In his varied 30-year career, Kimball Carr has overseen the delivery of more than $1B in revenue during his leadership tenures with companies like Starbucks Coffee, Mars Incorporated, and Trupanion. As a passionate people developer and coach, he has enjoyed nearly fifteen years working within the veterinary medicine sector, building cross-functional teams and helping to deliver standout year-over-year results. Kimball has presided over disaster recovery, built multi-year growth strategies, established talented leadership bench strength, and overseen models for medical and operations business collaboration.
Company: Inspire Veterinary Partners
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Kimball Carr: Inspire Veterinary Partners is an owner and operator of animal clinics throughout the United States. Our teams serve owners of small companion pets, as well as horse owners and trainers, via one facility, which also offers equine services.
Inspire was founded to be a completely different kind of multi-unit veterinary operator. Among those differences is a commitment to a long-term view of supporting clinics and communities with a team that features deep acumen in the veterinary world and the broad offering of equity to all of our team members.
We’ve recently announced the launch of our incentive program, and already we’re seeing increased satisfaction numbers across our clinics, and in July 2025, we welcomed our 14th clinic to our portfolio. With our long-term vision in these clinics, we expect those numbers to only grow as we continue our expansion and offer more veterinary professionals a path to professional and economic growth that they haven’t normally been offered in this industry.
What were the most significant challenges you faced during the scaling process, and how did you overcome them?
Kimball Carr: As Inspire grows via acquiring existing business units, we face the challenges of managing a broad national geography where our facilities reside and seeking ways to make sure our teams are connected and supported. Inspire invested early in systems that allow remote measurement of KPIs, maintenance of communication, and integration of case notes, financials, and daily client workflows via centralized systems, which support our entire workforce. This unified toolset was installed deliberately so that the inevitable change that will happen when a new team joins Inspire could be made as painless as possible for our new team members. We have also seen the benefits of our senior and field leadership being able to teach from one set of tools and systems instead of having more than a dozen units operating from different platforms.
How did you ensure that your company culture remained intact as your business expanded?
Kimball Carr: Personal presence with our clinic teams is vital for us. Inspire leadership begins spending time with and inside our new clinics even before our acquisitions are completed. This kind of on-the-ground connection is rare within our industry and demonstrates how committed we are to a long-term relationship with our clinic teams. We have also built reward systems based on shared goals, a communications process that integrates our company’s values, and a regular cadence of one-on-one and group interactions at all levels so that our teams can be mission-driven but comfortable and informal in their interactions. As exemplified in our avoidance of hierarchy or ‘closed doors’, our aim on a daily basis is to strive to be ‘the least corporate corporation’ we can be whenever possible.
What strategies did you employ to maintain quality and customer satisfaction while scaling rapidly?
Kimball Carr: One of our key pillars in bringing on new clinics is not wasting time trying to operate from a disparate mix of various tools or complex standards of procedure. One example of how we streamline our procedures is by having all of our clinics work from one software system, which schedules clients, records electronic medical records, and measures business and medical outcomes. This means our leadership can coach to one standard and set of systems. We also employ various social media and internal monitoring tools to allow us to understand client experiences, new client growth, and service of our existing clientele, so that we ensure we deliver the best care possible for every pet and owner. All of this data can be viewed at every level in our organization, allowing our unit-level managers to have ownership and understanding of the experiences they create.
Can you share a specific turning point that was crucial for your business’s successful scaling?
Kimball Carr: I think I can share several dozen. In our experience, each day presents us with the privilege to solve the problems that arise when we’re trying to build something that has never existed before. Sometimes those turning points are the hiring of extremely talented business leaders, clinical professionals, and visionary advisors. Other times, we’ve benefited from the ability to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to certain sources of capital for the company. Milestones like our IPO in August of 2023, or acquiring ten new locations in the year prior, or the many celebration-worthy achievements during the last five years are all a cumulative collection of turning points in our journey toward achieving our goals for the benefit of veterinarians, support staff, and the pets they serve.
How did you manage the financial aspects of scaling, particularly in securing funding and maintaining cash flow?
Kimball Carr: We maintain a constant vigilance toward selecting the right funding partners and the right funding structures, which often requires attending to today’s needs while seeking to understand how the implications of any action we take will be felt 12 to 24 months from now. Growth and responsible stewardship are a daily focus for our leadership team, and we are extremely engaged in the building of a collective ownership mentality so that our teams understand that being margin-minded aids us in all we do, including leveraging smart capital strategies. We’ve also remained very focused on the discipline to select wisely on where we spend or raise, avoiding trends or accepted norms, either in the capital market tactics used by our peers or the models employed by others who are engaged in the M&A space within our sector.
