Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. And I'm super pleased to have Lennon Fu on the line. Lennon is a veterinarian, but also a, can I say, yeah, Lennon, if not, I'm, I'm sure it will be very soon, a bestselling author as well.
Yes. Thank you very much. Lennon has just written a book, Vets for Life, Thriving in Veterinary practise, and I'm very keen, Lennon to to talk to you about the book, but first tell us a little bit about yourself, where you qualified from, where you're practising, etc.
Yes, so I'm from originally from Singapore, and I came over to UK in '99 to study veteran medicine in London at the RVC. And after qualifying there in 2004, I've moved down to Devon and has been in Devon ever since on all around Devon for different jobs before opening a MIT veterinary care in Newton Abbott about six years ago. And since I've just been doing the practise, and Devon is a beautiful part of the world to live in as well.
I, I've been down there, for the last couple of years on holiday, more towards Cornwall, but, it is a, it is a beautiful part of the world and. I know you've opened Amity Vets about 6 years ago and we were talking about it before the podcast. Very much tell us a little bit about your ethos, cos this is a very niche practise in Newtownab's beautiful little town, but it's.
You're not the only vet in the town, are you? No, no, we're not the only vets in the town. There are like 5 other practises and hence when we open up MT, we had to just like any other business really to find out why me, why now, what, what is going to be different with Amity.
And so far, we have, we, I opened MIT with the intention of wanting to solve the four big what I consider to be challenges in the that profession currently, which is high depression, high attrition, high suicide rate, and also low profit margins. So what we do at MIT has to address the bigger picture of these four challenges. And with that in mind, we have offered a very, very specific service to very specific guardians, and our way of thinking is quite different from how a, of all the practises I've worked before, I can't say about all the practises in the UK, but certainly all the practises I worked before, to solve, to have different answers, we need to address, we need to do things differently because if we do the things exactly the same, we'll get the same result, which we're not wanting to.
So our, sort of, our client Avatar is quite specific. Not anybody who has a pet is our client. Just like not anybody who wants a car wants to buy a Rolls-Royce.
So, we have marketed ourselves a little bit higher up, more like, we've been described as the Aston Martin of a vet medicine, if there's such equivalent in cars. So our client Avatar, they're not exactly rich because we've been accused of that as well. And Newton Abbott is not a rich town.
So it's not as though we're in chalousy or something like that. However, our client Avatar is, one of three categories. One is someone who wants to be, who wants to learn more because our sort of a core purpose is to empower you through education.
For pet gardens who do not want to learn, they wouldn't see any value in what we do over here, and hence will not be paying our prices. The second one is, who wants to be treated more than just another number. That's also another common complaint or comments that we get from our clients to say that at another vets, they just felt like they were a number, and they just push along and next, so to speak.
So we wanted to make it differently, so we pride ourselves in our customer service. And the last one is for pet gardens who want to build, who actually want to build a relationship with a vet, not just use us like a public toilet. So, our clients usually fall into one of these three categories, or more than 1 or 2 or 3 or all 3 in fact.
So that's our sort of client base and we have a group of very small but dedicated clients that allows us to vet how we want to vet because what we do not want to do is to compromise our own values as well in running a vet practise that doesn't address the 4 big challenges of what is facing the vet profession right now. I think it's so important to niche, you know, we did the same with the webinar that we decided that we weren't gonna do offline training, we were only going to do online training. And also that we were gonna be a bit different because there were companies out there that were obviously doing training, but it tends to be very clinical.
So for example, we were the first business really to go to the Royal College and say, you've set up the Mind Matters initiative, this is amazing, but actually let's do something practical and we did an eight week course with the Royal College on mindfulness. And of all of the things we've done clinical wise, people come and say your clinical material is excellent, but actually the mind matters mindfulness training changed my life because I went on holiday and I relaxed, or I don't shout at my nurses anymore. So I think it's really important, you know, obviously a veterinary surgeon is there or a veterinary surgery is there to treat the animals.
That's obvious. But how can you make yourselves a bit different and. So, I think you've done a great job with the niching and then also this USP or your strapline empowering through education.
Having that ability to really educate the clients as well as get the pet better because if the pets. Is getting better, that's partly because the client is following your instructions well and I often found in my practise I wanted more time with clients and certainly with my dermatology referral hat on, the reason I did so much better than the vets who'd referred the case, a lot of that was just simply down to the fact that I had an hour with the client rather than 10 minutes. Obviously I knew a little bit more about dermatology.
But actually the time is, is crucial, so do you also have longer appointments at Amity than maybe the the normal practise? Yes, we do. So our standard appointments are half an hour, and sometimes they do go longer than that.
And because of how specific we are in our marketing and our niche of clients, they would, number one, understand that, we are pricier than other best practises. So even though we're the youngest vet practise around here, we are the most expensive around. However, if, if money is a is a byproduct of value creation, It just means that we need to create more value, not what we consider as valuable, what they consider as value because it's them paying us.
So we do have longer sort of appointments for that. It's not only just the time, actually, because sometimes you can give people longer appointments, but they have no idea what to do at that time. And some people actually ran out of things to say.
I'm I'm talking about the professions of vets, which I used to do before. It is apart from the longer time which gives you the scope of communication. Your skill in communication must improve as well to be able to maximise that time, to use that time carefully, or, or, productive, productively to be able to create the result that you want with the client.
And as you mentioned, clinical competence is paramount. However, as taught by many, the vet business gurus out there like Brian Faulkner and Alan Robinson, and, you know, Caroline Crow and Alison Lambert, there are 4 outcomes that you want in the vet practise really. One is, patient clinical resolvement, you need to solve the clinical problem.
Then you have your client satisfaction. The client must be happy as well. So it's not only good just solving the clinical problem, the client is happy.
Third one is that financial resolution so that you must be paid for it and paid fairly. So, you know, it's there's no point doing the first two and you don't get paid or paid too little, and the last one is Team harmony. How you can do all the three things without driving everybody crazy.
You must look good as a team as well. So, as you can see, Your competence as a vet clinically is only 25% of the equation. You still have the other three to contend with before you can be truly useful and of value in a bad profession.
So, sorry, I diverse, but back to your question of how long do we have is 30 minutes, but it's not how long we have is what do we do with the 30 minutes. And how can we derive all these for outcomes with that 30 minutes is a more important question, not just communication because we can talk about it doesn't add any value. Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think the 4 points are really well made as well.
I think all of those 4 are really important. And I suppose at the end, maybe if I could add a 5th 1, we have to get satisfaction from it as well as that otherwise we won't stick around and. I feel I was very fortunate.
From the age of 8 I wanted to be a vet. I had to work really hard, I wasn't super clever, but I managed at the second attempt to get to vet school, got through vet school without too much trauma. And then of course, what I've loved about the profession is you can set your own curriculum, once you've qualified, whether you want to be a dermatologist, you know, whether you want to set up an online er.
Education service, whether you want to talk more about the environment as I've done to try and encourage people, . And, and I suppose what that all comes down to is I think I've got one of the best jobs in the world cos also, and I'm sure you get this as well, Lennon, . I have people, you know, you start a conversation with somebody, you're beginning to get to know each other and, and obviously it's not long before the question is, is, you know, what do you do?
Not what, what are, what, what are, what do you be, but what do you do. And of course then you, I, you know, I say I, although I'm not practising or I do very few clinics, I say I'm a vet. And almost without exception, people go, oh, that's such a lovely job.
And then they say . I've got a cat with scabs, or a dog with scabs. That's usually the second question, which actually, I don't mind.
I know sometimes people are at a party or whatever, and they really don't want to talk about their job. I think also particularly, although I've always done it because I'm not practising as much and particularly during the pandemic, I had so many people who couldn't get hold of their vets who were friends or acquaintances who would come to me and say, Tell me a bit about this, and this was very educational because I often couldn't see the pet or I could only see it via a screen. But then again, you are very much educating so.
I suppose my long way around it is to say we are incredibly fortunate to do the job that we do, and yet, as you said at the beginning, we're not really or there is a percentage of the profession that's not thriving. I wonder, partly. I do think that as well as loving animals, it's really important to love people as well because it's a tough job if you're not that keen on people or, or you find people are a bit silly in the questions that they ask.
So coming on to the book, which in fairness I'm gonna put my hand on my heart and say I haven't read yet, but I am looking forward to reading it, but tell us a little bit about the premise of the book, because I know it's. You're talking very much about being a vet for life, you're now almost 20 years a vet, so you can't be classed as a young vet anymore, Lennon. I'm 33 tomorrow, so I definitely can't be classed as a young vet, so.
But you've very much from that title, I presume you see veterinary medicine as a vocation. And something that you've actually derived a lot of enjoyment out of as well, so perhaps tell us a little bit if I've got that completely wrong about the book, I apologise. But otherwise, tell me a little bit about what the what the book's about.
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Following from what you first stage, when we graduate, we're allowed to form our own curriculum. And whether we're going to be a dermatologists, orthopaedics, or, you know, environmental, things like that. I think one curriculum, which many of us missed, including myself, for many, many years, is the potentially arguably the most important curriculum of all of being ourselves, a happy human.
Before you can do, you can, before you can do anything else, we should be grounded in what we do already because if not, you run in the whole event of which we are seen as well, you become a specialist, you know so much about one particular topic, but you do not know how to be happy. And you're miserable. You can be the top surgeon, the top brain surgeon, neurosurgeon, dermatologist, whatever, because you've done a course and because you've done all your residency and things and diploma things and but you forget how to be happy, you forget how to, what is fulfilment, what is achievement.
And that is, I think one thing that's quite elusive, and what people don't really understand, or rather what they don't realise is that just like any other topic that that can be learned, that can be learned as well, but we don't put enough CPD for it. We put enough CPD 35 hours a year for all those so-called clinical topics that we deem to be very, very important. We forgot the most important CPD of all.
Understanding yourself. And that, and that starts from the root of it before I even talk about client satisfaction. How do you get a client to be satisfied if you're not satisfy yourself?
Your external Reflects your internal. If you're getting unhappy clients, it probably is because you're unhappy yourself. As a business, what I've learned is that we attract the clients that we are.
So you're getting difficult clients, it's very, very likely that you may be difficult as well. Don't ask yourself that. As a team members whether you're a difficult person.
So Before understanding all those sort of things, all the amazing CPDs is available. If we don't understand ourselves, all those CPDs are just building on a very, very weak foundation. Because ultimately, if you can't satisfy yourself, you can't do anything else.
Where, and bearing in mind that as Anthony has a very, very thankfully pointed out, I'm almost 20 years graduate, and whenever I go for sort of a congresses and things like that, I always go, no, you're too young. And when people are saying they're like, I'm qualified for 3 years, I'm like, you don't look old enough to drink. So they just look younger and younger every time.
So we have to join them at some point in time whereby we're all getting older. But the reason why I wrote this book is as as the title of the book suggests, it's a vet for life and how. As Anthony mentioned as well, when I tell people I'm a vet, I usually get two sort of responses.
One is cool. I always wanted to be a vet. In my head, I'm thinking, if everybody thinks it's so cool and they want to be a vet, why do we have such high depression, high attrition, high suicide rate?
Where is a mismatch. It's such a noble profession, everybody wants to be, but us in the profession we're getting all those sort of rubbish and we want to get out of it. So there's a huge mismatch over there.
The second one is you are a vet, you must be minted. I was like, oh yeah, of course, there's also another thing which I'm like, really, but there you go. And what I understand is that, you know, what Our profession has become, OK, all the pros and cons of it, and what we moan about anything else people how the public always perceive us as a rip off and charging too much and things like that, and are not compassionate or any, any negative things that they say to us, I think, first of all, we have to understand that we did this to ourselves.
We are the one to set the prices. We are the one who chose a 15 minute consult. We are the one who chose a 10 minute consult.
We chose to structure that way, and we chose to speak in a certain way and present ourselves in a certain way, and that's a reflection. The external always reflects internal. So until we take responsibility for that and realise that we cause all these things from happening, nothing is going to change, including ourselves.
So, One of the reasons, not the main reason, one of the reasons why I wrote this book is because, like I said, that for life, I would like to help vets to actually vet for life, not just vet for 5 years, or vet for 2 years, or vet for 10 years and have all the issues with that. And what I do feel, and as challenging as the BET met or you know, the, the, the 5 year or 6-year programme of vet medicine, has entailed, we will all agree very rightfully so as well, pretty much 80%, if not 99%, it's all based on clinical stuff. And not much on non-clinical stuff, like communication, self-understanding, and things to allow you to thrive for life, not just for one or two years and get burn out, so to speak.
So, this booked for Life, it's to help. Passionate vets like ourselves to actually thrive and not just survive in this seemingly difficult environment, shown by the stats, not by myself. And what I found was that I mean, I love vetting and I cannot think of anything else I'd rather be than a vet.
And I, and after that, I also asked myself, OK, so why am I thriving and the rest are not, what am I doing differently or thinking differently or anything like that? And it's not just myself. So I started a survey, this is about 2 years ago now, of interviewing vets who are at least 10 to 20 years qualified and love vetting.
And I just speaking to them and finding, asking them pertinent questions. And after that, so like, why are you still in this profession, you know about a high depression, high dropout rate and na na, why do you live, what's so different about you? What, why do you think is the situation anyway, I was just squeezing them and things like that.
And after that, we found a common thread. I, I found a common threat that there there is something over there is this bit of information, the way they think, the way we think. That needs to be shared upon other people, shared with other people to potentially help to influence other people to improve their likelihood of thriving and not just surviving in this amazing, noble, wonderful profession.
And hence, the book was born that way, where it teaches, where it shows all the what we call the non-essential critical stuff. That you need to know apart from clinical, it's nothing clinical about the book at all. There's there's no CPD on dermatology, ophthalmology, or anything like that.
It's all talking about all the non Critical essentials, that's what they call non-critical, but the essentials to allow you to thrive, not just survive in this particular profession. So, it starts with remembering why you became a vet in the first place, and others following on to, OK, what are you going to do? How, how, how are you gonna look for a first job, and how to sort of, gauge what your first job is going to be like and little tips of how to help with the interview.
Where you first get your first job because, you know, arguably your first few jobs is more foundational rather than just Rather than just another job, so to speak. So if you get the first few jobs, those are a huge factor to see how long you can last as a vet as well. Whereas if your first jobs are not as supportive as it could be for you individually, then it may be likely to mar your thoughts and experience of being in the first place.
Then after he's got other, other bits of it, talking about finance as well, which nobody ever talks about ever, about. Because, about our pay, because we always talk about how little vets are paid and people want more money and things like that, but we don't really understand that money that much and my sort of suggestion would be just like any other subject like ophthalmology. All these sort of things, you can learn finance just like that.
OK, so it is a question of whether you are, you are going to do that or not. If you are great, you understand more about your own personal finance, not just for betting, just personal finance in general. If you're not, then be, be sort of, be prepared for pain.
We don't understand about money because there's plenty of amazing, well established vets who are very, very good at what they do, but still remain poor or broke. So it doesn't correlate to the amount of achievement you have in your CPDs and things like that. So we finance and also more importantly how to negotiate your salary, because people always want more money, but they actually don't know how to do that, don't know how to negotiate, so we go through how to negotiate salary as well.
We also talked a little bit about a The bit what if things go wrong, you know, and that's what we don't really talk about in general as well. What happens if a bit goes wrong, somebody complains, you get a letter of complaint, CVS display hearing, all those sort of things. What happens when things go wrong?
How should you feel? What should you do? And all sort of things, so we discussed about that as well.
We also discussed a little bit about. That there's, there's a lot going on there, so obviously a lot for us to read about, but I think it's you know, it's important we probably aren't the best paid profession. But again, all of the studies that I see, happiness and money are not related, you know, up to a certain point we, and of course we have the cost of living crisis at the moment, which I realise is, you know, difficult for people.
But once we reach a certain plateau of money, actually getting more of it doesn't make you happy. So it is much more about your experiences, your relationships, the money. Money is obviously important because without it, you know, you can't live in a house, etc.
Etc. Which I obviously get. But it's, it's also interesting, you know, from my perspective as a business, we don't see ourselves as a profit centred business.
We see ourselves as a purpose centred business because we want to help vets, similarly to you, you know, to be the most confident because they've done the training, they walk into the consulting room, and, and obviously we, we do clinical training, as I said, but we also have positive mindset type training and mindfulness training. But if you go into the consulting room and you have a very good idea of how to approach that case, that confidence I think will also help you in your profession. You're less worried about cases, you're not asleep at, you know, awake at night worrying about, did a bitch pay, you know, make it through because if your techniques and your strategies are good, then most cases will have good outcomes, so I think.
It it's so important and I think most veterinary practises are purpose centred. But as you say, if you're purpose centred and add value and add lots of value, then the money kind of follows behind without us being too obsessed with the money, doesn't it? Yeah, I totally agree with that.
So it's how you view money in the first place. Money is just money, it's a conduit. And if you use the idea of money is a byproduct of value creation, an argument to yourself would be, there's no problem with creating more value.
You don't chase the money, you can't chase the money. Money is an idea. You have a good idea, you have good money.
Bad idea, bad money. No idea, no money. Money is just an idea.
So don't chase the money, but what, what, what is a good reminder for all of us is that most that practises, they are, like you said, they're purpose-driven, they're purpose centred, and not profit-making, which is all great. If there's no other issues with that. But we know right now that vets are being burnt out.
They're seeing too many people not making enough money. That particular model still still needs adjusting. That's what I'm saying.
So, you see what I mean? Because if we keep doing that, we get the same results that we've, of course. Just, to finish off, Lennon, obviously you've, you've written the book, which again is a big thing to do, you know, to, to be an author of a book is something that not everybody does.
How involved was that, how did you er have the discipline to do that as well as run a practise, and have you self-published or is this published by er a publishing house? Great question. So just to be very clear, so, so this is the 3rd book I've written.
So, the first one was given in COVID and that was more for pet guardians, how to establish, the best relationship with a vet. So they get most of the vets or the pet wins, and that book is called It's My Vet for Real, aim at Pet guardians. Then, for this particular one is aim for, especially for vets, really.
And and just to say as well, all sort of profit goes to that life as well for that, for the sale of the book. So yes, I, how do I get disciplined. So I suppose it's just finding out why, really, why you want to do that, and that allows you to plan your time.
I'm a very, very not disciplined person, so I'm not some special person that's very self-disciplined at all. So, but having said that, What we do know is that we, there's no, there's no such thing as time management. It's more self-management.
How do you dedicate your time and what do you want to do that for? If you really think it's important enough, you will find time for it and put time aside to write that. So I've been writing it so consistently for the past year of last year and before sort of sending off the publishers early this year and getting it finally published in June.
And I self-publish with Amazon, for two different reasons. One is that it is not easy to get published in the first place. So who am I?
I'm not JK Rowling, you know, they wouldn't be touching with a barge pole. And certainly for professionals, just like us when we're writing a book like this, it is not to sell millions of copies, it's just to get it out into a very niche environment in our case, it's a bad profession. To want to help the vets.
So, and secondly, and, and with the Amazon right now, it's so easy to self-publish anyway. So, for those who want details of self-publishing, please do give me a private message or something, and you can catch me on, you know, all the usual conduits of LinkedIn and Facebook, and I can tell you how. The second reason is certainly without sounding too random as well when you use a publishing house, which I didn't realise until I look into it, they actually own the rights, not you.
So, I wanted to obviously use my book. I, I want, I want to design it myself. I want to write it, how I want it to be written, and I don't want anybody to disturb it and change a cover page or anything like that.
So I just wanted more autonomy with it. And if anything comes up from the book, then at least I still own the rights. For example, like for, for Harry Potter, it becomes a movie, JK Rowling gets a little bit of it, but the publishing gets most of it because it's from the book.
The, the content of the book becomes the rights of the publish a publishing house. Whereas, I wanted to own the rights myself. So, for me, it certainly did not make sense to go to the publishing house.
And who knows, Lennon, it's happened before, veterinary books can be turned into films and television series, so who knows what might happen? Possible, but not likely, but there you go. It wasn't intention.
Leonard, it's been great to speak to you and thank you so much about the book. I mean, the final one for me is, I've just read a book called 4 1000 Weeks, which was all about time management or self-management, and it was exactly that point. Some of the time management books are actually selling us a bit of a dream.
One of the most important things is to realise that your time is limited, that you can't do the 50 things that you want to do, but perhaps you can do the 2 or 3 things that you want to do really well, so concentrate on what you're passionate about, what you want perhaps to leave the world in a better place around. Mine is very much around animal welfare, but also the planet, so the environmental. Issues that we're having at the moment, how can I make a small dent into that as individuals, you know, we're, we're probably not going to change the world on our own, but as small as individuals get together into small groups, then we can, we can really change the world.
So thank you for this important work you're doing. I think as you said from the book and interviewing people. There are lots of vets who are really satisfied in their career, yes, it's a busy job, but it's vocational.
Sadly, there are some people who, who, it isn't the right thing for or or they leave and. Hopefully this book will help to help people make the right decisions, if they should or they shouldn't leave, but also maybe if they should even start in the profession in the first place, so. Thank you so much for writing the book, .
And for taking the time today to speak to me. I know you've got a 12 o'clock appointment, so I'm gonna let you go so you can prepare for that and be in a good space. But it's it's been great to speak and hopefully speak again soon.
Thanks so much. Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening again.
This is Anthony Chadwick, this has been Bet chat.
