From Good to Great Mentorship with MentorVet Founder Addie Reinhard, DVM, MS

Having a good mentor is vital to your veterinary career. Having a great mentor can be life changing. Dr. Addie Reinhard talks with us today about the qualities that set apart the great mentors and she explains how you can easily become one of them. Addie also details how her program, MentorVet, is helping recent grads adjust to life in the real veterinary world. If you've ever found yourself in a mentorship role (AKA literally ALL veterinarians!) or feel like you are needing help from a mentor, this episode is for you.
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About Dr. Reinhard...
Dr. Addie Reinhard is a veterinary wellbeing researcher. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating innovative interventions to support mental health and wellbeing within the veterinary profession. Dr. Reinhard is a 2015 graduate of The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine. She is the Founder and Director of MentorVet, an evidence-based mentorship and professional development program for recent veterinary graduates. She is on the research team for the next phase of the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study and is currently collaborating with Merck Animal Health to grow and expand MentorVet. She completed a master’s degree in Community and Leadership Development and a Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning from the University of Kentucky in Spring 2021, was a 2019-2020 KVMA Power of Ten Leadership Program participant, and holds a certificate in Veterinary Human Support from the University of Tennessee. She is also a certified QPR instructor.
Find out more about MentorVet and Dr. Reinhard here...
-MentorVet website
-Facebook
-Instagram @mentorvet
-Linked In
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Transcript

Stacey Cordivano: 0:07

Hey there, it's Dr. Stacey Cordivano. I want veterinarians to learn to be happier, healthier, wealthier, and more grateful for the life that we've created. On this podcast I will speak with outside of the box thinkers to hear new ideas on ways to improve our day to day life. Welcome to The Whole Veterinarian. Hey everyone, today I get to share my conversation with Dr. Addie Reinhard. I just want to prep this episode with the trigger warning that we discuss suicide prevention techniques and some statistics throughout this discussion. Dr. Reinhard is a veterinary wellbeing researcher. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating innovative interventions to support mental health and well being within the veterinary profession. She is the founder and director of Mentor Vet, an evidence-based mentorship and professional development program for recent veterinary graduates. I get to ask Abby all about what her research has shown on how to move from being a good mentor to a great one. I think this is a quest we can all strive to achieve. We also dig into the work that MentorVet is doing for recent grads, and we close out with the challenge for all of you. So listen to the end and find some resources in the show notes. I hope you enjoy hearing from Addie as much as I appreciated speaking with her. Now here's our chat. I'm so excited to sit down and chat with Dr. Addie Reinhard today. Thank you so much for joining me, Addie.

Addie Reinhard: 1:47

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to chat with you.

Stacey Cordivano: 1:50

Me too. So you founded MentorVet... today's episode is all about mentorship. I was hoping you could give a little bit of background about yourself and how mentor vet came about and then we will dig into the meat of it. Awesome. Yeah, so I am a 2015 graduate from University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and practice small animal and a little bit of exotics. I'm based here in Lexington, Kentucky, and I had pretty good mentors starting out my career. So I had really good medical mentorship. My mentors were very good at teaching me surgical procedures, very patient, very kind individuals. And I, in my early career still experienced feelings of burnout a couple different times. And a lot of my burnout was related to issues around ethical situations, I did work in kind of a semi rural area. And so I was facing a lot of those tough ethical dilemmas where you're having to give care that's not necessarily the best care or the gold standard care that you learn in vet school. And so you know, having to learn to operate in the gray was kind of really tough for me, especially if it was a patient that I knew how to fix, but there was just not really any resources to do so. So I struggle with that as well as you know, just some of the the caseload and just heavy caseload, and I became pretty exhausted after a bit. And I had, again, really great mentors. And when I when I talked to them about this, they kind of helped me through some of this burnout and adapted my work schedule and things like that. But I kind of felt this calling after I had experienced burnout because I noticed a lot of other vets were going through similar situations as me a lot of my classmates and they didn't have the same good mentors in their practices. Some of them didn't have any mentorship. And so I kind of felt this calling to be able to provide kind of this external mentorship and support for veterinarians. Because when I was looking for external resources outside of my practice, I couldn't find hardly anything to support me in this these feelings of burnout. So I actually decided to quit my full time job. I said, I'm going to make a national mentorship program. And that was two years ago. So went to the University of Kentucky, got my master's degree in the Department of Community and leadership development. And over the past two years have been developing and evaluating the mentor vet program to provide that external support and resources to our early career veterinarians. That's amazing. I mean, like idea to fruition, like, that's actually a very short amount of time, and we're gonna dig into all of what mentor vet does later. But first, how do you define a mentor?

Addie Reinhard: 4:39

It's a tough question. So so there's, you hear this term thrown around so much, right? And you hear this term from employers right when they're hiring. Oh, yes, we have good mentorship. We have good mentorship and you hear it from from associates that are looking for jobs, right? I want a good mentor. I'm looking for a good mentor starting out, what does this mean? That is the big question, right? What does this mean? And I think the definition of mentorship is individual to each person, what is it that you need? What are your individual and unique needs that you need when you start out your career or at any point in your career? And so to me, a good mentor just depends on who you are. And though that's not really a great answer to this question, but for me, a good mentor is someone that is very supportive. It's someone that I can trust somebody that I know that will advocate for me, and somebody that really believes in me. So those are some of the things that I look for when I look for a mentor it because I have lots, lots and lots of mentors, because I realized that you don't need just one mentor, you often need multiple mentors to help support you so so again, this this definition of mentorship, I would just encourage you all as listeners to really consider what is it that mentorship means to you? What is it that you're looking for? When you say you want to mentor and practice? Well, what does that mean, you want a surgical mentor, you want somebody help you with surgeries, you want somebody to help you work through tough cases, you want somebody to be supportive? What is it that you're looking for? Because I think if you can articulate that and define it, you'll have better luck and finding a mentor for you.

Stacey Cordivano: 6:25

That's great. That answers was beyond my wildest dreams of answer. So thank you. I know that you do some speaking, and part of your discussion I saw was the differences between a good mentor and a great mentor. So what are your thoughts on that? So yes, in the research that I've done with kind of early career vets, I did a focus group about a year and a half ago, and really was digging into this concept of like, what makes the transition to practice kind of challenging, what what are the specific needs of our early career vets. And one theme that kind of arose during this focus group was this concept of good versus bad mentorship. So they talked a lot about kind of what makes a good mentor, a lot of them had really good mentors in the transition of practice. And yet, they were still struggling, like me, right? They had good mentors, they identify these people as good mentors. And yet many of them were still struggling to adapt to some of the challenges of the early career. It's hard. Even with good mentorship, the transition is really tough. And so in that focus group, a few of the kind of themes that arose around what is a good mentor. So this comes from a group of early career vets, and they need to find a good mentor is essentially someone who was available and willing to answer questions. So somebody who wouldn't make you feel dumb? If you answered a question like no, no dumb question, right? Somebody who was an advocate for you, so somebody who is you know, if there was a difficulty with a client, for example, they would advocate for you first and foremost, and, and again, that kind of goes into supporting and trusting your knowledge as a new grad. So that was something else that they had mentioned is, is a good mentor will support you and trust you, and what you know, because new grads know a lot, they come out of school with a lot of knowledge. And I think a good mentor will will trust that a mentee will reach out if they need help. Because another thing that kind of arose during my focus group is that there's kind of this fear of making mistakes. And so a lot of times our associates are going to reach out because they're terrified that they're going to hurt something that they're going to make a mistake. So I think we have to trust that our new grads are going to reach out to us if they have questions. And then finally, a good mentor in this focus group was defined as somebody who was empathetic to the challenges of a new grad, somebody who could just say, Hey, I know that what you're going through is hard because I went through this too. It's a tough transition. So I think those things make for a good mentor. I think this these are some of the things that we see in practice today with some of our our mentoring. But what I've found, you know, with this focus group and these research findings is that even good mentorship, a lot of these individuals are having struggles, right? So what what is this kind of intangible thing that we can nail down that makes a really great mentor? What what are some of the things that make a mentor, an incredible mentor? And so I kind of through my research identified five key things. So one would be a great mentor can recognize when a mentee needs professional help. So we know there are a lot of mental health issues within our industry. And so a great mentor is going to be very supportive of mental health issues and be able to recognize and refer if a mentee needs help. And then a great mentor will also help our mentees navigate conflict, right. So this is one of the big challenges in the early career is learning how to navigate conflict. Often our mentors have a lot of experience with This and so being able to transfer that knowledge to our mentees is really important. And then the other thing is ethical decision making. So like I spoke about with my own burnout, a lot of it was around these tough ethical situations. So having somebody there that you can bounce some things off of, and learn how to operate in the gray area. This is something that you learn as you go forward in your career naturally, right how to offer this spectrum of options. But when you're starting out, that's really tough to do. So having a great mentor means somebody that can help you work through these gray areas. We also I also define a great mentor is somebody who creates safety and inclusivity within their mentoring practices. So essentially making mistakes and mistakes are okay, we're human, right. And so mistakes are a good learning opportunity. It's a safe environment. And it's also an inclusive environment where we can bring our full selves into the clinic, whatever that may look like. And then finally, I think a great mentor. And I think this might be the most important point is one that models good self care habits, because we talk a lot about mental health issues within our industry. And self care is such an important piece of this. But if our mentors are not modeling those good self care habits, then we're not going to know that it's okay to do as mentees, we're not going to see it being done. So we're just going to model what our mentors are doing right? So I think that self care, that self care piece, and being a great mentor, you got to step up your self care so your mentees can can see this and see how you can survive and thrive within this industry. Great. Oh, great. I mean, obviously, I come from an equine background. So many points come out. You know, even just the empathizing. I feel like a lot of equine vets are like, Ah just buck up and do it. I did it. It was hard, you know, and that's not empathizing with a new grad struggling. And then also the modeling self care, man. Oh, like, I've heard so many stories, where they're like, Oh, they said, I could go ride if I didn't have appointments. But they're there all the time. And I felt like I have to be there all the time. So yeah, great, great points to think about, for sure.

Addie Reinhard: 12:08

Yeah. And I did the same thing, right, I saw my mentor, working really hard. And I saw him just putting in so many hours. So I really respected him. And so I tried to meet that same pace as he was doing. And that's part of why I burnt out because I was just trying to keep up. And so yeah, that self care is so so important.

Stacey Cordivano: 12:30

It is hard hard to do, though. I mean, there's an actual practice for sure. Like it's not just something that's gonna happen.

Addie Reinhard: 12:37

No, it's not easy.

Stacey Cordivano: 12:38

I struggle every week.

Addie Reinhard: 12:39

Oh, I struggle too. I've and and i think it's a work in progress. Right. And one thing that I do for my mentees is show them that I can model good self care habits. But sometimes things get busy and things get hard. That's probably the most important time to be doing your self care. But we're all human. And again, that we all make mistakes, sometimes even with our self care. So So offering yourself some Grace is important if you slip up on yourself.

Stacey Cordivano: 13:03

and you kind of touched on this briefly, but how do you think that mentorship and mental health or overall well being? How do those things go together as far as veterinarians?

Addie Reinhard: 13:15

So yeah, I think we are in a profession that has a lot of mental health issues, and especially within the early career, we know that stress levels for early career vets are significantly higher than the general population. We know that burnout levels about half of that's experienced burnout within the first five years after graduation. We know that well being levels for early career vets are lower than other veterinarians, according to the most recent Merck Animal Health veterinary wellbeing study. So I think as a mentor, we have to recognize that there are mental health issues within the profession and know how to go about creating this open environment. So these things can be discussed more openly. Because what happens is, I think a lot of mentees are afraid to bring up if they're feeling imposter syndrome, or they're feeling burnt out or stressed. And they're just worried because they don't there's also a stigma around mental health. Right. And so I think if we, as mentors can open up these conversations a little bit. I think it has the potential to break down some of the stigma and help seeking because if we're more open about hearing about other people's challenges and sharing, oh, yeah, I also feel imposter syndrome almost every day as well and and bringing in this human aspect to our profession. Because it's tough. It's a stressful profession. This profession is so hard. And so if we can bring in that humanity to our profession, we're going to be in a lot better shape.

Stacey Cordivano: 14:52

Yeah, totally, totally agree. And I think that's where some of these communities where people do feel more comfortable to express their feelings are so important. And I mean, luckily, more and more are popping up one of course being MentorVet but for mentors who feel as though a mentee may be past the point of their help, like maybe needing professional help, do you have tips for recognizing that? Yes. So there there's definitely a few things to look out for, and I think that there's a huge list that I could even just read through, but but I won't. But I think that what I tell people is that if anything seems off, if anything at all seems not right about somebody around you, right, because often our mentees, especially within our practices are people that we see every single day, there are people that we work with every single day. So if you get that feeling that just something isn't right with this person, that they are upset that they're, you know, having mood changes, or just not acting themselves. I think a common term that we use in veterinary medicine, is ADR, right. So if you're if your mentee is ADR, this might be a time that that it might be a good idea to ask and, and so the way that I do this, essentially, with my own mentees would be so I recognize something maybe that's, you know, an excessive worry or fear, or they've they've mentioned something about, you know, suicide, or you notice that they're having changes in their eating habits, or they mentioned that they're having a really hard time sleeping. So if I see some of these signs, or they're just not acting right, I bring it up to them, I make some kind of empathetic statement. So for example, you know, I've just noticed that you've been coming into work a lot later than you used to. And it's been more consistent, I'm really worried because you used to always be on time, and I'm really worried about you. So making that empathetic statement of what you've been noticing about the behavior, and making that empathetic statement that you care. So I care about you, and then invite a story. So So tell me what's been going on, making it a kind of an open ended question of really inviting them to bring that story to the table, they might resist, and there's not really much you can do about that. But you can at least try to open up these conversations by stating what you're seeing, and then inviting them to tell a story about about what's been going on. Was there something going on that that has been upsetting you? So something to that extent, so I think just starting with that asking. And then the next part, which is really hard, especially for veterinarians who are fixing like, our job is to fix things. So the next part of this is really hard for vets. But then you just listen, you just listen. Right? And this is really tough, right? I think I saw one study that veterinarians, when they're taking their history, on average, interrupt their clients, I think it was after about 15 seconds, right? And so we just have to sit and listen, you can do active listening, that's pretty good at this. So reflecting back what you're hearing, asking clarifying questions, asking, you know, more questions about what's going on, but really just listening, not even trying to fix anything, because if you jump into fixing mode, which vets are really good at, because our brains, when we're taking a history are already jumping into what are what are the differentials here? What are we going to be my next steps, if we can just shut that little piece of our brain off just for a minute, while we're helping other people that can be super helpful, because what someone who is struggling needs most is somebody to listen to them, somebody that can really help support them and know that that you care, and and then after the listening part, if there are resources that you can offer, then then then speak up at that point. So you know, it sounds like you're going through a really tough time, I know of a few resources, can I connect you with those resources so that we can get you the help you need? And so actually asking if it's okay, first to kind of provide resources, I think, but but not jumping into that immediately. Like, you know, they start telling you the issue, like oh, it sounds like you need therapy, right? That's going to create a lot of resistance. Yes, a lot of pushback because, really, they've probably already thought about that. And, and it's okay to at the end, provide some resources. It's our it's our imperative to write we want them to seek help, but starting first with that listening is is really important and not trying to fix initially, Gotcha. You mentioned employer/employee stuff, and I've been a solo that for a really long time, so my mentors have always been outside of work, but I now have a new associate and obviously, lots of listeners work in a group practice. So what are the differences in mentorship as an employer mentor versus mentorship you know, For someone outside of your workplace because I feel like those are, they have to be handled differently, I would imagine. I agree, I think that what we're looking at is the difference between internal support and external support. And so with a with a mentor outside the practice, you have a really awesome opportunity to like, be super open about whatever it is that you're experiencing, right. So as a mentee, you can find a mentor outside your practice that external support, and know that likely this person isn't going to go tell a co worker or it's not going to affect your job, it's not going to, you know, affect anything else. But but internally, there's this unique situation of oftentimes, your mentor is a supervisor or your boss. And so you might feel a little less comfortable coming to them with some of the things that you might be experiencing. So I think, in my mind is really important to have both, it's really important to have a mentor within your practice, who can help support you through some of those medical cases through, you know, a lot of the stuff that we've already been talking about the support, but also having somebody outside of the practice to provide that external support. So that if you are experiencing something in the practice that maybe you don't want to immediately go to your mentor your employer with, you have somebody else to kind of bounce ideas off of, and maybe after you kind of calm down, then you can bring this up to your to your mentor and practice. But But yeah, I think I think it's slightly different. I think for the mentors, it's probably not as different, but just mainly for the mentees and kind of that power dynamic and, and kind of navigating that can be a tough place to be but but I think for mentors, I don't I don't know that it changes a whole lot. I think mainly for mentors inside our practices, it's especially important to provide that good medical mentorship to and in a lot of a lot of the internal practice. mentorship is also a lot of around kind of the structural pieces of your clinic, right? How are you going to with a new new associate, especially? How are you going to make sure that they're not so stressed out in the beginning? Are you going to lengthen their appointment times? Are you gonna start them off with an hour appointment, slowly, bring it down to half hour appointments? Or what what are you going to do as the practice owner or the mentor to fully empower this associate to perform their best so that they're not stressed so so you have kind of this, I think, unique ability to do both be a good supporter, but also create an environment where they can succeed, you know, are really an environment of that trust, where we can talk about medical errors and things like this, but But yeah, really kind of creating some standards around what your mentorship program looks like within your practice, and how you're going to most empower this associate to succeed. Great, great. So speaking of external mentorship, let's talk about MentorVet, because I think that's a great resource for people. And I want to hear more about I want listeners to hear more about what you do. And, and then I know you have research based on that. So Awesome. So I could probably talk about this for hours. But we'll give you the cliff notes version. So the MentorVet program is essentially this, like you said, this external support piece. So we're an evidence based mentorship and professional development program for early career vets, we really aim to promote well being in the early career. And we want to do this by really providing a centralized location for trusted resources and support. So our program is multifaceted. We have kind of the foundation of our program is an online skills curriculum. So we cover each month, a different topic and professional skills. So this might be self care, might be leadership, conflict, ethics, how to work with clients with limited income. So we cover each of these concepts once a month with a self paced online curriculum. And that's kind of the core foundation of the mentorship program. These are things that you can learn as a as an early career vet that will make you a better veterinarian, make some of those stressors less stressful that you might be experiencing. And then at the end of each module we meet and kind of small peer groups of five to 10 veterinarians. And what that meeting does is it serves as a safe space to talk about some of the challenges that our veterinarians might be facing in this transition. And so we kind of tie the module content and how it can apply to real world veterinary practice. Right. And, and also, it serves as a very structured and safe environment to talk about some of these challenges. So so that's the base required part of mentor vet that provides the 10 ce credits throughout the five months of the program. And we also have some additional resources and support and these are optional, but I think that they're very helpful to a lot of our early career vet. So we have a private social media group where essentially you can consult and sharing resources with other early career vets. We have paired mentorship with a mentor who has been trained in a lot of these things that we've been talking about today. So suicide intervention, emotional support techniques, and things like this. And we also have financial coaching sessions. So right now Grace Kim is our financial coach. She's fantastic.

Addie Reinhard: 25:08

Oh man, love grace, she is wonderful. So anyone who goes through the mentorship program gets a free session with Grace, individual session to kind of just go through your personal finances establish a few goals. So you don't feel so overwhelmed with maybe that mountain of debt that's kind of hanging over you. We also have a mental health coaching session for free if you if you want to participate in that. And essentially, that's to connect you with any mental health resources that you might need. If you feel like you're struggling, so we have two mental health professionals who have experience working with veterinarians who can really help provide resources and support. And so yeah, it's been an amazing program. It's been just really fantastic to see it grow, because we started off last summer. So summer of 2020, with seven that's going through the program, right? So we looked at their stress and burnout, and well being levels over time, and kind of compared this to a control group of veterinarians and another group of new grads who didn't receive the program. And what we found was that the veterinarians, the new grads, who went through the mentor vet program, their exhaustion and cynicism levels, which are two measures of burnout slightly decreased over time. And the individuals who did not go through the mentorship program, so our new grads who didn't participate in the program, their exhaustion and cynicism levels significantly increased over the six months period of the study. And this is super concerning, because they were, yeah, over six months already significantly increased. And the most concerning part is that they were already starting off with burnout measures that were significantly higher than the general population, right. So they're already starting off their careers. Day one, they just graduated two weeks ago, already starting off with burnout measures that are a little too high, in my opinion. And so and then it's getting significantly worse if we do nothing. So I think that this program has the potential to prevent some of this early career burnout, because it provides you those resources and support, we saw a lot of other beneficial findings from our focus group data, as well as some of our you know, well being and stress measures as well. But the most significant findings were definitely in that burnout range, the MentorVet participants had significantly lower measures of exhaustion, which is a component of burnout compared to the control group. So I think that when I'm looking at this program as a whole, it has the potential to really make a huge impact on this profession. And so Currently, we are partnering with Merck animal health to grow and expand this program. So in the fall, we officially had 80 veterinarians sign up to be in this program. And so we started our first large cohort this fall, super, super exciting, so helping a lot of individuals. And then in the spring, we hope to have an even larger cohort of hopefully around 200 veterinarians, and we hope to just continue growing so that we can continue to provide this resources and support because we didn't have a national mentorship program yesterday or two years ago, or four years ago. So it's just a really new thing that I'm super excited to be offering to the vet community.

Stacey Cordivano: 28:18

It's amazing. I really, at some point, it's hopefully going to be required for everyone. I mean, I can't thank you enough for creating this because I mean, just what work I've done on myself and hearing you speak, I just know how helpful it will be for people. So for mentors who want to become better mentors, you guys also offer a mentor training correct?

Addie Reinhard: 28:44

Yes. So we're always looking for more mentors for the mentorship program. So as part of this mentorship program offered paired mentorship and so a piece of that is finding veterinarians who are interested in volunteering an hour of their time a month to support a new grad for five months. And so essentially what what how that works is we have a mentor training, it's a five hour mentor training, it's it's typically offered on a weekend day, so usually on a Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon, and we do QPR training, which is suicide prevention, training, emotional support techniques. So a lot of what we talked about today, and we give you an abbreviated version of the curriculum, so you kind of know what the mentees are learning so you kind of understand the lingo if they're saying that they're having moral distress, you know what the heck they're talking about right? And then we kind of finish off with mentor orientation and next steps of you know what you're supposed to do as a mentor that mentor so yes, if you're interested, please, please please don't hesitate to reach out to me because we do need good mentors and, and you don't have to be somebody who's been in practice 30 years to be a good mentor. Some of the best mentors are ones that have been out 5,10,15 years because these are people that really remember what it was like to be a new grad. They remember how hard it was, the further away we get from that transition, the easier it is to forget how tough it was. So I think that if you have any interest at all and being a mentor, please please please reach out to me because we definitely need more mentors to help support these early career vets.

Stacey Cordivano: 30:23

Awesome. Awesome. Do you have any other suggestions if someone wanted to improve their skills on supporting their associates or other people that they provide mentorship to? Do you have a resource for them? Yes, I think that if you can do one thing, as a mentor, I think it would be QPR training and so the AVMA offers free for the veterinary community free QPR training, and it takes about an hour and it helps you recognize some of these warning signs of suicide, how to persuade someone to live and how to refer them to appropriate resources, because we know veterinarians are two to three times as likely to die by suicide than the general population. And so if every single person in the veterinary profession got QPR training, understand how to look for these warning signs, I think that we could make an impact on on the suicide rate within our profession. So I think if you're out there listening, you want to be a better mentor start there. Because I think we really have a ways to go with with supporting mental health within our profession. Let's challenge everyone listening to do that. I love that. Again, I cannot thank you enough for the work that you're doing. I think this program is amazing. I can't wait to get involved with the next training and the next cohort. I asked all of my guests, what is one small thing that has brought you joy this past week? Oh, my goodness, I love this question. And I've had a lot of big joys this week. So I recently attended the veterinary Innovation Summit and had the pleasure of pitching my project on stage in front of like, 200 people in the veterinary community, which was a little bit nerve wracking, but haha, right. So as as part of this, I met so many wonderful people in this profession, it really gave me some hope that we are going to make some positive changes within the next five years. Because I think there are a lot of people out there that really care about what I'm doing and how we can better support the mental health and well being of our profession. And so yes, one small thing was just an I think it was a big thing for me, but just really connecting with the larger veterinary community and seeing how many people are excited about finding solutions, right. So now we're acting, we knew that there was a problem. We've been talking about the problem for a long time. But now we're actually starting to have some actionable changes. And that that to me, is very exciting. Awesome, super inspiring. Yeah. And I think I think I had one one small joy as well as that I found and identified at this conference, a few people who will be my mentors going forward, which is really exciting. Because it's hard, it is hard to find a mentor. So So having a few people who you can bounce ideas off of and be there as a supporter. Super, super exciting. Yeah, super exciting. And like you said before, you need different mentors for different aspects of your life and growing this business is obviously you didn't learn that in vet school. So yeah, that's great. That's a great joy. Thanks again for your time and everything you do. I really appreciate it.

Addie Reinhard: 33:43

Thank you so much for having me.

Stacey Cordivano: 33:46

Thank you, as always, for sharing some of your precious time with me. I so appreciate it. If you're enjoying this podcast, please hit follow or subscribe. If you feel so inclined. leave a review on Apple podcasts, or just send me a direct message and let me know what you think I always appreciate the feedback. I hope you have a wonderful week and I will talk to you again soon.