Kelly Stazyk

Build a brand and create loyal clients.

Brand story No. 2

How to develop your brand.

Brand story No. 1

Are phone books obsolete?

More than 3,400 pets have been displaced or their homes have threatened by floods.

Take charge of the problems that swamp your practice and make it a brighter day for your team.

What is compassion fatigue, and how can you identify your risk? Serena Wadhwa, PsyD, LCPC, CADC, an expert on stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue in Chicago, offers answers to help team members identify and manage the emotional demands of veterinary practice.

Don't whiff on this all-important chance to bond clients to your practice for life.

Sometimes pets and their owners share an uncanny resemblance-bad behavior. Use this chart to tackle both species' less favorable features.

Review this list of items to include in puppy and kitten kits. Then select the handouts and giveaways that target your practice's education mission and goals.

Use these targeted tactics to chisel away at team members' bad behavior and heigh-ho poor performance right out of your practice.

Owning a pet is a lifelong journey. Help set clients' direction by offering strong care recommendations on nine critical topics.

Unfortunately, you can't read clients' minds and predict the information, products, and services they want. But you can take a good guess through a revolutionary process called listening.

"No. Here's why a strong recommendation for the care you believe in is the best marketing tool you possess."

Are you informal about informing, easygoing about educating, casual about coaching clients about their animals? See how more structure benefits your practice, pet owners, and patients.

Months into the pet food recall, the veterinary world is out of sorts, with some dry and wet food varieties still off the shelves. But amid the frustrations, there's some good news: The recall has shifted clients' focus from cost to quality of their pets' diets.

Yes. But oddly enough, few pet owners take the right steps to protect their pets, their families, and themselves from infestations (see Figure 1)

Working at a practice is like growing up in a big family: no matter how huge the habitat, you're never alone. With such little personal space, conflicts can heat up fast. But a little effort can take the work out of working together well.

The dogs, cats, birds, fish, gerbils, and hamsters you see today might look like the same animals that walked into your practice 10 years ago, but they're different. A sign of their status change might be the number of companies that cater to four-legged consumers, including Old Navy, Harley-Davidson, Origins, and Paul Mitchell, just to name a few. You can also look to what their human companions are spending on these and other products-an estimated $40.8 billion in 2007.

Nervous pets are often problem pets during office visits. Here's help.

Here are five ethical dilemmas, complete with guidelines for making decisions that keep you on solid moral ground.