Get a business degree or a business consultant. Make sure you have a strong business plan and good financial acumen.

Open a boarding kennel/doggie daycare/grooming business as part of your vet practice if at all possible. That's where the real money is.

Hiring the right people and putting the right systems in place for first contact with potential clients is critical. Your front desk people have to be personable, responsible, and highly trained. Love of animals is a necessary but far from sufficient qualification to work the front desk -- he or she needs to be a people person as well. Way too many animal people actually hate people people and have no people skills, but all the great care for animals in the world won't keep your business afloat if you can't get and keep paying clients.

Best vet I ever went to had carpet runners down all hallways so the dogs didn't flail terrified as their owners dragged them in. I'm sure it made cleaning a bear, but the dogs were so much calmer.

And yeah, hours. I picked my current vet not because I think they're the best or the cheapest, but because they're open until 10 pm every day. I can get an appointment after work without any issue.

When my beloved cat had to be put to sleep, it meant so much to me that my vet came to my home personally to do it so that my girl's last hour wouldn't be in the stress and fear of the vet's office, but at home on her special blanket in her own bed.

Have office hours when people are off, i.e., in the evenings and weekends. If the other vets in the area only see patients for a few hours on Saturday mornings, then I'd schedule your availability for Saturday or Sunday afternoons.

Be as warm as possible with the pets and their owners.

Have a pleasant waiting room; make certain there is adequate parking and that getting in and out of your facility is easy.

Make certain the equipment is clean. I walked out of one practice where the equipment did not seem very clean.

Get an excellent office manager and vet tech.

Know something about pet diets and nutrition, not just the one class in vet school. As more and more people either feed raw or freeze-dried and reconstituted with water diets to their companion animals, we'd like a second opinion on this practice. Too many recalls out there for comfort, and too many fillers in packaged food (just like human food -- lots of junk). Try to avoid selling a line of food on your premises; I'd prefer a good five minute discussion on the ins and outs of pet nutrition.

The BWI area is one of the larger concentrations of highly educated people in the US; please tell us the facts, or if you don't know, make a referral to someone who can.