In this episode, Michael Shirley, Chief Empowerment Officer at Family Pet Health, and I discuss what it means to run a practice while empowering the employees. Michael highlights strategies for making a practice a place that each person is happy to work at every day.

• Michael’s journey started in the 4^th grade with 4H.

• His wife is a veterinarian and they decided to open their own practice.

• Michael was a teacher and many of those experiences transferred to managing a veterinary practice.

• Michael loves technology and trying new things to help stay relevant and competitive.

• They have created systems to manage inventory at the practice.

• Use your practice management software to help manage inventory.

• They use min/max as well as reorder tagging.

• Slack is used for internal management and there is a backorder channel on Slack.

• The practice has an inventory budget.

• It can be difficult to manage inventory when growing a practice.

• First priority as an owner or manager is the success of the team and its members as individuals.

• Setting clear expectations is critical.

• One of the goals of Family Pet Health is to be the kind of practice where people are happy to go to work each day.

• Veterinary Leadership Book Club is a group on Facebook that you can join to participate with other professionals in reading and discussing books on business, leadership, culture, etc.

Michael serves as the Chief Empowerment Officer at Family Pet Health – a Fear Free certified practice in Murfreesboro, TN. He believes that if you take care of your veterinary team, they will take care of the patients and clients. Michael works hard to hire great team members, and then he gets out of their way! His roles include everything from HR to marketing to weeding the flower beds. Michael is currently looking to hire a head of Tiktok video production, so if you are interested please give him a call!

• Veterinary Leadership Book Club Facebook group
• Family Pet Health Careers