Grow Your Business,
supported by PetsApp
(Arden)
STREAM DETAILS
A full day of guidance, advice and top tips for anyone thinking of starting-up or expanding their practice
11:00 – 11:30
Thriving as an Independent Vet: Five lessons learned along the way
Ryan Davis, MSM Vets & Southwater Veterinary Group
Thriving as an Independent Vet
Starting or growing a veterinary business can feel daunting—but it can also be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling challenges of your career. Kicking off our Grow Your Business stream with this practical and reassuring session, Ryan will draw on more than 20 years of veterinary experience, including starting and owning multiple practices. He’ll share five key principles to help you make better business decisions, protect your profitability and build a practice that reflects your vision.
- The 80/20 rule: How Pareto’s Principle can help you focus your time, energy and resources where they make the biggest difference.
- Protecting profit – value beats being the cheapest: Why competing on price alone can be a dangerous strategy, and how to create a value proposition that works for both your clients and your business.
- Corporate practice – learning from what’s changed: What corporate veterinary practice has brought to the profession, the positives we can take from it, and why looking forward is more useful than longing for “the good old days.”
- Culture – the foundation of your business: Why the culture you create matters so much, and how aligning your people, values and vision can make a huge difference to your success.
- Keep it simple: Why business ownership doesn’t need to be complicated, and how focusing on the fundamentals can help you make confident decisions.
Learning outcomes
- Evaluate how your vision and culture are aligned
- Learn how to manage your client base
- Determine where to set your value proposition
11:35 – 12:05
Less Effort, More Impact: Rethinking Your Online Presence
Naomi Jenkins, PetsApp
Less Effort, More Impact: Rethinking Your Online Presence
Today’s pet owners expect convenient, connected, and personalised online to offline experiences at every stage of their journey. Yet for many veterinary teams, digital marketing can still feel overwhelming, unaffordable, time-consuming, or difficult to prioritise alongside day-to-day practice life. This session is designed to make digital feel accessible, practical, and achievable. We’ll explore how veterinary practices can build digital confidence and turn everyday interactions into stronger client relationships and sustainable growth. From understanding how pet owners discover and choose practices online, to creating content that builds trust, improving visibility, simplifying communication, and using data to make smarter decisions. Naomi will focus on the practical steps that create measurable impact. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the modern pet owner journey, a toolkit of simple digital strategies they can implement immediately, and the confidence to embrace digital as a growth enabler, not another item on the to-do list. Because becoming digitally savvy isn’t about doing more marketing. It’s about making every client interaction work harder.
Learning outcomes
- Understand how digital touchpoints influence how clients discover, choose and engage with veterinary practices.
- Identify practical, cost-effective digital marketing strategies that improve visibility, strengthen client relationships and enhance the overall client experience.
- Apply simple digital tools and data-driven approaches to optimise client communications, measure success and support sustainable practice growth.
12:10 – 12:40
AI Without the Anxiety: Building Confidence and Efficiency in Veterinary Practice
Adele Williams-Xavier, AiWX & Steven Goodear, SPVS and Black Sheep Vets
AI Without the Anxiety: Building Confidence and Efficiency in Veterinary Practice
Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving from headline news into everyday veterinary practice. This practical session is designed for veterinary leaders who want to move beyond the hype and make informed decisions about AI adoption. Adele will explore the fundamentals of AI, why AI literacy is becoming an essential skill for every member of the practice team, and the current state of AI across veterinary medicine. Steven will then share his experience of effectively introducing AI into day-to-day practice, including where it is delivering genuine value, how the team has responded, what challenges they have encountered and the lessons they have learned along the way. This first-hand perspective will help delegates distinguish between the potential of AI and the practical realities of implementing it successfully. Delegates will leave with a clear understanding of where AI can make a real difference to their teams, their clients and their patients.
Learning outcomes
- Understand the fundamentals and current applications of AI in veterinary practice.
- Evaluate the opportunities and challenges of adopting AI, including team engagement, implementation barriers, safety and responsible use.
- Identify appropriate starting points and prioritising applications that can deliver meaningful benefits.
12:45 – 13:30
Using Benchmarking to Strengthen Profitability and Performance
Suzanne Headington, Hazlewoods & Natalie Morris-Webb, Malthouse Vets
Using Benchmarking to Strengthen Profitability and Performance
Following the CMA investigation, financial benchmarking has taken on a new importance for veterinary practices. Used effectively, it can provide valuable insight into practice performance, support greater transparency and help owners make informed decisions in a changing market. In this session, Suzanne will explore which financial metrics matter most in the post-CMA landscape, how to interpret them in context, and how benchmarking can help practices understand profitability, productivity, pricing, staffing costs and overall business health. Alongside this, Natalie will share how they have used benchmarking insights within their own business to inform decision-making, improve operational performance and build a stronger, more sustainable practice. The session will focus on moving beyond simply collecting financial data to understanding what the numbers mean and what action they should drive. Delegates will leave with practical ideas for using benchmarking to identify opportunities, set priorities, demonstrate value and support better-informed decisions in the evolving veterinary market.
Learning outcomes
- Identify the key financial benchmarks and performance indicators that provide meaningful insight into the financial health, profitability and operational efficiency of a veterinary practice.
- Interpret benchmarking data to recognise opportunities for improving pricing, productivity, staffing costs and overall business performance, and use these insights to inform strategic decision-making.
- Apply practical lessons from a real veterinary practice to develop an action plan for using financial benchmarking to drive continuous improvement and support long-term business sustainability.
13:30
Lunch (in Monarch)
14:25 – 14:55
Setting the Right Price: Balancing profitability, transparency and online comparison
Brian Faulkner, Vetology
Setting the Right Price: Balancing profitability, transparency and online comparison
Pricing will remain one of the most sensitive and commercially important areas of veterinary practice, particularly as clients increasingly compare fees online and use practice comparison websites to inform their choices. This session will explore how practices can approach pricing with confidence, balancing financial sustainability, transparency, client expectations and perceived value. It will also consider the growing influence of comparison websites and online pricing information, examining both the opportunities and risks they present for independent practices. You will gain practical insights into how to position your pricing strategy, communicate value effectively, and respond to a more price-aware client base without compromising sustainability, clinical standards or client relationships.
Learning outcomes
- Evaluate the key factors that influence veterinary pricing decisions
- Assess the impact of online price comparison tools and practice comparison websites on client behaviour, and identify practical strategies to respond
- Develop effective approaches to communicating fees and demonstrating value to clients
15:00 – 15:30
Planning and Funding for Growth and Development
Ray Cox & Nigel Crossman, Medifinance & Peter O’Hagan, Dalehead Vet Group
Planning and Funding for Growth and Development
Building and sustaining growth can be a daunting challenge – a challenge that Ray and Nigel have faced while working with and for practices at every stage of their development and will share this invaluable experience in this session. They will provide practical guidance to help practices grow, exploring tools for making better use of existing space, moving premises, investing in and funding new equipment, improving cashflow, sourcing appropriate funding and ensuring that terms and conditions are suited to the product and the practice. Ray and Nigel will be joined by Peter O’Hagan who has recently expanded his own veterinary business and will provide practical, first-hand perspective on the opportunities, challenges and financial decisions involved in taking a practice through a period of growth. He will offer valuable insight into what worked, what proved testing and the lessons that can be applied by other practice owners considering their own expansion plans. Combining real-world experience with practical financial guidance, the session will give you useful ideas, tools and insights to help plan confidently for growth and make informed decisions about the investment and funding required to achieve it.
Learning outcomes
- Identify practical opportunities for sustainable practice growth, including making better use of existing space, expanding premises and investing in equipment.
- Understand how to prepare plans that give your business direction and ensure your financial requirements meet the banks’ criteria.
- Apply practical insights and lessons from real-world practice expansion to develop more confident, informed plans for managing growth and the challenges that come with it.
15:30
Coffee in the Exhibition
16:05 – 16:35
From Values to Behaviours: Creating a Positive Culture in Veterinary Practice
Helen Silver-MacMahon, Being Human Consulting Ltd & Granta Veterinary Specialists
From Values to Behaviours: Creating a Positive Culture in Veterinary Practice
Most veterinary practices can articulate their organisational values, yet many still experience communication breakdowns, conflict, incivility and inconsistency in behaviour. Why? Because values alone do not change culture. Culture is created through the everyday behaviours that teams accept, encourage and challenge. Without clear behavioural expectations, values risk becoming words on a website rather than principles that guide decision-making and interactions. This session explores how veterinary teams can operationalise their values by translating them into observable behaviours, creating shared team agreements and establishing “rules to live by” that define how people work together. Drawing on Human Factors, psychological safety and organisational culture research, delegates will discover practical approaches to reducing incivility, improving communication and creating environments where both people and patients can thrive. Attendees will leave with a framework for turning values into action and building cultures that are lived, not laminated.
Learning outcomes
- Describe why organisational values alone are insufficient to shape workplace culture.
- Identify the impact of behavioural expectations on communication, psychological safety and team dynamics.
- Develop practical approaches for embedding values through observable behaviours, team agreements and social contracts.
16:40 – 17:10
From Good to Great: How to take your clinic from plateau to performance
Francesca Verney, Pet People
From Good to Great: How to take your clinic from plateau to performance
Many clinics spend a lot of time and effort setting up: years of planning and holding your nerve to get the idea off the ground. The excitement of the start, the tempestuous and effortful first two years, the apparent settling years 2-6 (roughly). But how to you stoke the fire and take things to the next level and what does that look like. We’ll be talking about how to define ambitions for your clinic, why you need to be thinking about this before you open, what success looks like for you and how to not fall into the bell of the curve just ticking along.
Learning outcomes
- How and when to define your long-term success: personal and on a practice level.
- Operational and people needs to fulfil your ambitions: how to devise a plan
- Personal contribution, fulfilment and strategic focus: How do you coach yourself?
