Veterinary Business Accelerator. Time, Profit, Freedom

You don’t want to let anyone down. So you say yes to the extra appointment, answer the message after dinner, and put your own plans off until things settle down.

And then you wonder why you’re exhausted.

In this episode we're joined by Tracy Secombe, physiotherapist, business owner and creator of Soul Pleaser, about the connection between people pleasing, high achievement and burnout.

We explore the warning signs that are easy to dismiss as normal adult life, the guilt that comes with setting boundaries, and an awkward trap for practice owners: being too exhausted to put the changes in place that would make you less exhausted.

In this episode:

• The five stages of burnout, and recognising where you sit

• Why needing to be needed can keep you working long after you’ve had enough

• The overthinking loop that follows you home from the practice

• Saying no without feeling like you’ve failed someone

• How even exercise and hobbies can become another thing to win at

  
  

Resources mentioned:

• Try the APA Clarity Finder AI to help clarify what you want from your practice and your life.

• Book a discovery call with Tracy to find out more about her Soul Pleaser programme.

  
  

After 15 years owning practices and helping 257+ veterinary practice owners, Sam’s seen the same pattern: brilliant vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn’t working harder. It’s building a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how practice owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their medicine, their business, AND life again - without the sacrifice.

You’ll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

What if the biggest obstacle to feeling better in your practice isn’t what’s happening around you, but the story you’re telling yourself about it?

After a conference session on joy in veterinary practice took a decidedly joyless turn, Sam started thinking about why some people seem to stay stuck in frustration, worry or overwhelm, and how much control we actually have over our emotional default.

In this episode, Sam unpacks the stories, rules and expectations that shape how we feel, behave and lead. He shares a simple three-part tool for changing your state in the moment, explains why “everything is broken” is rarely the full story, and reveals how his own need to be constantly progressing made it almost impossible for him to properly switch off.

This isn’t about 'silver-lining' your challenges. It’s about responding to those realities without handing them control of your inner world.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to recognise your “home emotion”, including the ones that have become so familiar you barely notice them
• Why the story you repeat to yourself can become a self-reinforcing loop
• The triad of state, focus and language, and how changing any one of them can change how you feel
• Why you shouldn’t trust every thought you have
• How words like “always”, “everyone” and “nothing” make difficult situations feel even worse
• The emotional rules that can make happiness, progress and a good workplace almost impossible to achieve
• How expectations of employees, friends and partners create resentment
• Why removing the emotion can make difficult workplace conversations easier
• Three practical exercises for unpacking your stories and shifting your emotional state

After 15 years owning practices and helping 257+ veterinary practice owners, Sam’s seen the same pattern: brilliant vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn’t working harder. It’s building a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how practice owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand and Canada learn to enjoy their medicine, their business AND life again, without the sacrifice. You’ll find free resources, real success stories and ways to work with Sam directly.

Sam’s just back from the States and the big takeaway is this: the problems are exactly the same: mindset, money, leadership, marketing. Same challenges, different accent.One thing that stood out, though, is how quickly the conversation has shifted from “we’re flat out, don’t send us any more clients” to “how can we find, serve and keep the right ones?”That’s where this week’s guest comes in. Sam has unearthed a system that uses AI to dramatically increase both the number and the quality of Google reviews a practice receives. Not by gaming the system, but by removing all the friction that normally stops clients from leaving feedback.Leeor Meirovitz built this system, and he’s here to tell you all about why practices who are using it are reporting not only startling results in their reviews, but also happier teams, easier recruitment, and a noticeable lift in how the whole place feels.Somewhere in your practice right now there are clients who would happily tell the world how good you are. This episode is about making sure they do.

Leeor’s work: X18 Agency

After 15 years owning Practices and helping 257+ Veterinary Practice Owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant Vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away.

The answer isn't working harder. It's building a Practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how Practice Owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their Medicine, their Business, AND Life again - without the sacrifice. You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

Most people, when asked what share of the responsibility they carry for the happiness of their marriage, will say 50%.

Shane Barker reckons that's the answer that ends partnerships.

Because the moment you start keeping score, you're opening the door to resentment

We wrap up our series on partnerships with Sam's business partner , Shane Barker, with a conversation about how to turn your business partnership into a relationship that multiplies, not just maintains: the habits that keep a partnership healthy, the failure points that show up long before anyone says the word "exit", and how to get out of a bad one without setting fire to your money and your reputation on the way through.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "never let anything fester" is the number one rule
• The cadence question: why monthly partner meetings are too far apart, and what Sam and Shane do instead
• Addition versus multiplier - why two good vets joining forces should produce ten times the output, not twice, and what has to be true for that to happen
• Zone of genius and swimming in your own lane: helpful words rather than helpful hands
• The three warning signs that a partner has already started planning their exit
• Why playing with a scoreboard guarantees resentment, and the 100% rule that replaces it
• When it can't be saved: what a good shareholders agreement does that a bad one doesn't, and why pragmatism beats principle every time

After 15 years owning practices and helping 257+ Veterinary practice owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn't working harder. It's building a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit ⁠⁠acceleratepracticeacademy.com⁠⁠ to discover how practice owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their medicine, their business, AND life again - without the sacrifice.

You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

Most people choose a business partner the way they'd choose a dinner date: based on who's sitting in front of them right now.

Sam's business partner Shane Barker reckons that's the trap.

Use the marriage analogy again and it becomes obvious: who you dated, who you got engaged to, who you married in year one - that's not who you're living with fifteen years later. So the question isn't "are they great today?" The question is "can we evolve together?"

In part two of this three-part series, Sam and Shane get practical about selection. Fourteen years in business together, hundreds of partnerships observed through coaching, and a previous career spent divorcing people for a living. They know what the early warning signs look like.

They also hand over the actual tools they use to assess someone before a shareholders agreement goes anywhere near a lawyer.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The six human needs, and why sharing at least one of your top two with a partner predicts whether you'll agree on direction for the next decade
• Why significance as a primary driver is the one to watch, and what happens when two partners both have it
• The profiling tools worth running before you sign, and what each one actually tells you
• Why a good partner should be a reflection of your lacking components, not a copy of you
• The testing phase: how one multi-site owner trialled potential partners for years before offering equity
• Why "if you can't discuss the breakup at the start, don't do the deal", and what a sunset clause needs to cover
• Whether your best mate is ever a good candidate (short answer: proceed with caution)

Slow down to speed up. Nobody ever regretted taking longer.

Press play.

After 15 years owning practices and helping 257+ Veterinary practice owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn't working harder. It's building a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit ⁠acceleratepracticeacademy.com⁠ to discover how practice owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their medicine, their business, AND life again - without the sacrifice.

You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

"The only ship that never sails is a partnership."

One of the many tongue-in-cheek aphorisms you'd have heard that all allude to the same thing: not many things can ruin a veterinary business as reliably as a failed business partnership.

In this first episode of a three-part series, Sam brings in his own business partner, Shane Barker, who he's been in business with for the better part of fourteen years. Shane has run hundred-million-dollar companies, and before that he was a family law barrister, which means he's spent a career watching partnerships of both the romantic and the work kind fall apart.

Between them they've seen hundreds of business partnerships up close. The good ones are genuinely fantastic. The bad ones, in Sam's words, are contracted hell.

So before you go anywhere near a shareholders agreement, there's a question worth sitting with: why do you actually want a partner?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The single umbrella question to ask before you start thinking about partnership
• Why bringing in a partner is a terrible fix for a performance or capability problem, and what to sort out first
• Whether "they're a good vet and they'll leave if I don't" is ever a good enough reason
• The truth about skin in the game: does handing someone equity actually make them care more?

• When succession genuinely is a good reason, and when its not

Get this part wrong and nothing in part two will save you.

Press play to find out which camp you're in.

After 15 years owning practices and helping 257+ Veterinary practice owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn't working harder. It's building a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how practice owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their medicine, their business, AND life again - without the sacrifice.

You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

Why do you run your vet business? For Dr Michael Archinal, the answer was always: to sell it one day.

A few years ago he did exactly that, after building and running nine practices while working roughly half a day a week. In this conversation Michael takes the long retrospective view with Sam and unpacks what it actually took to get there.

He shares his supernatural method for moving on staff who aren't a fit (you'll want to hear this one). The handful of KPIs he tracked every single month, including one that sounds incredibly boring until you hear what it was really measuring. Why a standard of care written by the owner gets about 35% buy-in, and one written by the team gets 85%. Why he actively discouraged his partners from chasing surgical qualifications. How he knew it was time to let go. And a line about failure right at the end that Sam reckons might be the most important bit yin the whole conversation.

In this episode:

• Why partner in a group model instead of going it alone
• Managing culture across nine sites, and how Michael only ever sacked two people in his whole career
• The lead indicators hiding in your dentals and vaccination numbers
• Patient advocacy factor: comparing vets fairly
• Getting real buy-in on standards of care, including from senior vets who think they know better
• Setting your team up to succeed, and putting people in the right seat on the bus
• Knowing when it's time to step away
• What Michael would tell his younger self about risk and failure

After 15 years owning Practices and helping 257+ Veterinary Practice Owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant Vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn't working harder. It's building a Practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how Practice Owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their Medicine, their Business, AND Life again - without the sacrifice. You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

Dr Melyssa Cotton runs a new-ish mobile veterinary practice, and business is steady. The problem is where that business comes from: almost every client arrives by word of mouth, which is great, until it isn't.

In this episode, Sam coaches her through the unglamorous stuff that actually grows a practice from the ground up: a website that convinces strangers to book, Google reviews (they matter more than you think), a neighbourhood referral trick that costs basically nothing, and pricing set by your goals instead of whatever the clinic down the road charges.

It's a mobile practice on the table, but the advice applies to any vet business. 

Resources as promised:

Sam's Veterinary Marketing Playbook

Hugh's post on valuing your skills more

After 15 years owning Practices and helping 257+ Veterinary Practice Owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant Vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away. The answer isn't working harder. It's building a Practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how Practice Owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their Medicine, their Business, AND Life again - without the sacrifice.

You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

What if the thing holding your practice back isn't your team, your prices, or your marketing?

What if it's the building?

In this episode, we sit down with Jerry Kennard from Evoke Projects, someone who designs veterinary spaces for a living and has watched a lot of owners get this expensively wrong. Because a practice build always starts as a dream: the right location, the beautiful fit-out - the clinic you've always wanted. But plan it wrong, and that dream can quickly turn into a trap that stifles growth and demotivates teams . And most of it comes down to five mistakes that are a lot easier to avoid before you sign anything than after.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why falling in love with your site before you've validated a business plan is the single most expensive mistake you can make
• The "too big or too small" problem, and how to future-proof for expansion without drowning in debt
• Why designing for the pet and the client but forgetting your team is a false economy
• How lean design and smart workflow let you do more in less space, without burning anyone out

A great clinic isn't designed to look good on opening day. It's designed to perform every day. For the pets, the clients, the team, and the business.

Press play to find out how.

After 15 years owning Practices and helping 257+ Veterinary Practice Owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant Vets grinding through long weeks, wondering why success still feels so far away.

The answer isn't working harder. It's building a Practice that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how Practice Owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their Medicine, their Business, AND Life again, without the sacrifice. You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.

What if your team isn’t slow?

What if they’ve just never been shown how to work faster and feel safe doing it?

In this episode, Sam unpacks one of the hardest tensions inside modern veterinary practices: How do you deliver excellent patient care, protect your team’s wellbeing, and still run a profitable business? Because for many teams, the word “productivity” feels loaded.

It can sound like:

“Do more. Move faster. Stop complaining. Just learn to cope.”

But efficiency is a different conversation. And this is where we're having it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why productivity and efficiency are not the same thing
• How fear of complaints, mistakes, and burnout can slow your team down and what stress does to their brains
• How to help your team see pressure as readiness, not danger
• Sam's five-step process for improving efficiency without creating overwhelm
• Why the most profitable practices are often not the most expensive — they are the most efficient

The goal is not to squeeze more out of your people. It is to build a team that can move with clarity, confidence, and care.

Press play to learn how.

After 15 years owning Practices and helping 257+ Veterinary Practice Owners, Sam's seen the same pattern: brilliant Vets grinding through long weeks, wondering whysuccess still feels so far away.

The answer isn't working harder. It's building a Practicethat supports your life instead of consuming it.

Visit acceleratepracticeacademy.com to discover how Practice Owners across Australia, the US, New Zealand, and Canada learn to enjoy their Medicine, their Business, AND Life again -without the sacrifice. You'll find free resources, real success stories, and ways to work with Sam directly.