What’s worse than training your employees and losing them?

The only thing worse than training up and pouring your heart and soul into a team member and having them leave, is not training and pouring your heart and soul into them and having them stay. At AMC, we bring in new team members through a much more rigorous hiring process than ever, and we like to go after rock stars. Over the years we have brought on over 5 young go-getter veterinarians. And each time we start the hiring process, I can my buddy Dr. Dan Thomson and tell him, we are looking, and we want to visit with your “Top 5 Best Ya Got” veterinary students. We then begin the process of working to bring who we feel is the best one to our practice.

As a young business owner, I began this strategy of going after the best, they come in, you pour everything you have into these young people, about vet medicine, bedside manner, full perspective histories, best communication methods and options both verbal and nonverbal, life lessons, and much more. And we place a high demand for excellence on them. As time goes along, though, we have them leave. So after you give them everything you have, they leave.

I have had many vets tell me, “I am sick and tired of training them up and they leave.” Or, “Why should I teach them everything I know, only to have them pick up stakes and leave.” After the first couple vets left, I began to understand that exact thought and began to think about doing the same thing. But there was my innermost soul telling me, “Nels, mediocrity will kill you!” and I made a commitment to never taking the sour stance of a negative resistance or regret to going after the best of the best for fear of losing them.

The key being, the only thing worse than training up and pouring your heart and soul into a team member and having them leave, is not training them up and pouring your heart and soul into them and having them stay. And at AMC, it is an awesome week this week as we celebrate several things. We celebrate Katelyn Thomson, Dr. Dan’s daughter coming to spend the summer with us for an internship. We continue to celebrate the arrival of Dr. Austin. We also celebrate the arrival of another Rockstar Dr. Ashley. And last but not least, we celebrate Dr. Nick leaving his first veterinary job, his great growth and accomplishments, and the dream of heading home and owning his own veterinary practice. We celebrate his departure knowing we gave him all we could give him for a world-class veterinary practice experience so that he may go to another town in Kansas and provide world-class veterinary care for so many lucky people.

We are very thankful for our time Dr. Nick gave us and know that he will be wildly successful in his new venture. And at AMC, we move forward with another round of vets to pour our heart and souls into so that they may reach their full potential of excellence. At AMC, we are very purposeful and intentional in our training methods. What happens at AMC is by no accident. We aim high, and we fail, we aim high again and go higher. And we then hit repeat! It is intentional and a grind, and we won’t stop! Our challenge to each of you this week is who are you pouring your heart and soul into to help grow, shape, and mold, and add another person to that list!