Work + Life Reimagined Interview Series Feat. Dr. Ashley Bourgeois - The Derm Vet
Welcome to the Work + Life Reimagined interview series!
In this series, I feature successful accomplished women, working mamas, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and various professionals who dared to dream big and challenge the status quo. Each month you’ll meet a new vibrant person and learn about how they faced their fears to create the life and career that they wanted, all on their own terms.
I hope this series will inspire you to take action in your own life. As you read the stories of all these amazing people take note of their own struggles and the tools and tricks they use to adopt a more positive mindset and push through their own fears, doubts, and insecurities.
This month’s interview series is with an amazing veterinary dermatologist, business owner/partner, national speaker, and podcast host, Dr. Ashley Bourgeois, otherwise known as The Derm Vet. Ashley was a small animal intern at Purdue University when I was a fourth year vet student. We quickly bonded over our previous NVBMA days, and even back then she was a great mentor and teacher. Even though we now live miles apart (she lives in Oregon and I live in IL), thanks to social media, we have been able to stay in touch over the years.
I’ve been following Ashley on social media from the beginning. And if there’s one thing she has taught me is that success doesn’t come overnight. It comes after persistence, passion, willingness to pivot and change directions, and from having the courage to put yourself out there. What I love most about Ashley is her positive attitude towards just being herself and her willingness to put herself out there to go after her dreams.
If you have a big dream or goal, definitely read on.
To get started, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and what you are currently doing now?
I’m a clinical veterinary dermatologist at the Animal Dermatology Clinic in Portland, Oregon. It’s a dermatology only practice, and I currently work with one other dermatologist. Once a week I work at a larger specialty hospital with multiple specialists where I see patients there as well. It’s great. I get the best of both worlds of working in a smaller hospital where we get to design how we want things to look and then get to be part of a larger specialty hospital where I can collaborate with other specialists.
I’m also a business owner within our company. Our particular dermatology company has several locations national and internationally. We meet once or twice a year and as shareholders we go over actual financials and discuss what is working within the company. This allows me to get involved in the business aspect which I also really love and find very interesting.
This year also evolved into utilizing social media more to development my own personal brand which is The Derm Vet. My inspiration for the brand came about because I love lecturing. As often as I can as a mom of young kids, I travel around to different conferences and do public speaking to teach general practitioners about dermatology. The Derm Vet evolved after many different general practitioners started asking me more and more questions about how to improve their dermatology skills and knowledge base, especially when they couldn’t make it to my lecture. I am now working toward reaching out to a wider audience to teach on various dermatology principles and cases. Since so many vet schools don’t have a dermatologist, it’s been a fun way to bring more exposure and education for students as well.
I love your instagram account. When you were first starting out you did a lot of health and fitness. It’s been fun watching you evolve and develop your brand. What has it been like to go through that process?
You have to be willing to change. I listen to a lot of personal development podcasts and for me it was important for me to be okay that things will change.
Take fitness for example. Fitness is still very much a part of my life and health is a big value for me. I used to go to the gym often and then as life became busier, even before kids, I started doing at home workouts. And then after I became a parent, my husband and I had to adjust our schedule to prioritize our relationship and our own self-care, which developed into working out first thing in the morning.
I started hearing other veterinarians telling me they didn’t have the time to eat healthy, exercise, take a walk, etc. But here’s the thing - there are a lot of different ways to be healthy. You can do yoga. You can take your dog for a walk for 20 minutes a day. You can meditate.
Whatever works for you mentally and physically, you have to find the time for that. I initially became more active on social media because I wanted to help people realize that if I am crazy busy and can find the time, then they could too.
That was my focus for awhile. I still love that portion of it and still have an accountability group that we post every day. That group brings me so much joy and fulfillment.
It started becoming dermatology focused once I started seeing the need. Like I mentioned earlier, I would have a lot of young veterinarians coming up to me after a lecture telling me how much they were struggling to learn the basics. I’d also hear from more seasoned veterinarians who wanted to gain more confidence with the newer drugs.
So it was really shifting the need of my audience and it was a way to teach. I love to travel, but with two young kids at home, I am a bit limited on exactly how much of that I can do. The online platforms allow me to fill that need and love of teaching without having to be on the road all the time, lecturing at all the conferences.
What is it like to be a working mama with all these big dreams?
It’s a lot. I try to be real on social media and not just be a highlight real. Transparency is something that is really important to me. People can easily think that I do so much and it must come easy for me, but that isn’t always the case.
I just have a different outlook on “work-life” balance. I don’t think it is doable to say everyday I am going to focus on work X amount, on my kids X amount, and on my health X amount, etc, etc. Life and work comes in waves and different seasons require more attention to different areas in my life. Therefore, for me “balance” is looking at the overall average. For example, there was a time last fall where I had a span of two weeks where I was traveling a lot for work, and I was totally off balance and didn’t have much time at home. But then I knew that I would be having 6 weeks coming up with no travel booked completely focused on being a mom. That reminder kept me going and staying strong.
As a mom striving for balance, I think we are putting a lot of unneeded pressure on ourselves if we are wanting everyday to have balance. Overall I do feel balanced when I look at the whole.
Plus I love working. Work is joyful for me. When people talk about work-life balance, to me work should be within your life and you should love what you do. If you’re like me and love working so much, it is still important to take a step away from it and to also feel fulfilled in the mom section too.
It’s also important to know who you are. For me I just know I’m not supposed to be a stay at home mom. I need that career portion to be a better mom and stay fulfilled. I do also know I need to be careful to not just dive into work and make sure I set time away from the phone and spend that quality time with my family.
I remember when you posted about paying your student loans off in one of the veterinary moms facebook groups and that you received some negative feedback. What was it like to put yourself out there and receive that feedback?
That was definitely a learning experience for me. I wanted to encourage others that it can be done. Then there was an anonymous post following mine about this person feeling it wasn’t fair for people to be posting that they paid off their loans when it wasn’t possible for everyone.
This took me aback. I meant the post to be very supportive, it is possible to pay off your student loans. I think sometimes in our industry we can get surrounded by the negative and not think something is possible. Even realizing that you can love being a veterinarian is possible. I hear so many negative comments about being a veterinarian from people saying they wished they hadn’t gone in this field or that they could have made more money in the human field.
That’s not serving our field. The veterinary industry is an amazing industry and there are a lot of different ways you can approach our field if you are not happy in your particular situation. I don’t like when people just assume you have to have student debt. It doesn’t have to be that way unless you want it to be that way.
However for me though in that instance and example, I had to realize that if someone is going to react like that, that it wasn’t directed to me. That maybe that person has something internally that is holding them back.
Overall, I did receive so much more positivity than negativity. It was a good reminder that I’m are not made of steal, even though I see myself as a strong independent woman, And it was a good reminder to admit that what that person was eluding to really hurt me. That really did suck and it bothered me. But it bothered me because I care. I care that that person doesn’t realize their potential.
Learning from it and showing compassion is the best thing you can do.
What advice do you have for women taking on a leadership role?
My advice would be that you have to know what kind of leader you want to be and be comfortable with that. There are lots of ways to be a leader. You have to be passionate about what you are doing and who you are leading. You have to care. If I didn’t truly care and love my job, my clinic, and my employees, I don’t think I would be a very good leader.
I also believe the best leaders are transparent. There are so many different types of leadership styles and knowing the personality types of those you are working with can lead to more harmonious relationships.
For example, I recently took the Enneagram and I am a 3 wing 7. I want to achieve and do everything, I want to meet everyone’s expectations, and I want to make goals and then meet those goals. But I can also be a little unfocused and scattered sometimes. My staff knows this about me. I tend to be more of a servant leader and my staff also knows I really care about them. I want everyone to be happy, I want a great environment in which everyone wants to work, and I want us all to be supporting each other to love our jobs. They know that I can take longer in exam rooms and become “talkative” to certain clients as I am explaining, allergies, etc. They help me stay on track and that I need to be refocused if I need move onto the next client. They also know that I am off on Fridays. They used to send me my patient’s lab test results as soon as they were received on Friday, but then they knew I was calling my clients on my day off to discuss their pet’s lab results. They wanted to take care of me and not have me burnout so they stopped sending the lab results to me until Monday morning.
And that’s just it, because I am working to take good care of my staff, they are working to take care of me as their leader. They are almost protecting me from myself because they know the achiever in me would want to get these lab results out to my clients as soon as I receive them.
Speed Round:
What’s your best working mom hack to get through the day?
Getting up early. That’s what works for me. I’m up at 5 am every day. For me I need that time to get my workout in and talk to my husband before the day starts. Some days are so incredibly busy and knowing I am making time to foster my relationship with my husband as well as my health makes the rest of the day go so much better.
What is the last best book or podcast you've read?
Podcast - Rise podcast by Rachel Hollis. And well actually, everything by Rachel Hollis. I just love her message so much and she has accomplished so much.
What is the best thing to help you stay motivated when you just don't feel like doing something? How do you keep yourself going as a successful person that you are?
For me it's looking at the bigger picture as well as the now. I’m obviously one that doesn’t struggle with motivation. So it's actually the flip flop - it’s looking and thinking about my big picture and goals and then checking in with myself to make sure I have the fuel to keep going. I can feel when that burnout is coming. I’ll often give myself permission to go to bed early if I’m feeling on the brink of exhaustion and overwhelm For me, I need the motivation to be unmotivated. I have to constantly remind myself that if I am going to achieve the things I want to achieve, I need gas to run on. So reminding myself I will accomplish more in the long run if I take care of myself in the short term is what makes me take that pause.
Thanks again for Dr. Ashley Bourgeois for being part of this series. If you enjoyed learning about her story and journey as a working mama, veterinary dermatologist, practice partner, and developing her own brand, make sure to follow her on her social media sites: facebook and instagram.
Also be sure to check out her new podcast: The Derm Vet Podcast.
Please leave us a comment and let us know what you learned from Dr. Bourgeois -- we’d love to hear!
If you are interested in participating in this interview series, please reach out here.
See you next month -- until then, remember to challenge the status quo and create a work and life reimagined.
Jeni
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