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 today to have Gavin Durston on the line from Thrum's Vett in Kirriemu just north of Dundee. Gavin came to my attention because I was recently at Vet Dynamics and, Gavin's practise won one of the Vet Dynamics awards for 2023. Achieving excellence through performance, that sounds very, grand and can mean many things to many different people, can't it, Gavin?
Completely. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, please introduce yourself to the, the listeners.
Well, Crook, I'm Gavin Durstin, I'm one of the directors at Thrus Vets in Kerry Muir, so we're in the, just north of Dundee, we've got 4 branches, we're a very mixed practise, a large animals, mainly beef and sheep, got some horse work, but the majority of our work's small animals. Fantastic, Gavin and . You know, I noticed one of my little pet loves is doing all things sustainable and looking at the practise before I got you on the podcast, I noticed you've got solar panels on, on the roof.
How how's that been going? And when did you get them put up? Yeah, they, they're going really well, so we got them up in the springtime and contrary to what everyone thinks, this part of the country is very sunny.
And we've we've managed to be pretty well not pay for any electricity for a lot of the summer, and winter time we're cutting down our electric bills, so yeah, dead simple to put up, bit of noise and it just sits there, ticks away, and it's, it's good. We managed to get a, an interest free loan from Scottish government agencies and so instead of paying for electricity, we now just pay off the the panels and yeah, it's great, really good. Doing a bit for the local environment.
Yeah, brilliant. I, have a sort of aim of getting 300 practises to get solar panels on the roof because obviously vet practise or a veterinary industry, we need to decarbonize over the next 7 to 10 years. This is such an important time if we're gonna hit some of these climate targets that have been set.
So doing things like solar is, it is massive and I know you've been really impressed cause you've also fitted a battery so you can sort of store energy as well, can't you? Yeah, we're still er energy also if we've got the batteries full, we can shift the electricity into heating or hot water. So we'll use as much of it and store as much of it as we can.
You got a vand electric gate, we've got one car that's a hybrid, so we just come in, plug in and drive off, so er I get to home and back without any carbon footprint, which makes me feel very special. Oh, that's great, Gavin. And of course it is so necessary.
I've been doing a number of talks over the summer. And every time I do a talk, I started off by saying how, you know, bad the situation is with storms and floods and fires. And of course, I know the east was so badly affected by Storm Babette just recently wasn't it, which is these extreme weather events are becoming more and more common, aren't they, across the world.
100%, so some of our local villages were just . Yeah, that just devastated some of the areas and yes, there's some, and beacons along the road from us there was a whole street which is just completely underwater and these sort of things never used to happen. So for example, my folks have got a farm and we had a flood there about 20 years ago, and that's the first time the farm had flooded ever in 70 years that the family's been there.
And anyway, since then, it's now flooded. 3 times in the past 6 years, so it's definitely becoming more and more frequent and it's very, it's tangible now. You kind of used to be climate problems with someone else's issue but it's right on their doorstep.
So yeah, I think we've all got to do something, but it's, it's difficult to know exactly what to do, but solar panels is dead simple and cost effective. It's really obvious, isn't it? And I know, as you were saying, Dundee's a well known as a sunny area up in Scotland, and of course they're even putting some solar panel farms up there, aren't they?
Yeah, so Dundee, the cloquial term is Sunday because it's the sunniest place in the country. It's got other terms people use, but we'll stick with Sunday. Yeah, 2, we've got two local farms have put in dozens, and I think one farm's even got over 100 acres of solar panels up and it's, yeah, it's, it must be viable.
Yeah, brilliant. Tell us a little bit about what this award meant, achieving excellence through performance. Why, why do you think you got that?
What are you doing in the practise that, you know, helped you to win that award? So we're using vet dynamics for a wee while and basically the way we use them, they've got a, a very good dashboard, so they take all the practise data every month and they crunch it and put it into a very accessible form. So we can see what parts of the business are doing well and what bits we're not doing so good at.
And we can also keep your eye against other practises. So sometimes it's, it's quite difficult, you're sitting in the office in the practise and you're not sure if you're doing a good job or not, and you've got nothing to compare yourself. So the dashboard's great for letting us see what's, what's good.
The stuff we're not so good at, we just pick on one thing at a time because it, it can be quite daunting trying to fix everything, which is, I think it's impossible. So we'll pick one thing and we work on it and we do a bit of a marketing campaign. We've got a.
The marketer, practise makes perfectly helps us with that, and by getting the data and then by working on something well and doing it properly and getting our ducks in a row, we can see how things improve and once things improve, then we can move on to something else and it's, it's again it's really tangible. Better client outcomes, better outcomes, patient outcomes, and it just on the bottom line, it helps as well, so everyone wins with it. I think that's a really wise point.
If we try and do 10 things at once, we don't do anything well, whereas if you can actually focus just on one thing and put 2 or 3 months into it, it also helps to perhaps keep it there in the business afterwards when you move on to the next thing because it's. Become a bit more hardwired in the practise culture, hasn't it? Yeah, completely.
I think the stuff we're putting in place is, we're trying certainly kind of market wise trying to automate as much as possible. So once we spend a couple of months getting it set up, and then once it's set up and we move on to something else, it's still running in the background and we can just, yeah, fix if if you can't fix something, prove something, and then it stays improved for quite a while. Yeah, one of our value words that we have at Webinarett is Kaizen, which is this whole idea of the car manufacturers, it was Toyota I think brought it in.
How could they improve that car that was broken to make sure it didn't happen, you know, next Friday. Give us a couple of examples of maybe of things that you've looked at with the help of Alan's figures and gone, oh, OK, we need to work on that and then, you know, the sort of level of improvements you've had. Yeah, so one thing, dentals is your kind of classic one, so dentals and vet practise.
The percentage of animals come in who need dental work is pretty high, and we just looked at the KPIs and we weren't doing as good a job as most other practises. So we kind of worked out and we kind of talked to the team about it and trying to get the team engaged initially was quite difficult, but then we did our marketing campaign, so we're. Internal marketing and also to clients and we went from I do, I'm, I'm making up the figures slightly and I do 2 or 3% of our, work was dental work and we're now up to about 6, 7%.
So it's really dramatic, differences, and it's knowing where we are is the key thing and then doing something about it and having a that work we do lasting for a long time. So now the team are more in the habit of booking and and arranging dentals and talking properly for to clients, just saying that prevention is better than cure, it's better to. Do a small procedure sooner than a big procedure later it's cheaper for the client, it's easier to do, it's fun, better for the pet, which is the most important thing.
Yeah. Did you know the webinarets Virtual Veterinary Congress is back for 2024. Starting on the 5th of February, we have 10 hours of continuing education with speakers such as Sarah Heath, John Chify, and Samantha Kateler, and many, many more.
We'd love to see you there. If you'd like to get involved again this year, or if you'd like to join us for the day next time, please click the link in the description below to find out more. What do you do, Gavin, when you're not working in the practise to, to sort of free the mind and and and keep you cheerful?
So I do, I probably looks like Leicester now, but I do a fair bit of running, so I've, I never used to do any running at all, and then I got to my mid-20s, and someone missed an appointment one night and I was kicking about for 10 minutes and I thought I've not listened to my heart for a wee while, so I had my stethoscope and had a wee listen and. I had a heart murmur, which I hear murmurs in dogs, but not in myself. I didn't realise I had any issues.
So I got one of my colleagues to have a listen and she said, you're stuffed Gavin, that's bad, bad news. She was wrong thankfully. So I got checked out and I had a very, very slight prolapse in mitral valve.
And that gave me a bit of a wake up call along with kind of going up a trouser size and being a slightly tight Scottish guy. I thought I don't want to pay for buying a whole lot of new trousers, so I started running. And I couldn't do more than 200 yards without stopping, so I thought I'm not quite as fit as I used to.
And so I started doing 5Ks, 10 ks, did a couple of marathons and couldn't get any faster, so I thought I'll, I'll go longer and that's that's entered, an ultra marathon. So I decided I mean I'd seen the marathon sables on the telly and seen it advertising and all that like looks good fun. And I said to my wife, I fancy doing this, and she said, Don't be so stupid.
That's a bad idea. And as long as she said, don't be so stupid, I was never going to do it. But then one day I must have gone on too much and she said, just book the bloody thing.
So I either had to book it and do it or I had to agree that my wife was right. Anyway, my ego was too big, so I booked it and I did that, and that was just a really difficult, enjoyable life affirming experience. And yeah, it didn't change my life, but it certainly was life affirming.
So I decided to do more ultra so I spent. The following 1012 years just every year doing one or two silly races as my wife calls them. Yeah, you have to be slightly mad to run an ultra, I think I.
I run marathons and and always found them a bit difficult, those last 6 miles. I remember the first one I did, I was 23 and . My, my hardest training was about 3 weeks before the marathon, I ran my first ever half marathon.
And the half marathon went really well. I'd run that quite fast. And then I got to the day of the marathon and at 1820 miles, I thought, what is the fuss about marathons, these are so, so easy.
And from, I think at 20 miles I was doing about 2 hours 20, the last . The last 6 miles took me an hour and a half. Yeah.
So it was a rude awakening to, you know, the need for gels and slightly longer runs than 13 miles before you try and attempt a marathon. So the good thing about ultra marathons that most people know what an OK marathon time is and it's lots and lots of people do it, but. Few people do ultras and no one knows what a good time and so many races are different, so you can't really compare one with the other one.
And in my mind, an ultras this is an eating competition. So you start off slow, get slower and eat as much as you can. And as long as you're in a nice environment, it's actually quite a pleasant day.
And whether I do a race in 10 hours or 20 hours, you come back to the practise and no one knows if 20 hours is a good time, so I can wing it. Yeah, brilliant. And I found that I enjoyed triathlons.
I wasn't a great swimmer, so I had to work at it, but almost, that was a nicer distance because it's sort of 2.5, 3 hours when you're out on the. The the road and the the sea and things and, and that was more manageable for me.
So I, I take my hat off to you for your endurance and persistence because for these longer runs the, the preparation really needs to be spot on, doesn't it? Yeah, it's what you kind of get used to it, but I, if I was just going to try and swim triathlon distance, I'd, I'd sink. So, it's horses horses.
I, I'd admire you for doing for swimming that distance. I couldn't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We had Kiera on the podcast recently and she goes up. Not only does she do the distance, she does the distance at height around places like the Himalayas, which I think is just adding insult to injury, isn't it, for our mere sort of ultra marathon runners. Yeah, Kiera is a different kettle of fish.
She's she's up there. I'm, I'm a mediocre in the middle of the pad pack plodder. I'm happy with my place.
Yeah, brilliant, no, I, I, I agree with you on the mediocrity stakes for myself as well. Obviously Gavin, the practise I think is, is, is independent practise. It's, it's really interesting to see how the veterinary field is adjusting at the moment, isn't it, because we saw the rise of the of the corporates, and it seems almost like it particularly being at that dynamics the other month.
That independence is starting to rise back up again, what's your feeling on that? Yeah, I think every industry changes, it's got a sea change every 20 years, and I suppose 20 years ago that's when corporates started to rise up. And I think just recently they they maybe had the.
Their tails clipped a little bit with the CMA and they're maybe just pulling back a little bit, and I think there's a huge number of people who want to be in charge of their own destiny, and I think that's where all these phoenix and new practises are coming from. And I think it's great. OK, it might be a bit of competition at some point for me, but I think having good competitions is great, it just improves the industry in the end and, and it's exciting to see what some new practises doing that just.
Adapting an old model, like there's more membership practises coming on board, and I've seen a lot of that in the states and there's some a few of them sat down south and I think that's a really interesting model. It's something I'm I'm dead keen to. Explore like we're quite an old patch we've got our seventy-fifth anniversary this year, so we're an old James Harriet style thing, but I think if we could adapt to having a bit more of a membership type scenario, I think it's good for the clients, it's good for us, good for pets.
I think it's interesting. Exciting times I think. So an old dog that potentially can learn new tricks then, Gavin, if you're 75 years old now, you're looking good for it, or is that the practise?
It's a practise, yeah, I'm I'm still 36 in my head. Yeah, I think it's really interesting because I, I was speaking to Alan recently again and of course they're doing a similar thing with Garden Vets at Keele, which is a new vet school, opening that very much on a sort of. Membership basis, so it's, and I think pickles down in London is doing a similar thing, isn't it?
So it's a, it's a new model that's developing probably from the VIP health plans where we need to change those because of course I started one of those. I was one of the first to do it 20 years ago, as you said, and we were then using lots of vetoparasiticides and and worms and so on and maybe again with our sustainability hats on. Yeah.
Now finding fipronil in rivers and amidoclopridge, we need to look at a different way that we do all the preventative health, maybe with more testing of faecal cultures, etc. Before we just give out worms or or flea treatments or the like. Is that your sort of thoughts as well, or Completely we had a plan for a while and it was kind of very parasite side based and then 3 years ago we added in free consultations into kind of a premium plan.
And that's going really well, so most of our sign ups now are on the premium plan and I'm, I'm just. Almost going to press the button to have a like a free consult plan with, with an option for parasiticides. So at the moment it's most plans are parasiticized with an option for free consults.
I just want to flip it around because I think it drives the business, and I'm not knocking parasiticides at all. They've got definitely got the place, but the thing that drives the vet practise is people coming in, and I think it's important people bring their pets in early for better, more successful treatments. And if you can use that barrier of that consultation fee and we get people in earlier, it's more successful treatments, better value for the clients, it's sustainable income for the practise, and I think that's a, a really interesting model.
So there's a few practises, yeah, there's, creature comforts in London. They're just about to start with a similar sort of model, and then there's vets in Dublin who do something similar, so I think that's. Looking at what the industry is going to be like in 10 years' time, it's gonna change a lot, and I think having a low barrier for coming into a practise like included consults is a is a nice sustainable way to do it.
Going back to, you know, the practise being an older practise, 75 years old. It can be really difficult to stay ahead, can't it, and to disrupt yourself, you know, the model that you've got that's been working, but you see new things coming, you know, the world is changing. I mean, the change is accelerating all the time, isn't it, with tech, etc.
So it's, it's really important to have that time to also step back from squeezing the anal sacks and vaccinating the puppies to actually say, well, you know, what is the next stage, and I think this is probably what's also been recognised in that. Achieving excellence through performance award that you won at, that dynamics recently. Yeah, definitely, and it's also just, I, I, I've not, I've never had an original thought in my head, but I just like to steal other people's good ideas and I think the moment there's traditionally our old practise was, it's very much a silo, so clients used to come in through the front door and there was the gatekeeper who's the receptionist and they limited what the work we were doing.
And then we start to send out reminders and encouraging people to come in. And I think now there's so much kind of digital disruption out there and people trying to distract clients to go to Amazon or TUE or any other company you can think of, it's important for us to kind of stay ahead and and be very close to clients. So the bricks are what we're really good at, that's a secret sauce that people in our buildings and where we are.
I think digitally we've got to be there as well, so. Kind of if a client's thinking about the pets not well or what's wrong with the pet. We want to be the first protocol that they think of, so we use PetsApp, we use Vivvets.
We've got our, I think we're doing quite well just to be at the forefront of our clients' minds. And then if you can have a a subscription that keeps that cost down for the clients. So at any point they can think pets not well, I'll phone from or I'll get in touch with rums.
I think that stands us in good stead, otherwise we end up just being. A silo and other people are trying to attract clients away from us and I think we could give a good service and that we serve our pets really well, so that's, that's important for us. I think Tom had pets up said it well when he said it's bricks and clicks, isn't it?
100%. I think if you just, if you were just doing. Take that digital space between us and the clients, someone else will, and then they just get distracted elsewhere, so that's, it's important for us to do that.
I, I've spent a long time, you know, before the pandemic, I went to a an RCBS meeting and. Nick Stacey, who was CEO at the time, talked about every business being a digital business, and I kind of really took that to cos obviously we were a digital business. And I started saying to people, you know, whether you're a butcher baker, candlestick maker, or vets, you need to be a digital business and I don't think people took it that seriously on the whole, I think you, you know, you're a, a, an early adopter of it, but actually the pandemic has transformed people, they've suddenly become very adept at using Zoom and other things, and the pandemic as awful as it was, there has been that digital transformation which I think has given some really useful results, hasn't it?
Yeah, it's turned every client into millennial. So it used to be just millennials who wanted to do online stuff, but some of our older clients, they're booking online, they're using their chat facility and the likes of Byvet, and we've got all that stuff there, but it's so important we don't want to be working harder. We just want to be working smarter, so again the market and we're making sure that the right clients are getting the right messages at the right time.
And since we started doing that in the springtime, that's, I can see real tangible benefits of of that. So it's yeah, working smarter, marketing to the right people at the right times and it just, yeah, it's positioning ourselves to be lucky, I think is probably the best way to put it. Yeah, I like your idea of saying that you, you steal ideas.
I, I mean, webinar that's very good at R&D. You know what R&D stands for, don't you, Gavin? I was gonna say a research and development, but I suspect you've got another.
It's a rip off and duplicate. OK, I like that. I wonder if we could get a tax credit for that.
I should TM that shouldn't I, but it's not been TMed yet, so you can have it. Obviously you're an independent practise and I'm always a. Not exactly sure how this works, so please let me know, but I know you're also a member of Excel Vets.
What's the benefits of being with Excel Vets? Is that just simply as a buying group or is it something more than that? You know, it's an awful lot more, so it started off very much in the model of a buying group.
It was very large animal based and it was a case of getting good deals for for the membership. And you know, it's probably a bit cynical being more of a small vet to start with, but the more I get into it and the benefits are just they're dramatic for us. So we get a, they're very good buying group.
They do buying very well because there's such a a large membership. But I think a lot of it is the community, so we joined for the buying, but we'd stay for the community. So we'll have regular meetings and best example is during COVID, it's all new for us and no one knows exactly what's happening.
So we used to have a regular weekly, fortnightly, monthly Zoom meeting just with other similar practises, and it was so nice to know that we were all in the same boat, we all had the same issues and we just, again, R&D we ripped off each other's ideas and duplicated them. And it was, it was heartening and it made life so much easier. And then again, they help a lot of kind of CPDs to do a lot of leadership CBDs so we've got a young ones coming through so our new grads can go into our new grad programmes.
There's aspiring owners programmes, there's leadership programmes, and it just raises the level of community efficiency within the practise and it just makes life a bit nicer. To be honest, sorry. Talking again about Excel that, that, that sense of community is, is actually really powerful.
It's, it's often the way with mastermind groups like, you know, Alan's Dynamics. Of course the training that you're getting is really important, but you learn so much from your peers as well, don't you? Completely, yeah, it's peer to peer learning, stealing other ideas, so we, we would.
We were quite as we were getting bigger we're quite a flat organisations for the directors and then everyone else is in the same sort of level and then as it got bigger it didn't work. So again, ripping off some other Excel practise ideas we've now got our our. Students, we've got our new grad programme, we've got our vets, we've got a senior vet programme, and we can get up to director level, so everyone's going to got a career path.
In fact, one of our, she used to be our Saturday girl, Ashley, and she's gone from Saturday girl to nurse to head nurse, and she's now an associate managing director. So again, it's just that nice career path and it's, it's like a proper organisation as opposed to, me winging it. Gavin, it's been fascinating speaking to you and it's great to see, you know, as an independent you're doing such a, a great job up in sunny Scotland.
And yeah, I really appreciate your time cos I know how busy you are and imparting some of your wisdom, it's been much appreciated. That's OK, no trouble at all. If anyone wants to rip off and disperse my ideas, I'm dead happy.
Thanks Gavin, take care. Thanks everyone for listening, this is Anthony Chadwick from the Webinar vet, and this has been another episode of Vet Chat. Take care.
