Veterinary school prepares doctors to practice medicine, but the transition into real-world practice demands far more than clinical knowledge.

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, Don Adeesha speaks with Dr. Angela Henninger, veterinarian, multi-practice owner, and founder of DVM Ascent, about the skills veterinarians develop after graduation: confidence, communication, emotional resilience, leadership, and navigating difficult conversations.

Dr. Henninger explains why confidence is built over time, why mentorship needs to be structured rather than simply promised, and how communication shapes relationships with clients, teams, and fellow leaders.

Growing your practice so you can hire and keep good associates? Book a complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why the gap between knowing medicine and confidently applying it is so hard on new graduates
• What meaningful, accessible mentorship actually looks like
• How veterinarians can set boundaries with clients without sounding dismissive
• How shared decision-making reduces tension around treatment cost
• Why structured 30-, 60-, and 90-day mentorship plans help early-career vets thrive
• The difference between task-driven management and people-focused leadership

About Dr. Angela Henninger Dr. Angela Henninger is a veterinarian, multi-practice owner, and founder of DVM Ascent, where she helps early-career veterinary professionals access mentorship, peer support, and communication development beyond clinical training.

Learn more: https://www.dvmascent.com/

Complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting Structured mentorship depends on a practice healthy enough to hire — and that comes down to steady case volume. Veterinary Business Podcast listeners can request a complimentary one-on-one Marketing Strategy Meeting to review their digital presence, local visibility, competitive landscape, and growth opportunities.

Reserve your session: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

Adding another doctor, service, or location will not fix an unstable veterinary practice. Without clear systems, aligned teams, reliable communication, and strong leadership, expansion can simply multiply the chaos.

In this episode of The Veterinary Business Podcast, Charlotte Weir joins host Angie to explore what it really takes to build a modern veterinary practice that is operationally strong, sustainable for the team, trusted by clients, and prepared for the future of veterinary care.

Charlotte is the Vice President of Partnerships at Roo, founder and co-owner of 2525 Sunset Veterinarians, and a recipient of the 2026 AVMA Unsung Hero Award. Drawing from her experience building veterinary startups, integrating practices, managing hospital operations, and developing flexible staffing models, she offers practical insights for both established and aspiring practice owners.

You'll discover:

• Why veterinary practices should stabilize before trying to scale
• How weak systems can turn growth into multiplied chaos
• The role of clear SOPs, communication, mission, and accountability
• Why technology and AI should support people—not replace them
• How convenience and digital communication can strengthen client trust
• Why client education creates long-term loyalty
• How relief veterinarians can protect teams from burnout
• How proactive relief staffing can increase capacity and retain revenue
• Why modern practices must compete on experience, not price alone
• What will separate thriving veterinary practices from those that simply survive

Charlotte also explains how she uses relief veterinarians proactively on her hospital's busiest days, allowing the practice to see more patients, protect its full-time doctors, accommodate time-off requests, and preserve the client relationship.

This conversation is for veterinary practice owners, hospital managers, veterinary leaders, aspiring owners, and industry professionals who want to build healthier, more adaptable, and more sustainable businesses.

A strong client experience matters—but potential clients must first be able to find your practice, understand what makes it different, and feel confident taking the next step.

Veterinary practice owners can request a complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting to review their current online presence, identify visibility opportunities, strengthen their Google presence, and develop a customized veterinary marketing plan.

Book your complimentary strategy meeting: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

Listen now to learn how to build a veterinary practice that can grow without sacrificing its people, culture, client relationships, or quality of care.

What happens at home between veterinary appointments can reveal just as much about a pet's health as what happens inside the exam room.

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, Dr. Amanda Landis-Hanna speaks with Dr. Ken Lambrecht, veterinarian, practice owner, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Healthy Pet Connect.

Dr. Lambrecht explains how home-generated health data can help veterinary teams identify changes sooner, improve client compliance, and provide more proactive preventive care. The conversation explores pet obesity, feline weight management, nutrition, remote patient monitoring, client communication, and the growing role of technology in connecting pet owners with their veterinary teams.

You will learn:

• Why an occasional clinic weigh-in may not provide enough information to manage a pet's health effectively • How home scales, smart feeders, activity monitors, and other devices can reveal important health trends • Why body condition scores, calorie calculations, accurate food measurement, and regular reassessments must work together • How veterinary teams can help clients manage food-motivated pets and challenging multi-pet households • How Healthy Pet Connect organizes home health information so veterinary professionals can quickly determine whether a patient is progressing • What Dr. Lambrecht learned from helping Spudgy, a 37-pound cat, reach a healthy weight of approximately 12 pounds • How remote monitoring may support pets with obesity, chronic kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, and other ongoing health concerns • How artificial intelligence and better data integration could shape the future of preventive veterinary care

Dr. Lambrecht also shares why successful weight management is rarely about making one recommendation during an appointment. It requires a realistic plan, reliable measurements, ongoing client coaching, and a way for the veterinary team to see what is happening after the patient goes home.

The goal is not to overwhelm veterinary teams with more information. It is to organize the right information into clear trends that can support faster, more confident clinical decisions.

Schedule a complimentary veterinary marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa Marketing: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

Change in a veterinary practice rarely fails because the idea itself is wrong. More often, it fails because team members feel that change is being done to them rather than developed with them.

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, Dr. Nicola Bromley shares practical leadership lessons from more than two decades in veterinary medicine, including her experience leading a team of approximately 170 people as Hospital Director at Fitzpatrick Referrals.

Drawing on both her leadership experience and her studies in psychology and behaviour change, Dr. Bromley explores why veterinary teams resist change, how leaders can build greater trust, and what it takes to create improvements that genuinely last.

The conversation examines the importance of listening before acting, understanding situations from the team's perspective, and identifying the real barriers behind resistance. These barriers may involve capability, opportunity, motivation, workload, workplace culture, or a lack of connection between the proposed change and the team's values.

Dr. Bromley also discusses compassionate leadership, psychological safety, change fatigue, burnout, and the importance of creating space for team members to speak openly. She explains why leaders should avoid introducing too many initiatives simultaneously and why sometimes the most responsible decision is to pause, allow an existing change to settle, and revisit the next idea later.

Her practical starting point for veterinary leaders is simple but powerful:

"Curiosity, not criticism."

Rather than immediately judging resistance or poor performance, leaders should pause, ask questions, and seek to understand what is making the desired behaviour difficult.

Whether you are a veterinary practice owner, hospital leader, practice manager, or team lead, this episode offers a thoughtful and highly practical approach to leading people through change while protecting trust, performance, and wellbeing.

The way pet owners discover and choose veterinary practices is changing quickly.

Instead of browsing multiple websites and comparing clinics one by one, many consumers are now asking Google's AI features, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other smart assistants to recommend the right veterinary practice for their needs.

This creates an important question for veterinary practice owners:

Will AI recommend your practice—or overlook it in favor of a competitor?

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, host Don Adeesha is joined by Naren Arulrajah, CEO of Ekwa Marketing and Founder of the Veterinary Business Institute.

Naren explains how AI is reshaping the veterinary client journey and what practices need to strengthen to remain visible, credible, and competitive in an AI-driven search environment.

The conversation explores the shift from traditional search results and website clicks to direct answers, recommendation engines, and zero-click experiences. Naren also discusses the factors that may influence whether a veterinary practice appears in AI-generated recommendations.

• How AI is changing the way pet owners search for veterinary care
• Why clients increasingly expect immediate and precise answers
• How zero-click searches are affecting veterinary marketing
• What may determine whether AI recommends or overlooks a practice
• Why consistent business information across online platforms matters
• The importance of accurate name, address, and phone-number information
• How detailed client reviews can strengthen visibility and trust
• Why veterinary websites need useful, original, expert-led content
• How professional credentials can reinforce online authority
• Why practices should focus on client intent rather than isolated keywords
• The importance of mobile performance, website speed, and easy appointment access
• Where AI can improve internal efficiency
• Why human oversight remains essential when using AI
• The first practical step practice owners can take to prepare for the future

Naren also explains why veterinary practices must use AI thoughtfully. Technology can assist with reminders, content drafts, internal organization, and repetitive tasks—but meaningful client communication should still feel personal, accurate, and human.

For practice owners wondering where to begin, this episode provides a practical framework for evaluating online visibility, website performance, content, reviews, and the overall digital client experience.

Learn how your practice currently performs online, how your competitors compare, and where your strongest growth opportunities may be.

The Ekwa Marketing team will evaluate areas including:

• Search and AI visibility
• Website performance
• Local business information
• Online reviews
• Content strategy
• Competitive positioning
• Client-conversion opportunities

[Book your complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting]

Many veterinary practice owners spend years building a successful clinic, only to realize later that the business may still depend too heavily on them. In this episode, Don Adeesha speaks with Muriel Touati, Founder and CEO of Exit 3D Studio, about what buyers really look for when evaluating a veterinary practice and how owners can build a business that is easier to scale, transfer, and eventually sell.

Muriel shares a buyer-side perspective on valuation readiness, including why revenue and profitability alone are not enough. She explains how owner dependency, undocumented systems, weak digital presence, revenue concentration, and unclear recurring revenue can reduce buyer confidence and lower valuation.

Listeners will learn how to start building a more transferable veterinary practice by documenting key processes, delegating decision-making, strengthening marketing systems, tracking client and revenue data, and identifying what breaks when the owner steps away.

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, host Don Adeesha welcomes Naren Arulrajah, CEO of Ekwa Marketing and Founder of the Veterinary Business Institute, for a practical conversation on why many veterinary practices feel extremely busy but still struggle to achieve consistent growth.

Together, Don and Naren explore the hidden marketing bottlenecks that can quietly limit a veterinary hospital's progress in 2026. From Google visibility and website performance to online reviews, client conversion, and long-term retention, this episode helps practice owners step back from the day-to-day rush and look at their practice through the full client journey.

For veterinary practice owners, hospital leaders, and managers, the key message is clear: being busy is not the same as growing. Naren explains how to identify where momentum is being lost and why a clear diagnosis is often the first step toward stronger visibility, better-fit clients, and more sustainable growth.

This episode is sponsored by Ekwa Marketing, a digital marketing partner helping independent veterinary practices improve their online presence, attract the right clients, and grow with greater clarity and consistency.

Book you free Marketing Strategy Meeting now: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

In this episode, host Don Adeesha sits down with Dr. Tina Neel to discuss how veterinary practice owners can move beyond simply being busy and start building a more profitable, valuable, and sustainable practice. Dr. Neel shares why communication, client trust, team culture, and a stronger business mindset all play a major role in creating long-term practice value.

And that same idea applies to your marketing. Being visible online is important, but visibility alone does not always mean growth. Your marketing should help attract the right clients, support stronger relationships, and contribute to the long-term value of your practice.

That is why Ekwa Marketing is offering a complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting. In this meeting, a veterinary marketing strategist will take a closer look at your current online presence, identify where your marketing may be falling short, and show you opportunities to build a stronger, more profitable practice.

Book your complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting at https://www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

Talk about money in a veterinary practice, and the room can go quiet. Pricing, revenue, productivity, payroll, compliance, and efficiency can feel uncomfortable for people who entered veterinary medicine to help animals and support pet parents.

In this episode of The Veterinary Business Podcast, host Don Adeesha sits down with Senani Ratnayake, registered veterinary technician, leadership strategist, and founder of Motivatum Consulting, to explore how veterinary teams can talk about the business side of practice without losing their heart for patient care.

Senani shares why many veterinary professionals separate "business" from "care," how practice leaders can reframe financial conversations, and why a healthy business is what makes sustainable, high-quality medicine possible. The conversation also explores team accountability, efficiency, appropriate utilization, pricing confidence, and how leaders can help their teams understand the real impact of everyday choices on the practice.

This episode is sponsored by Ekwa Marketing, helping veterinary practice owners grow with more clarity, strategy, and intention.

If you are ready to stop guessing with your marketing and see what is actually bringing in new clients, where the leaks are in your client journey, and what a focused six-month growth plan could look like for your clinic, book your complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting at: www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm

Ekwa only takes a limited number each month, so grab a spot while it is available.

In this episode of the Veterinary Business Podcast, co-host Dr. Amanda Landis-Hanna welcomes Robert Sanchez, founder and CEO of Digital Empathy, for a forward-looking conversation on what comes after the AI scribe. Together, they explore how independent veterinary practices can use AI not only to reduce documentation burden, but also to better understand client conversations, patient needs, business blind spots, and the signals that matter most.

Robert shares how AI can help practices move beyond simple efficiency and toward smarter decision-making, stronger client relationships, and more personalized care at scale. The discussion highlights why context, judgment, and human connection remain essential as veterinary teams begin using AI to surface the right information at the right time.

This episode is sponsored by Ekwa Marketing, platinum sponsor of the Veterinary Business Institute. Through this partnership, veterinary practices can book a complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting, a $900 valued session designed to help practice owners step back and evaluate how their hospital is showing up online, where they may be missing growth opportunities, and what practical steps can improve visibility, competitiveness, and long-term growth.

To book your complimentary Marketing Strategy Meeting, visit www.veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.