Episode #89 – Dr. Karen Felsted

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how successful people got their start and what led them to where they are today? Hi, everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm specializing in the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter in the United States to focus exclusively on this space, building the first search firm dedicated to this unique niche. Over the past 28 plus years, I’ve developed relationships with many of the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast features the incredible individuals I’ve had the privilege to connect with throughout my career. In each episode, you’ll hear their stories, their career journeys, leadership lessons, and the impact they’ve made on the industry. With a wide range of expert guests, you’ll gain insights, inspiration, and ideas you can apply to your own career. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. On today’s show, I’m talking with Dr Karen Felsted. Dr. Karen Felsted is a veterinarian, CPA, and one of the veterinary profession’s leading voices in practice, economics, and strategy. Dr. Felsted is the president of Felsted Veterinary Consulting, where she advises practices and industry organizations on financial performance, valuation, and succession planning. Her career uniquely blends clinical practice, accounting and consulting, including leadership roles with the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues and experiences at Ernst & Young. She’s a frequent speaker and award-winning educator. Dr. Felsted has spent decades helping veterinary professionals navigate the business side of veterinary medicine. Karen, welcome onto the People of Animal Health Podcast, and how are you today?

Thank you so much for having me, I’m doing great. This was a fun idea, I was pleased to be invited. Like you said to me, who doesn’t like talking about themselves?

That’s right. I’m so excited to have you here, Karen. We have known each other for many years-

A long time. Yes.

A long time, like 20, 25 years, I don’t know how long it’s been. It’s been a while. But today, I’d love to start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up, and where did you grow up?

So I actually grew up mostly in Texas. I was born in Corpus Christi. We did move to California for a while, we lived in Mexico for a while. My dad was a geologist, so they moved around, then we were in different parts of Texas. And finally, when I hit the seventh grade, we ended up in the Dallas area. And so I largely grew up in nice middle-class suburbs of major cities. And went to high school here in Dallas, went to… My undergraduate degree is from UT Austin, I bounced around in degree programs there. I was in computer science for a while, I was in accounting for a while, I finally ended up with a marketing degree, and then moved into my professional career after that.

Well, when and why did you decide to become a veterinarian?

So actually, this was kind of a two-pronged thing, because I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian in high school. So there was a guy in our church who was a veterinarian, so he was like, “Hey, come on down to the practice, see what it’s like.” And I went down there, it was obviously some Saturday, and he was taking the little dewclaws off of these puppies. And it was this horrible experience because they cried, and they bled, and I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach. And I just was like, “I don’t think I can be a veterinarian.” And my family’s great. They would’ve supported me in anything I want to do, but we don’t have any medical people in our family. And so nobody said, “Hey, Karen, it’s okay. You’ll get over feeling nauseous,” whatever. So I kind of gave up on the veterinarian idea at that time, went to college, like I said, I bounced around a little bit, but was focused on business.

I got a marketing degree, thought I wanted to be in marketing, but in the travel industry when I got out, and I pursued that for a few years, but didn’t see it happening. And then I ended up in accounting, which I had taken in college, but didn’t get a degree in. And so worked in accounting for six or seven years, got a master’s in accounting. And then I was like, “Hey, wait a minute, what about that old dream of being a veterinarian?” And so in my early 30s, I went back to vet school, Texas A&M, and that’s what started this whole second career, if you will.

Wow, that’s so interesting. And you have such a rare combination of credentials, including a DVM, CPA, CVPM, and a master’s in management. What originally led you to combine veterinary medicine with accounting and business strategy?

I originally thought… after I went to vet school and then I started working in practice, I originally thought I’d own a practice, and that that would be my combination of business with medicine. On the side when I was practicing medicine, I was doing some consulting work for… actually, both for the practice that I originally worked at, but also for some others as well, and then at some point, I fell and broke my arm. And so this was, I don’t know, three or four years into practicing medicine. And I hit a point where… So I broke my right arm, I’m right-handed, I had to take some time off of practicing medicine because I couldn’t do it with my arm. I had also hit a point where it was getting too hard to stay up to date, both with medicine and with business and accounting. And so at that point, I decided just to go down the financial road. And I never did tax accounting for practices, that was never my thing, but most of the consulting I did was financially oriented.

Well, before launching Felsted Veterinary Consulting, you practice small animal and emergency medicine. How did your clinical experience shape the way you approach consulting with veterinary practices today?

I think the biggest thing I got out of it is… and there’s a lot of basic business issues in veterinary medicine that are no different in practices than they are in a hardware store, but how we run our businesses is different than how a hardware store is run, or an ice cream shop, or anything else like that. So I felt like… and even though technology’s moved on and some things have changed, I really do understand what it’s like working in a practice, what practice operations look like, what the major issues are there. And when I saw this question of yours, it actually made me think of an example. So there was a big consulting firm that was hired to do a project for a very, very large veterinary practice, and the veterinary practice decided that they wanted a subject matter expert along with this outside consulting firm, because they were a little bit concerned the consulting firm didn’t understand our field. So I got hired to be the subject matter expert on that.

And it was interesting because we were talking one day at the end of the day, me and the group, and they were all upset because one of their team members had come across some technicians that were crying during work that day. And I forget exactly why, it was a euthanasia, or it was a case that didn’t go well, or something, the stuff that happens in veterinary medicine, and they were freaked out by this. They’re like, “Oh my God, it must be a terrible culture. We’re going to have to focus on culture instead of the other things.” And I was like, “Hey, wait a minute. Certainly, crying employees can be a sign of bad culture, but we cry in veterinary medicine,” maybe men not so much as women, but it’s a more emotional field than if you’re a retail hardware store or whatever. And so I think understanding those kinds of things and the nuances of our field has really helped me in then applying the business side.

Well, Karen, you worked as an audit manager at Ernst & Young, what lessons from the broader business and financial world do you think the veterinary profession could benefit from adopting more widely?

The skillset… and I loved Ernst & Young. Obviously, I left there, I couldn’t see doing it the rest of my life, but from a learning experience, it was great. And it wasn’t the accounting and audit that was really… I mean, obviously, I learned that stuff, but that wasn’t the main thing. What I really got out of there was critical thinking, and I cannot emphasize enough how important I think critical thinking is to everybody, and that’s as true in the medicine side of our field as it is in the business side. So that was a huge learning issue for me at E&Y. And I think what that led to is when you’ve got a strong sense of critical thinking, what that helped me do is understand not just what is going on in practices in general, but what’s going on in this practice, and how do I adapt consulting recommendations to this practice?

So not just tell every practice, you need to raise fees, or you need to have better training, but how do we make that actually happen in a particular practice? And I think that’s been crucial to being able to successfully work with practices.

And Karen, during your time as CEO of the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues, you were deeply involved in analyzing the economics of the profession. What were some of the biggest economic challenges facing veterinarians then, and how have they evolved today?

So from a practice management perspective, I think a lot of the challenges are still the same. We’re small businesses for the most part, even our big businesses, our big practices in the grand scheme of things are small businesses, and a lot of it is just basic business stuff, so inventory control, effective hiring, leadership, how to deal with staff drama, how to look at the right key performance indicators. Nothing about that is particularly dramatic or unique, but back then, and now, I think those issues are still very, very critical for many, many practices. Now, some things have changed over time, salaries have gone up a lot, I think it’s a little harder to be profitable now than it was 10 years ago. We’re certainly having some major issues now with pricing and how much we’re charging clients and the related decline in visits. I think customers in all businesses are a little more difficult to deal with. I think employee expectations are higher, some of that is good, some of that’s a challenge. So there are definitely differences, but a lot of it is still basics.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, you specialize in practice valuation and succession planning, what are some of the biggest mistakes veterinary practice owners make when preparing to transition or sell their practices?

One of the biggest mistakes is they wait too late to start thinking about it. Somebody said once, way early in my career, that you need to start thinking about selling your practice the day you buy it. And there’s a lot of truth to that, right? Because ultimately, when you sell your practice, most practice owners want a lot of money out of it. And they want to sell to the right buyer too, but they’re hoping to fund their retirement out of it. If you do not have a profitable practice and you try and turn that around when you’re 65 and looking to retire, it’s too late. And so you need to start thinking about what’s it going to take to have a practice that I can sell and that will bring in the money that I want to fund my retirement to do the things I’m going to want to do. And so you need to start thinking about that earlier rather than later.

I think the other mistake or the other issue that we’re really dealing with right now is that there’s been so much talk in the profession about some of the prices that practices have gotten when they have sold to a corporate group. I think a lot of veterinarians think everybody’s going to get those prices and they don’t recognize, “Hey, if I’m a small practice and I’m selling to an individual veterinarian, I’m not going to get the amount of money that a corporate group would pay.” And let’s say you are a practice that a corporate group wants to buy, there’s still a pretty big difference in price between if you are a successful practice with a lot of solid veterinarians that are not going to leave the practice once it’s sold and you’re in a good area with a lot of growth, those practices are going to get much better prices than a smaller practice, less profitable, only a couple of doctors.

And yet a lot of veterinarians don’t seem to realize that, they assume everybody’s going to get these crazy numbers that have been thrown about. And so when I’ve worked with veterinarians that are looking at selling, there’s a lot of education there. And it’s awful, it’s terrible to tell a 65-year-old veterinarian that their baby’s ugly, essentially, that their practice is not very profitable and their expectations on sales just aren’t going to happen. So start early.

Yeah, that is such good advice. Well, Karen, we know many veterinarians enter the profession because of their passion for animals, not necessarily for the business. What are the most important financial metrics or benchmarks every practice owner should understand?

So this to me comes back again to basics. I think there’s a dozen metrics that every practice should be looking at every month, and you know that’s going to be revenue, growth, and transaction growth, or visit growth, doctor productivity, new clients, hours per transaction, there’s a bunch of them, that every practice should be looking at and comparing one month to the previous month, or April of this year to April of last year. I think every practice needs to be calculating their profitability on a regular basis. Most practices do not truly know how profitable they are, and the profitability is what drives the value, it’s what drives the sales price. So you don’t have to calculate profitability every month at a minimum, it needs to be done every year. And if you’re struggling with profitability, it needs to be done more frequently than that.

Now, there’s a whole ton more metrics that practices could look at, and I think you choose which ones of those to use and where to dive more deeply, one, if you’re trying to correct a problem, or two, if you’re putting in place a new program, like you’re trying to get more pet owners to accept dentals, so then you’ll focus more on dental metrics. But it’s the basics and then some additional metrics depending on what your focus is at any given time.

Yeah, that makes sense. And-

And profits, profitability.

Well, the veterinary profession has seen significant consolidations in corporate investment in recent years, how has this trend changed the landscape for independent practice owners?

Yeah, and this change with consolidation has probably been one of the most significant changes that I’ve seen in my career, because certainly, when I started consulting, there were some consolidators out there, but there were only a few of them, and it was a very small percentage of practices that were owned. So yeah, that’s been a huge change. When we talk about the impact on independent practice owners, I think in some ways, it’s been harder for independent practice owners. Probably, one of the biggest ones, and Stacy, you have to see this a lot, is that independent practice owners are going to have to pay more to get the people that they want because corporate groups are paying more. Now, there’s also some flip sides to that. I think it’s opened up some opportunities for independent practice owners. Not every corporate group runs their practice very well, employees don’t always feel the loyalty to a corporate practice that they do to an independent one.

And so there’s some opportunities there for practices to attract clients that just kind of get tired of the corporate environment, if you will, or to attract employees who are tired of the corporate environment. So it’s gone both ways. Obviously, if you’re an independent owner looking to sell, what corporate has certainly done is… I mean, there are veterinarians out there who have just made a fortune out of the practice of their sale, or the sale of their practice, and that nobody ever expected that when we went into practice. So corporate has certainly created some much wealthier veterinarians at retirement than they expected to be. The flip side of that is because so many practices choose to sell corporate because it’s great financially, or often, not for everybody, but for many. It also means there’s fewer practices out there for younger veterinarians to buy. And that makes me sad.

I think there are still a lot of practices out there that younger veterinarians can buy, but you don’t have as many choices, probably going to have to work harder to grow those smaller practices into what you want. So that’s a huge difference there. I think if you want to be a practice owner, you’ve got to change your mindset a little bit and be a little bit more open to recognizing you’re probably going to buy a smaller practice and have to grow it to be what you want than instead of having the opportunity to buy a three-doctor practice, and it already offers a lot of what you want.

Yeah, it’s gotten more competitive.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, you’ve spent decades advising practices on operational efficiency. Where do you see the biggest opportunities today for practices to improve their profitability, but at the same time while supporting team wellbeing, because we know that’s a hot topic.

Team wellbeing is definitely a hot topic. So if you want to grow profitability, the best way to grow profitability is to grow revenue. Now, that’s a challenge right now because we’re struggling with declining visits, we’re struggling with the cost of veterinary care, clients aren’t as willing to do as much because… just can’t afford it. We’ve got a kind of random economy right now, it’s a little unclear where everything’s going. But if you can achieve revenue growth, which means providing you do that, obviously, marketing and providing a great client experience, a great client experience… I mean, everybody assumes they’re getting good medicine, but a great client experience is really more about the nonmedical part of it. So it’s good communication and feeling empathy from the team members there and being able to be seen at hours that are convenient for you. It’s got to be about what the client wants, the pet owner wants, not necessarily what we want.

Now, revenue growth can be a bit of a challenge for all those issues I just said, so then we also focus on more what I consider to be that operational efficiency. And operational efficiency doesn’t just mean telling people to work harder, so this comes back to the supporting team wellbeing, what it means is that the practice management team, owners and managers, have to make it possible for teams to produce more using the term broadly. So for doctors to be able to see more clients, for technicians to be able to work with more clients, but management has to provide the tools and resources necessary to do that. So that’s technology, better team training, there’s a bunch of different things. Again, a lot of it is basic stuff, but you can’t just go, “You guys need to work harder or be here more hours,” or anything that takes away from wellbeing.

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When you talked about client experience, how have clients’ expectations changed over the time you’ve been involved in the veterinary profession?

I think clients have much higher expectations, there… and we saw a lot of that change over the pandemic. But I also think as we have continued to raise prices, clients expect more, I expect more. If I go into a store and it’s now 30% more expensive than it used to be, you bet I expect more than I did before. And so I think… but a lot of what clients want, to me, it’s not unreasonable, it’s what we’re here for. If they got a sick pet trying to tell the pet owner that, “Hey, we can’t see you for a week, go to the emergency clinic,” and it’s going to cost three times as much at the emergency clinic, that doesn’t work very well. Sometimes, I think we have to bend over backwards to meet those expectations. So a certain amount of it is convenience as well as the other things that we’ve talked about.

Yeah, that all makes sense. Well, Karen, you’ve been recognized multiple times for your contributions to veterinary practice management education. What topics or challenges do you find veterinarians are most eager to learn about right now?

So veterinarians are most eager to learn about medicine things. And as a management speaker, it’s a constant challenge, and then I am a financial management speaker, and I can tell you that very few veterinarians are just dying to learn about the balance sheet. So if you can get them into the management section of the conference, then what they’re probably most interested in is HR issues, particularly things that have to do with HR drama, because no business doesn’t… I mean, every business has HR drama all the time. And so I think that’s a lot of what practices are looking for. But there are people who understand, “I need to learn more about marketing,” there are people who do want to learn about the balance sheet, or if not the balance sheet, at least the profit and loss statement and how to use that to better understand what’s going on in your practice.

Probably, the least popular topic in my experience, and I actually stopped speaking on it for a while because I was tired of getting beaten up, is the whole subject of what we charge clients. I think that is seeing a little bit of a resurgence in interest because we are acknowledging that we are getting a lot of client feedback on that… or actually, pushback is really probably a better word than feedback.

Well, Karen, looking ahead, what do you believe will define the next decade of veterinary practice economics, whether that’s workforce trends, technology, client expectations, or new care delivery models?

So veterinary medicine is going to have to be affordable. I don’t think we have solved this issue of the cost of veterinary medicine. I’m positive we cannot keep raising fees the way that we have in the past. So to me, right now, that’s the biggest issue that we’re going to have to deal with. Now, there’s a lot of different things that we can do. So like you mentioned, technology, if we focus on technology, that means we can have more efficiently run practices, that means we may not need as many employees, which, right now, trying to find good quality employees continues to be an issue. It also means that we don’t have to have such high expectation of employees. And I think I need to clarify that, we still need good quality employees, but we also need to be able to provide them the work-life balance that they’re looking for.

So it’s having to be affordable, but then all of the things that it takes to become more affordable. I think that we also have got to be realistic. We’re veterinarians, we’re scientists, we love the fact that we can do so much more for pets from a medical standpoint, but at some point, for 99% of pet owners out there, they can’t afford it, or some just don’t believe in paying for that, for a pet versus a person. So I think we’ve got to be realistic too about just expecting clients to always want the gold standard, I don’t think that’s realistic, not for many, many pet owners.

How has that conversation about work-life balance changed over the years that you’ve been involved in the veterinary profession?

Of course, I come from a generation which is just like, “Get off your butt and work more.” And I wouldn’t say that… I mean, if I had to look back on my career, I don’t think I’ve handled that in as healthy a way as I could have. But certainly, when I was young… and of course, my first major job was with Ernst & Young, and we had no work-life balance from about October through, I don’t know, April or so, and then we had a little bit more work-life balance through the other half of the year. But that’s just what people did. Now, as time has marched on, generations have changed, I think parents are raising their kids differently. So now, there is a lot of work-life balance expectations. I think we really have to make a distinction between a reasonable work-life balance expectation and a sheer sense of entitlement.

And I never thought I’d be old enough to talk about the younger generation of which I’m unfortunately no longer a part of to expect to work half the hours and make twice the money as, say, somebody who grew up when I did is not realistic. I don’t think you can get the experience to be worth the extra money, plus that it just is not affordable for practices. And unfortunately, veterinary medicine is a business. So somewhere, not just… I think we as the older generation of veterinarians have to work hard to make our practices offer a more work-life balance, but the younger generation also has to recognize some of their expectations are probably not realistic. Is that answering your question?

Yeah, absolutely. And as a recruiter, I see this… I had a candidate that was working four days a week for his employer who told his employer he was going to reduce his work from four days a week to three days a week. And the employer lowered his pay by $15,000 a year, I think is what it was. And so this person was talking to me and said, “Can you believe that my employer reduced my pay? I guess they care more about money than people.” What would you say to somebody that has that viewpoint?

And that when I said some of the entitlement, that’s exactly the kind of comment… in all fairness to the younger generation, I’m not sure all of it is entitlement, some of it’s just a lack of understanding. When I was 20, I didn’t understand how a business was run, I didn’t understand what it took for a business to be profitable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I also think owners have some say in this too, I think sometimes, owner expectations about the level of profitability they need and what employees need to do to contribute to that aren’t reasonable and fair either. If I had the answer to how to deal with somebody like the person you just said to deal successfully, I should say, I could write a book and make a million dollars.

And I don’t think I have that answer, I think we’re just kind of bumping along with it. Some of it is… and not every young person feels that way, there’s great younger employees out there. So some of it is we have to hire… there’s got to be change on both sides, I think, is what I’m saying. I think owners have to recognize that maybe the height of the profit curve for veterinary medicine is we’ve hit it, and we can’t expect our profits to stay at that level or to keep growing. We can still make good money, but maybe not quite as good because we’re going to have to provide more to have people be willing to work for us. But the younger generation also has to understand that, “Hey, if I’m not going to work as much, I’m not going to make as much.”

Yeah, that makes so much sense. There has to be a give and take there.

Absolutely.

Well, Karen what’s the-

That’s probably the hardest question you’ve asked though.

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

I think when I came into veterinary medicine… it’s just a nice group of people. And not that accounting wasn’t, but it’s a particularly nice group of people, for the most part, in veterinary medicine. Every profession has some horrible people in it, but for the most part, it’s a great group of people. The biggest change has been, I think, the corporate change, the involvement of corporate and owning practices. One thing I’m not as excited about, I do feel our profession has become more focused on money than it used to be, and that’s everybody, it’s associate veterinarians, it’s owner veterinarians, it’s corporate groups, it’s professional associations. And I see more entitlement about money than I used to, and I’ve found that disappointing and frustrating.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think that there’s more of a conversation about money today than there was in the past?

To some extent, I don’t know, but I think part of it is because… I mean, there are outside forces, people want to … If I’m a 30-year-old veterinarian and I’ve got $300,000 in student debt, that’s a big driving force. So that’s going to be part of it. The cost of everything is just more than it used to be. We have higher standards of living than we did. When I grew up, going out to eat was this super special occasion, and we might go out to eat every couple of months. And we would pick a new restaurant, and we’d plan it, this was a super special thing, right?

It was rare.

Yeah, and rare. Exactly. And I’m not even talking like big fancy restaurants. But now, people go out to eat two, three, four times a week, and going out to eat costs more than cooking at home. And so I think living expectations are just higher and that’s part of the reason that people are like, “Well, somewhere, I have to fund this, so I need to make more.” I don’t know how you fix all this, this is another one that if I had the answer, I’d write the book.

Well, I had a candidate tell me that the employer needed to pay her more because she wanted to work three days a week and travel the other four days every week. So the employer needed to be able to fund that so she could have that lifestyle.

I get what she wants, sounds great. But for there to be money to pay people, the practice has to make money, and it can’t make money if all the money’s going out to… It’s just… this is an impossible topic, right?

Yes. You have to be realistic.

You have to be realistic. And this comes back to there’s got to be give and take on both sides.

Absolutely. Karen, what does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

I think the veterinary profession is always going to do well because we offer something that people want. People love their pets and they want to provide good care for them. So I always see us as being a profession that will do well, but that doesn’t mean that we have total control and expecting people how much they’re going to be able to pay, we’ve got to be realistic too. Part of what I think is hard about our profession… I mean, how many of us ever growing up thought that you would own $1,000 cell phone? I did not… If you had told me that 20 years ago, I would’ve laughed in your face, right?

I didn’t have a cell phone until I was in my mid 20s.

Yeah, no, and I didn’t either. But the last time I bought my iPhone, it was pretty close to that $1,000 mark. But somehow, we look at cell phones, iPhones, whatever phone people have, and say, “Oh wow, that’s sexy. It’s worth $1,000.” But we go a dental, “$1,000? Oh my God, that’s crazy. And so somehow, we don’t have the sexiness, and I get it, a dental is not v.ery sexy compared to a phone so somewhat, we have to be reasonable about our pricing expectations, but somewhere too, I do think there’s a communication piece we don’t have figured out yet.

Karen, as you look at your career up to now, what has been the biggest challenge that you faced throughout your career?

So me, personally, I hate politics. I don’t mean like our country politics, I hate internal politics. And everywhere you work has politics, and I can’t stand that, that’s the biggest challenge, I don’t have the patience for it. I know that’s held me back in some places because of it. So I would call that a significant challenge for me. And that’s why I’ve had my own company for a long, long time, because then, I don’t have to work with people that I don’t want to work with.

You and me both. I feel the same way. Sometimes, I’m oblivious to the politics, and then it’s like, boom, oh, there’s some politics.

Yeah, right, right. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, Karen, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

So this comes back to the work-life balance. And I’m happy with my career, but I kept thinking, oh, I’ll be able to start this hobby or take this class or exercise more, or whatever, and then all of a sudden, I hit retirement age and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I didn’t take the class, I didn’t start the hobby, I didn’t exercise more.” There has to be a little more work-life balance. I don’t think working as much as I did was totally healthy. I’m in a great place to retire and I’m happy about that. So I’m a big believer in the work-life balance, there just has to be reasonable expectations.

What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening to our podcast?

Know yourself, know what you want, there’s a lot of different things you can do in veterinary medicine. Recognize… I think this is the biggest thing I run into that I find frustrating, I think that you have to recognize that what you want or what you think about how the business is run, or any topic in the world for that matter, isn’t going to be what everyone wants or thinks. And you’ve got to be willing to compromise and to recognize that there’s going to have to be give and take on almost anything. And I think that’s true for 95% of us. There are some people out there that are genuinely brilliant. You take Steve Jobs, or you take Bill Gates, and they just went off and they did it their way. Now, they certainly spent many years working out of their garage and eating beans all day until they hit that massive billionaire success.

But for most of us, we’ve got to recognize that how we think isn’t how everybody else thinks. One, we can probably learn from other people. I think you look at the political situation in our country right now, it doesn’t matter which side you’re on, there’s got to be some compromise there and some learning from each other. And that’ll just give you a thousand more opportunities, and I do believe it’ll make you more financially successful in the long run. And while money may not be the most important thing to everybody, we all need it.

Yeah. Well, Karen, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book they read that helped them throughout their life or in business. Do you have a key book in your life that’s impacted you the most?

So I’m not a big reader of business book, so that I can’t really speak to. A couple of the books I read in my much younger years, though I’ve reread them since then, were by Ayn Rand, and so Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. And they’re great books just from a novel standpoint, a good plot, if you will, and characterization, but I thought they were really interesting from a… what kind of person do you want to be? And so somebody that works hard, contributes to society, doesn’t just sit around expecting handouts from everybody. So I think she takes it too far in her novels, but I think there were important lessons there, let’s put it that way. So those would probably be the two of the most important books that I’ve read.

Well, Karen, you’ve got the mic, what is one thing you want to share with our listeners of the People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

So I would say first of all, veterinary medicine is a great industry, tons of opportunities here. For all of the problems that we’re having and the things that we’ve talked about, we do something that people care about. And I’m sure… I’ve got cases from 25 years ago and patients from clients from 25 years ago, I can still remember, and I think that’s a lot of why we do what we do or we do something that’s supporting of that, and I think we always have to remember that even when we have those challenging days. And the other thing I would just say is because I am moving into retirement, I would say thank you to everybody I’ve worked with, talked to. It’s been a great career for me, and I hope everybody else has something similar, won’t necessarily be my path, but whatever path is right for you.

Well, you’ve had an incredible career, you’ve done so much good for the profession. I don’t know anybody that’s like you, that has the skills and expertise that you have and all the things that you’ve accomplished. And I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate and work with you on things throughout your career. And I enjoyed our time today, and thank you for being on the People of Animal Health Podcast.

Thank you for having me. Like you said, it’s fun to talk about yourself, right? But I very much enjoyed working with you too. If I had to pick somebody that really understands what recruiting looks like, what employees want, you’ve just been great to work with, you’ve been so helpful when I needed advice on that kind of stuff. So this has been fun.

Well, Karen, I know you’re not quite going to retire tomorrow, and I always joke with you, you say you’re going to retire, but I think we’ll keep seeing you. But I hope you get to achieve more of that work-life balance that you desire.

That’s what I’m looking for. Exactly. Exactly.