ABOUT
Lives in British Columbia, Canada
Independent Contractor at Maclean Chiropractic
Owns Vitality Animal Health Alternatives and Brookswood Veterinary Hospital with his wife, veterinarian Dr. Morgan Carey.
Graduated from Life West in 2016
Being able to pivot is part of the game for Life West graduate Kevin Carey, DC. A human and animal chiropractor in British Columbia, Canada, life has changed dramatically for him in the past year.
The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been the catalyst for most of this change, though it’s certainly had an impact. Dr. Carey, who is married to veterinarian Dr. Morgan Carey, welcomed their first baby this past year. Within a month of her birth, he joined Maclean Chiropractic, a family chiropractic office, where he practices a few days a week and shares office space. A few months later, the couple also bought a veterinary practice.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and chiropractic offices in British Columbia, considered non-essential, shut down except for emergency care.
“Either your business is growing or it’s dying,” Kevin said. “We had to really pivot.”
What does life look like for him now?
Before the pandemic, Dr. Carey was traveling two days a week to care for horses.
Instead of 2 1/2 days in the office caring for people, then 2 days on the road, traveling to homes to care for small animals (dogs & cats), and barns and the nearby racetrack to care for horses, Kevin is at home.
“Normally I would also fit in human patients as I was seeing animals on the road.”
Before, he said, he had a full schedule. “Our days were full no matter what. My wife had a full practice, with four doctors at the vet practice, and I was on the road or in my office. Then this all hits, and in Canada, if you’re working within 3 feet of someone else, you can’t work. I couldn’t see any patients, but veterinary medicine, being an essential service, could.”
But Kevin hasn’t really stopped working. He’s looking at this break in the action as time to reevaluate, re-prioritize, lay some of those foundational bricks in all three of his practices that he’s been too busy to do, such as marketing, creating online forms and fine-tuning the paperwork records.
“None of this is smooth,” he said. “It’s not smooth for anyone in practice, having to find ways to make it work. BUT, it’s also one of the best opportunities if you choose to spend this time doing the grunt work to make your practice even more successful. You can sit back and see your finances essentially dwindling away, or choose to put time and resources into creating something that can not only shift your business now but afterward, when things return to what they were before.”
What does that mean for Kevin’s practice post-pandemic?
While Kevin had to stop traveling and providing care for horses, he can still care for small animals by having them come to the veterinary clinic that he and his wife own. That’s a shift in providing care that he’d like to continue. He can see more animals in a day and be more efficient with his time when they come to him.
And now that he has a baby at home, finding ways to carve out family time is suddenly much more important. That includes time for vacations and mentally recharging.
Kevin is taking time now to think about how to reach his goals. “First, we’re keeping the businesses we own afloat, and there’s been a huge shift in how operations are done,” he said. “These changes will give us more time and freedom, something we don’t want the business to encroach on. This pandemic has given us the ability to spend more time as a family now and in the future.”
Advice for today’s students
With a baby in the picture, Dr. Carey says family is a priority for him and his wife, veterinarian Morgan.
“I always ask students, ‘What do you want your life to be like? What are your priorities?’ Mine are family and freedom, financially and time-wise.”
Kevin says he always knew he wanted to be the captain and have some control over which direction the ship was going. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible.
“You don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” he added. “We couldn’t have predicted COVID-19. We thought the housing market and economy might cool, but we never thought a virus would shut the economy down.”
That makes it even more important to love what you do, and balance that with other things you love. “A lot of people work 5 days a week and open up their whole schedule to see patients; the result is they burn themselves out,” Kevin said. “I started like that. I thought the more days a week I can work, the more money I can make to pay back student loans.”
But he’s found that offering less time for patient care, and being more efficient with his time means he can work, have ample family time and still find time for vacations and time to recharge. “You’re better off to limit your hours and fill your schedule within them, then if you get so busy that you want to expand, you can,” he said.
That’s the message he wants Life West students to hear.
“Life West is really great at helping you find purpose and your ‘why.’ If you love what you do and have a vision of what you want your future to look like, delve into that,” he said. “If you have a vision, create a plan of action to get there, and as long as you are adaptable along the way, that’s when you’ll start to reap the rewards of your work.”
