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A fortuitous opportunity recently came my way.
A friend approached me to ask if I could help with the design of a new vet hospital. The architectural firm had a first draft, but none of them had ever worked in a vet hospital, so they needed somebody with insights into workflows and how spaces in a vet hospital are actually used to review the plans. My friend, also a vet who consults for this firm, thought that I had the right experience to be this person.
My knee-jerk reaction: “I’d love to, but I’m no architect, and I’ve never actually designed a practice, so I don’t know whether I could add any real value.”
“That’s classic imposter talk. Trust me – you don’t even know what you know. You’ll be just fine,” he reassured me.
“Well, it sounds like fun, but I’m really short on spare time.”
“Oh, I’m not asking as a favour, by the way. This would be a paid gig.” He told me the hourly rate that they were willing to pay for my insights – close to three times what I currently earn as a clinical vet!
Unfortunately this was a short-term gig, so I’m not laying down my stethoscope and buying a fancy new house near the beach just yet, but it did give me a few major perspective shifts that I think are worth sharing.
These shifts were brought into focus by a conversation I had shortly after my little stint as a practice designer. I was catching up with one of the people I’d met in the co-working space where I do a lot of my Vet Vault work. Chad has a background working for big tech companies, including stints as a workflow and productivity consultant for some major players in that space.
“How has your week been?”
“Really interesting!” I gave him a rundown of what I’d been doing. “And the best bit is that I was earning almost three times as much as I do as a clinical vet!” I bragged.
The conversation strayed into actual dollar numbers. Chad seemed slightly unimpressed and more than a little bit confused when I told him what the design job was paying. To give him some more perspective I told him what the average veterinary salary is. His confusion turned into surprised shock.
Once he regained his composure he said: “I’m happy for you, mate, but let me tell you that what they paid you is absolutely fuck all for a consultant in Australia. For a big company like that, it’s like loose change falling out of their pockets.”
“Well, I’m not really a consultant, am I?”
“It’s exactly what you were doing – you have unique expertise and experience across multiple domains, and it’s expertise that they need and are more than happy to pay for.”
Here’s the thing: I would have considered doing that work for free. It was interesting and fun, and I completely underestimated my own worth. Actually, not underestimated – I was completely blind to it.
Sound familiar? “Oh, it’s just a…” “It only took a minute.” “Let me just quickly…” “Maybe I won’t bill for that…”
Our ‘value blindness’ starts in our clinical work. Like Chad said: you have unique expertise and experience. I think we KNOW this at a cognitive level, but we don’t truly SEE it – don’t FEEL it.
By the time you leave vet school you’ve already forgotten what you didn’t know on the day you walked into that lecture hall on day one. Layer a decade of experience (and hopefully a bit of CPD) on top of that, and your expertise is a reflex – kicking into action when called upon without you having to think about it. (Trust me – you don’t even know what you know.) Which is exactly why we’re so bad at recognising it.
I thought I was going to write about money today – about our dollar value in the vet profession and the factors that limit that. But in writing this it dawned on me that before we get to any conversation about pay, pricing, or what your boss should be doing differently, there’s an uncomfortable bit of internal work to do: we need to actually see what we do. Not in the vague “vets are amazing” platitudes that we love to share on social media. I mean REALLY see it.
Here’s your one thing to think about this week: pick one moment from your clinical day where you did something that felt routine. (Maybe it’s so routine that you felt awkward billing for it?) Ask yourself – what it would have looked like to that day-one-of-vet-school version of you? Or better: what would it look like to Chad?
Because until we can see our own expertise clearly, we’ve got no hope of having a sensible conversation about what it’s worth.
P.S. I still want to unpack why I can get paid 3x my vet wage to give opinions on a building I’ve never designed, versus the work I’ve spent twenty-plus years getting good at. We’ll leave that for next time. (I can feel another multi-parter coming on.)
Read: One (Veterinary) Thing to Think About…How Do You Recognise Your Own Value? Part 2 HERE
Hubert Hiemstra is the friendly voice behind The Vet Vault and Vet Vault Clinical Podcasts. With over two decades of veterinary experience across three continents, he's on a mission to help fellow vets fall back in love with veterinary science. When he's not in the clinic or podcasting, he loves hanging out with his wife and energetic boys, catching some waves, going for a run, or just soaking up nature. Stay current with the Vet Vault’s practical, on-the-go clinical CPD episodes that are anything but boring. Explore the library here https://www.thevetvault.com/p/clinical-content/
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The challenge of capturing the value veterinarians create In the previous post I told you about my recent experience of being better paid than I've ever been as a vet to do non-clinical work. Work that relied on, as my friend Chad said, my ' ‘…unique expertise and...
