Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarets welcoming you to another vet chat podcast, the UK's number one veterinary podcast, and I'm really thrilled today to have Crystal Stokes on the line. It's such an honour to be able to do these podcasts and speak to people, really inspirational people all over the world. And Crystal comes from America, from California and has.
A really interesting story and company working with a lot of veterinary practises and veterinary groups, really looking at mental health, wellness, retention. So I'm really looking forward to speaking to you, Crystal, perhaps before we sort of go into all the retention and burnout, information, love for you to tell us a little bit about how you found yourself in this place. Stories are always interesting and the journeys that we go on.
So, obviously, first of all, welcome, but yeah, tell us, tell us a little bit about how you found yourself in the, in the DVM veterinary world at doing what you do. Absolutely. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for having me on today, and I'm excited to share my story.
It's how, how my company came to be. So I was one of those children who wanted to be a veterinarian my whole life. I, I was very myopic and very focused on that path.
Found myself at NC State University. They have a great vet school there, and my hopes were to go to that vet school after my undergraduate degree. And through my undergraduate programme, I was burning the candle at both ends, working nearly full-time hours, full-time student.
And working in veterinary medicine. So I started, as most people do, in the kennels and worked my way up to becoming a veterinary technician and companion animal practise. Did a little bit of exotics and wildlife work along the way.
And then my third year of school, I took a job as an overnight ER technician. And I was so excited because I thought, I'm going to make so much more money because I can work all these night shift hours. I'm gonna learn anaesthesia, I'm going to be more involved in more complex cases.
I thought this was the smartest idea. Did not take into account that I wouldn't be sleeping. I really was, you know, in school during the day and, and working at night.
So slowly, I think that I started to lose capacity to just manage stress, . Just from that lack of sleep. And then on top of that, I was not ready for the burden of compassion fatigue that occurred with economic euthanasia.
So, the night shift, we often have cases coming in that are, you know, maybe hit by a car, broken leg, something like that, that would cost a couple $1000 to fix, whereas euthanasia back then was about $70. So people are often having to opt for euthanasia. I did not have the coping skills or mental capacity to handle that at all.
And so, as a result, I, I ended up leaving veterinary medicine. And the story I told myself was, Crystal, you don't have what it takes to be a vet. If you can't deal with euthanasia, you're absolutely not going to make it, so you need another path.
I felt like I had a quarter life crisis. I didn't consult with anybody. I didn't speak to other veterinarians and ask them about this.
I thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me, which is a very common thing I hear now from other veterinary professionals. I was very short-sighted at that time. I took time off, I re-evaluated my life.
The long story short is I became a psychotherapist. And I think that that path was really meant for me because it helped me. Understand humans so much better.
I used to feel more comfortable with animals than humans, because I ultimately didn't understand how humans worked. And then, and becoming a psychotherapist, I think it really pulled back the veil for me to understand and have so much more compassion and empathy for what humans are experiencing and to feel the same level of joy and comfort working with. Humans as I did with animals.
So after, after graduating, I, I moved into from psychotherapy. I also moved into coaching, so leadership coaching. And this was in a variety of industries, it could be Google, Facebook, large corporations.
And I really enjoyed leadership coaching. But I also missed veterinary medicine. So the as short of a story as I can make it, I think this is kind of serendipitous.
About 5 years ago, I decided to try and volunteer as a technician. I thought it'd be great to be back in veterinary medicine. I emailed a doctor here in town, offered up my services as a volunteer.
She wrote back, invited me to her clinic, gave me a tour, brought me to her office and said, Crystal, I'm sorry, but I don't actually need a technician. And I kind of laughed and said, Well, why am I here? And she said, Well, I looked you up on LinkedIn, and I saw that you were a licenced psychotherapist.
We recently had a doctor die by suicide in our town, and I'm worried about our team. And I'm looking to hire a full-time clinician. Would you be interested in a job?
And in that moment, my mind blew. I had no idea that veterinary suicides were as high as they were. I didn't know that clinicians were working with veterinary teams.
This was all new to me. And that was my entry point back in the veterinary medicine. I did not take the full-time position with their team, but I did start working with their team on a project basis.
And That would, I would say it was my kind of full circle story of where I started with veterinary medicine on my mind with love and passion and drive for the industry. I've down at the bottom of the circle where I got burned out and had compassion, fatigue and didn't know what to do. I left the industry.
And then through this magical occurrence, I found my way back into the industry, where now I'm, I'd say 98% of my work is with veterinary companies. And I'm a great believer in that somehow life is meant to be the way that people's journeys go and things happen and you go, why has that happened? And yet you were being prepared almost for doing this work because you have a real understanding of being a vet without.
Necessarily, you know, being a fully qualified veterinarian, but you've also brought those extra skills of psychotherapy and, and coaching into, into the mix. And I think it's really interesting, you know, your company's called Full Circle Lab. And, and I suppose this is it, we, we spend most of our life going around in circles, you know, sometimes we're in a really good place, we're at the top of the circle and then we have these difficult times at the, at the bottom of the circle and, and a lot of that is kind of.
Emotional and. And, and I remember Ignatius of Loyola, a Catholic saint who, who founded the Jesuits, he talked about not making decisions in desolation, but to make them in consolation. And you know, yours was an example there of.
Being in a really difficult place, burnt out. Making that decision in desolation to leave the profession, which possibly was the right thing because of where you've ended up, but we do hear of a lot of people who are in a bad place, maybe in a bad practise with a boss who isn't very supportive, and they almost think, well, I have to give up veterinary medicine, whereas actually, no, you just need to find a team and a practise that is supportive of you and actually, I, I just feel it's a big shame as a an older vet who's who's really enjoyed his career on the whole, you know, I had challenges within it, obviously. But To see people coming in with that huge amount of passion, and for us to somehow, within the job, being able to squeeze all that passion out of people, is incredibly sad, isn't it, and.
You know, there must be ways that we can try and reverse that cycle, which I think is what you're doing, so, yeah, talk to us a little bit about how. How do we get ourselves out of this circle and this ever diminishing circle that then takes us, spent, we spend most of our time at the bottom rather than at the top. Yeah, it's such a good question.
And I think that I would answer it different ways depending on the context of if we're talking about individuals, or if we're talking about teams. So, first I'll, I'll kind of illuminate. I, I kind of two sides to my business.
One is more team-based, which is around retention, helping leadership on retention issues. The other side of the business is more one on one, which is coaching with individuals in veterinary medicine. So when I think about this full circle story and cycle, Oftentimes companies will come to me saying.
You know, perhaps we're very productive, our income, our financials look good, but we just can't keep our staff. Our turnover is terrible. We need to do something about it.
What are we gonna do? So that's where they have a lot of their staff sliding down to the bottom of that circle and leaving the clinic. Maybe not leaving the industry, but they're, they're not staying with that particular hospital or group of hospitals.
What I like to do there, working with leadership is first, everybody getting on the same page and trying to say, well, what are, what are you seeing as leadership? What are, what do you think is going on? Getting a line there, and then collecting data.
So that could be ENPS surveys, there are a variety of different types of surveys we can do to find out how the staff are feeling. And the the challenge with surveys is that they are They're a snapshot, and they, they point us in a direction, but they may not give us the root, the true root causes. So then what I usually do is I will go into clinics and, and do one on one interviews, confidential interviews as a neutral third party with DVMs, with technicians, with reception, and to understand and flesh out what we think we found in the survey.
Data. So it deepens the data. We bring all that together, come together as a leadership team, and from that data that's unique to their clinic or systems of clinic, we then co-create answers and solutions that are sustainable to move forward in time.
Then it's just a matter of the difficulty of implementation, assigning different projects, different people, accountability charts, and then being able to pivot. Nothing ever goes according to plan exactly, but being nimble within our, our strategies to help improve retention, and that's helping to slide that company back up the other side of that circle with the goal of being at the top. And a lot of this is just about thinking more long term.
I think that it's after coming out of COVID, there's a lot of quick fix thinking, ways, can we just plug the hole, put a bandage on it, you know, Acute care for our hospitals. And hopefully, we are out of the woods with that and we can start thinking more about long-term strategies that both maintain the productivity and financial wellness of a hospital while also maintaining the wellness of their staff because they really are one and the same thing. If you can keep happy, healthy, you know, comfortable, confident staff in your, in your hospital, that's a huge boost to your revenue and the sustainability of your company for the long term.
So I'd say that's kind of a short answer to the group and team side, if we're trying to help bring them out of that, the bottom of that circle. For the individuals, this is where we also have a coaching programme. And usually, it's a company that will reach out to me and say, we would like support for our leadership staff or we would like support for our, our team in general.
They have health benefits, which are wonderful, like an EAP plan, or many of them are, are seeking out psychotherapy through their insurance, but sometimes find that it's not vet med specific, and that there are certain aspects of their stressors and challenges within their work. That they are not feeling met by with the current strategies they're using. So this is where me and my team of coaches come in and provide that very specific vetMed wellness and leadership coaching.
So we can look at all sorts of aspects of how are you maintaining work-life balance? What is your mindset, you know, do have a mindfulness practise? Are you, facing certain things that are causing you to be not resilient to the stressors that you're facing, because the reality is that vetMed will probably always be stressful.
It's difficult. We're dealing with life and death, and high volume of, of animals that need care and stressed out pet parents. That's how it's been.
It's going to be that way for a long time. So we need to make sure that these people that are working in VetMed really are equipped appropriately to deal with these stressors and to know their limitations and to have appropriate support systems built in to manage the level of stress that they are going to face daily. I think there's also strategies and obligations that the practise has as well, you know, we, we hear and I certainly experienced it when I even had my own practise and you might get to 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon and realise that you hadn't had, you hadn't been to the toilet, you know, and you maybe hadn't had a drink or you hadn't even had lunch.
And that is OK for a couple of days, but if you're doing that for weeks and months on end. Then inevitably the quality of your work diminishes over time, that's just inevitable and so not giving your team time to have breaks, comfort breaks, stops in the PDSA is one of our charities in the UK and they used to lock the door for 15 minutes. You know, there might be people waiting outside.
It was a charitable thing, so it was different, you know, people weren't paying full whack. But just that the the colleagues could get together, sometimes not even talk about work, but just about other things, it helps you to get to know your colleagues better, you develop more of a cohesive team if you know and like each other, don't you? Oh, absolutely.
And I appreciate you bringing this in cause it reminds me of something that I find critically important. When, when companies reach out to me and they're having challenges with retention. Often, and I, I would definitely have approached it this way myself too in my earlier days, is we want some kind of a top-down solution.
We want to know as leaders, what can we just top-down implement throughout the company that's going to fix this. And I really Love that enthusiasm. And I want to just bottle it though and use it in a slightly different way, which is to have the leadership team engage the staff, the boots on the ground people, because they know better than anybody what they actually need.
You know, we might as leadership think, oh, I have a great idea. Why don't we, you know, implement having a weekly powwow where everybody gets together in XYZ, and then they Implements it and it falls flat. And we go and we actually ask the team, what do you need?
They'd say, we don't want a weekly powwow, we just want to have a real lunch break every day. We'd like to eat food and not have to, you know, be in front of a client 1212 hours straight with no break. So I think really checking in with your team because every team has their own culture and every team and even region, they'll have a set of values and principles that might be unique compared like California versus, you know, North Carolina.
Lina, they might have different needs. And so I really want to make sure that as leaders, we are engaging our staff and asking them the, the right questions. I think as a therapist, something that was paramount for me, was learning the power of asking the right questions and deepening the response.
Often the first response you get is not the, the truest answer. So you hear them say one thing and then ask for more. Tell me more.
Let's go a little deeper. Cause once we really know truly what people want and what they're willing to get behind, having the staff help implement change. It's, it takes such a load off of leadership.
The people boots on the ground that are part of the change, feel invested in it. They want to nurture it and take care of it. They want it to succeed, they help sustain it.
There's so many wins to having leadership and lockstep with their team on the ground, and your, your comment just reminded me of that, of, of how important it is to engage them and listen to them. And that feeling valued that I, you, you're interested in what I think, I think is so important as well, isn't it? 100%.
To, to feel like your vote really matters, I think helps get rid of the apathy that we're seeing across the board. And, and a lot of what I'm seeing in VetMed is apathy, quiet quitting, people feeling like, why, why even bother? And that usually occurs because they don't feel they have a say and they don't see a pathway forward.
They don't believe they can advance, and they don't believe that their opinion will change anything. So why try? That's very toxic in the hospital.
When I see that happening, I see my, my warning signal flares shoot up and say, we've got to get this team turned around. We need people to feel that they do have a vote, their voice does count, and they do have pathways forward, and also just having some sense of control. When we feel like we have no control, even in a OK environment, it can still create that feeling of apathy.
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Pop and say hello to a community of over 2000 veterinary professionals by searching. The webinar that community on Facebook. Crystal, when I had my own practise, I, you know, and I think probably 90%, if not more, veterinary practises are purpose centred, we, we are on the whole caring people who go into the profession.
But our, our sort of tagline, our motto was we love and care for your pet as if it were our own. And I think sometimes, and I know people can think some of these things are gimmicky, but it also helps for people who are working for you to understand that's what you expect them to do on every interaction with a client and things like. The purpose of the business, the mission of the business, the values and the culture.
I think they're really important as well and and perhaps part of retention is making sure that you get the right people in this interview. And it's sharing, you know, I, whenever I interview, I always say this is a two way street. I, you're selling yourself to me, but actually I'm selling myself to you and part of that process might be actually trying.
To dissuade the wrong person from coming, and the only way you can do that is to be really clear as to what your values and what you're trying to achieve in your business and if it's, I want to make a lot of money in my business, then you get a different type of person that, My business is about helping to make veterinary education more accessible and affordable, or a veterinary practise. You know, to, to deal with dogs who have bad skin, if you're a dermatology practise or cats and so on. So I think, do you agree that kind of retention really does start before the person even starts working in the business?
I was just drafting a statement almost verbatim like this this morning before our call. Absolutely. I, when I think about the life cycle of something like this, it does start in the hiring process for a company to be very clear on their expectations, their values, and their purpose.
And there are a variety of length, we could say mission, we can say value, a purpose statement, you know, it, it's, we're all describing basically the same thing, but you have to be able to communicate to a new hire. This is what you're gonna get if you come work here. You need to know what to expect.
These are expectations of you if you were to join our team. Is that really what you want? It's like matchmaking, and Following that, I think a a big missing link in very busy hospitals is effective onboarding, that a person comes in, they need to be trained on your model, they need to be trained on the expectations, whether those are productivity expectations, professional development expectations, how do you communicate with each other, professionalism, these things that We kind of just take for granted and hope will magically appear.
They don't. So I think having a very well-structured, well thought out, cohesive onboarding process, and following that, we need to have performance reviews to give very clear feedback and that can be a two-way street as well. So, here, new hire, this is what we've seen in the 1st 30 days or 60 days or 90 days.
Here are the areas where you're crushing it, you get an A plus. Here are the areas where maybe at a C, we need to level up. Here's how we're going to help support you in levelling up those areas.
How are we doing with how we're taking care of you? What areas are clear, what's not clear, how can we better support you? And I think when you have that kind of very thorough communication from the beginning, it really sets your, your staff up for success.
Your new hire will feel much more confident and supported going in and lack of confidence is a big reason people quit. They just have too much anxiety to maintain or sustain. Then it also helps the team that has been there that is receiving this new hire, rather than feeling annoyed that this person is getting in the way, there's a sense of camaraderie, of excitement to bring them on, of looking forward to nurturing them to the point of really being able to contribute to the team.
So that part is often overlooked, but it is a critical element. I know one of our value words which we brought together as a team, and obviously as new people come in, we say, well, these are what people have said before. And things like respect.
So a new person coming in, one, we're not going to expect one for you to be shouted at, but somebody, you know, you have to act in a professional way. But also, as you said, the, the, the new person comes in and is then respected and cared for by the new team because. Coming into a new job is, is quite a nerve-wracking time, isn't it, you know, we don't quite know where all the things are and we look a bit awkward and it takes us time to settle in.
To a new job and a practise or so on. So if we have that supportive team where everybody wants us to be a success rather than a, a toxic team where perhaps people are talking about each other in the, in the lunchroom in a negative way, that sort of negative atmosphere very quickly, gets bigger because you only need one or two negative people and it can suck the energy out of the business, can't it? Yeah, but they say 11 bad apple can spoil the bunch.
That was very difficult. I have some, some more stories of working with and quote toxic teams, and it, it can be pretty tragic to see very talented, very compassionate, veterinary staff. Being drained by a culture that is unsupportive, because we're really here to do medicine and to take excellent care of animals and to provide their parents with comfort and support and knowledge of how to move through whatever difficulty they're experiencing.
And sometimes that gets lost. And I think we can centre back around the mission of a company and why we're here in veterinary medicine. And really drop the drama to have a workplace that we don't tolerate it.
It's a zero tolerance policy for toxic behaviours like gossip or unnecessary aggression, or even passive aggressive behaviour is rampant and vet med and harder to identify. But it, it's like weeding a garden. It takes ongoing continuous work.
And I think the key word for me is worth 2 probably 2 phrases, we had one of our vets, . Die by suicide and. Her motto was very much always be kind, you know, if we're kind to each other, if we treat others as we would like to be treated, then.
The culture will probably be in quite a good place with, it doesn't need to be terribly complicated. I think it's basic respect and trying to make the environment in which you work in a bit of fun as well, because it's. You know, I look at the veterinary job that I've done and we're incredibly fortunate and, you know, I feel very grateful that I've, the job I wanted to do from when I was 8, I was able to do, you know, in practise for 25 years.
There's very few jobs when you tell people that you're a veterinarian, where almost invariably I get a oh that's such a lovely job. There's always a second question which is, you know, my dog has scabs, what should I do about it. But as you said earlier on, I think for vets, it's so and technicians, it's so important.
We not only love the animals but love the people as well, and I think if we can do that in a, you know, those sort of conversations, I never found very difficult, even at, you know, a party because. If you love what you do. It doesn't quite feel as much of a job, does it?
So I know it's tough hours and I know there can be stress, but stress is also, you know, there can be positive stresses and, and actually if we led a life with no stress at all, it would probably be quite a boring life, wouldn't it? Well, the way I describe this to clients is that what the language we use as therapists is distress and you stress, EU. You you stress, you stress is what helps us grow.
So you think gravity creates bone density when you go through a difficult experience, like even learning in school or learning a sport is stressful, but you gain skills, you gain knowledge and awareness. And distress is the kind that more tears us down if we have like unrelenting stress that we cannot recover from. And I think a lot of it is, can be related to perception and how we're managing stress, what kind of coping strategies we have, and often too, Knowing how to complete a stress cycle.
So stress is cyclical, it should start low, it should rise and peak and then fall. And having a way to help our bodies and mind decompress from stress is, is really important. And I think that sometimes we don't complete the stress cycle as veterinary professionals, we stay at the top of that, that peak and just ride it constantly and we, we're stressed even while we're sleeping or not sleeping, and that really is bad for the system.
It's, it's that chronic stress, and in fact I was surprised when we did our mindfulness series with the psychiatric nurse, a guy called Mike Scanlon, he then said, well, I'd like to do a sleep series, and I said, OK, fair enough. I don't struggle with sleep, I sleep very well 99% of the time. And .
It was amazing how many people came back to us and saying, oh my goodness, you know, I'm an insomniac, I really struggle with sleep. Worried about cases, will this dog bleed from a a bitch bay, etc. Etc.
And of course worry is such a negative stress, isn't it? Because worry is just there in the background, it's chronic all the time. Most of the things we worry about never happened.
My mum was a big worrier and I got to a stage where I realised I also worried and I decided. This is not bringing me life, I have to stop, and obviously when challenging things happen. The part of the satisfaction is when you.
Come out the other side and that might take a day, it might take a week, it might take a month. But as you said, inevitably, your bone density, or your, your, your ability to cope can grow in that time if you're, if you're open minded to seeing it as a journey and as a process. Oh, I think you put that so well.
I, I completely agree with you. My, my training, what I specialise in as a therapist are anxiety disorders and trauma disorders. And in anxiety disorders, I, I wish I had learned this as a teenager, because it would have helped me so much throughout my twenties.
I always thought I was stressed, but I was actually anxious. So the difference is that anxiety is future-oriented. It means we're worrying about something that is going to happen.
We're anticipating something, we're trying to figure it out in our head, whereas stress tends to be just in the moment. An acute case comes in, your heart is through the roof, you are just all, all cylinders pumping to get through it. That's stress in the moment.
Anxiety is future tripping. So, a lot of the work that I do with clients is around, learning, learning techniques to really address anxiety, because anxiety is a normal emotion, we're supposed to have it just like every other emotion. It's when it is overused and chronically sustained, that it becomes more of a disorder and it can be really detrimental.
So having these effective strategies to identify your anxiety and effectively manage it, cope with it, there, it's, it's really big right now in veterinary medicine. And I think that what you were saying of having a way to Move away, step away from the worry, knowing that it's not really effective, that's, that's where mindfulness can come in. So, I know that you do a lot of work with mindfulness, and I think that it is such a foundational piece to health and wellness in general.
So if you're not aware that you're even doing it, you're not aware that you're trapped in a worry cycle, then how will you ever even step away from it. So that first stage of mindfulness is so key and I'm really appreciative of the work that you do in that area. Thanks Crystal.
Interestingly, and this was something my wife and I were talking about recently, is it helpful to talk about, cos she was talking about people coming, this affects. My anxiety rather than almost like your own anxiety rather than saying I'm anxious at the moment, so very much in that idea which you've said of, You have anxiety for a period, but then it passes, whereas. We, I think we have a danger that we can almost have that crutch of anxiety rather than saying, yes, as you've just said, it's normal to be anxious, but if you are owning anxiety over long periods.
It, it, it's, it's not the right way to look at it, is it, that we, we can accept that we can be anxious, but if we're anxious all the time and we, you know, I, I have this my anxiety, it's language, isn't it, that also is so important in being able to cope with. The everyday stresses and strains, which we obviously maybe have a bit more of with the job that we do. Yeah, it reminds me of like if somebody were to say to me, so if I, if I introduced myself to say, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm really anxious right now, you could say, no, you're actually crystal, and you're feeling anxious.
So it's like to say, when people say like I'm Yeah, I'm an alcoholic versus I struggle with alcohol use disorder. These are things that were very subtle and becoming a therapist is like language around you are separate from anxiety. You are separate from something you're struggling with.
And with anxiety, a lot of it is about learning to be courageous, that when we try to avoid anxiety, or we try to just figure it out without truly facing it, that's where it becomes a compulsive habit of just Avoiding or compulsively thinking about it. Instead, we want to courageously move towards it and trust that we are resilient enough to face it and work through it. So, if I'm anxious about a difficult conversation with a client, Or a team member.
And instead of having it, I just, I just dodge them. I don't answer calls. I try to slip behind the corner, and then I just think about it constantly.
That's completely ineffective and will absolutely make my anxiety stay longer. If instead I were to just take a breath and say, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety, I'm definitely afraid that this will go wrong. I'm afraid that this will turn into a big argument or something bad will happen.
I acknowledge my fear. But I also know that I have abilities in conflict management. I have the best intentions here.
I'm gonna go into the situation, have the conversation, and do the best I can, even if it turns out bad, at least I know I did the best I can. And if it does go south, I can. Still try to repair it again afterwards, but I'm not going to avoid it.
Avoidance is one of the biggest traps we fall into with anxiety, and I don't want to make this a whole podcast on anxiety, but I do think it's just worth stating that that is an important mindset shift is courage versus avoidance. Yeah, I, I was very guilty of avoiding conversations which you're quite right, brings no peace. And I think again if you're doing it with the right.
Will and you decide that it doesn't escalate into shouting, etc. Because obviously once you've said something it's difficult to take it back, but it's Difficult conversations are often the most rewarding, aren't they? A simple conversation could be very superficial.
This can let you go to a depth and find out perhaps why that why that person, client or or staff member, team member is, is being difficult is usually nothing to do with what you've done, but it's something deeper in their life and it helps them to bring it out. Sharing it with somebody is is always halving part of the problem, isn't it? Oh, yes, that is very vulnerable.
And this makes me also say that to bring this back to the, the group level, when I work with, with, especially doctors who are feeling like they might need to leave the profession, and sometimes there is some avoidance there too, of really looking at what is it about your current situation that is, that is really causing you pain? What are your dreams and hopes and ambitions that aren't being fulfilled? And then to help them face these fears and look many alternative solutions because the amazing thing that I love so much about VetMed is that it's so diverse for people that truly don't like working with people.
And that's the thing, that's perfectly fine. There are other aspects of industry that you can work in where you barely have to interact with people, . If you feel like you're more on the entrepreneurial side and you just want more freedom, there's a whole startup world around veterinary medicine that can let you spread your wings and fly.
So I say to people that if you're finding that the traditional clinic, like maybe a companion animal clinic is just not for you, or maybe you feel like the corporate model isn't for you, or perhaps you've opened your own clinic, and the grind of being both a business owner and a clinician is not for you. There are so many other paths you can take and having the courage to reach out and explore those, there are many people that have been in your shoes and found pathways forward. So I always encourage them to reach out and start these conversations, so we can fully investigate whether or not you actually need to leave the profession or not.
You might, there's a, there's a small chance that that could be the right decision for you, but maybe not. So that takes courage to overcome. Yeah.
I think we all deserve, you know, we have a limited time on, on the earth and we spend a lot of time in work. I'm very keen with anybody who works with me to, to, to do what you love. I know not everybody can and does and you know, some people are in jobs that they'd rather not be in.
But I think we're so fortunate with the skills that we have, that we shouldn't be afraid of jumping out and and looking for other things. And sometimes it's, it's almost do the one job, you know, when I, I mean, I was, I was happy within the profession, but as a sideline, I started Webinar vet when nobody really knew what webinars were and there was no online training. And as that grew, I was able to sell my practise and move over to it.
So there's always that opportunity to also do things without taking the huge risk of giving everything up and then finding that it is difficult to find a job or whatever. It's exactly, and I would see the veterinary professionals listening. Don't forget how intelligent you are.
You have proven through all the schooling that you've been through, you're capable of learning pretty much anything. So if you need to learn a new skill set, whether it's more on the, you know, business side or management side or whatever it might be, people skills side, you can do it. You are an incredibly intelligent, capable person, and then bet on yourself.
That's so true, Crystal. Crystal, thoroughly enjoyed speaking to you. It's always a joy and thank you for everything that you're doing for the profession, obviously in the US but hopefully with this podcast, people will also be, learning from you and your wisdom that you've shared with us today on what is.
Not only a problem in America, these issues that you're talking about, funnily enough, they're very similar in the UK as well, so, and obviously in other countries, so thank you so much for, for taking time to share this with us today. Absolutely, Anthony. It's been a pleasure to be on with you.
I really appreciate just all the conversations that we've had over time. I love the work that you're doing that we get to kind of play in the sandbox together of helping support veterinary professionals. It really means a lot.
Thank you so much, Crystal. Thank you, have a great day. Thanks everyone for listening.
This is Anthony Chadwick, this has been that chat. See you on a.
