Business Isn’t a Bad Word: Helping Veterinary Teams See Their Impact

Talk about money in a veterinary practice and watch the room go quiet. Bring up pricing, revenue, or compliance numbers, and suddenly the team that lights up over patient care goes cold.

It can feel like business is somehow the opposite of caring, but it is not. And that disconnect is costing practices more than they realize.

Welcome to The Veterinary Business Podcast, where practice owners get strategies to build stronger teams and stronger businesses. I am your host for this session, Don Adeesha, and it is great to have you here.

Today, I am joined by Senani Ratnayake. She is a registered veterinary technician, a leadership strategist, and the founder of Motivatum Consulting. With over two decades inside veterinary practice, she has spent her career helping veterinary teams see something most never do: the real impact of their everyday choices on the veterinary business.

Together, we are going to discuss how to talk about money and efficiency without losing your team's heart. By the end of this episode, you will have the tools for a total mindset shift: from seeing the business as a necessary evil to seeing it as the engine that makes high-quality medicine possible.

This episode is brought to you by Ekwa Marketing, the team helping veterinary practice owners grow without burning out their people.

Welcome to the podcast, Senani.

Thank you so much. I am super excited to be here.

Before we get into the core conversation, you were an RVT for a long time before you moved into leadership. When you were starting out on the clinic floor, did you ever imagine you would be the one defending the business side of the practice?

No. I was right alongside my fellow team members thinking that business was a bad word, honestly.

I remember thinking, "What do I know about business? I am not a business person. I have no business, pun intended, getting involved in any of that."

So no, I honestly would never have thought that I would be sitting here on a podcast with you now talking about business and how important it is for veterinary teams to understand that side of it.

That is a great point, because people often ask, "Is it my business to care about the overall health of things?" They put themselves on the sideline.

Why do veterinary teams often feel uncomfortable talking about the business side, and where does that discomfort really come from?

I have so many answers to that question. There are so many different things, and I think it depends on the person a little bit as well.

One of the first things that comes to mind is that people perceive conflicting values. If I believe I am in veterinary medicine because I love animals and I am here to help them no matter what, and then someone starts talking about business, profit, budgets, labor, and all these words that sound very financial and transactional, it can feel like it contradicts our actual purpose.

It can feel like it gets in the way of helping. People wonder, "If we are thinking about business, are we compromising patient care?" Often, people think that if we are thinking about the business, it means we are trying to save money or cut corners. We are not necessarily cutting corners, but people may perceive that prioritizing the business is to the detriment of patients.

There are a lot of optics issues like that. There is also the idea that business does not resonate with me, or that I am not a business person. People may not want to think about the business, or they may wonder whether they can care about the business and medicine at the same time.

There is also fear. If I do not understand business, I may shy away from it. Just like anything else, when we do not understand something well, it can be intimidating.

On a veterinary team, if there is a practice manager or practice owner, business becomes "someone else's job." It becomes somebody else's job to care about those things, while I stay over here caring about the patients, clients, and pet parents. That is where many team members want to spend their time.

We are relationship people. The idea of business being transactional, and having to talk about money, whether with pet parents or inside the practice, can feel like it takes away from what people actually want to do. They do not always see the value of it.

How do we begin to end the "salesperson" stigma, where staff feel like dealers instead of healers?

I always like to talk about the fact that we are not salespeople; we are advocates.

I do not ever want someone to feel like they are selling something that is not in the patient's best interest or the pet parent's best interest. Sometimes something is specifically in the patient's interest. Sometimes it is in the pet parent's interest. Sometimes it is in both of their best interests.

Either way, if we are recommending something and exchanging money for a service or product that is in their best interest, then yes, technically we are selling because money is exchanging hands. But we are also advocating. We are doing the right thing.

It is also important to remember that sales is not a dirty word, just like business is not a dirty word. Sales is not a bad thing. It is something we have to do in order to continue helping people and pets.

On the flip side, you cannot want to make a living in this profession and hope for a paycheck if you are not contributing to a business that generates money in order for you to get paid. That does not mean the business has to generate money for the wrong reasons, or that we have to use slick sales tactics or sell things that are not necessary.

We do not have to do that. We can do more than enough good work by making recommendations that our patients actually need and will benefit from. Money will exchange hands, and you can sleep at night because you have been advocating appropriately.

With pet inflation affecting 2025 and 2026, do you think technicians are scared that they are pricing people out of pet ownership?

Absolutely. It could be that.

I think it is hard for everybody because all of us are also consumers. We see price increases everywhere right now. It is not just in veterinary medicine. As consumers, we are cost-conscious and price-sensitive.

Depending on where someone is watching or listening from, there may also be different expectations around healthcare costs. I am in Ontario, Canada, where we do not get a direct bill for our own healthcare in the same way. So we do not always have a good understanding of what things actually cost, because we never see those invoices. Everything becomes relative.

One of our biggest challenges when we talk about money is perception of value. And it is not only the client's perception of value. It is often our own perception of value. I think we are not always great at perceiving our own value, especially when it comes to professional services.

Products that come in a box or a bottle feel easier to assign value to. But our actual services, our time, our education, and what those are worth can be harder for us to value appropriately. If we cannot value that appropriately ourselves, it becomes really difficult to convey that value to somebody else.

That is very interesting. How can leaders help team members connect business concepts to things they already care about?

I think you used the right word: connection.

We have to connect business-oriented concepts to things the team already cares about. That means we first need to figure out what they care about.

There is a set of questions I have used for a long time. I distribute it to the whole team and we fill it out together. It is essentially a "what is important to you" exercise.

The first section asks, "What is important to you?" For many people, that includes helping animals through things like better equipment, more continuing education, better adherence from pet parents, renovations in the practice, more services, better equipment, or a bigger team.

Then there is another section: "What is important to you for feeling supported and valued?" That includes things like wage increases and bonuses, of course, but also not feeling overworked, receiving positive feedback, getting developmental feedback, having performance evaluations, having ideas heard, and understanding the bigger picture.

Once we determine what is important to the team, then we talk about what the hospital requires in order to prioritize those things. Inevitably, it always comes down to two things: time and money.

When we realize that the things we want, value, and care about require time and money, it allows us to make the case for why we need to be more efficient, more productive, and more profitable.

It opens the door to have those conversations because we have anchored them to things the team has already said they care about.

You mentioned feeling supported, and sometimes that connects to the feeling of being overworked. There has been a lot of discussion in the veterinary community about technicians leaving the profession. Reimbursement is one reason, and underutilization is another major reason.

How can someone feel overworked, but also say that one reason for leaving the industry is underutilization? Can you give us insight into that?

I can try.

When I think about the practices I work with, what comes to mind is that sometimes people are overworked with tasks that other people could be doing. The same is true for veterinarians. It trickles down.

If veterinarians are doing technician or veterinary nurse work, and if veterinary technicians are doing work that veterinary assistants could be doing, then people do not feel as valued. They do not feel like their time is being used appropriately or like the practice is making the most of their education and expertise.

That can feel exhausting. Even if the work is easier, it is draining. It is not empowering at all, and it impacts job satisfaction.

There are also environments where people are overworked not necessarily because they are truly understaffed, but because the practice is not efficient. If there are not good systems, good protocols, appropriate utilization of people, or appropriate use of time, the team can feel like they are just spinning: working, working, working, but getting nowhere.

That leads to exhaustion and a sense of being unproductive. The team ends the day tired, but still without the outcomes they wanted. That is a real issue.

And that compounds for the business owner too, because as you mentioned, time and money are required for everything inside the practice. If you are underutilizing that license, you are really selling yourself short as well.

That is it. Exactly.

What business information should veterinary teams actually know, and how can leaders share it without it feeling overwhelming?

That ties to the earlier question. I think it is important to look at my favorite three: efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

I like talking with teams about the type of environment they want to work in. What would it look like if we were less efficient in the hospital? What would it look like if we were more efficient? What would it look like if we were less profitable or more profitable? Less productive or more productive?

When we talk about that as a group, we can discuss why it matters and how it benefits us. At the end of the day, we want to be in a place where we are more efficient, more productive, and more profitable. But what does that really mean? What do I need to contribute? What do you need to contribute? What does each person need to do in order to get there?

That is an important starting place.

Sometimes people think that if we are going to talk to the team about business, we have to get into dollars and cents and open up the books. But opening the books is not necessarily the pathway to talking about business. It depends on your team, where they are now, and what they already understand.

It can be incredibly overwhelming to start with language and dollars that do not feel relatable or connected to their daily work. A better place to start is with something they already know, already care about, and are already on board with.

For example, I will sometimes look at something the practice did in a previous year or previous season, like wellness screening. How many wellness screenings did we do in May of 2025? How many did we do in May of 2026? How many did we do in June? What do we think is possible for this June?

Make it fun. Make it a bit of a game. Yes, we may want to increase the number of wellness screenings, but not because we are trying to do something sales-driven or disconnected from care. It is because patients benefit from proactive preventive care.

So we can look at how to increase the things that matter, while recognizing that access to care still matters and not everything is a perfect fit for every client. But where something should be recommended, it should be recommended. Where we should be talking about it, we should be talking about it. When we can get someone to say, "Yes, I think that is a good idea," we do that.

Choose things the team cares about. I have done this with fecal testing too, with a fun "who cares about poo" kind of theme. It can be interesting to drive business discussions by looking at practical things the team already knows and cares about.

We do not need to dump everything on the team at once by opening books and using terminology they do not understand. We need to start by helping them get excited that when we do something that benefits patients, it benefits the business. And when we do something that benefits the business, it benefits our patients, pet parents, and team.

That is a big deal.

So start the conversation with the benefit to the patient, and then lead into the business connection.

Yes. Absolutely.

Frontline staff often see prices rising and feel guilty toward the client, especially if their own wages are not keeping up with the clinic's growth. Do you have anything to say to that?

I think this will be the case forever, unfortunately, at least to some extent.

We have to remember that whatever wage we are currently making, we only know our own situation. Some people may not make a lot of money, but they also may not have many expenses at home, so their money stretches further. Other people may make more money, but have many more expenses, so their money does not stretch as far.

It is not appropriate for us to put our own circumstances on somebody else and make assumptions about their situation.

Is it difficult to talk about money? Yes, it can be difficult, especially when we do not perceive the value. But if we do perceive the value, and we can look someone in the eye because we confidently believe it is in their pet's best interest or their best interest, then we have to do that.

We can still acknowledge that something is a big investment. I love the word investment. It is one of my favorites because it is so tied to the business piece. Framing things as an investment goes a long way. "This is an investment in Max's health" is very different from apologizing for the cost.

If we get nervous or come across like we do not believe it is a good idea, it takes away our ability to help the patient because the client will sense that. If we say, "You can do it if you want to," or "I am sorry, it is so much money," the client may start wondering whether it really is too much money. Some clients do not perceive it as expensive as we do.

We need to be mindful of how our language and choices impact someone else's perception, and we need to make sure our own bias does not shape the language we use.

Let us not shoot ourselves in the foot before we even get the recommendation out there.

Exactly.

We have been talking about the gap between what a team does every day and what they actually understand about how the practice runs. When that gap closes, everything shifts. Decisions get sharper, accountability rises, and growth stops feeling like the owner's problem and starts feeling like the team's win.

But here is the thing: most practice owners are stuck in the same gap with their marketing. You see the activity, the website, the ads, the reviews, but the connection between all of it and actual practice growth can stay murky. So you keep adding tools, spending more, and hoping something lands.

That is exactly why Ekwa Marketing built the complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting. Think of it less like a marketing call and more like a diagnostic for your practice.

You will sit down with Lila, a veterinary marketing strategist who has worked with hundreds of clinics. Together, you will look at what your marketing is actually telling you: what is bringing in new clients, what is quietly costing you, where the leaks are in your client journey, and what a focused six-month growth plan could look like for your clinic, your market, and your goals.

No more guessing. No more piling on tools and budget without clarity. You walk away seeing the full picture, the same way you want your team to see the practice.

Book your complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting at veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm. I will repeat that one more time: veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.

Ekwa only takes a limited number each month. If this resonates, grab a spot while it is open.

All right, let us get back to our conversation.

Senani, what terminology matters most? Let us get specific here. Are there any words or phrases leaders should avoid?

It does come down to how we frame things.

It is important to note that it is okay if our goal is to make money. But there are right ways to make money and wrong ways to make money. There are plenty of right ways to make money that align with our values. When we choose language, we need to make sure that is what comes across.

I have often heard practice owners or managers say to the team, "Inventory and payroll are our biggest expenses. You cost us a fortune." When we say it that way, we are communicating that pay is a burden.

Depending on the tone or mindset of the person hearing it, that can feel like a slap in the face. If someone is already feeling undervalued, they may hear, "Sorry you have to pay me." That can feel very uncomfortable.

This is where the word investment matters. Payroll is one of our largest investments in operating this hospital. When we talk about our people as an investment, which they are, we communicate that we value them.

If you do not see your people as an investment, that is a different soapbox for another day. But it is really important to recognize that payroll is an investment in operating the hospital. That tells people, "We value you. We are investing in you so we can have incredible outcomes for our patients and pet parents."

Instead of sounding cold and transactional, that brings warmth to the conversation.

Words like profit, revenue, costs, and expenses can also be confusing. Some people do not even realize that cost and expense are essentially the same thing. We need to break these words down in basic terms.

Revenue is the same as income. Revenue is how much something costs multiplied by how many times we do it or how many of them we sell. These ideas need to be laid out in a way people can understand and make sense of.

Margin versus markup is another example. We talk about markup all the time, but not everyone understands what that actually means.

At the end of the day, we run reports in the software and see a number. Some team members think that number is what the owner takes home and puts in their pocket. That could not be further from the truth.

One thing I love doing with teams is working out the hospital's break-even point for the day. That often shocks people. Sometimes the practice does not break even until noon, 1:00 p.m., or 2:00 p.m. At that point, we have only just paid for the people and the lights to be on for the day. Only then do we begin making money.

Understanding things like that is critical. It gets the team involved in the bigger-picture conversation.

When it comes to language to avoid, I think it is important not to get too complex or too in the weeds. Bring it back to basics. But do not imply that you are dumbing it down. You are not.

We are talking to people who may not have a business background. They are experts in what they do, and we want to help them develop skills in another area. It is not on them to understand everything immediately. It is on us to connect the dots appropriately, connect the information to what they care about, and talk about why these things matter to the hospital.

As I was preparing to ask that question, I was thinking about something that ties back to your first answer. What if, instead of saying "selling a treatment," we say something like "advocating for the patient"?

Instead of telling the team they have to sell a treatment, we talk about advocating for the patient. Is that a good way to go about it, or should we simplify the idea of selling a treatment into something more digestible?

Do you mean when we are talking to the pet parent, or when we are talking to each other as a team?

To our staff.

I think we can simplify it by talking about advocating. But I also want to make sure that selling or sales does not become a word we avoid altogether.

By basic definition, we are selling something. Someone has to pay for something, and that is okay. It is all right that they have to pay money for something, as long as it is something they actually need.

From a mindset perspective, we want to remind the team that they are advocating. But if we avoid the words sales or selling altogether, I think that can be to our detriment.

It is similar to people who say, "I just do not tell the team I am talking about business. I just avoid the word." But it is a business. It is a hospital, and it is a business. We work in this business, and we should take pride in the fact that it is healthy and successful.

That is where the language needs to land. We should not simplify to the point that we remove important language.

I appreciate that, because at the end of the day, we are trying to educate our own team on the business side of things. We are not trying to hide it.

No. We are empowering them.

We want them to feel excited about the knowledge they have. They do not need to run all the numbers. They do not need to have that full skill set. But they do need to understand their impact.

Every single team member has an impact. Understanding that impact is what keeps us out of trouble, honestly.

You mentioned earlier a couple of fun and practical ways to help the whole team see how their choices influence the health of the practice. Can you give us a little bit more on that?

I think we should always make things as fun as possible, especially if we are going to teach language, skills, and knowledge that open up the bigger picture.

We want the team to leverage that knowledge. That is why I like breaking down profit, revenue, costs, and expenses, because team members impact these things every day.

One thing I do with teams is use a simple framework where they insert certain words. For example: "When I give somebody a discount, I am impacting X." Is it profit? Is it revenue? What is being impacted, and why does it matter?

Another common example is when someone grabs a whole stack of gauze squares to do a nail trim, only one gets dirty, but the whole stack ends up on the floor and then in the garbage. What is the impact of that choice?

I have a whole list of these examples. When I work unapproved overtime. When I turn off the lights. When I speak up in rounds. When I attend rounds. When I do not speak up in rounds. All of these things are connected directly to the health of the business.

We can have fun with it. One of my team members created a bingo card for this. You could ask, "How many of these did we achieve?" Maybe the team earns coffee or another small reward when they hit bingo by doing a good job protecting the health of the business.

If we can look at the hospital the way we look at patients, we can recognize that it is a living, breathing thing. The things we do environmentally to it impact its ability to thrive. If we can get people thinking that way, it can be really helpful.

They need to work in a healthy business. That is in everyone's best interest.

Just like with patients, we can do things proactively. There is preventive care. We can screen for certain illnesses before symptoms appear. The same thing exists in business. The exact same thing exists in business.

If we start framing the things we need everyone to do in those terms, it allows us to normalize business conversations.

Another fun approach is to create contests. Can we drive revenue differently? Can we manage our resources differently? Managing resources, by the way, is another way of talking about cutting costs, but it is framed differently. It is about managing resources effectively so we can support patient care.

Ask the team to come up with ideas. What are three fun ways we could do this? If you only had $20 to spend, what would you buy to make our hospital more efficient? Twenty dollars is not a lot of money, so run a contest. Have everyone come up with ideas, and maybe choose the top three. It might cost you $60, and those three small changes could make the hospital more efficient.

Another exercise I like is splitting the team into groups and having them design their own hospitals. They identify goals for the business, then determine what they will prioritize and what they are willing to compromise on. Then we test their business models.

Inevitably, people want the best equipment, the best team members, a large team, strong pay, lower pricing, a decent number of patients, long appointment times, fancy equipment, and a great facility. They want all the things, but those things cannot all exist at the same time.

When we build it out, we can have conversations like, "If you want this and this, what are you going to give up over here?"

It creates interesting conversation, gives people perspective, and produces insight you would not get if you were just speaking at them. It allows them to wear the practice owner or manager hat for a little while and test things out in simple terms.

It helps them appreciate the push and pull and the balance leaders are constantly managing. We would love to give everyone everything, but that is not possible. So what is possible? Turn it into a bit of a game.

I love that. Gamify it.

Gamify everything.

Senani, we have arrived at the end of our podcast. I would love for you to give us a golden takeaway. What is the one key takeaway for our listeners from this conversation?

The one key takeaway is: do not underestimate what the team is capable of understanding when it comes to the business and their impact on it.

Everyone plays a role in how the business operates. Yes, when you say, "I want to talk to you about the business," everyone might scrunch up their faces and say, "No, I do not want to." But it is just the word and the optics around it.

It is not that they do not want to be empowered. We like being empowered. We like knowing things.

Make a real effort to empower the team with information that allows them to see a bigger picture, because it will pay off. It will pay off tenfold. The more they understand, the more they can contribute in a positive way, feel confident in how they are doing it, and make leadership easier.

That would be my key takeaway.

Amazing. Thank you very much, Senani. How can our listeners get in touch with you and your work at Motivatum?

Absolutely. You can email me at senani@imotivatum.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I would be happy to connect there and go from there.

And of course, I work at Vet Alliance. So if you are in Canada and you are an independently owned practice, we would love to hear from you in that regard as well. I work with our members all the time and love doing it. It is a membership that pays for itself, and we would love to have you be a member.

Amazing. Thank you once again to Senani.

And if you are listening and you are ready to build a practice where your team feels capable, valued, and aligned with where the business is going, it starts with the right strategy.

Book your free Marketing Strategy Meeting at veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm. I will repeat that one last time: veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.

I am Don Adeesha, and this has been The Veterinary Business Podcast. We will see you next time. Take care, everyone.