This week, we’re doing things a little differently. No written notes. No heavy leadership theory. Just me, Dr. Andy Roark, and a completely ridiculous idea involving visual art - on an audio podcast. (What could possibly go wrong?)

If you don’t already know Andy, he’s a practicing veterinarian, international speaker, author, and media personality, and the founder of Uncharted Veterinary Conference, DrAndyRoark.com, and one of the few people in vet med who can make serious topics feel human, and fun.

We got into everything from AI scribes saving vets five minutes a consult (and possibly their sanity), to how to stay calm when the world’s losing its head. We even tackled the fine art of giving feedback without crushing someone’s soul.

At its heart, this episode’s about perspective. About remembering that veterinary medicine isn’t just science, it’s art. And if we want to stay sane, we’d better learn how to create, not just cope.

So grab a brew, settle in, and join us for a conversation about leadership, creativity, and keeping your head while everyone else is losing theirs.

[00:03] – Meet Andy Roark

[04:20] – The “F*** yeah” AI moment

[06:13] – Staying on time, not speeding up

[08:22] – How Andy uses AI in consults

[10:21] – Right here, right now

[12:03] – Focus on what you can control

[12:49] – Feedback as art

[15:42] – Why vet med is art

[17:27] – Clients, costs, and conflict

[20:20] – Who we really work for

[23:48] – How perspective shifts

[25:52] – What Andy sees differently now

[29:47] – Money, motives, and mistrust

[30:04] – Don’t be a dick

[32:15] – Final thoughts

Connect with Dr. Andy Roark:

Website: drandyroark.com

LinkedIn: Dr Andy Roark

Instagram: @drandyroark

Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for More Leadership Insights:

Follow: @drdavenicol

Learn more about veterinary leadership training: Veterinary Leadership Academy

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with someone who needs a reminder that vet med, for all its chaos, is still an art worth practising.

Most practice owners think they have a vision. A sentence written years ago. A vague idea. A gut feeling. But a real vision, one that energises your team and shapes culture, is something very different.

In this episode, Oliver and I break down the most common mistakes owners make when creating their vision – why many end up with fluffy statements that change nothing, why some practices have no vision at all, and why the work isn’t finished once the document is written and alive.

We explore how to structure a vision that actually works, how purpose, mission, and values fit together, and the simple tests that tell you whether yours is fit for purpose. You’ll learn why authenticity matters more than polish and how a living, breathing vision becomes rocket fuel for recruitment, retention, culture, and long term sustainability.

The medicine gets you started. The vision takes you somewhere worth going. Remarkable practices are built by leaders who choose the path with purpose.

Episode Outline:

[00:00] – Why vision matters

[01:07] – The danger of having no vision

[02:14] – Vision as your X factor

[06:49] – When structure goes wrong

[07:51] – Why “vision, mission, values” fall short

[09:46] – The purpose–mission–values model

[11:54] – Vision is only useful if you use it

[13:19] – The cost of abdication

[15:32] – Why vets avoid vision work

[18:00] – People, culture and sustainability

[20:40] – The goosebumps and butterflies test

[22:23] – Writing the unfiltered truth

[23:52] – Turning vision into leadership fuel

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Need help with your vision? Book a chat with Oliver at the Veterinary Leadership Academy and we’ll help you assess where you are and where you’re going.
• Download the Leadership Actions Study – practical steps to help you lead with clarity today.
• Explore our leadership courses – build the skills to create a culture your team loves being part of.
• Follow Dr Dave Nicol for daily leadership insights and practical tools for running a thriving veterinary practice.

Leave us a review on iTunes and share it with your colleagues in vet med. Great leadership, like great culture, grows when it’s shared.

You care deeply about your practice.

The vision, the medicine, the values, the clients - it all matters to you. Maybe a bit too much sometimes.

But unfortunately, just because you care, it doesn’t mean your team automatically will.

So how do you get them on board? How do you turn that personal passion into something your whole team believes in and wants to be part of?

In this episode, Oliver and I dig into what buy-in really looks like inside a practice - how to move from pushing people to inspiring them, why fear and control never create lasting motivation, and how clarity of purpose, mission, and values can turn a team that’s “just doing the job” into one that’s driving the vision forward.

You’ll learn how to help your people see what you see, how to build belief through consistency and communication, and how to create the kind of culture where everyone cares - not because they have to, but because they want to.

Because when your team believes in the vision, everything else starts to work.

Episode Outline:

[00:00] – What real care looks like

[02:00] – Duty, patients & self care

[04:10] – When care goes missing

[06:50] – Why “care” isn’t enough

[08:20] – The restaurant test

[09:35] – Fear kills culture

[10:00] – Clarity builds buy-in

[11:25] – Purpose, mission, values

[12:45] – Defining care for your team

[14:00] – Create context, not chaos

[14:45] – What truly matters to me

Resources & Links Mentioned:

• Download the Leadership Actions Study – simple, practical steps to lead better today
• Explore our leadership courses – build the skills to lead your team with confidence and clarity
• Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for daily veterinary leadership insights

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your colleagues in vet med. Because great leadership - like great care - grows when it’s shared.

Why do veterinarians keep burning out?

In this episode of the Veterinary Leadership Success Show, I’m unpacking why so many great people in our profession are burning out, and what we can learn from elite athletes about how to fix it.

Because in sport, training hard every day is a fast track to injury. Yet in vet med, we do exactly that - long hours, relentless pressure, and no real recovery. Then we wonder why everyone’s limping.

I’ll walk you through how to think like a coach - setting the right dose of work, building rest into the plan, and checking in before things start to snap. We’ll talk about how to balance intensity with recovery and why emotional fuel is every bit as important as physical energy.

Episode Outline:

00:00 – Performance or wellbeing? (You can have both.)

01:00 – Lessons from the track: what sport can teach vet med

03:00 – Running slow to go fast

06:00 – The four factors of performance: volume, intensity, rest, and fuel

10:00 – When teams “train” too hard and start to break

13:00 – Building resilience, not fatigue

16:00 – Check in before they burn out

18:00 – Fuel, rest, and emotional recovery

20:00 – Your leadership training plan for a healthier team

Want more leadership tools in your corner?

Follow me: @drdavenicol

Check out: Veterinary Leadership Academy

Run your eNPS: drdavenicol.com/get-your-enps

If this episode hit home, leave a review or share it with a teammate.

This week, we’re asking the big question - what happened to mentorship in vet med?

To help me figure it out, I’m joined by Dr. Robin Hargreaves - former BVA President, lifelong mixed practitioner, and a man who’s spent nearly 40 years mentoring vets, leading teams, and keeping his sense of humour intact (which, frankly, might be his greatest achievement).

Robin grew up on a hill farm in the Yorkshire Dales, built and ran a four-site, 50-person independent practice, and has seen the profession evolve from handwritten records to AI tools that still can’t spell “lab retriever.” He’s known for his straight talk, northern grit, and deep care for the people coming up behind him.

In this episode, we dig into how mentorship quietly disappeared, why it matters more than ever, and how we can bring it back - stronger, wiser, and a lot less formal than you’d think.

So grab a brew, tune in, and let’s talk about how to keep wisdom alive in vet med.

[00:03] – Meet Robin Hargreaves

[04:14] – One broken arm, one life-long career

[07:51] – Why tough years become good stories

[09:55] – Where is mentorship in vet med?

[12:05] – Why we MUST share wisdom

[15:25] – A new kind of mentorship for today

[17:30] – Three lessons every leader needs

[18:23] – Stop defending. Start listening.

[21:10] – When to stop leading 

[23:01] – Being smart isn’t everything

[25:11] – How consistency builds trust

Connect with Robin Hargreaves:

LinkedIn: Robin Hargreaves, BVSc MRCVS

Instagram (bird photography & life wisdom): @robinhargreaves

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your colleagues in vet med.

What do you do when most of your team walks out? Pour a stiff drink? Hide under the desk? 

In this week’s Veterinary Leadership Success Show, I’m joined by Dr. Molly Husman, owner of Brinker Veterinary Hospital up in Lake Orion, Michigan, and a woman who has lived through the leadership nightmare most of us secretly dread.

Within a year of buying her clinic, she made the brave decision to let someone go. It didn’t go down well. In fact, it set off a chain reaction that left her with just a handful of staff and a whole lot of self-doubt.

But here’s where the story gets good. Molly didn’t crumble - she rebuilt. Brick by brick, hire by hire, dad joke by dad joke (you’ll see what I mean). She rediscovered her purpose, learned to trust again, and built a team that actually wants to be there. Today, she’s running a low-volume, high-touch, heart-led practice that’s about to move into a new purpose-built home.

We talk about the fear of letting go, the power of trust, and why sometimes the most painful decisions turn out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to you.

Grab your headphones, pour something strong, and settle in - this one’s a masterclass in courage, clarity, and leadership with heart.

Episode Outline

[00:03] – When your whole team walks out

[03:20] – Buying a clinic with someone else’s culture

[05:16] – The firing that changed everything

[06:07] – “Stay in joy or go in peace”

[08:20] – Rebuilding from scratch

[09:42] – Turning fear into freedom

[13:11] – What trust really looks like in a vet clinic

[14:24] – Looking at your clinic differently

[16:39] – Learning to step back and actually lead

[18:34] – Realizing you might be the problem

[20:25] – Hiring slow, building fast

[22:12] – One interview question that changed everything

[23:51] – Trust as the heartbeat of culture

[25:18] – Building a practice that fits you

• Brinker Veterinary Hospital
• Connect with Dr. Molly on Linkedin
• 
  

• Follow: @drdavenicol
• Learn more about Veterinary Leadership Training: Veterinary Leadership Academy

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your colleagues in vet med.

Generational battles are raging in vet med. Older vets roll their eyes at “snowflakes” and their boundaries. Younger vets look at the “dinosaurs” and wonder why on earth burnout is worn like a badge of honour. So who’s right?

In this episode, I dig into why these clashes happen, what both sides are actually getting right, and why the finger-pointing is making things worse, not better. We’ll talk about the lost art of mentorship, the corporate wrecking ball that’s left generations stranded, and the leadership skills that can turn all this conflict into collaboration.

Snowflakes. Dinosaurs. The labels make it easy to judge, but they don’t solve the real problem: our teams are breaking under the weight of division. In this episode, I’ll show you how to stop fighting the wrong battle - and start leading in a way that brings generations together.

Episode Outline:

[00:01] – Snowflakes vs Dinosaurs

[02:00] – Why the pendulum has swung

[04:07] – Burnout as “rite of passage”

[05:31] – What younger vets really want

[06:58] – The corporate salary trap

[08:23] – The Workload Goldilocks Zone

[09:39] – The mentorship gap

[11:22] – Fragile? Or just learning?

[12:28] – Mentorship done right

[13:20] – Why leadership is missing

[14:10] – Curiosity vs judgment

[15:08] – A message to the older generation

[15:35] – A message to the younger generation

[16:30] – Pets don’t care about labels

Resources & Links Mentioned:

• Download the Leadership Actions Study – simple, practical steps to lead better today
• Explore our leadership courses – build the skills to lead your team through complexity
• Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for daily leadership insights

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your colleagues in vet med!

Hiring is one of the hardest jobs in veterinary leadership right now. Everyone’s fishing in the same tiny pond, and most practices look and sound exactly the same. 

In this episode, I break down why veterinary recruitment feels like such a nightmare, and more importantly, what you can do to fix it. Spoiler alert: it’s not just about throwing more money at the problem.

We’ll dig into what employer branding really means, how to stop writing job ads full of buzzword bingo, and why a clear vision, purpose and set of lived values will do more for your hiring than any signing bonus. I’ll also give you a simple equation to score your employer brand, so you can see exactly where you’re strong, and where you’ve got work to do.

If you’re blaming “the market” for your hiring woes, this one’s going to challenge you. Because the truth is, there are practices out there with people lining up to join them. The difference? They’ve learned how to tell their story. And you can too.

Your story could be the key to better hires. Join our upcoming webinar and find out how, save your seat now.

Episode Outline:

[00:01] – Why hiring’s tough

[03:00] – Standing out

[07:01] – Employer brand 101

[10:17] – Vision vs buzzwords

[11:05] – Purpose, mission, values

[16:21] – The brand equation

[19:46] – Telling your story

[22:26] – Employee experience first

[25:08] – Don’t blame the market

[27:33] – Be unapologetically you

[29:11] – Webinar preview

[30:01] – Free NPS survey

Resources & Links Mentioned:

• Register for our Employer Branding Webinar
• Join our free Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey study
• Download our leadership brochures

Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for More Leadership Insights:

• Follow Dr. Dave: @drdavenicol
• Learn more about the Veterinary Leadership Academy

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your veterinary colleagues!

In this episode of the Veterinary Leadership Success Show, I’m joined by the brilliant Jenni George, CVPM. Jenni is a practice manager, co-owner of Deerfield Veterinary Clinic, and living proof that building a practice is never boring.

Her story? Well, let’s just say it starts with a fold-up table in the living room, a flannel blanket for style, and a husband with big dreams but questionable bill-paying skills. Fast-forward to today and she’s running a 25+ person, multi-doctor hospital. Along the way there have been triumphs, chaos, a few questionable jello shots… and oh yes, an old “friend” who ended up in jail after botching their clinic build. You just couldn’t make it up.

Together we dig into the truth about practice growth: what works when you’re starting out, why it all falls apart when you get bigger, and how to keep evolving as a leader so your clinic doesn’t implode under its own weight. Jenni is funny, sharp, brutally honest, and not afraid to tell you exactly what she got wrong, and what she’d do differently.

If you’ve ever thought “Help! My clinic is growing too fast!” or felt like your team has outgrown your leadership, this one’s for you. Buckle up, this one’s packed with chaos, comedy, and the kind of lessons you only learn the hard way.

Episode Outline:

[00:03] – Tequila & bad ideas

[05:42] – From living room to hospital

[07:46] – 3 big start-up mistakes

[11:00] – Friends vs leadership

[13:23] – Stages of growth

[17:01] – Hiring the first vet

[23:22] – Standing out locally

[29:01] – Outgrowing your space

[33:22] – Power of a manager

[35:58] – Beating imposter syndrome

[38:31] – Here for the people

[40:42] – Culture cracks

[44:45] – Building leaders

[49:13] – Vision = next level

Connect with Jenni George:

Learn more about Deerfield Veterinary Clinic

Deerfield Vet Clinic on Facebook  

Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for More Leadership Insights:

Follow Dave: @drdavenicol

Learn more about Veterinary Leadership Training: Veterinary Leadership Academy

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your veterinary colleagues!

In this episode of the Veterinary Leadership Success Show, I’m joined by my copilot, Oliver Loveday, Head of Community here at the Veterinary Leadership Academy. We’re digging into one of the most overlooked but absolutely critical parts of running a successful veterinary practice: your vision.

And I don’t mean some fluffy slogan you stick on a wall and then ignore. I’m talking about the hard graft of clarifying your purpose, your mission, and your values, the foundation stone that makes everything else work and align. Without it, you’re building on sand. With it, you’ve got a north star to guide the biggest decisions you’ll ever make: who you hire, how you shape your culture, the way you connect with clients, and even how you hold yourself together on your toughest, most difficult days.

The painful truth? Most practice owners either don’t do this work, or they do it badly. And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time until the cracks show. Poor hiring decisions, a toxic culture, poor team alignment, wasted energy, and a practice that feels harder to lead than it should.

Oliver and I share stories from inside our community of practice owners who’ve gone through what we call “vision casting.” These are raw, vulnerable, sometimes emotional sessions that strip back the layers and get to the truth of why their practice exists. And when that clarity hits, you feel it. A good vision gives you goosebumps and butterflies. It attracts the right people, keeps your team moving together and motivated, and fuels you as a leader when the simplest tasks feel impossible.

If you’re wondering where to start with your vision, this is the episode for you. Tune in, hear how we do it, and if you’re serious about taking the next step, reach out to Oliver Loveday to find out how we can help.

Episode Outline:

[01:00] – The Owner’s 3 Core Jobs

[03:30] – What Vision Really Means

[05:00] – Switching Brains: Logic to Creative

[07:00] – Why Vision Matters in Hiring

[10:30] – The Goosebump Test

[12:00] – Vulnerability & Masks

[16:00] – Real-World Examples

[27:00] – Humility in Leadership

[29:00] – Our Practice Vision

[30:30] – What You Need To Do Next

Connect with Oliver Loveday:

• Book A Call with Oilver
• Connect with Oliver on Linkedin

Follow Dr. Dave Nicol for More Leadership Insights:

• Follow Dr. Dave: @drdavenicol
• Learn more about the Veterinary Leadership Academy

Enjoyed this episode?

Leave a review on iTunes and share it with your veterinary colleagues!