The Veterinary Survival Show

How to Optimize Your Veterinary Clinic for Better Profit and Team Morale

• Mark McGaunn, CPA/PFS, CFP® and Jenni George, CVPM • Season 4 • Episode 11

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0:00 | 55:51

In this episode, veterinary practice experts discuss how to identify and eliminate chaos in clinics by optimizing systems, team utilization, and scheduling. Learn practical strategies to improve efficiency, profitability, and team satisfaction.

key topics

  • Capacity without chaos in veterinary clinics
  • Identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies
  • Effective scheduling and appointment templates
  • Utilizing team members to their fullest potential
  • Managing practice growth and expansion
  • Pricing strategies and profitability metrics
  • Training and onboarding new staff efficiently
  • Implementing SOPs and documentation
  • Using technology and tools for practice management
  • Strategies to prevent burnout and improve team morale

Sound Bites

  • "A well-oiled machine needs systems and processes"
  • "Efficiency is about team utilization and trust"
  • "Don't just add staff—optimize first"

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Chaos in Veterinary Practices

02:28
Identifying Bottlenecks in Veterinary Operations

04:16
The Financial Impact of Chaos

07:26
Optimizing Appointment Scheduling

11:22
Utilizing Team Members Effectively

13:17
Hiring and Onboarding New Staff

19:26
Assessing Capacity and Efficiency

29:15
Pricing Strategies for Veterinary Practices

32:23
Team Utilization and Efficiency

36:03
Career Development and Employee Retention

37:55
Key Metrics for Practice Management

44:05
Expanding Services and Managing Chaos

48:42
Practical Steps to Overcome Chaos

55:37
www.LGA.CPA 

SPEAKER_03

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_01

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the Veterinary Survival Podcast. I'm Chris O'Day. I'm joined today by Mark McGon and Jenny George. Let's start off with Jenny. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_03

Doing great. We're changing our practice management software, and it's just total total chaos, which is what we're gonna talk about today. So it fits in really well.

SPEAKER_01

Uh Mark, how are you doing today? I'm great. That's all I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_03

Was that a sarcastic? I'm great, like fine. Like when you ask your wife, are you are you okay? Are you mad at me? I'm fine.

SPEAKER_00

I'm fine.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No, I'm good. So, Mark, when you hear capacity without chaos, what does that say to you?

SPEAKER_00

Well-oiled machine systems, processes in place. Everybody knows their role. There's no fire drill. Is that reality? Maybe, maybe not.

SPEAKER_01

And then, Jenny, from being on the front lines, what does capacity without chaos mean for you when you hear that from veterinary practice? What does that look like in a practice?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I agree with Mark. I think a lot of it is my big thing is team utilization. You know, I mean, we talk about this all the time that partners have their utilization, you know, protocols. Uh, AHA has uh vet team utilization protocols. But I think it's exactly what Mark said. It's a well-oiled machine, right? Everybody knows, everybody trusts, you know, uh each other to get the job done properly, your clients and, you know, trust you that they're all part of a team. The patients aren't freaking out while they're here. You know, there's just a lot of moving parts, but they run smoothly. And I agree. I think it's always going to be a goal and not necessarily a reality because every day in vetmed brings something different, but it is possible for sure. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01

So, Jenny, I am going to turn you into the John Taeffer of veterinary practices right now. When you walk, so that's from bar rescue. So he walks into the bar, sees them all and chaos, everything. When you walk into a practice and let's say you notice it's slam, what are some of the hidden bottlenecks that you might spot or look for, the ones that are capping volume before the team is really even actually maxed out?

SPEAKER_03

I one of the things that I notice is, I mean, you always, if you're walking in, and this is the same thing as bar rescue, like right, you walk in and it's dirty, you have a problem already. So if it's dirty but you see people standing around, like that's not a good use of your time. That's not a good use. Everybody can clean. So if, you know, if you walk in, if you walk in and your receptionists are struggling and your techs are chit-chatting, that's a problem. That's not everybody doing their part. If you have a lot of people sitting in the lobby, and again, you see, or your, you know, your CSRs are chit-chatting, your techs are chit-chatting, and people are just, there's a lot of waiting. I think that's a a problem. Now that I do want to caveat this, that it really varies by your veterinary practice. If you're an ER or you do any type of urgent care or emergency medicine, there's always going to be some waiting. And there's only so much a team can do that a doctor can't or a doctor has to do, you know, that a teen can't do. And so there is some waiting around and you are going to see more people in a lobby. But if you're running a small animal practice, you should be efficient and know how long it takes to flip over a room, how long it takes to check clients in and out, you know, how long it takes to run, you know, various tests or whatever. And you should be able to schedule appropriately. So I think those are, you know, if you're not scheduling appropriately and people are just waiting all the time, I think that's a big thing too. So those are my big red flags.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_01

And we'll get more into some of those for like practice management later on. But Mark, chaos has a PL cost that hides in plain sight. Overtime, turnover, errors, no shows. Where does it actually show up in the numbers and how big is it usually when you're where you're hearing that, hey, my practice is in chaos right now?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, it's the top line, it's revenue, it's in staffing costs because sometimes you see overtime when there shouldn't be overtime if the staff isn't managed properly. Back to bar rescue.

SPEAKER_03

Like that this is our this is what we're you know comparing to today.

SPEAKER_00

So I have inside information that that show is not always accurate because I know somebody whose bar was on bar rescue, and he was chastised by the uh what's his name? John Capers. Caper? Yep. Caper. That uh his uh work ethic was lacking and he wasn't dedicated to his team. He had actually been a at a three-day charity event raising money for a nonprofit. And I know that because I he told me.

SPEAKER_03

So you're saying is that the chaos that you see isn't always the real chaos?

SPEAKER_00

The chaos that you see isn't always the real chaos. But you know, the the profit and the revenue and the staffing costs are always lagging indicators. Everybody says, oh, it's a leading indicator. It's a lagging indicator. It's what happened before. If you have good systems and you have documentation, you know, you look at a 911 call center, and I was a 911 call operator when I was a paramedic when I hurt my back. And so they sat me in front of a computer with very limited information in it. It was basically here's a bunch of addresses, here's the units that are responding, and oh, here's the phone, and people are gonna call up yelling at you. And and that was the job. And I think a lot of hospitals operate that way. There's little training. You know, the training is given to technicians and assistants, maybe, and the veterinarians. And guess who is on the poor receiving end of little or no training? CSRs, front desk people, call takers, who whatever you want to call them. I was called an ambulance driver when I was a paramedic. That was one little role in my job. I think CSRs need to be highly trained. They're the face of your hospital. They determine your revenue flow, they determine your scheduling, they determine whether you get paid or not, for the most part. So if you have poor systems and little documentation on how they should operate every single second of their day, they should have some professional judgment, and hopefully they're skilled enough to have that professional judgment. But I think, you know, there's a lot of tools out there. I look on Facebook all the time, you know, for those new and you know, tech tools. There are tools out there, AI tools out there that can create, you know, basically soap procedures for your CSRs. They can document every single part of their job: call taking, rescheduling, collections, etc. So I think if you don't have any formal book or processes on the computer, what do I do next? If this person asked me to do this, what should I do next? If they don't know that, they need a tool to guide them to that answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I think something that you and Jenny have both hit on already is very true that capacity a lot of time is won or lost in the schedule and how that's done. So, Jenny, how should a practice designed appointment template uh smooth demand instead of creating that daily fire drill?

SPEAKER_03

I think that again, if we're talking about just routine appointments, you should know how long it takes for your doctors to get in and get out. So, like the way that we we schedule our appointments in 20 minute increments or 10 minute increments, right? So a tech appointment is usually 10 to 20 minutes, depending on what that's for. A doctor appointment, a routine doctor appointment is about 20 minutes, emergency is 30. You know, right now we have a new vet. All of her appointments are 30 minutes. We're giving her extra time. Even if it's like a one owner, two pets, that appointment we're setting aside for her is one hour because it's just learning that flow. So you have to be able to adjust it. So I think clinics that say every appointment is 30 minutes, every appointment is 30 minutes, or every appointment is 15 minutes, you're not allowing for a lot of flexibility. So you really have to be able to adjust to what you're doing. Also, utilizing your team. You know, your CSRs are getting a lot of information when they set up the appointment and when they check it in. You know, then they hand that off to their technicians. The technicians get in there, you know, start or I I'm a big proponent of AI scribing. Start that, get all the history, go over that. Maybe if the dog is really great, they take it to the treatment area and, you know, do the nail trims and draw the blood and get all that basic stuff done before the exam even starts. If the dog is nervous leaving mom or dad, okay, then we do it in the room, we bring another, you know, an assistant in with us and we get it done in there. And then by the time the doctor comes in, hopefully those tests are almost completely done running. You know, we already have the history taken. They can go in and do their physical exam and really talk to the uh team members or the clients, I mean. Then they, you know, maybe, oh, we have an ear infection. Okay. The technicians then go back in, clean out the ear, get the meds ready, go over the meds, all this kind of stuff, take them up to the front desk. The best way that you can do this, if you've never done this before, is get a sticky note, right? And the receptionist checks in a client. Mark McGon is here with his pet. Okay. And we are going to put in checked in at this time, and that's your start time. Then the technicians are gonna, here's when we went into the room. Then the doctor puts down the time for here's when I went in when the doctor goes into the room. Then the technicians maybe go back in or when does the appointment leave? But you keep track of all of that, and then you can start to really know how long do these appointments take? How long does a routine appointment take? How long does an ear or skin appointment take? How long, you know, do all of these different appointments take? It tells you how long your clients have been waiting. You can also use a lot of softwares, practice management software, they have like a whiteboard and it can tell you how long they're waiting, but it doesn't tell you at where's your hang ups, right? Where are we, where are we hitting a traffic jam? You know, is it from when the receptionists and then the technicians aren't seeing the chart and getting them right into the room? Or maybe we don't have a room available, you know, because we're backed up. So that's how you can kind of start seeing where those log jams are. But I love the sticky note method to start with, to then start to say, okay, how can we do these appointments more efficient? And really look at are we utilizing our team properly? But yeah, your scheduling makes all the difference in the world. And if you don't know, you have to put the work in to figure it out. You can't just say, oh, well, Jenny said she does hers in 20 minutes, so we're gonna do ours in 20 minutes. That might not work for you. And honestly, most of our appointments are about 10 minutes by the time you put in same days. But because we utilize our team so much, we're able and we have enough rooms, we're able to keep those appointments moving.

SPEAKER_00

So does your new scheduling software or new software have better scheduling than your old software?

SPEAKER_03

I think it's pretty similar. You can set it up however you want. And that's the cool thing is that you can set it up, right? You can do 10-minute appointments, 15-minute appointments, 20-minute appointments, and you can really vary it. You can vary it by day, you know, and and you also this the new one that we're doing, we're switching over to Shepherd, which again might not be best for everybody, uh, but it seems to be what's going to work best for us. We can even say, like, oh, my new vet isn't doing any spajer neuters over 50 pounds. So then if you try to schedule it, if the receptionists or the CSRs just kind of like forget that and they try to schedule it, this practice management software will actually say, like, nope, you can't set this appointment up. That person is not doing these appointments. So that's another great way to utilize your software to kind of say, you know, I'm trying to put an acupuncture appointment in for somebody who doesn't do acupuncture, you know, and kind of help with some of those other issues that you might be having as, you know, scheduling under the wrong doctor for certain procedures, things like that.

SPEAKER_01

So thank you for all of that. That makes sense. And I love the sticky uh sticky note method too.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm gonna tell you, I don't love sticky notes because we lose them all the time. Look at we have the same color, Mark.

SPEAKER_00

No, I have I have my my purple ones.

SPEAKER_03

I have I have some orange ones too. So yeah. But I do think that that is a great place to start. I heard that at a practice management or I mean at a conference uh probably about 15 years ago. And I'm like, that stuck with me as such a great way to kind of see where your log DMs are. You can do it for surgeries, you know, check in to check out each and each chart has a sticky note on it and you can see, you know, where are hangups at.

SPEAKER_01

And then uh this this would be for Mark or Jerry, but when to follow up on that, what a practice tells you, hey, I need to hire to grow, we're at capacity, how often is it really that, or is it a workflow or scheduling issue wearing a staffing costume?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, it could be all of them. I mean, if you if you're not using utilizing your staff efficiently and to the best of their knowledge and and skill base, you know, if somebody is spending an extra 10 minutes in an appointment when it could have been handed off to a technician, that's 10 minutes. If you have a 10-minute block, that's an appointment block that somebody else couldn't be seen in. And that's typically why doctors run behind.

SPEAKER_03

I 100% agree. I think the very first thing before you hire anybody else is are you util do you have the right team members and are you utilizing them properly? Because if you're keeping so it's so funny, my son is 16, he just got his first job at Dunkin' Donuts. Okay. And I went in on Friday to order our 21 drinks that we get every Friday for dunks for and uh and we go to the same Dunkin' Donuts every time, okay? And I walk in and I said, I'm so sorry I'm here earlier or early today. I had an appointment. I know we usually come later and they plan on us being there at a very specific time. And she said, Oh, it's okay. Two people called out and I had to send two people home because they were sick. And I said, Well, good news, my son has an interview here on Saturday. And the owner of the frame of the franchise turned around and said, He's hired. And I was like, and I laughed because I'm like, oh, that's so funny. And then I was like, wow, that is literally hiring anybody who can fog up a mirror, right? That's the fog test. Are you breathing? We're gonna hire you. Different skill set working at Dunkin' Donuts, right? But they have their SOPs, they have every single thing as as Chris starts drinking from his dunks, dung string. But they have so if I'm going to make a caramel mocha latte, they have the exact things on how to make that. So anybody can step in and make that drink, right? Because their SOPs are so strong, they can hire warm body. In VetMed, we do not suggest hiring a warm body. We suggest training people properly and having those SOPs. And actually, Dr. Peter Weinstein just did a great article in veterinary business news about the importance of SOPs and how to really get that started so that you can have those notebooks or whatever. But I think that what we do is so important that you have the right people and that you train them properly. So before we jump into do I need another vet because we we're at capacity, are you using your team members to their fullest? Or do you still have that veterinarian who wants to be the one to trim all the toenails, who wants to be the one to place all the IV catheters, who wants to be the one drawing blood and doing x-rays? Listen, if you have registered veterinary technicians in your practice and you are not utilizing them for that, this is why they leave. This is why we have such high turnover because they didn't go to school to just sit there and hold a dog so you could do all the fun stuff, right? Or all the work. They're there to help you be more efficient. So, yes, I think, like Mark said, it could be all of the above, but I think so much of it comes down to utilizing your team and making sure that they're trained properly. And that's how you avoid that feeling of chaos. There might still be chaos. Like right now, my friend just texted me and said she's downstairs because her dog got into porcupines. Porcupines don't care what time of day it is, if it's in the middle of the night, actually, they like that time. You know, they don't care if it's a holiday and your dog has to come in. There's nothing that we can do to stop that. So there is that form of chaos, but the if your procedures are all in play, it's really not, it doesn't have to be that stressful. You just keep going.

SPEAKER_00

So I did find out a client got ratted out by Profit Solver. Thank you, thank you, Brad. One of my clients emailed for information and attached to that was a questionnaire on how they operate. And it said, Do you bring anyone in the exam room with you from your team? And they checked no. And I almost lost my mind because how can they be efficient and how can they chart unless they're doing AI charting, but they should still need assistance. So I am gonna talk to them in a stern manner because I know they're trying to expand to a new location. If they're not gonna be efficient at this location, oh my God, they're not gonna be efficient at the new location. That's much bigger, much more expensive.

SPEAKER_03

And to be fair, we don't take anybody in when the doctor goes in unless there is a reason, like if we have an animal that needs help or something like that. But for the most part, our technicians have already been in there with help and done those things so that when the doctor goes in, it can just be the doctor and the owner.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm hoping they're just not relegated to the treatment area and that's it.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Absolutely. They need to be utilized in the exam room. And yet they're so God, the ways that we don't use our team kill me. Kill me.

SPEAKER_01

Mark, when you're looking at a firm or any of the numbers telling that story, like, hey, we're not using our team to the fullest versus we are, we are maxed out or financially maxed out with what we have.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we have the conversation with people, what they're doing. You really I mean, you can't really tell by the numbers. You can look at profitability and guess why, but until you have the conversation with people on how they operate, you really don't know what the numbers mean.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and I think though, that's one of the best things that I liked about Profit Solver. We are not paid by Profit Solver. Well, I'm not, but Profit Solver. Anyone else? I'm not, but I use I've used Profit Solver multiple times, and they literally ask you who does what? So if you're doing a CBC in chemistry, how much time does your doctor actually spend on that? And I said 15, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, just reading the results and maybe comparing it to the previous one. Other than that, my technicians and assistants are doing everything, right? So when you can get it to that efficient, your profit is going to be higher. You know, but it's like if you really feel like you're stagnant and you have to get more people in, look at your systems and look at your team first. Because you're right, Mark. If if if you're looking at, oh, I'm gonna expand, if you're not efficient in your first practice, that's right, really not your best idea.

SPEAKER_00

Let's let's do the same thing multiple times.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Let's be inefficient in so many different places.

SPEAKER_01

Mark, for this first question, I'm gonna can I guess what I think your answer is gonna be first? It depends.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, it depends.

SPEAKER_03

It depends. That's always his answer.

SPEAKER_00

And that's a reasonable answer until you get more information.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So but a practice can add capacity in a few different ways. So let's say we're on those chaotic ones. Bring associate, add an exam room, extend hours, invest in technology. How should an owner think through which lever to pull first?

SPEAKER_00

I like the least cost scenario, becoming more efficient. That doesn't really cost you anything. It may cost you some planning time, it may cost you some training time. You know, I I go back to this all the time when I was a a new EMT. I joined a fire department, and they would always plan for the big train disaster coming through town and spend days doing it. But there were like a hundred other calls besides the local train disaster that they didn't practice, they didn't make more efficient, people didn't know their role. They'd have people driving in from everywhere, they didn't know what to do. It was it was kind of like in stripes when John Candy's running down the hill yelling. That's what I felt like at all of those trainings. I'm like, oh my God, they're not planning for what we should be doing every day.

SPEAKER_03

We see that in vet school, right? Like I feel like when Simon went through vet school, the amount of time that they trained him to do regular GP physical exams, you know, with horses, teeth floats, like the things that you're gonna do, lamenesses, you know, ADR dogs. Instead, they're looking at, okay, here's this very serious cardiac case. Here's how you do the basic workup before you ship it. Right. So in vet school, I feel like we really don't do the best job of training our team members to do the stuff that they're gonna do every single day. So that means when we hire those new baby vets, we have to have those systems in place because they didn't learn it there. And same with technicians, you know, in in school, they they don't teach them and train them to pass the VTNE. They don't teach them and train them to actually get into practice and do. I mean, not this is very generalized. I'm not trying to say that there aren't programs out there that do a great job, but they're literally learning how to pass a test. So you have to, as an owner and as a manager, have to have those systems to help those new grads grow because they don't learn that stuff. Because, right, they're always training for the train wreck, which you hope never happens.

SPEAKER_00

Right. I mean, UMass Medical School put in a class years ago on Bedside Manor, and they were lauded as It was an unbelievable event in human medicine because somebody had actually designed a class to talk to patients.

SPEAKER_03

How innovative.

SPEAKER_00

I'm like, how innovative? Shouldn't they have been doing that before?

SPEAKER_03

You're like, wait, they weren't?

SPEAKER_00

And I I, you know, I think all the other medical schools are like, darn, I wish we did that first.

SPEAKER_03

Jeez. Yeah. And you're literally like, why aren't they taught how to talk to each other?

SPEAKER_00

Right. So why aren't are why aren't veterinarians taught the 10 to 20 most, you know, prevalent presentation of patients coming to the hospital?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And same with your technicians and same with your CSRs. Like, yes, you can't train them for I mean, you can train them on what to say if somebody calls in and says, oh my God, my dog was just hit by a car. But realistically, you don't see that nearly as often as the itchy skin, the ears, the weepy eye, the my dog's not eating. You know, what questions should they be asking in those cases?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we had a hospital where I asked, Do you know what every doctor is doing for every patient in every exam room now? If you just went in there, could you tell me what they're doing? And they're like, no, everybody does their own thing. And I'm like, well, shouldn't there be some standard operating procedure, just like Dunkin' Donuts, which we have a client that owns a hundred Dunkin' Donuts, they know at any particular time what somebody should be doing because it's in the policies and procedures.

SPEAKER_03

And the reality is you can get to that end goal and communicate it a little bit differently. You know, we have five veterinarians. Each one of them communicate a little differently. And I know by what my clients need who I'm gonna put them with, as far as, you know, if if I've got a client who really needs hand holding, there are vets that I that work for us that I'm not gonna put them with.

SPEAKER_00

And then there are vets that are that's a policy or a procedure that, you know, evaluate who should be best working with a particular patient.

SPEAKER_03

But that takes communication training, maybe like disc style training, so that you can start recognizing these different communication styles in other people. It's a huge emotional intelligence, and that takes a big commitment as well.

SPEAKER_01

That one thing I just want to follow that up on, Jenny, you mentioned it, like getting people up to speed. So new hires, they can add capacity right away or they can absorb it for months. How do you really onboard and train those people to contribute quickly without breaking what's working? So you have that like that team that's like a NASCAR fixing the tires. We're good. And we're like, actually, like it would be easier if we added this one person in, but then he's the rookie, like in a movie, but he's not shaping up. So how do you get that rookie shaped up so they can actually be a net positive to the synergy? I'm on a roll today with these questions.

SPEAKER_03

You really are. I have to say, we have gone all over the place from you know, the bar to John Candy running down a hill to now we're in a NASCAR. I think a lot of it is being patient and not expecting too much too fast. And I have to remind myself and my team of this. So we have right now five veterinarians: Simon, who obviously started the practice, Dr. Robin, who's been with us for 18 years, Dr. Kim, who's been with us for 13 years, Dr. Britney, who's been with us for 12 years, and then Dr. Grace, who hasn't even been here a year, right? So we have this huge gap between my four core vets who have been here consistently, and my new vet. Grace is amazing, right? She is going to, she's going to fit in here. She's a lifer. I feel it. She's going to fit in here great. How do we go to get her? And here's here's where you have to be patient because she wants to be productive immediately, right? But you also don't want to set her up for failure because you know that if she screws up in an exam room, there are going to be clients that are like, I've never seen that doctor again. So how do we do it? We make sure that she understands that this is about a mentorship and you set realistic expectations. You know, you're not gonna, we pay on pro sale, which I know there's a lot of arguments out there for and against. We pay on pro sale. That's what works for us. And I tell her the first year you're not getting, you're just gonna get your salary. I don't expect you to make enough right away to make be able to get that production. So now that financial pressure is not there. She understands that we're giving her the time, right? Because obviously you're gonna make more if you're doing 20-minute appointments as opposed to 30-minute appointments. We also train our team how to work with her, you know. So, hey, we're getting a new veterinarian. This is how it's gonna go. We make it clear that she can learn from everybody, not just the docs. Mentorship doesn't just happen with the veterinarians. It happens with the whole team. And she has said that multiple times. Your technicians teach us so much, right? But I think having very realistic expectations about how soon they are going to be right in that pit crew, working at, you know, getting that tire change done in seconds, you have to have realistic expectations. And then you have to really base it on the person themselves. When are they ready to be let loose? When are they not? You team them up. So, like I am not going to put Dr. Grace on the road with my newest road technicians. I'm gonna put her on the road with my road technicians that have been here for 10 years or more because they're the ones that know how everything goes, and they're the ones that can really help guide her when she's on the road and we can't see what she's doing. You know, when she's on call, like this weekend, she's on call, she's on call with Lucy, who's one of my CVTs, that is very good at teaching. So you have to pair them together that way. But I think the biggest thing is having realistic expectations about the fact that, no, you don't hire somebody and all of a sudden, yep, we're open to new clients and we're gonna crammer full. And you're just setting them up for failure. You're just that's like taking somebody, you're taking me who has changed my tire on my minivan and throwing me into that NASCAR pit crew and going, you'll be fine. So do that.

SPEAKER_01

Swim. It's swimming in those rapid waters.

SPEAKER_03

Right. It'll be you'll be fine. You didn't take the time to train them properly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And uh hitting on that, so we we talked about this earlier, like what is the actual capacity problem? So I'm gonna make an analogy because I've been on a fire.

SPEAKER_03

You're on analogies are great, Chris.

SPEAKER_01

So Forefather's Day, it's coming up Sunday. All the fathers out there, make sure you grab them a gift or take them real lives. But I was going to ask for a tool cart, like a place to put all my tools, because when I was recently in Home Depot fixing our, I wanted to get another nice drill bit he headset. I'm like, ooh, that looks shiny and nice. Like I think that'll fix all my tool problems because I keep looking for my drill bits. When I realized it's because I don't store them properly. Like if I had a nice area where I could put them all.

SPEAKER_03

How many do you already have?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that that was the question. Like, oh my god, they're all hidden somewhere. So I did I backwards wrote, like you're you guys are saying, looking at your systems and processes, and I got the tool, I thought for myself, but uh it was gonna be Father's Day. I wanted sooner. It was a great deal in Facebook Marketplace. But I got the I tried to fix the root problem instead of going there. All right, so that might be cut, but that's a uh No, I think it's great.

SPEAKER_03

I think that's a great analogy because I think we do look at the immediate fixes, right? Everybody wants the silver bullet, everybody wants the band-aid to fix it, but you can't put a band-aid over a bullet hole. Like it just doesn't work. And so you have to look at that route. How did we get here? And how can we, what is our systemic issues?

SPEAKER_01

And in the long run, it's gonna help much more too. Because you're not just buying the new drill bit head. You're you could grab everything faster, everything's gonna work.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

You don't have 20, 10 millimeter socket heads. Yep. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01

Yep. Uh so a lot of practices are maybe they're at capacity or over capacity, but haven't even touched their pricing. Are busy practices a lot of the time systematically undercharging?

SPEAKER_00

How do you could do an examination of their fee schedule? You can ask them when's the last time you raised your prices. We have some people that won't raise their prices because they don't want to be higher than the average, whatever the average is. You can do your mystery shopper and find out what everybody's charging, like we've done for some clients because they really wanted it done. But do you want to be average? Is my goal to be average the rest of my life. I'd rather not be average. I'd rather be in the top 75 percentile, top 90. I'd rather be the most expensive and work less because fewer people are coming in, but I'm getting a premium pricing for seeing those patients. I mean, we have people that have out on the West Coast that have concierge medicine practices. They're seeing less patients for a higher price. Is that right for their practice? Yes, because they determined that's how their practice is gonna operate. Will that work in Deerfield, New Hampshire or Grantham, New Hampshire? Maybe not. Okay, definitely not.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna say, I'm gonna go with a 98% chance that no.

SPEAKER_00

But that still doesn't mean that you shouldn't be raising your prices because, as we know, gas is at an all-time or relative high compared to history. Food prices are up, staffing costs are up, every other cost is up. You have to raise your prices, otherwise, your profit's gonna drop. Your ability to do profit sharing for your 401k plan immediately drops if you're not raising your prices to at least conform with the CPI index. The CPI index, I think, is 4% for the past year now. It used to be 2.7 to 3, now it's over 4. So I think that if you don't at least examine your pricing on a regular basis, and that could be quarterly, we have some pre uh we have a practice in Pennsylvania that raises their prices one and a quarter percent every quarter, regardless. The cost of healthcare has traditionally risen six or seven percent a year across human healthcare, and should be in veterinary medicine, probably, to accommodate medicine. Medicine's expensive business. Whether you're buying diagnostic equipment, ultrasound, digital x-ray, digital dental x-ray, new lab equipment, unless your lab is providing free equipment, but nothing is free. There's always a cost for doing business. It's embedded in there somewhere. Somebody's paying something, but you have to bear those costs and have profit. And profit's not a dirty word, because it generates the ability to pay back loans and to pay back owners for their risk assumption. And it allows you to keep your team happy. You're able to provide additional wages in the form of bonuses if you're having pro sal, who I talked to a dental consultant yesterday. They're now paying their hygienists or recommending people pay their hygienists on a pro sal basis for production. So nice teeth, Chris. I know. I'd I'd shit my front tooth.

SPEAKER_01

I'm going to my dentist.

SPEAKER_03

There you go. I think true to what Mark's saying, though, if you if you feel like you you've raised your prices, you've raised your prices, you've raised your prices, and your profit like you don't want to not we this is a problem in BetMed is that we're all very, we're suckers, right? We would do it for free. We don't want to price people out. It's really not fair for us to sit there and say, well, if you couldn't afford it, you shouldn't have gotten a pet. Because sometimes those pets are what get us through some dark times, right? So in that case, we go back to utilization. But are you utilizing your team enough to increase your profit? There are other ways to increase your profit that aren't just raising your prices. Yes, you have to look at those on a regular basis and price accordingly, but also are you utilizing your team? Because I'll tell you, my husband says he literally does a hundred percent more than he would be able to do if he didn't utilize his team properly. And I I agree with that. It's a minimum of a hundred percent more. That means that realistically, every 20 minute spot, you're basically doing two appointments, right? Because you could have two rooms going because your workflow is so efficient.

SPEAKER_01

Jenny, how do you protect not over optimizing that? Do you build in breaks to your team or how do you get them? So like we're hitting all this, but I'm not like running a sweatshop.

SPEAKER_03

I'm not? No. Dang it. Chris, no. I, you know, we so we talk about our team schedule a lot. What do they need? So my text, I'll work four four days a week. So four 10-hour days. If they're on on Saturday, they have it's actually three and a half hours or three and a half days during the week and then a half day on Saturday, right? They on call is shared equally amongst all of them. We have one CVT on every night, one assistant on every night, one doctor on every night, but it really rotates so that nobody gets too burned out. Also, you know, what are your benefits? How much paid time off are they getting? I was shocked to hear the most recent um VHMA payment analysis and benefits analysis of the most recent one. CSRs get less paid time off than the rest of the team across the board. And that to me doesn't make any sense because we've already talked about the importance of them. I would say that we're they're very undercompensated comparatively. You know, yes, it's great that your technicians can put an IV catheter in a three-week-old dehydrated kitten, but your receptionists are on all the time. They are the ones that are getting yelled at, not just by by the clients, but also by the team, right? So, and you can ask anybody who wants to be a CSR, and no one's gonna be like, ooh, I'd love to sit at the desk all day. So I do think that we need to make sure that we're giving equal benefits to everybody. And really, I'm gonna advocate for those CSRs tremendously. But also, everybody needs a lunch every day, right? It's not that bad. If you live someplace, you know, like where we're at, you know, we have a picnic table outside so they can sit outside on a beautiful day. During the winter, they'll bring their ice skates to work because I have a pond in the backyard and they'll go ice skating over the lunch break. But allowing them to have that time to really take a moment and not burn out, but also utilizing them, giving them. I mean, I don't this really should have been the name of today's podcast is team utilization. But I think when they feel like they have autonomy over their job and they're actually cared about and needed, that makes them want to stay in it. They're less likely to burn out. That's why I have so many team members that have been here for 10, 15, you know, almost 20 years. And it's because we utilize them and they feel like they are making a difference every day. And that's why people get into vet med. We don't get into vet med for profit. I know it's not a bad word, but nobody goes to school in vet med and goes, boy, I can't wait to make all that money. They go into it because they want to help people and they want to help animals.

SPEAKER_00

And oh, sorry. Jenny, wasn't part of the VHMA study a part of the reason that people felt burnt out was because they had no career path and they weren't being utilized. It wasn't it wasn't purely pay as well. It was those intangibles.

SPEAKER_03

Correct. You're absolutely right. I mean, again, going back to the Dunkin' Donuts, the fog, can you fog a mirror? We're gonna hire you, right? That is a job. And I'm not saying that that's not a great job. We live on dunks, literally 21 drinks of every Friday. We live on Deerfield Veterinary Clinic runs on dunks.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but they have a career, they have a career path too.

SPEAKER_03

They do have a career path. So if you say that's where I want to go, same with like McDonald's, right? You can work your way up to being a manager, to being a franchise owner. You know, there are lots of paths with that. But if we're just hiring people and we're not investing in their education, which, you know, Mark and I are big proponents of, we've talked about this before, investing in their education, constantly training them, challenging them. And, you know, and also accepting those people who don't want to do that. I do have some people here who just want to be a cog in the wheel. They want to show up, they want to do their job, they want to go home. Okay, that's fine. They will reach a cap as far as what they're making and they accept that. And we've talked about that. But for those people who really want to take on more roles, let them and see what they're interested in doing and then train them up properly. But you're right, Mark, a lot of that burnout comes from what am I doing? I'm just a job. But I'm a job where I can get peed on, pooped on, bit, kicked, run over, you know, yelled at by clients, or I'm dealing with highly emotionally charged situations. I might as well get a job at Target, which is hopefully less emotionally charged. But you know, I like to say this is a profession. I like to say that our goal is to make these into careers. And we see it with veterinarians and vet tech, certified vet techs, that they can specialize, they can do these things. What about your CSRs? What about your assistants? What about your head receptionist? Can you be make them a certified veterinary office manager? You know, there's so many different avenues to really give them that feeling of I'm needed by my team, I'm needed by my clients, I'm needed by my patients. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Mark, going back to the financial guidance of this, so if you could put a few metrics on an owner's monthly dashboard, we already talked about pricing to manage capacity. What would they be? Number of meetings, or what would those key numbers be if you set a dashboard up for them?

SPEAKER_00

I like revenue by employee.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, by employee, not just by doctor?

SPEAKER_00

Not by doctor. I mean, it's a team, isn't it? So you should count all employees. How efficient are they? Is it rising? Is it stagnant? If you add new employees, does that give you the capacity to generate more revenue or does it say stagnant? I I try and use that as a that's a PE model growth factor. They always look at the that's kind of a top-down method of analyzing how efficient you are. And it's all about revenue creation because hopefully they're gonna sell that corporate owned venture to somebody else and they're gonna say, look how much we generate per employee. Revenue per FTE.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna say, how do you how do you measure that? Like, do you just take your revenue by month and divide it by how many team members you have total?

SPEAKER_00

Correct. Okay. And so you can see your swings. I mean, most people inherently know when their slow times are and they're like, uh, it's it's gonna be lower, but they should kick up. But you know, we have some uh hospitals that look at year over year. You know, where was I, you know, December 2025 versus when they will be on December 2026 and 2024? And and is it purely based on pricing? If they know what their pricing increases were generally, is it real growth or is it stagnant growth?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I can say that we have not taken a new small animal client other than the ones that live in Deerfield since 2020, because we have been at capacity. And I literally had to look at my husband and say, there are no more hours in the day, there is no more physically that we can do. We are utilizing our team like there's no more physically that we can do. We have picked up a lot of large animal because clinics, large animal practices are closing around us. So we've picked up, and we honestly don't have a lot more space for that. You know, we're booking out so far in advance. So I do think that there is a point where you have to say, Am I killing my team? You know, have we reached that point where if I keep bringing on clients, where how are we going to manage this? And it used to be, I remember when we did that, we were just talking about this. I was talking about this with Kayla, my head, my head tech. And she goes, Remember when we stopped taking new clients and we were so afraid. We were like, This is it. We're putting the nail in the coffin. This is the biggest mistake. Yeah, I know. And we freaked out, right? Because you don't do that. But yet here we are still seeing new clients because they bring their large animal in, and then inevitably we see their large animal and then we start seeing their small animal. So really we still are. But it's not like it was, and we're still booking way out, and we're still looking at, you know, our profit is still increasing because we have had to go up on our prices because we are hiring new people and we are able to utilize them to the fullest. So I do think that you do have to take that into consideration as scary as that is. It depends on where you're at. Again, there's so much more competition in urban areas like like Boston, like LA. You know, there's so much more competition that maybe you really can't ever think about that. In our situation, it turned out that that's what was best for my team. And I had to take that into consideration. But we've still been increasing our profit every year. It's just in team utilization and looking at our fee structure.

SPEAKER_01

And they probably want you more. It's like anything in life once you can't have it. Like, oh, I can't become a patient here if they're at capacity. Get me in there. Stowan has to have reservations to them, someone wants to know them.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so that's I have a whole list of people. And I do have people that literally check in every six months. So are you taking and I'm like, I'm trying. We hired a new vet, like we're trying, but I still I we're just not there yet. And so that was a way to that we had to take to decrease our chaos a little bit because it was overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00

It's like a boat mooring in Marblehead Harbor. You wait for 31 years to get a someone has to die.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, well, we're not waiting for anybody to die.

SPEAKER_01

Uh so Mark, I'll get back to a serious question, but just to follow up on something you said earlier. What the secret shopping for veterinary practices, is that just calling up and you have a theoretical dog, or is it like bringing your dog in with you with like a big, like, like make your spotty, make your paw like this so we can see what they say.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's yeah, usually it's just calling. And people get once. My wife Kathy is is so good at it because she's an animal owner and knows exactly all the hot buttons to ask. And I think it's pointless because, like I said before, you don't want to be average. Sometimes people can see right through your some people will just hang up because they'll know you're a secret shopper. But sometimes it's owners that will or have, you know, have hired somebody to see how their CSR people ask answer the phone. I mean, you can do this now on most voiceover IP phone systems that are sophisticated. You can replay calls. So you don't actually need to listen to a a fake, you know, caller. You can listen to someone, an actual customer. That's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I hate it because I feel like you are comparing, you don't know what you're comparing yourself to. Like if they are a practice that the doctor does everything, they should be more expensive because that doctor's time is more expensive, right? So what are you getting out of it? What's the information? Until you really go and look how their systems play out compared to yours. I don't feel like it's an accurate way to do things. But I would love to hear Kathy call do that. My mom was my shopper, but she was awful because we never had pets. So she had no head to write down all the questions for. And she was like, wait, what does this say? I'm like, Mom, come on. It was so bad.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's not worth the energy to do it.

SPEAKER_01

Um, so back to the overall picture, Mark. Before they s start spending money on trying to fix their chaos, what should they I think we already hit on most of this, but can you give a statement of what they should look at their system first to make sure they're not just funding the chaos by adding more to it? How are they gonna get to those root problems?

SPEAKER_00

So are we saying moving or expanding and what that would be? Well, to expand, they need additional patients, and I'm not sure what their marketing efforts are, but if they have to market against everybody else out there, it's a tough sell to find new patients. Usually you're we always tell people work internally, are you doing all the services you can for your current patients? If you offer chiropractic, if you offer acupuncture, if you have laser therapy, training, boarding. We have, you know, pay we have pet owners that are clamoring for these services and would rather go to their own veterinarian. A lot of people don't want to put in grooming because it's notoriously tough to find groomers, they don't stay, et cetera. And people are very fickle about their groomers. They they may if they have a good groomer, they're not going to go to their veterinarian's groomer just to make the switch. Usually it's those services that are medically related. So the chiropractic acupuncture PT, we just started onboarding a practice that is heavily into PT. It it looked like a huge pool that one of their technicians was in with a dog. So I'd love to visit there. So all those things, as well as efficiency that Jenny talks about, you have to examine are we doing everything we can and are we as efficient as we can?

SPEAKER_03

I would also argue that are we doing too much? I think there are some veterinarians out there who want to be everything to everyone. And in doing that, you're a jack of all trades and a master of none, right? So maybe you are doing PT and acupuncture and chiropractic. Are you really doing them well? Or would you be better served just doing your GP stuff and referring those things? You know, I think sometimes we, it's like having too many, you have all of the options out there for heartworm preventatives on your shelf. You don't need all of them. One or two and then let them know where they can go and get the other ones at your online store. But I think that we also, if we're looking at inefficiencies, maybe you're doing too much of things that you're not great at and you could be really great at this, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Are you saying the doctor isn't great at them or their team isn't great at them?

SPEAKER_03

I'm saying it could be both. It could be all of the above. You know, I think that I know my the vet that I used to work for picked up acupuncture, not because he believed in it, not because he wanted to do it, but because he didn't want to refer that money to somebody else.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm like, you don't even have time to add this to your schedule. Like he was already absolutely booked out. And acupuncture appointments take like an hour. Where in the hell are we gonna put that? But he was so focused on not giving that work to somebody else. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is just why are we doing this? You know, but for him, all he saw was dollar signs. And then and I mean, he did do it and that was fine, but he had like three patients that he did it on because he didn't have the time. So sometimes it's also looking at what are you doing and do you need to be doing this? You know, do you need to be doing PT in-house if there is a place that has an underwater treadmill and a pool and all of those things? Wouldn't you be better off maybe making a relationship with them and outsourcing that so that you can really focus on what you do well? That was what I was trying to get to.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. And then, Mark, when you mentioned not adding that uh, was it grooming can be fickle because people leave and stuff. I have a good quick brew grooming story. I was on Nantucket saving up for my wife's engagement ring by driving Uber. A rich southern man goes, I'm really particular about my dog. He had nice little lass Apsu. He's like, Will you drive me down around to the three different uh grooming places? I want to see which one I want to use. I was like, sure, sir. He goes, Here you go. Give me $100. I was like, whoa. And uh we drove to the three different places that were doing grooming on Nantucket so we could see which one he wanted to do for his lasses.

SPEAKER_03

So people are very, very serious about their grooming, especially on dogs like that. And it is very hard to find a great groomer that will stay, and that you, as the veterinarian, aren't going to get blamed for when it goes poorly in your space.

SPEAKER_00

I we've told people not to do not put like depending on what area they're in, don't put a groomer in. Don't put a groomer in. There's more than enough local groomers. They put in a groomer a year later, they're like kicking themselves because they could have put three exam rooms in, which they eventually did anyway. Right.

SPEAKER_03

It's a better use of your space.

SPEAKER_00

It's a better use of your space.

SPEAKER_01

And if you do have a groomer out there, I had a Lassa Apso growing up, and our groomer would always send us a Christmas picture with him that she never told us she took. So we always look forward to that. So add a little bit of stickiness.

SPEAKER_03

That's a cute idea.

SPEAKER_01

All right, I'll get us back on track. Yeah, we're not it's me that got everyone off track. So this is the maniac getting the the track back on. But all right, last question. If an owner is stuck in the chaos, they're like, oh, this is all great, but I'm in the chaos right now. I I'm I'm dodging the grenades. What's the first move you'd had to make this week before they even thought about hiring someone else?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I would definitely use the sticky note thing and figure out how you can be more efficient in your exam rooms and ask your team, where do you want to be used? Like, how do you think you guys can help me be more efficient? Don't just try and solve all those problems yourself. Again, I think that this is a trap that we get into as veterinary professionals because a lot of veterinary professionals are perfectionists. You have a whole team to help you. So make sure that you're utilizing them to their fullest and that you're being the most efficient that you can be. And one of the best places to start is in the exam room. How can you make those routine appointments go more efficient so your clients still feel the value, right? Because if you increase your prices, you better be giving them the value for it. And so, how can you do that? Maybe it's by adding AI scribe. Maybe it's by taking a technician into the room with you, maybe it's by utilizing your technicians before and after the appointments. Maybe they're waiting a long time and you need to really sit there and say, let's change the way that we schedule things. But start with, I think you start with your exam room and really start saying, how can we make this more efficient? Because I think that's more of what we do. You know, your surgery room is great, but are you using it every day? Is there a way you could be using it every day? Dental suite makes a lot of money as well. Am I using that every single day? Maybe you can't. Maybe you just don't have the doctors to do that. Your exam rooms are should be running every single day. So how let's start there.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. And Mark, same question to you. Where would you start if you want to pull yourself out of the chaos?

SPEAKER_00

Or if you want to I would find out what jobs aren't being done or what tasks aren't being done and make a list of those and find out why. If somebody says, because I can't I can't do that because what is that because? People should be designing their own jobs to fit in with the global hospital scheme. If somebody knows what their job should be and they want to do X, but they're prevented from doing that, whether it's Ivy catheter placement, et cetera, et cetera, they should be doing that. And it should be stripped from the person that shouldn't be doing it. Like we said.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I was gonna say, and train them. You know, they need to know how to do it. I find that so many times that people are like, well, I don't do that because I don't know how. Okay, how can we do this? Do do we need to make a training video? Do we have our SOPs? How do you learn? You know?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, just going to con if you brought your whole team to VMX, Western, AVMA, uh, your whole team should go. When I, you know, like I said before, when I see that people have spent $191 on continuing education in a year for their practice, I start crying. Because you could in the the whole PE scheme of things, you could 10x that amount that you spend on training. You could. It's it's very achievable if somebody is highly trained that they're gonna use it in the practice.

SPEAKER_03

And so do you feel like if they increase their CE, like what they pay for that, they will get that back in return.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so I don't want it to be like CPA C E. I just started doing CE, where I started, it was basically entertainment, and I learned so much more from the old traditional CP CPE classes that I had to sit there and go, oh my god, I can't believe I have to listen to this for another four hours.

SPEAKER_03

That's how I feel when I go to accounting class.

SPEAKER_00

But it yeah, but if if you're going to a continuing education that you really love, if it's dentistry training, anesthesia training, behavioral training, all of those things, if somebody is really interested in that, they're gonna put it to good use. Why wouldn't they? But you have to be passionate.

SPEAKER_03

If you send them to these continuing education and then they come back and say, hey, I have this great idea, and you say, No, don't waste your money.

SPEAKER_01

All right. Well, thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jenny, for your your time today. This has been the latest episode of the Veterinary Survival Podcast. Mark and Jenny, any parting words for our valued listeners?

SPEAKER_03

Delegate and look at your efficiencies and your SOPs. Read the emyth veterinarian by Dr. Peter Weinstein. That for me was a big one on how important it is to have the standard operating procedures in place. I'm still not great at it, but I'm aware of it, which is step one.

SPEAKER_00

Mark, any parting words? When I was a quality control technician in a summer job, I worked at Digital Equipment Corporation.

SPEAKER_03

So you have I don't understand how you have such a cool job like a paramedic, and then you have like these like super dull. Anyways, continue.

SPEAKER_00

I was a computer science major at the time in college. And he was on the gymnastics team. And I was on the gymnastics team. And what? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

We're talking, Chris, can you write that down to talk about on the next podcast, please? Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, next podcast. Everything on determining quality control standards was written so I could look at any particular moment in the production cycle and know when a disk unit was not being installed properly or was going to fail later on, because I knew step 379 should be X. And if it wasn't, there was a problem. So I don't think practices have gotten to that standard of detail, but they should aspire to that standard of detail. And there should be what ifs. If something is going wrong, what's step one? What's step two? I think a lot of people are left on their own devices, throw them to the wolves and see if they sink or swim. And and most people need a fallback plan. You know, what do I do if something's going wrong? Because in the heat of the moment, most people are scrambling and you don't want to scramble. You want to know, here's a clear step on how to proceed. Let's take this avenue B and go step one, step two, step three.

SPEAKER_03

I think the big point is to avoid chaos, you actually have to take time to think about how to get out of it, right? You can't just keep treading water when it's shark infested. Do you have to go, okay, now what? How do I, how do I go about getting better systems? How do I go about this? But if all you're doing is keeping your head down and just keep keeping at it, you're gonna have high turnover rates, you're gonna have high client turnover rates, you're gonna get burned out. Everybody's, it's just not, you have to take a moment to get your head above water, breathe, and assess the situation. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

I like that.

SPEAKER_01

I love that too. I'm gonna clip that.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you. Thank you very much for my analogy today. Thank you, everybody.

SPEAKER_00

You could paint that on the wall behind you.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, right here. Got it.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, everyone.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

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 veterin practices, visit our website at lga.cpa. Again, that's lga.cpa.