as the areas, because I usually invest locally, so I could watch some of the things locally and not have somebody in the boardroom making decisions that changed my life in a very, very bad way.

Well, through your foundation, you emphasize multiple streams of income as a solution to socioeconomic disparity. Why do you think this message is especially important for young people to hear early?

Oftentimes, and I get it, our parents kind of say, “Okay, go to school, get a good job.” And I noticed that with a lot of young veterinarians now, I mean, it’s almost like private ownership is not reachable. Maybe I was too naive to not figure that out, but most of them have no desire or don’t have a clue. And also young people, when they have these impressionable minds, being an entrepreneur, you get to really celebrate the wins. Meaning there are some losses and you can possibly lose as an entrepreneur because you’re betting on yourself. But if you really believe in yourself and you believe in doing the right thing when no one’s looking and you build the best widget you can, somebody out there will buy it. So I just feel like just imparting this that is possible, it is very possible.

I mean, oftentimes, and I know somebody who was doing the simple things, we all have eaten McDonald’s and McDonald’s, whether you like it or not, it is a franchise that has done well, and they now own a franchise. They started as a manager and it’s like, okay. And I’ve also seen a lot of success story where you’re talking to these kids like, “Look, you can own it. Just give it a try. What’s the worst thing can happen? You can always go back and get a job.”

And a lot of kids I talk to are from a similar background as myself, so they don’t have that person to reach out or explain that entrepreneurship can get them where they want to go in life and change not only their lives, but change their family’s lives. So that’s one message I’d like to pass worldwide.

That’s good. Well, the Vet For A Day program has grown from a local initiative to a nationwide effort. What’s one story from a student that really affirmed you were on the right path?

We were probably in year four or five with Vet For A Day, I’ll start early when kids who wanted to be me, they got a chance to meet me, to learn, to actually learn suture, learn how to do blood work, learn how to do different things. And you look in those kids’ eyes and they’re looking at you like you’re somebody special. And you remember the same kid that would sit on the stoop on that red clay road and like dream. You know what I’m saying? You dream of one day just being able to make animals better or do different things. And you see that dream in these kids eyes, man, you don’t see it until you really see it.

And then now that this program is five years we’ve been in it and I literally get kids from all across the country saying, now they’re in school. Now they’re living their dream. They’re applying to veterinary school, they’re doing different things. So those things tells me that we’re definitely on the right path.

With the launch of Vetopia, you’re promoting ownership within the veterinary community. Why is ownership such a critical piece of long-term success for veterinarians today?

You know, I can remember sitting down at my school at Skegee, we called them my bursar. I can remember sitting down with the bursar at the end, my last semester and the lady telling me I owed roughly 50K for my undergrad and veterinary education. I remember looking at her like, “Lord, how am I going to ever pay this back?” And as I have students through here, they’re always telling me how. I had no idea, and these educations can be $300,000, $400,000. And they’re trying to figure out how in the world are they going to pay theirselves back. They’re trying to claw for every penny to get a little bit higher salaries. And again, I commend them, employing at this point, probably 15 veterinarians across my practices. I definitely commend them. I get it, I understand. I feel their pain.

That’s why it’s so important to partner and own, because you do get to feel or do well with your success by being an owner. Because it’s no different from the corner store, from the tire store, from Starbucks or whatever business you’re talking about, if your business does well and makes a profit, you keep that profit as an owner or your percentage. That has a life changing ability to change your socioeconomic status. So that’s why I definitely like kids going for a great salary, but I think if you go for ownership, that is a huge thing and that is a life changing thing.

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Why do you think there are so many veterinarians that shy away from ownership?

I think it’s cost prohibitive in their minds. I mean, even as I look at how we started, I mean, we could start with the building, with the dirt, with equipment, easily 200,000. It cost less than what the medium house. I think I remember reading a few weeks ago that I think across America, maybe the median housing maybe is like 346,000 or something like that. And I can remember saying to myself, “Man, I started a whole vet clinic, a whole business clinic for less than that.” And I think that is the thing. Sometimes I read some of the magazines and they have these gorgeous hospitals and those things are millions and millions of dollars.

So I think that is what startles a lot of people. Most banks won’t give you millions and millions of dollars, and most people don’t independently have it, but we started a little paint shop. We started with used equipment, we used our brains, the hard work, and we made it a go. And to be able to go to now we have 15,000 square feet, we have ultrasounds and echocardiograms and all.

But I think in today’s world, people are scared to start slow. People are scared to go rent that little space, put a shingle out and bet on themselves and just believe that they’ll grow into that. Everybody want to start at the top and get these big places with MRI. I mean, that’s just not feasible. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I know oftentimes kids see it in the schools and think, “Man, I got to have all these kind of equipment.” I mean, yes, you do need some equipment. Yes, you do need x-rays. Yes, you do need some of these things. But nothing wrong with starting with something used, nothing wrong with starting in a smaller place and building up. And that’s one of the things I wish we had more teaching like, look, let’s start here and we can, and then you’ll graduate. And then one day you’ll be able to control your own destiny, your own future.

That’s good. Between business service, TV, and family, life is clearly full. When you’re watching sports with your son or hanging out with your dogs, what helps you truly unplug and what’s next that still excites you?

Great question. I love sports. I mean, that’s one of my things. That’s one of my vices. Sports, football, basketball, baseball. I mean, I guess I always loved that. And then the kid, as I reflect, I never told him to become a veterinarian. I guess, like I said, it’s another thing where you never know who’s watching. And he came home one day and was like, we have show and tell and I still have the picture. Maybe he was eight, seven, and he wanted to dress up as a veterinarian. I said, okay. I still didn’t push. I’m still at that time building a business, never really paying that much attention to it, and he’s never wavered.

I’ve been very fortunate, good kid, a lot smarter than me. I’m super excited to say, and I won’t say which ones, so far he applied to six schools. We’re waiting to hear from one. He had got accepted to all five of the other. So he does have his options of which veterinarian school he’ll attend.

That’s awesome.

Yes, it’s very refreshing. Now paying for it, I guess I got to figure out how to pay for it next. But no, seriously, I’m super excited about that. I told him, and he always talk about “Dad, I admire you,” and he’ll say different things. But I have to say, I had never been to Europe. I always wanted to be, always talking about it. So he got on his own. I had no clue, he’s like, “Dad, I got accepted to the Royal Veterinary College in London for a summer program.” He’s like, “I just need lodging. They’ll take care of all this.” I was like, “Hey man, consider it done.”

So the cool thing about it is I was able to go to London and then we took a short train [inaudible 00:27:19] and checked it out all because of my son. So he’s the leader of that. So I probably wouldn’t have gone thus far, but I got a chance to follow him, see him, go to the school, meet the people, go to the Royal Veterinarian College that I read so much about and learned about, but I never probably would’ve had access or gone without him. I mean, watching him at this point, he’s the captain of the quiz both teams. He’s gone, I think they were second last year in the [inaudible 00:27:52] Challenge in Los Angeles. So watching him just brings me joy.

But my biggest thing is going over to my boat. That’s one of the things I have really gotten into. I saw people who were boating, I had no clue. I always wanted one, I always loved the water. Never thought I would get a place to go and have a boat. So that is my simple pleasure. Me and my dogs would get out there. Sometimes every now and then, I can get my mom out there and we would just ride through and let the breeze blow. So that’s my therapy.

I love that. My daughter dressed as a veterinarian for Halloween when she was two or three, still have a picture of her. And she works in the industry as well. She’s not a veterinarian, but she works in our industry.

I love it.

What has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

And again, sometimes as I’ve done this, a little over two decades, I think about I never had the cognitive dysfunction talk with people. And by that I’m saying, people say, “Doc, my dog goes out and just stare. Or my dog goes in the corner and stare.” Or the different things that cognitive disease is basically senility. And as I start talking and thinking like, “Man, I never really had this talk in my early veterinarian career.”

So I’ve been able to experience in my veterinary career the lab that we had that would come in that would have the hip dysplasia, we didn’t have the anti-inflammatories we had today. So unfortunately, those kind of things became a death sentence. We couldn’t keep them alive. Or the treatment of pancreatitis or a lot of the heart disease. I remember first time getting pimobendan from Canada because we couldn’t get it here and those kind of heart diseases and different meds. So now, we’re keeping dogs alive long enough that they are starting to get the senility and cognitive disfunction because they live a lot longer. And that’s in my short career. I mean, you can see the 15, 17-year-old pet.

So to be able to see the longevity and the expansion of life in my career of how we can keep animals alive due to technology has been definitely something I think about and see every day.

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

Future of the veterinary profession? I know a lot of people, the thing is visits. People are a little worried about visits going down or corporate America or different things. But I think the future of veterinary medicine is bright because we are letting some bright students in. I think schools are starting to realize that, I get it. We definitely need some super smart people to invent the next cancer drug, to work in research, to do those things. But we also need that kid who’s from rural America who will come back and treat the cows and the horses, or become a general practitioner of veterinary medicine and learn those skills. I mean, I think it’s bright, but I think people are realizing it’s not always about taking the smartest person who is willing to go into research, which I know we need those, but let’s find that person who’s at the general practitioner level or who’s willing to go and save the farms and the daily lives and do those different things, because all of those need great veterinarians.

So I think the future’s bright if we continue along that guideline.

And there’s so many options and opportunities throughout our profession. What are a few of your daily habits that you believe have helped you to achieve success along the way?

I think the biggest thing, especially now that we have this TV show and people kind of recognize me now, it’s really just not taking myself seriously. I’m really a jokester still. If people see me in the clinic, they say I’m joking or cracking jokes or doing some stuff. It’s just not taking life and things very serious. I think that is, and I know that may be cliche, but that is truly what I strive to be. Because I mean, even me, I have down days. Even though I’ve been fortunate enough to achieve some success and I’m super proud of my kid, there was a time when I couldn’t afford to go certain places. Now I can afford it, but now I’m just working on the time to get there.

So those are some of the things that I made a plan in 2025 to start really working a little bit more from my phone, meaning I have managers who manage different things, depending on them and empowering them to be able to be me. Because before, everything was in my brain, I think I’ve gotten a lot of them out of my brain and into structure. So having the structure is one of the biggest things that have really helped.

What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Advice I would give the younger version of myself was really simple. Hold on, everything is going to be okay. So every day, you just keep fighting and keep fighting and it’s going to be okay.

And what message or principle do you wish you could share or teach everyone listening today?

The message I would give is don’t be afraid to try new things. I mean, one of the things we didn’t talk about was, I have a veterinary hospital and I started here at Critter Fixers, and I’ll be honest, we boarded since the day. And we still will some, but your dog is going to be clean, your dog is going to be fed, your dog is going to go outside. We’ll pay attention as we can, but it’s not our primary focus. And I try to tell people, right? Over the years, [inaudible 00:34:33] man, there’s a market, there’s an opportunity, and there’s a need for luxury boarding where you can go and your dog can play.

So I opened probably about five miles from here, Camp Bow Wow, which is a luxury dog boarding facility. It is doing well. But it’s also a necessity. I mean, people go there, the dog plays, the dog goes outside. All they do is give it attention. The place is doing well and people love it. So those are the things you find and you do different, and it usually works out.

Well, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book that they read that really 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.

As I was reading, like I said, I would go to Books-A-Million, I could only afford what I could afford, and it wasn’t a lot. So I would go in there and read. And it’s been 20 plus years ago, and I think it’s a good book today, start with the concept, because there will be words and different things in books that you don’t understand. I had no idea what the Dow was. I had no idea where certain economic principles were. I just had no idea. I had no idea that something like a jobs report even existed. But something that gave me the concept of how things work was Rich Dad Poor Dad. That was my book that kind of said, okay.

Because one thing you got to do is learn how to think. No different from when you first learn to examine a dog. I mean, you get your system, you start at one end and go to the other. I don’t know if it’s tail to the head or head to the tail, but either way, you develop your system. You don’t just start in the middle. You start at one end, and for me, it’s head to tail. Then I’m looking at the eyes, then I’m looking in the ears, I’m looking in the mouth, and I’m looking down. Then I’m checking the lymph nodes, then I’m moving around and making my way. Then I’m checking the heart, but it’s a system.

So same thing with reading books and learning the socioeconomics or economics is get you a book that gives you a little foundation. Because again, if you jump to too heavy a book, it’s maybe a deterrent because you don’t quite understand and you hadn’t understood the concept. And for me, Rich Dad, Poor Dad helped me out.

I love that book. I’ve read that book and I’ve actually seen Robert Kiyosaki, the author of that book in person talking about his multiple books, Rich Dad Poor Dad and Building Wealth. Incredible, love the book. Well, Dr. Hodges, 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 want to say thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. But for people, I just want to, and this is one thing I try to preach, you just have to believe it’s possible. And sometimes we get in that way and think, no way I could do this. No way somebody on Good Morning America would want to hear what I say, or be on a Kelly Clarkson show, or Danny DeVito showing me pictures of his dog and asking different things. But it’s possible. If a kid who sat on the stoop on a red clay Georgia dirt road could win a Critics Choice Award for Vest Animal Show on TV, and I don’t say those things, I’m just saying that it is possible. I’ve lived it. I’ve dreamed it. I didn’t know, but it’s possible.

So just believe in your dreams and just know it’s possible. That’s what I would like to leave with people.

Well, Dr. Hodges, I always enjoy seeing you at the major veterinary conferences. I just saw you last week in Vegas at Western Vet Conference. It’s such a pleasure to have you today as my guest on the People of Animal Health Podcast. Thank you for being here with me today.

Thank you for having me.