You became a veterinary professional because you love helping animals and making a difference. But you also live in the real world where mortgages need paying, student loans keep demanding attention, and you’d like to afford that well-earned vacation. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting both meaningful work and fair compensation that lets you enjoy life outside the clinic. When you’re properly compensated for your expertise, you’re more energized and focused on providing excellent care.

Having conversations about salary doesn’t mean you’re being greedy or forgetting why you love this profession. You bring incredible value to your practice through your skills, dedication, and the trust clients place in you. When both you and your employer benefit from fair compensation, it creates a positive cycle where everyone wins. You feel valued and motivated, your practice thrives, and your patients receive the best possible care…

Smart technology is already saving veterinary professionals time, improving diagnostic capabilities, and enhancing patient outcomes in ways that seemed impossible just two years ago. From AI scribes that complete SOAP notes in seconds to predictive algorithms that detect early kidney disease patterns, artificial intelligence has evolved from experimental concept to early adoption across progressive practices.

As a skilled veterinary professional, you understand that better tools combined with your own veterinary expertise and experience create better outcomes for your patients. Over your career, you have already seen that advances in equipment and practice software have significantly improved the quality of veterinary care – from digital imaging through to inventory management – think of Artificial Intelligence as another advance, to be considered and applied in a similar manner…

There’s a moment in nearly every veterinary practice where things start to feel tight. Consults are booked solid, weekends are full, the team is stretched, and the idea of growing starts to flicker. It might be a bigger team, more space, or even a second location, but before you dive in, it’s worth pausing to ask… growth toward what?

Not all growth is good growth. Bigger doesn’t always mean better. The smartest practice leaders take time to understand what they truly want, and what kind of growth will support that vision. This isn’t about business plans or budget forecasts (that comes next). This is the groundwork. The real work. Here are seven essential checkpoints to help you figure out whether growth is the right move, the right fit, and the right time…