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The Importance of a Positive Attitude

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 by Dr. Dean Severidt

If asked, what would you say is the most important ingredient to a successful career as a veterinarian? It could be your grade point average, years of experience, average transaction, or it could be how good of a surgeon you are. All of these are true, but I believe the most important characteristic is one’s attitude. A person’s attitude can determine everything from how well we perform duties to how we react and get along with people.

Many of us may think that we have a great attitude, but do we ever listen to what we are actually saying on a day-to-day level? Listen to how you respond to problems and situations and see if you are truly positive or not. Also listen to what you say to other employees and clients and see if you are positive. Record yourself for one day and you would be shocked at all of the negative things that you actually say. Unfortunately, we are all programmed to think negative and all of the subconscious stuff that has been buried over the years will naturally make us very negative. We all have a lot of dark shadows in our past that are waiting to be released; however, until they actually are, they will manifest themselves by us projecting our anxieties and fears onto others, which we do by being negative or not having the best attitude. Whenever I want an answer on how to act, I always try and look at Jesus. Whether or not you are a Christian, we all know about Jesus. His life here on earth was one of complete servant hood. He had all of the power of God, but instead chose to be a servant for us. He did not brag of whom He was or what He could do, he humbled himself even unto death on a cross. How many of us truly are humble? Or do we let our ego run with us since we are educated and have DVM behind our name? Be positive and have a great attitude about everything and then see how your life unfolds. Next time, we will talk about these dark shadows and what we can do in order to release them to improve our attitude.

Tags: business leadership, veterinary practice growth
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Serving Your Veterinary Clients

Saturday, May 15th, 2010 by Dr. Dean Severidt

width= Why do some veterinary clinics run so smoothly and others seem to be so chaotic all of the time? Some clinics can handle many people at once and others can only handle one or two at a time. Space definitely has something to do with it, plus patient flow and flow of charts has a lot to do with the amount of congestion in a clinic, along with the attitude of the veterinarians.

I have been in many clinics where there are so many steps to simply get a patient checked in. Then once the patient finally goes into a room, it takes a lifetime for a simple step to happen. They have to pull a record, have a doctor review the record, get the client to sign a release, print out a travel sheet, put the client in a room, find a technician to go in the room, and then reverse this entire process to leave. At the end, the only result is a frustrated and unhappy client. Most people do not mind waiting; however, they do want to see progress. When there are this many steps, there does not seem to be much progress.

Going paperless, as I have talked about earlier, will solve most of these issues. The person is checked in before arriving, then they sign a pad on entry, and then they are put into a room. The technician then goes into the room, followed by the doctor, the procedure is performed, and then the client leaves. All of the steps are shortened and the client is constantly being attended to. A lot of clinics that I have seen have an attitude that the doctor is this “high and mighty” individual and that everyone should cater to them. The doctor is an owner or employee and nothing else. Being a good practitioner has nothing to do with a DVM degree; it is totally dependent on your ability to converse and relate to clients. Do not make people wait longer then you would want to wait.

If clinics would understand that the client is the only reason that they are open and treat them as such, the flow of the clinic would take care of itself. Every client that comes through the door should be treated as if they are the last one left and should be given all of our attention. If clinics and veterinarians would focus on the client and not themselves, there would never be excess waiting time and there would never be unhappy clients. I have just lately seen an attitude coming out of school that “I am the doctor, people can wait on me, and I will get to them as soon as I can”. Instead, the attitude should be more like: “I am the doctor and the only reason that I have the privilege of being a doctor is because these people are coming into my clinic, and I will do everything possible to make them happy so that they do come back.” My bet would be that all of the flow problems and bottlenecks would go away because everyone would be focused on clearing them out so as to make it easier on the clients.

Tags: business leadership, veterinary management, veterinary practice growth
Posted in Culture, Growing Your Practice, Leadership | No Comments »

Being A “People” Person

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 by Dr. Dean Severidt

Have you ever wondered why some veterinarians are very successful as far as keeping clients happy and having profitable average transactions and others either make everyone mad or have horrible average transactions? There could be many reasons for this, but over my thirty years of experience, I have seen a lot of young veterinarians come and go, some with a lot of success and some with very little. Last week I talked about the different attitude of professionalism that we see from our veterinarians today and how it does not have the same meaning as it did years ago.

I believe from experience that the number one common denominator that most veterinarians lack is their people skills. This is their ability to relate to and communicate with clients. I have overheard veterinarians talking to clients in rooms and can pretty much guarantee that the client has no idea what they were just told. So why would they approve a procedure that they do not really understand? I have learned from firsthand experience as well as watching other veterinarians, that going into a room and talking on a level that the client understands will pretty much always result in the client opting to perform the procedure. Although the old school veterinarians may have not been the smartest people in the world, many of them are extremely down to earth people who are dedicated to their profession and do not feel superior to anyone; this allows them to relate to people at their level. Today I think that schools put so much emphasis on grade point averages that many of the young veterinarians that come out of school are very intelligent. However, although, they are way smarter than I ever dreamed of being, they cannot always relate to people. They can diagnose just about anything and everything, but they cannot explain it or simply will not explain it in simple terms to a client; therefore, leaving the client frustrated and unhappy with the services. I believe that many do this because they feel so superior to their clients that they have to talk in this way in order to build themselves up. I hear them complain about how dumb clients are, yet they can be so self absorbed that when it is 6:00 and time for them to go home, they will leave whether someone is standing in the waiting room or not.

I have never put any significance on grade point averages when hiring someone. My philosophy is that anyone that can get into and get through veterinary school is given the opportunity to be a good veterinarian. I look for people that can talk simply and do not present themselves as someone special, but just are who they are. They should carry themselves with confidence but not be condescending. They will stay for people that are late because they understand that they are doing this job for the client and the pet, and not just for themselves. Do not get me wrong; there are a lot of good veterinarians coming out of school today, but some lack so much professionalism which carries over and they cannot do the job that someone else can. Indeed, some knowledge is important to be a veterinarian; however, listening to people, understanding their needs, and truly caring for them and their pet will be much more successful than the smartest person in the world that cannot relate to clients.

Tags: owning veterinary clinic, veterinary consultants, veterinary management
Posted in Associate Veterinarians, Culture, Growing Your Practice, Leadership, Management | No Comments »

Dealing With the Shadows of Our Subconcious Mind

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 by Dr. Dean Severidt

We have been talking about the dark shadows that lay deep down in each of our subconscious minds. We always have two choices with these shadows: we can ignore them and hope that they go away, or we can deal with them. As Debbie Ford successfully put in her book, “When Good People Do Bad Things”, we all have a black wolf inside of us. We can choose to feed him and keep him quiet, which means deal with our inner feelings. Or instead, we can just ignore him to where he becomes starved, and someday he will then come out with full vengeance until we finally do feed him. I believe that this is why so many supposedly “good” people end up doing things that no one can believe, including themselves. So how do we find out about this black wolf if we all have him? The only way to be aware of him is to dig into our subconscious mind and understand what is there. I have mentioned numerous ways to do this and today I want to highlight two of them: meditation and through what Dr. Bradley Nelson calls the “emotion code”.

There is much written on meditation, and I for one am certainly not an expert. If you read the Bible, it always talks about people meditating and using it as a way to get closer to God. I believe meditation is nothing more than quieting your mind for a select period of time to clear out all of the junk or “stinkin’ thinkin’” that we all have in our conscious mind. 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, so does it not make sense that we ought to at least try and see what we are really thinking about most of the time? By getting quiet, it allows thoughts to come up in our mind that are deep down in our subconscious; all that we have to do is recognize the thought and let it go. If you have some major issue buried, it will surface over and over again and you will know that it is a problem. You can do this by just being quiet or there are also CD’s available that you can listen to that will help tremendously. You will want to come up with a mantra or a word you keep saying over and over to keep your mind from wandering. Most people use a word such as “Amen”, “Thy Will Be Done”, “Shalom”, or any word that has meaning to you. If you give it a try, you may be amazed at the things that come up that you do not even remember or barely remember at all. Once you find these, accept them as a part of you and do not try and rebury them. I always expose my management staff to meditation and enable each of them to learn what it is; however, whether they do it or not is up to them.

Another method of finding what is deep is through the “emotional code”, which is the use of muscle-testing to find out what is buried deep inside of you and which emotions that you need to release. You can learn to do this yourself or you can have someone do it for you. The writer of the book “Emotion Code” by Dr. Bradley Nelson is a great source to learn the technique. You can even set up a conference call with him where he will do it for you. I have done it with him and it is unbelievable what he can come up with. He can tell you when that emotion was affecting you, and then you will be able to come up with what was going on in your life at that time that caused it.

These are just two of the many techniques available to recognize your dark shadows so that you can do something about them before they control you. If you have ever known anyone that did something completely out of character that made no sense, it was probably related to this. It does not mean the person was irresponsible; but it is more a reason of why? On a less serious level, what if you had blocked emotions about being successful and were therefore holding yourself back every day? It might not be earth shattering if someone finds out, but it may affect your income for your entire career. All that I can say is to be open-minded and try these methods to see what changes in your life.

Tags: subconscious thoughts
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Sharing Your Vision to Grow Your Veterinary Practice

Saturday, February 20th, 2010 by Dr. Dean Severidt

Formation of Leadership XX

We are talking about the mistakes I have made as a leader. Fortunately, each time that you learn from a mistake you become a better leader and a better person. Take responsibility for your mistakes; look at them as a learning tool and not as a mistake or failure.

The next mistake that I have made is not sharing my vision with the staff enough, as I should have. I am sure all of us have a mission statement and a vision; however, how many of us actually get the staff involved and how many staff members even know what that mission statement says? Many times we do this because we are told to, but then we never talk about it again and wonder why it seems impossible to achieve our vision when know one even knows what it is. We need to get the staff to take ownership in the vision; once they do, they will help you achieve it and more importantly, they will want to be a part of it. This starts by getting them involved in the vision and mission statement so it becomes part of what they want to accomplish not just you. When we do not get the staff involved, they do not care what our vision is so they will not work to try and accomplish it.

When we wrote our vision we sat down with the staff and collectively came up with our three core values or what we stand for. We came up with superior customer service and satisfaction, empowered employees, and generating significant profits. Since our staff helped develop these when new staff comes on board they remind them of how important these things are. They will make sure that customers are happy, they will see to it that we allow employees to be empowered and they will work diligently toward generating profits for our business. The great part of this process is that people that don’t want to adopt this vision will leave on their own because they feel left out and if they don’t buy in why would you want them working for you anyway.

Through this process we came up with our vision from our three core values. When people are hired they are presented this through a branding training and agree to adopt it or given the opportunity to not work for us. When they accept this, as I said everyone else makes sure they live by it. We came up with the following vision; Our vision is to change veterinary medicine into a profession that offers opportunities and careers so attractive that the best and the brightest aspire to contribute to the profession in return for a career that is not only psychologically rewarding , but also financially. We intend to accomplish this by offering our customers such superior customer service and satisfaction that they become raving fans that promote Pet Doctors of America to every pet owner they come in contact with. We can provide this unmatched customer service by creating a culture of empowered employees who are free to take all actions that are necessary to exceed our customer’s expectations. Our customers will reward these efforts with repeat business and referrals that will generate significant profits that will enable us to compensate and retain the best and brightest who will provide for services and care not yet available, through relentless pursuit of perfection out of sheer admiration for our customers and their “family members.”

Tags: Core Values, mission statement, vision
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