Have you ever had a client tell you, “You’re only in it for the money”? If so, you’re not alone. This common statement can feel frustrating, unfair, and even personal. But why does it trigger such a strong reaction?
In this episode of The Joyful DVM Podcast, Dr. Cari Wise breaks down the real reason behind this emotional response. She explores the money stories we carry, how they impact our views on pricing and client decisions, and why we must shift our mindset to find peace in veterinary medicine.
If money conversations in vet med leave you feeling uncomfortable, guilty, or even resentful, this episode is for you!
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ Why the phrase “You’re only in it for the money” feels so personal
✅ How our money stories (often shaped by family and past generations) influence the way we approach pricing in vet med
✅ The two major links people have with money: safety & self-worth—and why they matter
✅ Why client decisions are not a reflection of your value or success
✅ How to stop tying pricing to guilt, resentment, or failure
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ Money is neutral. The emotions we attach to it come from our beliefs, not the numbers themselves.
2️⃣ Veterinary pricing is neutral. Clients’ reactions to cost come from their own money stories, not because prices are “right” or “wrong.”
3️⃣ Your job is to recommend, not convince. Clients get to make the decision—it’s not a reflection of your skills or success.
4️⃣ Resentment builds when we believe money is the barrier to good veterinary care. But in reality, our role remains the same no matter what clients choose.
5️⃣ Shifting your mindset leads to more joy and peace in practice. Let go of what you can’t control and focus on what you can—providing quality veterinary care.
Resources & Links:CONNECT WITH ME
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✨ If this episode resonated with you, share it with a fellow veterinary professional who might need to hear it!
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos.
Hi there. I’m Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach, and certified quantum human design specialist. If you’re a veterinary professional looking to up level your life and your career, or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let’s get started. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Joyful DVM podcast. This week at the clinic, I heard those dreaded words that so many of us hear on a regular basis.
You know, the ones that veterinarians are only in it for the money. When I heard those words, I noticed that I automatically felt a little defensive. And I know that you feel the same way when you hear people say that, but I also then became really curious because here in front of me was a client that was carrying around this belief that we’re only in it for the money.
And so I started to consider, why is it that we care so much about those words? So I thought today would be a great opportunity for me to help us understand why it is that we get so triggered by those words and what it is that we can do to help really diffuse our reaction to that kind of opinion from a client. If we don’t understand where all of this is coming from, then the only solution that we have is for the clients to stop saying that.
And we’re never going to control anybody’s behavior. So if we can’t figure out how to reconcile the reality that clients will sometimes say that we’re only in it for the money, then we will continue to have this point of frustration and resentment and bitterness built into our veterinary careers, and we just don’t need more to be stressed out about. So when it comes down to this idea of you’re only in it for the money, the reason that we get so offended is because it’s just not true.
Right? Our motives are being misunderstood. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about money or we’re talking about any other aspect of our lives. When the person we’re interacting with has a false assumption about us, it can be very triggering. We don’t want people to think bad things about us. That is just part of our human nature. But the truth is we won’t ever control what anybody ever believes when it comes to money.
It just makes it so much worse when people have the wrong perspective. And so I wanted to give you some context as to why it is that the money part of veterinary medicine can, can be so uncomfortable for us, whether it is Talking to clients about money, or hearing what clients have to say about our prices, or even the prices themselves, without the context of why this is such a potentially triggering concept or topic, then we will just keep trying to control everybody’s reactions around money conversations, and our efforts are going to be wasted because we will never be able to control what another person says and does.
We have to consider as part of this that we all have a money story. So we carry around our own beliefs about money and what it means to make money, what it means to accumulate wealth, or even just maybe wouldn’t, you wouldn’t even define as wealth, but to accumulate financial resources, to build savings, to pay bills, to have debt. We all have a money story, and our money stories are generational.
So what we believe about money is likely influenced greatly by what our families and the people who raised us and who we spent the most time with, what they believe about money. And because of this generational money story that we tend to have, there’s also a degree of generational trauma that comes with this. Because if we think back generations in the past, the financial resources were not as readily abundant as they are today.
It wasn’t as easy to make money. There weren’t as many different ways to make money as what we have here in the modern world. And our ancestors, you know, our great grandparents, our great great grandparents, they went through some periods in history where money was very scarce, where there just wasn’t a lot of it. And they had real struggles with abilities to be housed, to eat, to have clothing.
It was just even more prominent than it is today. Now, I’m not saying that there are not people who struggle with those things today in this world, because there absolutely are. But the vast majority of people do not struggle to the extent that the vast majority of people did struggle decades ago. The trauma associated with that lack of financial resources and what then resulted in truly lack of safety because financial resources weren’t available.
The trauma of that gets passed down generationally. So even if we aren’t experiencing those exact things today, we still carry with us the trauma of those things through our lineage. We just want to be aware of that. Because if we wonder why we are always so freaked out about money, a lot of it is because of money stories and beliefs about money that have been passed down to us.
Those money stories, they feel very true. So, for example, it’s bad to have debt. That may feel like a very true and factual statement because you’ve been taught that it was. It may also seem true that people who have More money are safer. People who have more money have life easier. Those would also be examples of just little pieces of money stories. So, so we do have these links within our own belief systems that we don’t necessarily have awareness of, but it’s important for us to start to look for those because they’re influencing everything that we do.
The two most common links when it comes to money and the way that we interact with money are the link between money and safety and the link between money and our own sense of self value or success. So we don’t necessarily even realize that we are operating through these links, but most of us are. So just to be very clear on what I’m talking about here, money and safety, the link between those, we tend to feel safer when we have more money.
So when we have more savings, when we have more regular revenue or income, we feel safer overall. And so we naturally conclude that having money makes things, things easier or safer for us. That isn’t necessary necessarily true, but we function as if it is a fact. And so as soon as our money is in any way compromised or threatened, then we automatically feel unsafe. When it comes to the link between money and self value or success, what we are doing is we are using the external circumstance of money.
So how much money we are making, how much money we we are saving, and we are linking that then to our own sense of self value and success. So the more money we make, the more successful we are. The more money somebody else makes, the more successful they are. The more money you make, the more valuable you are. So the more maybe more responsible you are, the better person you are.
Now when I say that out loud, I’m sure that some of you are kind of shuddering and being like, no, money is not a reflection of somebody’s value at all. And I completely agree with you on that and can also recognize that there are patterns in my own life where I do use money as an external validator. So it’s completely fine for us to know that it shouldn’t be that way, that we should not feel that way.
When I say should not, like I don’t mean that with any kind of shame, but that it’s not. Our value is infinitely valuable. We are all infinitely valuable and worthy simply because we exist. Like that is the reality and that is the truth. But because we live in a world where we depend so much on external validators, we have kind of almost by accident tied the money thing, the money aspect of our lives, to our own self value and to our height of success.
Our Level of success, if you will. This is important to know because again, if our money is in any way threatened and our potential to make money is in any way threatened, then we feel less successful, we feel less valuable. So we can start to feel like failures. And this comes into play in veterinary medicine when clients decline our services. So if we haven’t considered our own money story, and we’re just diving into veterinary medicine, talking to people about veterinary services, offering them things, having them decline, that can all feel very, very uncomfortable.
And we can all start to say things like, I can’t talk about the money. I don’t want to talk about the money. It’s uncomfortable to talk about the money. I’m bad at talking about the money. Like, of course, we’ve all said all of these things, and I’m not even going to say that some of it’s not true. It’s totally fine to feel uncomfortable when we’re talking about prices, but that doesn’t mean that we need to try to adjust prices so that we only feel comfortable talking about them, because it doesn’t matter what the price is.
If we haven’t reconciled our own money story, and we haven’t reconciled our own beliefs about what we charge for veterinary services, then talking about money is always going to be really, really uncomfortable. So one of the very first things that we need to consider as we go through this, like I said, is our own personal money story. And I’m going to give you some tips about that here in just a little bit.
The other thing that we need to consider is what do we believe about what we charge for veterinary services? So what do we individually believe about the prices at the place that we work? And also what do we believe about the cost of veterinary services in general? If we are carrying around a belief that it is too expensive, then we are going to have a very difficult time recommending veterinary services to our clients.
That is just fact. Because if we are uncomfortable, if we don’t believe it’s worth it, then we are going to have a very difficult time conveying value. And we are not here to be salesmen. So I want to be very clear about that. We are not here to be salesmen, but the reality is that we provide a service for a fee. And it’s not really different in that regard to going to a hairdresser or going to get your nails done or going to get your oil changed in your car.
Those are all services, and they all come with a price. And we get to decide whether or not we pay for Them. Veterinary medicine is no different. We provide services for a price, and clients get to decide whether or not they pay for them. Unfortunately, we’ve turned it into something way bigger than that. And so when clients decline services, we are tying that back to our own sense of value and success, and we’re making that mean that we failed in some way.
So we make a recommendation for our client’s pet, they decline our services, and then we start to believe we failed. We then, because we don’t like the way failure feels, we try to justify that failure. And we use our very logical left brain to justify the failure through the reasoning that if it was cheaper, the client would have said yes. So it’s not our fault that they said no, it’s the fault of the price.
And if the price was lower, then the client would have said yes, and then I wouldn’t have failed. So it seems very reasonable, especially if the client declines and cites the cost as the reason for their declining, it seems very reasonable and very logical to say, okay, a client said no because it was too expensive. If it had been cheaper, they would have said yes. That seems like a very factual, like, cause and effect relationship.
But it’s never that simple. Because one thing we want to remember, my friends, is that saying no and using money as the reason for saying no is the easiest way to say no to anything. It doesn’t mean it’s even true. It’s just the human nature. It’s too expensive is the easiest way to say no because it doesn’t require any additional conversation. Most people will drop the topic if somebody says it’s too expensive.
The truth is that when people say no to something, they say no just because they don’t want to do it. And that’s okay. And I’m not saying that they have the money for some of these advanced services, like right here in this moment. But people who really want to pursue a specific type of treatment plan for their pet will figure out how to do that. Whether that is tapping into savings, cashing in some retirement plans, whether that is asking friends and family doing a GoFundMe searching around to find someplace that has a lower price.
And I’m not saying that it is our responsibility to help them to do any of those things. That’s not the scope of what this podcast episode is about. But what I’m trying to illustrate here is that when people really want to do something, whether it’s veterinary medicine or anything else in their life, then they figure out how to find the money to do it. So Even though our brain is like, they said no because it was too expensive.
If it wasn’t that expensive, they would have said yes. We don’t actually have any ability to know whether or not that is a true conclusion. But the longer we hang on to that as a factual conclusion, then we will start to build more resentment about the price of veterinary medicine in general. So somebody declines a services, a service. We have related that to believe that we failed in some way.
So we failed the client, we failed the patient. We justify that failure because of the price. We believe then we wouldn’t have failed if it had been cheaper. And if we’re an associate, what that tends to do is build a lot of resentment because we keep concluding that it’s not cheaper because the business is only in it for the money. So do you see how this starts to become a whole cycle?
So clients say, you’re only in it for the money. We get all offended. We know that’s not true, right? We get defensive. We start to then sometimes modify our treatment plans because of that. So a client declines a service, we then justify that failure, right? So they decline. We feel like a failure. We justify that failure by saying if it was cheaper, they would have said yes. Then we feel resentful because the reason it’s not cheaper is because the business charges a higher rate than they should for the services, and it’s because they’re only in it for the money.
Now, I. We say this in all levels of veterinary medicine. So whether we’re an associate in a private practice or a corporate practice, many of us are concluding that the reason that the prices are so high is because the owners of the business are greedy, because they’re only in it for the money. Which is kind of funny in a way, because the vast majority of us are not in veterinary medicine for the money at all, right?
But this is just a natural way that your brain wants to link all these things together. And because of this, and because veterinary services are not free, and there’s always going to be a price associated with the sale of veterinary services. That also means there will always be clients who say no, which means there will always be an opportunity for you to view that as a failure and then to try to justify your failure as not your fault, because if it was cheaper, you wouldn’t have failed.
And so whose fault is it? It is the fault of the business who charges so much. If you believed in what your practice was charging, you would not then feel the need to blame somebody for the prices. So reconciling the prices of where you work is very, very important. Now, how does this work if you’re an owner? Well, again, you’re still human. So unless you’ve reconciled all of your money story and you’ve really learned how to let this whole thing be ne, then a declined service to you also means that you failed.
And again, you’re going to justify that by thinking if it was cheaper than they would have said. Yes. But then from the owner perspective, you’re going to feel a lot of guilt because you recognize that you cannot lower your prices and still pay your bills and pay your employees and pay their benefits and all kinds of things like that. And you certainly can’t lower your prices if you want to be able to expand what you pay your employees and the benefits that you’re able to provide.
Provide. So there’s some guilt that you carry around. Guilt because you’re believing that you’re making it unaffordable for the pet owners, but also guilt because if you did change it, then it would impact your ability to actually run the business. There’s also fear. So a fear of raising prices. So this fear of raising prices comes from this belief that if I raise my prices, the clients will leave.
So even when the margins of profit for veterinary medicine are shrinking, which they definitely have over the last year, as the cost, the goods that we utilize, so the things that we need to provide services and the medications, as all that has gone up, if we haven’t raised our prices, then we’re starting to feel even more difficulty in being able to meet our bills, meet our payroll, and any ability to expand what we offer to the people who work for us.
But if we’re not raising prices, it’s because we’re afraid. So that we have a fear that clients will leave if. And then we won’t make any money at all if we raise the prices. So this is just another reflection then of this money and fear, I’m sorry, money and safety link that many, many of us carry. You see how this gets complicated really quickly. So this whole thing, like where we start and when we’re usually kind of the extent of the conversation around money and clients and veterinary medicine usually goes something like this.
Oh, my gosh. Mrs. Smith was in today and she said, you’re only in it for the money. And then I just. That wasn’t true. And I tried to explain it to her. I tried to explain how much veterinary medicine cost, but she just didn’t listen to me. And she was just mad and she’s declined Everything and she’s left. And why can’t people just understand, you know, why is it that they just don’t see that like this costs us money and we don’t have the luxury of insurance in the way that human healthcare does and that we have our own hospitals and we have to pay for the inventory and we have to pay, pay for the diagnostic services and all of those things that other doctors and other medical professionals don’t.
Why don’t they just understand that? If they just understood it then they wouldn’t say those things. But that’s just not true. Like I didn’t go into Vet Med to make a million dollars. Like that was not my goal. I wanted to do this because I wanted to help patient people. I wanted to help animals. I loved animals, I cared about their well being. But it’s not all about the money.
Why can’t people just see that? It’s not all about the money, but we do have to make a living. We do have to eat. So how many times have you had that kind of conversation? We will keep having that kind of conversation as long as we have not individually reconciled our own beliefs around money in general and also money when it comes to veterinary medicine. So let me share with you some truths.
Truth number one. Money is neutral. Money is a man made concept. It has never been a reflection of your motives. It’s. It’s never been a reflection of your efforts or your self value or self worth or success. It’s neutral. Money doesn’t hold any emotion. It’s the same kind of emotion that is available to you by picking up a water bottle or looking at your cell phone. It’s just a tangible item.
Tangible items do not create emotion. Emotion is created by what we believe. And so if we keep holding, holding onto these stories about money and safety and money and self value or success, then we will feel very emotionally triggered by money itself. It’s not the money that’s creating the emotion, it’s the stories that we’re holding that we don’t even realize we’re carrying that create the emotion around money.
And as we try to avoid emotion around money, we do that by trying to control the conversations and reactions to money. And so this brings us to truth number two, which is the price of veterinary services is also neutral. So money itself is neutral. No emotion, the price of anything is neutral. Which means the price of veterinary services is neutral. It cannot create emotion on its own. How any person responds to the price of veterinary services is always going to be dependent only on their Own money story, which you will never control.
Somebody’s going to call up and they’re going to ask how much is it for rabies vaccination? And they’re going to be like, oh my gosh, that’s so expensive. But somebody else may be like, that is so much cheaper than what I got before. They have a story about the money, the price of what you offer. You’re not going to control that because you can’t control anything about what people believe already about money and pricing in veterinary medicine.
That’s why we have to remember that the price of it is actually neutral. It’s just a circumstance, whatever the price of any service is just circumstance. Your job is to provide the veterinary care options for your clients. So we are veterinary hospitals, we provide veterinary services, we give recommendations for veterinary care. Like if we look at what is our job actually, our job is to evaluate a patient, give options and then implement client decisions.
Nowhere in there is our job description to convince anybody to do anything. That’s not your job. Your job is to provide options and to implement whatever they decide. What they decide is not your responsibility. Their decisions come with a price tag. That’s because we are in a service based business. But their decisions are not your responsibility. We provide the options, they make a choice, we implement their choice.
That’s it. The choice to spend money or not to spend money is always the responsibility of the client. So the sooner that you disentangle their choices from your sense of self value and success, then the sooner that you are going to start enjoying your job in the veterinary field much more quickly. It’s going to get much easier when you stop using the money aspect as an indicator of how well you’ve done and whether or not you’ve had a good or bad day, them saying yes doesn’t make your day better.
It only has an influence on your emotional state. If you’re using client decisions and money as external validators and most of us are without even realizing realizing it. Which is why it’s so important to look at your money story. Which brings us to truth number three. Your money story is impacting the way you do your job. So whether or not you realize that your personal money story is absolutely impacting the way you do your job today.
So if you believe your prices are too expensive, then you are going to be hesitant to recommend the best diagnostic and treatment plans for your clients. It’s just that simple. If you don’t believe in the value of what you’re selling, basically in the value of what you’re offering, you will be very hesitant to offer it. You will make assumptions about what people can spend and tailor the treatment plans to your assumptions, not to the patient’s best interest.
So if you haven’t reconciled the prices of veterinary medicine for yourself, if you have not allowed the price of any service that you offer at your hospital to simply be neutral, if you haven’t learned how to stay in your lane, which is to make a recommendation, ignore what the price tag is because it’s not relevant. You’re making a recommendation based on the examination and the history of the patient in front of you.
That’s what you base your recommendations on. Forget the dollar signs, they are not relevant. You make medical recommendations based on your professional evaluation. Then you let the clients decide what they want to do. Then you implement those wishes. But if you go into all of this believing something about the client’s ability to pay, or if you believe it when they say, I don’t have the money, I don’t have a lot of money to spend today, like a lot of people, just throw this general, you know, statement, I don’t have a lot of money to spend today.
You know, my dog’s got an ear infection, but I have a lot of money to spend today, we that may be all that has been said in advance before you’ve even made your treatment plan. And many of us will then take that and start to basically cut things off of a treatment plan based on our assumption about what they can pay. So we aren’t offering the best treatment and diagnostics for the patient because we’re already believing that the client will say no.
And let’s get really clear here, we’re trying to avoid the client saying no. That’s why we’re putting less on the treatment plan. The client can spend whatever they want to spend, and so we don’t even know what a lot is for that person. Right? I can’t spend a lot today. Maybe a lot for them is I can’t spend over a hundred bucks. Maybe a lot for them is I can’t spend over a thousand dollars.
We don’t know, and it’s not relevant. What we need to do is to go in and make a diagnostic plan for that pet based on what we believe that pet needs after we’ve done that exam. So if we’re looking at know an ear infection, then maybe we’re looking at an ear cytology a mite check, an ear cleaning, and we’ve got some medications we think we might use based on what the other diagnostics showed.
Maybe we are going to recommend a culture and sensitivity, you know, based on what you see and for you, when you examine that pet, you will have the path that you want to take. Put all of it on the treatment plan. Let the client say, no, that is fine. So maybe they do only leave with the medication, maybe they decline even the medication. That’s okay. Because what they decide to do and not decide to do and decide not to do isn’t a reflection of how hard you tried or how well you, you did your part of the veterinary care cycle.
Not at all. Your job is to do an exam, make a medical recommendation and implement wishes. As soon as we can really embody that as our role, we can start to put everything on the treatment plan and start getting used to hearing people say no. It’s when the no, we’re using the no as a reflection of our value and our success rate that we really tailor down the treatment plans in advance to avoid the no in the first place, which we can’t do that either.
Like you cannot guarantee any time that a client won’t decline a service. So like tailor, like cutting off stuff from your treatment plan out of fear isn’t helping anybody. And it, we’re gonna justify it, we’re gonna be like, they said they can’t afford it. So I didn’t want to give them, you know, a huge estimate that was gonna make them feel bad. Friends, you can’t make people feel bad, right?
If they feel bad about prices, that’s because of whatever story they’re telling themselves about the prices. If they come back with, you’re only in it for the money. That isn’t about you, right? That’s about them. That’s about their beliefs about the cost of veterinary care, their conclusions about the cost of care and the level of the cost of care and then the level of like true concern about their pets.
Assumptions, not facts, right? And more often than not, it’s actually a behavior. Saying that you’re only in it for the money is actually a behavior that comes from self judgment because they want to help their pet and they may not have the financial means to do that. And they feel bad and they feel guilty about that, that they, they aren’t financially able to care for their pet. And so they are now wanting to blame.
And so of course they’re going to blame the cost. But it’s not a cost issue, it’s a resource issue. The resources for anybody are for the individual person to sort out. So take a breath and remember that you’re here to make a recommendation and to implement whatever a client decides. You can’t tailor things enough to guarantee that people always say yes. And the only reason you try is because you don’t want to hear them say no.
Because you’re making that no mean something about your own motives, your own success. That no is also neutral. The prices are neutral. The treatment plan itself is neutral. The client is neutral. Nothing outside of you can create emotion for you until you tell yourself a story about it. And many of those stories are so deeply embedded that you don’t even recognize they’re there. So you have started to try to control your environment to avoid situations where you feel uncomfortable.
So if you can control a treatment plan and make it really inexpensive, then you feel more certain that people will always say yes to it. And then therefore, you will not have to feel bad if they say no. What I want you to see here is that you don’t need to feel bad when they say no. It’s okay for them to say no. Your job isn’t to make them say yes.
Your job is to give them the options that are in the best interest of their pet and then to implement whatever they decide. Your money story is also impacting the way you do your job because you will foster resentment toward your organization and toward vet med in general as you continue to build a belief that money is the barrier that keeps you from being able to do your job.
So after we’ve experienced this no to things many times, we start to build this conclusion that we can’t do our job because it’s too expensive. And that is absolutely false 100% of the time. Your job, just to remind us again, your job is to make a medical recommendation and to implement a wish. No price in the world will stop you from doing a physical exam, getting a history, and making a recommendation.
You can do that no matter what the price of anything is. And you can also then implement whatever the client decides they want to do. No matter what the price is. The price is not relevant when it comes to you being able to do your job. You only believe it’s a barrier. If you’re believing part of your job is to convince people to pay for your services. That is not your job.
My friends, as we educate clients on the recommendations that we meet, we make. That is our only role. I recommend an ear cytology because we need to determine what’s going on inside that earth. Is it yeast? Is it bacteria? And if it looks really nasty like we are going to recommend that we do a culture so if it is bacteria, we can figure out exactly what kind of bacteria is in there so that we can tailor the medication to that bacteria to have a greater chance of resolving this ear infection once and for all.
That’s client education. That’s all you’ve got to say when it comes to the price of it, that doesn’t matter in your recommendation process. So this resentment that we start to foster against organizations and Vet Med in general, when it comes to this belief that money keeps us from being able to do our job, you’ve got to start to disconnect those two things because you always have the ability to do your job no matter what the price is.
If we’re still hanging on to that belief, then that’s just our evidence that we still haven’t let money be neutral. And we certainly have not yet reconciled our beliefs about the price of veterinary services. So with all this said, what is it that you can do? Well, number one, you can get curious. So you want to start out by getting curious about your own beliefs in regard to the cost of veterinary services.
Your personal beliefs about money and safety and your personal beliefs about money and self value. I recommend just journaling out those three things to see what all comes up. Because whatever you come up with, whatever comes to mind as you consider the cost of veterinary services, money and safety, money and personal value or success, whatever comes up for you is under the surface influencing you all of the time.
So we have to start out by getting curious. Number two, you intentionally rewrite what you believe about the cost of veterinary services and its impact on your ability to do your job. So again, curiosity is great. Let’s figure out how we’re believing this is limiting us and now let’s intentionally rewrite what we believe about that. Take some of the things that I’ve shared today, put that into your intentional belief.
Simply just unlinking those things is super helpful. Number three, identify your true motives for pursuing a Vet Med career and remind yourself of that reason frequently. The vast, vast majority of us did not say, I’m going to go into Vet Med to become a millionaire, right? That is not why we got into this job. So there was a reason back then that you did. It could be something as simple as I really like working with animals and I care about their well being.
That does not mean that you do not enjoy receiving a paycheck for doing this job and that you don’t deserve to be paid because you absolutely do. But remind yourself of the reason that you started on this journey in the first place. Because with so much being focused on money in our world, if you don’t remind yourself of your why, then it will start to feel like it’s all about the money.
And that definitely is not true. Number four, remember that money is neutral and it does not evoke emotion outside of your beliefs about it. Along that same line, remind yourself that clients are also neutral, that their behaviors and their words and their actions and their decisions cannot create emotion for you. It is what you believe about all of it that does so. As you allow these things just to be neutral and to control your stories about all of it, then you actually will find so much more joy and peace.
And number five, remember your job is to provide options and to implement client decisions. Their choices are never a reflection of your efforts or your success. The more that you can keep reminding yourself that that is true, the easier it becomes to let them say no. And that no doesn’t have to mean that you did something wrong or that you hurt a patient along the way. All right, my friends, lots to consider today.
So I hope the next time you hear you’re only in it for the money, you’ll be more curious and less offended and realize that what other people believe about the price of veterinary services was never yours to control in the first place. I hope you have a beautiful week and I’ll see you soon. Bye for now.