Mastering A Million: Dr. Robert Gribble Reveals How He Built a Veterinary Empire Worth Millions

Dr. Robert Gribble is the owner of 3 veterinary practices in east Texas. Well known for his “Million Dollar Veterinarian” presentation that is based on a survey Dr. Gribble has conducted on elite producing veterinarians, as well as his own experience consistently producing well over $1M/yr, in this webinar Dr. Gribble will share one of his biggest secrets for achieving this elite level of production.

Transcript

Welcome to the Genius Vets Show for veterinary practice owners and industry pros. At Genius Vets, it's our mission to help veterinary practices thrive, and this webinar and podcast supports that mission by giving a platform to the best and brightest minds in the veterinary industry, where we identify challenges facing veterinary practices today, discussing ideas, insights, and solutions that practice owners need to know about. If you like today's show, that's something we'd love to know. Feel free to send an email to genius at genius vets dot com. And make sure to check out the wealth of resources available to veterinary practices at genius vets dot com slash pro. That's genius vets dot com slash pro.

Now without any further ado, let's dive into today's show.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Genius Vet Show for veterinary practice owners and industry pros. I'm your host, David Hall, cofounder here at GeniusVets.

And today, we're gonna be continuing to explore the trends, the threats, the opportunities that are facing veterinary practice ownership, and we have an outstanding guest today. We have doctor Robert Gribble, the owner of three practices in Texas. You can find doctor Gribble at vets of east texas dot com. Doctor Gribble has been a speaker.

He has so much to teach that we're gonna talk about how he's blown the lid off of independent or individual veterinary production in his practice. So many amazing lessons. And when he does speak, I've seen rooms of veterinary practice owners just taking notes and enthralled, hanging on his every word. So very happy to have doctor Gribble joining us today.

Doctor Gribble, thanks so much for taking some time out of your extremely busy schedule to join us on the GeniusDET Show.

Appreciate you having me, David. Definitely looking forward to our conversation today.

Awesome.

You know, to start off, just to give people some some familiarity, some context for your personal journey, what's gotten you to the level that you're working at today, where you'll be able to speak from.

Can you tell us a little bit about that journey from, you know, from where where you started in veterinary to, you know, getting to the point where you get now you have you're sitting on three practices, very successful practices that you own and are growing. Tell us a little bit about that.

So I'll start from the beginning. I'll say one thing that I think benefited me in my practice, in my practice habits, in my practice philosophy are, the first day I ever worked in a veterinary practice, I was a veterinarian.

So I never worked in a practice. I was never a kennel guy. I was never a technician.

First day I worked in a veterinary practice, I was a veterinarian.

And the only idea I had of what a veterinary practice should be was from doctor Dennis McKernan, who's a practice management, guru that was the director of clinics at LSU when I was there. I had he had instilled me this is what a practice should be doing and how they should be doing it. And when I walked into my first practice, I started learning immediately what not to do.

And because it was so far from the ideal practice, which doctor McKernan had taught me, and reality practice, which is what I walked into on day one.

And, I will say I learned some things not to do in that first practice. And the second practice I went to work for, I learned a lot of good things.

Doctor Keith Satoff down in Rose Hill, Texas, great practice owner, great practice manager, had a great practice manager working there with us. So I kinda went from learning what not to do in real practice to what to do. And then after that, I bought my first practice. And, since then, I've just been toiling alone like the rest of us.

You know, it's funny you say it because, I've consistently been taught throughout my life from some of my best mentors. Some of the most important decisions you make is what not to do. Right?

Yeah. That's a that's a great foundation, you know, right there. When did you open your first practice?

So I bought my first practice, two years out of school in nineteen ninety nine, and that practice was over in White House, Texas, south of Tyler. And, I owned that practice for from ninety nine to o four, And I in in the middle of that, I bought another practice in o one, and that is the Vent on West Main, which I I still own today.

Vet on West Main. You have the vet on West Main in, in Hallsville. You have the vet on fourth in Longview, Texas. And and then the newest one, vet on Broadway in Tyler. Correct. Tell us a bit about how that's going.

So we just opened it up. There's an associate partner in that practice who was a a high producing partner in our Longview practice and wanted to be an owner. And so we found a new market to put her in and opened that practice January the first, and it's been doing very well. We're happy.

We've had both those practices, Longview and Tyler, are extended hour practices. So ten in the morning to ten at night, doctor's hours. So we see a lot of urgent care, but we also do wellness, every day. And if you want your wellness done at nine o'clock at night, we can do that too.

Right. Sometimes with schedules, I mean, that's the only option. Right? You're busy, job, parent, all the stuff, you know, fitting it all in.

That that that's fantastic. What what would you say so far, has and this is this is a new practice open in the beginning of the year. So, you know, early days, what lessons do you think have been the most impactful from your your previous, you know, journey, opening, starting, manage, running practices that have made this third one maybe easier, smoother, better that you think are things that, you know, are can be replicated by others. Yeah.

But when you're looking at a brand new practice, you're gonna be looking at exponential growth.

And knowing how to staff for exponential growth is, I think, a learned behavior unless you've done it before, because you can overstaff and expect more growth than you get or you can understaff and have way more growth than you expected.

So that's kind of a fine tuning type thing to know how many people you need there based on how much you're gonna grow, not only this month, but this week.

When you open a practice like that, that the growth is just ridiculous. So you'll go from doing three appointments today. Next week, you're doing eight appointments, and the next week, you're doing twelve appointments. So, you know, that type of growth is is hard to staff.

But having done it once in the practice in Longview, I think we've got a little better understanding of how many people we're gonna need there and and what our actual growth rate is gonna look like.

Are you, are you looking at those projections for what you're doing and projecting, you know, to make those decisions a month out, three months out, a year out?

How far are you, you know, trying to practice, two weeks out.

Yeah. Yeah. It's moving so fast.

We're gonna need somebody two weeks from now. We need to hire them today so they'll be prepared to actually handle a client in two weeks.

Right. Would you say, because, certainly, you got some, economies of scale of, you know, so to speak, of systems and things that you've done at your other practice that you spent years dialing in, that likely, you know, translate to a large extent. I'm sure there's things that are that are unique and that you have to just cross the, you know, the same unique bridge with every practice you own. But other things like, you know, training systems, you know, things that you have in place in order to be able to you're you're talking about staffing. So, just even HR systems that you bring people in going through the the the hiring process and then, you know, onboarding and training and all of that.

Is that stuff you find that you're having to tweak for your new location at all, or are you going kinda plug and play your playbooks from the previous Well, of course, we try to plug and play because that'd be the easiest.

And maybe ninety percent of the things you can plug and play and move on. But that ten percent, that's a little bit specific to the Tyler market or specific to the Tyler staff, those type of things.

You know, maybe a staff member has a scheduling conflict because of children or because of, you know, doing anything.

But for the most part, ninety percent, you can plug and play. I mean, like a protocol book, we didn't have to make a new protocol book. We just copied and pasted it. So those things are definitely helpful.

Yeah. How how much are you looking for your practices from one to another to be, you know and you're ninety percent, you say and that's that's exactly what was gonna be my follow-up question was how much, you know, of that. So you're saying about ninety percent is likely to be about the same. Ten percent is gonna be unique based on the market or the staff or, you know, things like that.

How much do you are you able to really manage these, you know, bring the staff together or manage them, you know, concurrently just, look at them as one entity as opposed to, you know, do you have them structured all as separate entities? I mean, they're on the same website, but that doesn't mean anything towards the business entities themselves. You indicated that the new one has another partner, the associate vet, you know, to some degree that that may not be in the others.

How do you manage that kind of complexity going as one doctor who seems to be building an empire?

I'd say that's probably a grandiose term in empire.

A little bit. That's fun.

But the two practices in Longview and Tyler are I mean, they are very similar. They they have extended hours. They're open seven days a week. There's a lot of staff.

So those two practices, a lot of things cross over. We did this in Longview. Let's do it in Tyler, but back and forth. And my Hottleville practice is what I would consider a day practice. It's only open Monday through Friday, so a lot more wellness going on in Halsville and a lot more illness and injury going on in Longview and Tyler.

Okay.

So a little different staff, a little different mentality in their Halsville practice.

So a lot of those clients in the Halsville practice, which is more wellness than illness, are repeat clients over and over. Now a lot of times, if you got extended hours, you see urgent cases from practices all across the city, and that might be the last time you see them.

However, when I go in and they go, well, we need to we need to talk to our regular vet about this, then my next statement is I am the regular vet now. You forget that guy.

It it's interesting because I I like that we we when we're working with practices, that are certainly, if they're focused on being specialty and emergency, that referral business is so, so critically important that, you know, they wanna go to great lengths to try and, you know, massage the referring clinics in the area that, hey. We're gonna send them back. And then we have some other clients that, you know, started more general practice, and are getting or sorry, started specialty and getting into more general practice. And so now they actually want to switch to hanging on to those clients, you know, and that sort of thing.

It's a really interesting dynamic that you're saying you're you're you wanna confront that head on and say, hey. We got the extended hours essentially to be the only ones open, but we wanna keep that business. What else are you doing aside from just telling them in the exam room, hitting that head on, hey. I am your regular vet now. You stay with me. What else do you do in the follow-up to to try and, you know, keep that business?

We we definitely have that conversation. You know? You're here tonight for, say, urinary tract infection that you noticed at eight o'clock at night.

I want you to know when we get over this urinary tract infection and you need something else that's wellness oriented, vaccines or blood work or preventative, we're here. We're here until ten o'clock every night if you wanna get that done. And a lot of people are happy about that.

And I will say this about the pet owning population.

A lot of times that dog that showed up for a urinary tract infection at eight o'clock at night, hasn't been to another vet in four or five years. So they have no vet.

Yeah. That's, I mean, that's seventy percent of the population.

You know, seeing according to the studies I've seen, seventy percent of the population does not take their pet to the vet on a regular basis. So access that's the access to care. Not that access isn't available, but it's not being taken advantage of by the majority. And so, it certainly is that we're we're pumping as hard as we can from every channel that we possibly can to the public from Genius Bets that people need to really understand a lot more the importance of having a veterinarian as the go to pet information resource.

Yeah.

And that that conversation we have, okay, you're here tonight for a urinary tract infection.

When we're over that, you know, we have a list on the wall in every exam room. These are the things that need to be done to help your pet live longer. So once we're over this, we need to do the preventative stuff, and we're available to do that too.

Yeah. What do you do in terms of active follow-up with those people, after they leave?

So we try to book recheck appointments.

You know? We won't check this year in in two weeks to make sure everything looks good.

So you're forward forward booking before they leave?

Correct. And and we do that more in our Hallsville practice, which is more wellness, and our Tyler practice, which is new a new practice.

Now one thing that discourages me, if I show up one day and I've got twenty recheck appointments on the books, my first thought is we're not gonna be very productive today.

A lot of times, they'll say, when do you wanna recheck this dog? And I'll say, if he's not better, then I wanna recheck him. And you know? Because if you start eating up your appointment schedule with rechecks, man, that really knocks a big dent in your daily production.

Yeah. Do you are you utilizing telemedicine at all for telehealth platforms or anything like that, any version of that for rechecks?

Any version of what? Any version of telehealth.

No. In fact, probably four or five years ago, I went to a telehealth talk at a big conference.

And they're talking about charging, I don't know, sixty, eighty bucks for a fifteen minute phone consultation.

And if I have my associates on the phone for fifteen minutes and I made sixty or eighty bucks, I just took a big hit right there. So there's no way we're gonna go to telehealth because, you know, we're doing production of eleven or twelve or thirteen hundred dollars an hour. Why would I take fifteen minutes out of that to make sixty dollars?

Yeah.

That's that's definitely what I wanna get to. So you're you're hinting, you're foreshadowing at, an area that I really wanna spend some time talking with you. And I'll I'll introduce to everybody.

So doctor Grebel was a participant, in a survey that we had Genius Bats put out a little bit earlier in the year, and that we are, you know, refreshing now all the time. We asked practice owners, top performing, who we identified as top performing practice owners across the nation, to tell us, what they thought the trends, the threats, and the opportunities were that were that veterinary practice owners that ownership is facing today. And, so in each one of those areas, doctor Gribble offered responses that were short and concise, but that really spoke to what I think are are some of the most important topics within these categories. So, doctor Gribble, when when you talked about trends, what trends do you see? You said, you know, basically, you spoke to visit count. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? What you think the trend is good is going on in visit count right now?

Yeah. So visit count or invoice count, across the country since twenty twenty three.

I'll say COVID versus post COVID.

Invoice counts have been trending either flat or down in a lot of places. And just about everywhere I go speak, I will look on VetWatch, vet watch dot com, and you can look at those invoice counts for each particular area you're in, and it dials down pretty close to cities.

And with the exception of maybe one or two, most of them have been in the negative invoice count for twenty three.

Part of twenty four, I've seen those invoice counts peaking up in March and April and May, getting above zero as far as growth rate, but for the most part, flat or or negative for over a year in most places.

And I think I've heard some explanations from different people, theories of why that is and how COVID played a role in it, and everybody was getting a dog and bringing them in during COVID. And now they're falling back into that population of seventy percent that just doesn't bring your dog to the bed anymore.

So, invoice counts, anything you can do to drive invoice counts is something you wanna invest in heavily, I think.

Yeah. Absolutely.

When it comes about the the threats, what do you think the threats are facing practice ownership? You you said, you know, talk about the economy, and a shortfall of expendable income, which I think also, you know, point to the the trend that you're talking about. Would you expand on that a little bit? What what are your thoughts currently on economy and the trend of expendable income?

Yeah. Well, that's that's what veterinarians live on is expendable income. I mean, that is where our money comes from. And when that pool of expendable income gets smaller, then the pool of our income gets smaller. And I think the economy plays a huge role in it, but because everyone goes to the grocery store and everyone knows that that same basket of groceries you got today cost you about fifteen to twenty percent more than it did two or three years ago.

And what does that leave in your pocket in case your dog does need some wellness? And we talk about wellness, that seventy percent that doesn't bring your dog in anyway, well, that number is gonna get bigger as the dollars in our owners' pockets get smaller.

So they may show up for an urgent care because dog or cat is sick.

But unless they have to spend that money, they're just kinda holding on to it because it's not as much as they're used to having in their pocket.

Yeah.

What do you see as, you know, from your opinion and, you know, extremely informed perspective on the topic, what do you see as, you know, levers that veterinary, you know, practices can pull to try and offset that imbalance of, you know, less expendable income.

How can we get, what are your thoughts on on driving more business, you know, into the practice?

Well, one thing, and I think it's not not my theory, but for a long time, the theory has been as our prices go up as veterinarians and the cost of care goes up, you gotta provide additional options for paying for that.

Now I think I've seen on the news how credit card debt is rising in America.

As that cash in their pocket gets lower, the debt on their card gets higher.

And, you know, maybe that's something like CareCredit or Scratchpay offering alternatives to pay in cash is is very important.

And I haven't looked at our trends, but now that you and I are talking, I probably will go look and see how much of a percentage of our income in twenty three was CareCredit versus twenty four and versus twenty two and see if that number itself is rising in our practice.

My gut feeling and I always say when I make a guess, I tell you it's a guess. This would be a one hundred percent guess.

My gut feeling would be it's probably gonna be higher Well than that versus I can definitely tell you, you know, just a bit from my interactions with CareCredit as a industry vendor, someone who has, supported, our events and, you know, supported some of the things that we've done this year, as opposed to previous years.

For instance, CareCredit was one of the supporters, sponsors of our veterinary practice ownership symposium, earlier in the year in Las Vegas. That was a very successful event. And I know that they're seeing these trends, and they're going, there's a growth year for CareCredit. Like, this is yeah. You're definitely onto something that they're feeling and seeing and believe in and looking to, support, because, yeah, a lot more people need that. What what are your thoughts on on insurance?

You know, pet insurance and and, you know, the role that that might play in making stuff more affordable.

I would love to see more pets insured. I think it's about two or three percent of the population right now.

That's the estimate. It's three percent. And I know, you know, every time I hear veterinary practice owners voice, you know, weariness about insurance because, certainly, nobody wants to see pet insurance and pet medicine go the the way veterinary medicine go the way that human medicine has where it's really insurance companies dictating what doctors can recommend. Because if the insurance company is not gonna pay for it, then, you know, it's not gonna end up happening. So what's the point?

But, you know, I think offsetting that in human medicine I I don't know what the exact number is, but the vast majority of everybody has insurance.

And in pet, it's three percent. So I I don't think that that even gets on the table till it's the majority of pet owners, and I don't think that that's something that is ever gonna happen. But if it gets to thirty percent, forty percent, you know, a lot then a lot more people would be able to afford care, I think.

Yeah. I agree. And I was asked to be part of a pilot program with, Pumpkin Insurance, And the pilot was they wanted to see if insurance could pay the veterinary office directly without the client having to pay and get reimbursed. And I told him, I said, I don't even wanna be part of that pilot program because I don't wanna get paid by you.

Right.

Because it may not be today, and it may not be in ten years. But twenty years from now, I'm gonna be sitting just like my MD friends who are waiting four months to get paid for exam they did today.

Right. Yeah.

I I would rather the structure be client pays a bill, gets the money from the insurance company. I don't wanna be in the middle.

That's right. And maybe it's maybe it's CareCredit's paying the bill, and then the insurance paying CareCredit, and the client's got a little a little slice at the top of that that they ended up something. It's gotta yeah. That's really interesting.

Well, listen. I wanna get on to from the from our survey, it was what are the threats trends, threats, and opportunities. And under the opportunity section, you talked about increasing per veterinary production. And in conversations, that caused me seeing that caused me to reach out to you.

And, having heard you speak before and know a little bit about what you spoke about, I wanted to reach out to you, and you really kinda opened my eyes and and blew me away a little bit in what you were talking about and what is your per veterinary you know, the type of production that you've been able to achieve, in your practice.

And, I mean, if if more veterinarians could get close to that, is it it'd just be an entirely different industry, I think. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the the per veterinary production levels that that you've been able to achieve, that you aim for in your organization, and and what you think what are the really the things that allow you to achieve that level versus where you think a lot of, let's say, the median of veterinary, you know, production may be, what are the big difference makers in that?

Alright. So we're we're getting into my wheelhouse here now.

I, I'll say first off, I did not have some brainstorm and create this practice model.

I had a practice in Hawesville, Texas. It was it was solo practice, one doctor practice, and we started producing.

We hit the million dollar mark, and, you know, no veterinarians are lining up to move to Halsville, Texas to go to work. So if I wanted to continue to grow that practice, I was gonna have to produce more myself.

And the only way I was able to do that is add more support staff to my practice.

And that's kind of how that model was created, and that's how our practice run now.

Really high support staff ratios.

And like I say, I did not create this model. It created me.

Because How many how many support staff do you run?

So we're averaging about ten.

We have been up to twelve and fourteen and sometimes I just wanna pause for a second just so we don't talk over the moment that that number sets in for anybody who just heard you say it.

Ten practice per staff, and it's been up to twelve or fourteen. That is I mean, because I talk to practice owners all the time that are stuck around five.

You know? And it's like and certainly and the study's been out for a while saying it should be between six and eight, and they're like, we we know, but they still can't figure out how to get there.

How are you doing it?

I think the current number that I'm familiar with is just a little bit under four across the country.

And number one, you have to pay those people.

And if you get start getting above twenty percent on support staff, people start getting antsy. And my number's getting above twenty percent.

My my support staff number can't go that high.

And where's that money come from? Well, the the money comes from the DBM pay, which everyone is kinda stuck on the twenty percent production pay, which to me is limiting production in the country.

And I'll talk a little bit about some average numbers. Average versus non praxis, uh-huh numbers, and these are about four years old, five years old.

Average production is about five sixty per full time equivalent veterinarian.

Another number that I utilize is the well managed practice study that Denise Tomlin does every year or every other year.

Average production in those one hundred practices that she handpicks to be well managed practices is about six forty eight.

The other number that I like to utilize is the VMG groups. So those are guys that you know are interested in moving their practice forward, and the average production in the VMG groups across the country is about eight zero five. So you can see those numbers are going up.

So my theory is if you move those guys from five sixty to, not to a million, but to eight hundred thousand, and you move the guys that are doing six forty to nine hundred thousand, and the guys doing eight hundred to a million one.

Now is there a critical shortage of veterinarians?

Not as much.

But the numbers gotta come from it it can't be twenty percent veterinary pay production.

And people get hung up on that percentage, and they don't look at dollars.

So I have veterinarians earning about fifteen to fifteen percent production range, but making way more dollars than people earning twenty percent because their production is so high because I can afford to add support staff to help them produce more.

So probably if you're stuck in that twenty percent rut, it's gonna be very hard to get out of it because you can't approach one of your associates and say, look. I'm gonna move you from twenty percent to fifteen percent.

First thing associate's gonna do is go, what?

Then you have to then you have to have the explanation. Well, I'm gonna move you to fifteen percent, but that five percent that I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna put into support staff. So now instead of four or five or six, you're gonna have eight or nine or ten support staff, and you're gonna be able to produce more. So that fifteen percent of the higher production is gonna be more dollars than the twenty percent you're making now of the lower production.

Yeah. I mean, it's the classic, you know, a little slice of a much bigger pie.

Right.

But but that but that approach, I can see that explanation now to sit down and say, hey.

You know, right now, you're at whatever whatever their their you're at two hundred thousand a year. How would you like to be at three fifty? You know? Or whatever it is.

Well, here's how that happens. It can't happen with you at twenty, but it can happen if we go down to here and we move that into support staff staff and your production goes there. That's how this happens. And and you are actually are sitting there going, and I've done it.

I've done it. I've done it.

Yeah. We've done it.

So you've moved beyond the theoretical.

And the other thing that's important to mention is you're producing more, but you got more help to do it. So you're not what I call quotation mark working more. You're thinking more.

Yeah.

Which is way more fun.

Yeah. It's better work.

So you're not you're not doing things that technician should be doing.

You're doing everything that a doctor should be doing, and anything technician related is delegated, which brings us to a whole another topic.

Veterinarians aren't good at delegating.

Yeah.

That's and that's a that's a deeper thing. That's a that's a much deep you can get some some serious therapy to, through some of those some of those issues.

It's true, though. I mean, the the lowest paid person in a business should be doing up to the maximum amount of of tasks that their skill allows them. And if you follow that all the way up, you end up with doctors who are doing the thinking work that they've invested all that money and all that everything. Yes.

Surgery in mind, and the mind is the number one thing. So what's in your mind that's so important, and that's why you get the big bucks and certainly skill skill in in surgery. But, that I mean, that that's it. And, certainly, it's very clear that you have you have figured out the formula, and this is something that just a lot more people I hope that I hope we've whet the appetite of some people here in the audience, and I know we have some some prize managers that are opening their eyes that are going, oh my gosh.

That's possible. But but more so, so much of our audience is practice owners.

And we know I know so many practice owners that are out there that are struggling to break through some certain ceilings, and that's always the case in business. You know? There's there's break points in business. There's, you know, you you go, I got all the systems are perfect.

We can we can we're ready to to to grow. We're gonna add, you know, thirty percent, and then you add that thirty percent and start finding those perfect systems now aren't perfect at this level anymore, and they need to improve so that you can double, you know, and those sort of things. But if people wanna plug in to some more of your thinking on these on this stuff and and, you know, want to hear how you've done it and so that they can consider how to implement some of these concepts in their own practice. Do you have any any speaking, you know, that's coming up or any any things that they can maybe plug into, to learn a little bit more from what doctor Gribble's laying down?

So I do a talk called the million dollar veterinarian, and it's based on a survey that I've been giving to elite producing veterinarians. They're all of them produce over a million dollars a year. And I've had about eighty five veterinarians take this survey, and I give a talk on those survey results.

And, definitely some trends developing there, and and increased staff numbers are probably the biggest trend that I see.

They've got more help. And my, you know, my philosophy and I give that talk at some bigger conferences. I probably haven't given it in about two or three years. Just gave it to a VMG group up in Saint Louis.

And, there were some horse there, you know, there were some workhorse producers in that group, and they were doing over a million, but there were also you know, I think there's probably ten or twelve practices in those groups.

And but there were also some stragglers that had veterinarians producing four and five and six.

So, you know, I think they got some benefit out of that.

And some of the veterinarians in that group were like, we can't do that. I was like, well, if you don't think you can, then you never will.

So, you know, it comes with where you are.

I tell you what. You're gonna have me now following up with you trying to to set up a where we can do a whole webinar and just have you give that as a webinar that we can, you know, somehow make accessible because it just sounds like such valuable advice that your your profession needs and can benefit from so much. And good on you for for not just learning and and building yourself up, but for being so true to what I see from so many veterinarians, you know, doing the best you can for you and your community and and really being willing to help others up along the way. It's just so admirable.

Say, you know, I'm not perfect in everything in it. I've always been a top line guy. The bottom line, I struggle with just like everybody does, you know, trying to get that EBITDA up a little bit. And I don't I'm not a twenty percent producer. I'm not a twenty percent profit guy.

But my my, you know, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen percent profit of way higher production is more dollars than most people that are profiting twenty percent. So like I said, I've always thought, you know, if my numbers weren't right, just see three or four more appointments today.

Okay.

You know, not the top line up. And and I struggle with the bottom line just like everybody.

But, you know, I I guess you can't be great at everything, but I I can I can definitely produce more? And I I tell my staff when I'm on the floor, that front door ain't wide enough for you to outwork me.

I love that. Take on all challengers. That is an attitude worth having. Any parting wisdom?

You know, I that's one of the questions I ask my million dollar producer survey. Give me a give me a piece of wisdom. So I'm gonna steal one of the pieces of wisdom that I got from, doctor Bobby Boyd out in Midland, Texas.

And he said his practice philosophy is if he doesn't go home with makeup on his shirt every day, he didn't hug enough old ladies that day.

That's great. That's great. Embrace them. Embrace them. Strengthen strengthen your bonds with that community. I really love it.

Well, doctor Gribble, thank you so much for, again, I know how busy you are. I mean, man's running three practices, running them at a high level. Just go, go, go, producing the pants off anybody out there, just really doing it, and still taking some time to to sit down and and share some of your thoughts, with us and our audience. Really greatly, appreciate that, doctor Gribble.

I appreciate you having me, David. My pleasure.

And, to everybody else out there in the Genius Beds community, hey. Plug in. We're doing so much great stuff, to to really help pet owners understand why they need a veterinarian in their lives and why their veterinarian needs to be the go to information resource. I mean, we're pumping this message out. We've got a lot of, really inspiring guests that are gonna be coming up on the show.

So stay tuned, and, go check out, in fact, your veterinary practice has a full page profile that's live right now on genius vets dot com. It's true. Every veterinary practice location in the country has a full page profile on Genius Vets. The thing you need to do right now is go find yours and make sure the information's correct.

They're free to claim. It's a hundred percent free. We'll never charge you for anything on that. They rank really high in Google search results, and we want all roads to point to your practice.

We wanna make sure that pet owners are able to find the best local veterinarian in their area, and we're hoping that's you. So check it out, and stay tuned next week. Thanks so much.

It's no secret that the past two years have been a roller coaster ride for veterinary practice owners.

But the truth is, right now is the greatest opportunity of your lifetime to grow and strengthen your veterinary practice for years to come.

Business goes in cycles.

These cycles have peaks and valleys.

Right now, we're at a peak, but at some point, there will be a valley.

Smart and successful business owners find a way to build a bridge to get from peak to peak so that they never have to climb out of a valley.

Now is the time for you to build your bridge.

What is that bridge? It's an investment.

Investing in your operations, in getting your staff well aligned, and in delivering a higher level of customer service.

Are you looking to attract doctors and staff?

Do you wanna make it easier than ever to deliver a higher level of customer service, to attract clients that are ready and willing to follow your advice and will happily pay whatever you charge?

The key to all of this is truly understanding the processes people go through leading up to, during, and after their interactions with your practice.

How do doctors and staff find and evaluate you before applying?

What is the complete customer journey for your clients?

And how can your practice better support these people in every step they take?

Knowing the answers to these questions and implementing strategies to support them can be transformational to your veterinary practice, leading to increased workplace satisfaction, happier clients, and significantly higher profit margins.

Genius Vets has proven to be an industry leader in helping veterinary practice owners take their businesses to the next level in all of these ways and more.

Genius Vets offers many incredibly valuable resources that can help you grow and strengthen your veterinary practice that are completely free of charge.

Along with professional services that strongly outperform every other company in their space.

If you've not yet scheduled your free consultation and demo with Genius Vets, we would strongly recommend that you do so now. It might be one of the best things you do for your business this year.