Reimaging Education & Innovation with Aaron Massecar

Today on Vet Life Reimagined, your host, Dr. Megan Sprinkle talks to Aaron Massecar. 

Aaron Massecar is the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council (VIC). His career started in philosophy with a Ph.D. and was a professor for 5 years. Married to a veterinarian, he found veterinary professionals with a big dream for the future of veterinary medicine. With diverse backgrounds aligned, they created some of the most forward-thinking initiatives and programs to create the future collaboratively. 

The VIC hosts the Veterinary Innovation Summit, where big thinkers in animal health gather to learn about the possibilities of the future of veterinary medicine. 

Resources

• Aaron's website
• The Veterinary Innovation Council 
• The Veterinary Innovation Summit
• The Veterinary Care Accessibility Project
• Video episode on YouTube

Transcript

Megan Sprinkle: [00:00:00] How does a PhD philosophy professor co-found and lead one of the most innovative initiatives in veterinary medicine? Being married to a veterinarian helps, but Aaron Massacre is about to share his story and some amazing insights that you may not have heard before. Aaron is currently the executive director of the Veterinary Innovation Council, which is an organization with a mission to investigate needed changes in a collaborative way to transform the veterinary ecosystem.

They host the Veterinary Innovation Summit, which will take place this year in August in Kansas City. This is one of my favorite events. I've gone for three years now. Erin brings a unique perspective to the veterinary world. Because of his interest in knowledge and education, we talk a lot about ideas on how learning could be more impactful and how it can also translate into making us better communicators.

And of course, we talk about the exciting happenings in the world of innovation in animal health and how you can get [00:01:00] involved. This episode will challenge you and hopefully inspire you. Let's get to the conversation with Aaron Massacre.

Megan Sprinkle: welcome Aaron to Vet Life Reimagined. You have been in the veterinary industry for quite a few years. I think 2016 ish was when it may be kind of official. , But your background is really unique and I'm very passionate about bringing in these different perspectives to make the veterinary profession all the better.

And so what is the journey? First of all, I'm really curious about philosophy. So how did you fall in love with philosophy and decide to do that , for your entire life? And, but then how does that connect to that 2016 when you go to Texas A& M and start a veterinary innovation program?

Aaron Massacre:Yeah, it's, I don't know, at the time it seemed like just kind of a natural transition, but then ever since then people are like, wait, so what did you do?

So yeah, my background was in philosophy. So my [00:02:00] undergrad, my master's and my PhD were all in philosophy. I was teaching for five years. , the whole thing was trying to figure out how do we live a good life now? And there's 2, 500 plus years of people writing about this stuff. And yet we, Think that we're unique in our struggles and everything.

And I'm like, no, these guys have figured some stuff out. And unfortunately it is mostly guys, but more and more, there's, a really deep, rich history of women that are talking about it too. So it's, it's super interesting from that perspective. , and what are the mental models that they use in order to make sense of their experience?

So there's little things that you find when you dig into it, like, what's the most charitable interpretation possible? and that's something that like, you can just use every day, right? You find yourself upset with somebody else and you can just say, is this the most charitable interpretation possible?

Is there another way of looking at this that does not ignore any of the facts? But puts a different [00:03:00] narrative on it, you know, am I trying to tell myself a story just because I'm upset with this person and I want to be angry at this person, you know, is there a different way of looking at it? And it's just that pause that exists in all of our experience that allows us to just take a moment and say, Is there something that I'm missing here?

And it's so interesting that, you know, people have been talking about this since the Stoics, right? And Stoicism has had this revival now today, which is really awesome. But it, it was that kind of stuff that I found. , and then I started studying this guy, Charles Peirce. So he's one of the founders of pragmatism.

Most people know William James, one of the founders of like modern psychology. And one of his colleagues was Charles Peirce. And so most people don't know about Peirce, but , I looked into that to figure out how do we bring theory and practice together? Right. Because it's one thing to talk about all these different things.

And like, you know, if we could just make these kinds of choices and that would be so much better. And you create in philosophy, they call it like these [00:04:00] castles in the sky, right? And you're like, okay, let's get down to earth. Like, let's get down to like, on a practical level, how do we actually make these changes?

And one of the things that he talked about was habits. And so I got like really into what habits were. And this was before Charles Duhigg and James Clear and these people were talking about habits. And I was like, man, I totally missed that wave. Like if I was publishing on this stuff, I could have done something pretty productive.

Anyways, so I met somebody when I started my PhD at the University of Guelph, and later married her, and she became a veterinarian, and was showing me all these really interesting things about science, and how we live, and how we take care of our animals, and it was just, it was fascinating, , and then, She introduced me to someone named Dr.

Adam Little. And if you haven't had him on the podcast, I strongly recommend it, but make sure you're like very well caffeinated because he's, he's pretty [00:05:00] fast moving, and we just talked about like some of the trends that were happening in veterinary medicine, you know, and it was really interesting getting his perspective because those were the two basic veterinarians that I knew, right?

Like my wife and then Adam. And I'm like, Oh, all veterinarians are like this. And then come to realize this is not the case. So, you know, Adam tells his story much better than I could, but he definitely felt like the stuff that he was interested in kind of put him on the periphery, you know, and he would have some of his colleagues say things like, dude, that's great, but can you just put on a stethoscope?

Like, I know you're interested in the future of veterinary medicine and telemedicine and all this stuff. And he was like on the forefront of all of this. So we just started talking more and more and hanging out and having a really good time, drinking beer in the local pub and talking about the future of vet med.

And I would be like, well, that's kind of like one of these models that is from like Hagel or Kierkegaard or whatever. And he'd be like, Oh, you actually get what I'm [00:06:00] talking about. I'm like, yeah, isn't it? Doesn't everyone talk like this? And he's like, no. , so then my wife finished up her internship at Cornell and her career prospects were just looking way better than mine.

and I was like, okay, well let's move to wherever it is you want to go. So she got a choice between Pike's Peak Animal shelter and Houston SPCA. And I was like, a couple of Canadians going down to Texas. I'm not really sure about that. , and she really loved the job at Houston SPCA. So we moved down to Houston and got the job there and then.

I was helping Adam really set up all of the innovation entrepreneurship program with Eleanor Green at Texas A& M, and then I helped provide structure to it. so Adam has some really great ideas. And so my job was to like turn those into reality in a certain way. And so we created the innovation summit, the entrepreneurship Academy ran some hackathons and some [00:07:00] other things there.

And then I met Mia Carey. She's such an unbelievable human being and just positive all the time, except when you mess up. When I found out when I was working for her as a program manager of the innovation council.  She's just very direct.

She's not mean about it. She's just, this is not the way that it's supposed to be. We need to make this better. And I'm like, okay. Yes, ma'am. , often go and do it. So I got a job with the Innovation Council, which led to working with NAVC, which led to my real passion is in education and how we're educating people on how we're not exactly for following evidence-based practices.

and so that turned into a job at Colorado State University. I worked for VEG for a little bit, and now I'm back at the Innovation Council. And this is, it's such an amazing job. Like the board that supports the work that we do is unbelievable. And these people are just so amazing and so [00:08:00] humble at the same time.

so it's just, it's wonderful working with them. So that's where I'm at now. And we're looking at things, back in the day, we were looking at telemedicine, workforce shortage, , empowering mid-level practitioners. , and today we're looking at access to care is the biggest issue that's affecting the industry.

And so we have some work that we've commissioned. So to try to figure out what financial models are effective, where the challenges are. So Mike Greenberg and the Veterinary Care Accessibility Project working with him to try to identify, those care deserts. And then we've got a website that we're launching probably in March or so.

That's going to be focusing on what are the tools that practitioners need. So how to have financial conversations, what payment plan options are available? And then a new area that's kind of intermediate care. So what are things that could be done in the practice that people are referring out? How do you keep that in practice?

Because we know that , not every [00:09:00] animal that gets referred to a specialties center is going to go there. So how do we keep that back in the practice and make sure that the animal gets at least some level of care? Those are some of the things that we're looking at.

Megan Sprinkle: Speaking to that, keeping it within the general practitioner's practice.

I think that was a big conversation at the last veterinary innovation summit around cancer. And I thought that was fascinating to hear everybody's perspective, both the GP's perspective, because everybody's in the room. That's, that's the cool part about the summit is you've got the general practitioners are in the room.

And these are the people who are genuinely interested. This is not like a huge C. E. Conference. People are coming to really discuss these things. And so the GPs. Were talking about their challenges. And then the oncologist were talking about their perspective and how to help.

And then we had the A. I. People were there to talk about all these things.  So just to back up a little bit.  Well, a lot of it, the Adam [00:10:00] little, like I can very much relate to him and his thought process of getting excited about these big thought processes.

And, and a lot of times people are just like, we just need to survive today. It's like, you know, do the technical things and just get us through the day. , so I definitely relate to that. But then you also said something about that you saw a lack of evidence based approaches. And I, that one kind of triggered a little flag in my mind because I think in veterinary medicine we like to talk about the evidence-based everything, right?

That's how, what we want to practice. So do you mind elaborating just a little bit on what you were seeing and what you were working on?

Aaron Massacre: Sure how much time do we have? Uh, yeah. So, , this is not me, , trying to be excessively critical to veterinary medicine. Like this is, this is something that I experienced myself, right?

I finished up my Ph.D. and, And I got a pep talk [00:11:00] about how great it is to be a professor and teaching at university or college. And so then I went off and I did that and I'm like, okay, so how do you teach again? Like what you know. And so there, there are resources and tools that are available at every school, but not every professor, , whether they're like a sessional or adjunct or whatever, or a full professor are taking advantage of these tools.

So there's amazing resources that are available. So I started really digging into it and saying what is it exactly that we should be doing? How should we be teaching? And I found more and more that standard lecture is the format, right? People just kind of standing up on stage and talking at people.

And I was like, this doesn't feel right. And so. I would just start trying to have conversations, and in philosophy it's a whole lot easier to do that, right, because you're like really digging into concepts and finding the periphery of them and trying to get people to absorb them and use them for their daily life.

So [00:12:00] it's a little bit harder in some of the sciences, but the methodologies that are available aren't really being utilized. So, for example, if you're standing up at the front of the room and just lecturing at people, that's really more about you than it is about the audience. Because you're not sitting down and saying, Where is my audience at?

And how do I move them along? You're more just conveying information. And in a time when information is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. And why are we doing that? Right? Like, that's a That's kind of like a 15th century model of education, where you only had people who had, for example, the ability to read and access to the books.

And today that's not the case, and yet our model is still the same. And then there's a bunch of other things like, , what was originally educational theory is just educational fact now, like spaced recall is the best way of turning something from short term to long term memory. And so [00:13:00] if you go through, , a massive amount of information, and then you never return to that information later on, it doesn't get retained.

And if it does, it's, it's a really small amount. And it's typically only by those people who really know how to retain that information anyways. And so, you know, things like nobody's ever taught how we actually learn, right? Like we, we have these ideas of , if one more person starts talking to me about learning styles, I'm probably going to lose my mind.

People talk about like kinesthetic, auditory, visual learners, all that kind of stuff. There's zero evidence for that whatsoever, and I see people talking about this still today, right? And you look back on the history of it and there was this really great podcast on NPR where they looked back into like where the stuff actually came from.

And it was just a theory that was turned into practice without ever really understanding [00:14:00] whether or not it was efficacious. And it's just not. So what do people need instead of thinking about like visual, auditory, kinesthetic, et cetera? They need simplicity to complexity. That's how information should be presented.

And simplicity often involves diagrams. And then you move to more complex information where you might have a photograph or 3D rendering of something. And so it's, that's a much better perspective, but it's way more difficult to understand and to apply, and yet, I still see people talking about, I'm a visual learner.

It's like, no. And even things like, most people don't know what they're doing when they're actually learning something. Like, if you're reading through something, in order to learn that material, you have to be asking yourself questions as you're going through it. And it's even little things, like, do I understand this, or is this a little bit fuzzy?

And this is, like, this is one of the most fascinating [00:15:00] things that I find about higher education, is it teaches people to be incredibly sensitive to the things that they know and they don't know. And if you figure out the way to capitalize on that feeling and pursue the things that are really important for you to know, then the feelings of pride and self-efficacy and all of that come out of just being able to read through something and say, I don't really understand that little piece.

Like, let me go back earlier in the text or. Let me go somewhere else and figure out the answer to that and that like that feeling of empowerment is something that we we do every day, but we don't really prioritize it. And so can we just encourage people to do that more often? 

. So that, that feeling of self-efficacy, the feeling like you're better at the things that matter to you, like that drives motivation. It carries you through all sorts of like depressive episodes and struggles . And [00:16:00] yet we don't prioritize that enough. We spend all of our time talking about work life balance when work life balance is just creating a dichotomy between work and life.

And nobody gets into the profession of veterinary medicine because They just want a nine-to-five. Like they care about animals and they care about their jobs and they care about the people around them. And yet we keep reinforcing this idea of work-life as these two separate things. And I'm like, no, like what makes you happy?

 What are the areas of fulfillment and how do you get more of those? That's what really matters. You know, I talked to entrepreneurs, like we had a panel at VMX with people like Cindy Trice and we're just talking about her schedule and she's like, look, I just really like working, you know?

And it was almost like this thing that was maybe even a little bit shameful , she really loves working and, and her whole life is organized around that. And that's a really good thing. , why don't we talk about that more often? Why don't we talk about [00:17:00] fulfillment instead of these other things?

And I think all of that comes down to the way in which people are educated or not. , , I could go through a whole bunch more examples, but those are the basic things. 

Megan Sprinkle:  Wow. I have to digest this for a second, but what I've tried to do , on Vet Life Reimagined too, as I talk with people all throughout the profession, as they tell their journey, I try to understand how were they making decisions?

How are they discovering their values to make the next step of their journey? Cause I think. That is helpful. If you're able to watch somebody go through their values when it comes to decision-making, then hopefully what I'm trying to convey is, okay, it's your turn. You get to decide what are your personal values.

If you are really enjoying your work, that's fantastic. It's like, how do you do more of that? So you can continue to get that joy. And if you aren't enjoying what you're doing right [00:18:00] now, What is joy for you find a little bit more of that and try more of that so that you can grow in that direction and the other thing that you're saying is about how I'm interpreting this maybe a little bit into the habit side of things, right? You, you have to find things and give yourself the reward. So it's easier to do the habit over and over again. Well, how can we change how we learn and whether that is in vet school, vet tech school, or even going to conferences, right?

Cause that's, we're supposed to be going to learn lots of other things too. Conferences are fun. I'm a nerd. I love my conferences, but do we need to change something or how can we better reward that type of learning versus the, I've got a test on Friday and I've got to pass my test .

Aaron Massacre:  That's really hard. Like, yeah, it's really hard. , I tend to think that some of these changes are really driven by consumer demand. And I tend to think that if more [00:19:00] veterinarians. we're able to focus on not their own learning styles, but more on the things that really matter to them and demanding that things be presented to them in a way that contributed to better learning outcomes.

For example, most CE goes by RACE certification, right? And so, is it "registry of approved continuing education providers", something like that. And through AAVSB, and the standards that they have set up, I think are like, they're definitely better than nothing, right? They're better than, willingly saying whatever.

But they don't exactly contribute to the best possible learning outcomes. So, for example, a 50-minute lecture followed by five quiz questions has no bearing on long-term memory. , there's just, there's nothing there. , it does get you to think a little bit about how do you process the [00:20:00] information.

So, for example, there's things like, Chunking, right? And sometimes professors will do that for you, but sometimes you have to do that on your own. And so going through a certain amount of material, say 10 minutes of material, and then stopping and saying, what did I just learn in the past 10 minutes? Having a notebook beside you and say, what did I learn in the past 10 minutes?

And then being able to summarize some of that information. So the chunking of information, the summarization of that information, being able to say, how does that apply to me? And how can I use this information? Something as simple as that. , some people do that just kind of naturally. But most people don't, or they don't even know that they're doing it.

So that, that would be a simple way of getting started. We could demand that information was presented differently. So space recall is one thing, interweaving of content is another thing. And this is something that you get in practice all the [00:21:00] time, right? It's not like somebody comes in and says, what is that anatomical structure?

Nobody says that. They're like, what's wrong with my dog? And in order to answer that question, you have to understand the anatomy, the physiology, all of that stuff put together into one thing. And we don't do a great job in college and university of weaving all of that content together for people. What we do is we separate it out and then we teach it as discrete units.

But we don't bring the whole thing back together and so simple things like everything that you learn should be able to be tied back to some sort of story about the animal, about what's happening with the animal, how you're addressing that need or with the owner, how you're addressing the needs of the owner.

It's tying that all back together to create like a comprehensive whole there's a whole bunch of philosophy that goes into the background of this. And it's a whole tradition called epistemology and how we learn and all this kind of [00:22:00] stuff. And it's 500 years old, actually 2, 500 years old, but more recently, like 500 years old and it's all there, you know, but we don't use it.

Another thing is constructivism. If the learner is not actively processing the information, then they might as well just be watching a movie, right? And it's really interesting. Like some of the studies that have been done. So, they put somebody on stage who's at the top of their profession, research area.

I can't remember exactly what it was. And then they took a two minute. Slice of that and then put an actor on the stage and ask them to convey that basically the same information over those two minutes recorded both of those and then put those in front of people and said, who's the expert and categorically people said the actor and why is that?

Well, the actor knows how to convey the actor knows how to make engagement happen with the audience. These are the kinds of things that really matter. And there's tons of books, like you can honestly, some of the books on my [00:23:00] shelf, there's this thing called instructional design, , and yet it's reduced down to this, , oh, I have to have three learning objectives.

Okay. Here's my three learning objectives, right? Without necessarily thinking about. Why they're created, why they tie back into the entirety of the program that you're trying to create, what the actual outcomes are for the person on an individualized level. And this is the thing that's like really exciting.

We're getting to a level of personalization of education. In the next probably 6 to 12 months, we're going to start to see really rapid advancements that the most progressive DVM or VMD programs are going to start looking at how to deploy these inside their institutions, but many of them have zero capacity for bringing on some of this different way of thinking.

For example, copilots, we see this with at GPT all the time. Somebody is going to do that for veterinary medicine and show better outcomes with time and less stress for the students. [00:24:00] And They're going to be better off. 

Megan Sprinkle:  And do you mind explaining a little bit more on co-pilots? Cause I don't know how many people might be familiar, with that.

Aaron Massacre:  Yeah, sure. So companies like Microsoft, for example, are developing co-pilots and these are basically either on your phone or on your computer using something like a GPT, but it's usually just large language models with a defined area on the backend. And you're able to ask questions.

And it provides you with responses, it's able to ask you questions and then gauge your responses. And so it's like having an assistant there to guide you through all of this material, because that's the thing that all education is chasing after, customized responsive learning pathways. Like that's what all education should be.

And we've gone from apprenticeship models where it's a one on one to a one to 500 [00:25:00] Model where we have like one instructor and then 500 students. And now we're getting down to every single person can go back to that apprenticeship model and have experts providing you with guidance on the things that matter to you.

So that's the kind of stuff that we're going to start seeing through things like, , chat, GPT and other examples like that. I'm glad you're bringing this up. Cause I had heard that concept of veterinary education where it's self paced and I was very skeptical at first. Cause they were saying, Oh, you know, some people will be able to graduate in like two years.

And I was just like, do we want to do it in two years? Like, so I, I just didn't quite have all the tools that would be able to. Be put into place to make that happen. But as we are starting to talk about more co pilots and I, I hear that on my marketing podcast and things like that.  It's really exciting, because this allows us to learn [00:26:00] what is most important, it is much more targeted in the learning approach. So with these tools, I definitely see how this is possible for that vet and beyond. It's, it's super fascinating because, for example, you write an exam and then you get the response back and sometimes you don't even get the exam back.

Right? Because the instructor says, no, I have to keep the questions and you can't have the questions because I use the questions next year and that sort of thing. Well, , I've gone through chat GPT and just said, create. X number of questions for me based on this one article, right? And so I upload that particular article and I say, and it's my own writing, so I'm not worried about it getting out otherwise.

So I upload my own article, put it in and say, give me 10 quiz questions. And then I say, give me 10 more and then 10 more and then 10 more. And so that barrier from the [00:27:00] instructor side is now gone, but imagine you as a student knowing exactly the things that you're good at and the things that you're not good at based on objective information and being able to go back and revisit those things again and again.

So having those exam questions and it's, it's really interesting. If you combine competency and confidence. So in almost no exam, do we ever get how confident are you in this answer? I have never seen that in vet med. Somebody might be doing that. So apologies if they are, but if you can figure out what people are competent and confident at, and go back to that information for them.

So if their confidence is low, but their competency is high. Then all you have to do is ask them the question again, a couple more times and get their confidence back up if their competence is low and their confidence is low, then that's, you got, you got a lot of work to do the [00:28:00] really problematic area is when the confidence is high and the competence is low.

And that happens a lot. And it's just somebody posturing, you know, they're saying like, I need to feel confident about this answer. And we see that in practice all the time. And especially on social media, when veterinarians are slamming each other. The hubris, the arrogance of some people saying , I know this answer and you don't know this answer.

And it's like, if we had, Clear objective reference to what was right and what was wrong, and we can match confidence and competence. I think a lot of the A lot of the challenges, a lot of the well-being challenges that we see later on would be addressed in vet school rather than waiting for that to like bubble up over time.

And it's just, it's just as simple as asking confidence and competence and then responding appropriately to the student. Stuff like that. I'm like, why don't we do that? You know, there's evidence behind it. There's lots of research [00:29:00] papers. It's been written about for decades. Like, why don't we do that? It's like, no, no, we'd rather, you know, talk about wellbeing and how people are burning out and that kind of stuff.

And it's like, where do you think that comes from? Where do you think that comes from? Because most of those people don't have those experiences prior to vet school. So where does that come from?

Megan Sprinkle:  And unfortunately we're setting with the, the, some of the methods that are being approached it. It's setting up the assumption that I'm just going to burn out instead of addressing the root causes and so that's very concerning.

And it is happening young. It is happening definitely in vet school, if not before vet school, like the way people talk about. Oh, you're going to be a veterinarian. All right. You're not going to be wealthy. You're just going to work a lot. And then you're going to die there in the clinic. And it's like, that's terrible, , back to the people who enjoy, you know, what they're doing, , and the other thing that kind of came up for me while you were [00:30:00] talking about this is not only are we hopefully building more confident and competent veterinary professionals.

By teaching this way, but I think it can also help and improve our own communication with others because a lot of times it is conveying our knowledge to others who don't have the background, whether it's pet owners, or I see this in industry when science people try to talk to the business people and vice versa, it's very, very humorous.

At least for a little while, and then you're just like, Oh my goodness.  So even being able to learn that the simple concept and grow and then come back to, okay, what did I learn? What was the whole point of this? Why does this matter? That's not only important for yourself, but it's important for you to be able to communicate that to others.

Aaron Massacre:  Totally. And it's really interesting. and it's a bad example for me today because I've been talking the majority of the time, but even if you just [00:31:00] start off with, , what do you already know and how do we develop that even more? And it's unbelievable when people are able to do this really well.

So to figure out, perform some sort of baseline assessment, but just know where is the person at? And then how do you get them to the next level? And so going back to the GPT stuff, there's this pretty funny example of a veterinarian named, Kate McDaniel, and she was talking about this at VIS last year.

She was trying to explain some complicated, case to the animal owner and the owner didn't really understand what was going on. And so she went over to GPT and said, explain, DKA or something like that. to somebody who really loves basketball because she knew that he really loved basketball.

And so it created this whole analogy of how to understand DKA through the perspective of basketball. Brought that back to the owner and was like, does this make sense now? And the owner's like, [00:32:00] totally makes sense. Right? And so it's figuring out where people are at and then being able to elevate them based on that.

And the tools that we have available to us now are far surpass anything that we could have had before. But it's really just like knowing who you're talking to, knowing your audience and being able to relate to them appropriately.

Megan Sprinkle:  I remember that example. It was great. So you're kind of leading into it.

So it sounds like a lot of the learning concepts that we're discussing does have crossover into this world of innovation, which is also extremely exciting into the profession. So what has your journey and experience been? , being very much involved in veterinary innovation from definitely the beginning of the veterinary innovation summit and council, but like, what has that been?

What are you most excited about? What are things you think people should know about?

Aaron Massacre:  Yeah, I think the [00:33:00] first thing is that If you're really interested in innovation, that might make you a bit of an outlier with some of the people that you normally hang out with, but there are really interesting people out there in the community and plug for the innovation summit.

They definitely tend to collect at the innovation summit. You were there. That's a good example. So there are communities of people who are there. , just because you're thinking differently than other people doesn't mean that you're different than everyone else. And so just finding, finding that community has been really awesome.

So seeing that happen, and that goes back to the experience that Adam had, where he felt like there's gotta be other people like me. And that was part of the reason why he and Eleanor Green created the Innovation Summit. What I find really fascinating is a couple of things. So one, every veterinary professional, whether they're DVM, VMD, CVT, unlicensed tech [00:34:00] assistant, whatever, they're all really good at figuring out workarounds.

You know, they're really good at , this doesn't quite work. And we're going to , try this different system over here. And I'm just going to take this tube and , put it over there. And , maybe we can organize things better, you know? And I'm just like, that's fascinating stuff. So really good innovators, but not so great at the entrepreneurship thing.

And I think it comes back to the communication stuff that you were talking about before is that, this leads to the second point is that they, they tend to struggle with how do I turn this into something that can actually help other people? Right? And so they don't necessarily want to solve this problem for other people in general.

I remember talking with a board of cardiologists years ago, and they created, it kind of looked like a jello mold. And it was designed to mimic some of the tissue around the heart. And they were able to create this. And it was fascinating because you had to navigate it in the same way that you [00:35:00] would with an animal heart.

And I was like, this is amazing. , have you talked to other people about this? And she's like, yeah. I'm like, have you thought about like potentially commercializing this or making it available to other people? And she's like, I'm not really sure if other people want it. And I'm like, well, what do you mean?

She's like, well, you know, I've probably talked to like 15 or 20 people, and they all say they want it, but I don't know if they really want it. And I'm like, that's such early market traction to be able to demonstrate that you have something that's valuable. So anyways, it's stuff like that. , the other thing is that, , I find veterinary professionals are insanely intelligent, like they're just so smart, but for some reason they can't transfer that outside of veterinary medicine.

And so, they focus so much on being able to provide every possible differential and like seeing all of these different pathways and I'm like if you just took Even something like the soap notes format and [00:36:00] applied that to other problems in your life, You'd be a whole lot more successful than you currently are.

And it's not to say that like veterinarians are not successful in living. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying that they often don't apply the skillset that they have in veterinary medicine to things outside of veterinary medicine and think about things like differentials and treatment plan options and costs and weigh all of these things together.

I'm like, that is, that's perfect business thinking. Right? And that's actually more than what most people in business do. Most people in business, I heard this term a while ago, 60 percent and go. Right? You're 60 percent certain that you've got something good, go, right? Whereas veterinarians, I just feel like are much more at the 95, 98 percent and go, you know, ideally it's a hundred percent.

And I totally get it, you know, a life hangs in the balance.  And the ability to transfer that [00:37:00] knowledge from one domain and that skill set from one domain to another makes them incredibly successful, and yet I think it's because the confidence is low and they don't know how to be confident in things that they haven't been trained on.

And yet they have, they just don't know how to transfer those skills. That, to me, is fascinating.

Megan Sprinkle:  Yeah, One of the things that I loved about veterinary medicine, and I started in zoo and aquatics and things like that, and talk about Having to be creative, you only have so much information.

And if you're doing like rescue rehab or it's like nonprofit, you don't have all the resources that you would probably ideally love to have. And so creativity is your bread and butter to get through the day and to help, , that animal. And. And that was the fun part for me. And actually I found a lot of it in nutrition too.

It's one reason why people don't like nutritionists is because we say, well, it depends, or let me ask you 50 questions first, [00:38:00] but. , there's a lot of kind of art to it as well. And veterinarians are fantastic at that. Techs are fantastic at it. We're a big team.

We need each other, but that creativity element of it is definitely there and when we think a little bit outside of that scope, whether it is communication to people outside or making decisions on your career. Think the same way, right? You could do that too. But yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to again, take those , fundamental skills that we have learned to be veterinary professionals. And we get to apply that in so many different areas. And again, that's where that innovation, 

and even entrepreneurship. I interviewed Natalie Marks not long ago, and she said, well, I was an entrepreneur way earlier than people probably think. And that's beautiful, taking that creativity, the love of the profession of what she does, and you can apply that into so many different [00:39:00] areas to have impact in so many different ways. And the other thing is being open to bringing other people into the circle to help us in those as well, because there are a lot of different people in this innovation and entrepreneurship circle that do not have veterinary backgrounds and we have to work together, communicate.

Open, listen and try to understand both sides of it so that we can make this bigger together. So. I'm sure you see that all the time and probably have entrepreneurs who come to you and say, we just don't get vets. I don't know,  and I'm sure vice versa. But what are your thoughts about that? And how we can further embrace some of these really neat things that are here and are coming?

Aaron Massacre: Yeah, So I go to a bunch of different conferences, like the Consumer Electronics Show is one that I go to HIMSS, [00:40:00] the Healthcare Information Management System Society meeting, and you see all of these people who are working in the Sort of pet health area and you talk to them and you say, Oh, do you have a veterinarian on your team?

So for example a really popular litter box company And they have litter boxes and smart feeders and other things and they're all digital they're all providing all this data to your phone and they have Thousands upon thousands of these products out in the market. And I, so I walk up to them, like, do you have a veterinarian on your team?

And they're like, Nope. Why, why not? I'm like, well, we're not really sure how to talk to veterinarians. do you think that they would be interested in this data? And I'm like, well, tell me about the data. We can tell you how often your cat is going into the litter box. How much time they spend in the litter box, we can tell you the weight of the animal.

We can tell you all of these different [00:41:00] things. We can differentiate between different cats that are going into the litter box. And I'm just like, uh, yeah, I'm not a vet, but I'm pretty sure that that's going to be pretty helpful, especially for early screening stuff. So we, we have one of these in our home and.

It was just showing us that we left for a week and we had somebody coming in and taking care of the animals, but our cat's weight went down from 8. 1 to 7. 1 pounds. And that's, that's a lot for a small cat. And so we, as I was away, , I just upped the amount that she was being fed in her smart feeder. So I just gave her a quarter cup more and then it just balanced out her weight, right?

And so. It's like that kind of stuff, you know, imagine if you as a veterinarian have this dashboard of all this information that's available to you. And it's saying, Hey, fluffy is in the litter box and he's spending a lot more time there than normal. And. [00:42:00] That's a huge trigger for you as a veterinarian to say, maybe there's some straining that's going on.

Maybe he's blocked, maybe whatever, but being able to catch that before the owner does that kind of information is available through these companies and yet no veterinarian approaches them. They don't approach any veterinarian. They think, oh yeah, the veterinary channel, that's important for marketing purposes.

And I'm like, no, that's important for your product. Like the essence of your product should include veterinarians. And there are tons of companies out there like that, that have no veterinarians. They're getting better, but there's still tons that don't. And so what I recommend to people is like, look, just go into a particular area that you're interested in.

If you're feline only clinic, then just take a look at some of the websites of some of these companies that have litter boxes and smart feeders and that kind of stuff and just see, , do they have an advisory board? Do they not, if they don't have an advisory board, then just message them and say, look, I'm really interested in your product.

I think it can be [00:43:00] helpful for me as a veterinarian. Is that something that you would be interested in talking about? And so then people become part of the advisory board. there's all sorts of different ways that they can get involved in these companies and all it takes is somebody just demonstrating some interest to them.

And it's not like every single company out there is waiting for veterinarians to knock on the door, but there are some. And so it's a matter of finding out who they are and then being able to develop a relationship with them. Like wearables. There's implantables.

Now there's smart fences that are generating more information, smart feeders with a camera inside them. Those are turning into computer vision. , tools to be able to analyze whether or not your animal is overweight based on an objective measurement, being able to pick up on things like lameness.

Like there's all of these things that are happening, and yet these companies, when they're developing them, they have nowhere to go. So if, your animal is demonstrating more lameness, [00:44:00] Then the machine can pick up on that. So the actual hardware can pick up on that and tell you that that's the case, but it can't connect you with a veterinarian.

And so it's a broken experience, but if veterinarians got more involved in this stuff, just being able to pick up on things earlier, like I know for, we have three dogs and two cats and I'm surprised that it's limited to that. , but there's absolutely stuff that I don't pick up on that.

If I didn't have a veterinarian living in the house, then I wouldn't know what was going on. And I might leave things longer than they should be left, right? So can we get more veterinarians engaged with these people who are building these companies, providing them with guidance, how to speak veterinarian in order to then, , get more of these animals inside the hospitals earlier?

Like, that's the kind of stuff that, I find super fascinating.

Megan Sprinkle:  that's fantastic.. Maybe that's something that the Veterinary Innovation Council can work on is like a match [00:45:00] program. And maybe it's less intimidating. Again, that's, that's something that I'm passionate about is really bringing the veterinary team more into the action, into these conversations, be part of it. Because when we're part of it, not only will we know about it, be able to use it, we get to make it better now.

Yes. We may not be able to do it from ground up, these tech and app developers and all of that can do, but , they are going to benefit from everybody working together in it. , you know, as a practicing veterinarian, you have the best perspective , to help on a project like that and get insights into some of these new innovations that are coming. And, and a lot of times when you come in early, you get early access and you get to try them out for free and all those fun things.

So yeah, I think it's a great opportunity.

Aaron Massacre:  Yeah, and you see when people start doing this and they find a right fit with a particular company and you just, you see them open up and start achieving things that they didn't think that [00:46:00] they had the potential to achieve and you see. That they value their experience even more because other people are also valuing it.

You know, they're like, wow, we never thought about this perspective or this thing that you're bringing to the table. And so when it works, it works incredibly well.

Megan Sprinkle:  Yes, absolutely. And you hinted a little bit. I was, I always wondered is your house decked in all the tech and the gadgets? And if so, do you have a favorite?

Aaron Massacre  So I love techy things and I love playing around with stuff, but it's more problem solving than anything else.  So for example, we have a 16 year old retriever, Shepard Cross, and he is lovely, but he is quite aggressive. And so we had this shelter or this facility that we were sending him to anytime that we were out of town.

And then they closed down because they were doing renovations. And so we were kind of caught. So we just built like a no-touch facility in our [00:47:00] basement. I cut a big hole in the back door and put one of the smart doors in. And so he can either go in and out whenever he wants. Or more likely the case, we have an app.

So I just grabbed an old phone that we're not using anymore and put the app on it. And so we had somebody come by and they would just let him out. , so open up the door, let him out. And then he would go in the backyard and then come back inside. But it was an area that was blocked off so that one of the dogs was on one side and he was on the other side.

And just having that set up just gave us the peace of mind that he was at home and not at another facility. We have two cats and they both have their own litter box that we put them in. Each one of the cats has a hole in the door that is linked to their microchip. And so they, only they can go in and out of those doors. Smart feeders.

Megan Sprinkle:  So you have a, probably a few pieces of tech. My husband, is an I.T. engineer. So [00:48:00] we have a lot of tech as well.  It's handy to have an it engineer. I will say that, but their toys are very expensive. So that's understandable. Yeah. , so I usually end with a final question and that's to ask, what are you most grateful for, but maybe to be inspired.

And if it's a slightly different answer, feel free to answer both. But I want to come back to your, your question on how do we live a good life? What is your definition of a good life?

Aaron Massacre:  I found things that. work for me, but they don't necessarily work for other people. so for example, I did, one year in my undergrad in my third year, I went to Belgium for schooling and then came back for fourth year and then went back for my master's. And one of the things that I found as I was kind of moving back and forth was that, [00:49:00] you can live well wherever you are, as long as you know what you need.

Aaron Massacre: And I found out what I needed, right? I need to. I need to work with my hands. And for me, that is pretty passionate about cycling. , so I do a lot of bike riding and working on my bike is fulfilling. , I just go and I work on my bike. It's a very discrete problem, right?

Like there's a problem and there's a solution. And the time between those two is pretty minimal. And whereas in a lot of other things, you're thinking about like long-term projects and that kind of stuff. So I found out that, yeah, I needed to work with my hands. I needed to work on bikes. I needed to exercise regularly.

I needed to, when I'm exercising regularly, do that with other people. And so finding a cycling group, , that I can ride with is so incredibly fulfilling because you don't even need to have a conversation with the people that you're riding with. , you can be like, Hey, what's your name? What's your name?

What do you do? But sometimes you can just [00:50:00] ride your bike with them, you know, and it's just being with other people as somebody who identifies as an introvert. I'm like, that's great for me.  And then, I needed to use my brain. if I'm not reading something challenging or trying to figure something out, I don't feel good.

And then there's, you know, other things like sugar is really bad for us. Like, it's really bad. Um, but it's so good at the same time. So being able to balance that. So, all of that comes together into particular routines. But, you know, I get up at six o'clock in the morning, I come into this room, and there's another dog who's on the floor here.

He comes in, and we stretch, and he stretches and stuff with me, and it's kind of funny, and meditate, and it's just 10 minutes, like I just close my eyes for 10 minutes, put on some like headphones, don't listen to anything, but just have the noise reduction, and that just gives me just enough calmness.

And then I go downstairs, I [00:51:00] lift weights for 20 minutes. He has some problems that we think that it's, I don't know, but maybe a bulging disc. And so we do some PT with him for 10 minutes. And so there's just a very particular routine. And one way of talking about it is routine. Another way is habits.

Another way is rituals. And I think rituals is probably more important. So being able to set up rituals that make life better for you, even though they're maybe mundane or boring or whatever, it's unbelievable what you can achieve if you set something up as a ritual. And you see the progress over the course of, say, six months, there's a statement, it's something like we drastically underestimate what we can do in the next six months, but overestimate what we can do in the next five years or something like that.

I can't remember exactly what it is, but the essence of it is like rituals. Rituals will make you more successful in what you do. , as long as you find out what you need and you [00:52:00] put those into rituals that you have every day. 

Megan Sprinkle: Thank you for joining us on VetLife Reimagined. I want to thank our sponsors through our hosting platform, Bussprout, FYR Consulting, and Will Hughes. We are looking for more opportunities to collaborate, to continue to grow and sustain the podcast on audio and YouTube, so please check our website, VetLifeReimagined.

com to learn more. Until next week.