The Shane Crocker Q&A Special

Welcome to another episode of Questions With Crocker! This week Dr. Crocker we get to learn more about Shane with a special Q&A episode; his thoughts on being married to a veterinarian, his business book recommendations, his thoughts on why owning a veterinary clinic is a unique business venture, and more.

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TIMESTAMPS
Intro 00:00
The Vet Med Holiday Effect 05:24
Theories On Why This Happens 06:24
What Does Shane Do? 09:03
When Did Shane Realize He Was Going To Be A Podcast Star? 11:42
What's It Like Being Married To A Busy Veterinarian? 12:46
What Is The Best/Worst Part Of Running A Vet Hospital? 14:36
What Is Shane's Favorite Animal? 18:28
What Business Books Would Shane Recommend? 20:35
What Is Passive Income? 22:15
Outro 24:47

Transcript

0:00

[MUSIC] Welcome back to another episode of Questions with Crocker with me, Dr. Crocker, an emergency veterinarian, and my husband Shane.>> Right.>> Good morning.>> Good morning.>> It is the earliest we've ever recorded a podcast.>> Yes.>> And we're a little tired, but it's going to be a good one. I'm excited about this one.>> I'm glad somebody else.>> Do you have any idea what the topic is today? Okay. Well, just letting you know the topic is you. I ask people what questions I should ask you, what they want to know about you. You are my co-host and my partner in life and a business owner with me. So I have a couple questions for you specifically.>> Sounds like a terrible idea.>> It's not a terrible idea. I think that you are good at coming on here and sharing your knowledge and having funny little comments, but it is good to know a little bit more about you. And I'll also talk about how you got into this crazy veterinary life with me and that hospital ownership. So just a note, we are not an expert in anything. We are sharing our experiences in veterinary medicine behind the scenes, being married, owning a vet hospital together.>> I'm an expert at being married.>> You are an expert at being married?>> Okay. How many years have we been married?>> I don't know.>> When is my birthday? No.>> I actually know that one. April 11th.>> April 11th. Good job.>> I'm married in 2016.>> I will say->> Look at that and two for two.>> Good job. High five. I will say our kids are not home and it's not common that we have the house completely to ourselves. So we had date night last night. You took me out in the fancy car and we had a good dinner and it was really nice. There's nobody we had to be responsible for or worry about or give back home too. So shout out to amazing in laws in Louisiana who one of our kids coming out for a couple of days before the holidays. So speaking of the holidays, the holidays in veterinary medicine are interesting. We are ramping up for end of year, which what does that mean for you with the vet hospital? What are some of the things that you're working on at the end of the year?>> Minimum I was revenue, so we can not pay as much in taxes. Does that count?>> No, that counts 100%. So we've been talking about trying to buy a new X-ray machine potentially. This is something that honestly, I don't think I was that familiar with, but basically, we're trying to spend money so that again, we don't have to pay as much taxes. So can you explain that a little bit more for people who are maybe not as familiar with that as business owners?>> Yeah, I think the CPAs or the right people ask those questions too, but there's ways to minimize your tax liability that's completely within the laws of the tax code. So.>> I'm glad you clarified here.>> The tax code is there to encourage businesses to reinvest themselves and get tax benefits from doing that. So we try to do that to invest our ability, but making sure that we leave enough money in the accounts that we can run the business going forward. And we have essentially decided that we're not going to really take money out of the business ourselves in the end of the year. So we're not going to pay ourselves an end of your bonus or a distribution this year.>> A distribution and instead we're going to invest back in the practice, which we're already doing in the big huge renovation that we're doing.>> Some call that an investment. Some of us call it something a little bit different.>> That money is just flowing out the door.>> Just flowing.>> But.>> I planted a money tree in the back of the clinic to see if it takes you watering it.>> Pinging on it.>> Trying to, you're like, please grow, grow quickly. So anyways, an X-ray is an investment because a piece of equipment is going to be something that we can calculate. Okay, this is how many X-rays we currently take. This is the quality of those X-rays. We just added a doctor so we are doing more radiographs and we want to have better quality X-rays. So we can charge a little bit more with better quality X-rays and we'll hopefully be able to cover our costs on that and make money in the long run with that piece of equipment.>> Possibly.>> Potentially.>> I think we will. The other thing is you can talk to the companies that you work with, your lab companies, your distribution companies because when we started talking about buying an X-ray, a lot of these people said, well, we might be able to help you out. Some of them want a contract renewal, some of them want to buy you the X-ray or lease it to you with a certain amount of time. So there's a lot of different ways to actually make it happen. And I think that's good to know. It's not just, I need to buy an X-ray for this amount of money. There's a lot of negotiations in there that maybe can help you out financially or finance it and pay it out over time and things like that. So as a business owner, it's good to know it's a little more flexible. If you don't have the cash upfront to be able to just do it, which fortunately we do, but man, if someone else wants to pay for it, we're not going to say no about that at all. So excited to do that. There's actually another piece of equipment I have my eye on, but we're going to hold off on that, right now.>> Can't wait for 2024.>> We're headed in 2024. The other big thing at the end of the year is inventory management. So what are some of the things we're looking at inventory-wise at the end of the year? Obviously, we're doing counts so we can settle up and see, did we accurately keep track of what left the hospital our numbers matching up? But is there anything else we're looking at?>> Yeah, also looking at our pricing for all of our inventory items to make sure that with price increases and just adjustments for inflation that we may have to do some increases in that area as well.>> Yeah, pretty much every company sends an email or a letter at the end of the year. And they're like, happy holidays. We are raising our prices next year. I think the lowest one I've seen so far is 5%, the highest has been 8 to 10%. So as a business owner, you can't look at that and just say, okay, you actually have to adjust to be able to still pay everybody and do everything you need to do. So you have to also adjust your prices to make up for that. So in the process of that, the end of the year time is always really busy. I also think it's important to address something else that happens in the end of the year. And I talked about this a little bit on my social media stories and then got questions about it. So I thought I would kind of explain a little bit more what it is. But I talked about the holiday effect in veterinary medicine. Have I ever talked to you about that or explained it? So basically, do you need to blow your nose?>> I'm sick. I'm pretty good at feeling down there, actually.>> Do you like a saline nose blush on you?>> You're a normal person would be able to have this podcast.>> You have a man cold, like let's be honest.>> I'm just saying it.>> You don't even have a fever.>> I thought about taking my temperature.>> I can just tell. I'm a mom. I can tell you don't have a fever. Okay, so we're going to talk about the holiday effect in veterinary medicine. And basically what this is is during this time of year, we see a pretty significant statistically significant rise in euthanasia's impacts. And it is something that you, as you go further in this career, you actually kind of mentally prepare yourself for. Even in my general practice, we had four the other day, which you don't usually see in general practice. In the ER around this time of year, I think the record I had was 10 and they definitely have seen it up to get them. So there's a couple different theories on why people think this happens more over the holidays. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?>> I do not.>> Okay, so one of the things is that people think owners are going on trips, they're going out of town, maybe they've had an aged pet for a while that's had pretty significant medical conditions. And they don't want to leave that pet like in someone else's care and have something happen. So they elect to have kind of a peaceful ending because they already know it's coming and they don't want it to happen while they're gone basically. The other one is sometimes people don't have something severe going with their animal, but their animals just aged and they are going out of town and it's maybe more of a convenience factor, which those are a little trickier and harder to handle. Another thing is a lot of people visit when it's the holidays. And so I will often hear that the daughter came home from college, she saw the condition of the cat and was like, "Mom and dad, this is bad, you need to make a decision." And so they decided while the kids were home from college, while people were there and had said they're goodbyes like they could finally make that decision. So a lot of it is kind of family dynamics, but we also just see a lot of issues over the holidays. At the ER the other day, we had a ton of dogfight wounds, like really significant one where a really large dog picked a small dog up by the neck and shook it so hard that it actually dislocated part of its neck and vertebrae. So you just have more like interactions with pets that sometimes result in euthanasia. And then obviously you talk to cities and things that they get into because they're in places that are not used to being into or people are visiting and they bring things into the home. And so it does seem like it's a kind of a combination of things, but those- What about financial matters? Like you got all this expense going out for Christmas presents and everything else over the holidays and maybe you have a chronic path that's costing you a fortune and you just can't do it anymore. Can't do anymore. Honestly, I think that would be something that you would think, but I really don't see it that much. So you see the opposite. I've had people come in the ER and say like, yes, do whatever, save my pet. And then they legitimately will look at their children and I kind of feel bad in this moment, but they'll look in their children and say, I guess you're not getting Christmas this year. Like, and I don't know if that's true or not, right? But pretty much people will say like, hey, we were going to do this for Christmas. So we were going to travel and like, we're changing that plan because we want to take care of our pets. I almost feel like it's the opposite that probably taking care of the pet financially affects. Yeah, is a priority, which is great to see and is part of the reason why people need to plan for these things a little bit if they can and start setting aside a little bit of money because, you know, emergencies never happen when you want them to or when you're actually prepared for it. So, but that is a holiday effect and increase in youth in Asia's over the holidays. It's not a fun thing. So if you get a chance to stop by your veterinarian office, take them something nice, tell them you appreciate them this time of year. That would be great because it is definitely a difficult time of year for us. Okay. On that, use an Asian note. New Asian note. I know. I feel like. It's a shame questions. Leading into interview with the Shane Crocker. I have a lot of energy right now for some reason. I don't know why. Okay. So I have a couple questions and I kind of got the same type of questions over and over. So I just kind of compiled them. So the first one is, what do you do? What do you do for a living? I feel like maybe this comes from the fact that we talk about you golfing and we talk about other things that you do. But what do you do, Shane Crocker? So I have a degree in finance and I spent most of my career in corporate banking and healthcare technology. So now we basically own a few different businesses or partner in ownership for a few different businesses and I run the back office. So basically everything to do with finance, all your receivables, payables, pricing, reports, margins, all that kind of fun stuff. So I basically manage the books for several different companies that we are part owners or owners in. And you're not really like an accountant managing books. It is more that you are managing the business to make it run more efficiently, to make sure that you are making money and you're in Excel whiz kind of looking at things from a big view and then dialing down to say, okay, why are we not making as much with this product and how much we're paying everyone and what is that taking us to get that done. So your ability to do that is great and I think the detailed orientation of your job is something you're great at. I think what I consider you is like you're the operations person. So there's all these ideas, there's all these things happening and you're the one that's actually making sure they happen and then making sure when they happen, you are not the kinks and that you're making money off of whatever those things are. Yeah, I think I learned early on, especially in corporate America that there's those that talk and those that do. So I realized pretty quickly that I can actually accomplish things that other people just think about. So that's kind of what I do on the day-to-day basis. So making sure that we're actually doing stuff that maybe other people are just talking about. And I always joke like everyone needs a shame because I would say we're a good partnership in the vet clinic because I'm very much the big idea, listen to what I want to do and you're very much the, that sounds great. How do we do that? What do we need to do to get it done? Okay, now we did it. Let's look at the return of our investment and what we did and did that make sense and how does that work. So it's good to kind of have that checkpoint and have that person. But you do spend a lot of time in your office in front of the computer, which I would hate. I think you kind of like it because you're working alone. You're not a big people person. And then you get to take breaks and golf and do other things and be available for the kids. So it's kind of funny and tell me if you think about this ever. We used to joke about you being like a stay-at-home dad. And you're not because you also are working and not just, but you still essentially are kind of a stay-at-home dad because I feel like a lot of things kind of shut down a little bit. You'd be difficult to do if we both had corporate jobs. Yes, like a nine to five. Yes, 100%. We need some flexibility. You are definitely the more flexible one with your schedule, which is amazing. I appreciate you. Okay, so the next one, your friend, Josh, @IamLish wanted to know when did you realize that you were going to be a podcast star? When did you? Josh. I mean, really, the podcast idea, I feel like I- Josh and I, we're in business with Josh now, as probably 30 days ago. What do you mean? We're in a business with Josh. We're early investors in a technology company that he's helping advise. Okay. It's just for the hardware. Oh, can we not talk about it that much? We can. Who knows? It's in the hardware space. Okay, there might be an India. I don't want to get us in trouble. We do like to invest in new companies and new ideas. That is one thing that we like. So if you have an idea, definitely let us know. We're always interested to hear those and to see if we can help out in any way, but- But podcast star we are far from. I feel like I'm, they are like, somebody's making me do this. Like a point of fingers, but somebody in this room is making me do this. But let's be honest, what happened when we went to the conference? And people actually recognize you. I got weird. And people are like, oh, you're really funny. Like people appreciate you. So you got to like take that in and, you know, just own it a little bit. I think that you might protest, but I think you actually enjoyed it a little bit, but that's just me. Okay. Um, the other big question was, what is it like being married to a busy veterinarian? So is our lives now kind of what you expected? And what do you think the like progression of it has been? I mean, we were married between first and second year of that school. So you've been along for like most of the ride. So how do you feel? It's been. I would say, I don't think we ever have a real vision of what the future is going to look like, but I would say that I knew what I was getting into before we got married. Being your personality was one that's not just going to go work eight hours and that's it, right? I mean, I knew that going in. So I don't think it was anything different than, well, I probably would have envisioned just based on your personality. Yeah. I mean, whether you're a veterinarian or a people doctor or a CPA, I don't think it really matters. I think the dynamic that we're in today would still be the same. I mean, the biggest difference I would think is that occasionally when you come up to the hospital or something's going on, you know, you might be asked to do some things that you are. I think everybody knows now that I'm the thungist team. They don't ask me to participate in kind of holding of animals or things that we had like a surgical thing the other day. And I was like, Hey, can you and he's like, no, no, not it, not happening. But I do agree. You have been pretty good. And I think both of us are pretty good about just being flexible and kind of seeing where this journey takes us and being very open to what's going to happen. And one of the things I appreciate about you is you recognize early on like, I love what I do and you supported that. And we never really have had like the traditional, I guess, gender roles of like, you're going to work and I'm not going to work as much or your career as a priority or my career as a priority. We really have had like a give and take along the way depending on what each of us are trying to do in that in that time. So it's definitely been exciting. It's been interesting. And you've only had a couple times where you've had pus, blood on you, all that and you survived. So I still smell some of the smell. It stays. It stays with you forever. Aino glands are one especially. Okay. What is the best and worst part of running a vet hospital from your perspective? And the best part is it's just a, it's another business, right? It's an investment. It's a, it's an area that not everybody can invest in, meaning anybody can go open a restaurant, right? Not everybody can own that hospital. So I think that's kind of cool. Usually when I'm telling people that that's one of the businesses we own, that's the one that kind of triggers the most questions or the look of excitement and people's eyes because it is an industry or a job that at some point, somebody in the family wanted to be of that area. Yeah. That part's pretty cool. The difficult part is it is a little bit antiquated still. When you look at other businesses and how they progressed, I don't think vet net is really fully progressed that way yet. I think it's going in a direction of more technology and more overlap between the PM systems and everything talking and communicating back and forth and financial records and stuff like that, but it still has a long ways to go. So there is some frustration in the manual entry of moving stuff out of your PM and your QuickBooks and some of that stuff is still a little bit antiquated, I think. So from like a business ops running of things, it is. And I think that would probably like the argument of it again, some of that is when you say things like that, it's very corporate type talk, but really you're just talking about making a small business efficient. Yeah. And just more visibility into data so that you can make educated decisions. And we definitely have a vision for this practice to have it more technology driven and we've taken steps to do that, but even in the way that clients can interact with us and we can have the flow be when they come into the hospital and when they leave or trying, especially with this renovation, to update a lot of those things. So hopefully it will be a success. But I agree with you. I think it's a little tough because you know, veterinarians used to be one of the most respected professions out there. It was like one of the top two, three every single time and that is actually drop some. And I think part of that is because it went from a very like relational feeling industry to maybe more of a transactional industry. And so you lost some of that magic of being a veterinarian. So for me, the balance is like trying to update it and not even from like your perspective of like running the business, but like from the client facing part, update things make them a little less antiquated, but still keep that veterinary like feel. Yeah, there's nothing worse than going to a bank these days, right? When you go to the bank, nobody knows who you are. They would prefer that you just go to the ATM machine and deposit a check. You got to stand in a long line or there's one person at the teller line and there's five people running around not doing anything. You don't want the veterinary medicine to turn into that. I feel like that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And that is, it's something that we, I think we talk about a lot actually about how to do that and how to keep that feeling of you're just coming to visit people you know and they're helping you out with your pet versus like you're coming to spend money at a place you don't want to be, you know, so. I would also say this is probably something that's unknown to a lot of patients. The margins in the veterinary industry, especially from a GP practice, the margins aren't near as good as some of other businesses. So it becomes tricky kind of managing that business because the margins aren't as good as I think I would anticipate it going in. Well, and we, I will be honest, like we intentionally are trying to keep our pricing reasonable and like be very community oriented. Not wear our staff out by like having to see a ton of pets either. So it is a balance because if you want to keep your pricing low enough that it is attainable for a majority of the people like where you live, then your margins are not going to be as high. And so that's where you really have to do good service and hope that you're going to have great clients that at least will do the things you recommend. And I would say we have accomplished that. We have like a really good group of clients that take great care of their pets. And we could bump prices up. I mean, I've worked to places that are dramatically more than what we're charging right now. And eventually we might have to do that. But as long as we can pay our team like a competitive wage and we can help as many people as possible, I want to kind of see like how this model plays out a little bit. But it is interesting that they're so different than other businesses like small businesses that you've been a part of and have owned. Okay. The next question is what's your favorite animal? And I would preface this by like, hey, Shane Crocker, are you an animal person? I am not an animal person. You are not. But what is my favorite animal? Can you explain a little bit more like why you're not an animal person because people might have audibly been like, like, how is a veterinarian married to a non animal person? Obviously you're a wonderful human being. I mean, we grew up with animals. We had dogs, we had cats, we had cows, we had horses. We had all the animals. I don't like getting my hands dirty. I don't like smells. I don't like like your little OCD. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. So hair and smells and slub or it's not my thing. It's not your thing. So it's not that I dislike animals. I don't like what they come with. Maybe like a like a hairless cat that. It's kind of to me. It's like the people that don't like kids because like kids are gross. Kids are like, you're that way with animals a little bit. But you we have animals. You help take care of them. Like you feed them. You do things. It's just if you I'm not on the floor and roll around with a dog. Exactly. Yes. Like I don't mind them sometimes. But yeah, you're definitely not going to get on the floor and like, really. I really just like snakes and lizards and that type of stuff. It's kind of weird me out. Does our beard dragon wear a dragon? I don't touch it. I never touch the thing. That's true. I don't think I ever really realize that. It's just in the cage or y'all are touching it. That's fun. We're dating. I realize quickly that you were not really an animal person. But you helped me try to catch this. Yes. I should have pulled the trigger right there. But this is not going to work here. You explain a little bit more of what happened. You showed up at the house with a random dog. Well, you can't just like leave the dogs on the side. I guess not. But you were like, what is happening right now? Man, I mustn't really charm me if you put up with that. And then when we got married, we pretty much came to an agreement that I can't just bring random animals home. I have to at least like send a picture or text you. Usually if I talk to you about it, you're like, absolutely not. I never said no. No, I know. But you are perfectly content with not having a ton of animals around and not having them in your space. And I think that's okay. I mean, there's people that don't want children in their lives and probably those people are the ones right now that are judging you really heartily. So I guess the answer to question, I don't have a favorite animal. I tolerate dogs, cats, horses, etc. Definitely not reptiles. No, I'm not reptiles. Not a fan of snakes. Okay. The other question that people had is they enjoy your business acumen and they wanted to know what business books do you like and what do you recommend? What are some of the ones that you have like really felt gave you a lot of information and value and obviously they don't have to be veterinary related. Yeah. Heavy books. So like the four hour work week is one that I really enjoyed because it looks at a different way of structuring your life where you can still manage stuff but not be, you know, engulfed in the day to day activity. So that's one that I'd, again, I don't know that I apply all that to my daily life, but there's just things in there that I enjoyed. How to rent, win friends and influence people. Yeah. Is a good one. It gave me that one while we were dating or newly married or something and that one actually is one of the ones that made a huge impact on me. I started it and it was like a little drive when I started and then the further I got into it, the more I realized the value of it and talking about body language and almost like how to be a better salesman. And I say this all the time to young veterinarians like you are salesman and they hate that. Like they want to just help all the animals. But I try to explain to them like our job is to, you know, form a relationship with someone, present them with the information, you know, give them a plan, make recommendations and have them like buy into that. So you need to kind of have a salesman attitude of, you know, I'm going to get this person to want to do this for their pet and to know that I'm on their team and I'm trying to help. And so that book is really good about how to do that from lots of different perspectives and personalities. And they have a new version of version out that's talking about it in the digital age. So it's actually talking about online marketing and social media and things like that too, which I think is really interesting. So sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. I don't know if you want to. Robert Kiyosaki that he's got one, one of his early ones, the cash flip quadrant. And again, it's not something to apply really every day that what we do. But just thinking about looking at stuff from a business perspective and working in corporate America and passive income, that type of stuff is just kind of intriguing. Can you explain what passive income is? mailbox money. It's really nothing's ever passive income, right? I mean, passive income is like investing in other companies where maybe you don't work in a day to day operations, but you get dividends off of it or buying real estate where you invested in it and you have rent coming in. You know that a lot of people tout that as passive income. You don't have to do anything. I think it's a croc because there's always stuff you have to do. You have to manage the books. You've got to answer the calls when the tool that goes out at midnight, etc. So I don't know if passive income is always really passive, but it's just another way to kind of think through ways to have income coming in that's not just your day to day corporate job. Well, and to have like a more financial like well-rounded investment portfolio, it's always good. That's also why we're trail-apart counters. Oh yeah, let's take a break. Yes. Any other books that you can think of? I've got a whole bunch of office in some of my reds, some of my red parts of. So. I know I have a couple that are kind of my like go-to's that I go back to and look at. There's some really great books right out right now. Caitlin DeWild is a big social media person in veterinary medicine, the social DVM. So she specifically has a book out now about social media marketing and that's a really good one. Debbie Boone just came out with one about hospitality in bed med and not something that I think is important. And she really, you know, looking at other industries and how well they do hospitality and how we could do a better job sometimes. And that is what gets people talking and gets people wanting to come back to you and have people be like very loyal to you. The Amazon effect. I'm just going to be cool with thinking about stuff. What is the Amazon effect? Basically just how Amazon has kind of changed people's mindset. You know, it used to be that people would go to the store and get something when it was convenient. Now you order and you expect it to be there within an hour. Yes. And that's kind of flown, you know, flowed down to everything in life where you expect to meet results pretty quick. So that's kind of a cool book right now. That's very true. And I think that's why we've seen some changes in the way that, you know, clients interact in veterinary medicine too. The other big one in the last one we can talk about is Peter Weinstein, the E-Meth. We really like that one. Dr. Weinstein is just a great speaker in general, but talking about how to put systems in place, you know, for your vet hospital to make things flow and be more efficient and run the right way and also have you kind of get out of the way as leadership is a really good lesson. So I enjoyed that one a lot. That's it. That's the questions, you okay? Life in a nutshell. Very simple. Well, we have to keep this to around 30 minutes. So basically we're out of time. I was going to have you say like three nice things to me because, you know, so just marriage tip here, if your partner's love language is not words of encouragement and yours is then just occasionally prompt them and ask them to say three nice things to you. That's a good idea because that is definitely not the top of my mind. It is not at the top of his mind. Speaking of saying nice things, if you enjoyed this podcast, if you want to check out the others, you can go to Apple or Spotify and listen to other episodes. We recently started having specialists on asking them questions. We talked about the hospital and answer all your veterinary and medicine questions. If you want to leave a review or give us feedback, that would be great on Apple or Spotify. You can follow us on all our social media channels at questions with Crocker. And you can always DM me any question you have. If you want a question to be anonymous, I am happy to do that for you. Just let me know in a message, but we want to keep just bringing you the information that you want to know about veterinary medicine and a little bit about our lives. You can watch some YouTube as well. You can watch us on YouTube right now. I look a little tired, but we're happy to have you watch us on YouTube. So thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful day.[MUSIC]