Blog

The Uncharted Culture Conference is coming soon, and we created our Buy 2, Get 1 Free deal (ending 9/15) because we know just how important it is to get your whole leadership team involved in building the culture of your veterinary clinic. Trying to change the culture in your veterinary clinic alone is not going to work. Keep reading to find out why.

One Clinic, Many Team Members

Culture is the heart of what makes your practice unique. It’s the blend of personalities, passions, and processes that give your team a sense of belonging. When you're building (or changing) clinic culture, everyone on the team is going to have to work at it. It won't be a simple switch from negative to positive when you set a standard for what you expect. Every person in the hospital will need to commit to upholding your standards, which takes support, coaching, and effort – especially from each other!

There's No “I” in Team

Okay, so you came back from the UVC Culture Conference and know where to start making changes. You bring the ideas to your team and say, “I know what we need to do!”…and nothing changes. You need buy-in. You need support. If you were looking for a new way to track inventory, you'd include the member of your team that does that job in the conversation, right? This is the same! You will want to include some key players in your practice to help you achieve the vision for your veterinary clinic culture because there is no “I” in team.

Accountability is the Key to Success with Any Goal

The number one benefit we have heard our members tell us about after attending an Uncharted Conference is the element of accountability! Uncharted members leave every conference feeling energized and excited. They take their ideas back to practice and then the magic really happens. Things get challenging, and they check in with the Community when they have questions. They set goals, and help each other stay accountable for reaching them! You might not be ready to join the Uncharted Community just yet, and that's okay. Bring leaders from your practice and be each other's “accountabilibuddies” long after the Conference is over. It will make a big difference in reaching those goals!

The Uncharted Culture Conference is happening October 21-23, virtually! There are so many ways that you and your team will be able to work together toward your ideal clinic culture, so don't miss this chance to start the process on the same page!

Are you just getting started managing social media for your veterinary clinic? One of the most important things you should do for your photos is to watermark them using your logo. Yep, ALL of them! Why? Here are a few reasons:

• Keep your photos from appearing on other sites
• Instill confidence with your clients
• Add a polished and professional look to all of your photos

A problem people run into often is that their logo is only available in a JPEG file. This is a problem because that means when you add it to your image, it will have a white background. If you want to know how to get rid of that background and level up your social media game, keep reading!

This blog will walk you through how to turn your veterinary clinic's JPEG logo into a PNG with a transparent background using Canva Pro so you can quickly and easily watermark your images and help your veterinary clinic shine on social media.

Step 1: Download your JPEG file & Upload to Canva

The first step is downloading the JPEG file of your veterinary clinic logo to your computer. Your practice manager or practice owner probably has this saved somewhere. You might have to do a little digging (especially if your veterinary practice has been around a long time!). Once you have that JPEG file downloaded to your computer then you can easily upload it to Canva!

You want to start a logo-sized design in Canva for this project. Start designing by clicking the button in the top right corner “Create A Design”. Upload your JPEG file by dragging and dropping it into the menu on the left side of your screen.

Step 2: Size your Logo on the Design & Remove the Background

The next step is sizing the logo image. To do this, click the uploaded logo and it will appear on your design page. Clicking on the corner of the image will allow you to make it larger. You want to make sure that the edges of the logo image reach the sides of the design page, or that the logo is as big as you can make it without becoming blurry. Then, center your image. You can tell if the image is centered by the grid lines that will appear when you click and drag the image.

Remove the background (the white part behind your logo) by clicking on your logo image on the design page. This opens an editing menu at the top of your screen. Click “Effects” and click the “Remove Background” option. This will take a few moments to load. When it is done loading, click the “Save” button at the bottom of the menu on the left side of your screen.

Step 3: Save Your Design (The Most Important Step!)

This is where the magic happens! Go to the top right of your screen and click the Download button. When you click this button, a drop-down menu will appear. Select PNG for the file type and mark the checkbox that says “Transparent Background”. Download your file.

Step 4: Re-upload your PNG Logo

You are almost done! The last step is re-uploading your PNG file to Canva so you can save it for future use. Upload the downloaded PNG just like you uploaded the JPEG file in Step 2. You'll see that the white background no longer appears behind your logo.

Canva Pro allows you to save your logos for your veterinary clinic into a special Logos folder so you can find them quickly when you're designing.

That's it! Now you have a logo with a transparent background that you can add to all of your future designs.

---

More from the Uncharted Blog:

Canva in Your Veterinary Hospital is a Must-Have

The Uncharted Community's Must-Have Marketing Books

Uncharted Veterinary Podcast: Why Are You So Special?

---

Learn more about marketing, branding and telling your veterinary clinic's story! Join the Uncharted Veterinary Community. It's a vibrant, online community filled with some of the brightest marketing minds in the business. Our Marketing and Strategy Conference happens every April. Learn more about membership here.

Do you feel like no matter how much compassion you approach a conversation with, it still leaves you feeling drained and unheard? Patience is running thin everywhere. We have been hearing from our community members, many of whom are seasoned and skilled managers, practice owners, and veterinary professionals, that their tried and true tools are no longer working. Many of them have invested significant amounts of time learning about communication skills – but they are feeling at a loss with the hard conversations appearing left and right in practice.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a magic tool kit we could reach into for any critical conversation? We might not have magic spells, per se, but we definitely have tools that can help you.

Put some power into your communication toolkit.

I've never understood power tools. They take up space in the garage, they put people in the emergency room if used incorrectly, and they mostly do work I could do with some elbow grease. That's what I thought, anyway.

Then I met the power drill and my life was changed. Assembling a cabinet went from a 30-minute affair to 15. Home repair projects no longer left me tired and with a hand cramp. When I looked around the living room at every piece of furniture I had assembled…I only wished I had that tool sooner! Everyday tasks can be made quicker and simpler with the right tools.

I was talking to a veterinarian a few days ago. He was telling me about what his afternoon schedule looked like, and I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. His afternoon would start with a dog that was “licking his paws until they were bleeding”, followed by a cat who was shaking his head and a limping Golden Retriever. I could hear him mentally preparing himself for the challenges that you most likely see too with that schedule.

Your first thoughts might be about the near inevitability of a late night. Your thoughts might also jump to the huge variety of conversations that could come up with a limping Golden Retriever visit.

How prepared would you feel to walk into that exam room?

These are the conversations we are trained for. What about the ones we aren't?

The person that walks into your office and asks for a raise.

The conversation you find yourself in at your annual performance review.

The moment you walk up to your teammate and ask them if you can discuss the case that went poorly that morning.

So much of the stress in our colleagues come from anxiety around hard conversations. Those hard moments don't only appear when we are working with Angry Clients. The conversations we have in the veterinary clinic are hard because they matter. We're talking to clients about the health of their loved ones and to our teams about their livelihoods.

Dr. Andy Roark has spent years of his career studying communication tools and teaching them to veterinary professionals all over the world. You may have seen him speak at NAVC's VMX conference, or at the Western Conference in Las Vegas, or maybe at one of our Uncharted events. If you have, you know you're not in for a snooze-worthy webinar. He has honed in on the 12 steps he thinks you need the most to succeed in any critical conversation.

So if you're feeling like you've exhausted the tools you know, join Andy at his workshop on August 18. Like a tinkerer in their garage – no one ever said that they wish they had fewer tools once they knew what was possible!

---

If you're tired of not seeing the outcomes you hope for after hard conversations, or if you feel like you've exhausted what you know and it simply isn't working anymore – we get it. Uncharted is a Community built by veterinary professionals for veterinary professionals and our goal is to bring you the workshops we think will help you the most.

You can get access to all of the workshops Uncharted has to offer with an Uncharted Membership! Learn more here.