The Happy Secret to Thriving at Work with Josh Vaisman

Josh Vaisman, MAPPCP (PgD) has a fascinating veterinary career. He started as a PetSmart associate. He became a veterinary assistant and then a veterinary practice owner, multiple times.  After some hard realizations, he got a Master's of applied positive psychology and coaching psychology. So, in 2018 he founded Flourish Veterinary Consulting which translates the science of human thriving to empower veterinary organizations in cultivating workplaces where professionals can thrive. He also recently worked with AAHA to publish the book Lead to Thrive: The Science of Crafting a Positive Veterinary Culture. So, now Josh is a well-known speaker, author, and veterinary culture consultant.

In this episode, we discuss
- Veterinary Practice ownership as a non-veterinarian
- The fear of failure
- Different definitions of success
- Secrets to Thriving in Vet Med
- And Much More! 

Resources
- Flourish Veterinary Consulting
- Lead to Thrive book on AAHA
- Lead to Thrive book on Amazon
- Lead to Thrive audiobook at Barnes & Noble
- Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage
- Shawn Achor TED talk

Transcript

Megan Sprinkle: [00:00:00] The thing is, is that you can have an environment where you're not burned out and you're not thriving at the same time. We don't create professional fulfillment by getting rid of stress. We create fulfillment by nurturing something. Welcome to Vet Life Reimagined. I love this conversation with Josh Vazeman.

I had seen him all over LinkedIn, and then finally had the privilege to hear him speak at VMX for his Adversary to Ally talk. And he is amazing! He is an energetic and engaging speaker, and you can tell he knows his stuff about psychology and culture. In this episode, you will get to hear his journey in vet med, starting from pet smart associate, to veterinary assistant, to co practice owner.

After some hard realizations, he got a master's. in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology. So in 2018, he founded Flourish Veterinary Consulting that translate the science of human thriving to empower veterinary organizations and cultivating workplaces where professionals can thrive. He also recently worked with AHA to publish the book Lead [00:01:00] to Thrive, the Science of Crafting a Positive Veterinary Culture.

There are tons of wisdom in this episode, so let's get to the conversation with Josh Faizman. When did you know that you were interested in even getting into veterinary medicine? Oh, wow. That's a good question. Okay. So it's, it's 1998 and I'm working in a pet smart in Boulder, Colorado. I worked in the specialty department.

So I was the guy who like sold people, fish and lizards basically. And we had a pet smart veterinary services in our pet store. Which, uh, dates me a little bit, although I did actually just give the date. Yeah, so PVS doesn't exist anymore, but at the time, there were Pest and Veterinary Services, and the chief of staff at our PVS was this really incredible guy, Dr.

Donald Davidson Dodge III, no joke, triple D III, yeah. I like to tell people he broke the cycle, his son's name is Alex. So, Donald was just a [00:02:00] hooth of a human being, just full of life, really charismatic, hilarious, super kind, really compassionate, very I found myself kind of wandering over there over breaks and I sort of befriended him and some of the people at the hospital and started hanging out and then I had this wild hair.

I like to joke with people. I think you'll get a kick out of this as a veterinarian yourself that I had a minor break with sanity and thought maybe I'd want to go to vet school one day. Uh, so, I, uh, I approached Donald and I, I asked him if I could volunteer there to get some experience to see if that was really something I wanted to do.

And he, he said that they couldn't allow volunteers, the corporation didn't really allow that, but they could hire me. And so I started working there as a, like a technician assistant. And that's how I broke into VetMed and I haven't really looked back much since. Okay, so you start working as a clinicians assistant.

And all I know, the jump to the story is you end up going into partnership. So what is [00:03:00] the story that is getting into, you know, even partnering and ownership of a hospital? Yeah. So, so I worked at PBS for a few years and then at the time it was Vetsmart that was that sort of predated the rebranding to Banfield, uh, bought all the PVSs and everything really could have changed for us culturally in that practice and Donald decided to leave and open up his own private practice.

I wasn't a hundred percent sure that I, at that time, that I wanted to keep working in veterinary practices. I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Some may argue that even at the age of 46, I still don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up. But, uh, I ended up leaving and I worked at a couple of sort of odd jobs for a while, and then I got back into vet med and I worked at a veterinary practice in the area and I ended up doing that for several years, just working as like a tech assistant at a few different hospitals.

One day I'm working at this practice also in Boulder and. One of our associate came in, associate veterinarians came in and she was like lit up, just super, super excited. Her [00:04:00] husband has sold his practice. So he owned a hospital actually just like five miles from ours. They're both veterinarians, but I'm assuming that they realized that if their marriage was to succeed, that they couldn't go into partnership together and she wasn't going to work for him.

So she ended up. Doing a partnership at a different practice in the area, uh, with a friend of hers. Anyway, the short of the long of it is that he had sold his hospital to two veterinarians and a vet tech. And I had no idea that you could be a non DVM and have ownership stake in a veterinary practice, never even occurred to me.

So If people only listen to the first 10 minutes of this podcast, they're going to think like I'm the most bombastic and self assured, maybe egocentric human being on the planet. So I'm making 9. 50 an hour or something along that lines. And all of a sudden this like idea sparks in my head. Well, I mean, I've seen people run veterinary hospitals.

I can't, can't imagine it's really that hard, but I could do that. And so I, I waltzed into the doctor's [00:05:00] office and I sat next to one of my favorite associates at this practice and I said to her, hey, I, I realized that you don't have to be a vet to own a vet hospital. And I, I feel like you and I could probably do this pretty well.

You want to buy a vet practice with me. And six months later, we bought a hospital, you know, now all of a sudden I'm a hospital owner, you know, co owner in this practice with two other vet, two veterinarians. And a practice manager. And that's how I stumbled into that part of my career. I can only imagine what you learned from that start.

So what were some of your, your best memories of, all right, I'm part owner, I'm running the hospital now, what do I do? In, uh, best memories, I think at the time, if you had asked me that I would have pointed out like the, the really fun and exciting things, you know, like, um, rebranding the practice and going through this, like, you know, [00:06:00] creating new logos and new color schemes and then redoing the website and going out into the community.

And we, we like secretly posted stickers about us, uh, these funny little paw print stickers that had this like obscure message. I don't even remember what it was, but it was like one of those things where you'd be like, what? Oh, got BNA, that's what it was, because that, that, uh, the initials for a practice was BNA, and it just said got BNA and then www.

gotbna. com, which then took you to our website. And yeah, so it was like all of that stuff, building a hospital, building a team, building up a business, you know, taking something that wasn't really doing that well. And then over time. Making it into this thriving organization was really, really exciting. But the honest truth is, is that now sitting where I am now in my career, thinking back, you know, those 15 or whatever years ago that, that we were doing this.

Um, actually I think the best memories that I had were the things that I completely screwed up. You mentioned learning. Yeah, I learned a ton. I learned a ton by just like, [00:07:00] confidently deciding I could do something and giving it a try and probably having about a 27 percent success rate. Uh, so yeah, I think that the errors and the stumbles and the screw ups and the missed opportunities were actually some of the best when I look back at it now.

That's very insightful because as a veterinary team, We don't always appreciate the tries that, that we do. We feel like we should know and we should get it right and it's a risk. And so I'm sure you've seen that in people in the hospital. What are your thoughts on that? Is that, is that even something that in a medical profession, if we're with a patient, are we allowed to try things or what happens if we fail?

Yeah, that's, it's a really wonderful question. Failure, generally speaking in life is something that we try and avoid. And certainly I think that there's. [00:08:00] There's probably interpersonal pressures for that, there's psychological pressures for that, there's societal pressures to appear competent, capable, and you know, look professional, incredible, and all those kinds of words that we think of with folks, and I am no less susceptible to that than anyone else, I don't want to like paint a picture that You know, this like failure guru who has no problem messing things up and, you know, zero risk aversion and all that.

I do care what other people think of me, and I do want to do things well and do things right. Now, you take those sort of normal pressures of a normal person to show up and look good, and then you add to it medical training. And medical training, especially, I, I feel like in vet school and probably to a similar extent in tech school, We're, we're teaching people sort of like, you know, the gold standard, and this is the best way to do things, and this is the right way to do things, and if you don't do it the best or don't do it the right, you're screwing it up.[00:09:00] 

And so we're sort of hammering that desire to be perfect. And then we're also attracting people who I think are probably a little more susceptible to that pressure and a little less self confident around failure. And we're also talking about lives. We have patients lives in our hands. And so with this particular dog, this particular horse, or this particular hamster, whatever it might be.

If we mess things up, that animal may suffer or die, and the people attached to it may suffer as well. And so all of this is pushing us to avoid. any sort of failures. I think what we need to do is we need to learn to think of failure not as a zero sum game. Failure, most often, sometimes it is not.

Sometimes it is simple one or zero, right? If I walk into the street with an oncoming semi going 65 miles an hour, that was a failure on [00:10:00] my part and it will probably end my life, period. There are absolutely cases like that, but most of the failures that happen in our lives, most of them, I would say probably 80 or 90 percent of them fall into this sort of gray area of it's not going to end the world and it's not going to end the life.

It's going to teach us something. And if we can look at those opportunities as an opportunity to get better next to it, I think that that can help us reframe failure into actually a very necessary and important part of our existence. And I think that mindset, which to me, my mind goes to the growth mindset of the situation, right?

Is much more likely to have a enjoyable culture if the whole community embraces that. So, which I know positive psychology is kind of your, your guru area, but we aren't there quite yet. So [00:11:00] you're, you've been owning this practice, your first practice. And some, you do change. So how does that evolution happen when you.

When you leave this particular one that you've built. Yeah, that's a great question. So the reason why I think back fondly on the errors and failures and screw ups that he'd made, it actually relates heavily to this part of the story. We had a lot of success and I'm going to put that in air quotes. On purpose, because I think we think of success, you know, when we say that word, most of us, especially in our society, have a mental model around, you know, something numerical, uh, we, the business is making money, we're growing those kinds of things.

And from those traditional metrics, we had a lot of success at that practice, um, for anybody who's business related, you know, when it, when I left the practice, we were at 26 percent Evita, which is like a highly profitable veterinary hospital. However, I have reframed how I think of success now. So, I'm [00:12:00] in this practice, we're having all this growth and success, and I start thinking to myself, well, gosh, if I could do it here, I can do it elsewhere.

And I got really ambitious and decided to pursue multi practice ownership. My partners were not interested in that, and so I chose to leave. I sold my equity to them. I left and I went on to another venture in a much larger hospital that was really going to take a big turnaround, but because of that, it was also an incredible opportunity.

From a business perspective. And, uh, I sort of dove headfirst into that. This hospital was 75 miles from my house. I bought this practice with a couple of business partners. One of them was a startup corporate group and they had a whole bunch of their own money. They were looking to buy hospitals all over the place.

We like, you know, we had this big retreat thing where we talked about building a billion dollar company, like all these kinds of things, you know, super excited about all of these amazing business opportunities. And so that's what, that's what I dove into headfirst. I. Started to try and apply the same kind of things that had worked for me in the [00:13:00] first hospital and they just weren't working.

And I couldn't see any other way. And so I started just beating my head up against the wall harder. Stood thinking that that's going to break down the wall, right? And instead it just broke my head. And so over about a year and a half, I went down this, this path of, you know, beating my head so much that it actually caused harm to myself and unfortunately to others, and I ended up really just totally burning myself out.

I mean, I was. I was probably in that practice 68 hours a week. I was commuting 75 miles up and 75 miles back home every day. We were open seven days a week. I was often there all seven days. And then I was also trying to do this consulting work with one of my partners. I was trying to help the corporate group find and acquire other practices.

I was doing some training and transition. I mean, I was doing, I was trying to do way, way, way too much and doing none of it well. But really the problem wasn't so much the workload for me. It was this mismatch in values. I found myself sort of trying to force things in a way that [00:14:00] really just didn't go along with the kind of person that I want to be in the world.

But I also thought that's what I was supposed to do, to get the numbers at the end of the day. Uh, and eventually it just I really think of that part of my life as the darkest time in my life. I thought about leaving VetMed. I actually had no idea where or if I fit in the world. And so I ended up leaving that.

I sold my equity to my partners. I resigned my position as hospital director. I left the consulting firm. I left the corporate group. I sort of took a break to try and, I don't know, take care of me a little bit. And a few weeks into that break, I came across a book by Sean Acor, A C H O R, The Happiness Advantage.

And I read The Happiness Advantage, and then that turned me on to This idea of happiness studies and positive psychology, which are two kind of different things. I ended up getting onto Coursera and I took a specialization on the [00:15:00] foundations of positive psychology taught by Martin Seligman and Karen Ravich and Angela Duckworth and Jim Pulaski.

So these are like titans of early days of positive psychology. And I was convinced that this was what we were missing in our profession. I saw something there that was like, okay, this is the missing piece. And I need more of this. So that's how the whole positive psychology thing came around. I love it.

And. For those that are interested, if you just want to taste, Sean Acor has a fantastic TED talk. That is how I first found him and fell in love with it and then read his book after that. The TED talk, if you want like a snippet of it, it's fantastic. And so do you mind elaborating a little bit more on The, how you were seeing veterinary medicine to notice this gap.

So describing the problem so we can better understand the solution. Yeah. I want to be very [00:16:00] candid and honest here. We, we have a lot of challenges in our profession. The reality is, is that there, there are a lot of problems in how we have sort of built our profession to function right now. We, we face a lot of stressors and uncertainty and unpredictability every day.

We often have people who are working in. Environments that are not very healthy or supportive. We have people who struggle to make a living. I mean, I personally employed technicians who had one or two other jobs to try and get by. I'm not proud of that looking back on that. No, but that's the reality.

There's a lot of difficulty and challenge in our profession. And because of that, we see very high rates of burnout. We see people who struggle with. Compassion fatigue, we definitely have a suicide issue, and, you know, all of those kinds of things, those are real. I don't want to dismiss those at all. I want to face those head on and recognize the reality of that.

What I started to feel like, and I couldn't put words to it until I encountered the area of positive [00:17:00] psychology, was like, all we're doing is talking about, pardon my French, the shit. And if all we do is talk about the shit and smell the shit and walk in the shit, we're covered in shit all day, every day, and that doesn't benefit anybody.

And I felt like there's gotta be something else we can do that's not dismissive, that's not like ignoring the bad stuff. And that's what positive psychology really uncovered for me. So the way that I describe it is If you think of a profession, a workplace, your personal life, your relationship with your significant other, whatever, if you think of it as a garden.

Every garden requires weed management. So, if we think of the problems in that relationship or the stressors in our profession is the weeds, listen, we can't just let the weeds run rampant. I don't know about you, but in Colorado, we have a weed called bindweed. The source of that plant is like six to ten feet underground, so you can never actually get rid of it.

And it just grows [00:18:00] these little like spindly vines that bind around all the plants. It's the bane of my existence. So when I'm gardening out here in the summer, like I'm pulling bindweed almost every day. Weed management is important and we need to focus on it. You can think of it the same way with patient health.

Like, if we ignore the symptoms or the clinical signs that a patient is having and we just focus on, well, their weight is good, like, that's not going to help the patient, right? So, we have to deal with that stuff. However, if all we do as a gardener is focus on weed management, number one, There's no such thing as a weed free garden.

You can go to the most wonderfully curated, most well resourced and cared for garden in the world. A botanical garden in a big city somewhere, whatever. You will find things growing there that don't belong. There's no such thing as a weed free garden. But let's imagine for a moment that we could actually eliminate all the weeds.

You can go and pull all the vine weeds fast enough and deep enough that they're all gone. What's left? Hatch of [00:19:00] dirt. Gardening is not only weed management, it is also growing things. Well being does not come from elimination. We don't create a profession of thriving. We don't create professional fulfillment.

By getting rid of stress, we create fulfillment by nurturing something, by taking the things that actually are fertile seeds and planting them in nutrient rich gardens and adding nutrients to that so that there's sunlight and there's water and there's all of the stuff, you know, nitrogenous stuff that it needs to grow, right?

And we cultivate those things so that those seeds sprout and they grow to their full potential. We have to do both. And that's what positive psychology is trying to teach us how to do. We are going to live in a world of weeds. How do we minimize and mitigate those? And counterbalance them with an abundance of fernal seeds, so that in the end, we get a flourishing garden.[00:20:00] 

I think the story that I shared with you when we were talking earlier was when I heard one of the earlier Merck well being studies. And the two gentlemen had gone to some veterinary schools to talk with the students and they were sitting down with some and they were asking them what they were excited about to do after vet school.

And one in particular said, well, I'm really passionate about emergency and critical care. That's just where my heart lies, but I know I'm going to burn out. So I got to work on my backyard. And so when I heard that story, it just struck me like, that's wrong. Record right. Wait a minute. We shouldn't be setting up where people just are going to assume they're going to have problems.

Right. And can we not set these individuals up for success by teaching them? Yes, there are challenges, but these are the ways that we can think about it so that you [00:21:00] can make this more a sustainable career going forward. And I think that's a great way of kind of also putting a real example in veterinary medicine on if you focus too much on the negative, you create potentially an entire generation that just accepts that instead of working on the skills to make it better going forward.

And that's what I would love to see in veterinary medicine. So do you have some examples of that positive psychology approach when it comes to a particular problem? Yes. Oh, absolutely. I, at your spot, I'm Megan, and I think you're really onto something here that, that's really important for us to address.

You can walk into any veterinary practice in the country, and I would be willing to bet that so long as they have a team, there's multiple people that work in their practice. You're going to find at least one person, probably more, uh, depending on the research we look at, you're going to find 40 to 60 percent of people on average who are not burned out, [00:22:00] Who with you?

If you had them complete the MozLock burnout inventory or the professional index or the U Track engagement, well, any one of those validated assessment tools, they would not show up as burned out. And yet we've, we talk about the profession as if it's inevitable, that everybody's going to experience that.

So I think the solution to that is Let, let us continue to do what we can to minimize and prevent the burnout for those that are experiencing it and to ensure that those that aren't never get there. We need to keep doing those things, but we're not going to learn about what excellence looks like, what fulfillment looks like in this profession by studying where we're falling short.

What we're going to learn is how not to fall short. The thing is, is that you can have an environment where you're not burned out and you're not thriving at the same time. So let's, you know, for that student that you were talking about, what I would want to do is I want to go into veterinary practices, emergency practices, where there are [00:23:00] thriving emergency practitioners.

And I'd want to study them. What is it about them as individuals? What are the skills that they utilize? What in the environment is the scaffolding that supports them utilizing those skills at work? What are the skills that they're emboldened with or that they get to develop at work that all contribute to them thrive?

That's how we're going to learn about thriving in emergency medicine. And so that's the kind of thing that we're doing. So at Flourish, one of the things that I can share that I think is actually an evidence based solution is we wanted to look at, okay, what are the predictors, the environmental predictors Of workplace well being in veterinary medicine, among other things, we looked at organizational commitment, which is like a form of engagement.

We looked at job satisfaction, we looked at perceived resilience, we looked at job retention. So, you know, I have no intention of leaving that kind of stuff. And one of the things that we found, which we weren't that surprised, but because the literature seems to suggest it just generally. Uh, is [00:24:00] that the types of behaviors that leaders bring to their workplace each and every day.

So I'm your boss. The things that I do in our interactions on a day to day basis seem to actually make a difference there. They have a very strong relationship to your workplace outcomes when it comes to things like joy, fulfillment and well being. Okay. So what are those behaviors? What are the most things?

Well, it seems pretty clear that when we have leaders who cultivate voice and create an environment of growth mindset, this is what we call psychological safety. This is what you were referring to or alluding to earlier in our conversation, right? If I, as a leader can recognize that you're not going to be a perfect practitioner, but you're definitely trying to get better.

Then I can help you get better by responding productively when you fall short. And if I can do that routinely, you're going to start to feel safer to take intelligent risks at work so that you can learn and grow. Right? That's going to [00:25:00] lead to a sense of achievement, to a sense of purpose, to a sense of fulfillment.

So that's one thing. As a leader, I can recognize the positive, purposeful contributions that you're making every day, and not just see them, but actually show them to you. You did this and this is the difference it made for me. This is the difference it made for your co workers. This is the difference it made for our clients, for our community.

If I can actually show you that on a routine basis, you're significantly more likely to feel like you matter at work and that the things you do every day are meaningful. That leads to fulfillment and well being and resilience as it turns out. There's a very, very strong correlation if you look at Angela Duckworth's work on grit.

Uh, there's a very strong correlation between the experience of purpose, so this is not knowing that I have a purpose, but actually experiencing it alike. Purpose activated, and grit. So that perseverance, that passionate perseverance, right? And if I can recognize the unique strengths that you bring and the unique goals that you have and find ways to tie both of [00:26:00] those to my goals and the goals of our team or our organization, so that you can feel empowered to achieve those things and help yourself and us at the same time, gosh, you're probably going to feel more fulfillment and joy and wellbeing in your work.

And then finally, if I can like connect with you on a human level. And actually care about you and show that I care about you on a routine basis and that I'm here to support you and that I believe in you, even when you fall short. Well, you're probably significantly more likely to be happy, joyful, and fulfilled in your work.

These are solutions. These are things that we can do. And it turns out it's not just leaders, but anybody can do that. Anybody who works alongside another human being in a veterinary workplace can deliver those gifts to that person on a daily basis, and it makes a difference. So what I'm hearing is actually that it's a, it's a culture of feedback, but not, some people may get nervous about that word because they think feedback means a negative.

All the time. But what you're saying is that [00:27:00] it's a culture of feedback, but you're, you're looking for positive in addition to maybe opportunities to grow. Yes. And, and I want to, I really want to, if it's okay, I think you were about to ask a question and I realize I'm cutting you off, I'm sorry, but I think this is.

a very important thing. It's not necessarily either or. Feedback doesn't have to be either harsh criticism or placating, right? And that's, I think, what most people see. People who are, like, averse to critical feedback, because I don't like confrontation and they just try and be nice all the time. And then people who, like, are very results oriented will often Uh, retort back, well, this is all nice and dandy, but it's not my job to make people happy every day, right?

I don't want to placate people, you know, if they're falling short, I need to tell them it's Like, I I get both of those things. There's ways to do both. You know, it's different if I go to you and I say, You know, uh, the way that you dealt with that client earlier, that really doesn't match [00:28:00] with our values, and I need you to fix that.

That's critical feedback and there are ways to deliver that effectively and in real time. You can build a culture where you can actually say exactly that and it'll be okay. But let me ask you this. What if I did the same thing but I did it this way? You know, I know that you're the kind of person who really wants to establish a good connection with your clients.

I'm curious, the interaction that I saw you have with that client earlier when you said X, they responded in this way. Do you feel like that established a stronger or a weaker connection? And then I can see what you have to say. And you might actually already know. Like, I don't have to tell you that you fell short.

You might respond to me, Actually, no, I don't think that that was that great. Well, can you help me walk through what led up to that? What do you think you'll do differently next time? And what can we do to make sure that these things that made it harder for you to do that, those barriers are removed?

That's a way to do exactly the same thing. You screwed up with a client and I need you to do better. But instead of you [00:29:00] screwed up with a client and I need you to do better, it's listen, I know this stuff is important to you and you're a capable person. Let's talk about how we can get you a little bit better at this.

Yes, I think when you can approach it from I care about you and I know that you're this good person and then this situation kind of has me confused. Can you help me through that? That is a lot easier to hear because I'm hearing someone who cares about me. Not someone who's just upset with me and doesn't care about my feelings and thoughts or whatnot, because it is very possible that something bad happened on my way into work and I, it just was not my best self and it doesn't make that what I did right.

But it's a lot easier to communicate that back and say, yeah, I had a really rough morning. I was not myself, you know, thank you for calling it out. I realized I need to, to work on that. And, and if it is something that maybe. The leader can help with to, you know, it's an opportunity to build a better [00:30:00] relationship internally to, to help with an external result at the same time.

Yes. Care for the person, coach the behavior. We need to separate people from behaviors. Building a culture of feedback or working on these things is, I don't know if it's completely natural for Most people, it just means that I think as leaders, there are going to be skills that are crucial. That are just going to be a work in progress.

So what are some ways that people can practice these or something that you've seen where you've seen somebody improve on some of these very important skills? Yeah, it's a really wonderful question. I think that almost universally. The intention is there. I, I really, honestly, in the seven years or whatever, know that I've been doing this and [00:31:00] the thousands and thousands of people in this profession that I've encountered, I ain't probably count on one hand, how many people with ill intent.

There are the professionally, everybody really has pretty good intentions here. It's the delivery on those intentions, taking intentions and making them felt by others. That's where the skills gap is. And yes, I think that there, that's a skill that can be developed and there are things that we can do. I'm going to give an example of what I mean here, but I want to start by saying I think we have to find ways to operationalize our intentions.

So we have to think about what is the intended outcome that I want. I want this person to, whatever, feel that they can deliver feedback to me safely. I want this person to experience purpose in their work. I want this person to feel like they're developing in a way that's fulfilling to them. Whatever it might be, think about what is that thing I want?

What are behaviors that are likely to get you to that? How do you literally schedule those behaviors into your day to day interactions? So, [00:32:00] one way that I, that I've personally done this, I didn't know about the concept of psychological safety until I actually left practice, went back to school, did this master's and, and then started learning about all these concepts myself.

And I thought back of all the times that like, I mean I had a couple relationships with some Team members who I probably built some psychological safety with them, but there were many times where I didn't do a good job at that. I just didn't know. I didn't know any better. No one ever taught me. So when I started Flourish, my consulting firm, it was really important to me to sort of live out that value in particular.

And then when we started adding team members, like I had to like really think about if I'm going to do this. So one way that, that I tried to operationalize it. I want people to feel like they have a voice on this team, that when we sit at a table and we're ideating, or we're working on a new project, or we're thinking about our next step, whatever it might be, that we are sitting at the table equally.

Yes, I'm the boss, I own the [00:33:00] company, whatever. But in that moment, I want everybody to feel like they have a voice and that voice is worth sharing. So, how do I do that? Well, I have to invite that. I have to make sure that they are encouraged to speak up and that they're thanked when they do. Okay. How do I operationalize that behavior?

This is what I started doing. Our team is virtual. I live in Colorado. I have another team member that lives in Colorado, which is an hour away from me. I have a team member in Rhode Island, Maryland. She's moving to Rhode Island. Uh, and then I have a team member in Florida. So we're kind of all over the place.

So we use Slack to the left of me. Here is another screen and Slack is up right now on there. That's how we communicate every day throughout the day. I decided to operationalize this intention by asking a question, force of words, in almost all of my Slack messages. What do you think? Hey guys, um, I'm really thinking about us developing a master class.

This is what I kind of think it should look like. This is [00:34:00] why I want to do it. What do you think? And oftentimes I'll tag somebody directly, what do you think, Megan? And then I'll wait for a response and then whatever they say, even if it's like outlandish, even if it's unachievable, even if it's like hardcore, Josh, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

I say to them, thank you for sharing that. That's it. That's all I started doing. About six months into this venture of having a team and using this, what do you think on Slack? I don't remember what conference I was at, but I was at a conference, and I have Slack on my phone so I can see the notifications, but I'm not really participating in Slack when I'm, like, in conference mode.

And so the other three team members are talking to each other about whatever they're talking about, and I noticed they're asking each other, What do you think? Hey Andy, I was thinking about blah blah blah and this and that, what do you think? Oh, that's a great [00:35:00] question, Tess. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think I agree with that, but I also think that maybe have you thought about and they're just asking each other questions and they're opening up this line of communication with each other.

That's what I mean by operationalizing. It is not enough to come into work, especially. In a position of power and authority to come into work with good intentions, good intentions are what get you through the door. Once you're through the door, it's behavior. It's the consistent routine things that you do with intention and in response to the stimuli around you that create a culture.

So you have to choose the behaviors that's operationalizing. I want to show up like this. Here is how I'm gonna do it and schedule it, quote unquote. I love that. When the leader starts working on these things, that is when people will learn and accept it and it will become natural for them to also repeat the behavior.

So it's like that will affect and it, that leadership at [00:36:00] starting there is so important because. It gives everybody else permission to do that as well. Yes. It's so impactful. And it may be, is that something that you enjoy as well? Now being in a consultancy type of position where you're able to help many different hospitals, it is.

I'm not trying to assume it, I'm already assuming for you, sorry, uh, impact comes in one line. But what are some of the things that you are discovering that is, like, allowing you to thrive personally? Listen, I'm just like anybody else in the world, I want to make money and I want to be able to, you know, live the kind of lifestyle that I live.

Uh, and so, obviously, Propensation and how much money we make as an organization is, uh, important, but I have redefined what success means to me, success for me. Now, the most important part of success is impact is knowing that we're having some sort of a positive impact on the [00:37:00] community in some way, and.

You know, when it comes down to it, the numbers at the end of the day or how much money we make, um, you know, we have financial goals, but we don't, we don't put those goals above our sense of purpose and the mission that we have. In the world that is first and foremost, and we are constantly looking for craving indicators that we are having an impact.

And when we get them, man, they are powerful, way more powerful than any number would ever be. Yeah, and you've been able to do a lot of different partnerships as well. I think the one that's most recent that I'm aware of is, is working with AHA and publishing a book. And that, that's a big deal, so I'm really excited for you.

So what was the journey of publishing this book? So everything that you've learned it on paper, what is that like? The book, honestly, was just another indication of what I said to you earlier, that the people in this profession are some of the best human beings on the planet. Publishing a book is quite an adventure.

I am [00:38:00] audacious enough to think that I have something to say that people might be interested in. And so when AHA approached me about writing a book on practice culture, it, it made a lot of sense to me sitting down and then writing the book and going through that process, uh, was really, really interesting.

But the, the really, the most interesting and perhaps the scariest part was, you know, you get done with your first draft. So I've got 14 chapters of material and I've spent, I don't know, a year and a half writing this and researching citations and the whole bit. And now it's going to expert reviewers, six people are going to read the manuscript script with explicit instructions from AHA's publishing group.

This is what you need to do. These are the comments you need to make the questions you need to answer. Basically, I mean, they don't say this, they don't use these kinds of words, but it's basically like read this thing and tear it apart, prove to us why this isn't good enough. Uh, and so these six [00:39:00] people anonymously read through the whole manuscript and they're typing comments in the margins and then they send it back to the publisher who then anonymizes it.

They take all the names off, any identifying information. They collate all the comments from these six people into one document and I get that in an email. And I remember sitting in this chair at this desk and looking at my computer screen and going, I don't know if I can open it. Like I was scared, I was really, really scared.

So I opened this thing up and I start reading through the comments and they were pointed comments. They were very direct, they were candid, they were incisive, and in some cases a little bit surgical. And unbelievably helpful. Like it was clear to me, it didn't take very long to read through all of those comments to realize that these were six people who genuinely wanted me to make this book better and really, truly wanted to help it get there.[00:40:00] 

And that was amazing. That was amazing. And I can unequivocally say that, that what ended up getting published is 10 times better than I would have written on my own if I didn't have the help of those six people. What another great example of taking feedback and from people who are really just trying to grow you as an impactful human in a profession in general.

So I am glad that was your experience and. I, I'm excited that AHA has really seemed to be investing a lot when it comes to the practice culture, retaining our people. I listened to one of the presentations at BMX when I was there, and she made such a good point that, Jessica Avokosan, that it's great that we want to try to get more people into the profession, however, If it's like a colander with all the people draining out of the bottom, you're never gonna keep up.

So, if you're not focusing on that part, then you're not [00:41:00] really helping the problem. So, I love that they're dedicated to this and that they've been a good partner with you. Yeah, I has wonderful, uh, everybody there, Garth, Jessica, Judy, Rosalina, you're like the whole group there is really just phenomenal people who are, they, they are fighting for the future of our profession.

It's been truly delightful working with them. Well, I know that we've talked a lot about positive psychology. What is something else that you would like to, to share with the profession to help us continue to make it better and better, even though it's good, it's good, but we can always grow. Yeah. Um, I, I mean, I, I guess I would play off of a little bit of what you were just saying about, um, you know, this whole idea of like attracting more people versus retention.

There's an interesting discussion happening in the community right now around this idea of shortage. You know, a lot of folks that [00:42:00] you go to at the hospital level will tell you there's not enough people. We don't have enough team members, we can't find doctors, there's not enough techs. You know, we're bleeding people from the profession.

And if you look at the study done by Mars, you know, suggesting, what is it? It by 2050, we're going to have like a 15, 000 veterinarian shortage or something in the country, like crazy numbers like that. And then there. There are other people who say, it's not a shortage problem, it's a, it's an efficiency problem that we, we are highly inefficient, our business models aren't really working, and that actually if we improved our efficiency, we would find that we don't have shortages at our hospitals.

I think the truth probably lies somewhere in between there. I'm not an economist. I am not a, you know, a data analyst. I don't conduct those kinds of studies. What I do know is that people who get energy through their work do better work. If we work in an environment that contributes to our sense of [00:43:00] psychological energy, or what psychologists refer to as subjective vitality, if we work in that kind of environment, we are significantly more likely to be able to put more into it.

And we're going to get more productive over time, we're going to be able to endure more stressors and You know, bumps in the road, we're going to stick around longer, retention improves, all those kinds of things. So I think I agree with Jessica, like let's keep doing the weed management stuff. Let's try and make sure that we can attract more people into the profession, open up more vet schools, more tech schools, you know, create a larger talent pool.

Absolutely, we should do that. Let's also ensure that we create environments that when those people are out of school and they start working for us, they want to stay. For a long time, and they want to do the best that they possibly can because they're actually getting some value out of their work. You know, I have to talk about we spend the average American if you just do the math, right?

So a full time adult American is working about 40 hours a [00:44:00] week. There's 168 hours of the week. That's about 25 percent of your life, 25 percent of your life at work. In vet med, it's probably a larger percentage, right? And I would even venture to say that the time that work occupies our mind and our being By far exceeds the time that we're physically clocked in.

And so probably 30, maybe 40 percent of our adult lives is spent doing something work related. That shouldn't be something we just get through. That should not be the thing you survive to get to the good stuff. I don't think it makes sense for us to create human lives that only 60 percent of it is good.

If you're going to spend 40 percent of your time somewhere, it should be part of the good stuff. It should be contributing to your sense of fulfillment. And if that happens, I mean, think about just personally in the areas in your life where you get lit up, where you like really feel like this is, this is good stuff.

I want to savor in this. I don't want it to end. How [00:45:00] energized and alive you feel and how able you are to deliver on who you want to be as a human being. Let's create workplaces like that because then we will solve magical problems. I think when you can support your current people, it's a lot easier to hire more.

Yes. I remember looking at internships and luckily I had a father that insisted go visit these places that you may wanna intern. And there was a hospital where one doctor had just come in, she looked trash. She had left for two hours to take a nap and came right back. Um, I spoke to one of the interns and she basically told me to run.

Not good signs. No! So if we can make our current place a wonderful place to work, it is so much easier to [00:46:00] recruit. They will, they will recruit for you, even if they're moving, right? And they have to leave. They will say wonderful things about the hospital, which makes it so much easier. To, to get new people than them telling new people to run.

So we worked with the hospital. I don't even want to say, I mean, they were a client, but they didn't need us. I don't, I, to this day, I say to the owners, like, I don't know why you hired us. Cause you are already pretty darn exceptionals, but I think that's part of what makes them exceptional last year in 2023.

That I know of two doctors joined their team unsolicited. They didn't have an add up. They weren't hiring. Two doctors from out of state contacted them. I've heard about your practice. I've heard about how awesome it is to work there. I'm wondering if you're looking for a doctor. It does happen. I love it.

So I have just a final few questions for you just to learn a little bit more about you. Do you have any hidden skills [00:47:00] or interests that maybe not a lot of people know about? Oh, hidden skills or interests. That's a good one. Um, I think a lot of people probably know this stuff now, but I, I've been a beekeeper for nine years.

I was once the. Two years, I think I was the vice president of the Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association. Very proud of that. I am a little bit obsessed with my 225 gallon saltwater reef tank, like probably too obsessed, which to the point of like looking at things under microscopes to try and identify pest issues for people in the local reef keeping community.

That's impressive. Man, it's a little nerdy. It's a little nerdy. Love that. Do you have anything on your bucket list that you would like to do bucket list? I've been, okay. So there's a veterinarian who I met, I don't know, a year or two ago. [00:48:00] He has a flight simulator at home. And so like. Okay. I've never had interest in flight simulators.

I've never had an interest in being applied for many years of my life. I was terrified of flying. The work that I do now requires me to travel almost constantly. And so I've gotten quite accustomed to flying to the point that I actually really enjoy it now. When he said flight simulator, I'm 47. I thought back to like, Early, early, early PC days, like the Microsoft Flight Simulator programs that, you know, was, like, super pixelated and the plane, like, moved in herky jerky and you were using, like, a joystick.

Like, and he's like, no, no, it's not that. It's like a true flight simulator. It's like the kind of thing that pilots purchase for their home to practice. Like, how? Are you like independently wealthy? No, apparently you can get these things. They make these like crazy devices. There's the controllers and the plain stick thingy.

And [00:49:00] they make like, um, Devices that you can attach to your seat that simulate the feeling of turbulence. Like there's all these crazy things that you can get and it's not that expensive. Like it's accessible to everybody. And he said, he, he got turned down to this and he bought all this equipment and he spends like hours every day learning to fly.

And now I'm like, I don't want to do that. So that's a bucket list. It's a strange and odd bucket list, but I want to learn how to fly a plane. I kind of want to learn how to fly like large planes on a flight simulator. That's really cool. For some reason, I am surrounded by people who are interested in flying.

My, my brother, my stepdaughter, she's 13. That's terrifying. Do you think she'll do it? Do you think you'll get her like pilots lessons? She is, she's already, she's already taken lessons, but, look for her for getting started early though. That's really cool. So, I mean, I would [00:50:00] not mind having somebody who could just fly us wherever we wanted to go.

So, but, yeah, I mean, that's kind of a nice perk to have in the house. Yes, so, well, fantastic. And finally, what is something you are very grateful for? Oh, gosh. Um, I am grateful for you reaching out and, uh, welcoming me onto your podcast to have this kind of conversation. Uh, honestly, I truly mean this every time I connect with somebody like you who is willing to give space, I don't even.

I want to say willing to give space because I feel like that's limiting. You're clearly interested in the wellbeing of the people of this profession and your willingness to step forward and be part of the change. It means the world to me. And I'm eternally grateful that, that you're doing the work that you're doing to try and help the people of that.

Thank you. That, that means a lot to me. So thank you. You're welcome. So good. I am glad you are [00:51:00] here. Funny thing, I have a new editing tool called Descript, where it creates a transcript, which you watch as you edit, and the last part where Josh says, and help the people of Vet Med, it translated it to, and help the people of Vet Med.

Batman. So even Descript knows you are a superhero. Well done. I do hope that Vet Life Reimagined is giving value to you. If you haven't yet, go subscribe over on the YouTube channel. That helps us greatly. Have a fantastic week and join me and Dr. Natalie Marks next week.