Stewardship, Succession, and my Last Day as Vet Practice Owner

So that’s a wrap. I am no longer a veterinary practice owner.

Monday 1st June marked the first day in over twenty years that I have not owned part or all of a veterinary practice.

In rough, contemporaneous order, the list goes something like this.

Parkvets, where I had a very minor shareholding in a very special place and spent nearly a decade growing professionally.

North Ryde Veterinary Hospital, my first true “fixer upper”, owned outright and operated by me.

Dr Dave’s Vets & Pets, a second addition to the Aussie group, this time a start-up and a fun new brand.

Love That Pet, a start-up group I sold my Aussie clinics to, which turned out to be both a huge learning curve and, sadly, a deeply scarring cautionary tale.

Roundwood Vets Ltd, the leadership development project, and the last ten years.

And finally, Roundwood Pet Hospice, a spin-off born from Covid-era innovation.

I intend to write about much of this journey in the weeks, months, and possibly years ahead.

But for now, there is a more immediate story to tell. One that concerns the nature of the sale of Roundwood Vets. To whom I sold the practice and, more importantly, why.

But like all good stories, let’s start at the beginning.

Purchasing Roundwood Vets

Back in December 2015, not long after I had sold my practices and while I was still living in Sydney, I was keen to undertake a new project for several reasons.

I wanted to work with and train younger vets who had aspirations of ownership, so they could go on to lead teams effectively and have a shot at a life of ownership themselves.

Some people find that leap easy, even exciting. Others second guess themselves, or hesitate because of inner or outer voices telling them not to do it.

My own belief and experience is that owning a veterinary clinic can be highly rewarding. It can also be highly frustrating, energy-draining, and maddening when things go wrong. I made several barrels full of errors along my ownership journey, all the while documenting what worked and what did not, then adapting. Sometimes that meant working on me. Other times it meant working on the systems.

By 2015, I felt ready to find a partner and start building again, but with one big difference. This time I would not be in the building. I would be unable to influence events directly, day to day.

That felt like the last piece of the puzzle and led to two tantalizing questions.

Could I successfully operate a veterinary practice at long range? Sydney to London is about as far as it gets.

And was it possible to provide an ownership opportunity for someone who might not otherwise take that leap?

So alongside a young vet, Hannah, who had worked with me in Sydney, and with whom I had formed a close bond, I decided to find a new “fixer-upper” and set about the project.

In December 2015, we completed the purchase of Roundwood Vet Centre in London.

And then we got busy.

Turning Things Around

Well, sort of busy.

What we bought was, I think, an act of charity to describe as a fixer-upper. In reality, it was a wreck.

On the day of completion, Dr Hannah and a great Aussie nurse pal, Sam, walked in and the seller and his kennel assistant handed over the keys and promptly left. 

No transition. Nada. Tag! You’re it.

I still have the first hilarious email update from that day. It was busy, frantic in fact, just not with clients. I think we took in about £200 and everything was broken.

I also have the joyous screenshot of the Skype call we were on when word came through that we had completed and the practice was ours. You have to mark and cherish such moments.

The next five years went by in a blur as we grew the practice.

We inherited a clinic with virtually no technological adaptation and 1,000 clients, 500 of whom we knew were not going to be suitable for our plan.

We published a website, built an email list, got on social media, created a marketing plan, and got busy. We recruited new teammates as we steadily grew. There was much experimentation, much growth, and a lot of learning. Slowly, our reputation grew as a place where we looked after people and helped them to grow.

By 2019, we had reached a decision point, which resulted in me purchasing the practice in full. On December 31st, 2019, we signed the paperwork, raised a glass, and my partner of more than four years cashed in her chips.

We all know what happened next in the world.

So began an incredibly challenging transition for the practice. Covid hit hard. A team reeling from a huge leadership change was hit with an even bigger existential change, and everyone reeled. Old teammates left as we reimagined what Roundwood Vets was going to be. New teammates joined.

At the time, it was a point of great pain and vulnerability for the practice. We lost 75% of the team over a six-month period. But with a new medical director and practice manager recruited, our resolve galvanised, we got busy again and rebuilt the team, ready for the next five years of growth.

Through this evolution, something amazing emerged. A vision and commitment to becoming a place where both people and pets could thrive.

Veterinary practices are almost always very good at caring for animals. Sadly, they are also too often places where people break.

We had made mistakes previously and we were determined to learn from them. We wanted to build a genuinely people-first practice.

Our recast vision became central to this journey. We added regular strategic planning meetings, which became central to our intentional growth. Slowly but surely, we reduced the energy-sapping chaos through innovative systems to manage the workload, careful selection of teammates for both skills and values alignment, and investment in things that fit our strategic vision.

That included spinning out a second practice, Roundwood Pet Hospice, which grew from an experiment during Covid.

The approach worked.

One of the things I am most proud of is the fact that we rarely had to work hard to attract talent. People either sent us their resumes out of the blue after hearing good things, or they readily responded to our job adverts. And this happened with such serendipitous timing that I have a hard time putting it down to blind luck.

We worked hard as hell creating and protecting a culture where people could feel supported, enjoy coming to work, and grow new skills.

Leaving Things Better Than We Find Them

It became apparent to me over the last two years that veterinary medicine was changing rapidly.

The corporate glut of purchasing has created a double trust fault line that is impossible to ignore, because it has not just changed the nature of the profession, it has significantly weakened it.

The first fault line is the trust between leadership and teams.

This was always a challenge, but the distance between boardroom and exam room is a gulf in the mega-groups we have today. That detachment is not so easily bridged as some might think.

Accountants and clinicians have different aims. They speak different languages. They are rewarded for different results. The gaps in communication, objective setting, and decision-making are as far removed as midnight from midday.

It is hardly surprising that a fracture as wide as the Grand Canyon would open.

The second fault line is the fracture between clinicians and clients.

You can barely doom scroll for a hot second before finding a “professional” running their mouth about how awful pet owners are.

Are we really arrogant enough to believe our jobs are above these people?

We have no jobs without them.

Further, we see corporate influence here, though it is a second order effect. The act of paying 10, 12, 15, 20, or 25 times annual profit for a practice that would traditionally have traded somewhere between 3 and 8 times was always going to mean someone had to pay the piper.

Private equity wants its return.

That reality, combined with retention issues, means labor costs have increased. And some morons in high office seem to think endless war is good for the global economy, while the rest of us schmucks pay more and more for things as markets wobble and individual buying power erodes.

The net effect?

Higher prices for pet owners. Much higher.

Add that to the antipathy shown by swathes of the profession towards clients and you have a recipe for disaster.

Actually, we got worse than disaster. We got political meddling here in the UK in the form of the Competition and Markets Authority intervention and in the US, political rumblings are there. It can only be a matter of time before someone important has their nose put out of joint and intervenes. 

But that’s getting away from the point.

The point is this.

For me, leaving this profession better than I found it means creating opportunities for others. It means helping people grow so they can have prosperous careers. It means realizing we are all just stewards of tomorrow. Profit matters of course, but the long term health of the patient is the prime concern of every vet, and the long-term health of this profession should be the concern of every leader. Profit primacy places that future, or at least the version I want to be part of, in doubt. People have to matter more. I think that has shown up in my books and courses for new graduates, and in our employment of new and recent graduates at the practice. In the way we place such a high emphasis on culture in the practice.

And now, most significantly, it shows up in my decision to sell Roundwood Vets to those who have shown commitment and sweated blood and tears over six years of working together.

More specifically, that means Dr Jo, our Medical Director, and Nikki, our fearless Practice Manager and Registered Vet Nurse.

These ladies have diligently and professionally shown up day after day for the last six years for the team, for the pets, and for the community.

We have climbed to heights I did not think possible. We have also been to hell and back together. Worst of all, they have had to put up with me as their boss!

There are enough stories to fill several lifetimes. But there is no time for that now. They have their own chapters to author as owners.

And what chapters they will be.

The truth is, they do not need my skills anymore. They have learned everything I have to teach. So the only sensible decision for the future was to offer the clinic to them.

I, too, have learned huge amounts from my time as steward of Roundwood.

But it is time for a new adventure. The old must eventually move on so the new can flourish. 

So, on the 1st of June 2026, I could not be prouder to say that Dr Jo Nuttall and Nikki Roberts RVN became the new owners of Roundwood Vets in Willesden, London.

It matters that in a profession highly dominated by women, this is represented at all levels. Ownership of veterinary clinics has been a demographic laggard in this regard. And since owners make the decisions that affect teams the most, that is a problem.

It matters too that veterinary nurses and technicians are able to own clinics. They invest just as much emotional energy and skill as we vets. And certainly more than the “bean counters” at “head office” could ever muster.

So the thing I am happiest about is being able to pass on a part of the profession to those who deserve it most.

And I hope it acts as an inspiration to others in the future to understand that succession does not have to be about maximizing a multiple.

There are other measures of success.

Strong relationships. Friendships. Trust. Equal opportunities. Stewardship.

These are all things I believe matter. They may well be more beneficial and more lasting measures of success than profit and a maxed-out multiple.

In our little bit of London, at least, those things survive for a little while yet.

I may not wind up the richest guy in the graveyard.

But I sure hope to be smiling when it is my turn to rest.

So let me finish, appropriately enough, with some gratitude and right back where it started.

Thank you to Dr Hannah for having the belief to jump into ownership and a slightly crazy idea in the beginning.

Thank you to Dr Jo and Nikki for having the courage to take over and rebuild when it might have been easier to walk away. And thank you both for the courage and skill to take things forward into the future.

And there would have been no practice to speak of without all the people who chose to spend some of their lives working at Roundwood.

To each of you, thank you for your contribution along the way.

Dr Dave Nicol