The Veterinary Survival Show

Mastering Practice Growth: Mid-Year Check-In

• Mark McGaunn, CPA/PFS, CFP® and Jenni George, CVPM • Season 4 • Episode 10

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 49:59

In this episode, veterinary practice experts discuss mid-year financial check-ins, team morale, practice management software, and strategies for growth and efficiency. They share insights on tax planning, inventory management, staff engagement, and leveraging technology to improve practice performance.

key topics

  • Mid-year financial review and tax planning
  • Team morale and communication strategies
  • Practice management software transition
  • Inventory and receivables management
  • Capital investments and financing options

Chapters

00:00 Mid-Year Check-In: Reflecting on Goals
04:32 Team Morale: Keeping Communication Open
12:54 Financial Strategies: Avoiding Common Pitfalls
21:30 Summer Strategies: Managing Burnout and Team Culture
25:09 Creating a Welcoming Environment for Clients
26:49 Understanding Seasonal Trends in Veterinary Medicine
28:33 Navigating Financial Conversations with Clients
30:03 The Rise of Financing Options in Veterinary Care
31:48 Making Smart Capital Decisions
33:19 The Importance of Inventory Management
36:46 Building a Strong Team Culture
38:53 Investing in Trust and Team Accountability
42:28 Future Planning for Veterinary Practices
49:46 www.LGA.CPA 

SPEAKER_01

We know that running a veterinary business can sometimes feel like you're fighting your way through a jungle of financial insecurity, HR nightmares, and overall business confusion. Our goal is to give you the ideas and tools you need to not just survive in this jungle, but to thrive in the veterinary industry. By combining over 50 years of knowledge and experience with differing opinions and a little humor, we will help you get the information you need to make the best decisions for you and your veterinary business. Welcome to the Veterinary Survival Show with veterinary CPA and certified financial planner Mark McGon and Certified Veterinary Practice Manager and Practice Owner Jenny George.

SPEAKER_02

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the Veterinary Survival Podcast. I'm Chris O'Day, and I'm here with Mark McGone and Jenny George. Mark and Jenny, how are you both doing today? I'll start off with Mark. How are you doing? Awesome. If Dilbert could jump out of the comics and say hello. Jenny, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01

I think better than Mark. I I guess no, I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_02

All is well. So if you're listening to this, it's currently June 10th. We are halfway through the year. Those shiny goals that we all set for ourselves, both personally, professionally, for our practices on December 31st or whenever you sat down saying, hey, this is what we're going to hit next year. You're you should be halfway through them or at least accomplish some of them. So that's what this whole episode is about. We are doing a mid-year check-in. And again, maybe if you haven't hit some of those goals, we'll hit on that too. How do you write that chip now and get focused back on that? So we're midway through the year, Mark. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great halfway through the year. It's almost my birthday week. All right. Yeah. So got a question for you though, for on the CPA advisor side though. So we're halfway through the year. What's the first number a practice owner should be looking at right now to know if they're on track for their goals for the year? And what does it tell you?

SPEAKER_00

I would not focus on a number. I would focus on a strategy call. I've had a number of calls recently about people that want to change direction with their practice, go in a new direction, go in an advanced direction, opening up second locations, building out their space where they are. I've had other people do it and do it incorrectly and never consult us. They've gone dark on us. And then I find out later on we had a veterinarian buy 13 properties.

SPEAKER_01

And never talked to his CPA.

SPEAKER_00

They never called us once. And they didn't think about asset protection. They didn't think about deductions. They thought that buying those 13 properties, they were going to get a write-off for the purchase price of those properties, including land, which is non-depreciable. That was their tax savings strategy. However, I think they consulted Facebook and Instagram and Reels videos and TikTok before they consulted the U.S. tax law. So I would not focus on a number. I'd focus on do I have the right strategy going into 2026 or half almost halfway through 2026? The one strategy I do employ is please pay some taxes in because we don't want surprises at the end of the year when you have to scramble to come up with cash. People always tell us in their tax organizer, yes, I have the money available to pay taxes. It will be there by April 1st. And then everybody when asked to pay those taxes, I don't have that money. I said you checked off the box that it was available April 1st.

SPEAKER_01

It is now April. We need that.

SPEAKER_02

Trying to rob a bank.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So don't a lot of owners, that that's right. They don't even think about their taxes until Q4. What could they be doing in June and July? You said pay into it or pay those quarterly taxes.

SPEAKER_00

At least pay estimated taxes if you don't have them yet. Consult your CPA. What should you do? Pay in at least something. But you should always be thinking about it. We have some people that overpay, some people that decide to hold on to their cash. Maybe we have a couple people that say, look, I'm not going to pay estimated taxes because I'm heavily invested in the market. It's doing great. I will be happy to pay the underpayment penalties for the gains that I'm going to be taxed on later on. But they're thinking about it. They're not, they're not it's not an abstract, you know, thought that they think about in April of next year. And we try and do tax planning for every single client and at the end of the year and try and get them a game plan for how things will go in April and the following year. But at least have that phone call. If you haven't had that phone call, just make the phone call. Don't buy 13 properties without talking to your CPA.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Jenny, uh so six months in, how do you take an honest read on your team's morale and then it make sure that small problems don't lead to bigger things like turnover or things go negative?

SPEAKER_01

I think the biggest thing is don't wait until six months in to figure it out. You know, it's a matter of having monthly team meetings. It's, you know, having constant conversations, having an open door and those types of things. We are in the process of switching our practice management software, which for anybody who's ever done that, it is an overwhelming like I have dyed my hair way more often to get rid of the grays. It is ultra inducing. I mean, it's just nobody wants to do it right. And it's one of those things that we all put off for too long. We've had the same practice management software since we opened 19 years ago. But it's, as Mark says, looks like an 80s video game. And it's not growing with us. It's not growing with the needs. So this is a choice that we made earlier on in the year that this was what we were gonna do. This was how we were we sat down and had a game plan on how we were gonna roll it out, who are our leads on this. You know, I'm not the lead, even though I'm the one paying for it. It's, you know, our practice, you know, but I'm not the lead. I know that I am not technologically advanced. I have team members who are far younger than me, who are very interested in this and very organized and are able to lead the training and lead the integration and and build out the whole system. And so I think for us, this has been an ongoing change. You know, here's what we're doing, here's how we're how we're handling it. But I think that if you're waiting until mid-year or January 1st to go, okay, how's my team doing? You're missing the point. It has to be consistent, it has to be frequent, it has to be these all these check-ins on as, you know, constantly. The the small things that turn into turnover, Chris, that you said, you know, how are they communicating those things to you? If there's not an open way for them to communicate, then that's a problem. You know, then they are gonna blow up into, well, she never listens to me. So when I'm walking through the practice, somebody will say, Oh, hey, Jenny, you know, we have to do this broke. And I will immediately say, put it in my phone log. So my phone log is in our practice management software and it is like my diary, right? It is where everybody goes in and writes notes to me, what needs to be taken care of. It's where our time off requests go. It's everything. And I check that multiple times a day so that I can keep up on these things. Then once, so another fun thing that happened to us early this early half was our x-ray machine blew up. Now, this x-ray machine we have literally had for 19 years. The normal life of a of a generator, of an x-ray generator, is about 12 to 15 years. And this, this thing gets used hard. It we haul it up and down the stairs. It's a portable machine because we do it for large animal and small animal. So it really has put in its time. And then all of a sudden the whole clinic smelled like ozone, you know, that smell where some electrical fire is happening and then I touch it and it's hot. And I'm like, oh no. So we just bought a new generator. Okay, fine. All of that has gone on Slack. That's how we communicate as a team. Hey, this is when it's coming, you know, this is where we're at. Here it is, it's new. This is how to run, how to use it, this is what it looks like. You know, you put the pictures up there. And that way nobody ever feels left out like, oh, I wasn't being heard or this didn't get done or things like that. So to me, it has to be communication frequently. Often you have to have an open door policy. And I know how frustrating that is for practice managers because we're busy doing 60 other things and we get interrupted on a regular basis, but that's how your team knows that they're heard. That's how they, you know, feel like they're part of the team.

SPEAKER_00

Did your team vote on your practice management software you were moving to?

SPEAKER_01

So we not all of them know. I had one team member who led the whole thing, and I had her vet out multiple different ones. So she looked at, like she was talking to her friends who work in corporate. You know, she has a friend who works down in Bond, the Bond hospitals down in Massachusetts. She was like, What do you use? You know, and all this kind of stuff. And she was on, you know, asking other veterinary clinics what do they use. You know, she had demoed, I don't know how many. I did not include my whole team in this only because there are so many options and there are so many variables to it. So what we ended up doing was I had my one team member, I think, like we tried to let the team know this was where we were going. I did wait to really tell everybody that we were making the switch because, you know, change is scary and makes us feel like we're being tortured and all the bad, all the bad feels. So, but Kayla really did a lot of the legwork as far as, and then she would come to me and say, here's this, here's this. And then I would say, Well, can it do X, Y, and Z? Or then I would go on my practice manager sites and say, Hey, like look up what is everybody's opinions, because there are some that consistently get, you know, bad integration, bad support, doesn't do what they said it would do, and all this. And the, and we ended up going with Shepherd, which is a cloud-based thing. And after doing a lot of research, and then I met with them, I spoke in at the beginning of March at NAVC Hive in Kentucky, and they had a booth there. So I went and I talked to them. I said, hey, we really think you're the ones we're going with. And they gave me a demo and ran through it all and stuff like that. And I was like, yes, this is gonna be able to fit well. So she really, but she probably spent four months doing her research on that. So no, I did not include the whole team, which I normally do. But in this case, I was like, I really, it would have gotten really muddy. But I think now she is leading the training and having, you know, like last the last team meeting we had. She put together a PowerPoint, real basics. Here's what it's gonna do. Here's why we're making the change, here's what it's gonna do better, here's how it's gonna save us money, you know, like it'll have its own pack system. So, or no, maybe we have to buy another pack system. But anyways, it's gonna save us money from what we've been paying on whatever. We'll be able to text through it so we won't have to have this other third party thing, you know. Like it really all around, it's gonna work. But it no, normally on different things I do take the whole team into consideration. But on this one, I was like, I really but they have come together and like, do we want to use the online DEA controlled substance logs? And so my one of my tech, my CPs and one of my road techs looked at that and went, yes, this is gonna be able to do what we need it to do. So I am getting their input on the extras.

SPEAKER_02

All right. I have my own actually one part question. Jenny, 19 years is a long time to have something. Did you guys have a nickname for that x-ray machine? Old Bessie or anything?

SPEAKER_01

That was the big banana when we first started, but then we thought that might not be appropriate. No, we actually did not have a name for it. And I feel like we called it names sometimes, but we did not have an endearing name for it. I'm sorry to disappoint.

SPEAKER_02

Let's pour one over at the big banana at 19 years.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, let's 19 years was a long time. I was I called them and I was like, so we bought this from you, and they go, That has been almost 20 years. I said, Yes, it has, and it has been literally hauled up and down the stairs more times. It's yes, so it did its work. It did us proud.

SPEAKER_02

I'll get back to the subject for you, Mark. What one quick tidbit story on that? Something some along with my uh son, he was only sleeping in this the swinging bassinet, and like he loved it. He'd only sleep in it. And I'm like, oh wow, we should buy another one. I looked it up, it had been discontinued for like doing bad things ten years before. I'm like, gone. Well, that's why he's sleeping so well in that bad parent.

SPEAKER_01

Some things work well, but it's okay. Shake it, baby, you know, but no, it wasn't from the parents.

SPEAKER_00

I remember riding in a car without seatbelts. Me too. When I was a kid. And as you got in a car accident.

SPEAKER_01

Me too. I hit the dashboard and my I it's amazing I didn't break my nose, but there was a perfect imprint of like my nose and my face in the dashboard. That's great. And that's how old we are, folks.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So I'll get my uh us myself back on track. But so, Mark, we're again, we're halfway through the year. You're how companies complete defense, paying their taxes. Where are you seeing binary practices leave money on the table this year? Is it missed deductions, entity structure, or how they're paying themselves?

SPEAKER_00

Anything popping out to you? We always try and tell people that they should be considering reasonable compensation. You know, we have practices that some people overpay themselves. There's no requirement to pay yourself more than you're legally required to, but the IRS does. And in this age of AI, the IRS is also employing AI. I don't know how fast their deployment is, but pretty soon they're going to be scraping returns for unreasonable compensation. We've received numerous new client returns, and the first thing I zero in on the front page of the 1120S is officer compensation. Sometimes it's zero, you know, sometimes it's forty thousand dollars. You know, the barometer for reasonable compensation could be 20 to 21% of a doctor's own production, an owner's production. In valuations, that's typically the gold standard for adjusting to get a reasonable IBITA for the practice. So, in the absence of any absolute benchmark by the IRS, that's deemed pretty much reasonable compensation. Some people also pay themselves a management compensation of one to four percent of revenues. If you have a practice manager, do you have to do that? Probably not. You should adjust for your role that you're doing. In multi-doctor practices, it's pretty much a given that you should have some structure to reward people for the time they spend doing management when other people don't do management. We've have some owners that love doing management. Other people, you know, just dally in it. They're, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Please don't dally. Hire a practice manager.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm thinking, you know, Simon versus Jenny. Simon's management time is probably intrinsic and medically related.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Now, so do you recommend paying owners on production? Like would it vary then every year by how much how how good the practice does?

SPEAKER_00

I look at that. When we're adjusting IBITA for some clients that want to say, what's my adjusted earnings and what are possible valuations for my practice? We'll look at that and see if they're underpaying or overpaying themselves.

SPEAKER_01

And are you saying that the IRS is gonna go back and say, hey, you haven't paid yourself and we're gonna tax you for what you should have paid yourself?

SPEAKER_00

They can.

SPEAKER_01

So they But how far back? That is terrifying.

SPEAKER_00

They can look back at least three years.

SPEAKER_01

I hate the IRS. Oh, I probably shouldn't have said that.

SPEAKER_02

We love podcasts. We are big supporters. But we love our taxing authorities.

SPEAKER_01

They really can go back three years and say, hey, you didn't you should have been making $100,000 a year and you were only paying yourself $20,000.

SPEAKER_00

That is correct. And they can make you file payroll tax returns for that and charge you payroll taxes and also penalize you and potentially not allow it as a deduction.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh. So pay yourself a reasonable wage.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you know, you look, you look at, you know, online. I look at, I mean, I scroll through Facebook and I have a ton of Newfoundland websites, drumming websites, and financial advice websites. And you always see the people that are advising, giving the most boilerplate generic advice, you know, get an S Corp, don't pay yourself any salary, take your profit out as distributions, and you've fooled the IRS because it's a secret loophole. There are no secret loopholes. So pay yourself a reasonable salary, whatever you deem that to be. Reasonable is in the eyes of the beholder. However, there are some generic guidelines that you should probably follow. It should be commensurate with what a similar-sized hospital doing similar medicine medicine, what you know, loc geographic location, you know, number of doctors, etc., how involved you are in patient care. I mean, there are some absentee owners that typically they're being paid a minimal salary because they're doing minimal work. But it is something you should examine. You know, every time I see those, you know, officer compensation lines and it's zero or 40,000 and it's a four million dollar hospital, I get queasy in my stomach. What else? I mean, if that is that's an indication, I always think that there could be something else going on.

SPEAKER_01

I think your your underlying message, what I've heard so far, is don't take your financial planning information from social media.

SPEAKER_02

But TikTok just told me that I should.

SPEAKER_01

It sounds so good. Kind of like don't take your like nutritional information from social media. Don't get your news from social media.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I see all the time I I try and look at the the background of who is providing that advice. And when I click on about author, rapper, you know, ski bum, and and I get very scared because people gravitate to the lowest common denominator, and it seems like that is the modus operandi. They publish a glitzy video with minimal substance, and people are like, yeah, that sounds like a big thing.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god, we should we should do a video view with like strobe lights in the back and like a catchy theme song. Oh, I like it. And and a yellow Hawaiian shirt. I think that would be amazing. Flowers all over it.

SPEAKER_02

Someone to you, Mark, because we both work in the CPA field. I get those ads all the time now. It's just a bro going, Do you want to make a billion dollars? And I'm like, Yeah. And then one thing is I one of my I love retirement investing. I read all the books on it, and my wife and all my friends like, oh, you should start one of those Instagram things. I'm like, mine would be so boring. I just say buy low-cost index funds. Like, that's what you should do. So I don't know if you're not sure.

SPEAKER_00

There is a benefit, there is a benefit to advice. Yep. So, but you want to find the right advice. And part of the price that you pay for advice is for them to tell you what not to do. And listen to them.

SPEAKER_01

And like listen to that advice and follow it.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, as a CPA and a certified financial planner, I do my own taxes. Should I? I should probably outsource it. Do I do my own financial planning? I found out years ago there is so much I don't know. I know enough to be very dangerous. I used to write the certified financial U.S. certified financial planner exam for three years. However, I defer to a certified financial planner that's objective, knows me, my family, my financial situation, and can provide the right advice. Somebody on TikTok, Reels, Facebook, Instagram doesn't know you from Adam, as the old saying goes. Can't deliver the proper advice without actually knowing your own particular situation. And they may not have the qualifications to do any of that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think it's the same thing too in veterinary medicine. We get really frustrated when people come into the room and say, Well, I Googled this, or my breeder told me this, or my cousin's girlfriend's best friend works at a vet clinic in Nevada, you know, and that's where they're getting their information from. So if if that upsets us when we're like, but we're the ones who have the veterinary degrees, we're the ones who've gone to all the school, maybe we should accept what we don't know and trust in the professionals who do know it, you know, and say, okay, I'm gonna stick in my lane, which is vet med, and I'm gonna let Mark handle my taxes, and then I have Andrew handle my financial planning. I have my, you know, Matt is or Mark is my uh I have a Mark that's an uh my uh mechanic. He takes care of my trucks. If he tells me the truck, you don't want me taking care of your truck. No, I sure do not. And I don't want me taking care of my trucks. If he says I need brakes, I don't go, well, the guy on TikTok said, you know, you can make them last longer if you do whatever. No, put new brakes on my truck. Same, same principle.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, certainly. And if anybody's watching us on YouTube, the guy in the background right there, that's not a creepy stalker. That's street Steve Prefontaine. And this is gonna come around, uh, one of the best runners of all time. And his coach, similar to Mark said, he held him back. So as Mark said, a lot of times those those advisors hold you back from making the wrong decision. Or you have a coach that's not just always, hey, go, go, go, bye, bye, buy. They had to be, hey, I mean, you thought about this. Mark said about this in six months, or your taxes, or everything. So finding those advisors is very important. And that's why a lot of those fly by night, they do such a disservice because people don't think they could trust an advisor or someone going in because they've heard these stories from the bad actors. So always great. When you find a trusted mechanic, try and find a trusted CPA, find a trusted veterinarian, hold on to them like gold because they back to the sum of the year. So, Jane, what you said earlier, I I believe in too, you can't just do it six months in, check in. But summer does tend to be brutal in all medicine, especially in veterinary as well. High volume, burnout, people all want to take PTO, go to the lake or go to the Cape or wherever they like to go. How do you keep the culture from cracking under that pe uh under that pressure and make sure that everything people can still take their vacations where you can serve your clients and everything?

SPEAKER_01

I think we utilize summer help a lot. So it is like we I we were just talking about. Us that May was probably one of the busiest months we have ever had ever on record, which is very I mean, it's usually one of our busier months in the year, but the phone calls that I mean, it's just it's constant. I know a lot of large animal veterinary practices have closed around us. So we've picked up a lot more large animal things. But I think the way that we really try to help is we utilize um summer help. So I have a team member who left us to go into vet school, which was what her goal always was. She comes back in the summer and she works. Great. She can work while my long-term team members go on those vacations and things like that. You know, we just try to really plan around it. July is always a month that we have just a ton of people asking off for. But if I can somehow coordinate that or talk to them and say, hey, could you move it to this week? Because we don't have a doctor this week either. So if we're short of doctor, we don't need as many team members, you know, and so we'll try and play around with it a little bit like that. And my team's really receptive to that because they know we try really hard to give them the time off that they need. We also try and have, you know, a little bit more fun stuff to do, you know, maybe like an ice cream Sunday, you know, party. We just did a weight loss challenge. And so we went out for Mexican afterwards, which was counterintuitive to the way I was like, I like that though. Right. But it was great, you know, lots of margaritas around. So that really was, you know, okay, you did great. Here we go. And I refilled all our snack drawers. But, you know, I I try and do, you know, we do our clinic Easter egg hunt in May because that's kind of halfway through our really busy, busy season. And that's our opportunity to say to our team, hey, we love you. We thank you. You know, this is this is for you. This is from us to you. You know, they lots of different prizes and stuff like that for them to win. You know, each one of them walks out with cash. It's always a fun time. Later this month, we're going to Canaby Lake Park, which is our little amusement park near Turkish twist. God, that thing makes me want to vomit. No, no. My kids will go on that three times in a row. And I, but that's okay. But we're gonna go there as a teen. That's one of our team get togethers. So we try and do stuff to blow off some steam. We're looking at going on a whale watch. So I think this is when you really try and focus on getting outside of the clinic. I think in the winter we do a lot of team get togethers that are in the clinic, you know, like uh, you know, like we did a basket making, which was really interesting and very difficult. We've done paints, painting, we've done signs, you know, where you do the board and brush type of thing. So we try and do those things, but that's a lot of that in the winter. So in the summer, we try and get out more as a team. And again, I don't think you can wait until everybody's reached that point of burnout where you say, okay, now we're gonna help. It has to be a constant, it has to be an always and a listening and asking team members what they want. You know, what what are you looking for? What would make you feel better about showing up and working long hours? You know, and it's not pizza. It's never pizza. That is not the answer. And I feel like that's what we always go to is oh, we're just gonna get them pizza. We're sick of pizza, right? So think outside of the box and maybe, you know, maybe they want some healthy and fresh, you know, snacks to have. Maybe they want popsicles in the freezer, maybe they want to a a picnic or a bat uh a picnic bench so they can go outside and picnic tables so they can go outside and eat when it's beautiful out in the summer. You know, just things like that that maybe don't even cost that much, but that just let them know that, hey, we see you, we hear you, you know, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02

That's awesome. And then follow question on that. So a lot of professions. I had a friend that he was an accountant, he said, I work hard the first six months and then I kind of coast. That's not a great mark, that thing to have, because you have to serve your clients throughout the year. But that used to happen. That used to happen. The old days. It's no longer. Is there a slow time at all in veterinary medicine? Are you guys just constant because you can't tell when animals are gonna get sick?

SPEAKER_01

Well, we are. So I I have heard a lot of practices are having a hard time getting people in the door. We don't have that issue. Like it's June when we're recording this. My next available routine appointment is at the end of August. You know, so we book out a ways, quite a ways. We're just that busy and we still aren't taking new clients. I was really hoping adding another, a fifth veterinarian would help it so that we could. And we're just that busy. I mean, I think our our our current clients, we have such high retention of our current clients that we don't have a lot of turnovers, so that's a good thing. But September tends to be a little bit slower. Uh, everybody's back at school. So that usually is one of our slower months, but then it picks up and October is one of our busiest months. So who knows? And then, of course, January, February, where we're in New England when there's a blizzard, we try to encourage people not to come in. You know, I think last year we did close for one day because we had this three-day blizzard that was pretty brutal. And so we did close on that Monday, and I had everybody stay home, and it was just my husband, myself, and one other doctor. And God bless they tried to help answer the phones. And I was like, please, please don't do that. But stay in your lane. I'll I'll get you a phone call, but you don't need to answer it. But no, I think some clinics do really struggle. There are a lot of times that they have a hard time filling those appointment slots. And I think when I talk to a lot of my um like distributors and stuff, and I'm like, are you seeing this? Are you seeing people that are slower? You know, I think that it's either not the best managed practice, they're not utilizing their team as well as they could. You know, if if you're waiting for only a time that a doctor can do things, you have technicians that can easily trim nails, do anal glands, you know, give vaccine, you know, do these things. So really utilizing your team, I think makes a huge difference. But uh it is, I guess it is seasonal depending on where you live in the country as well.

SPEAKER_02

I have to put a dollar in the jar for every time we say anal glands on this podcast. Actually, I should probably edit that out.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so it's a veterinary podcast, and anal glands are an everyday thing. Yes. And it is something I'm glad I don't know how to do.

SPEAKER_00

So, Jenny, I mean, if you look at the vet source reporting, visits were down recently year over year, 3.1% across thousands of practices that are in the reporting study. Some people, you know, that I talk to, they're not down. They're they're up, but a lot of smaller practices are down.

SPEAKER_01

I think I think there's more competition, and I think the financial people are we're having a lot more financial conversations right now with the people who are stressed about the economy and they don't want to go dropping a lot of money if there's other options.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I saw an ad for care credit recently where somebody said that they had a large breed dog and you could now finance their heartworm preventatives using care credit. I'm like, nobody years ago would have financed, you know, a wellness visit on care credit. I mean, that's kind of what we're at now. And I think was it one-third of all Americans can't afford a $500 bill if an um in an emergency, whether it's, you know, hot water, heater repair, you know, furnace, veterinary care, et cetera. So I think we're in more challenging times.

SPEAKER_01

I agree. I think I have noticed a lot more financial conversations with clients, and I have noticed a lot more care credit use for routine stuff. But they'll they'll kind of pile it in, like, okay, I'm gonna get all my dogs in this month. And then at the end of the month, we're gonna run that care credit for all visits, you know, to try and get the best, the longest term that we can. But I am seeing a lot more of that, you know. Cherry is making a really big play, scratch pay. There are a lot of different options out there now, and they're more viable than they used to be. I remember when care credit came out and they didn't like nobody. You didn't need it. If you got approved, you probably didn't really need it, right? Like that was just how your credit was already amazing and you probably had a, you know, a mattress full of cash. But now I I think I think they're just doing a much better job of really it's just a more helpful, more helpful tool to have.

SPEAKER_00

And I spoke for sorry. Well, I spoke for scratch last week, and they want to be one of the financing avenues of choice besides care credit for regular wellness care. So everybody wants to get into it because they realize how much, you know, it's needed by pet owners.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And I think two, you know, years ago we've talked about wellness plans. This is almost that, right? Is right, okay, you're gonna pay for this now and then you're gonna have six months a year to pay it off. We're still getting paid right away as your veterinary professionals. But this is basically if you have said, hey, I didn't want to do wellness plans, that would be me. But I didn't want to do wellness plans because it's, you know, a lot of work and you have to keep track and blah, blah, blah. This is this is that kind of idea.

SPEAKER_02

And shout out to my people with good credit. Uh probably now, almost eight years ago, when my dog needed ACL surgery and we were a young couple, uh, it was around $5,000, but very good with credit cards, always have been paid off. But I opened up a new credit card. I asked the doctor if they took it first. They said yes. And it was a $5,000 purchase, and I got $600 back for hitting $5,000. So and didn't have to pay it off. So self-finance or using a credit card that I paid off, but also got the $600 back. So again, that's uh unsolicited advice from not a CPA. So if you're good at credit, there are years.

SPEAKER_01

If you're smart about it, if you're smart about it, you can do that. But don't take out 50 credit cards and then owe on all of them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_02

So Marks. Uh Jenny earlier had had to get the X-ray machine. It's something they need. They just can't feel for breaks and uh go by doctor's intuition. How should uh it's six months in, how should a practice be thinking about their big capital decisions in the back half of the year, interest rates, equipment costs, staffing wages.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, capital decisions, all the time we have people, you know, going to their lab vendor and saying, Hey, I want to continue working with you. I need a new x-ray machine, I knew need new lab in-house lab equipment. What can you do for me? That's typically the first avenue they approach. They're not they don't want to spend cash out of pocket, they don't want to just take a lease, they want somebody else to pay for it, which I think is perfect, you know, using OPM, other people's money, especially if you're gonna maintain a long-term relationship with your lab anyway. It kind of solidifies the deal. But other we have practice in New York City that's expanding to a second location after a number of years trying to find a spot because real estate's at a premium down there. Their lender didn't like their alternative method of financing and their entity structures. I think you need to find lenders that you know are invested in the veterinary space to be able to fund that and have an understanding. And even some veterinary lenders were like, oh, this is, you know, there's a lot of non-vetinarians on. I said, well, that's the future of veterinary medicine. You need to work with somebody that understands veterinary medicine. And if you're successful in one location, you know, in three years where most people would work 15 years to get to the same spot where they are, they're probably going to be successful in in the second location and third after that.

SPEAKER_02

Awesome. And then if we want to get smaller on that, so say if an owner wants to do one mid-year financial cleanup task this month, what's a high leverage thing that you would have them tackle first?

SPEAKER_00

I hate inventory and I hate receivables. People normally they'll wait when until we request, you know, what's your inventory value and what are your receivables? And they're like, my God, I didn't know I I didn't know it was this bad or this much. Or, you know, how can there be zero or negative inventory for something that's on the shelf? I think I've said this before. We we tell people export your inventory valuation report to Excel, sort it, look at anything over a total value of a thousand dollars, look at anything with zero dollars for cost, but units on hand, and look for something that has negative units, which you can't draw something out of inventory if it's not there. So it's probably not correct. Um, and do a physical inventory and do cycle counts of high dollar items. You know, we have people that all the time that say, I never do cycle counts. I I trust what's in the system. I'm like, well, if you have minus 35 of something, how can you trust that? So you need to change your your standard operating procedures, and you don't have to do it as the practice owner. If you want to help and have a glass of wine on December 31st and physically count your inventory, like I did in East German. Well, on the East German border in 1986, I counted underground ink storage tanks at the stroke at the stroke of midnight in the worst blizzard in 50 years. It was for an audit.

SPEAKER_02

God.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So anybody that says they have a tough time doing inventory, it's not zero degrees with blizzard winds on the East German border.

SPEAKER_02

So small. The wall the wall was in a suit.

SPEAKER_00

In a in a suit. The wall was up. Yep. I had visited Checkpoint Charlie the day before. Did you tell Mr. Gorbachev to break down that wall after you did that audit? I I was warned by my father, don't create an international incident.

SPEAKER_01

I like that he had to say that to you.

SPEAKER_00

The searchlights did come on and East German police came out, and yeah, there was yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I'll say to the inventory thing, you don't have to do it yourself. This goes back to utilizing the team.

SPEAKER_00

Delegate.

SPEAKER_01

Like your if your CSRs are the ones that are handling your flea and tick, your heartworm prevention, your over-the-counter stuff, they can probably count it too. You know, I mean, it's not, I think we are in this really bad habit of, well, oh, I have to do it all myself. We don't, you know, and so I feel like we have to do a physical inventory when we switch over to Shepherd from Avmart. And it is gonna be like one night we have to count everything. So we're gonna invite people in, and you know, my CVT who's in surgery, you count what's in surgery, right? My CSR, you count the preventatives. Like we're gonna break it all up. And you know, Simon will do controlled substances, he can count. That's that's that. But it just don't, it sounds so overwhelming. And I think we put off that task. I hate inventory. I hate inventory, but I think we put off that task because we think we have to do it all ourselves. And towards accounts receivable, if you have a high accounts receivable, include your team in that conversation. Because if they don't understand that you have high accounts receivable and all these clients owe you money and they're just letting them walk out, give them a goal. Say, hey, if we can reach this together as a team, everybody gets a dollar raise, you know, I can guarantee you they're gonna be much better about collecting money. You know, if you pay on production, well, maybe your vets don't get paid on production if we don't get paid. I'm not saying you make it about money, but if it's not a team effort, you got a lot of work to do and it's gonna be very overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00

And in this, you know, age of financial question difficulty for many people, AR is gonna become more of a problem if it's already a problem.

SPEAKER_01

That is true.

SPEAKER_00

On back on inventory, Jenny, I mean, isn't now a good time to examine what you have in inventory and discuss should we have less and should we have less choice and make more standardized decisions?

SPEAKER_01

And like really looking at your online pharmacy too. You know, do we need to have six different preventions available if we have this online pharmacy? So, no, we're going to carry, you know, two options, maybe. And then you want whatever we don't carry it in here, we'll send you a link from our online pharmacy. So I think it's this is a great time to have those conversations, especially, yeah, when you switch over to a new software system. Do you really need all of this stuff? We're pretty good about going through and saying, okay, we're gonna switch from this product to this product. My inventory manager will be like, okay, you guys have to use this up. I'm not bringing the new one in until this is gone, right? So we don't have two different things on the shelf. So we do try and and stick with that. But yeah, it's one of those things that it's a great opportunity to. I mean, it's just one more thing to add on to a practice management software change, but it's a great time to do it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. What I'm hearing from a lot of these things, it's a lot of the big hairy things that people just put off because they are type consuming. You don't want to do it. But if you do it now, it's one thing less you have to worry about at the end of the year so that you can't focus on those holiday parties or whatever's going on or enjoy more time and thank your past self. Reminds me of Bill and Ted too, when uh they're they thank like their future ones, sent back the thing for them already. And they're like, oh, thank you, past Ted, because their past version of them had done the work for them. So yeah, listeners out there, if you haven't done your inventory, you haven't met with your CPA, do it now, and then future you can thank past you. So yeah. So, but Jenny, back to culture and everything. I love talking about this. I love talking about things that compound over time, whether it's investing or smart decisions. Have you seen now halfway through the year anything that you guys have invested in with your culture that has really taken off?

SPEAKER_01

No, I think the big thing for me is the trust that is coming with this practice management software system. I think, you know, in the past, and I'm talking 15 years ago, when we would bring in a big change, it was immediate. Oh my gosh, this is so awful. Oh my gosh, this is never gonna work. You know, and it was like, I remember when we went paper light. So we got rid of our paper charts. God. It was my husband was the biggest one that argued with it. And I'm like, I am tired of finding charts under my refrigerator in the kids' bedrooms because he would go up and sit on the floor and write up charts while they were trying to go to bed. I mean, they were everywhere, and I'm like, this is so inefficient. So we finally said, we're gonna do it. I'm done. Like, we're gonna do it. And I had someone come in and and we I paid, it was mandatory. I had the whole team come. Everybody sat down and he taught us how to use Avamark to its fullest, how to make documents, how to do check-in sheets. Like he did everything. He worked one-on-one with different stakeholders and he taught everybody. People were crying in those, like sitting in my meeting room crying, like, I it's great. And every single person who works here agrees that it is a thousand times better than the paper chart. So I think having had all of those different changes happen and starting to really say, like, oh, look, it wasn't as bad as you thought it was gonna be. This change, even though there's definitely some nerves about it, there's definitely some, you know, one of my team members, one of my older team members who's not tech savvy came up and said, How scared do I need to be? I said, You don't need to be scared. I just need you to have an open mind. I will take the time to teach you. Like it's it's just a matter of understanding that it's not going to be done the same way anymore. But the trust that is coming from the team is amazing. The trust that they have in each other to get certain jobs done. I mean, there are still, don't get me wrong, there are still some, my God, why are we doing this? But for the most part, I really think that we have gotten a lot of good buy-in. And I think that we're gonna get through this with hopefully minimal tears. But I think it's that that building of the trust the whole time that when we say we're gonna make this huge switch and this is when it's gonna happen and we're with you and it's gonna be great. And they're like, Okay, I'm not liking it, but okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but you have the benefit of institutional memory because you have long-term employees that have seen change over time.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. But again, that goes back to the whole culture, right? Why do I have 14 team members that have been here over 10 years out of my 25? You know, I have them because that's how we try to keep it. We want retention, right? And it helps in so many different ways. This is one of those ways. Because and they stay because they have autonomy over their job, because they feel seen and heard, because they know that we care about them. And because of that, they put their best into the clinic, you know, and so it just it's a full circle. So yeah, I all it really all comes back to keeping your team members, keeping your good team members, I should caveat that, keeping your great team members for a really long time. And then they become the leaders, you know, they become the ones that pull that whereas I used to have to drag people along now, they're like, no, no, no, you're gonna come with me. We've done something like this before, it's gonna be okay. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Mark, so we're at the six months now. If you could do a time capsule and or your message to now to practice to veterinarians, like this is what you should do now, so that in six months when you open this time capsule, it's already done. What would your message to them be? Clone yourself. Is that an AI clone? Like they should build agents doing this or real clone. We're talking about duplicity, or was it duplicity or multiplicity or whatever that movie is? Multiplicity. Multiplicity.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I wanted to create my own avatar, and you said I couldn't. I said give me a c a PDH of the book so I don't have to read through text and try to do it.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think we need avatars, and I don't think we need to clone ourselves. There has to be a better answer than clone yourself.

SPEAKER_00

It'd be nice. Then I could have my clone come to the podcast and I could go on the patio and finish my coffee.

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to clone. This world could not handle multiple jennies. No, I don't think a clone is a good idea.

SPEAKER_02

There is a TV show right now about that on Apple and uh severance, and that that's a little bit more horrifying. It's you you don't clone yourself, but you have a separate mind, so you only one one mark would only know outside of work and the other mark or whatever the name is only knows work. But for that work person, that'd be brutal. All you do is just work again and again.

SPEAKER_01

And there's no reward, no fun. No, that's horrible.

SPEAKER_00

No. I mean, veterinary medicine isn't supposed to be punishing. Being a CPA isn't supposed to be punishing. There should be some joy in it. And I think you have to find that. I still I'm I'm trying every day to find joy.

SPEAKER_01

I find joy in all the like stupid things. That's exactly what I would do.

SPEAKER_02

I'll reverse the question too for you, Jenny. So in six months from now, where do you want to be? You want your practice management software running, going great, and what would you want to hit for the year-end goals that then you want to chuck in now with?

SPEAKER_01

I think I mean I wanna continue to work with. With our team and holding them accountable, that tends to be my hardest thing that I have a really hard time with. And so I've come up with different solutions for like my team members who are late. So I'm hoping in six months to see that improving. And then I am hoping that, yes, I'm praying that this software goes off without a hitch. And, you know, in six months we're like, wow, that was the best idea we've ever had. You know, I don't know. We can't see a crystal ball. Um, I'm hoping that no more of my machines break because we're all it's so tough right now because this new building that we did is about 15, like our all of our equipment is about 15 to 17 years old. So last year our oxygen cage broke, our oxygen concentrator broke, our washer and dryer broke, and now, you know, the x-ray machine. I said we're on a spending freeze. And as soon as I freaking said that, the x-ray machine breaks. So my goal for the next six months is that nothing else breaks and I can actually stop spending money on stuff.

SPEAKER_00

So are you gonna be able to use Shepherd out on the road?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And get this. We're gonna be able to use Shepherd, but I'm gonna get Starlink. I'm switching to Starlink because we our internet goes down on a regular basis because we're in Deerfield. And um, they have mobile units. So in so right now we use hot spots, Verizon hotspots. But if you've ever been in New Hampshire, we have a lot of trees. Like 70% of our um state is covered in trees. So our cell service really isn't always that great. And we still have places that do not have cell service, including my house. So I'll be talking to Mark on my cell phone and he'll be like, you went away. And I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry, I moved over a foot on my deck. So with Starlink, you'll always have service. So that's one of the things that I'm really excited about on my list of things to do today is to call Starlink and see what kind of deal we can get. But I have talked to a couple of different people who use it and have said that they never have any outages. So I'm hoping that that will be another thing that will help with right on the road. Because right now it's great when it works because but we have to remote desktop in yesterday. Our internet was really slow. So my road technicians were like, couldn't get anything done. Our credit card machines weren't connecting. I mean, it was just a hot mess. So hopefully, fingers crossed, all of these things are going to help with efficiency. And then efficiency in the end is profit.

SPEAKER_02

Awesome. I've heard great things about Starlink. So I think you'll be happy there. And then I can attest to the trees. And it's funny when you're younger, like you get your first impression on somewhere. I think of New Hampshire as trees because I visited my cousins, lived in Derry, New Hampshire, and they have so many forts in their backyard of like trees. And I was like, that was my impression of New Hampshire was all tree forts.

SPEAKER_01

It is. And I've had people come and visit from Kansas and they literally feel claustrophobic because of all of the trees. And I'm like, well, but it doesn't, it does make some aspects very difficult. Like if it's windy, inevitably you will lose your phones, you will lose your power, you will lose your internet because those trees come down.

SPEAKER_02

Mark, in six months from now, what do you want your clients to have all done? They've done their inventory, they paid themselves, what else? Anything else that they should be putting on that list to hit in the next six months?

SPEAKER_00

Last minute tax planning is done. We want to make sure that everybody has their results, that they have some strategies to employ for the next three and a half months till April 15th, but also looking forward into the rest of 2026. But we should uh start having those conversations now for what 2026 is going to look like. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Mark Jenny, any upcoming talks or anything that uh on the horizon for either of you or any uh conferences you'll be attending?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I am at AVMA in July in Anaheim, seeing the mouse again. And because I've gone through withdrawal. I haven't been to anything Disney since January, and I'm really struggling. And then I'll be speaking at uh NAVC Hive East in August and then NAVC Hive West in Phoenix in October.

SPEAKER_00

And I think I'm only going to the TBC board meeting in Columbus in September.

SPEAKER_01

Ooh. Columbus, Ohio.

SPEAKER_00

Ohio.

SPEAKER_01

Ooh, go bucks.

SPEAKER_00

That's really heart. Gooster.

SPEAKER_01

No, the road the cedar point is up north in Cedar. Cedar Point, sorry. That's in Sandusky, Ohio.

SPEAKER_02

Then, Jenny, on those home repairs, I'm feeling you. I had to get my uh Mark. I thought when you when you mentioned boiler and heater, you had a camera in my house. I had a $1,500 bill on that last week. But in better news, our dryer broke, which is not good news, but I YouTube it and I fixed it. It was a dryer belt. I was like, all right, this doesn't look too hard. And I went in and did it. It was a lot harder than YouTube made it look, but I got it to work and I was like, woohoo! So saved a little bit of money there.

SPEAKER_00

You should do a YouTube video about watching a YouTube video.

SPEAKER_02

I did I put it on my story and people were laughing because I was like, all right, uh, I'm like, uh, because my friend, that's how I started it. He did run an appliance repair place on Nantucket and I taggle out them to all the rich people's houses. But in my video I go to fix things, I go, I actually learned nothing because I didn't pay attention. I was just sitting there like holding it.

SPEAKER_01

It's like, it's like reading the IKEA, right thing. No, it's funny that you said that because I actually on Monday morning I had to take my computer apart because it was making a very funny noise, but it was the fan. So I took it apart, but somehow I disconnected my external hard drive that we had put in there. And so now I have to figure out how to get it back attached. So I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna YouTube it. So there you go. Don't get your information from TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram. But YouTube is okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, fix your things on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01

YouTube is okay, but only if it's from a somebody who should be teaching you. Let's caveat it with that.

SPEAKER_02

100%. All right, for everyone, thank you for the latest episode, and we will all see you all next time. Have a great week. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for listening to the Veterinary Survival Show. If you have any questions for Mark or want to learn more about how LGA supports veterinary practices, visit our website at lga.cpa. Again, that's lga.cpa.