Expand your mind, stretch and strengthen your body, and start your Connexity experience right. All dogs are adoptable.

What do people think and do, to not only survive change but to thrive?

Learn what people do who improve after a disruptive change. Develop a personal “Change Airbag”, ready for anything. With flexibility, optimism and courage/perseverance, nothing will get you down!

This results-focused program holds attendees accountable for their own change readiness – even during the session

In this interactive workshop, learn what it takes to keep people motivated, engaged and optimistic during changing times. Engage in a short boot-camp on win-win conversations with those “difficult” people. Take back a playbook of best-practices you can use in your practice to keep people accountable and on board. Bonus: Take a free ChangeStyles™ assessment to pick up on your strengths and challenges, and get a short guide to adjustments you can make to be even more successful as a change agent.

In this invigorating session, Dr. Justine Lee will share how she grew an idea into an empire that serves thousands of veterinary teams. Her straight-talking stories will reveal key lessons on courageously embracing change and will help jump-start your journey to be an even better practice leader, teammate, and healer. Be prepared to identify how each of her tried-and-true life hacks could be immediately implemented in your practice.

Regardless of where we practice, ethical distress is everywhere. It is caused by the barriers (real or perceived) that prevent us from being able to treat our patients the way we believe is right. Handling suspected animal cruelty, managing sick or injured “stray” animals, and the perpetual issue of a client’s inability to pay for care are just some of the scenarios that can cause ethical distress and negatively impact our wellbeing. Veterinary forensics expert, Dr. Melinda Merck and experienced veterinary practice leader, Dr. Deborah Stone have unique perspectives on how to create options to alleviate these common scenarios which will directly benefit your team and your community.

Self-care is not for sissies. True self-care requires investing in yourself so you can ultimately help others. Using a nationally recognized health and wellness coaching system, veterinary social worker, Dr. Elizabeth Strand will walk you through a personal assessment of your current self-care practices, and create a step-by-step process for improving your life. This masterclass will use “buddy-hood” to create a support network for you that will last for at least one year after the class. Regardless of where you are on your journey towards improving your life, you will leave this class buoyant with the confidence to make real change.

There will be a 1.5-hour break starting at 12:15 p.m. and ending at 1:45 p.m. The Master Class will resume at 1:45 p.m.

Get some exercise and show a local shelter dog some love while supporting a local shelter. All dogs are adoptable.

Description: In a world where convenience, personalization, and transparency are in high demand among consumers, online retailers like Amazon and Chewy are thriving. E-commerce is here to stay, and veterinary practice owners and managers must learn to navigate this evolving market landscape to accommodate their clients. This session combines Abhay Nayak’s unique background in business strategy, case studies from other industries, and the wisdom of your fellow veterinary leaders to provide concrete ways for you to evaluate the impact of e-commerce in your veterinary practice and understand the steps you need to take to put your practice in a position to thrive.

In this 1-hour lecture, Dr. Justine Lee, DACVECC, DABT shares tips on how to improve your wellness and self-care. After all, we veterinary professionals discuss quality of life every day with our pet owners, but often fail to achieve this in our own life. Whether you’re struggling with the stress and anxiety of daily veterinary practice to the balance of being a working parent professional, find some take-away tips to significantly improve your quality of life.

Time-management expert, veterinary practice owner, and warrior-mother, Dr. Laura Baltodano, guides you on a personal value-based journey. Intentionally reclaim the extra minutes in your day, and use them as a catalyst for meaningful change in your professional and personal life. Be prepared to walk away from this session with a refreshing outlook on how small choices will lead to abundant change.

The philosophy of the world’s largest destination of animal content, The Dodo, is simple: We can advance important animal causes through leveraging the unique ability that animals possess to tap into human emotions. As veterinary teams, we are keenly aware of this, yet we often don’t take the time to share the stories of the animals in our care, missing an opportunity to build rapport and engage with our community.

Learn from The Dodo’s President, YuJung Kim, on video storytelling best practices to improve the lives of pets and people. What you learn in this session can be applied to your practice to position yourself as a source of meaningful, credible content, actionable advocacy, and, ultimately, to become top of mind for your next client.

There is finally a term that explains why we cringe at the mention of certain high-maintenance clients with their chronically ill pets–“burden transfer”. Clinical psychologist, Dr. Mary Beth Spitznagel, coined it after caring for her dog who had Cushing’s, transitional cell carcinoma and cognitive dysfunction, and observed how challenging client interactions in this context could be for the mental health of a veterinary team. Using her background in caregiver burden for families who care for humans with chronic illness, she has been actively researching how veterinary teams might decrease caregiver burden in clients (potentially reducing loss of revenue to non-billable interactions) and change their own reactions to clients to avoid the negative ramifications of burden transfer.

Learn how understanding more about this new concept will change the way your team cares for these complex people and their pets.

Dr. Greenfield will explore the results of his dental study and the lessons learned that helped practices double the dentistry they were practicing, reaching more patients and almost tripling doctor productivity.

Get your drink on and learn how to create delicious libations! Limited to 50 spots.

If you or your team are considering transitioning ownership, finish your first day at Connexity with this diverse and seasoned group of panelists. The panelists will share their unique stories—from those who managed to keep their practice “in the family” to those who supported their teams during a sale to a corporation. They’ll also discuss important leadership and financial pitfalls to avoid, what to consider if you want to try to sell privately, and what to look for if you’re considering selling to a corporation or veterinary practice network.

Come and learn more about your benefits as an AAHA Advantage member. Plus win prizes from all our participating vendors!

Expand your mind, stretch and strengthen your body, and start your Connexity experience right. All dogs are adoptable.

Routine preventive care visits offer the best chance to detect and prevent disease as early as possible; however with very busy schedules and multiple practice priories it’s often a difficult task to implement new practice protocols. During this presentation, you’ll learn tips and tricks on how to get your entire practice team onboard, achieve financial success, and provide better patient care.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn tips and tricks to build a plan to implement Preventive Care and get your entire practice team onboard
• Best practices for how to keep your momentum even with everyday demands of your practice
• Help your clients get to “Yes”

Join us for breakfast and learn about the latest topics in digital marketing with Google Partner Troy Leonard of Doctor Multimedia, who will deliver an enthusiastic, passionate talk covering the newest best practices for website design, social media management, and client review generation. Learn what successful veterinarians are doing today to enhance their online presence and attract new clients. Have you considered investing in search engine optimization (SEO) or Google AdWords? Get your questions about return on investment answered. Other topics include three major website mistakes most vets make, easy ways to boost conversions for free, and what websites will look like in 2020.

A thriving workplace begins with an engaged and collaborative workforce. In this inspiring presentation, author and millennial workplace expert Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky will share how organizations can attract top talent and empower the talent of the future by leading with purpose. We’ll break through common stereotypes about millennial employees, share case studies for increasing employee engagement, and learn proven strategies and tools to foster collaboration in the workplace, which will help you build a purpose-driven company culture that empowers all of your employees.

The goal of this breakout is to help participants better understand how generational differences can have an effect on ones leadership style and company culture. This workshop will provide participants with the necessary tools to be able to effectively communicate with both Generation Z, who will now enter into the workforce, and millennials, who comprise the majority of today’s workforce.

Using video at your practice sounds like a great idea, but where should you start? In this session, Craig Spinks (Co-Founder of Veteos) will share many of the tips and tricks professional videographers use to create engaging content – from how to make your staff feel comfortable around cameras to how you can utilize items already at your practice to improve the quality of your footage. When you leave this hands-on and practical session, you’ll be equipped to turn your great video ideas into effective marketing and client engagement tools.

Bosses tell, coaches ask. If your team is constantly looking to you to solve problems and keep them moving forward towards a goal, it’s time for them to be coached and not bossed. But how? Executive leadership experts, Jeff and Peg Thoren, will lift the weight of the world (or at least, the practice) off your shoulders by exploring contemporary coaching techniques that will give you a mindset and skillset to shift the culture of your team from secretly resisting top-down mandated change to collective co-created change.

Unless you’ve been very intentional, you may have fallen into the trap of creating a traditional business strategy, which tends to mirror military strategy – beat your competitors! Business Strategy 2.0 moves away from tradition and embraces a “purpose-driven” strategy, which naturally attracts motivated team members and clients. Led by executive leadership expert, Dan Bruder, this engaging masterclass dives deep into the 4-step Strategy Whiteboard™ System that will identify the unique purpose of your practice – beyond “helping animals through best medicine” – and teach you how to weave this purpose into every interaction you have with pets, clients, and your team. The result? You and your team’s passion for this field will be rekindled, your clients will be raving about you to the community, and most importantly, the animals in your care will reap the benefits of a cause-based purpose.

There will be a 1.5-hour break starting at 12:00 p.m. and ending at 1:45 p.m. The Master Class will resume at 1:45 p.m. An additional 15-minute break will start at 2:45 p.m. The Master Class will resume at 3:00 p.m.

Setting veterinary service fees has been a long-standing challenge in our industry. There are many different methods used to set veterinary service fees like cost plus, matching competitors fees, using benchmarking and more. But which method is the best option for your practice? We will explore the important items to look for when determining the right service fee for your practice. Knowing the true cost of a product or service helps veterinary practices with pricing decisions, and we will break down the anatomy of a service and how the fee is derived.

Program Objective:

• Understand how the true cost of a service can influence the service fee
• Learn about the challenges of setting fees in your practice
• Provide you with fee-setting strategies that can add more to your bottom line

Details coming soon!

With all the marketing-related noise circulating throughout the veterinary industry, it can be hard to know what the right objectives of your marketing efforts should be... let alone know how to accomplish them. Veterinary practices have a lot of options when determining where to invest their marketing-related efforts, but not all options are equally important or powerful. Join us to learn how to determine what marketing is best for your practice and how to make it happen.

Get some exercise and show a local shelter dog some love while supporting a local shelter. All dogs are adoptable.

Whether it’s a nasty online review, a late-night text from a long-lost “friend” who wants free pet advice, or face-to-face issues with staff, colleagues, or clients, conflict causes deep physiological changes in our bodies and brains that can be hard to overcome. Fortunately, there are straight-forward tools that you can use to calmly create boundaries and resolve conflict while keeping yourself intact. Dr. Elizabeth Strand has devoted the bulk of her energy in her work with veterinary teams on teaching them how to take the crisis out of conflict, and she’s excited to be sharing those concepts with you.

Every employee in your practice plays a vital role in your business’ success. Their collective efforts determine the experience your patients and clients have. Great team members cause clients to trust you with the care of their pets, leave happy, and ultimately recommend your practice to others. They can contribute to stellar medicine and impeccable patient care. Less-than-great employees can cause a very different set of results. Choosing the right people to determine your future is one of the most important parts of leading a practice. But how do you attract and find the right people? Fortunately, leadership expert, Randy Hall, can share with you the successful strategies he’s discovered through working with Fortune 500 companies along with thousands of veterinary hospitals as they work to attract and hire phenomenal teams.

Bosses tell, coaches ask. If your team is constantly looking to you to solve problems and keep them moving forward towards a goal, it’s time for them to be coached and not bossed. But how? Executive leadership experts, Jeff and Peg Thoren, will lift the weight of the world (or at least, the practice) off your shoulders by exploring contemporary coaching techniques that will give you a mindset and skillset to shift the culture of your team from secretly resisting top-down mandated change to collective co-created change.

Whether it’s a nasty online review, a late-night text from a long-lost “friend” who wants free pet advice, or face-to-face issues with staff, colleagues, or clients, conflict causes deep physiological changes in our bodies and brains that can be hard to overcome. Fortunately, there are straight-forward tools that you can use to calmly create boundaries and resolve conflict while keeping yourself intact. Dr. Elizabeth Strand has devoted the bulk of her energy in her work with veterinary teams on teaching them how to take the crisis out of conflict, and she’s excited to be sharing those concepts with you.

Did you know that the average veterinary practice of 20 people needs to hire someone new almost every 90 days? Once we’ve found superstars, how do we get them to stay at our practice? Unwanted turnover is incredibly expensive and spends both our time and money in places that do not make our practice more successful. It can also add to stress, chaos, and ineffective teams. Employee engagement plays a key role in retention. A recent Deloitte survey indicates that fully engaged employees are 53% less likely to leave their current organization. But how do we make our practice an irresistible one? Work alongside leadership expert, Randy Hall, as he unpacks the surprisingly simple changes you can make to minimize unwanted turnover and maximize teamwork.

With turnover in the veterinary profession reaching nearly 30%, effective training programs are critical to maintaining high-quality patient and client care. Whether you already have an established program or are thinking of implementing one, Dr. Karen Parker’s five simple, yet remarkably effective tips will have you rethinking your strategy and jump-start your training efforts. Allow your team to quickly master the skills you need them to know. With over 20 years of experience in talent recruitment, retainment and engagement, her creative ways of identifying veterinary training resources and tailoring them to your practice will save you time and stress. SPOILER ALERT: by the end of this session, you’ll be adding new words to your management vocabulary like quizlets, “embrace and extend”, and MORE.

We know you may be wondering why we chose Indianapolis as your Connexity destination; join our Selfie Scavenger Hunt to experience everything Indy has to offer! During the debrief, teams of (5) will be given a list of tasks to complete –including a list of locations where a selfie is required! All participants MUST be in each selfie, and additional points may be assessed for creativity. Uber, Lyft, taxis, etc. are not allowed, but groups may partake in activities like Pacers Bike Share at their own expense.

Prizes will be given out!

Expand your mind, stretch and strengthen your body, and start your Connexity experience right. All dogs are adoptable.

Implementing preventive care plans at your practice can feel like a big step; learn the tools and tips to make it a major success! This session will examine the milestones for delivering plans and best practices for inspiring your team and clients–a win/win.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how preventive care plans can advance your practice’s philosophy
• Learn ways to inspire your team and cultivate deeper relationships with your clients by putting the best medicine within reach
• Discover how to create, implement and measure the results of preventive care plans

The truth is that regardless of your position within a veterinary practice, you are expected to produce more in less time with fewer resources, while staying positive and engaged. The reality is people are stressed out, tightly wound, and exhausted trying to meet and exceed expectations. The best intentions go right out the window before lunch due to constantly changing schedules, demands, and priorities.

In this real-world and laugh-out-loud funny presentation, Colette teaches how to stay resilient through constant change and challenges. She shows each audience how to create the focus, energy, mindset, and connections necessary to make healthy choices in this 24/7/365 world. Participants feel valued and walk away ready to make positive, long-lasting change for both professional and personal success.

Are you ready to take back your life and love it? Then you MUST attend Colette’s deep-dive, interactive stressful-to-successful session. The only way to survive and thrive in today’s “crazy-busy” world is through honest reflection and authentic action. Come prepared to roll up your sleeves and get busy putting a plan in place to stop wishing for a calmer, less-chaotic life and start doing what matters most to you. Identify your own stress triggers, boundary busters, and time suckers to best align your time to your personal and professional core values. Gain the framework and clarity necessary to put more “well” into your being and lead a joyful life!

As America’s Opioid Crisis continues to scale, it is critical that veterinary professionals understand controlled substance compliance and how to protect themselves from drug diversion. Demystifying this topic is former DEA Supervisory Special Agent and Founder of Titan Group, Jack Teitelman. Having spent 26 years with the DEA running high-profile criminal investigations including drug lords and mob bosses, Jack has seen it all when it comes to drug-related illegal activities. Utilizing real-life scenarios, Jack will open our eyes to the state of America’s Epidemic and the resulting threats veterinary professionals now face, such as employee theft and “doctor shopping”. The session will conclude with an overview of best practices to ensure veterinary practices remain protected and compliant according to federal and state regulatory requirements. Aside from his expertise, attendees will leave inspired by Jack’s compassion for those struggling with addiction (having experienced a near-brush with it himself), his dedication to social responsibility and his respect for the complexities of the veterinary community.

Your team’s best work can be undone by a breach in infection control and a slip-up can easily occur every day. Join Dr. Jason Stull, the chair of AAHA’s Infection Control, Prevention and Biosecurity (ICPB) task force to unpack the top recommendations from the recent ICPB Guidelines. Upgrade your protocols to limit the risk of disease transmission to your patients and staff, as well as protect the reputation of your practice. From the front desk to the isolation room, he’ll show you how small, practical changes boost the pride your team has in their patient care and the loyalty of your clients to your practice.

Imagine knowing how to effectively shift the behavior of your team to create the workplace culture of your dreams. This intimate masterclass will empower you to do just that. Using ground-breaking concepts in neurobiology and human behavior change, Randy Hall will guide you through a “Change Game Plan” tailored to your individual practice. You will design your ideal workplace culture and bring the tools, processes, and ideas from this masterclass back to your practice to create and sustain meaningful change. The morning session will focus on principles of change management, and the afternoon on how to specifically lead the change to improve your culture. By the end of the day, you will be able to guide your team to make choices that create a better future for them, the practice, and the pets in your care. Ultimately, this could be the first step in the most important leadership journey you have ever made, resulting in a thriving, balanced, and successful practice.

There will be a 1.5-hour break starting at 12:00 p.m. and ending at 1:45 p.m. The Master Class will resume at 1:45 p.m. An additional 15-minute break will start at 2:45 p.m. The Master Class will resume at 3:00 p.m.

Get some exercise and show a local shelter dog some love while supporting a local shelter. All dogs are adoptable.

The lecture will focus on the value of in-house diagnostics in screening apparently healthy as well as sick patients. An emphasis will be placed on wellness screening including CBC, chemistry, urinalysis, fecal, infectious disease and endocrine screening. Preventative proactive medicine will be compared to reactive medicine in both in terms of best medicine and clinical outcomes as well as the financial benefit to the practice as well as the client. The new opportunity for the use of cutting-edge technology and automation in diagnostics will be highlighted.

Digitizing your practice is not just arming your millennial staff with smartphones, messaging apps, and social media waivers, but that is what so many of us are doing. We are taking the same practice paradigm we’ve always had and are trying to add technology, which is difficult, at best. Instead, second-generation veterinarian and tech junky, Dr. Kerri Marshall, recommends reinventing your practice paradigm and aligning your digital strategy to what “pet parents” are demanding - personalized, convenience, and a trusted relationship with a digital pet healthcare guide–you and your team. While this session scratches the surface of a revolutionary way of thinking, you’ll leave armed with great ideas to enter the digital age.

No one wants to stand by helplessly and watch hospital profits be whisked away in a financial hurricane, least of all, YOU—a numbers junky! Using his vast experience in veterinary economics, Dr. Salois will share his predictions on the economic tailwinds and headwinds facing our profession in this current economic climate. Come prepared to ask tough questions, receive expert advice, and redirect your hospital in response to these emerging trends.

Whether you love it or not, dentistry has specific pain points that can decrease your team’s effectiveness and affect the comfort of your patients. From making recommendations to clients to adjusting dental therapies on the fly, Dr. Jan Bellows uses key concepts from the 2019 Dental Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats and his robust experience in dentistry to help you institute change and break inefficient habits in dental care.

Be prepared to leave this session with new ways of thinking, practicing, and speaking about dentistry which will decrease chronic oral pain and improve the quality of life of the pets in your care.

The veterinary oath challenges us “to use our scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society.” However, too often in the eyes of veterinary medicine, those who comprise “society” may exclude families who lack the means to care for their pets in the tradition of high-quality veterinary medicine. There is no one better to open our eyes to a more inclusive, One Health-based approach to veterinary care than Dr. Michael Blackwell, whose exemplary career in public service has instilled in him a deep compassion for veterinarians and those they serve. Be prepared to shift your perspective on how you offer care to your entire community and learn new approaches to help a broader spectrum of families and the animals they love.

If spreadsheets tell you stories, and statistics sing you songs, you have found a kindred spirit in Dr. Bridgette Bain. She has focused her career honing survey tools to help the veterinary profession make informed, data-driven business decisions. In the hour you spend with her, she will teach you how to evaluate growth potential in your community through delving into demographic data. This will lead you to a critical evaluation of your culture, services, and practice focus to meet the needs of the local families in your area.

After performing more than 15,000 dental procedures and contributing to AAHA’s Dental Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, Dr. Jan Bellows and his team have picked up hundreds of different ways to maximize productivity in the dental suite—and he’s brought his top 20 to share with you.

From bubble-wrap to smart phones to elevating a patient’s head when encountering excessive bleeding, you’ll know which tools and processes to use to boost your patient care, create client connection, and cultivate joy in your dental practice.

Come drink and dine with the dinos! We will have private access to multiple exhibits, including the Dinosphere. There will be food and drinks to enjoy as well as non-structured networking. Guests get the chance to complete their evolution with us at this fun event.