Brian Hopkins: Pet Pharmaceuticals, facing adversity, stoicism and friends you can fight with.

About this episode

Longtime friend and Elanco pet-pharmaceutical rep Brian Hopkins joins Vance for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with the pet-medicine industry — how the "human-animal bond" has shifted as dogs moved from doghouses to beds, driving surging spend on specialty veterinary oncology, discretionary pet gifts, and even pet daycare as a corporate perk — and quickly deepens into the personal. Both men candidly discuss years-long struggles to conceive, pregnancy loss, and the grief and marital strain that came with it, framing the ordeal as the catalyst that pulled them from casual interest in stoicism toward genuinely internalizing it (Marcus Aurelius: "the happiness of your life will be dictated by the quality of your thoughts"). They connect this personal resilience to professional resilience — sales as constant rejection, and the "crucible moment" of choosing consultative honesty over pushing a customer toward something they've explicitly rejected. The back half pivots to friendship and media: their eight-nine-year friendship built on productive conflict ("friends you can fight with") stands in contrast to social media's zero-sum unfriend culture, and Vance elaborates his "tribes vs. communities" framework — tribes are hijacked by an "intransigent minority," while communities of overlapping tribes with bridge-people (like their mutual friend Travis) dilute that risk. Both describe quitting or rationing social platforms (Hopkins ditched Facebook, kept Twitter for dissenting views; Vance quit Twitter for Sober October and found it harder than quitting smoking) and close on unease about hyper-targeted advertising to children via YouTube algorithms.

“One of the biggest problems with social media is the appearance of a zero sum game, because I can immediately cross you out as soon as I want to unfriend you.”

“It doesn't take very many people to come in and hijack the entire group... the intransigent minority is best able to operate inside of a tribe.”

“Twitter is a dopamine machine. It is like, oh, are you a little bit bored now? Find some novelty... I may never go back to that because it is the equivalent of a drug.”

Key moments

• ~4%: Pet-pharma framing device: dogs moving indoors and into beds as the driver of an exploding specialty veterinary/pharmaceutical industry.
• ~14%: Statistic — $1.7B spent on pet Valentine's Day gifts; 70% of millennials own pets vs. 35% of the general US population.
• ~22%: Veterinarian suicide rates linked to routine euthanasia decision-making and inability to separate work from home life.
• ~30%: "Get advice from people who didn't struggle and let them be, because they just don't know" — on unsolicited fertility advice.
• ~32%: Both men disclose years-long fertility struggles and pregnancy loss; a nun's advice ("stop praying for what you want, pray for the grace to accept what comes") as Hopkins's entry into stoicism.
• ~44%: Sales "crucible moment" — choosing consultative honesty over forcing an unwanted product on a longtime customer.
• ~46%: Friendship built on productive disagreement contrasted with social media's illusion of zero-cost unfriending.
• ~54%: Vance's "tribes vs. communities" framework — intransigent minorities hijacking tribes, community bridge-people diluting the effect.
• ~58%: Vance's Sober-October Twitter detox described as harder than quitting smoking; Hopkins kept Twitter deliberately to read dissenting opinions.

Notable quotes

“Why didn't anybody tell me that this could happen?... you need to be prepared that this could happen... young men in particular need to know that.”

“Twitter is a dopamine machine... I may never go back to that because it is the equivalent of a drug. It's just an electronic drug.”

“That is kind of the crucible moment in sales where you decide, am I gonna cross that line... or am I gonna push them.”