By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. I will never forget my first staff meeting as the new owner of a rural mixed-animal, one-doctor practice. To this day, I can still feel my nervousness and excitement. I vividly recall walking into the hospital’s small [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. I’ve been fortunate to wear various hats in my career — hospital manager, veterinary association business manager, adjunct faculty member, consultant and small animal practice owner. The first one, which I’ve never removed, is the now-weathered, dusty, [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. It’s 3 in the morning, cold, dark and rainy. I’m 3 or 4 years old and sitting in the backseat of my dad’s truck as he heads out to deliver another calf or fix another prolapsed uterus. [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting The waves lapped at a pink hued sand beach in the Bahamas while two actors, presumably grandparents, frolicked with their grandkids. The next scene focused on a similarly aged couple leaning over the balcony of a glistening river cruise ship with the Rhine, adorned with European architecture, drifting [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. I sat next to a registered veterinary technician at a recent continuing education meeting. As we chatted, she explained that she was no longer in practice. Her employer informed her that after over a decade of service, [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. If I could assign one word to the feeling around change in this hospital, it was “fear.” Not the kind of fear like that feeling of excitement or pre-game jitters, but the primordial, fight-or-flight type of fear. [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. I was speaking at a veterinary conference when an attendee, a midcareer owner of a multidoctor hospital, asked, “If you could identify one factor that separates average or even good hospitals from the great ones, what would [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. In case you missed my previous article, “Uneasy Street,” I examined the difference between flying by the seat of our pants as practice owners versus leveraging financial statements and key performance indicators (KPIs) to make educated, intentional [...]
By Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Today's Veterinary Business. Daggers were shooting out of the eyes of the four veterinary hospital partners. You could have cut the tension with a butter knife. I was there as an impartial facilitator after the partners discovered through a professional [...]
by Stith Keiser | Blue Heron Consulting This article was written for and featured in Clinician's Brief. On the first day of fall football camp, athletes ranging from seasoned upperclassmen to wide-eyed freshmen were silent as they pondered the coach’s question: How do you want to be remembered? Our answer was important, the coach said, because [...]
Design by
