Joceyn Michaud

I was raised right - my parents gave me a great sense of work ethic and tenacity. There was not much that you could not achieve through hard work. While in marketing, sometimes I'm not always the flashiest person in the group, I'm always gonna be the hardest working person in the room, and that's what I attribute my success to. I'll always keep working, keep trying, I'll find other ways to accomplish the task. I always just put myself in the room and work hard, and know that that will work out in the end. I also have to attribute some of my success to great mentorship - I've had a number of female mentors, specifically female mentors, that have helped me navigate my career.

If it doesn't matter in 5 years, it doesn't matter. This is especially big in marketing, because it feels like in marketing, everything's an emergency. I had a boss that always said, it's PR, not ER. If it's not going to matter in 5 years, then it's not worth setting your hair on fire for. If it doesn't matter in 5 years, it doesn't matter - you can do it in good time.

Young women in marketing need to know that they deserve a place at the table. Marketing is still a male-dominated field, and I think so many fields are. I think that women are trained to be confident when they finally have mentors, and they're trained to take space at the table, and I think that is very, very important for women to know. I think a lot of men just have confidence, and women don't want to take up space because they are worried they don't know as much, but they do. So my advice is take up space, trust your gut, and be confident. You've got this. You know what you're doing. There's a reason you're here. Trust your gut. It's okay. Be confident.

The biggest challenge is that pet care is becoming increasingly competitive. Pet parents, just like we talked about, are very discerning about where they will place their dollars and who they will trust with their babies. So as a marketer, the biggest challenge is creating that trust that we talked about. The biggest challenge too is finding marketers that have a passion for what they do and that care about their role, and I think that makes all the difference. I think people can see that passion and authenticity.

Passion and staying true to your values are most important to me. In my case, that's animal health, family, and mental health. Mental health is very important to me, especially because the vet space has a big mental health crisis - veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any career. Veterinary technicians make minimum wage even though they're running surgery, filling prescriptions, seeing rooms - they're phlebotomists, pharmacists, surgeons, dentists. And veterinarians have a lot of debt. They hear all day 'you're in this for the money' and it's very taxing for these professionals in this field that is very misunderstood. Mental health is very important to me, and I don't take that lightly in my role as a marketer. I make sure that I always advocate for those in the profession. Hard work is also a core value for me.