Breaking the mould: part 3 – independent woman case study

 

I read with interest “Breaking the mould: part two – can women vets really have it all?” (VBJ157).

I’m not a strident feminist, but it made me realise I am one of those women trying to “have it all” and, by and large, I think I manage to achieve that. Here’s how it happened.

Two years or so ago, four days after the birth of my youngest, I was distraught – not just because of hormones and lack of sleep, but I had just been informed I had been unsuccessful in a job interview.

I was devastated to have missed out on a job I really wanted. Having worked hard in the same organisation for a number of years, following a management restructure, the opportunity I had been waiting for arose and, ambitious as ever, I had gone for it, despite being heavily pregnant, but didn’t get it.

“It’s probably for the best”, people said, and followed that with: “Did you really want it that much?” I ummed and ahhed a bit and said the right things, but, deep down, I knew the answers were “it’s not” and “yes”.

Management opportunities are fewer and farther between than you think in the veterinary profession, especially when you’re geographically tethered to a certain spot. Once you’ve graduated and become a vet, and then found out you have some leadership skills to boot, your career can progress quite nicely, initially, as you work your way up the hierarchy of the clinical team. But once you want to go above that and move into the upper echelons of senior management, the much-coveted positions are a lesser-known species and sporadic in their availability.

I had missed out this time, despite my best efforts. My pride severely dented, there was no way I was going back. So, the big question was what do I do now?

I toyed with not working, part-time working as a vet, part-time working as a vet and a bit more working as something else (maybe indulging my creative side), even voluntary working, but knowing myself, I knew whatever I chose probably wouldn’t give me the job satisfaction I craved if I wasn’t somehow running the show.

Striking out on my own

Then someone said: “Set up your own practice.” So I thought about it, and I did. I found somewhere very local to me, found someone to set up a practice with and spent the rest of my maternity leave carting an infant (and sometimes a three-year-old) around commercial properties, writing a business plan, obtaining planning permission, instructing builders and scouting around for equipment, among many other things.

And 12 months later (when the youngest was 13 months old), Pinfold Vets opened for its first day of trading.

The whole point of writing this article is to encourage other like-minded women to do the same. I know we are striving for gender equality, that leadership and management discussions should be gender neutral and all that jazz, but I’m sorry, despite shared parental leave and other opportunities for men in relation to family and childcare, they can’t breast-feed and aren’t a human incubator for nine months, so ultimately, the majority of the time, the buck stops with mum. And this gets in the way of work and can get in the way of your career. It’s not easy to believe you can do both, but there are ways you can and we need to tell the women of our profession that.

Strengths and opportunities

Leadership and management skills are great assets to possess, whatever your gender. If you’ve got it, flaunt it and seize every opportunity to make it work for you. Setting up and running your own business – especially a veterinary practice – isn’t easy, but working for yourself has many advantages: you are in charge of your own destiny, you call the shots and you can be as flexible as you like. You can fit it (kind of) around your family.

As the corporate groups seek to dominate, there lies a great opportunity for setting up of small, independent practices.

Ask most folk and they say they’d rather go to a good independent practice rather than a corporate any day. Provide a great service, continuity of care, look after your patients and their owners well, and you’ll be popular, and people will come back. Women are good at that, and much needed to do it, too – we were born to nurture, and let’s face it, in this day and age, it’s probably only us who can hug a grieving client and not risk being accused of harassment.

Sharing the load

I admit I’ve been lucky. I found someone to work with who I trust; who understands family life and the things that go along with it. We each do our fair share of late finishes and weekends so, with the work load divided by two – and with a half day off a week thrown in – my working week is actually quite manageable. I work locally (all part of the master plan), which makes my commute almost non-existent and gives me a great sense of belonging in my community. It also means I can do a decent share of the school runs (even if they are sometimes slightly hurried). I have a supportive husband who runs his own veterinary business and understands the pressures, and I’ve found a good support network – for childcare, housework and even dog walking if needed.

With a fair amount of organisation, most of the time it all works fine. Yes, it means I do do some strange things – I have been known to cook a roast chicken or make profiteroles at 7am, prove a loaf of bread in the airing cupboard at work, and sit in the office making a papier mâché model of a giant egg (actually I delegated that task to my business partner), but hey, that’s motherhood for you.

Juggling act

My life is a continual juggling act (and sometimes I do drop all the balls), but, from what I’ve gathered, whether full-time, part-time or stay-at-home mum, parenting combined with anything else generally is.

The hard bits are the unforeseen bits – the husband away, inset days, someone’s ill (at home or at work), or one or either of us ends up working later than planned. But working for myself, I’m better equipped than most to be flexible and deal with these bits. My children like Pinfold Vets, their school and playgroup have been to visit (as have most of the other schools and playgroups in the area) and there’s the odd day, after school, that the eldest comes to work until I’m finished. That’s the beauty of it – it’s my practice and I can do that. And yes, planning for school holidays is bit of a nightmare but, as directors, we’ve given ourselves six weeks’ holiday a year and, by having a business partner, it means, so far, we’ve both managed to take them.

Payoff

So, for all the organising, juggling and general busyness (now I know where the word “business”  is derived from), what do I get in return? Simply, to be able to do the job I love, in the way I want to do it. The sense of achievement has been huge and I glow with pride when I hear good things about the business.

Even better, all the hard work I put in will be worth something later in life when I choose to get out. I also get what I think is a decent work/life balance most of the time.

I earn a decent crust and the boys seem happy. I think having working parents has made them confident and sociable – and joy of joys, they don’t mind the occasions they’re left with a babysitter. Of course, I sometimes feel guilty for wanting to work, especially when one of them asked the greengrocer “will you be looking after us today?”, but I feel guilty about loads of other stuff to do with the children too – feeding them sausages, for example.

So, as the profession becomes even more female-dominated, as the corporate sector continues to grow and so (as recently reported) does job dissatisfaction, it’s especially important you don’t discount becoming an independent woman. Embrace your inner-ambition if that’s what makes you tick and don’t shy away from what certainly seemed, to me anyway, an absolutely mammoth task. There’s plenty of support out there – you can even ask the “old boys”, they’ll love telling you how it’s done.

It’s early days in our practice and much will change. I know as we grow there will be points when the workload seems slightly overwhelming, the youngest will start school at some point, there may even be branch surgeries… who knows? But, having managed this far, I know it’s all doable.

When I look back over the past two years, to be honest, I’m not quite sure how I did it. But I did and I’m still standing and, most of the time, I’m even smiling.

• Breaking the mould: part one – can women vets really have it all?

• Breaking the mould: part two – can women vets really have it all?