Everyday Wonder Women
Each week, I sit down with a woman you probably never heard of before—but trust me, by the end, you’ll be so glad you did. This is where we get real about the tough stuff women go through, the grit it takes to get through it, and the lessons they pick up along the way. It’s honest, inspiring, and full of stories you won’t forget.
Everyday Wonder Women
Episode 9: Caitlin reminds us what really matters—and why we can’t wait
I’m chatting with Dr. Caitlin DeWilde—veterinarian, tech nerd, business owner, mom of many species—and someone who’s been through a lot. She opens up about losing her mom, caring for her dad with Alzheimer’s, and how it all forced her to rethink what actually matters in life.
We also talk about building her business (The Social DVM), setting boundaries (like not answering your Sunday morning texts... sorry), and her favorite life filter: “If it’s not a f*ck yeah, it’s a no.”
This one’s real. It’s funny. It’s a little raw. And it’s your reminder that you don’t get forever—so maybe it’s time to stop saying yes to things that drain you and start living like you mean it.
Welcome to the podcast Everyday Wonder Women. I'm your host, stacey Santee Longfellow, a veterinarian, an entrepreneur and the author of the book Stop Acting Like a Girl. In each episode you'll meet an amazing woman that you might not know yet, but by the end, trust me, you'll be so glad you did. These are stories of grit, courage and resilience Women who've faced tough challenges and come out stronger on the other side. I'm so glad you're here. Stick around and let's get into the interview.
Speaker 1:Our guest today is Dr Caitlin DeWild, a veterinarian turned tech savvy entrepreneur, who took her love of social media and turned it into a thriving business. She's smart, scrappy, super funny and never afraid to say exactly what she thinks. Caitlin and I've worked together a lot over the years. We share a love of animals, technology and finding smarter ways to work. We even started a podcast together a while back called I Vet so Hard, where we dish out workflow hacks and tips for our fellow veterinary peeps. In this episode we're going to talk about how Caitlin built her company, the Social DVM, why learning to prioritize the right things matters, and how losing her mom and later supporting her dad through severe Alzheimer's completely changed the way she lives her life. This one gets deep. There are some laughs, some tears and, yes, some F-bombs, because Caitlin and I kind of like to cuss from time to time. Come with me and meet my friend.
Speaker 2:Caitlin kind of like to cuss from time to time, come with me and meet my friend Caitlin. My name is Caitlin DeWild. I live in St Louis, missouri. I am a veterinarian. I own a small business. I have two kids and a husband and two cats and a dog and a gecko.
Speaker 1:That is me and you used to have the cutest little guinea pig.
Speaker 2:I did have the greatest little guinea pig named Stanley. He was the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. But I did not know that I was super allergic to guinea pig hay. So when Stanley met his maker, at the very end he was not replaced. But honestly it's kind of good, because no one could have been as good as him. Anyway. He was such a good little piggy, so cute.
Speaker 1:You've had a very interesting career path. It's kind of zigzag, yes, and then now you're over into entrepreneurship and you own this really successful social media company. But how did you get there?
Speaker 2:That is a great story. And actually it's not a great story. It's a funny story, I think. So I had every intention of going home to be a mixed animal veterinarian. I loved beef cattle work and I thought that was fascinating and liked it, and I wanted to do mixed animal and just be a kind of tiny little town vet. So my career thing.
Speaker 2:I think that a lot of at least veterinarians or type A people think of your career journey as a straight up and down ladder and I always planned for that that you get on each rung, like high school and college and vet school and you know clinicals and boards, and then you get out and maybe you work two years at one practice and then you go to the next practice and you buy it and you own it and you die. I thought I was going to do that too. Yeah, that was just the plan and I probably should have known early on that I was not going to do that plan because I'm not a typical veterinarian. I did not know from the beginning that I would do this. I actually thought I was going to be an orchestra teacher and I'm really glad my mom did this to me. My parents are both teachers. So it was really kind of funny.
Speaker 2:But she made me do a job shadowing program when I was 16. She knew me better than me in 15 and was like I don't think you'll be happy as a teacher for your whole life. And she signed me up for a vet clinic job shadowing. And I was so mad. And she signed me up because she was like well, when you were little you said you wanted to be a veterinarian.
Speaker 2:I was like doesn't every five-year-old girl say that they want to do this? And I was livid about doing it and said I would only stay till noon and called it like 1130 and was like, yeah, I'm going to be here all day, so, but anyway. So I had like a lot of. I have a lot of other interests and parts of my brain that are both good and bad for being a vet. I'm not the smartest vet. I was operating on the like DS for diploma track in vet school, but I think that when I look at my career ladder it looks more like a jungle gym and like the dome shaped metal ones that are probably illegal now. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Do they still?
Speaker 2:make those? I'm not sure. But the point is you don't just go straight up, sometimes you go over, sometimes you go down a rung so that you can better position yourself to get to the top. Sometimes you go inside of it and go upside down, sometimes you fall off the damn thing entirely and then you have to get back on. And I feel like that's kind of how my journey has been, because when you come out of vet school you do not know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:I know you don't know anything. You're so scared, so bad, and.
Speaker 2:I felt like a child until I was out, like I feel like I kind of was stunted a little bit, like I wasn't a grown-up on my own yet, you know, and you have to learn how to be an adult and how to work with others and how to manage, because vet med is weird, like you're not really the boss but you're in charge of people, and that's a different skill set.
Speaker 2:It takes a long time, and I knew that, and so I wanted to go somewhere for a year or two first and it was also 2009, and it was a recession. So I couldn't find a good job anywhere near there, and my husband, who's a software engineer, could not find anything anywhere in a rural town, of course, and didn't really want to be in a rural area. So we went to St Louis for two years except for now that's been 15. So, yeah, I thought I would go home after that time, and then just some life things happened that made that not a good option, and so I stayed at my first practice for about three years. I went to a new practice, were you?
Speaker 1:doing bovine?
Speaker 2:I was not. I was doing small animal the whole time and I really thought I would hate it. But turns out when you're 17 or 18 and you get asked to go pull a cow in the middle of the night it's fun and it's an adventure and it's not a problem to get up the next day when you're pushing 30, you're like, oh crap, I don't actually want to do that. And then get paid, like you know, a hundred bucks or something, for four hours of work on a black Angus cow in the middle of a field with no facilities. It's less appealing as you age.
Speaker 1:I know some large animal vet, women vets that tell me they take their baby with them. You know, like you have to. It's the middle of the night you're nursing. You put the baby in the carrier, you go do your work, come back, nurse, go do your work. You know these girls are amazing. They're fucking badasses.
Speaker 2:And I can't imagine doing it. And it's not that it wouldn't have been awesome Like I miss being able to ride in the truck with the windows down on a nice summer day onto the next farm call. I love that life. It's so, James Harriot. Oh, it totally is. And you would pull up and I rode with the vets that I worked with until I was even out of vet school and just met the nicest people and they would have lunch ready for you and they would know about your family and your kids and some of that small town stuff too. But you know it was, it was salt of the earth type stuff and I I miss it in the warm weather in the daytime hours.
Speaker 2:I did not miss it the rest of the time. So, yeah, so it didn't work out for me. But it's one of those things that even though you make a choice, it doesn't mean you don't want to do the other choice. It's just balancing all the other things Like for me it was my life and my marriage, the economy and what was going on with my extended family and my student debt, and all of those things have to all get taken into consideration. Would I be thrilled to be a large general vet now? Yeah, probably would really like it. I would probably also love being an orchestra teacher for some parts of it, right.
Speaker 1:But you never know. When did you leave practice and get the gumption to start your own business? What was the catalyst for that.
Speaker 2:Well, I had moved to a second practice and maybe five years after being a vet, and I was getting a little bit bored in terms of just being a regular vet, I felt like I was a good vet, I had it figured out and I was starting to think about that ownership journey because, remember my original ladder plan I was like, well, I'm not going back home at this point, so I need to start thinking about this. So I went to this practice that in 2012 and 13, did not have a single computer in the building and had that credit card machine that goes, and the owner had everyone's timestamp in and out on his clock. I swear it was from the thirties and he would drive the payroll over across town to the accountant every week and then drive back to pick up paper checks. And I was just like this is so inefficient and people are constantly starting. That was when iPhones had, like, just gotten to be popular. People were Googling stuff in the exam room as you'd be talking about it or they'd be price matching, especially like foods and stuff, and I was just so annoyed by all of it. And then I thought about it and I thought, well, I can get mad or I can do something about it. And so I started a Facebook page and I taught myself to build a website and within about a year that was our primary driver of new client traffic and it was way easier to be on social media at that time as a business.
Speaker 2:But it turned out to be very effective for our practice and we grew and I'm trying to buy this and I did a little bit too good of a job and basically worked myself out of a job, because, as we're planning to buy it, he says you know now that I've realized how much we could grow. Now the price is X. Oh no, because if I stayed on, which was my original plan, if we continued at this rate, that would be worth x. Well, you can't get a loan for a practice more than the value. And it was like I don't, I don't have that. And I went home and my husband, who is a phenomenal father, was going to be traveling that weekend and I had to say what does the baby eat in the morning? Because I would feed him, I would nurse him and everything, but he had started eating foods and I didn't know what he was used to eating in the morning.
Speaker 2:Because I was gone and I was also gone by the time he ate dinner, so I would get home and I'd see him for 30 minutes and he'd go to bed. And I was also gone by the time he ate dinner. So I would get home and he, I'd see him for 30 minutes and he'd go to bed and I was like this is a sign, this is crap. I have worked so hard. Now I'm not going to own this business and I don't know what my kid eats. So it was a real like eye opening time and so I stayed on a little bit. But I was like I'm not doing all this other stuff, I'm not working to build someone else's dream.
Speaker 2:And I was on the program committee for our St Louis veterinary group and this guy named Andy Rourke was coming into town to speak.
Speaker 2:I'd never heard of this guy and I had always assumed to do anything other than be a vet you would have to have more school or more credentials or more letters. I'm putting in Andy's bio to speak and I realize he has the same letters as me. He's a year older than me and he's doing all the speaking stuff and like killing it and I was like, well, this seems fun, not the speaking part that at the time did not seem fun, but it was just the first time I had realized maybe there's something else I could do, because clearly practice ownership is maybe a bad idea for me, but I can't just see ear infections for the next 30 years. I'll go nutty. Because I had been doing some of the practice management stuff at this practice. I had gotten to know a lot of the reps and they had started asking me hey, will you do like a dinner lecture about this or would you talk about social media? Yeah, they were just cause it was so new at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like I remember, um, I remember for my clinic when Facebook came out, our clinic was owned by MVA, it was just a big corporation. And I said I'm going to start a Facebook page for our hospital. I'm thinking we could post a lot of successful outcome stories and cute pictures and get to know the staff and stuff like this. And the mothership said absolutely not, they were afraid of that, you cannot do that. I said, well, why not? And they said because people will just go on there to complain about you.
Speaker 1:I said back are there that many people upset with me? Like I thought I was doing a good job. You mean, there's people that don't like me and think I'm a bad vet. And they said, well, they're out there. And I said they are. I mean, it really disturbed me. And I said, well, all the I mean it really disturbed me. And I said, well, all the more reason. I think I should meet these people and see what I've done to hurt them. And they said, no, you can't do it. And so of course I did it. And that did not happen at all. Like, I mean, every now and then someone would be upset, but for the most part people could share the post, I don't know. They liked it, yeah, but I think to your point. You don't understand it. You don't do it Right, which turns into a business opportunity for you.
Speaker 2:It did, it did.
Speaker 2:That was probably a very good early lesson I learned is I asked Andy because I had to pick him up at the airport to have him come to this lecture and I was like could I just buy you a cup of coffee and run something by you? And I said you know, I really like this because I think it's an interesting way for clinics and clients to connect. I think it's a better way to educate Because back then it was still the whole like and clients to connect. I think it's a better way to educate Because back then it was still the whole like Dr Google was like the big threat and at the time this seemed like a very good alternative and I really liked teaching the other vets how to do it Because it just seemed to come naturally to me and not to them. And he was like you should totally do it. And I remember I came home from that lecture and I bought the name thesocialdvmcom and I put in on like Fiverr or something for a logo. I was like I'm going to do this and I did.
Speaker 1:That's great. And how many years have you been in business now?
Speaker 2:11 years 11?
Speaker 1:11. I know Weird right and your primary job duties are. I know from hanging out with you a lot that you do a lot of speaking at events. Some people say the scariest thing a person could ever have to do is stand up in front of people and speak. And I still get a lot of Twitters about it. But you do not. I don't Because I've asked you this before. I'm like what do you do?
Speaker 2:You're like what are you talking about? You just, I don't, because they're my peers and I know I'm helping them. It doesn't bother me If you had me get up and talk to a hundred people that were outside the veterinary industry and they wanted, I don't know, to like a TED Talk type thing, leadership or something like that would probably make me nervous. But I know my stuff so well because it's what I do and I know they're there because they want to understand it better and they're my colleagues, like we're all in the same boat, so it doesn't I don't know. For that reason it hasn't bothered me. I could also talk to a chair for an hour, as you know.
Speaker 1:And then you also work with practices and companies.
Speaker 2:now I do, I do. I can't imagine a job where you do the same kind of thing every day and for what I do now, it might be a clinic and they might need help with social, or it might be an industry company and they need help with the messaging, or another clinic that needs help with workflow and technology, or you know a startup vet company that needs help with webinars or a podcast, like I never know. But I'm helping all of them and I'm helping them solve their problem, which to me, is the best part of a career, or at least for me. I love to be able to help solve a problem that somebody else has.
Speaker 1:So what do you think of this idea that, like my parents, both hired out for the railroad when they were 18 19, and they worked there for their whole entire life and then they retired, which was what I thought you were supposed?
Speaker 2:to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I think a lot of people like that's. The standard norm is you pick your poison when you're in your 20s and then you do it until you get the gold watch at retirement, right, right, but that's so old school of thinking and I think where I'm at is encouraging younger people to think about your life in chunks and maybe it's okay to have two or three careers in there. I think it takes time to get really good at something. It seems to me about 10 years you get really good at something, but then it's okay.
Speaker 1:don't you think to do something different for the next?
Speaker 2:chunk. I think it's totally fine to be aware of that and be willing to change those things. I think I struggled with it a lot, and I think you did too about not being in practice. People are kind of almost judgy about it. Well, you feel guilty.
Speaker 1:Like you had this privilege to do this thing and then now, for whatever reason, you're not doing it Right, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:I did it for a long time Leaving the profession they call it.
Speaker 1:This poor little animals. They need you. So what's been some of the more challenging things you've had to deal with personally?
Speaker 2:Personally, there's been more than I would like to wish on anyone, but I lost my mom when I was 30, which sounds to anyone who hasn't lost their mom probably sounds like, well, that's okay, you know. But I think if you're 5 or 30 or 75, losing your mom is a pretty terrible thing. You know, I was pregnant with my oldest when she passed away. What did she die?
Speaker 1:from.
Speaker 2:She had a weird condition called primary sclerosing cholangitis and we had no idea that she had it. So Carl and I, my husband and I, got married when I was a fourth year, on my off block. Because that's what you do you have your one week away Good choices there, so dumb. We decided to elope in October of my fourth year and we did that, came home, we had a small little wedding ceremony and then I went back to school. When I got home my mom had told me one of her friends said oh, are you still tanning for the wedding? And my mom was like no, I'm not. And she's like do you think I look tanner? And I was like no. And then we're sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and we had candles and I was like mom, your eyes look kind of yellow. Dinner. And we had candles. And I was like mom, your eyes look kind of yellow.
Speaker 2:She went back to work on Monday and somebody had made a comment again about her skin. She went and got blood work that day and they wouldn't let her leave because it was that bad. They originally told her she had pancreatic cancer and being the mom that she was tells me everything is fine. She did because my boards were coming up and she didn't want me to stress about my boards, so I didn't know she was sick for a while and she finally told us and that actually worked out kind of really well, because we had already made the decision to move to St Louis and that was a little less than two hours away from where I grew up and all of her specialists were in St Louis. So I'm sort of kind of now convinced that I ended up there so that I could be there and help with a lot of that.
Speaker 2:So she went through several procedures and all this workup and all these things for a long time and she went on for five years of like sometimes she was totally fine and we were like this is okay, we found the right, you know steroids and immunotherapy and all this thing, and then she'd get really sick. And then it was just a roller coaster and honestly, it just had never occurred to me that she could die, because she was just that person that was like this is fine, I'll get through it, and nothing bad had ever happened to me or anyone we knew, and so it was just like a totally foreign concept to me and I think that looking back. I'm like I wish I had started thinking about like this could end and I just didn't at all. And I just didn't at all. And really even until the last week she was in the hospital we were talking about baby stuff, you know, because I was pregnant and really terrible thing about organ failure.
Speaker 2:So her liver started to fail as a result of all of this. She'd been on the waiting list for a liver transplant for over a year but you have to be so sick to be eligible for a liver transplant but you could be too sick and not get one. So it's like sometimes she'd be like number two, but then she'd get sick because her liver is failing and then she'd have to drop back down because she was too sick for it. So you have to catch it, like just at the right. I didn't know that. It's awful. So when she passed away she was actually number one in the country waiting for the liver. That's so sad. Yeah, probably the most impactful thing that has affected me. But you know I got 30 years with a great mom.
Speaker 1:You know one thing you always I don't know if you know this that you always inspire me to do is set boundaries, because I've seen you you'll do crazy things like not take your phone somewhere or or turn it off or not respond to work messages, and I learned from you family is the most important time. Family time is the top of the pyramid, right, and I don't know if you know that, but I think about that a lot when I was getting my work-life balance very mixed up and I'd be with my family but on my phone and I think Caitlin doesn't do this because she learned what matters.
Speaker 2:The beauty of what I do now is I can be very flexible and so I often will work at night after they're asleep or whatever. But I also know even 10 days from now, we're going on a trip for 10 days and I won't work at all. So I'm willing to work crazy hours and things to make that work later. But it's also a little bit of you know, some people. I think think the way that that we travel and the things that we do with our kids are a little bit outside the norm. But I think that that is probably the lesson that I've learned is you don't know. So I would rather do it now, because you just don't know.
Speaker 2:My dad also has had terrible, awful health things. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's within five years of my mom dying, which during that and he's young yeah, he is 67 and is a complete shell of who he once was. He's nonverbal and you know we had a couple of good years after my mom passed away, that he was there and he was grandpa of the year and all those things. But there were so many things during that time that I'm like, oh, I thought he was grieving my mom, but those were early signs of his disease and so, essentially, even before my youngest was born, we didn't have him in the normal way, and so I'm like, oh, I'm a genetic nightmare. But both of their parents lived very long, healthy lives. So it's very odd. But I now have this like I don't know if I will be normal after age 55 to 60. So I'm going to have the best possible life I can have right now.
Speaker 1:Does your brother have the same anxiety about that? No, we're both messed up.
Speaker 2:We're both messed up In a good way. I mean we can mostly laugh about it now, but you know we both feel that way because both of these things we did not see coming. Now we had a pretty idyllic childhood, like just the best possible, and we had grandparents and you know all the things and it doesn't look like that for my kids. But I think both of us have been like take the vacation, take the trip, do the career that you love. You know my brother's had to make some big career changes because he made a career choice and then was like I'm not happy, I don't want to do it. Why would you slog through that for another 10 years? You know we talk about it a lot that.
Speaker 2:You know my parents were teachers, so we didn't have a ton of money, you know, and we didn't realize that as kids we had everything we needed. But there's so many people that we knew and where we're from that you know you're going to take those vacations when you retire, like you might not get to retire. Neither one of my parents got to retire. They just didn't. My mom worked three weeks before she died. She was still in the classroom. I don't think she saw what could happen either. But I'm taking our kids to London in a couple weeks and somebody was like, why are you taking your kids? They're not going to remember that, they're not going to appreciate it, and I'm like they might not, but I'll appreciate it. I want to have those experiences with them. So it has definitely impacted my choices and my risk taking. I would say First, thanks for sharing all that?
Speaker 1:I know that's unimaginable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean my brother and I talk about this a lot. Everybody has some kind of trauma, and everybody's trauma is valid in how it affects your life. But I do think I've become much more grateful for things as well. So I'll still be in therapy forever.
Speaker 1:You're amazing, Caitlin. What advice would you give to a 20-year-old woman just getting going in her life?
Speaker 2:I would start by figuring out what makes you happy and chase that. And I would be open to not having the ladder. You know having the jungle gym instead, there's going to be ups and downs and I think if you know that from the latter, you know having the jungle gym instead. There's going to be ups and downs and I think if you know that from the beginning, it's a lot easier to stomach some of those failures when they happen and take the trip.
Speaker 1:This one was tough. When Caitlin started talking about losing her mom, I felt like I was right there with her sitting at that Thanksgiving table losing her mom. I felt like I was right there with her sitting at that Thanksgiving table, noticing her mom's eyes looking a little yellow. I tried to keep it together but I'll be honest, I was fighting back tears and on the verge of doing the ugly cry. And I want to admit something to you guys Back when I first started working with Caitlin she was helping me with social media for Vets A Pet.
Speaker 1:I'd sometimes get annoyed when she wouldn't respond to emails or texts on like a Sunday morning or something. I mean, isn't that what successful business owner people are supposed to do Work all the time? But after I got to know her better and heard what she'd been through with her parents, I felt two things One, like a big a-hole for ever thinking she wasn't committed, and two, that she was put in my path to teach me one of the most important lessons I've ever learned be present, not just physically there, but actually there, phone down, not running through the to-do list in your head, not rushing the moment along so you can get on to the next thing, and that's what Caitlin is teaching us. Yes, she works hard, but she also protects her time. She says no, she takes the trip, she shows up for her family, because she's learned the hard way that that's what really matters, and you don't have to wait until everything falls apart to start living like it matters. You can choose now, today, even in the middle of your chaos, because guess what? The to-do list never actually goes away. I have to share another thing with you that Caitlin taught me in this one.
Speaker 1:We didn't get a chance to talk about in the episode, but from time to time I call her up Okay, well, kind of a lot. I call her up and I want to get her opinion on whether or not I should do something. Maybe it's like a speaking gig I'm not super stoked about or starting a new podcast, and her advice it's either fuck yeah or it's a no. That's it. And let me tell you, once you start applying that rule to your life, everything gets a whole lot clearer. You say yes to the things that light you up and you say no to the things that don't, and that's one of the big themes in Stop Acting Like a Girl 2.
Speaker 1:We've been conditioned to say yes to everything, to be nice, be available, be agreeable, but Caitlin shows us that the real win is knowing what deserves your energy and what doesn't. You don't owe your weekends to your inbox. You don't owe your life to someone else's definition of success and you definitely don't owe anyone an explanation for choosing your family or yourself. If you're craving more unfiltered, no bs conversations like this one, grab my book. Stop acting like a girl on amazon. It's part pep talk and part permission slip for every woman who's done trying to live up to everyone else's expectations. All right, that's it for today. Take the trip, turn off the phone, be present and, most importantly, don't wait. I look forward to seeing you again next week, my friends,