About you:
Is practice ownership your next step?
All of your training leading up to this moment has likely prepared you to be a vet or perhaps a vet nurse. Maybe you did cover a bit of the business of practice in your tuition but that might seem a long way away right now. The challenges of running any small business are significant – you will soon be Chief Purchasing Officer, HR Manager and Finance Director and that’s a difficult balancing act for anyone. Never fear – because you are also the visionary who has identified an opportunity and had the courage to take some bold action.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Click on any of the sections below to find out more information or use the arrow on the right hand side to move through the pages.Attitudes, skills and knowledge required: Recognising the gaps and solutions
Leadership and personal development
Rewards of running a practice: Your long term personal and professional goals
Your 'why?'
Entrepreneur, dreamer, charismatic leader… you are essentially about to become all of those things, but there are a lot of myths around each of those roles.
Entrepreneurs are often considered extroverts, maverick risk-takers. And risk is certainly part of any new business enterprise – both financially and emotionally. But not every entrepreneur is a reckless, larger-than-life character. Dreamers are directionless and fail to take action and you need to be an inspirational speaker and all-round impressive figure to lead others. Cast aside all of those ideas! You can be any kind of leader you want and there are many types of leadership styles (more on this later).
There are many articles written about the characteristics and personality traits of business owners. Here are a few of the attitudinal aspects that have been highlighted:
Curiosity / openness – being flexible about how things are done and observing what is happening in the world around them. This allows people to act on new opportunities and adapt their businesses accordingly.
Passion / drive / capacity for hard work – often this seems the easiest one in the early stages when your enthusiasm and motivation are highest.
Willingness to make a decision and an acceptance that things will not always go well.
Acceptance of risk – but many people will balance this against the potential rewards and seek ways to mitigate risk.
Persistence and resilience – repeated failures will often not deter them and will be seen as a way to grow.
Understanding their own strengths and weaknesses and building a team to fill the gaps.
Consider whether there are any areas of significant weakness:
Rigid thinker? Be aware of the need to be more open to the ideas of others. Consider filling this gap by using a coach or mentor who can challenge your thinking.
Passion – create a mood board or diary to inspire you when times are tough, featuring all you have to gain from your new practice.
Indecisive? Decision-making tools can be a really useful way to make more objective decisions. Look at forcefield analysis, SWOT analysis, decision trees and mind maps.
Fear of risk – plan for different scenarios. Consider using ‘What if?’ What’s the worst that might happen?
Resilience – build a strong support network and maintain a good work-life balance.
Insight into self – consider using personality profiling for you and your team.
Check out this document: EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework
Communication
Negotiation
Problem-solving
Time management
Leadership and delegation
Project management and planning
Financial insight and control
Networking
If you are already working in practice, chances are you already have many of these transferable skills – we often just don’t realise it. If there are areas where you have gaps, be prepared to seek help. For example, a great accountant will help you understand the intricacies of finance and what you need to track to maintain financial control. If this is a weak area for you, spend more time choosing an accountant and don’t opt for the cheapest service. Really bad at time management? Choose a receptionist who can also act as a PA and help you plan your day efficiently with proper breaks and meeting slots.
Again, it’s amazing how much you already know from working in practice – whether that’s being aware of what you don’t want to copy or even actively avoid, or a fantastic way of working that you’d like to imitate. In the next few chapters, we’ll also be covering some of the topics you need to be aware of and hopefully expanding your knowledge.
There are also many other sources of knowledge:
Attending events with more of a veterinary management focus (such as SPVS and VMG Congresses and the London Vet Show) Journals like the Veterinary Business Journal
Podcasts like The Veterinary Leadership Success Show Facebook Groups – try Veterinary Marketing Nerds, Veterinary Leadership Book Club, Veterinary Woman / Veterinary Women in Leadership Ask the experts – talk to other practice owners or specialist companies that help support veterinary practice start-ups.
Introducing the New Practice Academy, an exciting addition to the London Vet Show (LVS) and BVA Live veterinary industry events. Initiated at LVS 2023, the academy proved a great success and will be continued for the 2024 events.The New Practice Academy is sponsored by NVS Group as part of their exclusive initiative - Dream Big: Your New Practice Plan of Action.This initiative offers a vibrant platform designed to empower you with the knowledge, skills and confidence to establish your own independent veterinary practice and help you chart a course towards excellence in veterinary care.
How the New Practice Academy could help you:Exclusive high-level expert panel discussions - everything you need to know about starting a new practice. From funding and business plans, to marketing your business effectively.
Meet relevant exhibitors to discuss your needs and get personalised advice.
Connect with other professionals in the veterinary field - get advice, share stories and build support networks for your journey into practice ownership.
Ongoing support and learning opportunities throughout the year, from NVS Group, the London Vet Show and BVA Live.
Find out more
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
Leading people is one of the biggest challenges of practice ownership and also the one that can make the most difference to the day-to-day lives of your new team. There are many different leadership styles and some may work better in some environments than others.
Autocratic leader – issues orders, no discussion; good for situations where fast decisions are needed.
Laissez-faire – lets employees decide; good for confident and experienced employees.
Democratic leader – consults employees; good for motivation but decision making can be slower.
Servant leadership – power is shared with subordinates; often used in humanitarian organisations, good for diversity and inclusion.Situational leaders – a mix of styles dependent on the situation.
Transformational leadership – inspires and motivates teams to build confidence; good for intellectual teams that like interactive environments.
Your leadership style can set the tone for human relations in your practice. If you haven’t been in a leadership position before, you may find being ‘the boss’ difficult or even lonely. Workplace friendships can be hard to negotiate around the difficult conversations that are sometimes needed when managing people. For this reason, it may be useful to identify someone you can confide in and gain unconditional support. A coach, partner, or friend outside the industry may be able to fill this role. Some people also choose to set up a practice as a partnership for this mutual support and the sharing of risk.
Autonomy – being in charge of your own destiny is a strong driver for many business owners.
Financial reward – while the risks are greater, the potential rewards are too.
Self-actualisation – this is the top level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it describes that feeling of ‘being all you can be’.
Flexibility – while there is a perception that practice owners may have a poor work-life balance, many cite the ability to largely determine their own working hours and schedules (emergencies permitting) as a positive aspect of ownership.
Many entrepreneurs have a long-term focus and one thing you may want to consider is your long-term goal. All business owners ultimately require an exit strategy and some people go into a business with a specific time frame in mind.
This may determine how quickly you want to grow, the optimal size of your practice and even the people you recruit. So, while it may seem premature to talk about exits in this first chapter, it’s worth considering whether you want to look that far ahead before you even start!
Options include:
Partnership models: bring in a partner or partners to help you run the business (selling your shares in the practice can be a way to release some of the cash you have built up in a tax efficient manner). This can be beneficial in other ways and actioned long before any eventual exit.
Employee ownership: sell the practice to an employee ownership trust (this can mean a longer time frame for exit from the practice).
Sell to a corporate or another independent practice.
Retire but retain ownership and delegate to a manager who can run the practice for you, generating an income stream.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
The idea is that most businesses are very good at talking about what they do and how they do it, but they often don’t fully appreciate why they do it. Some of the most successful leaders of businesses in the world excel because they understand their ‘why’.
You can apply this model personally to identify your own purpose or to your new practice. By defining your ‘why’ you can be a better leader and develop a strong company culture (the way we do things around here). People and teams who understand why they do what they do are more likely to be motivated and inspired.
An example that Simon Sinek gives is Apple.
WHY: We think differently. We want to challenge the status quo.
HOW: The way we do this is by making products that are easy to use, elegant, and well-designed.
WHAT: And we just happen to make computers as our products.
Click the video above to watch a short TED talk from Simon Sinek
Simon’s own personal why is: to inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that, together, we can change our world.
In the next chapter, we will take this idea further and talk about your new practice’s ethos and values.
