What the Future Demands of Veterinary Practices Across Compliance, Culture, Growth and Innovation

Hello. Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Veterinary Business Institutes Monthly Summit series. I'm thrilled you have joined us for a conversation that promises to be both practical and inspiring. Give me one minute to share my screen. All right, let me introduce the person who truly brings this veterinary community together. That's Nen. Racha Nen is the founder and the co-host of the Veterinary Business Podcast and the CEO of iqua marketing. With more than 18 years of experience in healthcare marketing, and as a Kni certified professional, he's recognized authority on veterinary growth and strategy. Nore is passionate about helping practices thrive with smart data-driven approaches that create lasting impact and sustainable success.

Under his leadership, Equa Marketing has spent nearly two decades delivering cutting edge digital marketing solutions, created specifically for veterinary practices, from beautiful build websites and precise core tracking to advanced SEO and strategic advertising. Their outstanding 95% of client retention rate says it all about the measurable results and long-term partnership they provide. So Equa is the main sponsor for tonight event, and we are truly grateful. All right, let me just also take a moment to remind you of the Veterinary Business Podcast, which drops new episodes every Thursday at 5:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. As you can see from this slide, the Veterinary Business Podcast covers a wide range of topics and dis discussion with industrial leaders, experts, and practice owners.

You can find these podcasts@veterinarybusinessinstitutes.com, and I just encourage you, it's a great source of best practices, innovative ideas, inspiration, and great thought leadership as well. So make sure you check those out as well. You might see some familiar faces in this slide. All right, so tonight we turn our attention to what the future demands of veterinary practices, looking closely at four key factors that will shape success, compliance, culture, growth, and innovation. So here's how we are shaping tonight. As you can see, we'll move, move through six focused sessions, each led by one of our amazing panelists covering all those four key factors that will shape success.

And to wrap things up, we set aside the final 10 minutes just for you, an open q and a where you can bring your questions, ideas, and challenges directly to our experts when we are live. This is an amazing chance for you. Alright, let me introduce myself. I'm Shahara, you can call me Jay. And I have the privilege of being your host for today's session at the Veteran Business Institute. I manage live events summits designed to create engaging and practical learning experience for veterinary professionals. My background is in psychology and human resource management, and what truly drives me is bringing people together, sparking conversations, building connections, and creating opportunities that make a real impact on our profession and on society.

All right, now let's meet the incredible panelist who will be sharing their wisdom with us tonight. First, I'd like to introduce Dr. Amanda Landis. Hannah. She's the Chief Veterinary Officer for One Health Group and the Make Voice, which is a biometric monitoring device for animals. She's also a co-host of the Veterinary Business Podcast, with over 20 years of experience in small animal, mixed, exotic shelter and corporate medicine. She has also worked extensively in research industry and nonprofit animal welfare, a frequent national speaker and board member of several veterinary organizations. Dr. Amanda is passionate about expanding access to veterinary care, advancing research and education, and supporting mental health in animal care.

So welcome to the webinar, Dr. Amanda. All right. Next I'd like to introduce Heather Printer Guest. She's the president, synergy president of Synergy, VE Veterinary Consulting Group, a registered veterinary technician and certified veterinary practice manager over 30 years in the veterinary field, including 20 years in small animal practice, an accomplished author and educator. She has written multiple industrial leading textbooks, including the newly released fourth edition of practice Management for the Veterinary Team, Heather Lectures nationally and internationally focusing on leadership, team culture and workflow optimization to help veterinary practices thrive.

So welcome to the webinar, Heather. All right. Next I'd like to introduce Dr. Karen Bolton. She is a veterinarian business strategist and ethical AI advocate, and the founder of the business Wet with over 15 years of clinical experience spanning animals, exotic and shelter medicine, plus an MBA in innovation and management, Dr. Bolton helps practices streamline operations, strengthen brand strategy, and integrate AI responsibly. She also serves as head veterinarian at Grand Strand Human Society, and is a sought offer speaker and educator guiding veterinary teams to further pro future proof their workflow while keeping compassionate care at the heart of their mission.

So welcome to the webinar, Dr. Baldon. Next I would like to introduce Stacy Gantry. She is an operational coach with Blue Heron Consulting and a seasoned veterinary practice consultant and culture builder. With over 20 years in veterinary medicine from client services to practice, owner Stacy has led hospitals through growth, cultural transformation, and leadership development. Today, she focuses on coaching practice managers and teams helping them create workplaces while leadership shines and both people and practices thrive. So welcome to the panel, Stacy. Alright, finally, I would like to introduce Kim LANs. She is a veterinary practice consultant with Synergy Veterinary Consulting Group and a recognized leadership and compliance expert, a registered veterinary technician and certified practice manager.

Kim has lead teams as a hospital administrator and multi-site operations leader, turning complex challenges into data-driven actionable solutions. She's passionate about helping practices strengthen leadership, streamline compliance, and achieve their goals with clarity and confidence. So welcome to the webinar, Kim. All right, amazing. So, today we will be exploring some exciting themes that are shaping the future of veterinary care. We'll talk about how to stay ahead of compliance changes using smart tools and systems to simplify regulations and protect your practice, and also how to build a winning culture, creating a workplace that attracts and retain top veterinary talents and ways to unlock smarter growth with marketing automation and client engagement tools that drive profitability, and how to harness innovation from telemedicine to AI and streamlined work workflows that keep you future ready.

And also how to gain financial clarity using the right tools to track and strengthen your financial health. And finally, how to future proof your practice by bringing all these pieces together into a strategy built for long-term success. So having said that all, let's go ahead and get started. All right. To start off, I'd like to turn to Dr. Amanda for a conversation on improving access and wellbeing in veterinary care. All right, Dr. Amanda, to open this question, open this discussion. I'd like to ask you, what do you see as the biggest barrier to accessible veterinary care right now? And what first steps can clinics take today to begin overcome overcoming them?

Absolutely. Thanks again for having me on. so it's a really interesting question that you pose because there's not one simple, straightforward answer. The challenges with accessible veterinary care largely depend on the barriers that a particular family may be facing. So one family may be facing a transportation barrier. How do I get access to a veterinary team whereas another family may be facing a language barrier? How do I, best communicate, or get my needs translated in such a way that I can have an open flow of conversation and communication? There are other barriers as well. there are things like social stigmas that have to be taken into account, and of course, the, the one that so many people think of is socioeconomics.

You know, what, what are the financial barriers that a family may be facing? And it's also important to keep in mind that any particular, pet family may be facing one or multiple of these barriers. And the financial barrier that family a is facing will not look the same as the financial barrier that Family Z is facing. These are all individual families, and rather than take a blanket approach of, oh, we're just gonna, you know, shave our fees by 5%, and that's gonna address everything, that's a, a inappropriate way to address it. Now, in some cases, a discount or a sliding scale of fees may be appropriate, however, it's more important to get to the source.

What is the root cause of the issue? Is it that a client doesn't understand the value of a particular service? Is it that the client understands the value of the particular service, but feels judged for asking for help? Is it that the family feels like they can do it, but they can't pay it all upfront? I mean, honestly, I can't speak for all of the speakers, but if someone said to me, this happened to your pet, if you can't provide $5,000 right now, this minute things are not gonna go appropriately, or things are not gonna go well, and that's emotionally burdening to, to a particular pet family, even if they have the financial means to do it. Getting that kind of shocking financial news creates a barrier in and of itself.

So I think when we're looking at how can we take first steps to address some of these barriers, the place that I always suggest is coming from a place of compassion and empathy, understanding that the individual, the family that is bringing their pet in loves that pet enough that they are willing to cross the threshold. And we all know that not, not everyone can or chooses to cross the threshold into your hospital. So meeting people where they are better understanding what their goals are and what their needs are can make a big difference. It may be that providing a discounted service or providing access to, veterinary specific, credit lines may not be the most appropriate.

but instead they need services that can be provided around a schedule where that pet family can work because they can make the money to do it, but maybe they work on third shift. So I think it's most important when addressing some of these barriers to really get into the concept and meet the family in a compassionate way to say, what are your challenges? I am here to help your pet and to be an advocate for your pet, but the only way I can advocate for your pet is by advocating with you through you. No decision will be made without that pet parent on board. So how do we work in order to be engaged with the pet, parent and family as a sole unit, as a team working for the benefit of the pet, rather than coming from a place of judgment or disbelief of why would a person make this choice?

Why wouldn't a person make this other choice? Sometimes we make choices and now we have to move forward from whatever those choices were understanding that pet parent is there seeking your knowledge. Right. That's amazing. Sometimes we see a barrier or a challenge from a client that must be their choice, as you mentioned. So to understand the root cause of that barrier or particular challenge, you need to be, as you mentioned, compassionate and empathetic. That's amazing. so my second question to you, Dr. Amanda, is how can veterinarians balance high quality care with the mental health and wellbeing of their teams? I am happy to, answer that Heather looked like she had a comment, and certainly the wellbeing of teams as well within her bailiwick.

So I'd love to hear what she has to say before I give my variation on the answer. Thank you for that, Dr. Amanda. I did wanna come back to your, our barriers that we often see with, with financial care. And I think that we as veterinary team members most often assume that when a client is, maybe stunned by the price that it is a, that they don't have the financial means. But there's, and that's our assumptions on our part because of that, that is most, most of the times our experience. But I wanna share a story that was very impacting for me. That is, a way to, again, coming back to seeking to understand, and this was a client that came into a practice and it was a little kitty that was very sick and needed surgery.

It ended up being an intestinal foreign body. And it was a young gentleman, 20 years old, he couldn't afford, they thought he couldn't afford care because he was not communicating back. He was in shock. And when the veterinarian, when the team gave up, the veterinarian went in to seek to understand, and she asked a bit more information and said, what can I do to help you? He says, it's not a money thing. I have the money to pay for this, but I'm 20 years old and I've just been entered into hospice because I have less than three weeks left to live, and I don't know if my kid's even gonna be alive when I die, or what's gonna happen to my kitty. I care so much about this kitten and I just wanna know that he's gonna be taken care of.

That was his concern. And so it was just about going beyond that, and he had the money to pay for it. They found a home. They, he met the, the soon to be parents, and he only lived two weeks, but that was his wish to make sure his kid felt well. So I just wanted to really emphasize that it's not always money, but we unintentionally assume that's what it is, and let's seek more to understand from those clients. Thank you. Thanks for that insight. It's absolutely wonderful, Heather, because as we have more conversations around accessible veterinary care, and as we are learning more about compassionate language and trauma informed communication in, in exam rooms, we, we have more tools available to us to seek, to understand and to engage as a human to a human, as opposed to a directive of, I will now preach to you about exactly what you need to be doing and what one person needs is not the same thing that another person needs, even if their cases are identical.

so I think you raise a really good point, in regards to providing high quality care and the impact on mental health. I'm an avid mental health, proponent within the industry. I'm very open about my own challenges with anxiety, and I think that one of the things that, we can do as an industry as a whole, as well as supporting the mental health of our clients too, is to try and help break down some of those barriers. I know personally when I walk into an exam room and I get the large bug-eyed, petrified look on the face of a client, I need to seek to meet them where they're at. And that is my role primarily as the veterinarian. And if I'm then able to help bridge that gap so that when I relay this to my veterinary team members, they can go in with even more compassion and provide additional layers of support from different angles.

Whereas potentially in the past, I've been practicing a really long time. I'm really old in the past, a veterinarian might have tried to relay most of these kind of, emotion inducing, pieces through the veterinary team as opposed to trying to meet the client where they were at that particular point in time as the primary face of healthcare. I think we have moved away from that, and we are utilizing the team as a whole so that not all of the burden of the emotional, the emotions related to the case, the emotions of this particular situation are resting solely on a veterinarian, a technician, a hospital manager, but instead are being discussed and shared so that the, overall burden isn't being carried by one individual.

I think we've also done a really good job recently with understanding different ways that, veterinary teams, through good leadership and through good culture, can find ways, can find healthier outlets to address some of these, types of concerns. But my ultimate comment, is that providing some care is better than no care. Providing compassion is better than no medicine, providing pain relief, providing analgesia, maybe that's the only thing you can do, but that is worthwhile too. So knowing that there is always one step, one teeny tiny step that can be made for the pet parent and for the patient to address those needs can move you that much closer so that maybe the team member may feel like, gosh, I really want that patient to get a $5,000 surgery, but it's just not in the cards.

But today I provided pain relief today, I was compassionate with that pet parent when we talked about the need for euthanasia today. I gave scratches and pats and rubs and a treat as we were doing something that was more uncomfortable for that patient. And in all of those instances, maybe it's free, maybe it's cheap, maybe it's small, but I can do something every single day, every single patient to make that patient's life better. And I think that can provide all of us with a greater sense of self empathy as well. That's, that's amazing to listen to you. I think the key here is getting to other person's shoe and like look at it. Right. This is amazing.

And, finally, I want to ask from you, can you share an example of an innovative approach or a tool that has transformed patient care or patient practice efficiency? Mm-hmm. There's so many different, technologies that have come to market in the last 10 years, let alone in the last year, that have really modified, patient, care and quality of efficiencies. Everything from electronic medical records, scribe services, AI tools. the one that I am most excited about, and it is because I am personally and emotionally, invested in it, is remote patient monitoring. So, being able to monitor patients, whether they are in an exam room and you're monitoring them, say for instance, in a different area of the hospital, whether you've got a patient in, say, emergency and critical care, and you have all of those patients, up on a whiteboard where you're able then to manage the flow for each of those patients.

Remote patient monitoring can allow you to be more efficient with triage, can be more efficient with diagnostics, because you have more information from an objective perspective, it collects that data. So unlike old school veterinarians such as myself, that likes to still physically write everything out and then come back later and type stuff in, that you have that all collected in a central record. There's tons of different types of remote patient monitoring. we see some of them in surgical cases. We see, some that are more like pedometer types of, equipment where, it can be, you know, sort of a clip-on. We've seen GPS trackers. Those are less medical in orientation, but they are great for helping identify, certain things.

the ones that I spend a lot of my time working with and really focusing on are medical devices that can be sent home with patients. The one that everybody thinks of first is, is a Holter monitor. And we've had Holter monitors for years, and you get it through your cardiologist and you rent it and it goes home for a while and you get the data back, all of which is great. But now we are at an age where we can do things like send home a blood pressure monitor overnight and get accurate blood pressure readings from your dogs and cats when they're at home, rather than the stressed out version that we get when we're in our hospital. We can send home remote patient monitors after a surgery to be able to determine what is our pain control post-op.

We're also able to, utilize things like remote patient monitoring to evaluate long-term care, whether it's for hospice, whether it's for long-term neoplastic care, weight loss care. So these can be utilized in very short, per acute timeframes all the way up to longer term or chronic uses. And I think each of the types of remote patient monitors that are coming onto market, not only now but will be launching in market there, there is a very exciting, spur that's going to be happening, over the next 18 months. And, I certainly encourage everyone to keep an eye out on it. I will be dropping hints as, as I'm allowed to tell people things. but there are really unique monitors that if there's things that you're looking for, somebody is probably working on it.

and if you don't find it, ask for it. Because what we can do now through science, through ai, through remote patient monitoring now just blows my mind. and being able to ask for what you need as a clinician, what your team needs to improve their quality of flow, what your patients need to have overall better care, those are the types of things that can be developed if we know what the needs are. That's amazing. I think the technology is evolving very fast, and there are so many things that you can inculcate in your practice to enhance the quality of your practice as you, as you men, like very correctly mentioned. there might be so many, devices or trackers or whatever it is not, might be not related to like the medical field, but still you can inculcate them to enhance the quality of your service.

Mm-hmm. this is amazing. So thank you so much for that, Dr. Amanda. You're welcome. All right, next, let me share my screen again for a minute. There you go. I hope we can see the screen. All right. Next, I'd like to bring in Nareen a Raja to talk about how modern clinics attract and keep loyal pet parents. Hi, Nareen, very nice to see you. Yes. Hi. Hi. hi. Hi. so nice to see you, today and, thank you for hosting this event. and I also wanna take a minute to thank all of our panelists and, all of our attendees as, as, as a founder of this community. I really appreciate everyone and everyone who's making this an awesome community. So thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. All right, nen, so my first question for you is, many practices struggle to turn first time visitors into long-term clients, right? That is the main challenge. From your perspective, what key shift can help clinics build loyalty that truly lasts? Yeah, so the question is, what's the key shift clinics need to make to build loyalty, right? Exactly. Yes, correct. Thank you. so those of you who don't know me, I have been working with veterinary practice owners for the last 18 years, so I know a thing or two. And I remember 14 years ago when I visited, four different practices, and kind of really got to work in those practices for a couple hours each, over a two day, two, two to three hours each, over a two day period.

And I learned a ton. So this is coming from my experience working with veterinary practices. And, you know, what I'm noticing today, I think the biggest challenge is, sometimes the world happens to us and the world that happens to us influences us, right? So there used to be a time, not too long ago during COVID, the number of, pet parents increased and the amount of money people's pet spent on pets went up through the roof. So things were easy, right? There's so much money, and they couldn't go for a movie. They couldn't go to a restaurant, they couldn't go on a vacation. So they spent a lot of money on pets because pets became the companion, both for those with kids and those without kids.

So, there's overwhelming demand. And then of course, all of that drived up and, you know, inflation and all kinds of other economic challenges and, that people are facing now, you re really need to, do a good job in attracting and keeping clients. So, so in, in the, in those days, the COVID days, it's all about taking care of as many people as possible and not necessarily building long-term relationships. So practices, I think, went after this, you know, let me treat the emergency of the day, whether it's a vaccination or an illness or any other kind of whatever the patient or the client needs today, versus how do we build a lifelong relationship with these clients?

How do we, so they, they stop being relationship driven. So I do think that's one of the main things, the ones who are struggling, the root cause of that. So not being relationship driven. and, and also I think, if you think about those who, like, I mean, I, I know my daughter, she's 23 and she got her first puppy and you know, she got her insurance for the puppy and you know, she got all the vaccines and she spends like two hours a day, you know, walking the puppy. I hope I, I'll wait and see how long all this is gonna last, but at least she's starting with this idea of, here is somebody that's very important to me, and she won't even like visit us.

She lives in Vancouver for more than a day or two because she doesn't want to, you know, leave the puppy. she can't bring it in the plane. And, you know, you can't, she doesn't want the puppy to be traveling in the cargo area. So she, she won't even come for more than two days because she wants to be able to go back and take care of the puppy. Anyways. So my point is, there are those, those kind of pet parents who really care about their, animals and they're willing to invest in them, but are you building trust and c and con confidence with those kind of pet parents? And then also, are you using technology, right? Many of these, pet parents are young people, like, are you using automated reminders?

Are you using client portals? Are you using digital communication? you know, too, so that it's kind of like the right kind of experience for them versus, or call me and call and wait on hold and, you know, nobody answers and they don't wanna leave a voicemail. Like all of those mistakes. That's the second thing I see a lot of practices struggle with. And then finally, I think many practice owner practice owners don't have a great onboarding process. So what I mean by that is, you know, like that first impression either ends up creating a lifelong client for you or doesn't, like, unfortunately, like, you know, I have, you know, I have a pet who's 12 years old and, we have bounced around from veterinarian to veterinarian because we never really felt there was anybody who really took the time to get to know us, get to know our pet, or even care about us.

In other words, that first experience and obviously subsequent experiences, almost like it's all like reactive as opposed to proactive. What does a proactive experience look like? You know, welcoming people, you know, explaining how, you know, how they should, educating them on how they should be thinking about their pets. And, you know, creating some kind of a schedule to maintain that relationship using technology to keep those relationships warms and only, and not only just, you know, treating them when they call and come in for an emergency or a problem, but rather making it proactive and getting the pet parents to engage. So I do think like technology, not having a relationship approach and obviously not having an awesome onboarding process are some of the key reasons.

I think, you know, practices are struggling. of course during COVID time you didn't need any of this, right? Like, because there's too much, you know, money to go around and too much need to be solved, but those days are gone, so we have to now get back to it and do those fundamental things that are critical for success. Yes, I think that's a, that's such a practical way to think about it. 'cause it's, it's not about today's appointment, it's about earning trust for every stage of that pet's life for that you have so many technology out there, it's evolving like too fast. So yeah. That's, that's amazing. alright, so my second question is, what role does digital marketing play in attracting the right pet parents, not just more clients?

Yeah, that's a great question. again, like everything I described in, in terms of why practices are struggling, it kind of is a reactive response to being a practice owner versus a proactive, right? Everything I was recommending is about being proactive. It's, you know, same way I think in marketing also, a lot of people have been reactive. So what are they doing that's not working? You know, they run, they do random social media posts, they run random ads, there's no strategy or cohesion. They don't know what their ideal customer profile is. They don't customize their marketing and their messaging to that ideal customer profile. Do you want those pet parents, you know, who only come in when there's a problem?

Or do you want those pet parents who will keep coming in and who will spend, you know, $500,000 every year for the life of that pet, right? And who are proactively taking care of their pets. Like, for example, dental visits and, you know, nutrition and shorts and all the other things that are important for the, the wellbeing and the health of the pet, right? So once you know your ICP, is your marketing resonating with that, right? For example, you know, if you are attracting, you know, pet parents who care about quality, who care about relationships, what are some of the keywords you can use to attract those pet parents? Like for example, you know, when these people are looking for you, like, my daughter literally moved to Vancouver, so she didn't know any veterinarian, so she used Google to figure out who she should make her, you know, home, make her pet's home and her home, right?

Of course, she did a lot of research. She, you know, Googled a lot of people, looked at a lot of reviews, you know, looked at, you know, called a few offices kind of even gauged on the way they answered the phone. And you know, how they responded to her. Do they, like, do they want her there? Or they were just like, you know, just answering questions like, you know, like, you know, like as if like they're just going through emotions, right? Did you feel like the pet will be taken care of? So all these little signals people are looking at and, you know, have you run an audit? Have you looked at your digital marketing? So for example, on the digital marketing front, like when you people start googling, are you showing up again and again for whatever they're googling without an ad organically, right?

With an ad they don't trust you. and then when I go to your webpages, do I see relevant content that makes you fall in love with your practice? Do I see like a pet that looks like mine? You know, do I see a friendly and helpful team, welcoming me? Do I see educational content that's, that makes me want to be part of your service? Because you are really focused on not only the, the, the, the so immediate problem that the pet owner has, but the wellbeing and the health of the pet. And of course, you know, catering to the pet, pet owners. So all of these little, little things, is your marketing doing all that? If it's not, then I think you need to change.

If I can leave you with one thought, are you being strategic? Are you starting with the end in mind and are you developing a marketing plan that attracts the right patients the right way? Are using all these signals all the way from showing up on Google to Google reviews to those pictures and videos I talked about? Or you're just being reactive, throwing dots here, throwing dots there and hoping and praying something works if you're reactive. You know, for example, if you run an ad about discount, for example, you're not gonna attract patients, pet parents who care about quality. So obviously you're gonna, it's kind of like in the old days we had something called Groupon, right?

Those of us who can still remember Groupon is dead now because the people who wanna deal are not the right patients for you, right? Not right clients for you. So that's, I think one of the reasons I think digital marketing is, is, is broken today. Amazing. I think marketing yourself is how you showcase yourself out there. That is how you can attract the right clients, right? Right. People, to give your service. alright, n so when you look at clinics that are thriving today, what marketing strategy are they using that others often overlook? Yeah, that's a great, great question. So I'm gonna answer it in four buckets, right? Step one is, if you wanna attract the right people, you need to show up at the right time.

For example, you know, best veterinary in near me, are you showing up and are you showing up organically? Right? If you are not the person who really cares about quality, you might be the best veterinarian or you might be the highest quality veterinarian. They don't even know you exist. So if they don't even know that you exist, how can you blame them? Or how can you blame anybody for the fact that the patient who cared about quality can't find you? Right? That's your fault. So a good way to know that if you're doing well is it's kind of like a all or nothing game when it comes to Google. Google makes so much money from ads. So they make getting organic rankings almost impossible.

Like five, less than 5% of you will get all the free traffic. So start typing in keywords. Are you showing up for all these keywords organically on the maps, below the maps? And not just 1 0 2, but dozens and dozens in your town, in your zip code in your area? So that's one thing I think people who are doing right are doing because they are the right place at the right time. When these people who care about these things are looking for a veterinarian like you. Second online reputation, are you getting 10 more Google reviews? If you're not getting 10 more Google reviews, at least, and ideally what I call love letter or paragraph reviews, you are not, you're not good enough.

I'm sorry, but not, not in 2025. Ask yourself, go to your Google Review page, look at the most recent reviews, count the reviews, literally. And if you don't see 10 oh more five star reviews in the last 10 days, you have something to work on. Educational content, right? You know, are you educating your people like we talked about, you know, the ideal client profile, right? Like that young educated, you know, pet parent for whom this is, this pet is like a child, you know, are you talking to them? Do you have videos? You do, you, are you explaining things to them? Are you like really, really focusing on communicating in a way that they understand not all the, you know, technical mumbo jumbo and all the knowledge you have as a, you know, doctor, but rather in a way that they can understand, they can relate to, they can get their questions answered.

'cause remember sale and the, the, you know, getting, you know, wanting to, wanting to come to your practice is happening online. Those educational content will really make a difference. And finally are using data to make decisions. For example, you know, like how many keywords am I ranking for? How many phone calls am I getting? What's my conversion rate? is the percentage of new clients who are calling my office who end up booking my, booking an appointment? What's my missed call percentage? Imagine you have, you're getting a hundred new pa, new clients calling you, but you are only booking 30%. You have a huge leak, you know, so you might be spending a lot of money on marketing, but 70% of that money, you know, is going to waste 70% of, new pa new clients are not booking.

Why? Because that phone experience is not optimized. Do you know your conversion rate? Do you have any kind of ongoing training and development program? Not just once in a while, but every month to check the conversion rate and coach people so they know how to, how to, you know, respond to 2025 again, what used to work in 2023 doesn't work today. So you have to keep your skills updated, especially in the world that we live in today. That's amazing. Aaron, I would like to sum up what you said. So to attract right people, you need to show up at the right time and you need to get 10 plus at least, five star Google reviews, right? And you need to educate people, plus you need to take decisions based on data, alright?

Correct. right. Alright, finally, I would like to ask from you, oh, no, we have one more question. All right, so my fourth question is, if a practice feels stuck busy but not growing, right, why should they start in evaluating their client retention strategy? Yeah, that's a great, you know, great, great question to ask. If you are stuck, you need to get to the root cause. And I think one of the areas I would look at is that experience we talked about. Are you relationship driven? Do you have a good, you know, good, onboarding process? Are you using technology? So I would start looking at those internal issues and I would start fixing them because think of it like, you know, if you get a new client and you, and you work really hard with marketing, but those clients don't say stay, they just come once and never come back or come every three to four years, your business is broken, it won't work, right?

When you, when you have, when you invest in technology, when you pay your rent, and when you pay your people, well, that kind of business doesn't work, even training, right? Because remember, most of their experience is not with you the veterinarian slash practice owner, but it's with your team. Do they know how to educate? Do they know how to build relationships? Do they know how to, you know, cater to your patients? Are you educating them? Do you have any educational programs? Do you have any, you know, certification programs for your team? So really look internally and fix all these things, right? Even like when it comes to technology, are you using, you know, automated reminders?

Are you using digital portals? Are you using texting? So clients can easily interact with you, right? Today's generation, they don't want to like get on the phone and talk to somebody. They want to like do things by text as an example, right? Are, are you keeping up, you know, with 2025? So those are some of the easy things I would look at if you feel stuck because you know, what's the point of fixing marketing till you fix what's going on inside? That's true. It makes me think about how every small touch point from reminders to follow ups can become a growth moment. All right, my final question to you, Norine, for practices that want a clear step by step plan to attract and keep loyal pet parents, what is the next best step that they can take after this session?

Yes, I mean, the obvious is the obvious. If you're not attracting enough of the right kind of parents, you know you're gonna struggle, right? So you have to fix it so you can't ignore it and ignore it and fix everything else. So if that's your problem, you're not attracting the right kind of pet parents and enough of them to keep your business viable, then you need to fix that. So, i would do what we call a marketing audit. for example is, is your website reflecting and attractive to your ICP? Is your website ranking for keywords like veterinary and near me veterinarian in my zip code? You know, cat doctor, you know, near me, you know, whatever the keywords or even cost or different kinds of shots, whatever they are looking for when they find you, if you're not ranking for hundreds of those keywords, then you have a problem.

do you have recent reviews? Remember I said, are you getting 10 or more Google reviews every month? If you're not, fix it. Create a plan. And one of the things we do with our clients is teach them how to do this, right? How do you get 10 or more love letter paragraph reviews a month? how is your communications, the reminders, the follow ups? Now, I, I'm touching on communication twice, both as one of your internal systems and one of your marketing systems because just because they booked, that's still not enough. You have to be on top of things. People are busy these days and they forget. So reminding them, and, you know, and also understanding your clients.

Some people, they'll keep their appointments. You just need to send a reminder. That's all they need to do. Others, they totally always no-show. So who are those 10% who always no-show? Don't, don't book an appointment with them. Rather tell them you are on my VIP list, which means, you know, anytime there's an opening, I'll text you and if you're available, you text me back or you let me know, you know, through the system and I'll give you a spot. But that way, like you are not wasting your time, but rather you're putting all these people who are always flaky to show up, you know, at a time when you have an open spot. So let's say a spot opened up, you can text 10 people and two people text back and you confirm it with one person, right?

So simple methods understand, like, you know, everyone is different. Some people are very, you know, dependable and some are not. So understand your clients, don't, you know if they are the way they are, work with that, right? Understand them and you know, support them. and I think one of the best things you can do is we do offer what's called a marketing audit of, sometimes we call it a marketing strategy meeting. And the link is veterinary business institute dot, dot com slash msm for marketing strategy meeting. And we spend six hours studying you, your competition, tell you how you're doing and all these things. How are your website? How is your SEO how are you doing on Google reviews?

We'll give you a kind of like a report card so you know where you stand versus your competition. Also, we will give you a roadmap. So does doesn't matter where you are, how do you get to the top 5%? How do you dominate? How do you like master the art of attracting this ideal client? And then how do you, take it all the way till the phone rings? When the phone rings? Then you need to get conversion rates. So that's something again, we do as part of our service. We listen to the calls. We'll tell you how many you are booking, how many you're not booking, you know, how many, missed calls. So you can also improve that. Once you improve this, then it's just a matter of just keeping it running.

Like you start, put the oil, it's kind of like a car, a nice car, a reliable car. Once it's working, you just need to maintain it. It'll just get better and better and better. And the technique that I shared with you, which is organic driven means every year you will, your results will improve, right? With ads every year, things get more expensive with organic, every year things improve. So those are my tips. go to that link, book that marketing strategy meeting and you will learn a ton. Thank you so much. Narin. I want to add into that as well. I think this pre-marketing strategy meeting with Lila Stone, the marketing DI director from the Veterinary Business Institute.

So here's what makes it valuable. Lila will actually spend more time researching your online presence as Noreen mentioned, your competition, your local SEO, and then come to the call with a set of customized recommendations just for your practice. So you can see the QR code and, scan it right now or you can see the link in the chat as well. So I encourage you to grab that opportunity, that is giving you as a thank you for participating this event tonight. Alright, NEN, thank you so much for your wisdom sharing your experience and everything. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Shahara. I really enjoyed this conversation and I also once again, wanna thank everyone here. Thank you.

Alright. Amazing. Have a great day. Alright, next, let me share my screen again. All right, next up I'd like to bring in Heather to talk about optimizing veterinary teams for success. Hi Heather, I hope you're ready. All right, my first question to you is, from your experience, what key factors most influence the creation of a truly positive culture inside of veterinary practice? There are so many factors that contribute to the culture and the efficiency within a practice. And every, in, in my view, everything that a leader does is what impacts client service. And that experience, just as Naren had talked about. And, it impacts team retention, it impacts the marketing, it impacts everything.

And so leadership for me is, is it's about what we do as leaders that we impact our team. If we are a leader that people want to follow, that people want to work with, work beside, if we are influential in our roles, all of these other pieces are going to fit. But if we are not a great leader, then we set up a poor culture and we have a poor culture. People hate what they do. So the clients and patients suffer for that. Our team retention or team, turnover rate skyrockets. We are hiring multiple people every year. We cannot get training or onboarding ahead of ourselves. And so I think that all of it just kind of creates a trickle down effect. So I often think of leadership as being the number one priority, that as owners, practice managers, lead technicians, lead CSRs, they're all responsible for creating leadership in a hospital.

And so many times leadership is put on the owner and the practice manager and nobody else, has responsibility for it. But I think of it as a credential veterinary technician as leading the team. And they need to lead from the middle up. Our, our receptionist leader is gonna lead from the receptionist team in that middle and lead up. We all impact people. But it starts with, definitely starts with the practice owner and the practice manager or the medical director that is in that role. And I think about, modeling the way. So, so when we go in and we do practice cons, consults, and we listen to what the leaders have said, the issues in the hospital are, and we go in to look for those things, it's usually things like my team procrastinates.

They don't wanna go in the rooms, they don't provide good client education. They are lazy, they're always on their phones. So we observe what is everybody doing in the hospital. And nine times out of 10, the leader is doing everything that they complain about that the team is doing. We are the leaders that demonstrate the behaviors that give everybody else on the team permission to act that same way. So a key takeaway is if you see some behaviors that are happening in the team that's leading to poor culture or poor efficiency, poor optimization, it starts with a look in the mirror. What am I doing to impact the behaviors of our team that is leading to the poor experience?

Am I not providing education correctly? Am I not, being a leader and demonstrating the values of our hospital? Am I not implementing techniques to achieve our goals, which is usually our practice mission and our vision? And those are always the things that are left off the board. So, so leadership is about helping to achieve goals, but it's also embracing and lifting the team to also achieve those goals, which always includes efficiency. If team members don't know what our practice goals are, they're just coming to work, they have a job. But if they know what those practice goals are and it embraces the efficiency, then they are going to find ways to be more efficient with their time.

We are gonna be able to utilize their strengths. We are going to then have a much more efficient team that wants to do it because they're internally motivated versus externally mo, externally motivated. And I think of the two as internally is 'cause I wanna do the right things. Even if my leader's not there externally, I'm motivated 'cause I'm getting a paycheck. Well, as a leader, I wanna grow a team that is internally motivated, they wanna be here, they're gonna make the right decisions, they know how to make the right decisions because they know what our values are, they know where we are going. And when we create that autonomy with our team, efficiency increases, cultures impacted significantly, and we also significantly impact our team retention.

So I think all of those are important. More factors are going into that. I think of psychological safety, emotional intelligence, being able to respond appropriately to our team members, responding to cultural crisis with empathy and compassion and seeking to understand as we've already addressed as well. And, leading from that point and creating some clarity and transparency. I, as a leader still always learn in my role every day that I'm not always as clear as I think I am. I think I'm crystal clear, so why can't you understand me? But many times I am not clear for my team to be able to understand. And if they are afraid, if I've created an environment of, an unsafe, psychologically unsafe environment, they're not gonna be willing to ask questions.

They're just gonna kind of go along with it and try to figure it out and hope that they are going down the right path. So that psychological safety plays such a big part of that. and one last piece is, I want people to love their job in our hospital because when they love their job, they love the people, our clients and just like, we just talked about in, in having a dog that is gonna have to go to a boarding Ken, no, a dog that has to fly underneath the airplane. No, we have a little dog here at home, it's my husband's princess, and we can no longer travel because he can't take her with him. And that has impacted, our life significantly. And there's nobody that can provide the best care well enough for her, not even me, who's been here forever.

So, leadership impacts that. I want our team to, to be in a place that they love and be able to care for high end clients that really care and have fear for their babies. That's very true. I think as you mentioned, leadership is the key to create a positive culture. So, you need to, you need both of you, you and the team needs to be on the same page. Your practice goals should be aligned with your team's individual goals. So mm-hmm. That's, that's a, good point, for our audience. All right, my next question for you, Heather, is how can practice leaders effectively leverage their team's strengths to improve efficiency and patient care? Something we already talked about, but we would like to hear more.

I think the, the everybody has different set of strengths on our team, and we want to celebrate that we should be celebrating that. What I see most of the time in hospitals is that we focus on everybody's weaknesses and we're gonna try to grow their weaknesses. And I think that, that, that is the wrong way to take it. Let's focus on the strengths that they have and let's continue growing those strengths. Because when we find their passions, we are gonna lift those weaknesses too. And so if I can find that somebody loves the client interaction is more of a external, or excuse me, an as somebody that loves to have conversations with the client, somebody that is engaging is, puts the people first.

I want that client to be, or excuse me, I want that team member to be client facing. That's not somebody I'm gonna hide in the back in surgery because I need them to build those relationships and create those amazing experiences that we just talked about. And not everybody is gonna have that type of personality and they're gonna be more analytic and they might be more introverted, and they may be the most efficient, skilled surgical technician ever. Well then I need to make sure that I'm embracing that and figuring out how I am going to part partner them with a very efficient surgeon. And we are gonna knock out surgeries incredibly fast, but with great patient care and with intense, recovery protocols and things like that, that is not somebody that I'm necessarily gonna place in the front except as a backup plan.

It's not somebody I'm gonna have answering the phone and providing that client experience over the phone. It's somebody that I'm gonna have getting things done in the back because that is where their strength is. And I know that there, and I talk from the, that the technician perspective. There are some technicians that absolutely love surgery and they wanna stay there. And there's technicians that absolutely love the exam room, and I'm gonna put them there. It's not a one size fits all, but it's rather let's build on those strengths so that we increase that efficiency and optimize what they love doing. Again, it comes back to the leadership. If they love what they're doing, they're gonna be huge contributors to the profitability and efficiency of our practice.

So focusing on their strengths that they have incredibly important. Many times I see that leaders never recognize even what the strengths are. And I think that is a starting point for us as leaders, is to identify who is strong at what and what are their passions. And we can do that through one-on-one check-ins and asking how can I help support that? And what CE can I find for you to continue growing those strengths that you can also come back and teach our team once you go to that ce. You're on mute. I Was on mute, sorry. I think this is amazing because I, I, I hope the audience is taking notes. to start practicing from tomorrow onwards, you need to know the strengths of your team.

What is the strength of person A in my team? What is the strength of person B? And let them do that. Then they will love the work that they do. It's, it'll, it'll not be a job anymore. That is something that they'll love doing. Yes. Alright. Amazing. Heather, what's one practical step? Dr. Amanda has something. Yes. Sorry, I didn't say that. Dr. Amanda, go ahead. Absolutely. Heather, I love where you're coming from. with this, I did pop into, our webinar chat, one resource that's available for evaluating individual's personal strengths and then being able to leverage those within a veterinary hospital. I've used it quite effectively. and it's a great sort of team builder because you can actually create a matrix of each person has their five top strengths.

So how do you create, a team, or a particular shift that emphasizes and takes advantage of individual's personal strengths, and it allows them then to focus on what they're good at rather than feeling like they're fighting that uphill battle of what they struggle with. Amazing. Thank you so Much. Thank you. I love it, Amanda. Yeah, I love how you, add on to each other's question and making this discussion richer. All right. My final question for you, Heather. What's one practical step veterinary practices can take today to build stronger leadership and more resilient teams? I think, and, and it's a great question and still of, an eight hour discussion around that too.

But I think that, it's a self-reflection. You know, start with, as a leader, I need to see what I'm doing so that I can build a more resilient team. Am I being resilient? Am I demonstrating their, the behavior, showing resilience? How do I lead our team through change, change? we were in rapid change when we had COVID. We responded, we pivoted, we adapted every day. And now we've kind of gone all the way backwards where change resistance is, I, there is a, a wall when we're having to do change resistance or when we're having to do change. But I'll tell you that the resistant resistance is often built because we didn't give them transparency. We didn't give them clarity about our goal, and we didn't let them be a part of what we need to change.

So creating, you know, talking about strengths and creating efficiency and building stronger leadership teams, I think is about empowering the team to be a part of it. It's a part of being a part of the goals. It's a part of being a part of the financials, understanding the business. I am a firm believer of open books management and being able to share open books management, but I think it dials back to with change when they are a part of it, and they are a part of creating the smart goals associated to make a change happen, they're gonna be intrinsically involved again, and they are gonna find all the reasons to make something work versus finding all the reasons why something won't work.

And so many times that's where our teams get stuck at, is everybody's finding out why it's not gonna work and change management. A great leader can take change management and say, okay, this is where we wanna get to. Let's do a, what I would call a postmortem, problem solving event. What could go wrong with this? Why is this gonna fail? And we whiteboard out all of the reasons something's gonna fail. Now we can go back and say, okay, well here are the things that we need to put in place so that it will succeed. And then we have our team on board who then creates smart goals to make it successful. So I think that's important. Second is, I think so many of our hospitals, don't create resilient teams because we have very poor onboarding structures and we have very poor training structures.

So in veterinary medicine, we are known to hire fast, we fire slow, and we train for one or two days, and we turn the team member out to the wolves to either succeed or they fail. And in today's environment, maybe that worked five years ago, 10 years ago, but today, team members are out. They're, they don't need to put up with that. They can go someplace else and look for something else. And so we need to be better as a leadership team of developing strong onboarding training protocols so that team members get the training they need to be successful moving forward. And then we need to develop ongoing training programs so that they get to continue growing in their skills and doing, bringing back and giving back to the practice.

Third is, I think we also need to have leveling programs and practices. When we level our team members, they can see that they have a career path to be able to grow in the practice level 1, 2, 3, and four. It goes with our wage scale. We can be transparent with what those wages are, and we can create a matching training program to go with that leveling program. When we have that level of transparency, there's clarity there. They're a part of the financials, they get to see that big picture. They will be part of the ongoing efficiency and optimization of the team that comes back to making it so much easier to be a leader in the practice versus feeling like, eh, you're fighting a losing battle.

That 'cause that can be exhausting. This is, I think, amazing not only for a veterinary practice owner or a manager for any leader, right? Mm-hmm. You need to involve your team, in whatever the decisions you are making and maybe your service optimization or enhancing your service. and you need to develop your team, not only the business, you need to develop your team, let them grow, help them grow, help them develop their selves, and be very transparent, in what's coming up ahead in their career path, right? That is very important. That builds the trust and satisfaction in what they do. That was amazing, Heather. Thank you so much both us. thank, thank you.

Very insightful, valuable answers. Thanks a lot. I would like to posit though that, our traditional training methodology has never actually worked, though. I, I will, I will only speak for myself that I was just reliving my own trauma as you were speaking. You know, you, you make a really good point, Karen, and I think that what we do in training is that we show somebody how to do something and we think they're gonna master the task, and we go on to the next thing that is our traditional, here's how you do it, okay, now we're moving on and we need to teach with the adult learning theory. It's where we read it, we see it, we do it, we need to master it.

And so it's not just a matter of, it's a one time thing. It's much more extensive because we learn differently as adults than we do as kids. And when we show you one time, it's more like a learning as, up through 12th grade in high school. And post that is now we need to, we need to actually do it when we're hearing and learning about it. And we need a coach to help coach us to greatness as we continue mastering that skill. Thank you, Karen. I appreciate that. This is amazing. All right. Thank you so much, Karen. As well as, Heather, right next up, right? You can see my screen. Next, I'd like to bring in Dr. Bolton to talk about future proofing veterinary practices through innovation, ai, and strategic growth.

All right, Dr. Bolton, my first question for you, how can clinics integrate emerging technologies like AI while still preserving the personal touch that clients truly value? Yeah, so I, I think there's multiple aspects to this and, I, I think, I, I've, I've actually been pleased with how clients have accepted AI into their lives in, in that practice thus far. I really thought there was gonna be a lot more re resistance. I'll just say that upfront. so my first PO point is, asking clients for consent. So they, I think they need to be aware, when there's ai, being involved, especially with the AI scribes, just from the ethics perspective, they need to, they need to be, have, have consent that they're being recorded.

But with that said, I have literally not hit a single client who has been opposed to it when you explain it well. but I think people are, are starting to get used to the idea of ai. and I think the barrier that I thought was gonna be there has not really been fair to the degree that I thought was gonna be an issue. So I think that's just an important place to start off. But in terms of just the personal touch in general, there's basically places for ai and there's places where AI really should not be replacing humans. so someone before mentioned, client facing, jobs. So I always think of this one receptionist that I work with, that she was just, she was the best clients, loved her.

She probably made the, the, the, the clinic so much money just by being herself and just existing in front of clients. She should never be replaced by ai. That would be a poor, a poor position for AI to exist in a clinic. So, and actually I think there was a study that that just came out about, jobs that are destined to be replaced by ai. And I think it, I, I'm probably gonna misstate this, but basically, things that have kind of physical involvement, emotional needs. So that receptionist role is definitely emotional. and decision making things. those are kind of your ones that, that are probably not gonna be replaced as soon. but basically there's, there's still jobs that are not gonna be replaced.

even things where we think AI might be good, like I love spreadsheets, which I've already discussed with you guys today. Before, before we started, AI is actually not very good at looking at spreadsheets. so even places where we think it would be good at, it's actually not as good as you would think. But even in, in the areas where we have all kinds of AI products existing in vet med commercially out there that we can pick and choose from, you shouldn't just take all of them and throw them at your practice. Each individual practice needs to figure out what issue they have and pick the tool that fits with that, with the issue that they actually have though.

So, it's gonna be a unique decision for every in individual. So, for instance, I personally have issues with medical records and completing them, so that's my Achilles heel. So that's the AI tool that I should pick. So the AI scribe ones definitely helped me, but o other people have other pain points. So it's a matter of figuring out what your, your individual pain points are, figuring out what tools match those pan pain points and prioritizing the most important ones and starting bit by bit. Don't just go out and get all of them. Great. I think thanks for sharing that experience that you had with that receptionist. That is very true. There are, there are some roles, there are some people that you cannot be replaced with whatever the technology that is Gonna, she would, she would die if she knew that how, how often.

I talked about her as an example, but she just, she really stands out. But there, I think there's, there's probably so many of her out there that, it, it would be a mistake to replace people like her. That is very true. And AI reception is, is definitely one that's starting to grow. Yes, definitely. right, Dr. Bolton. next I would like to ask, what are the most common operational or strategic challenges that you see in clinics facing and how they can be addressed proactively? Yeah, so I, I thought I would look at this from the strategic standpoint and from the operational standpoint. So, I'll start with operational, so that, that kind of ties into the, the AI discussion to, to a degree.

So, on the operations side, I like workflow analysis. And I think probably the biggest thing if, if I had to guess, is that oftentimes we probably think, think we know what the issue is, and perhaps that's not actually the issue. that's why, you know, statistics exist as a field. You know, if, if, if, if we all just knew what the problem actually was, we wouldn't actually have to have data. So I think looking at your actual workflows and, and picking them apart and finding where the, the problems actually are is a really valuable thing to thing to do. I think when you start getting into the, the, the nitty gritty and finding all the little details, you actually find, more important things that are actually, screwing everything up that you often are even paying attention to.

Or perhaps people are telling you that as the leader and maybe you're not listening. so I think looking at workflow analysis is a, really good way to, figure out your workflows and how to do things better from the strategic standpoint. My obsession is, mission, vision, and core values. And this is something that I thought I knew when I first founded my clinic. but my foundation was just nothing. I had the, the completely typical mission statement of I wanted to offer good quality medicine at a low price, and I wanted to make clients happy. Like, that's just your, your generic mission statement that 90% of all businesses probably have. But I think really going through the process of doing a mission statement, vision and core values that really, really fit with you, your business, your workforce, your founders, I think that is so incredibly valuable, even if you're a well established business.

I think there it is just absolutely the foundation of everything. I mean, just the, the, the metaphor of a foundation of a house, I mean, like, I was, I basically built my business because I like animals and I like animals. That was basically what I built my business on. Like that was nothing to build a business on. so, and I have a lot of hindsight about that. so, but you can still go back and do all that again. I've gone through that even with my own consulting business, like a couple times, like several years apart, co couple times. And it gets better each time. Like you just keep growing and growing every single time you do it. So I will never not be obsessed with this as such an important part of a business.

'cause absolutely every single thing you do in all the functional areas of business are based on this. so that's really important. yes, I think from what, from what you mentioned, if you wanna strategically address any challenges that you have, you need to have a proper vision, mission, and value system. And your team also needs to align with that vision, mission, and value of your practice Business. And I've seen people put, like, even put like their core values, like on the wall, like paint them on the wall. I like, I love that. Mm-hmm. That's, that's true. Then, then clients also, I don't know how, how that ties in to the way you operate, if you like that or not.

I don't know. Love it. I like it from you. Alright, amazing. Dr. Baldin, finally, I wanna know if a practice wants to futureproof, itself for the next decade, what's one bold action they can take today to stay ahead in both care and business strategy? So the question was one, bold action, and I, I had like three, but I, I really blabbered on a while about like mission, vision and core values, and that was one of them. So that's an, that's an important one. I already talked about that. so Dorin before was talking about a lot of marketing stuff, and I, I'm also very passionate about target marketing, and just figuring out what the heck is going on in your client's heads.

And I will never forget the very, very first time when I owned my practice, the very first survey I sent out to my clients, I, I thought I was gonna throw up when I sent this email out, just basically asking like, what do they like, what do they not like? Like just more than just, like this is before we had anything automated. Like, this is literally me sending an email out to my email list and hoping people would reply. And I just, I, I was just waiting for people to say absolutely horrific stuff back to me. And it was actually, I had really good responses for the most part. So if, if people wanna be brave, I would say survey your clients, but on a deeper le level about more strategic things, you know, like, just like, where is your practice going?

Like, what are they like and what are they not like beyond just that appointment that they were at? but you can do things like focus groups too, if you like, really want to get into it. Like, like we can, I could talk about this for a long time. so that's probably something more client facing, but copying a little bit inadvertently off of what Heather was talking about before, from the culture perspective, this is probably, more important from the employees. If you're thinking from, from future p proofing, innovation, innovation and change management, there's a lot of research that basically show that culture is so integral into change management, especially when it has, has to do with implementing AI into your practice.

If you have a culture that is like not very technologically advanced, that speaks to a lot of other cultural things. and it's, it changing your culture is not gonna happen overnight. That takes a lot of work to do. But what also ties into that is being innovation minded, which also ties into psychological safety. It all ties together, like we're all just saying the same things. So, but there's all kinds of research, of course, not on the veterinary side, it's all on the human side, but in human ai, medical imp implementation that, culture is extremely important. And having, a psychological safety, innovation minded, but it takes a while to establish that.

And of course, you kind of need to start like implementing AI now. So, but you know, you can start working on your culture now. but just having an innovation minded culture, I think is always a good idea. And if we're looking at the perspective of the next decade, I mean, you can start planning that culture change for a decade in advance, and I think you will always need in innovation in your practice. So. All right. Amazing. Would like to ask from, other panelists, is there anything that you wanna add into that? Because there have a lot of practical strategies, that the audience can, start practicing from tomorrow. So, there were a lot of insightful, practical strategies.

Thank you so much Dr. Bolton, for your sharing your wisdom. All right. Next up, I would like to bring in, Stacy, can you see my screen? Are you sure? Oh, yeah, there you go. right next I'd like to bring in Stacy to talk about cultivating high performing teams and a thriving practice culture. All right, Stacy, when you trans, when you transformed, well LinkedIn Veterinary Hospital into a thriving practice, what key changes in leadership or culture made the biggest difference? That's a good question. I actually had to really think about this. 'cause it was a few years ago that I became the practice manager. Like, we're talking like 2015. So I was like, okay, what happened all those years ago?

But I, I really thought about, you know, one of the, the things that I teach now that is really was very fledgling back then, but that we worked on really hard in our hospital, and that was this ask don't tell model of leadership where, you know, when you're telling someone what to do all the time, it's a little bit micromanaging, let's be honest, right? And it's, it's more about how you want it done. You have the ownership of the task, not them. you're not giving feedback until it's all over with then, and everything's already happened and they've already made the mistakes and it's just not a good model. But a lot of us fall into that model and, and our hospitals that we're so busy, it's easier just to tell in direct traffic versus taking the time to ask and seek to understand using Heather's words.

and so we really tried to focus on curiosity in our hospital versus telling people what to do all the time. We also had like a little bit of maybe call, I would call it maybe learned helplessness going on in our hospital where we're always telling 'em what to do so they can't do anything on their own. So they're, they're constantly coming up to us, how do I do this? What should I do here? Almost asking for permission to proceed. and so just trying to do this ask don't tell model. It took a while to really get into it, but our goal was to focus on curiosity and not commanding them to do something. You know, asking them how we can support them through this or what do they think, even like, how do they think we should proceed?

They've got ideas. They, they just didn't wanna say 'em. Right. You know, how can we guide them and help them think through these problems and, and have solutions? And when we did that, all of a sudden we realized we were encouraging ownership of them, and they were becoming a little bit more accountable, you know, for themselves. And it was a lot through the questions that our team was asking, you know, how do you plan to move forward? I think of what does success look like for this issue they're having, you know, depending on what the que the problem is, they don't always have the answers. And we didn't wanna make them scared to come to us, but just trying to encourage that collaboration versus always dictating what we were gonna do.

And I, I also think about, you know, if we're just telling somebody to do something, the task will get done one time, but are we developing their critical thinking skills? You know? And, and so really thinking about that concept, I also thought it reinforced the why really? Well, you know, we're drawing out the purpose behind the work that, that we're asking them to do instead of, again, just dictating. And, and so I, I think that the other part that I really thought about with our hospital and what changed is when we started doing that, all of a sudden we noticed we had broken systems. You know, we had, you know, processes that maybe weren't so cool that we were doing at our hospital that maybe we should consider stopping or changing, because now when we were curious, all of a sudden all this information started coming out towards us.

You know, this is why they had to ask for permission. It's because we didn't have a rule about how many urgent care appointments we would see today, right? And, or something, you know, I'll just insert here, right? That's the common problem in the field right now. But, and so we'd started then step two is developing clear expectations. What, what does the team, you know, like, do they know everything that, that we should, we want them to do? Do they know what's expected of them? Role clarity came in here, and I know Heather talked about that a bit, so I'm not gonna jump into that too much except to say that what seat on the bus should they be in?

And where are we duplicating roles or where are there gaps in our roles that, that we needed to fill? And so it helped with role clarity. We developed leadership teams through this experience, discovered that when you're managing 35 people, you need a few more leaders than than you thought you needed. and we ended up with like one leader per five people, I think is where we decided on and what we tried to maintain so that we had people go-to people for people to be curious toward, you know, like ha seeking to understand and having that person that they could talk to in those, in those moments. and then the last thing is clear communication. We discovered that oftentimes what we were saying was not what they were getting out of that situation.

So we needed to really work on being more clear and concise and practice of practicing reflective listening. What did you hear when we had that staff meeting, right? Versus this is what I told you during that staff meeting, just trying to, to understand each other better. And, you know, that transparent communication also involves exactly what Karen was talking about. What is our mission, right? How can we, how can we connect all of our, these expectations back to our mission so that we're all united behind whatever goals, whatever mission we have in our hospital. So it was a, it was a bunch of stuff, but I, I was able to encompass it. Just ask, don't tell, and, and let's really set some clear expectations, is really made a big difference in our hospital in the end.

Right. Thank you so much. Stacy, I think this is a very reflective talk. You are talking after doing that and making a change, right? So, that is, that is very important. So you need to empower your team for that. You need to have that clear communication and have that clarity in what they need to do in their roles. so that is very important to create that, empowered culture. Mm-hmm. as I understood. Alright. my second question for you is, how can practice managers cultivate an environment where both leadership team and staff can shine something we've already talked about, but would like to hear from your experience? Mm-hmm. It, it continues. Like we, we wanna continue empowering them through that shared, shared decision making process that I was kind of talking about.

You know, instead of telling them what to do, let's ask and have a collaboration about it. I think we also need to, show them how they matter in our hospital. I don't know that we talk about that very much. You know, do they feel seen? Do they feel heard? Are they valued? You know, people that know they're valued add value back into our hospital. And so I think mattering is a concept that we haven't talked a lot about. we talk a little bit about belonging in the veterinary field, but I, I think even more important than that is really pointing out to them and showing them how they matter. And that'll help them to speak up and even have an even more bigger voice in that shared decision making approach.

and of course, you need to have that foundation, and Heather already talked about this, but psychological safety. we have to be vulnerable and admit as mistakes as leaders, or they never will, right? We have to have consistency in our hospitals. I can tell you so many stories about that. But, you know, what's the old adage of the owner has, let's clients call their cell phone at home, right? And then they wanna come in, but the CSR said no. So they call the owner and the owner says, yes, we're inconsistent. That's not a safe place to work. Now the client shows up and gotta come in, and we were booked that day, and that makes the CSR not matter feel undervalued and unappreciated, and now we're not safe in our environment.

So that consistency terribly important in the veterinary field. Empathy, very important to psychological safety, accountability, you know, take responsibility for the outcomes, ensure that everybody knows their part. They're playing in that transparency. Just like Heather said, humility, just because we're a leader doesn't mean we're right. Like, think about that for a second. Like, we want to be right. A lot of times in that big, that a authoritative position that we're in, it doesn't mean we are, and it doesn't mean someone else's. You know, truth isn't also accurate. There's, there's multiple paths we can take. And if we're too busy being right all the time, nobody speaks up.

No, you aren't gonna, nobody's gonna talk and you're hospital about anything important anyway. and so very, very important to have humility. the last thing I can think of is to celebrate milestones in your hospital, not the final goal. Oh, we, you know, did whatever we got. This makes now plans, whatever. But the progress we're making towards success needs to be acknowledged. I think sometimes our goal is so far out there that we lose sight and we don't talk about it and celebrate the little milestones. So creating milestones for success, it really boosts that culture and, and helps your team a lot. Yeah. All right. Amazing. I think this answer was, like a collective answer from what everyone else gave.

Mm-hmm. Amanda was mentioning about empathy, how to show empathy for our clients, and you started speaking about how to show empathy to your own team, to your own staff, right? And then Heather was talking about transparency. And I think if you have all these, qualit, you as a leader, as Dr. Bolton mentioned, that value system is already there, right? That core values are already there. So show your team that they matter, that they're heard and seen and, recognize them. So that is very, very important. All right. That's amazing. Stacy, so my final question to you is, what is one practical step veteran leaders can take today to strengthen team engagement and long-term success?

Awesome. Yeah, I picked a simple one for this. I thought about this one, but I, I wrote down to learn to give and receive feedback. I actually think that, I know, I, I just think that this one ha will have just such an intense impact on our teams. We avoid stuff so badly in the vet field. It's like, oh man, taught, tell them how they're doing. Are you crazy? Is because we don't know how to do it, so we need to teach each other how not to just give that feedback, you know, giving feedback, being clear, you know, being, giving the context around it, collaborating with them, having an action step, that kind of stuff. But how do you receive feedback?

we taught our team that at our hospital, it was super eye-opening that they didn't have a clue how to even receive it. Their emotions got in the way. They became defensive. They wanted to justify it as much as they could. There's not really what you think. It's all these other things, right? We wanted to blame other people. some of us just shut down because it's so emotionally hard to, to hear that information. And so if, if there's one thing that I, I could ask of us as, as just in the veterinary field in general, is be kind. Teach your team how to receive it. Teach your team how to give it. it, it's, it's not a one time event. It's not at the end of the lifespan of that poor employee who has never heard a thing this whole time, and now we wanna fire them, 'cause they're not doing a good job.

That's, that's not what feedback's about. And so it's a continuous conversation that, that we, we've got to get past this fear of, we gotta normalize it a little bit. So that's, that's my best advice there for the one, one step That, that's amazing. I think this whole discussion is important to anyone, not only someone who's into this whole veterinary, field or industry. This is amazing. Feedback is not a complaint, right? As you mentioned. Mm-hmm. It, it is a way to success. It is something that we have never seen that we are doing wrong, that we need to correct, if we say a bad feedback. So this is amazing. As I mentioned, this was a reflective talk that you have, done that change and you have shown that, you are speaking from that.

So thank you very much, ZY. That was amazing. All right. Finally, I would turn to, I would like to turn to Kim. I'd like to bring in Kim to the top about data-driven leadership and practical solutions for modern veterinary practices. Right? My first question for you, Kim, is with your experience in leadership and operations, what common challenges do you see in veterinary practices that data and ANA analytics can help solve? Sure, sure. so one of my favorite subjects to talk about, I know that that will get a couple laughs from people on the panel because they know that. But, in my work with practices, I really see that challenges come down to those blind spots that we have.

And if we're not looking at data and our analytics in practice, then we're gonna miss those things. practices may not realize things like how much revenue is being lost due to inefficiencies or how compliance gaps may put us at risk. how a lack of team utilization patterns can drive burnout. So when we look at data and we bring that information in, we can help focus on those blind spots. So analytics can show us where inventory costs are creeping up, or where our doctors are priced appropriately for services or not. if our clients are declining recommendations. so instead of relying on gut feel, those data and analytics can really help us solve problems and find problems that we can react to, more on a proactive basis than a reactive basis.

and I think it shifts, from the anecdote to like, like where evidence is really powerful, it gives teams a clear starting point for improvement. So if, if we don't measure it, like how do we know if we improved it? Yeah, that's, that's, that's very true. Data is not guts. It is it's stats, right? It shows where you stand, where you, where you need to go. right. So my next question for you is, how can practice leaders balance compliance, safety and efficiency without overwhelming their teams? so I think this really feeds into some of the things we talked about earlier. really, building these things into culture. I think it starts with that mindset that compliance and safety are not, extra work, but rather they're the foundation that lets efficiency happen.

they're kind of the, I think of compliance and safety as like the keys to the kingdom, right? I have to do these things in order to get to do the really cool things I wanna do at work. So taking care of our patients. So I really encourage leaders to kind of focus on, practicing a culture of safety and compliance, but also integrating it into the things that we do every day. I think when you treat safety and compliance as something that you bolt on top of other things that we do, it seems burdensome. But instead, if we can make those OSHA protocols, those DEA protocols, part of the same SOPs that the team already uses to take care of their patients, which is what we all care about, right?

It reduces that friction. And then leaders need to set those priorities. If, if our leaders don't believe in safety and compliance and they don't set that priority, then it's not gonna happen. So the other thing is too, is I think that these things can be really overwhelming, like when you start working on safety and compliance in the hospital, and it's really about breaking it down into processes, right? Breaking it down into smaller pieces that you can work into the system as you go. I think a lot of times we start with the end in mind and we, procrastinate on doing some of these things in hospital because we want it to be perfect. Day one doesn't have to be perfect day one.

Safety and compliance are about doing the little things as we go along, getting those, you know, little wins along the way so that we've got the hospital protected and our people protected, Right? I think as a leader, you need to make sure that your team knows that you are okay with not being perfect on the first day. so as Stacy mentioned, you need to celebrate little, little wins and, encourage your team to do good work more and more. All right. can you share an example of how actionable insights transformed a practice's performance or a team dynamics would like to hear some examples from? Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. so this is, this is one of the things that I do a lot of on our team.

so I'm, I'm the, the resident nerd as we like to joke about it. but taking, data and breaking it down and looking for pain points in the practices is, is one of the things that I love. So, one example that stands out recently, we worked with, a practice that was struggling with high cost of goods. and I think that's a common problem for practices like high cost of goods or payroll issues. When you take, those things and break them down, pinpoint where the problems are in the data, look through it, analyze it, we discover where those real issues are. in some of the practices we've worked with, maybe it's lab utilization, where, you know, lab costs were, elevated and we needed to help them figure out how to price appropriately.

in other situations, maybe it's looking at things like, operational inefficiencies and having the right people in the right places in the hospital, and having the schedule covered appropriately. So when we can take those things and show them, show the team clearly where those challenges are, I think it helps break it down into little chunks so they can take those things and work on them and be able to make the changes that they need to make in the hospital. So, in some of the practices that we've worked with, it's just been simply working those things out, finding those pain points for them in the data, and then helping them be able to, take control of that and make it not scary so that they can shift their workflow or their culture to build momentum and tackle those areas.

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Kim. yeah, I think all of you together, this, this whole discussion made a very insightful discussion. thank you so much. What an inspiring evening, right? So before we wrap up, I'd like to pause for a moment and open the floor to your questions. This is for our audience. If there's any questions, anything that you'd like to ask our panels or clarify something, please drop your questions in the chat and we'll bring as many as we can into the discussion. So it's, it's your time to clarify anything that you want to. Let me check the chat. Do we have any questions in our q and a? It looks like there's one about feedback, there's a question about giving feedback.

I, I was gonna, I was gonna mention something personal that, I feel like people might find a value about receiving and giving feedback, that I suspect might be really common in the, in the field. this is not answering this person's question, but it's on the same topic that, there just was not the right moment to pause and, and, mention this. so this was my own personal journey on receiving feedback and, perhaps not responding well to feedback during my, my career. So my, the personal information is, I got an A-D-A-D-H-D diagnosis really not that long ago, which is really common for women to get diagnosed extremely late in life. part of a DHD is rejection, sensitivity to dysphoria, which is responding poorly to negative feedback.

This is actually something that, now that I see it, I keep seeing it in our field over and over and over again. as a couple of you have mentioned, mental health issues are rampant in our field. And, once again, now that I see it, I can't unsee it. so I, I mainly, I just throw that out there as, for just for people to know, know about, perhaps for themselves, because I didn't know about this until someone told me about it. And once I knew it, I was like, well, gosh, that is me. because now I actually respond completely different differently when I start feeling it coming on. Like, because if you don't know what it is, it's, you just feel so angry, like you just cannot control the anger.

It's just inappropriate. but it's, it's literally part of the mental health condition. But now I'm like, oh, I can just pause and just kind of set that emotion aside. but before I just, like, it was just, I just felt the emotions. But the other reason why I mentioned this is for people giving the feedback, it might just be something important just to pay attention to. I'm not saying to be a, a mental health professional diagnosing your staff, but you might be able to see certain things like where things are checking the box, or maybe you can help that person or talk to them in different ways. just because mental health things are very common in our field, unfortunately, or I don't know, whatever, fortunately, or four, unfortunately, I'm not sure, and our field attracts it.

but I, I mainly, I just thought I, I would throw that out there because, it really does play in terribly to receiving feedback negatively. And a lot of our coworkers have the same issue. Well, That's Fair. Thank, thank you, Dr. Bald. I think Stacy was talking about this during our discussion. Would like to add anything to this? Yeah, Yeah, I think so. When you're, when you're giving feedback, I have three rules to be able to be allowed to give feedback. First you have to have a relationship with that person. So there's some form of trust between the two of you. You can't give a stranger feedback and have much success with that of them hearing you.

So you have to have a relationship with them. their positive piggy bank has to be full. That sounds really corny, but if you've not given them positive reinforcement, you're not allowed to give them negative reinforcement. So you, it, it, we have to work to feel fill that positive piggy bank. So when you give them negative feedback, we're taking a penny out, but we still have 50 cents in there, we're okay. Right? And so that's kind of the concept you wanna think about is our positive piggy bank needs to be full already, or we, it's just not fair to that person, right? So we've gotta, we've gotta be giving out positive reinforcement, even more so than these criticisms that we're, we're trying to provide.

And then the other, the other rule before you can give feedback is the, your mindset when you're going into that room, are you going in to vent on that person because they did something really bad and you just want them to know it? Don't go in that room. Don't go in that room. And so you have to go in that room with the mindset of, I want to really support this person and improve their performance today. Not, I want to yell or whatever, insert here on them. So once you've met those three criteria, the formula for giving feedback is to ask for permission, provide clarity, allow context, so that person gets a voice too in this, right? Collaborate together, create your action plan, and then follow up.

so those are the steps. I mean, they take a while to dig into, but the, that's that essentially, but not everybody should be allowed to give it, I guess is my biggest message. And, you know, receiving feedback, I don't have necessarily a tool. I, I found this visual on LinkedIn that I love, that I guess I could share, with Brooklyn. I have her email if it's helpful. It's an old one. And I, I just gave my team members all this visual and I said, which one are you? We're all one. And it's like one through seven. And one's, I can't handle my emotions. One, you know, I'm not processing one is I need to justify or blame and, and I just normalize it first by saying, we're all one of these, there's not a single one of us that does feedback.

And that helps the team to realize that I have to pick one, I'm one of these things. And it, it, it can help with the process of help them becoming more self-aware. To Karen's point, you have to be self-aware of how you receive it in order to do anything about it. That's true. I think if you already have a good, strong relationship, and if you have earned trust from that person, giving feedback will not be that hard. 'cause that person knows that you're giving this feedback for their own good, right? That trust is the most important thing. Dr. Amanda would like to hear from you as well. If you have anything to add to this, Trust is something that requires two individuals to have some level of commonality.

And there are situations where, our teammates, our peers, our staff, or our clients cannot in that moment see a level of commonality. It's easy to prevent commonality by creating a sense of superiority or utilizing medical language instead of, language that's more universally accepted or speaking in a way that creates, diversion between people. And so when you look at, for instance, when you look at historic descriptions of veterinarians as the trusted advisors for your pet, and if you look at current statistics around that, that description is veterinarians as trusted advisors for your pet, has largely decreased in the polls. And I think a component of that is because we have lost our ability in the veterinary hospital to develop trust, not only between various veterinarians trust within our team, trusting each other, and our clients trusting the veterinary team to have their best interest and their pet's best interest at heart.

It's incredibly disheartening for me to recognize that. But data doesn't lie. And so, you know, I, I can stand and, and say, okay, well, I'm gonna be the exception to the rule. And, while I would love to say I am the exception to the rule, I'm not, I'm part of the industry as a whole, so, you know, my clients are gonna respond to the polls just as readily as anybody else's. And so I think when we talk about, developing trust in order to, provide feedback to our teams, when we talk about developing trust as a way to drive improved culture and education amongst our various team members, when we talk about trust as a component for finding grounding mutuality between, the client and the veterinary team in the interest of the pet, it's important to keep in mind as well, that as of 2025 in September when we are recording this, there is a lack of trust amongst the United States community as a whole that is permeating a variety of different areas.

It also happens to include veterinary medicine. And so when we're doing our reflection on how do we move back towards the veterinary team as the trusted resource for your pet's best interest, that means that we have to become more trustworthy than Google. It means that we have to become more trustworthy and compassionate than Reddit or Facebook. It means that we need to make our efforts as humans who want the best things that we can do for our teams and for our clients' mental health, to demonstrate our trustworthiness, to meet them where they're at, and help them to not feel judged, demeaned, help them have that voice so that when they get feedback, if it's part of our team and they're getting feedback, they know that they have been heard.

And if it is one of our clients who is addressing us with their concerns, we need to hear their concerns and acknowledge their concerns. Even if it's, you know, I just want a rabies vaccine, but there's other medical conditions. If we don't come at it as, I'm glad you're here today, we're gonna do your rabies vaccine today. And if we don't hear people where they're at, they have no reason to trust us. So whether we're looking at it as an industry perspective, whether we're looking at it as a, how to better engage our clients, or whether we're looking at it within our communities, we have to seek to meet people where they're at to build commonality and build trust so that we can back to a place where we can have these open conversations in a safe space where there's psychological safety, there's a lack of judgment and an openness in communication so that at the end of the day, everyone goes home satisfied and provides the best care possible for their patient, no matter what type of care that may be.

That's amazing. I think that comprehensive answer, made me ask, final thought of all of you. I would like to start off, with maybe Kim, I would like to hear from you, what is the one advice that you want to give to our audience, who is listening to you all today? One advice from all of you. We'll start off with Kim. I would say one advice, that I would give is to be, very open to change, right? change and change and learning really, as we go and grow and improve. I think we just have to lean into discomfort of change, be willing to learn about our opportunities and embrace it as we move forward. Amazing. Be open to change. what about Stacy? We'd like to hear from you.

Well, knowing me, it would be, be curious, about your team. Be curious about why the client's behaving in the way they're behaving. Don't make assumptions. Don't let your emotions get involved. Just be curious, see what's going on. Amazing. Be curious and explore things. All right. Would like to hear from Dr. Bolton? Dr, you're on mute. Karen, You're on mute. Yes. You just had to imagine what I was saying. So I think looking at things from the client's perspective, whether that would be trust, but there, I think there's so many things that, that, that people have said about like touch points and marketing and just, you know, even culture affects the clients as well.

but stepping back and especially as we're going forward, financially stepping back and looking at things from the client's perspective to help our businesses improve, Looking from clients POB. Amazing. alright, Heather, we'd like to hear from you as well. I'm so glad that I got to be the last one so I could ponder this for just a moment. There's another one we have Amanda, I, I think that it is challenge the status quo. What we have done in the past is no longer gonna carry us to the future. We need to look at how we retain employees differently. What a full-time equivalent team member really is, we need to look at technology and embracing it differently.

We need to look at what clients want and how that has changed over the years. So the way we've always done it is no longer gonna carry us. So as Stacy said, let's be curious and find out how we are going to move things forward together. That embraces change management, great leadership, meets client expectations and of course, still meets our needs for our team. Amazing, amazing. Finally, Dr. Amanda, what do you have to tell to your audience? I, I wanna say I have loved everybody's answers and this whole webinar as a whole and, and every opportunity I've had to, to learn through this. as someone who works in innovation and technology, it's gonna sound kind of interesting, but I suggest my one piece of advice is at least once per day in a practice, go in with your dream of being a veterinarian's eyes.

So for me, I started saying I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was three. So maybe, maybe you decided that you wanted to work with animals when you were 10, when you were 15, once per day. Just once. I'm not asking for always once per day. Think back on that before you walk into an exam room. Think back on that before you have that difficult conversation with the teammate. Think back on that before you get feeling frustrated with your CSRs who may not have checked in with the technicians about timing. And remember that at some point in time, everyone in that building wanted to work with animals. They might not write in this particular moment in time.

They might be questioning life choices, but at least once per day reflect back on what it was that you wanted to do. Maybe that's not something you get to do every day. Maybe for a veterinary technician, that's not something that they are getting to do in, in the best way that they feel like they deserve or have that opportunity, but they still, somewhere have that little inkling of loving animals. Everybody does. That is the only reason you enter through that door plus a paycheck. But your clients come in because they love an animal. Your team walks through the door because they love an animal. The veterinarians frequently have all, all of the objectivity that we have to carry can suck all of the joy out of it.

But if you can for one 32nd period, think of it as a mini meditation. Breathe back, think back why you wanted to do this work and help animals. I think that grants a certain level of perspective that can help to bring a little bit of joy back into your day, even when everything is blowing up and the world is a dumpster fire, just remember that everybody there has that one string of commonality of wanting to help animals, and it can help overcome quite a few headaches. Wonderful, wonderful. What a great way to wrap up everything that we discussed today. I think a heartfelt thank you to Dr. Amanda Narin, Heather, Dr. Walton, Stacy and Kim for sharing your expertise and especially your time with us.

We are truly grateful for that. All right, let me share my screen. This is more reminder to reserve your complimentary strategy session with Lila Stone. This is courtesy of Qua Marketing. Remember, this is not just a chat, it's as of research tailor the insights and a roadmap design specifically for your practice. So scan the QR code, grab that golden opportunity. You will be glad you said yes too, right? All right, then finally, thank you to all of you who tuned in because you are the reason we do this. Without you, there is no learning, no growth, no community. So stay connected, keep the conversation alive. And remember, leadership is not about surviving, it's about creating a future worth leading into chara.

And it's been an absolute honor to host all of you tonight. We'll see you at the next Veterinary Business Institutes event. Until then, take care and goodnight.