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In this week’s episode

• Don’t Let Convenience Compromise Control – While cloud solutions offer simplicity, always ensure they align with your practice’s security needs and data ownership priorities before making the switch.
• Look Beyond the Buzzwords – Avoid being swayed by industry jargon like “AI-driven” or “cloud-based.” Focus on real, measurable benefits to your practice and how the technology actually solves problems.
• Invest in Customisation Over Standardization – Choose systems that can be tailored to your unique needs. Flexibility in your PIMS ensures better functionality and smoother integration with your practice’s daily operations.
• Evaluate the Long-Term Costs – Cloud systems might offer savings upfront, but always assess the total cost of ownership over time. Subscription models can add up, so be sure you understand the long-term financial impact.

Additional Guest Spotlights

• Louise Cooke: Louise highly recommends The DO Lectures, an inspiring annual event in Wales that brings together creative and curious minds. She highlights their insightful talks, books, and newsletter (The Chicken Shed Chronicles), which offer valuable perspectives on marketing, branding, and curiosity-driven thinking – perfect for anyone looking to stay engaged and innovative.
• Next episode sneak peak: Alyssa Mages reveals how smart workflow tweaks and targeted clinical training took a struggling seven-doctor practice from chaos to efficiency – doubling their daily surgeries, streamlining appointments, and finally getting doctors out the door on time!

Show Notes

• Out every other week on your favourite podcast platform.
• Presented by Jack Peploe: Veterinary IT Expert, Certified Ethical Hacker, CEO of Veterinary IT Services and dog Dad to the adorable Puffin.
• Ryan Leech is a veterinary industry consultant, speaker, and host of The Bird Bath podcast. Ryan specializes in providing critical market insights and strategic guidance to veterinary businesses, helping them thrive in a competitive market.
• The Bird Bath is a weekly news podcast highlighting the latest trends and developments in the veterinary industry, offering listeners valuable insights into hot topics, breaking news, and industry analysis.
• Ryan recommends the podcast “Planet Money“.

Transcription

Jack Peploe:

Coming up on modern veterinary practice.

Ryan Leech:

And so I think that’s the big thing that we’re pushing against. It’s people needing to explore and try technologies. And my big thing, the thing I’m going to be talking about probably for the next, hopefully a couple years, is the permission. I want everyone just to feel the permission to be able to explore technology, and I want the governing bodies and the regulatory bodies and the universities and the C-Suites to say, try it. Look at technology. You’re not going to get fired. We’re not going to fire you for saying you want to try an AI cooler practice. Not saying we’re going to adopt it, but we at least are willing to let you look at it.

Jack Peploe:

Welcome to the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast. I’m your host and veterinary IT expert, Jack Peploe. In this episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Ryan Leach. Together we’ll delve into the dynamic forces shaping the veterinary industry from the evolution of technology adoption to the challenges of corporatization. Ryan brings his unique insights as the host of the Bird Bath podcast and a seasoned growth consultant for early stage companies in the veterinary space,

Ryan Leech:

My name is Ryan Leach. I’m the host of the Bird Bath podcast, which is a weekly news podcast covering everything happening in the veterinary industry. I also do growth consulting, helping early stage companies introduce themselves and get into the veterinary industry.

Jack Peploe:

Ryan, it is awesome to have you on board and I absolutely love your podcast. Obviously it’s great to invite you onto the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast where we’re going to delve into the dynamic forces that’s shaping the veterinary medicine currently today. Now I’m obviously eager to explore your insights on the evolving landscape of veterinary industry and what the future may hold. So I thought that might be a good subject for us to jump into. So without further ado, let’s dive straight in. Based on your extensive analysis, how have you seen the veterinary industry evolve over the past decade?

Ryan Leech:

This is going to be a long form version here, so it’s interesting and it’s especially interesting speaking with someone from the UK because I do look at the UK market and the European market as a precursor to what to expect in the us. The US market in a lot of the corporatization of the medicine within veterinary industry is with about eight years behind. So a decade is a great segment to look at. If you look at where things were in the UK about eight years ago, that’s sort of where we are now. We’re finally getting to the point where consolidators are buying each other and consolidating with each other. And so that’s an interesting place to be. We are seeing an increase of membership models, we’re seeing an increase of people that are trying to find alternative ways to be able to practice medicine. And so some of the stuff that’s evolving, obviously the consolidation is the big thing that a lot of people look at is kind of that driving force and all of that.

But I also think that there’s a major shift in the generational impact of the DVMs that are graduating from schools. And I’m no longer I think able to be young and think of myself as a colleague or right along the side with the new grads, but it’s a generation of students that are coming out that always had a cell phone. They no longer have this memory of having their first flip phone or something like that. They’ve always had an iPhone. They’ve always been connected to the internet, they’ve always been in these situations. And so the demands for what the industry is bringing them on the technological front, on the speed efficiency, all of that is a complete paradigm shift from what 40 year veteran DVMs are expecting.

Jack Peploe:

I mean, what a way of making me feel old. I remember those flip phones and getting very excited about them, but you are very, very right. I mean, just winding back before we look at the younger generation, looking at the consolidation side of things, I mean that’s something that really intrigues me because it’s a little bit different to how we have done it in the UK because what I’ve noticed within the UK is the corporatization is enforcing almost a standard model with regards to the platforms that are used, the way that the practice may work, and even down to the branding, especially with the recent CMA changes. Well, I mean I don’t know the US market and especially I don’t know it as well as you do, I’ve got a basic understanding, but it does seem like the approach is a little bit different now in the us. Is that correct? It is, but I think

Ryan Leech:

It’s different because it’s going to get to what you’re seeing in your sense of things. In the US obviously, and this is probably going to be a broad generalisation of our revolutionary spirit, but a lot of times when businesses are acquired, they’re less likely to continue the mold or fall into that corporate structure that the parenting companies have. So a lot of the consolidation that happened was bought and practices were bought with the understanding of we’re not going to touch anything, we’re not going to change anything, we’re not going to do anything. And the massive amount of individual private equity or independent or not independent, but unique private equity companies that were participating in, it allowed enough opportunity for people to dictate some of the, that they wanted to continue doing within their practice. As we saw in the past two years, I guess year and a half, the private equity slowed down. It’s now picked back up, but it’s picking back up in the sense where groups are looking to say, okay, you can’t just do whatever you want. We actually do need to start implementing some unified technology strategy. We need to have a more centralised buying process. So it’s not just an arbitrage, which is just the purchase bundle and sell for more. It’s actually getting to this point where you’re needing to have people push in the same direction, which is what you see. And then that’s where the buying of groups buying groups starts to play into.

Jack Peploe:

Absolutely, and I mean the other thing that intrigues me, I mean I find it fascinating that you guys regard yourself or from your perspective, you regard yourself as sort of about a decade behind as an industry compared to the uk, which is fascinating by the way. First of all, I suppose the first question would be is are the US aware of this and are they doing something about it? Because surely this could be an opportunity to actually analyse what the UK market are doing and going, okay, well we could jump frog this leap past and understand where the mistakes have been made so that you don’t make the same mistakes and you could actually force forward. Do you think that there’s a chance that that’s going to happen?

Ryan Leech:

I think so. And one thing to say for sure, for any of my DVM friends that are listening, I don’t think you guys are ahead of us at the practice of medicine. I think that the practice of medicine and the novel approaches and the things that we do on a medical front are just as cutting edge as they are anywhere in the world, if not ahead in a lot of situations. But I do think that the corporatization or the introduction of membership models or insurance is another big thing. And so I think if we were to say what can we take from the UK market, it’s a little difficult purely to apply it when you keep in mind that on the insurance front, there are, I don’t know the exact number in the uk, but we have massive insurance penetration. And from what I know in the US we’re at about 3%, but the total number of pets that are insured is pretty similar.

And so just the size of the market is so different that there are these difficulties of saying, Hey, this worked for 10 million pets in Europe. Well it can work for 180 million pets in the US or something to that effect. And so there is a difficulty there. I personally like letting you guys push forward and find those difficulties there. I’m going to be really interested to see what the shakeout is with everything with CVS group and those sort of things. I do think that we’re getting to that point where we’re starting to see it. We had when ETHOS acquired or when NVA acquired Ethos and Sage, then the FTC, which is our version of the CMA, right, CMA is your version of TC stepped in and said, Nope, this is not, you can’t buy this many. And so they split ’em into two separate companies. We recently had one of our senators write a letter for JAB saying, tell us everything that you guys do, and JAB becomes NBA said, no, we’re not going to do that. And then there’s another really large two groups that are going to be combining that I’m not going to name because most people know who they are, and if you don’t, you’ll learn it soon.

And I think that’s going to be another one that’s going to hit some FTC scrutiny. So we’re learning from you guys a bit about probably how to be competitive without being anti-competitive. So that’s probably the biggest spot where we’ll see it change.

Jack Peploe:

What are some of the other more significant challenges currently facing the industry over in the US and how can the professionals adapt to these hurdles?

Ryan Leech:

Well, I think the things that you tackle and that I try to talk about are the implementation of technology. I think that we’re very slow to adopt technology across the veterinary industry. It’s how I got into the space. I joined the vet industry doing consulting, and I had a sales consulting business and I had worked for a company that was acquired by bookie.com and people always laugh when I tell this story, but it’s on paper. I was selling to small hotel owners and on paper, if you don’t know anything about the veterinary industry, a small hotel is the exact same thing as a vet clinic. And people are usually like, I don’t see how that makes sense. But they’re usually family owned, they’re generational businesses. The family works in the business. The revenue cycle from just a view is we need to get an appointment or a booking. You need that person to show up. You need them to be happy whether it’s enjoying their stay or that is well taken care of, sometimes you need to sell them some food or a bottle of champagne or whatever those differences are, and then you need them to come back.

So I looked at it and said, okay, cool. Everything I did in the hotel business I can do in the vet industry. I just need to show ’em a good ROI on technology and they’ll jump on it. And I got absolutely destroyed by veterinarian and I learned very quickly, just a clear ROI does not mean that a technology is going to succeed in the vet industry. And so I think that’s the big thing that we’re pushing against is people needing to explore and try technologies. And my big thing, the thing I’m going to be talking about probably for the next hopefully couple of years, is the permission. I want everyone just to feel the permission to be able to explore technology, and I want the governing bodies and the regulatory bodies and the universities and the C-Suites to say, try it. Look at technology. You’re not going to get fired. We’re not going to fire you for saying you want to try an AI practice. We’re not saying we’re going to adopt it, but we at least are willing to let you look at it. And I think that’s probably the biggest hurdle that will help us advance in ways that we might be held back.

Jack Peploe:

And another thing that I’ve noticed, I mean this is from my personal experiences, it’s one of the key reasons why we launched our report. So obviously the PMS in the uk, but state of the PMM S report. And the key reason behind that was I suppose lack of clarity, lack of transparency, and it’s something that I’m keen to jump into the US and look at the same time, but I do feel like we’ve got this big problem with technological solutions where you’ve got some incredibly intelligent people. I’m talking about the veterinary professionals here, incredibly intelligent, who lack a lot of time. I think we’re in a stage now where they understand that technology possibly can support and enable them. We were past that phase of almost seeing it as an enemy, but I do feel like maybe that there is a little bit of lack of transparency with regards to these solutions and understanding what they do, how they can work and how they can benefit the practice. What’s your personal experience?

Ryan Leech:

Yeah, I, so I have worked at multiple PIMS, that’s how I got into the space. I worked at Hippo Practice Management Software, didn’t know what a PIMS was before that and learned a tonne about it. And then recently worked with Digitail. I have clients that are also practicing  software companies, and your report is very wonderful and very useful. It’s a little nicer than my crazy Google drives that I have of all my notes and competitive analysis and all of these sort of things that I try and keep squirrelled away. But it’s interesting, it’s difficult because the majority of users are still on server on-prem solutions. I think it was maybe last year Q4, IDEXX put out their investor report saying that they want to move their clients by 2030. I believe they want the majority of their clients to be on cloud. And so I think that’s going to be really helpful.

And every time that, the thing I love is when IDEXX or Covets goes to move one of their server-based clients to a cloud solution, that is the moment of opportunity. That’s when you have a doctor or a practice that hasn’t thought about anything different for their system and they go, I don’t need this closet with a room that I’m not allowed to go in. And my IT guy tells me not to go in there and he has the key and I can’t do anything with it. And now I can Google cloud-based PIMS just so I know what they’re talking about. That’s where certain businesses can find opportunity to win, and that’s what the next generation of the time is going to do.

That’s not the bread and butter. And so if you are trying to build a business that’s exclusively living on something that somebody else’s table scraps, it can be very tough to compete in that 10 where it does make it difficult for the cream rice to the top in that sense because mediocre or subpar solutions can be funded by just pushing a lot of labs or pushing x-rays or things like that. So I think that’s going to be difficult. I also think, and this is a soap box, but I also think that the functionality of PIMS as they exist currently is a bit bloated. There’s way too much feature creep or scope creep that happens within the PIMS space. And it’s understandable because as soon as you have the client’s name and their email address and their pet’s name, well then someone says, well, you have their email address.

Can we send ’em an email? And you go, well, we’re not trying to be a communication, but you have the email. Can we send it? And you’re like, okay, well you have their phone number, can I text them? Well, we don’t want to text. And okay, you can text them and it starts to become an issue there. But I do think the technologies that I find to be the most flexible and forward thinking are actually the people that plug into the pim. So people like Tom Jenkins, who I know Tom probably pretty well with Pets app and the teams that do these ancillary services to plug in, I think are a real bright spot to be able to find the continuous innovation.

Jack Peploe:

What’s interesting that, and again, this is something that I’ve noticed is that you are finding that the PIMS are starting to try to replicate some of the capability and functionality. I mean, if I just pick on, for example, easy bet, the IDEXX variant, obviously there are too many easy bet, but obviously they’re building their own app, which is almost in direct competition with the likes of Tom’s app. I appreciate that there is a bit of different functionality, but equally we’re making it more confusing for practice owners and practice managers in making a decision. And especially when you’ve got, if we pick on digitals awesome, PIMS really nice, really, really, really good solution, but has its own client facing app. So it’s kind like, do we need to sort of wind things back and actually ask the question of what is the PIMS? What do we need it to do and do we need to be focusing more on enabling partners like Pets app to be able to integrate solutions that are going to be great rather than just subpar?

Ryan Leech:

This could be a 40 part series if we want, and maybe you and I should do put a PIMS Expo day or to follow what you did the UK or the US report. Yes, I do think that my dream pyramid could be an EMR that plugs in and is an open API that allows people like Tom and companies like CoVet and the best solutions that do what they do the best with teams that focus on what they do to actually thrive and grow and not lock away the data that the PIMS controls behind crummy APIs and half half-baked solutions. But when you look at especially the funding and where the money comes from to fund a lot of these businesses, you have to say what’s a much larger addressable market? TAM for a DVMs in the world even is significantly smaller than the TAM four pet parent.

So it’s very difficult as we talk about scope creep to say, alright, there’s things we can do for the dvm, but now people start looking at it and going, sure, we have a thousand DVMs using the solution, or 10,000 if you’re using that, or whatever their number is, but we’ve got 500,000 or a million pet parents that we have their information as well. If each one of them spends a dollar and we make a dollar on a marketplace solution with them, we make a whole lot more money than selling a PIs for $300 a month. So it’s difficult. It’s very difficult and you would need to get to the scale of someone like Epic for human EMRs to be able to do anything different. And at that point you become monopolistic and you’re forced to have an open API and forced to collaborate and forced to participate with everyone. But it’s a difficult battle. Yes.

Jack Peploe:

I think I’m going to have to take you up on this 40 power series. I think we’re going to need a lot more than 40 Palestine.

Ryan Leech:

Yeah. Well also if you need a little lawyer to sit in the corner to go, so with all of our contracts to go resay that, it’s going to be like our 40 part of three words where we go, hi. So yes, there’s a lot that’s risky ground, but yeah, it’s a hot button

Jack Peploe:

Issue. Well, I’ve just realised the time and I told you I’d get carried away, but before we do close off, if there was one bit of key advice you could provide the listeners, what would it be?

Ryan Leech:

So this is one kind of, I feel dorky with it. Early in my career I started, and I don’t know if this surprises people or doesn’t, but my first job out of college was selling cars. I loved cars, I loved selling things. And so sold cars, and the company I worked for was big on customer service. They were actually, the founder wrote a book called Customer for Life. Carl Sewell is Wonderful, booking our Times bestseller, and they sent a selection of salespeople through the Dale Carnegie course. And at the time, I think I was too young and immature to really appreciate the opportunity that was there, and it’s kind of like youth is wasted on the young. And I thought, okay, well, this is sort of crazy and low, right? I don’t need someone to tell me how to be a people person. But in retrospect, as I’ve gone through my career, I found it to be pretty interesting. It is very old school, but there’s one thing in there that I like to really take and move forward with, and it’s give people a reputation to live up to, and I’m probably butchering that, but it’s give people the opportunity to excel and when you’re meeting with somebody, give them that space to shine and you’ll find that they will and that they’ll rise to those occasions. And so I think that’s an interesting piece of advice in that book that I really enjoyed, and it was how to bring friends and influence people, I think.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s an awesome statement. But yeah. Well look, Ryan, it really has been enlightening to hear your insights into the dynamics and directions of the industry. Obviously I really appreciate your time. It’s really lovely meeting you, and I really hope we are able to catch up again. In fact, we’ve got London Vet Show not far off, so I’m really looking forward to that. But thank you so much for joining us today. If people did want to get in touch with you, how can they go about doing it?

Ryan Leech:

So I always say I’m not difficult to find, so I don’t have any bad decks out there, but you can find my podcast@thebirdbath.io and it’s on all podcast platforms. It’s the bird bath, it’s got a cute little bird, and then I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on every social media as well as first 100, the number 1 0 0 io, that’s my consulting business. And send me an email, send me a LinkedIn message. I’m always happy to chat with anyone.

Jack Peploe:

Awesome. Ryan, thank you so much. And obviously all of those links will be on the show notes. But Ryan, thank you again so much. Really, really nice to chat to you.

Ryan Leech:

Thanks, Jack.

Recommended resources

Jack Peploe:

Every week we ask professionals and experts to suggest a best business resource for our listeners. This week’s recommendation is from Louise Cooke.

Louise Cooke:

So one of the resources I’ve found incredibly helpful in my career is something called the DO lectures. So if you’re in marketing or consumer marketing, something I’ve always looked for in people I recruit into teams or within myself as being an interested and an interesting person, and this insatiable need for curiosity is something that is so important for marketers in any sector, you have to have that ability to look out and outside the sector and especially within the veterinary industry, we absolutely need that for our practices. They are really busy in their practice. So the DO lectures is an incredible space. I’d encourage you to go and have a look at it online. So it’s actually a physical event that happens every year in Wales, and it’s just about getting creative, curious individuals together. They record all their talks and one day, hopefully I’ll get the chance to go in person.

It hasn’t happened yet. They have a brilliant email newsletter that comes out. It’s called The Chicken Shed Chronicles. It maybe comes out every four weeks, and it’s just for of brilliant adverts, insights, top tips, information. You don’t have to be marketing just if you’re an interested person. It’s a great source of knowledge. And they also have a brilliant series of books. They’re little pocket books. I think I’ve got about five of them. So do check those out as anything from beekeeping to, there’s some really brilliant pieces about building brands, et cetera. So if you run a team or you’re a marketer yourself, definitely buy some and gift them out to your team. They’re really nice bite-sized pieces. And finally, they have something called a manifesto of a doer. I think it’s maybe 50 points, and it is a brilliant read. If you need a little bit of a refocus in your day, you can read through it all for free, and it just reminds you what getting on and taking action looks like and what balance looks like. So it’s a really interesting space, all the work that it’s set up by a guy called David and his team. But yeah, the DO Lectures, the Chicken Shake Chronicles, absolutely. I’d encourage you to go and have a look. There’s a lot on there for free as well as things you can pay for.

Jack Peploe:

Coming up next week. We welcome Alyssa Mays, a certified veterinary technician, educator and passionate advocate for empowering veterinary teams. Alicia shares her journey from working in various veterinary sectors to co-founding empowering veterinary teams. In this episode, we’ll explore how she’s revolutionising veterinary training, tackling challenges like team engagement and leadership buy-in, and integrating diversity, equity and inclusion into her programs. Alyssa also dives into the human skills essentials for a veterinary success and how innovation in education can shape the future of the profession.

Alyssa Mages:

What we’ve noticed in particular, our one shining jewel was about a seven doctor practice, and they were doing three surgeries a day and just running into walls with doing their exams and things. And so we took it and really got, especially their medical team, their technicians and assistants, and we’re like, all right, this is your role. This is your lane. This is how we do these things. This is daily task, weekly task, monthly tasks, and let’s go through it. And so we didn’t just work on clinical skills training, we’re doing workflow efficiency, and after four months together, we had them doing seven surgeries on their surgery days, and one doctor seeing 20 appointments and leaving on time.

Jack Peploe:

That’s it for this episode. All links and recommendations we talked about are in the show notes. Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast if you found it useful. In the meantime, thanks for listening and see you next time.