Kathryn Artiles

I attribute my success to all of my mentors. I've been so lucky to be surrounded by wealths of knowledge in my industry. My manager Yanira has been wonderful and got me my promotion. I also set up networking calls with sales directors and marketing directors from my company - 45-minute connects where I just learn about their career path and what I need to do to shape my own career. I have these calls once a month with different people. I recently met someone named Joella Grenard who is one of the most influential women I've met. She came from Target and Petco and has so much experience. Learning from women in this industry has been tremendous, especially because it's not a very female-dominated industry on the corporate side. You're sitting in rooms with a lot of men, so getting to sit with somebody who is so smart and wants to help young women has helped me turn tremendously.

Never stop networking. I think that's something I'm constantly doing, and I don't see myself ever stopping. I think there's always room to meet people, and I think it's such a mix of what you know and who you know - I don't think that one trumps the other. In this industry, it's definitely about what you know, but in the corporate side of things, it's who you know, and getting in the right rooms and making sure that you have a seat at the table and that people know your name. Joella gave me a great piece of advice: save some money every month and take someone out to coffee or lunch. Just buy them lunch and pick their brain. Completely immerse yourself into their experience, not even work-wise. Get to know them on a personal basis. When you build the personal connection, I've always found such great success from there in building a more business relationship. When you can understand them on a people level - people love to talk about themselves - it's nice to get to know people and have your name in their mouth.

You have to be very open-minded and really put yourself in the veterinarian's shoes. It's the opposite of a selfish industry. These people are caring for people's pets, people's companions. It's so different than the human side - they're dealing with something they can't speak to. We can't understand the problem without doing certain diagnosis and being super compassionate to the pet parent. So I'd say you have to be open-minded, and you have to be completely selfless. You have to really put yourself in the veterinarian and the pet parent's shoes and understand the business.

The biggest challenge is fads and trends. With media, and coming from a marketing background I understand media, but a lot of consumers are influenced heavily by it. It's really hard to change the mindset from words like organic or grain-free - it's really hard to sell them animal protein anymore. Media is both a benefit and one of our biggest hurdles. It's a challenge we face every day, influencing pet parents on what's science-based versus what is a fad or a trend. The biggest opportunity is getting ahead of the game. People are so business savvy now and know what customers want. Fresh food is taking over - Farmer's Dog is very good at campaigns. I think if we can, as a pet industry, invest in advertising and invest in clinical research, that's what's going to take us over the moon.

You have to be very dedicated to working over time and above and beyond. You have to be compassionate, you have to be driven. Overall, you have to be passionate about the role that you're in. If you're not passionate about it, it's hard to be successful. You have to really care and understand and believe in the product before you can sell it. I can always tell when someone's reading a script or doesn't believe in it - you truly have to believe in what you're doing.