The formula for success in veterinary practice

At Fetch Charlotte 2025, Ernie Ward, DVM, CVFT, will share his wisdom and advice on getting ahead in vet med with the session The 5 lessons every veterinary professional needs for success. In this video preview, Ward breaks down 1 of those lessons: that consistent, long-term focus and intentional actions are key to effective leadership.

Transcript

Ernie Ward, DVM, CVFT: Yeah, I'm Dr Ernie Ward. I'm a veterinarian now, going on 33 or so years, if you're counting those kind of things, and I'm super excited to be at fetch once again, talking about management issues. And this year we've got a jam-packed sort of slate of really hot topics, including how to get your team to take ownerships. You know, some of the top lessons that I've learned over those 33 years is how to be a good, effective, caring and compassionate leader. And then we're also going to talk about some new technologies are going to help us with endocrinological testing in clinic that actually meet a lot of our clients demands, while also offering the best patient outcomes.

Yeah, I think I'm really excited about one of my talks, the 5 lessons that every veterinary professional needs for success, and these apply throughout time. But the one that I think most of us forget about is that there's a formula for success. And it really goes like this, success is equal to consistency times, duration times, focus. Now it kind of makes sense on the outset, but if we can just apply consistency in all of our actions, these are intentional things, whether it's training ourselves or how we act in the world, right? And then if we can do this over a long period of time, even though small changes begin to add up. But the secret element here, the variable too often we forget about, is the amount of focus. And that's that intentionality that's actually saying I've got a strategy, a plan, because success can be defined in many, many different ways, and for us, however we're going to apply that, we're going to do the same things, and even if it's small, over a long period of time, we're going to have a lot of focus, and then we're going to just continue to build on those skills and whatever success we have. So it's 1 of those things where there's four other lessons that we're going to talk about. But if I had to sum it up and say, gosh, you know, guys, success is consistency, times duration, times focus, rocket ship.