Strengthening Modern Veterinary Clinics Through Culture, Communication, Technology, Client Care, and Marketing

Well, good evening and welcome to the Veterinary Business Institute's Monthly webinar series. This veterinary panel will focus on strengthening modern veterinary clinics through culture, communication, technology, and marketing. If you are a veterinary practice owner, manager, or part of a clinic team facing daily pressure around communication, workflow, client expectations and growth, you are in the right place. So, tonight's discussion focuses on real world solutions you can actually use. We will talk about how culture, communication, technology, client care, and marketing all connect, and how small improvements in each area can make a big difference.

You'll hear ways to strengthen team communication, reduce daily friction, use technology more wisely, and deliver a better client experience without adding more stress. So whether your goal is to improve team morale, run smooth operations, serve clients better, or grow your clinic in a smart and sustainable way, tonight's panel will give you clear, practical ideas you can take back to your clinic right away. So join me for this panel. Please welcome Reese Elli and William Lins, and also now in ra. Just a small note now, re will not be joining today as he will. Yes, he's facing a family emergency, but, you can always, put your marketing questions if you do have any questions with regards to marketing since Nen was supposed to be covering the marketing part for this panel.

please do, please do go ahead and add any questions you have with regards to marketing, and our podcast managers will try to get you those answers in, in no time. And it's great to have both of you and all of you here with us tonight. Thank you for your time and your talent. So, we also like to give a big sponsor to, a big thank you to our sponsor, eco Marketing, who is also the founder of the Veterinary Business Institute. For nearly 20 years, Equa has been a leader in providing digital marketing services tailored specifically for veterinary practices with a deep understanding and unique challenges and opportunities in the fields, and a big shout out to them for making all, making this all happen.

So, before we get to the discussion, I would also like to take a moment to introduce, or, to perhaps remind you of the Veterinary Business Podcast, which is every Thursday at 5:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. As you can see from the slide, the Veterinary Business Podcast covers a wide range of topics in discussion with industrial leaders, experts, and practice owners. You can find this podcast@veterinarybusinessinstitute.com, and I encourage you, it's a great source of best practices, innovative ideas, inspiration, and great thought leadership as well. So make sure you check the, check those out as well. So in today's, webinar, we're gonna dis discuss on the topic, wet evolution, strengthening, modern veterinary clinics through culture, communication, technology, profitability, client care, and marketing.

So, first up, first up to kick us off, before we, get to the discussion, I also like to share about the main points for today's discussion. These will be the points that we'll be, we will be covering and I, and we believe this will be a great, session for, and we'll be delivering some great content as well. So, to kick us off, I am excited to welcome our first panelist. Re Elli. res is the founder of Innovative Veterinary MA Management Solutions and a true leader in the veterinary space. He works closely with practices to help them grow in a smart and sustainable way. Re brings a great mix of big picture thinking and real hands on experience from running successful veterinary hospitals.

Reese, we're so glad to have you here tonight. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I think you embellished in a lot of these things that I am, you know, a leader of some sort of thing, just, just not a human like everybody else. William, however, is the Titan, not me. Amazing. Thank you. So next I'm happy to welcome, William Lindas. William is the director of operations at it gu and has spent years helping veterinary teams improve workflows, communication, and technology use. He's known for building systems that actually make daily work easier and more efficient for teams. William brings a strong, strong operations and technology lens to this conversation, and we're excited to learn from his experience.

William, thank you for being here with us tonight. Welcome to the panel. Hey, it's good to be here. thanks for the kind words, Lester. Thanks for the kind words. my clone, Reese. So glad that, both of us, who, unless you're at one of our Vet Partners conferences, technically never seen us both in the same place. So this just proves that we're different people. I'm just more gray than you. I'm right behind you. Alright, So, yeah, and, so, so, and also I also wanna let you know that tonight we have the chat open. So if you'd like to pose a question, please go ahead and do that. We like to see your reactions. If it's a heart reaction, thumbs up, anything.

You just go ahead and do that. And, if I'll, I'll also bring into the question, any questions you pose, I'll try and manage and make sure we get it answered by one of our panelists. And if for some reason I don't get those questions answered, rest assured, one of our podcast managers will, get this to get these questions, answered after this webinar, to you. And having said all that, let's go ahead and let's get started. and we have some great Christmas lined up for tonight, and, to start the conversation. just give me a second. Yeah. So to start the conversation, we're gonna, get to, yeah, we're gonna get to Reeses. So to get us started, let's zoom out and talk about culture.

So many clinic, cha, so many clinic challenges start here where external communication or follow through. So Reeses, what practical steps can clinic leaders take to build a culture that encourages collaboration, accountability, and a long-term staff retention? It starts from a simple word that we always seem to have a problem with, and it's called trust. We need to learn to trust each other, to trust that we want to do the right thing. Need to trust that we all have the same goal in mind, and that's patient care. if we can trust that we are trying to do the right thing for each other, the patients and the, practice, that's where it's gonna start.

No one goes out of the way to, to, you know, To mess things up, to, to make the role, make mistakes, and just to plane ride, be not a nice person. We all want to be that, but it's because we feel that we don't trust the other person to do their job. That's different. That's called accountability or trust that they're gonna do the right thing. Now, there are different types of trust. There is, there's a trust. I think that Will is a great person. I think he's a top guy. I might trust him to do the right thing. I think he's gonna be loyal to me, but do I trust will to do his job? That's a different trust, right? Will may not have the capacity to do that job, but have we had that conversation with Will to say, Hey, will, this is some of the problems that we are seeing.

What love and support can I now give Will to get him above that bar so that way Will can do that job. Now, it doesn't start with Will doing his job, it starts from that conversation. If I can have that conversation with Will, and he's, and we are open and honest with each other, he can say, Hey Reese, you know, I really would like some more mentorship on X or YI can find ways to give that to him. Now if, if I do give him that mentorship and I, he'd lead the horse towards only that water does drink, we are gonna see some development. Now we gotta work on the person, we're gonna develop the person, and in turn, he, we gotta develop that person professionally.

But unless we actually have a system or a mentorship program or some sort of training regime that is going to get that person, those resources, those skills, how can we then say that person is gonna do their job? What does that look like? What does success look like? And until you set that foundation of trust, that will has to trust me to give them mentorship, and I have to trust will to take that skill and resource and put that into practice. That's where it's gonna start. Once we've built that, the rest is, well, I think easy. As long as you can actually map out your core values. If you have it, I know it's a buzzword, but core values is gonna set the tone of your workplace.

Because core values isn't something that is a mission. It's more of a, a behavioral trait that we, hold our accountability for our team to, to say, hey, to, to do the right thing. As an example, let's pretend that's one of your core values, a moral compass to do the right thing. That's a core value to behavioral thing. I hear and see a lot of people say, oh, my core value is to be a, a leader in our community. That's a mission statement, not a core value. The core value is something that we need to start to tie into internally and to drive our team to a common purpose, to have the same, behavior within our workplace environment. Because we all want the same thing.

We all wanna be the best, we wanna be better than what we are, but if we can't hold each other accountable because there's no trust, there's no training, there's no mentorship, we can't, hold everybody to the same standard. I hope I've answered that question. Of course. Yes. thank you ris. And I think, trust is the, like you said, trust is everything. And that really sets the foundation for everything we are gonna talk about tonight. And, William, would you like to add anything to that? absolutely. one of the things that I think that we see, kind of going outside of, you know, I predominantly, I, I talk technology and talk about how that impacts workflow, but, one of the other roles that I serve is as the current president of vet partners, which Reese is also a member of.

And one of the conversations that we have a lot of times at that con at that conference is how much are we trusting our staff to do their job? And specifically that means that we are as an industry, we under utilize our licensed technicians. and so because of that, they're having to do more, you know, kind of administrative and CR CSR works, which are also valuable as well. But a lot of times they're then kind of shoved it off to the side to do other things. Sometimes that's because of technology. Sometimes that is because of trust. Like you mentioned Reese, you know, if you're a a practice owner, a doctor, you know, you might think I need to get in there and do all of these things because I, I'm the one who is, you know, responsible for this patient.

But sometimes we need to realize that, that all the team members downstream of us have functions with their own ceilings to them, and we don't always allow them to reach those ceilings. So yeah, trust is key. Amazing. Amazing. Now culture is the foundation, but systems are what's, what's supported day to day. Let's talk about when, where things often break down operationally. So William, with your experience optimizing workflows in veterinary clinics, what are the most, common inefficiencies you see and how can clinics address them quickly using technology? Absolutely. so one of the things that I do see here is the, the fact that we're not just in general talking about one individual workflow.

We're talking about all of these different workflows that intersect and flow one flow through one another at any given time at one of the practices. truth of the matter is, is that I can think of no harder working industry than the veterinary industry. And everyone gets so used to the idea of, well, this particular workflow has an issue, but if I spend an extra five to 10 seconds to do this sort of outside of the box, then I can get myself back on track. And those five to 10 seconds don't feel like a lot, but they start to add up over days, over weeks, over months. And what we're losing out on there is whole appointments, patients, staff, morale, profitability, all things, just because we didn't address that one issue.

one example I always talk about is printers up at the front desk. So every practice I've ever worked with has, at one point or another, dealt with the following situation. My printer's not working up front, but that's okay. I have another one in the back. So they'll try to print every, you know, time, it's time for checkout, they're printing their release orders, they're printing whatever. And the receptionist goes, oh yeah, this printer doesn't work sometimes. So she stands up, she walks all the way to the back, meanwhile the phone's ringing and we don't want the phone to ring. So a technician who's walking by getting ready to go into a lab, picks up the phone, Hey, thank you for calling a b, c vet.

Now that tech isn't there to start that blood work, start that initial part of that consultation. So the doctor who was spending some time getting their notes together and sort of doing some preliminary work now steps into the office and starts doing some of that work that the tech was doing. Everyone's day just got shifted off a little bit because that 10 seconds it took to go to the back room. And I wanna say that none of those roles are, are unimportant. Every single part of that pipeline is an important one. But what we're doing is we're shifting the deck chairs every single time so that we are losing those few seconds. I think back to this study that A VMA did back in 2022, they took 60 animal hospitals and because of a few different things, workflow technology, they were able to give them a score of either high moderate or low efficiency.

scheduling fell into that overall staffing, just a few different elements. But they found that the highly efficient practices had 45% more appointments per, per full-time employee than the next tier down the moderate, efficiency practices. And the high to low was a 75% more appointments per day. So you're able to buy that time back that you've, you've on this one crummy printer that's not doing it for you. If you get that replaced, get something under management for it. Just use technology the way it's supposed to. You can buy back whole appointments every day, bring up, revenue, bringing up, you know, overall staff morale. so I call that the waterfall of inefficiency where everything gets pushed off just a little bit by one small thing, but it cascades.

Mm-hmm. so I've got a few others too that I, I do recommend, and that's really technology that can kind of help you with anything involving your soaps. That can be time that there's a lot of additional time spent on, we'll talk a bit, a few of those a little bit later on. but also going into any technological change with some sort of plan. I do feel that's the other issue that comes up quite a bit. You know, you say, I'm gonna invest in X I'm gonna invest in YI went to this trade show, and then all of a sudden you've got this new product that no one knows how to use and is creating more efficiency inefficiency on top of it. So yeah, technology needs to work within your workflow.

It doesn't need to supplant it, but it does need to be maintained and coached to regularly so that it can provide the results you want. Amazing. Tha Thank you William. Great insights. Reese, do you like to add anything to that In, in terms of efficiency? I, I, I come from assistant, not a IT systems, but more of a business structure system. Mm-hmm. background if, if practice managers and practice owners, if you're listening, if you are your own bottleneck and everything has to go through you as a decision maker, you are that printer, you are that printer because everything has to go through you in order for it to function and work. Hence the going back to trust and trust your team to do the work for you.

Just train them, give them a foundation, give them an SOP, give them, some, some training to be able to do that particular thing for you. Now, we all heard about, it's above my pay grad current, phrase. Almost everything at an ownership level is above everybody else's pay grad except for yours. If you're an owner, if you are doing pre fixing a printer that's not within your pay grade, that's your practice manager or that's your owner, office manager, that could even be your technician. However it is that you've allocated for that role is not you as an owner. You do not need to be all things to all people. You don't have to wear all the hats. You can delegate, there's a great word, delegate, delegate a lot of stuff, and you'll have more time to do more stuff that is, doesn't involve fixing printers.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. Oh yeah. So now once systems start to shift, teams often feel the impact. First change can be exciting, but it can also be very stressful. So Reese, how do you help veterinary teams navigate, change, and adopt new workflows or technologies while maintaining morale and productivity? Change is hard and difficult for many, especially for our industry. So if you're going to implement anything, and I'm gonna use me as an example because I've got a story and Will's gonna laugh at this one. in 2020 during COVID, we all got shut down and I thought, we're gonna be close for a while now will be a great time to move to cloud while we are closed from a server to a cloud.

I signed the paperwork to, to go cloud. I thought we were still closed. I think it was not even two days after I signed that paperwork to go live that, we, we had to open our doors because the government said, yeah, well you can open, you can operate now. And then, you know what happened? Everyone had a COVID puppy boom. And we were, let's just say that if words could kill, Jesus Christ would have nothing on me because I was stoned, crucified, and stabbed many, many times. 'cause my team just said, what is happening? So, I, I recommend that you start very slow. That if you're going to do something like I did, I would schedule appropriately. I would limit, obviously don't do it during COVID, but do it.

in a normal setting. Schedule appropriately. Allow time for inefficiencies. Allow time for mistakes. Allow time for your team to learn this system. If you give it to 'em in small bites, and every, every little bit that you take a bite of is going to be digested small, that's gonna help that change. If you're just gonna say, again, don't do what I did, but if you're gonna say, oh, we're gonna change this, new system and that's gonna how it's gonna work, you're not gonna have that buy-in. They need small incremental changes over a period of time. It could take up to a year. But this small release changes not everything, like all at once. Like I did, again, learn from our mistakes, people, I'm, I made many mistakes learn from me.

Amazing. Thank you. Re I know change management is very hard. What, what do you think about that, William? Change management is hard and honestly, when I look at the five major, what I call technology fires, like the little, sparks of inefficiency that cause the full blaze to go off, you know, one of them really just comes from the resistance to new tech elements of it, right? Mm-hmm. Because when you get up every single day, I don't care who you are, if you are the most tech forward or the most, technologically, just like, this isn't for me, it breaks when I touch it person, you probably don't come into work saying, oh boy, I can't wait for everything that I've known up till today to be upended by something new.

It's scary for all of us, even those of us who live and breathe in that world. So what you really have to find are ways of bringing your staff into the decision making process upfront. especially during some of those like tr you know, like you mentioned Reese and your, you know, the COVID, time, you know, all of that. it's hard to kind of pick the right time. you don't know if you're going to, you know, if the next thing is gonna happen one week after you sign that deal. But what you can do is you can prepare your staff as best as possible for what's coming down the pipeline so that they are more on your side than they are the disaster side. Yeah. That, that wasn't a happy time in my office, let me tell you.

So now technology, like you said, can unlock growth, but only if it's introduced in the right way. So William, how can clinics balance adopting new technology tools without overwhelming staff or disrupting daily operations? So I think a lot of times people think that the process of getting new technology is the owner decides they need to have it the next day the technology is purchased, and it has happened that way sometimes, you know, for a lot of different reasons. But there are several other steps that I put in the process that I think are as crucial. the first of all is before going further at all, looking at your technology that you're thinking about investing in, and you should have a why, why am I doing this?

Why is this now? What problems is this going to solve? If you can't answer sort of that question of the why yet, then you're not ready for that new technology no matter how, how else? So what am I trying to do? Why is this effective now? Then you need to get your buy-in from your team. Usually what I like doing there is developing a, a task force. And this task force's job is to be representative of different people within the practice who touch up against that, technology and have them give you your gotta haves and your, this would be nice list. Mm-hmm. And again, this is for any technology. I'm basing this a lot around kind of cloud pims, which are kind of the big overhaul one, but you can use this for just about anything.

Even that new printer up front, once you've gotten the, the buy-in and the checklist from all the different team members, the stakeholders, those people now are your evangelists because when something goes wrong with it, they're now, they now have some skin in the game too. So they're going to help figure out ways around those. So that task force isn't just for the decision making, it's also going to be, involved in the rollout. The next thing there is make sure those rollouts are take as long as they need to take, practice management softwares. and they've gotten a lot better about this, but I do remember there was a little stretch where they would go, go into practice and say, yeah, we can have you up and running in a month.

Mm-hmm. And the problem with that is you can get someone up and running in a month, but not smoothly, not easily, you know, usually it should be a several month process where you, your IT team, your stakeholders and your new software provider are all working in concert with one another. Saying, okay, what's the next step? What do we need to have? Do we have the infrastructure in place to support this practice management software? If not, maybe we need to look at boosting our internet speeds, upgrading some workstations, looking at our overall network, what reports have to make it over to launch. When are we gonna schedule all this data? How do we test to make sure the data works?

Once the physical server in this example is gone and you're in the cloud-based one, what is the process for decommissioning that physical server? How so how long does that take? And are there any other server functions that we need to load to the cloud to, to make this work? That's a lot of stuff. And you as the owner shouldn't have to be the only one to decide on those things. You have a team with you and beside you and some external team members who can work with you as well. And then finally, with new technology, sometimes there's a buzz to do this right after convention season, you've just gone, you've walked around the floor, this looks cool, that looks cool.

They gave me a flyer. And that's great strike while the iron is hot, for sure. But don't strike all of the irons. at the exact same time change should be incremental and mapped. So figure out what your priority is. Let's do this one now. And then in Q3, maybe we roadmap out this. And then Q4, we roadmap out that so that you're not overwhelming your staff with too many changes at the exact same time. Do I go to this new platform? Do I go to this new one? No. This way they can focus on learning the one thing, gaining the mastery. So it does mean that you put your practice in a longer period of change, but that is more structured change than it is just scrambled chaos while they're trying to get all these new systems in place.

Thank you, William. Thank you, William. I think, like you said, it's very important to know about the why we are doing this. And, Reese, do you like to add anything to that? Yeah, I just wanna tag on what Will said about putting all the irons on the same time. again, I'm in the practice management side. I see a lot of practice managers go to these conferences and they're writing down all these notes and they're like, frantic and they're like, this is awesome. I love this. And then they go, then they go back to the office on Monday and go, everyone's fired because we don't do X, Y, Z. What we failed to do is like, okay, we've noticed that here's some deficiencies.

We noticed that some efficiencies can be better. How do we best do that team? And it's important that your team come up with the solutions, not you, you have the answers now lead them to the answer, and you go, yes. How do we do that? Samantha And Samantha hopefully gives you some good solutions, and then hopefully there's gonna start a chain reaction with your team and the someone's gonna give you the, the right answer, the right way to do it. And then you say, that sounds amazing. Emily, do you reckon you can head that up? Do you reckon you can grab a team together and put that together? What ama that's amazing. Thank you so much. Your job's done.

You didn't do it yourself. They did it. And all you have to do is guide them, direct them to the light instead of firing them. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. Re so before we move to the next set of questions, I want to take a moment and share something helpful for all of our veterinary leaders here tonight. And if you're joining in, also, please do, if you do have any questions, feel free to use the chat and add it on, on the, on this chat, and we can bring it to the discussion. We'd like to see your engagement as well. So, so what, what I was gonna share was when someone in your area, such as, for, for, for veterinary, veterinary care, for veterinary care, it's not just Google anymore, right?

AI tools are now answering questions directly, often without sending people to websites. So here's the real questions. Is your practice being recommended by ai? Or are your competitors showing up in set instead? The whole model is changing fast. AI search is giving direct answers, skipping websites and reshaping how, patient, patients choose a provider. So if your practice is not positioned as the trusted authority, you risk becoming invisible to high intent patients. So, but here is the opportunity practices that focus and expect expert on expert content. Real patient education and strong online signals are the ones AI trust. So the trust turns into calls, just like we were talking about earlier, bookings and real growth.

So the new goal is simple. It's not just to be found, of course, but be recommended by AI as well and be trusted by people. So, tonight's discussion throughout tonight's discussion, we've talked about culture, systems, technology and client experience, which we'll also be talking about in a few moments. And all of these pieces work together. But there's one question every veterinary clinic has to answer and that can the right pet owners find you, trust you, and clearly understand that makes you clinic different. So in partnership with the Veterinary Business Institute and the, and Equa marketing, the We Equa is offering you specifically for all the veterinary practices and owners to help them grow through a smart digital strategies, focused in visibility, trust, and long-term client relationships.

So as a thank you for being with us tonight, Nareen is offering you a complimentary, veterinary practice growth session with his team. And that is here, you can, you can see the QR code, there'll be link on the, chat as well, and you can go and get that. It's a complimentary call. That team will review your clinic's online presence, local search visibility, website experience, and how pet owners see your brand before they ever book an appointment. You'll walk away with clear answers to questions like oped owners, finding your clinic with when they search online. Is your website building trust or creating confusion? Where are you losing potential appointments without realizing it?

So you, you can get all those questions answered. This is complimentary and, and make sure and it'll be a worth, worth your time. So with that said, let's jump back into the conversation and that will be back to re So now, now that we talked about systems that net technology, let's bring the focus back to aligning culture with client care. So, so Reese, what strategies have you seen work best for aligning a clinic's culture with its client care goals? Well, I have to be the cliche here. When we talk about buzzwords, will said it before about what is your why? what do you do? What you do? If we can't understand what our why is your team doesn't have the same buy-in, you are operating on different pages.

So we talk about three things. We talk about a why your niches and your uniques. These are marketing tools that everyone uses. It's just a matter of defining them. So when someone says, what's your why? Like, what, what, what's the why for the practice? What's the practice's vision? If the practice's vision is to be the, the community leader, the neighborhood vet, where everyone knows that everyone wants to go to, maybe it's reasonably cost, maybe it's not high level medicine, and that's also okay, we don't need to fall into the same bucket as everybody else. But if we understand our why, our mission maybe is to be affordable. Sometimes affordable doesn't mean the best practice because sometimes we just simply can't have that.

But that's okay. As long as we can identify who we are, who we stand for, who we target, target market, and what our niche is, we are able to then to identify what our why is and who we serve and how we are gonna do it. That needs to be translated to your team. That needs to be brought in by your team. The same, the same reasons why they or your team needs to also buy in to the core values. 'cause it's gonna create the culture, create the vision. But this is just a, you know, one arm of everything that we, that I look at anyway. I look at from the vision to the people, the people to the core values and aligning them all. And then we set systems to make sure it runs the same direction by itself.

But we need to have goals. because if we don't know what our goals are, he the vision, we can't go into that direction and we can't make plans, mini goals or micro goals to get us there. You wanna build the boat? How? Gotta get some wood, great. Then what? Got some nails? Then what we, that's what we are building, building a house, building the boat, making sure we row the same way, singing the same song, drew it the same Kool-Aid. Amazing. Thank you Reese. William, anything you'd like to add? I, I just wanna really echo that whole, you know, everyone pulling the same direction at any given time, you know, understanding what that mission is like.

To Reese's point, I think sometimes companies will build the mission statement and it'll go up on their website, and that's the last people ever see from it. one of the things that I do with, with my team, and it's, they, they, they roll their eyes a little bit, but they know it forward and backwards is every Wednesday is our staff meeting. And we don't start until we've gone through what our, our, our core values and our mission statement are as a group. and then sometimes we'll say, let's really dive into of our core values. Which of those core values did have you shown or seen demonstrated in the last week? So that they become a thing that is communicated and integrated, upon.

And honestly, aside from just having it at the agenda of the beginning of each week and hoping that people, you know, kind of go through it, it becomes something that the a o they own as well. And what we've seen is the more that they have that buy-in to that set of core values, the more that they live it and they more that they breathe it every day, the more that I can see it reflect in the work, and then it gives me points of, follow up with them when I see someone who's one of ours is, kindness. And when I see someone indicating kindness as one of our core values to our clients, going that extra mile, you know, just being pleasant, being friendly, as we work through an issue, I can say, Hey, thanks for following through on that core value of kindness.

That was really good. so it's a little, it can sometimes feel a little hokey to do, but if you're gonna have it, if it is gonna be your why, live it. Breathe it. Just like lean, lean into the cringe, I guess a little bit. And, and they will too. Exactly. Leave it and breathe it. So, now client communication is often where culture and operations meet in real life. So William, in your work integrating digital marketing with operational processes, what strategies have proven most effective for improving client communication and satisfaction? Yeah, so there's a few different places to put this one, right? whether it be under the marketing side or under the, technology integration side.

So I'll be speaking a little broadly on both. Mm-hmm. first of all, you need to understand what your gaps are, right? and this is the, this is usually the, the part that requires some of that self-reflection or to go to that trade show and learn about some of the other things people are doing and bring that back into to ruminate over it. is, am I experiencing a situation where I'm missing incoming, messaging from clients? I'm missing texts, I've got calls that go into the queue and that eventually get dumped in a voicemail somewhere. does this now make my client service feel a little disjointed? if, if so, then maybe one of the things that we look for is solution, is some sort of communication tool with like SMS email portal access, sort of built within.

maybe the issues, fall more under kind of when we're responding back to people, maybe we're doing a really good job at answering calls, but we're not necessarily doing a good job of communicating with things through the day. So the first thing I really like to look at here is, whatever of these tools or functions that I'm about to talk about, they only work when the things that I talked about in the previous question. Staff buy-in and training are front and foremost if you just slap a communications tool on and say, Hey, you're great communicators. Now you haven't fixed an fixed an issue, you've just sort of moved the hole from another part of the boat.

but you should also be looking at meeting clients where they are. some of the things I'm gonna say are gonna vary demographic to demographic, and area to area. and most people require multiple touch points of communication nowadays to get anything going. So you should not rely on just one thing. I will say is that unless you're in a very specific area that, that might need them in a way that maybe others don't, I think postcards are no longer a primary method of communication. you may have some market research in your area that counters that, and that's very valid, right? But as a general rule of thought, most people are, interacting with technology on their phones, even less so kind of at their laptops and workstations these days.

It's tablets and phones. So texting, being able to include appointment reminders, check-ins during surgery, becomes a great way of helping to relieve some of that. Like, well, I had to drop off my dog this morning, but, and I don't see him again until later in the day. Now I've got anxiety. But getting just say, Hey, buddy is going back into surgery. Hey, buddy is doing well. maybe even, hey, here's, depending on the type of surgery, you know, here's a photo of but of, buddy, in the recovery room afterwards. He's still groggy and coming too, but he's feeling well. Same thing with grooming. You know, if you're dropping your pet off all day for grooming or for a few days for boarding, being able to get video footage check-ins on how buddy's doing while you're away, those are good things that can help the client relationship with the staff feel good, but it only works when it's done with care and with training.

it also is useful to sort of understand that veterinary medicine, and I hate, I hate the way this is about to sound, but it is turning into a little bit more of like concierge service these days in certain places. And that's because we're seeing a gulf that where in the average practice, 25% of your clients are going to be driving about 50% of your revenue. mm-hmm. Which means that half of what you make comes from a quarter of your clients. That goal seems to be increasing each year. So being able to provide some, some of that concierge service so that 25%, still continues to feel like, Hey, I'm still getting the value out of this is important.

Well, also looking at kind of whatever spectrum of care items you might do to make sure the others get compliance. As with anything though, you need to tr and reset this before, and I was, I was nodding along you tr you need to trust your team because all of this sounds like a lot of things to start adding in. Now I've got, you know, I'm using Check Vet now and they're helping me with all of these different things. I'm using this tool and it works into my pims and all of these different things that are interacting and receiving rece, messages. This doesn't mean that you have to do all of it. Your team needs to know when and where they fit into everything.

And if you have good, active, marketing team or technology teams, they should be taking some of these things off your work, plate as well. I do strongly recommend that if you have it in your budget, you partner with a veterinary specific marketing agency. Because what they'll do is they'll help you figure out your social media calendar, your email blasts, your marketing message, your brand. You still need to be involved. No one knows your practice like you do, but between them and the staff members that you have working on some of these different, direct to client communications, you are going to have a much better time than you are just sort of hoping the old ways of communicating still work.

Amazing. Great point. Julian, thank, thank you for that. And, Reese, do you like to add anything? Maybe, what was the question again? so it was about, digital marketing with operational processes. What strategies have proven most effective by Improve? Yeah. You see, yeah, I, I actually learned something at, the last V max that was just that someone was talking about internal marketing and, you know, I never really involved myself with the internal marketing of, of a reminder system. whether it be check that it, whether it be PET Desk or D-V-M-L-I, it, I never really involved myself in it, but what I didn't know is that by default, some of these systems are set to three reminders, but through one of the talks I went to, they actually recommended between nine and 12, but it wasn't like at, at a time.

It was over a period of 30 days that there's multiple touch points. There was also some little points that I didn't know, again, again, didn't know about and in certain, sentences in some of the reminder systems that are able to help that conversion. Now, we're not saying please confirm. Again, this is just what I, what I heard, and I actually quite enjoy this conversation. Mm-hmm. But they're not saying, please confirm at 30 days or at 15 days or at 10 days. What they are saying is, Hey, just a reminder, it is coming up. Make sure you, you, it's in your schedule, it is coming up. But by the fifth day, please confirm. Third day, please confirm day before it's tomorrow, look forward and you're seeing you there reply no before, whatever that may look like to, to cancel or reschedule, but we're not bombarding them a well, we are sort of, but it's more about keeping, keeping on top of mind.

But we're not saying, please confirm 30 days before, because I don't even know what I'm doing next week, let alone Yeah, 30 days. Right? But the, the mindset that I got that I had to change was different because I, I did, I just assumed that three days was the best, marketing strategy set by the, these platforms. I didn't know any better. To me, they're the experts. But until we understand how internal marketing is structured, how it plays on the psychological minds of our, our clients and demographic and geographic, we, we just need to tweak it for ourselves. Every practice is different, every region is different. Every, every age group is gonna be different.

So we just need to tweak it. Now, I'm not saying that this person said this is the Bible, it's about understanding what to do according to your own metric system. So I just wanted to make sure that, I mean, I put my 2 cents in, but again, it is something that I recently learned. So, you know, I, I'm still a, learning this component, myself. But in terms of using marketing, sorry, using technology to market, as will said, postcards for the most part are, are dead or die in, but they still have a place, as William said, according to your own demographic. Again, every practice is gonna be different. I have one practice that majority of my, actually a good 30% of my target market is over the age of 55, right?

So I, I may need to go to, postcards in that regard, right? I, I have to make sure I don't take it out of the equation. That's what we're trying to say. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Now, growth is exciting, but it can stretch teams if it's not handled carefully. So re clinics looking to grow sustainably. How can leaders balance operational efficiency with a focus on team engagement and values driven, driven decision making? It's a very, it's a very, I think it's a very broad and vague question. I think we get asked this a lot, but I don't think there's ever a, an algorithm that we can go to, for me anyway. Mm-hmm. I, I like to lean on the fact that if we can have our team lean into that trust conversation a lot more to gain the ideas and the, the want to be better than we were yesterday conversation, I want my team to challenge everything that we do because I, I'm not the status quo person.

Trust me when I tell you that if something worked today, I wanna find out how it could be better tomorrow. I, I, some people may say, what got you here won't get you there. And you know, at some point that's true. If we don't challenge ourselves, if we don't reinnovate, if we don't try and find out better ways to be more efficient, we're gonna fall behind. And that's, you know, unfortunately, the, the rule of life, it's not longer. The strongest will survive. It's more who's more adaptable. So if we can be more adaptable in terms of what is happening between technology, our teams, wants the economics, the, the standard of care conversation, things are changing every day.

But we need to adapt to what is happening in real time. And to be able to do that, you need to have what I call a scorecard. If you can understand of maybe five or seven top things that you need to track weekly to understand how your practice is doing, that's gonna give you enough ammunition to say, okay, what do I need to change? How do we change it? Why do we, why is this thing wrong? Well, this, this number incorrect or not, not incorrect, but just abnormal. I'm gonna look at that and go, okay, maybe my unscheduled appointments is more than, you know, seven a week. Why, why is it more than seven? What's happened there? Did, did my calls drop?

Did I have higher calls, but my conversions are low? Why is that the case? I might listen to 10 phone calls at random just to see what is happening. Maybe I have a CSR who's in training that didn't convert. Why These are the kind of questions that we need to ask ourselves. I think I'm going on a bit of a rant, but if we can find out how to be better leaders, and I say the word leaders through stewardship, not servantship. Everyone's gonna hate me for this, but ev stewardships for the team, stewardship is for both the business and the team. There needs to be a balance, in my view. We can be all for the team, but there has to be some balance for the, for the goals of the practice, that we need to make sure that practice are at the forefront of everything.

As long as we are supporting our team, they need to be attainable. They need to be, they, they need to be attainable. We can't have goals that we just simply can't reach. It'll just demon diminish everyone's morale. But as long as we can have those goals that can be attainable, we have historical data that supports it, we can get there. But if we have goals that simply won't be reached, you've lost your team from the start, ask their buy-in, ask them what they can do, ask them for a goal and see if they can reach it. Start small, start small. Maybe your first year is pretty easy. Get them some buy-in, get 'em a win next year, it'll be a little bit harder.

Trust me. It'll, it will, it will just be a snowball effect. Amazing. Thank you. Reese, anything you'd like to add? William? I, I love all of that re because I think it's all about figuring out what your team needs, and working with them to accomplish that. And when you accomplish both of those things together, you get what the practice needs. One of the things that we do in the cybersecurity side of things, if you allow me a small tangent on this, we have this process set up where whenever we're putting cybersecurity out for, veterinary practice, what we're really rolling out are pillars, identification, protection, detection, response, and then recovery.

Beneath that, there are a bunch of tools, but we are agnostic to those tools. can change and come and go because that's what happens. A lot of times I find out that a tool is becoming obsolete is because my frontline people are finding new things that are worth exploring. So they'll come up to us and they'll say, Hey, I wanna try this out. And I'm like, great, let's do it. Let's figure, you just need to bring me the why and bring me sort of how you envision it working. Then we'll sit down and see if this particular tool kind of fits underneath one of those pillars. We're still accomplishing the same goals. We're protecting, we're responding, we're recovering, but the methods we go about, we leave ourselves the innovation to grow because we have to, because that's the industry we're in.

And I think that's true of, of any veterinary practice too. Be open to those new ideas with guidance of course, and let people take ownership over how they present those to you so that once that does get implemented, it's like, and it's a success then it's not you as the boss that made that. It's, you know, Mary from the team was the one who really thought this through and we're seeing, you know, 10% new clients because of this thing that Mary came up with. You know, you can do that, you know, don't necessarily need to do it if it doesn't work out, but, but when it does, and a lot of time it will, if the planning goes into it, you know, you can make that a shared victory.

Do you mind if I just, chime in on that as well? Will, if we will said, you know, just because you've given someone, some leeway to do something, it doesn't mean they have to do it or you have to do it. It's, you can delegate anything with guidance because you are teaching, you are, delegating, but you're also teaching them. So if they're come back to you with a project and they're really excited about it, that's fantastic. But we can also ask more questions. Have we thought about what happens if this happens? I like this. Can we also look at this? I want them to explore every single detail before we go ahead. Because what you are now doing, you are still mentoring, you're still asking 'em to lead, you're still asking 'em to be collaborative.

But if, if we simply say it's my way or, or or nothing at all, you team is not gonna be collaborative. They're not. They're gonna lose interest if you, the more, times you invite people into the conversation, the better it is. Here's another thing. Most practice practices have, what's that? Is it not millennials, that's the other one. Gen, gen Y, gen Z. they, they have this age group that want to be involved. They want Yes, a say, they want to be able to have a word in and be involved in a say on how and where the company's going. It's not, it's not exclusive to the vet industry, it's every single industry. They wanna know why. They wanna know, Hey, can this work?

And let me tell you, they know more technology than what we know. and maybe I'm not too sure about will, but they may know more. Oh Yeah, I'm sure they do. Yeah, Yeah. Right. But if we don't invite them into the conversation, we will never know how to be better than we were yesterday. Right. That's just a factor of matter. I only found out about a, a, a program called Fixer AI about a week and a half ago, and it was only because of one of my texts that said, Hey, have you heard of Fixer? I'm like, no. But this is the, the type of environment that you wanna be creating. It's that trusting environment, trust that anything I bring forward, it's not gonna be out of repercussions, fear, repercussions.

It's, thank you for that. Have we, have we thought about, or it's great. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I had no idea. This is what trust is about. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, tonight's conversation is all about trust. So without that, the nothing can happen. So, so William, looking ahead, which, er, which emerging technologies do you see having the biggest impact on veterinary clinic efficiency and client care in the next three to five years? Yeah, over the next three to five years, I've kind of boiled this down to four main technology types, mm-hmm. With the caveat of we don't know the thing that's right around the corner that hasn't exploded onto the seat yet, whatever that thing happens to be.

So everything could get disrupted, by some cool technological wonders. But number one is ai. it's used a lot and it can be used as a buzzword in this space. It can be used as something that we're afraid of in this space, or a thing that we just want to throw every single one of our apples into the baskets of. for me, AI has a couple of pretty cool things that are happening. Scribing being one of the most primary ones that's coming up. You can now have vet scribing software that's a part of, or integrates with your practice management software, which is gonna reduce a lot of the time that you're spending on just getting your notes in following an appointment.

And you can also, when used properly, even enhance the, client experience in the practice. I had one doctor who was, would have up the voice to text scribing, and it would auto, auto document while they were talking. And instead of just putting their, you know, putting the stethoscope up to the dog and then writing something down and then go lifting the tail, doing something, writing something down. Now what they're saying is, alright, what I'm doing now is I am checking for pulse, and the pulse I'm hearing is this. You're gonna notice that. Now what I'm, so they're talking through this experience, and now the per the patient sitting there is getting a better understanding of why these different diagnostic techniques are important and why they're valuable for that pet at the same time that they're saving time, getting their soaps in.

so I like that. I do like it for administrative tasks, things like building out SOPs, meeting agendas, stuff that you just are, they're rote and you do 'em several different times. you can offload some of that thought to them. diagnostics, it's really cool the things happening in AI diagnostics these days. You can, get labs, you can get your, different, ultrasounds, x-rays, all your different, slices just responded to more quickly. especially looking for like cancerous cells or abnormalities. Now all of this comes with the caveat of there should always be some sort of SOP for AI policy in your practice? Who's allowed to do what When? For me, the one that I've got rolled out for, for my team is, it has to be sort of a human ai, human sandwich.

And what that means is the human does the critical thinking to put the, put whatever input is needed, right? It's, you know, garbage in, garbage out. So we need good data going in. The AI can do whatever it needs to do in the middle, but at the end, some human needs to review oversight, make sure that it didn't parse things that aren't supposed to happen, especially anything that goes out to the clients. So I am a big fan of the human ai, human sandwich on that. You can trademark it if you'd like. I also find that there's an inefficiency that comes from misused AI tools. sometimes used blindly. it can skew records, it can create ethical issues.

So those SOPs need to dictate not just the how, but the when. the second of those evolving technologies is cloud-based practice management softwares. we talked a little bit about these, but we are starting to see some of the, companies that do the physical, on-prem services. They are starting to slow down some of their update windows, which means they're starting to kind of shift more over more of their resources over to cloud as well. Mm-hmm. So you're not there yet. you know, that's not saying that physical servers are dead or dying. It is saying that they are getting less attention, which means more attention is going to the cloud. So you should start thinking about that the next time your server comes up for replacement.

wearables, we're seeing a lot of growth in the space of wearables. you know, different things. They can check sugars and different bodily, you know, like functions as well as checking pulse and temperature, all sorts of different things. So just from wearable collars and things that happen at home, what I like about these is that they're really good for ensuring compliance outside of your normal practice windows. of course, you always have to compensate for the fact that my cat that was displaying lethargy, when I bring him into the clinic, he's now a little more alert because he's in a new space around new people. So you can't account for that home environment quite the same way wearables can.

They can also give you more prolonged reading, especially for things like diabetic function. and I've even saw one hospital that would use them for some of their initial telemed, which is actually the fourth, pillar that I wanted to talk about here. The expansion of remote work where they could see kind of where the pet was sleeping. He would come in kind of itchy and they couldn't figure out why. And it looked like the, once they finally did just sort of like a, let's just view what his sleeping area looks like, he was on this kind of thick wooly blanket, and it seemed like that was causing some, some irritation. So they had a kind of a cleanup of the environment, and that solved a lot of it, something that would be really hard to catch, just bringing the pet into the practice.

But when we're talking about remote work, we're also talking about that in addition to hybrid and telemedicine, we're also talking about you might be able to, connect CSRs and some specialty practitioners from home, so that you don't have everyone in the practice every single day. all of these are really very valid, all of those different things I talked about, but every single one of them requires that, what is my why? What is my buy-in? How do I implement this, and how do I make sure that it's still working through regular checkpoints and regular training along the way after implementation? So that's what I would look forward to. Amazing. Great. Amazing.

so we do have some, we do have a question of some questions, but I think we will get to one of these questions, that, some of these registrants, submitted while, joining for this webinar. So, so the question goes as, our business has slowed down pretty significantly over the past 16 to 18 months. We are hearing similar things from peers. From what you're seeing across the industry, what do you think is driving this and where should practice start looking for solutions? Re William, would you like to add anything to this? Yeah, I, I can start. Yeah. Yeah. So, I am, you know, from some of the industry numbers that I've seen, through, our most recent vet partners conference, as well as even some of the practices I'm working with, that six, you know, 16, 18 months sort of like slow down is, is real and it is impacting people, right?

And that's not every single practice everywhere. That's what the average looks like, right? I've had, I have a few practices that are over exceeding their previous numbers. I have some that are, falling below, but, you know, I think by and large, we are seeing a small, dip off recently, I think there's been a little bit of it that has been financial crunch. there have been certain things involving inflation and even for, investing in different things that they're having to invest in. Some of the different tariff type situations have also caused a little bit of economic uncertainty, right? So when it comes to pet care, I know we in the industry don't see it as discretionary spending.

There are some pet owners who feel as though certain elements of their pet care might fall under that discretionary, spending, window. So what can we do about that? Well, in some cases, you know, you can't deal with things. You, you know, at the practice level, you can't really address things that are happening more on a, a national, international, or global scale, right? Yeah. What you can do is you can find out how to continue to show value in each one of your interactions, how to make sure that those experiences feel as positive as possible. And looking at what your spectrum of care looks like, and understanding that if you've only got 25% of your practice that is going to meet the air quotes gold standard, then you should instill in your staff the ability to not make co clients feel down or disregarded.

If they can't meet that gold standard, where else on the spectrum of care can we meet them to where they're still getting quality care, even if they're maybe having to go for this one test or another. Again, we in vet med don't like having to do that because we don't suggest stuff that we don't believe in, but we do have to figure out ways of getting everyone on board with meeting them where they're at. Amazing. What you liked about anything? I mean, not, not so much more, but as, as, as will said, there's a lot of factors. I mean, sure the economy is, is hurting a little bit from all these outside pressures, excuse me. And I mean, look, I'm, I'm in the same boat.

I, we dropped a little bit as well. We dropped 17%. what have we done? We have, I mean, go through the whole, the whole adage of looking back to anyone who hasn't been in your practice for the last 18 months, find out where they're gone, bring them back. Maybe it, see, the other thing is, and I'm not too sure if this gets talked about enough, but find out what it costs you to get a client through Google Ads, Facebook ads. If it's costing you $50 an ad to get one client, offer that money as a, as an incentive to bring 'em in. Hey, if Fluffy comes in, let's put Fluffy in today, I'll give you $50 off your, your next, visit. Now, I know some of you might think, oh, we're discounting the services.

Is this, you're just taking your Google spend or your Facebook spend, and you move over here at a qualified buyer client because they're already a client of you. They were anyway, unless they've moved to another city, that's a different story. But if they're still down the road, but they've gone to another practice, find out why. Let's, let's start to do some research. Find out why, why they're gone. What could you have done differently or better if it's simply down to price. I mean, we've done wellness plans, we've done senior wellness plans, we've done another wellness plan or some other kind of promotion to get them in to offer some value. So once again, my, my cost per, per client is $35.

But I said, okay, well, what if I want to take that $35 and offer a little bit more incentive just to have that person come back? Can I afford that? Well, of course I can. If it means I can not have, seven unscheduled appointments, and now I only have two, great, I can still put money in your bank. I'm still gonna make money. It's just a matter of, I'm just gonna make a little bit less of it. But it keeps my team busy. It's just a matter of thinking outside the box rather than I'm gonna give away services. Now, if you're gonna give away $500 worth of services, well, that's a different question. but give them enough of a, of a, of a hook to, to catch because you, you've done some homework about your practice, about who your target market is as to why they've gone, why they've left.

I hope you take it, I hope that you are already taking some reports on this as to what your bonding rate is or your retention rate is. I hope you have this data. 'cause if you don't, you, you need to start, because you need to find out why, why these things are happening. But if you can go back and go, Hey, Mr. Smith, I, I see that you've gone down the road. We have released records to the clinic down the road. Talk to me more about that. What could you have done differently? Find out why They may not be, they might be too embarrassed to tell you why ask. We can't, we can't change until we ask. Maybe it's because Rose from CSR was, was rude to them.

Rose is not there anymore. Fi find out how we can get them back, as is some examples. Amazing, amazing. I mean, some great insights, great discussion. And we, and right now, I mean, looking at the time, I was just wondering like, time was flying tonight. we have, we've come to the final stretch as well. so, I would love to keep going, but I want to be mindful of everyone's time. Tonight has been awesome. So many comprehensive answers, valuable takeaways, and practical insights. Thank you all so much. And, with that said, before we act officially close out tonight, I just wanna say, if you've been listening all the way throughout this discussion, it probably means you, you're serious about growing, not just as a, not just as a clinician, but as a leader and as a business owner.

So that's why I really encourage you to take the advantage that I was talking about earlier of the complimentary strategy session. And, think of it as a health checkup, but for your practice. We discussed this in the, we discussed this earlier as well. Just like you review a, a record about your pets to understand their current state of health, this session gives you a clear picture of your practices online health, how visible you are when you're strong, and what might be holding you back from reaching more of your ideal patients. So it's complimentary, it's personalized, it's designed to help you make smarter and data-driven decisions about your growth.

You can scan the QR code or grab the link in the chat to book your time. And, the team will be, team will help you get all those information. And it's one of those small steps that can lead to major results for your practice in 2026. So with that said, I'll, I'm, I'm going to, basically, say, our time has come to an end and it has been awesome. First of all, thank you to our expert panelists, Reese generally, and William Linde. You all were amazing. So much insight and, best practices, actionable content, and very tangible passion for what you do and how you do it and who you are and why you matter. So if I were to sum it up, I'd say collectively, you made the complex, simple, the hidden, visible, and the difficulties.

So secondly, thank you to all of our attendees for the privilege of your time and participation. Without you, we don't grow together without you. We don't set each other up for success. So a reminder to like, share and review us on your favorite social media and also stay connected with our expert panel here, if you like, a deeper conversation like this. Until next time, and on behalf of our panelists, thank you and keep striving for excellence and making a positive impact in the life of your patients and your pet parents. Thank you again for, to me being with us tonight. We'll see you at the next Veterinary business webinar. Until then, take care and good night. Thank you.

so much. Thank You. This was a blast. Thank you, li. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you. Goodnight. Bye.