425 - What CE Should I Attend Next?

0:00Maria Pirita: Ten years ago, I thought people came to conferences for information. I was wrong. You can Google almost any answer in 30 seconds while hiding in a supply closet. What you can't Google is skill. Skill is having hard conversation when you're exhausted, short-staffed, and the person across from you is upset. And that only comes from practicing with people who will tell you the truth when you miss. That's what Uncharted is. On Friday, January 15th in Orlando, the day before VMX opens, we're celebrating 10 years with a one-day conference built around leaders practicing hard things together. You'll get Dr.

0:37Maria Pirita: Peter Weinstein, the Uncharted team, and about a dozen mic drop talks from people in the community, people you know like Dr. Phil Richmond and Dr. Caitlin DeWild. I'm not going to tell you it'll be easy because it won't. But if you want to do the work alongside people who get it, come and join us. details are at unchartedvet.com. Register today. Don't miss your chance.

1:01Ron Sosa: Welcome back to another episode of the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Maria Parita, and I'm sitting down with the Ron Sosa to talk about something that affects everybody in veterinary medicine, and that is continued education. That's right. We have gotten a few different questions, both in the community, in emails, and I've seen it all over my management groups as far as like, what CE should I be taking as a manager or as a leader in veterinary medicine? And right now, I feel like we have an influx of veterinary conferences, of online CE, of whether it's webinars, whether it's all day virtual events, whether it's in person or virtual, there's coaching and there's CE and there's certifications and there's letters you can add to your name.

1:42Ron Sosa: And between all of it, how do you decide which one is right for you? And that is exactly why I brought Ron Sosa because Ron Sosa has been such a wonderful guiding light in my life as far as which CE I actually want to do because I want to do it, not necessarily because I feel like I have to do it. And I think a lot of this conversation kind of deals with that. And so Ron and I talk a lot about how do we decide which CE to take? How do we look through all of the CE that's even available? How do we discover the ones that we don't know about, you know, whether we stay in industry or whether we go outside of that med?

2:13Ron Sosa: And in general, what that looks like as far as application, like really putting it into practice. And so I loved this conversation. I love learning. I love coaching. I love the fact that there are professionals out there that actually help you do this. And so we talk a little bit about that as well. If you have also been stuck in this paradox of what CE do I actually attend and go to, you're going to want to listen to this episode. So let's get into it. And now the Uncharted podcast.

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3:44Ron Sosa: about you. I know that's one of the things that community members love about you. They constantly are talking about that when it comes to like leadership lab or your coaching calls in general, like you are so good at, you know, pushing people to, to try the hard thing. And so I just, I love talking to you for that reason. And one of the, one of the reasons I wanted to have you today is because we have an excellent question that did not necessarily come from a mailbag. It came from comments and emails, but overall it was actually a few times we got asked this question. And obviously at Uncharted, we have the Uncharted Veterinary Conference, which the next one is actually happening in January, January 15.

4:16Ron Sosa: Uncharted is turning 10. I'm so excited. And they're like, they said, I have never been to an Uncharted conference. I have been to a couple of local conferences, but overall, I just don't know where the next conference that I go should be. And I understand that you guys are going to say Uncharted because you're Uncharted, but realistically, I've never been there. I don't know what to expect at that conference. And also having been to some of the other conferences locally, I understand that there's VMX. I understand that there's Fetch. I understand there's VHMA. And there's all of these different options now that it's starting to feel a little overwhelming.

4:48Ron Sosa: And I just don't know what kind of CE to take. And I thought that that was such a good question simply because, well, first of all, I've heard it from multiple different areas, right? Like one of the most common threads in my management groups is what conference you're all going to. And I feel like sometimes we pick conferences simply because our friends are going to be there. Other times it's based on the content that's also going to be there. And other times it's just because it's what we know or what we can afford, right? Like that's also true. So there's a lot of different ways that we kind of pick where our continued education comes from.

5:19Ron Sosa: But I thought for a leader in veterinary medicine, this was such a good question because I think as always, the answer is probably it depends. But just off the bat, how do you decide, I guess, Ron Sosa, what CE to take?

5:33Maria Pirita: It's such a good and hard question all at the same time, right? Because we have continuing education in lots of different ways. And I don't think we understand or fully look at it that way. We think about continuing education as here's conferences or what's the next online CE or whatnot. We also have some of us who are credential junkies and go for what's the next credential am I going to get? So you've got people with way too many letters after their name. I don't know who that could be. But, you know, so then it's like, do I get my MBA? Do I get my CBPM? Do I do, you know, the certified veterinary business leader?

6:11Maria Pirita: Do I get a SHRM? Do I get a PHR? Like there's so many ways to expand the horizon of CE. And I always go back into, and I think I've said this to you before on this podcast, Maria, is what are we trying to achieve? What's the legacy we want to leave behind, right? So we can start with who we are today, where we're trying to go by the time we retire. Maybe it's just the age that I'm in, but I'm constantly thinking about my retirement and the impact that I want to leave back on Vet Med when I do retire. What is that impact and how can I get to the path of continuing education that allows me to have the impact that I want to have when I look backwards?

6:52Maria Pirita: So it's kind of like starting with the end in mind.

6:55Ron Sosa: Well, I think that's a beautiful place to start because I will tell you when I decided to get my CVPM, it's not like I immediately jumped to CVPM. You can't, honestly. You have to be a practice manager for like three years and then you have to have, you know, co-education. You have to have your CE and you have to have your recommendation letter. So you can't even just jump into it. But I did, when I started looking at it and being like, I think this is something that I want to do, it still was a good four-year plan, right? Like I was finishing up my degree already. I knew that I was going to have to have these tasks in.

7:25Ron Sosa: I knew I was going to have. So I think starting with the end of mind is a really good place to think about your future. And even if you don't think about retirement, I think thinking about your career as a whole. Because for me, CVPM was an obvious choice because I knew that I wanted to go into speaking. Like I had already delivered a couple of like non-paid workshops. I was like, I know that I want that. And I knew that when it came to management and leadership, that's what I was good at. It's what I love to do. It's what I love talking about. And this kind of covered so much of that to give me some of that credibility behind my name.

7:59Ron Sosa: I was very much motivated by the letters after my name. I'm not going to lie. I was like, that would be really cool. So I see where that does come from. You know, the people that have an alphabet soup after their name, like it, it upon seeing your name, it gives you a credibility that I think will really, really enjoy. And so I think that that would be where I start. Oftentimes people, I think, look at the longevity of how long something like that takes. And that's why they don't think of it that way. And so what would you say to the individual that's maybe like, okay, now that you mentioned it, I have been wanting to maybe get my CVPM or maybe get my CVT or my RBT, but it seems like it's so, so far away.

8:39Ron Sosa: That's why I look at the immediate relief of conferences or the immediate relief of online education, because it's something that I can learn from and grow from right now. What would you say to that individual?

8:50Maria Pirita: Yeah, it's just like most of the things in our lives, the stuff that gives you immediate satisfaction and gratification is probably not the stuff that lasts and creates the impact that you want to create, right? So what is, I go back to what is the impact that we want to create and then how do I get there, right? And so if that is getting your CDPM, yes, it's going to take a while. No, it's not going to be overnight. You're going to, you might have to go back to college. You might have to get more CE, might have to go to more conferences, but at the end of that, then you can start to create the impact that you want to create, right?

9:24Maria Pirita: And I always think about that. There was a leader that I talked to years ago and one of his talks, he said, imagine your funeral, right? What do you want the people around you, the people who love to adore you or the people in your life, what do you want them to say about you? And it's always been like that has resonated with me because I have been very strong that I've wanted to leave Vet Med better off than the way I came into it. And I didn't exactly know the path that would get me there, but I knew I had that in mind that I wanted to create an impact that would survive me, right? and so it's always in the back of my head is like okay if I were to pass away and have my funeral tomorrow what would the people in vet med say that I contribute to vet med that is what drives me for my CE so when I started doing and I you know me I love I'm a conflict junkie so I love to learn about different communication styles and how we can use I say vocabulary gymnastics in order to you know, like ebb and flow through the conversation and not have it be deconstructive conflict.

10:31Maria Pirita: It was one of the reasons I was drawn to a coaching certification is what I thought it was, which turned out not to be at all what it was. What I thought it was is going to help me with how to communicate and coach or what I thought was coaching in my team and turned out to be something completely different. And so sometimes just do CE that is interesting, or maybe it's not in veterinary medicine. Like I took my coaching certification outside of veterinary medicine. I was awestruck in what I learned in that process and that journey of learning because you could go and all the conferences are wonderful.

11:07Maria Pirita: Like the Uncharted Conference, VET, Fetch, VHMA, all of them are wonderful and they all deliver in different ways. But at the end of the day, what you get out of it, you're getting sort of the same framework. Some are going to help you work through the skill of doing it. Some are going to just teach you the knowledge and and present it to you. But at the end of the day, you're getting similar information disseminated just in different vehicles, right? And so find out, I would say, what it is that drives you. What's that passion? What's that one little thing? If you could niche down and do that in your practice, in your veterinary community, what would that be?

11:43Maria Pirita: And then target and learn more deeper, right? The conferences are wonderful, but you can only learn so much in a one-hour presentation or a two hour presentation. It's very, it tends to stay on the superficial level. So how do we get deeper into get our hands dirty in the information? That's the stuff I want to learn.

12:01Ron Sosa: Yeah, it's so true, because I think you're spot on there. I feel like conferences are a really great area to get that immediate learning on that one topic. But typically, when, when it is like that, the topic, let's, well, let's say it like accounting or something or finance, right? You go and you go and lecture on how to balance your chart of accounts, right? And that's the lecture. Usually that leads me to more learning somewhere else because that ends up, they end up covering this one piece that I didn't really understand. And then I have to go through and I have to research that. So I do think the learning doesn't really stop at the conference.

12:36Ron Sosa: I think the conference is a great way to spark and get your ideas and figure out where to navigate the rest of your continued education. But I do think we do a better service to ourselves if we go into a deep dive on a topic or in an area. I think that one way to definitely define that is like, where do I want to leave my legacy? Where do I want to grow? And all of those add up, right? So like, if I do want to get my CVPM, then likely I might prioritize conferences like Uncharted or that have that VHMA credit or like the VHMA conference that has those credits. If I'm like, I know I need help coaching and developing, then a coaching certificate makes a lot more sense, right?

13:12Ron Sosa: Because now I can coach people. And I think another area to really look at for your practice is figuring out not only where do I want to grow my career, what do I need, but also what does my team need, right? I think some of that too, a lot of times looking at them and being like, okay, well, I know that maybe I'm a little behind on my dentistry, right? And maybe if I can get myself a little bit harder on that, I can bring that back to my team. I love where that framework goes. And I think it's really important for those kinds of things. I love for the team to go to CE together and learn it together because then they get excited together.

13:47Ron Sosa: So really thinking about like, okay, well, is this coming from something that like you want to do for yourself? Is this something because you're hoping to help the team, in which case we need to get the team more involved? Or is this more just like, I am trying to grow in this area and in which case making the right decision from there? How do you, when you, I love that you took the coaching certificate. And you said something that I think was really, really interesting. You said, it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. So what did you think it was going to be? And what did it turn out to be?

14:16Ron Sosa: Because I think that that's super interesting.

14:18Maria Pirita: Yeah, I totally thought it was going to be a like communication, how to, you know, talk with each other, how to get maybe get a little bit of buy in how to do performance reviews, how to like, I really thought it was going more prescriptive in the frameworks of these are how you communicate with people. And what a true coaching certification turns out to be is how do you ask powerful questions to get out of the person in front of you everything that they're not seeing that is already down there right in coaching the person that you are talking to has all of the information in themselves already and so you get to see that person is whole and complete you are not there to give advice or counsel or mentor, you're there to pull out the answers that are already there within, and so that they can make their own choices.

15:08Maria Pirita: And what I love about it is there's natural buy-in, right? So you can say, I can say, Maria, I see that you're really good at dentistry, and I want to help you grow that skill, right? But if you have no buy-in to want to learn more about dentistry, right, you have to find that motivation, or I have to like really push the rock up the hill to motivate you to do more. Right. And that's where I see leaders get really, really frustrated. And it's like, this person's so good at this. And yet, like, I'm giving them everything. I'm giving them more CE. I'm giving them like all these opportunities and they're just kind of not doing the work.

15:44Maria Pirita: And I think if we can sometimes use the coaching tool, right, and find the internal motivation of their own learning and development, then we often see the progression of the careers of our team that we are trying to push for anyway.

15:59Ron Sosa: And I love so much of that. And did you, do you feel like when you're having these coaching conversations with individuals, are you directly pulling out some of those tools from those certificate? Like how, or how did that work out from a, like, cause obviously in my brain, there's a lot of people who are going to look towards, I want to get this CE, I want to get that CE, but how do they actually make it a regular thing in their practice? Cause I think that's more of the battle that we face sometimes in veterinary medicine.

16:26Maria Pirita: Yeah. Oh, that's a good question, right? So if I put my coaching hat on for a moment, right? It's I want to pull out and ask my team, like, where do you see yourself in five years? Right? Like, I always want to project off into the future. And then if you never accomplished that continuing education, what would that be like? And where would it be otherwise, right? So you were widening this gap between where they are today. And if they just stay stagnant in five years from now, versus if they did a couple of things with CE they wanted to do where they could be in five years. Now we've created this gap that drives their internal motivation to want to do the thing that they want to do.

17:07Ron Sosa: Yeah. It's almost like a future seeing, right? Like I love that at this one Uncharted conference that we had, we looked at crystal balls and we were like, we were closing off, but just being like, all right, imagine that you implemented one of these changes in your practice. What would clients be thanking your team for? And they were like all looking into the future ball And like, but a lot of that it's an actual, people don't realize like it seems like a silly exercise, but it actually does something to motivate your brain because you're now seeing the success. It's kind of like visualizing making the basketball, right?

17:38Ron Sosa: Like Michael Jordan obviously talked about that a lot. Like I just visualize the ball going in. It's the same thing with our own goals and our own, you know, CE and our own learning is really just like making sure we're visualizing ourself doing the thing, you know, learning and putting it into practice. And I think that that goes a long way in holding ourselves accountable. So for some of these programs, they can, I know that we talked a little bit how some of them can take like four years and that kind of takes a toll on the learning and things like that. And then we've also got conferences that have more, you know, the information right there for you in one hour.

18:14Ron Sosa: And so when somebody is trying to decide between what they should accept as their next CE, beyond the average, the obvious things that we've called out, what other things should they take into consideration as they're making these decisions?

18:28Maria Pirita: Yeah, I see so many leaders or even just veterinary individuals as a whole. We have this expectation that we are just going to be, you know, sit on the Zoom call or sit in this conference lecture hall and we're just going to watch and we're going to absorb all this information and somehow we're going to go back to the conference or to our practices and bam, I'm going to be proficient in the thing that I'm doing, right? Is you need to understand that, you know, what is it we need to hear things like three times for us to remember the name, we need to hear it six times in order to actually repeat it back, we need to hear it nine times in order to actually remember all of the pieces to it.

19:09Maria Pirita: So it was interesting neuroscience to how many times you even need to hear it. And you've now gone to a conference one time and think you can take it back to your practice and do the thing. And let's face you've now been to a conference and it's, let's say it's three days times eight hours all day long as 24 hours of stuff that just filled your head, right? You're going to remember all the ins and outs and nuances of implementation on 24 different things. You're mistaken. So we've got to look at it as, are we dating? This is an interesting way of looking at it. I think of going to a conference is dating, right?

19:44Maria Pirita: I'm going to go a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, And I want to figure out who I'm going to date, meaning am I going to have a longer term relationship with conflict or am I going to have a longer term relationship with financials? And once I figure the thing that internally motivates me at a conference, then I'm going to dig deeper in that coming out of the conference. And so then I want to dig into are there master classes in financials that I need to take? Because that was the date that I really enjoyed at the conference. Right. Are there other courses I can take?

20:13Maria Pirita: Are there practice skill shops that we can go to? Are there things or classes or certifications in that specific area to dive deeper into HR, for instance? Like if HR drives your internal engine, then yes, you might want to look at SHRM. You might want to look at something like the PHR. You might want to look at other programs that deepen that scope and really gets into the nitty gritty and details to further that, not just the knowledge, but the skill of performing the thing that you want to do.

20:47Ron Sosa: Yeah, I love, I love that. And correct me if I'm wrong, but your certification in coaching, it was outside of veterinary medicine, wasn't it?

20:54Maria Pirita: Completely outside of veterinary medicine. It was a year and a half program. I had supervised hours, unsupervised hours. I had 98 hours of continuing education that was on demand, plus the program cohort itself, plus the practice, plus the unsupervised and then the supervised. So it was very much, I had no idea what I was getting into from the beginning, but it was, it was very involved. And had I not loved the communication and trying to be inclusive and understanding more about conflict, I probably would have hated it, right? If I was, if that was not my strong suit, I would have not have ever done it.

21:33Ron Sosa: you believe that uncharted is turning 10 that's right uncharted veterinary conference is celebrating 10 years and you're gonna want to be there it is happening on january 15th 2027 and registration is open right now unchartedvet.com hope to see you there do you think that there is a benefit in attending some of the ce or getting some certifications or ce that's not in in vet med because i think oh yeah a lot of professionals will immediately like veterinary is part of the search, right? Like veterinary coaching, veterinary practice management, veterinary leadership. What would you say is sometimes the benefits of attending the CE or the conferences that are maybe not geared towards veterinary medicine?

22:14Maria Pirita: Yeah. I mean, there's definitely pros and cons. I think going outside of vet med, I absolutely love it now is where I'm at because I, you know, you and I go to tons of veterinary conferences, right? And so at some point you get to see the same speakers, you get to hear the same framework, and maybe it's delivered in a different way. But when you go outside of veterinary medicine, you realize there's this whole scope of communication and leadership philosophies, and we have not been presented in veterinary medicine. And so I really do love that. The downside of going outside of vet med is now you have to explain how that works in your particular job, in your particular role, with people who have no clue what that looks like.

22:55Maria Pirita: Right. And so when you go to a veterinary CE, you're surrounded by hopefully people who are also in vet med plus or minus somebody who's in your same role, or at least has an understanding of what your role. So when you say, I am a practice manager, they understand sort of the gist of what you do. But if you go and you're sitting next to a plumber who is an entrepreneur and you're like going to the same leadership class, they're like, what is a practice manager, like veterinary, is that like for veterans? Or it's like, oh, animals. Yeah. So you don't quite have that same kind of shared understanding and shared language, but you still can get a lot out of it.

23:32Ron Sosa: Yeah, I will say, I feel like some of the, I feel like some of the lessons that I learned as in leadership came a lot from outside of vet med. So I often speak about the fact that before I started in veterinary medicine, I had leadership and management training from like the corporate side in the service industry. And I think that that gave me a huge benefit by the time I got to vet med, I did have to mold it and switch things to fit into the veterinary medicine model of things. Like obviously we at the time didn't have the same exact, you know, scheduled breaks or the same things that we had in the corporate side.

24:04Ron Sosa: But I think that bringing that concept allowed us to understand why we do the things that we do and then still be able to mold them to veterinary medicine. So I think, I think you're right. There's benefits to both and there's definitely downsides to both. And one of the things that I love the most when it comes to going to conferences outside of veterinary medicine is the fact that I do feel like I get to learn so much. And then it's kind of fun to apply it to vet men. Like it's kind of a unique puzzle and a unique challenge. The downside to me to not going to those or the reason why I don't often go is my friends aren't there.

24:37Ron Sosa: Like you're right. You and I go to plenty of conferences that to this day, one of my favorite parts is just like getting to hang out with my friends and getting to see them all. And I don't get to see them at those conferences. So I guess what I wanted to ask you and kind of bring to the forefront is like, how important do you think those relationships are or the networking at these conferences? And does that ever play a role in what you decide to learn or in your scene, be it virtual or in person?

25:03Maria Pirita: I think it keeps me sometimes in my comfort zone of going back to veterinary conferences. I know. I think it does. I will say I go to at least one non-veterinary conference per year right now. And I don't know a single soul and the networking has been extraordinary that I did not expect. Right. I got to, I get to meet people who are outside of vet med, who are in leadership roles or in executive roles, who are in, you know, entrepreneurial roles. And I like, I now I have this base group of people that I can ask questions with about life. Right. And then I can say, Hey, this is what I'm going through in vet med.

25:48Maria Pirita: Have you ever seen anything like that in your industry? And then like, now you have a creative solution that you may not have ever thought of. So I do think widening that scope really helps. And if you can get outside your bubble and your comfort zone to talk to people outside of Vet Med and realize there's an extraordinary amount of your phrase. There's also a lot of overlap. I've gone to conferences where they talk about Eisenhower Matrix, where they talk about some of the things that we talk about in Uncharted. And I was like, oh, okay, great. I understand that concept. But then you will hear something and it's like, oh, I didn't know that piece.

26:26Maria Pirita: I just found another little piece of a puzzle that I'm assembling together in my whole career. It's just been fascinating. But yeah, I have this wonderful couple that I talk to and they own Airbnbs out in Montana. I've got another one who's a fractional COO in the tech world out in California, another who owns his own coaching, ADHD coaching business out in Ohio. And I get to talk to these people about their businesses and leadership in ways that I don't talk to other veterinary professionals about.

26:58Ron Sosa: Yeah, I think there's great value in a lot of that. I could definitely see it. Do you ever, is there anything that you wish you could change about the certification process or the CE in general in veterinary medicine? Like if we could do things differently as a whole, what do you think? Where do you think we should go?

27:16Maria Pirita: Yeah, I, oh, that's a great question. I think I'm a person who likes to dive deep right into one type of topic the problem is did I know that early in my leadership career or in earlier in my vet med career probably not I think from a medical standpoint it makes sense to go to all of these different like let me go to derm let me go to ortho let me go to oncology like all all the things and piecemeal what you need for your practice. When we get into leadership, I think that what I don't see enough of, and maybe I'm blind a little bit, so please tell me, correct me if I'm wrong, audience, correct me.

27:56Maria Pirita: But what I don't see out there is where we go in deep on a topic, right? Like let's say conflict and like let's role play that conflict and let's like go into the nuances of that conflict for several hours or several days. Like that's what I would absolutely love and enjoy. And time where I can bust out the laptop and go, here's what I'm working on in my business. And here's the, like, here's the exact conversation I had with someone, you know, obviously anonymize it. And this is what I'm struggling with in my business or in my workplace and work on that particular thing. I think that's a really hard place to be in from a conference company, from somebody who actually helps Uncharted design their events.

28:44Maria Pirita: And it's very hard to put on. But as an attendee, I want to dive deep into a topic. But maybe that's like my neurodiversity. I like to dive deep into topics anyway and rather just, you know, stay superficial.

28:58Ron Sosa: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so funny that you mentioned that because the only conference that comes to mind besides our own at Uncharted, because I do think that we do a lot of role-playing and practicing at Uncharted, is the one specifically called Skill Shop. And ABC Skill Shop does a little bit of that where you go in and you deep dive on a skill. I would love to see more of that as well, just because what we know around the adult learning in general is obviously not the same as when we're in school, but that's how conferences are kind of designed, where you go in and you do, you sit down for a one hour lecture.

29:30Ron Sosa: And some of the most dynamic speakers will really get the audience like involved and they'll get them participating in things. And I know that we try to do that. I know I try to do that at least as a speaker, but I do, I do wish that I could do more of that, like more putting them through practice, you know, that, that regular thing that you could do. And I think it becomes difficult when you only have the one hour. And so we kind of are battling that, but I think that as this

29:55Maria Pirita: And now we're battling like, hey, let's do a 20 minute to give you these, you know, three key lessons that you need to learn about. And it was like, that's great because we're like helping people not have an attention span. It's like, I don't know how this 20 minute little like, here's three key lessons you need to learn about conflict management. And I know I'm saying conflict management a lot, but that's just an example. It's like, here's the three key things like, yes, but there's no way I'm going to be able to implement, right? Like implementation is hard when I get back into practice and the anxiety hits and I'm red in the face or I feel bad because I'm a people pleaser.

30:31Maria Pirita: All of those skills are going to go away. Right. Like we need to build the same kind of anxiety in people and practicing the thing that makes it hard to implement when you go back into practice. Sorry.

30:44Ron Sosa: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, that's kind of what we that's what we battle in general with conferences. isn't it? Like how many of us come home with a binder full of notes that just gets put back into the shelf. And then maybe we're lucky if we implement one thing that we learned at conference. And I think that that's one of the reasons why I loved, I have loved the uncharted community so much. We go back and we try to hold people accountable to the change that they wanted to see in their practice. And so that's something that I think too, when it comes to the people that you meet at conference, they also tend to hold you accountable to some of those things.

31:14Ron Sosa: So I do kind of like that, that part also, depending on the network that you have, you know, and the people you hang out with for sure. What else, what do you think as far as like final notes for this individual as they're thinking about, okay, this is like, where do I go to my CE? Where do I figure out where to find, where to even find where some of this stuff is? How do people make this decision?

31:35Maria Pirita: Yeah, so there's something you said earlier was like, do I go to CE to do the thing I like to do? Or do I go to CE that's better for the team? This is what I love about having a coach. And I have now have a business coach for myself because sometimes I need to look inward and I don't actually know what questions, the right question to ask myself. I love having a coach now where I can go to someone and say, I'm really stuck and I don't know what to do next and have somebody challenge me and pull and ask me powerful questions to get what I already have out. So if you're in a place where you're stuck, having a coach for yourself is so valuable because it really will help you see, bring to light some of your limiting beliefs that you don't even know that you have because you've been operating on them for so long.

32:24Maria Pirita: Are you going to all of your CE because you're just trying to do things better for the team and you have no clue what your actual strengths are? I'd love to have a coach to help you through your career. Honestly, if it was up to me, everyone in the world would have a coach to help them in their career because I think that's how much I believe in what you can get out of it.

32:46Ron Sosa: Wow. So do you think like a life coach or like a career coach? Because you said you had a business coach. Where does somebody even go to find a coach in the first place? Like if I was like, oh, you know what? I really want to take Ron Sosa's idea. I want to put it into practice. Yeah. Where do I even start?

33:02Maria Pirita: I do know, and I am a member now, there is the Veterinary Coaching Coalition coming out And they're trying to gain a presence with the AVMA and the CBMA Canada to show that there are coaches in the veterinary industry who the coaching industry in general, it has been exploding the last several years. It's been that it's growing vastly, the number of coaches coming out of programs now. And we're having that same mini explosion in veterinary medicine. And there's things where like burnout coaches, like I do help with neurodivergent coaching. There are people that do addiction. There are people that do leadership.

33:38Maria Pirita: There are people that do all sorts of mindset, authenticity. Like it all depends on what it is you're trying to achieve. And so knowing thyself a little bit, right? Who do I want to be when I grow up? That's what I ask myself all the time. At least having a semi idea of what that looks like helps you aim the pointer in. Let me find myself a leadership coach because I'm in a practice manager role or an entrepreneurial role. I'm a practice owner. practice manager and I want to further my skills doesn't mean your coach is going to further your skills but the coach is going to help pull it out of you help practice have you actually practice the work and then help you find what the next thing is that you want to take or the the gaps

34:24Ron Sosa: that you're trying to fill for yourself I'd love that because I think I honestly have the opposite problem where I want to do too many things you know what I mean like that's still an area being

34:35Maria Pirita: stuck, right? Because you end up with indecision because you have too many things. You have like indecision paralysis. And so now we can go and it's like, okay, Maria, in five years from now, and you saw the most wonderful idyllic version of yourself, which one of those five skills is she possessing more of? Right? That's what I love about coaching and having somebody say that to you, because you can say that to yourself and still feel that paralysis of, I don't know, I could see all five worlds. And if you have somebody on the other side of the table that you feel like obligated to have an answer to a degree and you have to pull that out and like really be challenged with it.

35:14Maria Pirita: I don't think there's anything else like it.

35:16Ron Sosa: No, I totally agree. I wish somebody did that for me in college. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been so undecided for so many years, right? Like it was just, I wanted to do it all. And it's like, sometimes you just do need that other person to ask you the right questions to kind of pull it out, to draw out what really is most important. because the truth is that that's exactly what happens. We get into this. And it sounds like this is where the mailbag kind of is in this area as well, right? Like this person's just like, well, there's so many, there's so much CE out there. I just don't know which one to go to.

35:46Ron Sosa: Where would you say people can go to find even the conferences that maybe are not, like we all know about Fetch. We all know about BMX. We all know about WVC. How do we find those other conferences or even like the retreats? Because I've seen a lot with retreats nowadays. You know, I know I'm seeing that. And that sounds, that sounds pretty interesting too. If anybody is hiring speakers for retreats, particularly in Europe or Latin America, please reach out to me, mariaparita.com. I don't have a website. I'll write the website. It's fine. Just invite me to your retreats. Cause I would like to do that.

36:21Ron Sosa: But like in general, seriously speaking, like I wish there was one database where we could just all go and be like, this is the skill I want to learn. And this is the conferences that'll help you.

36:31Maria Pirita: I was just having this conversation a couple months ago with a good friend of mine. And I was like, I just wish there was a place where I could see all the conferences all one and one, like the vet cove of conferences. Yes. So that I could know where to spend my money, right? Because let's face it, we have budgets, right? We either have a CE budget or we're pulling it from our own pockets, which again, is a different budget. And sometimes it's hard to know. It's like, I wish I had known about the VHMA when I was earlier in my leadership career. I was more of an aha person. Like I didn't even know the VHMA existed until I had a practice manager who was a CVPM because the first couple practices when I was newbie in vet med, they didn't have CVPMs.

37:13Maria Pirita: And so I didn't even know to look for it. Right. So I was an aha person, which I love the aha conference, but I would have loved to have like had the option like, oh, do I want to check out the VHMA or do I want to check out aha? I think with information being disseminated the way it is now in the 2020s, as opposed to the early 2000s, I think that information is more easily accessible. But you got to go around and sort for it and Google search and figure out what's out there. But yeah, I would absolutely love a place where I could be like, OK, here's this, this and this. Here's the cities are all in.

37:45Maria Pirita: Here's the ones that are closest to you and you can filter. I have this whole dream world in my head about filtering conferences. So, I mean, you're going to get me off on a soapbox about it.

37:54Ron Sosa: Thanks for being on, Ron's Dex Adventure is creating this thing that we all want. No, I think you're spot on.

38:00Maria Pirita: By telling up people, somebody will make it.

38:02Ron Sosa: Yeah, somebody. Somebody's going to listen to this podcast and you're going to be like, I have the next billion dollar idea. That's super smart. Definitely takes some research. That definitely takes, you know, asking around. I think people that are in management groups tend to have the right idea of like, hey, what conferences are y 'all going to in this area? I think LinkedIn is an underutilized tool for a lot of people. You know what I mean? I think that a lot of people that have small businesses or that are coaches or that work a lot of business to business tend to go to their LinkedIn. But I don't think the average veterinary professional is on LinkedIn.

38:33Ron Sosa: And you will be surprised how many conferences and speaking things I find from LinkedIn and free stuff like free webinars, free this. And sure, anytime that there's free, like anytime that there's free, there's usually something that they're trying to sell you on, but the information is still there, right? Like you still have somebody sharing good information. I know that you've done some webinars online too.

38:56Maria Pirita: I put on a monthly webinar right now. Yeah.

38:58Ron Sosa: Yeah. So like even that Ron Sosa, you can have access to him monthly on LinkedIn. We would not know that if you weren't on LinkedIn. And so do you think that that's, that's a tool that people can use on top of being a part of the management groups? And then there's a couple of really great websites that will do like the best conferences of veterinary medicine and you can kind of see like the top five. But I think that those name the biggest ones, to be honest, like the ones that have a lot of online presence. Like for example, my state local conferences did not have a huge online presence, but I did get the most out of those.

39:30Ron Sosa: Like I, I think that you should reach out to colleges, to specialty centers. So the specialty center in my area used to put on together a big business symposium is actually where I met a lot of my vet med friends in the first place, but it was local. So I could go to it and it was free. So it was like, you didn't have to pay a whole lot. And all of those things do, it takes some research, but don't forget that you can, you can call up those CEs a lot of times. I'm sorry. You can call up those veterinary specialty centers. A lot of times too, they have training that where they'll send out to your practice, right?

40:02Ron Sosa: Like they'll want somebody, like they have somebody that you can hire for like CPR training or something, or for technician training that they can send to practices. So don't forget that those options also do exist. But beyond that, any other final words, Ron?

40:16Maria Pirita: Yeah. And some of the specialists will come out to your hospital. Like we had the anesthesiologist local in Arizona to our practice who would come out and do CE to our teams. We had a local dental technician come out and do how you take x-rays, right? And level our team up. So I didn't have to be the one teaching it or my lead tech wasn't the one teaching it. We had somebody who'd come out and just teach us how to sharpen dental instruments. Like there are lots of things outside of the box, so to speak, or then conferences. So there's tons of things out there. And yeah, the question is, are you dating and figuring out which kind of subject you want to dive deeper in?

40:55Maria Pirita: Are you trying to feel more like, okay, I got this in confirmatory of the information you already have? Or are you trying to deep dive into something that you truly want to learn?

41:05Ron Sosa: Yeah, I love it. I love all of that. Well, thank you so much, Ron. Thank you for joining me for this one. This was really fun. I love talking about expanding our education. You know me. Me too. I thought I could be a student forever. I'm like, what's next for me? I know. I've been thinking about that for a while already. It's hard once you start getting, I think, to your point, you've got so many letters after your name that you're just like, okay, what's next? You know?

41:26Maria Pirita: I think I'm going to go into NLP training, which is neuro-linguistic programming. And it's all about parts work in the coaching world. And so I think that's my next venture.

41:36Ron Sosa: Well, very cool. You'll have to let us know how that goes for sure. I will. Cool. Well, thank you, everybody. We'll catch you next time. And that's it. That's what we got. I hope you all enjoyed this episode. I know I certainly did. I always love talking to Ron so sad about these things. And in general, I think continued education is what helps us get better at what we do. I think it's so valuable from a development perspective, from a growth perspective, in order to lead by example and show the rest of the team that education and learning is important. and so I just love all of it. I love that people are looking for more options.

42:09Ron Sosa: I love that more options are starting to come out. I love that we are learning how the adult brain likes to learn and we're starting to see kind of these changes in the continued education that we already have and so I think it's a very exciting time. Maybe I'm just a forever optimist but I do think that there's a lot of goodness in the way that we learn in veterinary medicine and we're starting to get even better at it. So whether you go to Uncharted Veterinary Conference 2027 or whether you decide to join us virtually somewhere else, I do hope I get to see you somewhere. So don't forget that registration is open for Uncharted Veterinary Conference.

42:44Ron Sosa: It's happening January 15th at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando the day before VMX. So we're gonna have a bunch of meetups throughout the conference, even after. So you're not gonna wanna miss it. Registration is open and I hope to see you there. Thanks everybody. As always, feel free to leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast or send us a sweet message on social media, on our LinkedIn, our Facebook, our Instagram, or even through our email at podcast at unchartedvet.com. Thanks everybody. And we'll catch you next time.

43:17Ron Sosa: A brand new course is now available from the Uncharted Veterinary Conference team. Don't Get Sued is an on-demand eight module course that we've created in partnership with HR expert Debbie Hill to help you answer the question, why do veterinary practices get sued in the first place and what can I do to protect my team. This course is available now for$2.99 and is free for Uncharted members. You can find out more now at unchartedvet.com.