How Embracing Innovative Services and Technology Trends Can Boost Your Veterinary Practice with Dr. Mark Thompson

The GeniusVets Show features Dr. Mark Thompson - AAHA President. Hosted by GeniusVets Co-Founder, David Hall. 

This insightful conversation will dive into the Trends, Threats, and Opportunities facing veterinary practice ownership today. 

This discussion will cover: How Embracing Innovative Services and Technology Trends Can Boost Your Veterinary Practice

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 to the GeniusFets Show. I'm your host, David Hall, cofounder here at GeniusFets.

And today, we've got a fantastic episode lined up for you, an incredible guest, doctor Mark Thompson, currently the American Animal Hospital Association president and also also, at the same time, an owner of two veterinary practice locations.

He's in here. He's doing an incredible career. Earlier this year, doctor Thompson was kind enough to join us, as GeniusFets put on the veterinary practice ownership symposium at, WVC.

We had a panel discussion where we brought on some, some, industry thought leaders to talk about what the trends, the threats, and the opportunities are that are facing veterinary practice ownership today. Doctor Thompson joined us on that panel and led some real wisdom. So wanted to invite him today to the show to dive in and talk about some of those issues a little bit more as well as talking a little bit about his time, as the president and, what that's been like, what he's been able to accomplish. So without any further ado, doctor Thompson, thank you so much for joining us here today on the Genius Pet Show.

Great. Thanks thanks, David, for having me. Yeah. I, I'm honored to be be a part of this.

Yeah. But, just give you a little history of of my journey. Yeah. I grew up on a farm, so I, applied to veterinary school to be a mixed animal practitioner, went through three and a half years before I decided small animal is for me.

And, it's specifically, things like surgery and and advanced diagnostics, you know, really interested me in which, then led me to practice ownership.

I've been a practice owner, for almost twenty four years now, and, I practice in, rural Wisconsin. So, believe it or not, our practice is considered a a rural practice, Pam, as far as, if you look at the the demographics of where I practice. I have two practices, and, and I do this with two doctors, one at each location, myself at at one, you know, which is a highly productive practice, and the other one I have an associate at. And I, currently am the president of the American Animal Hospital Association. I've been on the board since two thousand and and nine, and, I loved that journey, to help others, simplify their journey to excellence in in veterinary practice.

That's our whole whole key with So, Yeah.

And that's fascinating. You know?

Is such an incredible organization leading the industry in terms of standards, and so much. Can you tell us a little bit? I mean, I I know you've been on the board for quite a long time. So you've been you've been shape shaping policy. You've been shaping direction and all of those things for quite a long time. And now for this past year, stepping into the role of of being the president, again, while while continuing to run your two practice locations, amazing, can you tell us a little bit? I think that a lot of people would be interested to hear, you know, what's been involved with your role as the president?

What what type of responsibilities do you have? What have you been able to to see and do, and accomplish, you know, during that time?

So it's it's been an incredible journey.

I didn't realize even as a board member how much work it is to run an association. Yeah. I'm just a day in and day out. It's incredible staff that we have that is running from meeting to meeting at all these conventions.

I've been lucky enough to travel with and see a lot of the the country and meet a lot of, previous presidents, a lot of members along the way, which gives me huge insight to what we do and how much it means to people. It's incredibly, eye opening to see the perception of of and, its membership.

People look for us to guidance, and they follow standards of care, which gives them kind of a backbone to, build their practice on. And everyone practices differently, but, in general, we're just looking at improving the standards of care everywhere.

I know that.

Japan. Yeah. So, we're in Canada, United States, and Japan now. And there will be, extension probably soon into to South Korea. And so we are truly going international.

Wow. So going international, I mean, that's no small deal.

Going international, I mean, the and and not the least of which is translating everything that you have into into new languages, which is a really big deal, and really doing a lot of content myself. I mean, you can there's so much there that can be lost in translation, so there's, you know, a lot to that. Right?

I think that's our biggest hurdle with going internationally is is finding out how translation I mean, you can you can translate something, but it can lose its intent if you are not really working hard on it. We've been working on this international accreditation for Japan for years. Yeah. It's not something that happens overnight at all. Yeah. And I think we've got a good business model to to help them through and extend what they're already the practices that are already there. I think we have eight right now that are accredited, extend what they can do as far as standards of care also.

Love that. Nice. What about any particular, initiatives here at home in the in the states?

Oh, we've got a lot of irons in the fire.

Our strategic, plan is really focused on membership and communication with the membership. We had, a lot of communication with membership, of what direction they want us to go in and what they wanna see, how they would they would like to see, the standards of care change, which we're in a a complete revamp of standards of care right now, which is, nine hundred standards of care that have to be, have to be reevaluated and updated, and, that's something that it was an ongoing process. But this this new process is really looking at where we can extend into things like physical therapy and business management, and, some of the things that go on in in private practice like holistic medicine that we don't touch right now.

So those are things that are on the forefront for us. Yeah. But standards of care is really what we do. Guidelines, for care is another really big thing.

I was a part of group that did the guidelines for utilization of technicians.

I'm really proud of that work, and it's getting a lot of lot of traction.

But one of the bigger things that we're looking at, this year, we published a white pair paper on, staff retention and attrition and, reasons for that. And that has been very eye opening as far as why do people leave, why do they stay, and how do we address the overall culture of our our veterinary practices in really in the US right now is where we're focused, but, that extends to all of our accreditation.

I love that. Absolutely love that.

It's really important work, that stuff that, you know, where do we talk about constantly at Genius Vets? Doctor Drake, recently just finished writing her book that's being picked up by Wiley Press, that that really gets into that, that that building a culture so that you can both attract and retain staff. And once you retain them, that you can actually may have get them all bought in all the way and performing at their highest level. Right?

I mean, you know, it's funny, when you get into all the training stuff, I had a a one practice owner, in a big group discussion say, well, what if I train these people up and, you know, then they leave? But, you know, the antithesis of that is, well, what if you don't train them and they stay? You know? Like Right.

Really gotta do that. So that that's that's fantastic to see that that Oz putting out such great recommendations and all of that. Encourage everybody to take a look at that. You know, when you talk about putting up recommendations, on utilization of text, I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit because something that I happen to know about your practice, and because you recently become a Genius Vets client, I know we're building you a new website.

It's not live yet, but we're working on that stuff for you. But it really opened my eyes to realizing how incredibly productive you are as a veterinarian in your own practice. I would absolutely love if you would talk about that a little bit, you know, today as we go through.

And and, you know, earlier as I said earlier this year, you joined us on a panel discussion, talk about the trends, the threats, and the opportunities. I think that's an opportunity that I really wanna get to. But let's go ahead. Let's do some of this in order. When you talking about the trends, the threats, the opportunities that are facing veterinary practice owners today, what do you think the the the big macro trends are that everybody needs to be paying attention to?

Well, your trends are gonna be where is your where is your pharmacy gonna go?

And, and, really, who's who's gonna be providing care for your patients when you're not there? And is this, truly, a place where telemedicine is gonna come in? Is this something that's gonna gonna happen as far as, emergency clinics. We've had some closed, across the US, and, trends are really, really optimistic for me as far as the efficiency part of veterinary practice and getting out of those dark ages where the veterinarian has to do everything.

So so you're seeing, efficiencies? It sounds like technology driven efficiencies, as well as, being able to, to take care have a good plan for taking care of clients when when the practice isn't open and and managing their pharmacy. So sorry about those a little bit more. On the pharmacy side, what are you talking about? Are you talking about practices putting you know, utilizing their own online pharmacies?

Absolutely. So online pharmacies is is one thing that we do, but we've also, looked at what happens when someone comes and wants to get products somewhere else. And are we gonna be fighting that battle, or are we gonna be charging the appropriate amount for our services that we're billing? And I chose to go the direction of of, making sure I'm charging for the services that I'm billing, and pharmacy would be a bonus in that situation, not, the old way of thinking, which is pharmacy as a subsidy of some kind to our services.

So, you really gotta have things that are are profit centers that stand on their own. And, part of that is trying to figure out what are my costs. You know, what are my costs of my my, staffing? And that really, for us is is around twenty percent, twenty percent related to our veterinary, veterinary billing part of it and, then forty percent of your cost of goods sold. So, if you look at things like dietary, products, your diets and that kind of thing, Unfortunately, they are probably the the least desirable for a practice because of their footprint, to, their their markup value. So, when I look at at food, it's really hard to make a huge margin on food because the retail value and our cost of goods, it does not match any of the other things that I I produce in my practice.

And quite frankly, I can use that footprint for something else that is more productive, such as we're putting in a hyperbaric chamber, in the next, two months here.

Laser treatments, we have physical therapy. We do a lot of physical therapy, and, just advanced imaging, that's becoming more and more available to practices as they look to provide more of that care as some of these emergency clinics struggle to see all of our patients. We have to we have to help them in some way. And part of that is using technology, telemedicine to try and get images looked at, make sure we're not missing things.

All of that stuff is really exciting stuff and really great opportunities for the general practice.

And it sounds like when you're talking about telemedicine, you're talking more like, having radiology specialists that as a doctor you're sending out to collaborating with specialists through telemedicine.

It doesn't sound like you're talking about client facing telemedicine, or are you?

Correct. I am only, yeah, I'm only talking about, the the help that you can get your staff and your doctors to to be more efficient within the practice itself. Not outward facing, not looking at, telemedicine as a whole different ballgame, and in some, states who just can't, can't do that for non non clients. But we've been doing telemedicine, facing the client for for as long as I've been a veterinarian. Yeah. And it's just now going to the talked about it's talked a lot about going to non client telemedicine, which is very different, and trying to gain clients by using telemedicine.

Whether whatever your viewpoint is on that, right now, it's just not a possibility in some states.

Right. Right. Absolutely.

Let's talk about, any other you know, you mentioned that you're you're excited about other efficiencies, maybe technology driven efficiencies.

Do you have any sort of a list of those that are particularly, exciting to you?

Yeah. There's there's a lot. Yeah. Most of my efficiencies come with data entry.

So you you can now even get someone that can phone the not even at your location, be listening and and doing data entry for you in your exam rooms, out, in your treatment areas.

You can have them answering phones remotely. There's just a tremendous amount of help that you wouldn't have to have a staff member, with the expenses of a staff member to to do.

So, I think it's a fairly exciting thing. Obviously, with all of these exciting things, you can't do everything, and you gotta do it with a little bit of care as to how your your particular clients perceive that that additional service that you're providing.

And make sure that you're not, you know, overstepping where some of these technologies get rid of, some of the things that really make our profession great, which is that interaction between client and and veterinarian and client and staff. For my my point of view, it's clients and staff because we use our entire staff to serve our clients, not just the doctor.

Yeah. I think that's such an important point when looking at at anything from, you know and you're talking about you mentioned some technology. I thought you were gonna go, like, AI scribe, you know, scribing direction, and you're actually talking about utilizing people as as, you know, remote workers, right, virtual assistants who can come along. And perhaps, you know, there's a marriage of some of those things.

But as we enable, you know, technology to come in and create efficiencies and stuff, I agree that the wrong way to do it is is sticking it in between the interaction and user experience and saying, hey. Technology, you take care of the client experience. No. No.

No. No. If you keep people, you know, keeping that high touch, you build those relationships. It solidifies those things.

It it brings comfort. It it's that. And where you can allow, you know, the technology to supplement work that you would be doing on the back end that people aren't really seeing anyway, I mean, that's really, I think, the right direction to be looking for these efficiencies.

And that's for my practice, that's exactly what we've done. I don't think our clients really know how much technology goes into the backside of it, whether it's, the AI tools or telemedicine tools that go into radiology, or if it's, just help, from remote remote, employees.

Yeah. That's that's very cool.

If people are looking to get it, how did you go about finding remote employees to what? It sounds like there's they're on the phone with you. They're listening. They're typing.

There's, yeah, I mean, there's a a number of companies that that do that. And, you know, again, there's a pushback of how do you utilize everything.

It really needs to be best practice for you.

And I I think, really, when you look at utilizing stuff like that data entry, positions, you really need to make sure that you're not getting in the way of yourself. Meaning, don't hire someone just to hire someone so you have this technology. Hire someone with a a really clear purpose of this is what's gonna help me to spend more time with my clients. This is gonna help me send more patients.

This is gonna help me do a better job. Those things you have to have to have to figure out before you start implementing every new thing under the sun because there's a whole bunch of them, and they're coming from a lot of different companies. Some of them which are not located in the US, and some of them are right here, you know, next door. So Yeah.

Just make sure that you're doing the right thing for your clients and patients foremost and and firstly before you before you start adding in technology.

I will tell you that I'm a I'm a early adopter of of things. And so, when you become innovative, you have to realize that innovation, requires that you'll fail.

If you're not failing, you're not innovative.

So some of these things will fail in your your practice if you try too many at a time and you don't really ask the questions before you do all. So make sure that you you figure out why and not just because, doctor doctor John's down the road is doing the same thing and it works for him. So, yeah. Yeah. That's that's my advice to people is make sure you you don't let technology over overwhelm you or get in the way of what you're doing.

Yeah. That's spoken. That is advice sage advice spoken, as somebody who I can I can just hear the way you describe that that you are you are dedicated to being an early adopter and an innovator, and realizing that that, yeah, through some fits and starts and some mistakes in hearing something that you have hope into and it not working out, saying no? Well, it doesn't mean I'm not gonna innovate.

It means I'm gonna become more disciplined, and I'm gonna learn from how can I how can I mitigate, you know, the times that that maybe don't go the way as planned? And and having that clear plan is is really the key to that. That's that's very good advice. Hey.

So you we talked about the trends. What do you think some of the threats are that are facing veterinary practice ownership today?

Well, I think, the biggest biggest one we talk about a lot is pharmacy.

However, if you really look at pharmacy, pharmacy could be it could be an opportunity also. An opportunity to run a lower, inventory number, and that is helpful so that you can actually spend that money on other things like service, which are higher margin things.

But pharmacy is a it is a threat, for the general practice because there's so many of us that rely on pharmacy to subsidize our service. And, and a lot of times, we don't even realize what's our what we're doing. We don't even realize that it's really a subsidy for my service.

And so then if you are using it as a subsidy, you need it in order to provide your service, or you think you need it, to provide your service.

So, I think that is a threat for most general practices.

My my feeling is I've decreased my, my inventory and also I've decreased my, pharmacy sales to about sixteen to seventeen percent of my gross income.

And the it's done on purpose. Yeah. I sell the things that they need right away. I start to move towards using online pharmacies, and, allowing people to get a script without punishing them for asking for it. And, by doing that, I'm still providing good quality care, but I'm also, in the position of seeing what my clients want and need and charging for the things that really make me money and find out what those things are before you you start changing everything.

But, when we look at at pharmacy, pharmacy is something that can be easily competed for. It is not easy to compete for, type of, procedure that you do, physical therapy or laser treatments or, even having your your lab work laboratory or imaging, it's very hard to compete for that kind of of income, but it's really easy for someone to pick off your pharmacy.

And, especially, you have to make money. You cannot compete with with these pharmacies that are ordering a million dollars worth of product, and you're ordering forty thousand. Yeah. Just dollars and cents. So that's a that's a threat as far as, but it's an opportunity for us to to grow and get get a little bit better too.

As far as other threats, I think our our biggest threat is ourselves. We, you know, we lose a lot of money when when we talk about staff turnover.

That's one of the biggest threats that I see coming down the the line here is is not being able to retain our our staff.

And, we did a study at did a study that talked about what is the financial impact, and it's somewhere between forty and fifty thousand dollars a staff member.

A trained staff member. Yeah. But I always look at training as as an ongoing thing. We don't get through a training.

We start a training, and we continue to train over and over and over and over again. So, but the biggest threat there is they can find a job, with the same same income that you're providing. You need to give them reasons to stay there, and I think we have those. We are a unique business.

Our business is is animals, helping animals, and there's a reason why they come to to work for us. So we need to really embrace that, figure out what keeps them there, and do our best to say, I've hired them for a reason, so I need to try and work with them to get them up to speed, train them, retrain them, train them again. Yeah. So that you can retain them and save that turnover value.

Yeah. Lot you made a lot of really interesting points there. And the the the two big ones being focusing on your staff and really getting them focusing on that culture, getting them to really enjoy, wanna stay for the long haul, avoiding that turnover, you know, wherever you can.

So important. You know, it's it's amazing to me when I hear practice owners really kind of burning out on their staff, right, and the process of dealing with them. And that's just I mean, it's such a massive and ongoing, never ending part of that's what you do. Right?

When you when you're a a practice owner or a manager, constantly just, that's farming. You know? That's that's nurturing your your field there. They're they're your producers.

You want them to yield fruit, so gotta nourish them. I love that. The other thing is I think it's a really interesting framing for you to talk about, pharmacy as actually subsidizing services. And I think as as soon as you say that, you go, oh, wait a second here.

That's not the way it should be. Pharmacy can't be subsidizing this. This has to the services need to survive on their own, and be profitable on their own. And the pharmacy, to what extent you're doing it, it needs to also it needs to be profitable on its own.

And so Ronnie, it almost like they're two separate businesses so that you're cutting the line of that dependency. And then if you're able to really do that, you don't it doesn't have to be bring the stress. You're not feeling the stress of your threat of pharmacy because you know that your services can can stand on their own. But the the other part that we're looking at, say, we're talking about threats.

A lot of the feedback we got from practice owners around the country is, you know, they're feeling their profit margins being squeezed. Right? And they're and and the offsetting fear of that is they raised their prices. A lot of them for the first time during COVID, just in recent years, first time they've raised their prices in way too long.

You know? Most prices have gone, like, a decade, hadn't raised their prices or more. They raised their price a little bit, and now they're they're feeling like maybe they hit the top of the price elasticity curve. Right?

I mean, we are actually finally seeing prices in different categories across the country coming down. So that that's a that's an effective company saying, hey. Prices ran up. Consumers are pulling back.

If we wanna maintain sales, maybe we have to come down a little bit. But it seems like, you know, to make your services stand on their own and really hold that profit margin, if anything, maybe more people are you suggesting maybe prices need to go up a little bit further so you can solidify, you know, that business to be profitable just on a service side?

You know, how does this there's probably a lot a lot of people who are listening who are dealing with this, you know, these conflicting desires and things that they're dealing with. You know?

Yeah. And one of the things that we've done is offer wellness plans. So they offer, monthly payment plans to their clients. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting to see. I I look at I don't look at prices anymore, other than when I'm changing things. I have my staff deal with it because I'm more sensitive to price increases and say, oh, maybe we shouldn't do that than than, presenting that to add well, from the staff to the client. And we see less pushback, to the staff than we do to the doctor.

But, yeah, I do think that we need to make sure we're we're profitable on our services. And if you're not figuring out how much that cost you, everything that goes into it, staffing is a big part of that. Twenty percent of your your, cost of of a services you're staffing.

So make sure that you're calculating that out and finding out how much does it cost me to do a nail trim. Because if you're losing two dollars on a nail trim, you don't need to do more. You need to do less or move your price.

If you wanna do something for less than what it cost you, more power to you. But figure it out and find out what you wanna lose money on, what you wanna wanna make money on. Because at the end of the day, you should start with a profit margin and work your way back. Instead of start with how do I raise my prices, I would go to the end of it and say, I wanna make twenty percent at the end of the day and then take out everything and say, how much am I making at the end of the day?

I like it.

Yep. Pragmatic approach to evaluating your price structures, throughout and maybe costs and looking at where can you be more efficient, on the things that are going into cost of goods and all of that. Fantastic. Hey. One more big question. Next the last big section here, really wanna get your advice on, is what do you think the opportunities are? Opportunities facing veterinary practice owners today that they can take hold of, grab hold of so that they're running thriving businesses today and for years to come?

There's there's a lot. I mean, veterinary medicine, I'm really optimistic for what what we have. Yeah. We can we can do so much nowadays, and people are are asking for it. They're asking for physical therapy. They're asking for innovative treatments like hyperbaric oxygen, chiropractic, acupuncture. That doesn't mean that chiropractic and acupuncture should be going through your doctor's schedule.

What I'm talking about is is making your practice as efficient as it possibly can. And we have we have more tools to increase our efficiency in both marketing and, actual day to day workload than we've ever had. Meaning companies can help you do that just like Genius Beds can can help you with marketing goals that you have.

But, also, when you look at opportunities for for innovative treatments, physical therapy didn't exist when I I started this profession. And, I look at it, and we've been doing physical therapy now for, a little over twenty four years.

We started small and just worked up, and now it's its own profit center. And, we do well with it.

But find what you're you really like doing and and expand what you can do. But the the possibilities are really great for veterinary medicine today, and I think people are looking for better ways to treat their animals. We can do so much with the help of technology to help us provide better service at point of care.

So that clinic, when you get a fine needle aspirate, you can actually send that out and have someone look at it. See, I'm a pathologist look at it. You don't have to be perfect at everything that that you do. You just have to know where to find the answers, and you have to know where to use the technologies in your practice to your benefit.

And, again, that's gonna be different for every veterinarian. So every veterinarian has an idea of what they wanna do in their career.

Mine was not, to hold puppies and kittens. Mine was, more of, idea of how many people can I help and how, how many people can I touch? Not necessarily how many animals can I touch? How many people can you touch?

If you touch people, yeah, and you help animals, this profession's bright for everyone. And it and I've I had a I had a student that came to me, about two years ago, and she's she was, watching in the clinic. And I said, why are you here? She goes, well, I I don't wanna deal with people.

And I said, oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, I'd hate to tell you this. You're in fourth year veterinary school, but you went to school for the wrong thing because that's what we're doing.

We're helping people help their pets.

And, indirectly, it's it's translated into how can how can I do a better job every day? But, but we're helping people, and that's really the key of how do you use technology? How do you use your staff? How do you make money at this?

And do all of that and balance everything with your your life outside of veterinary medicine.

Yeah.

Well, you know, if that absolutely is a people business, you know, and and I think that goes you know, it's something we talk about a lot. I always try and set the mindset for veterinarians, because vets are and particularly practice owners, but, you know, you're typically, most veterinarians are so focused on on the service delivery to the pet. They love the pets. They're dedicated, passionate about the medicine.

They want to practice good medicine. They want to do a good job for the pets. You know, but you're you're you're examining and operating on and and prescribing to pets, but it is the the the pet parent. It's the pet owner that is with that pet all the time.

If you really wanna make that pet's life better, you gotta start by educating that pet owner. You know? And they're the decision maker. They're the caretaker.

They're the ones that's with there's eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in a year. And how much of that time does does a pet owner actually get to spend with a doctor asking questions and getting good information from the veterinarian? If the fifteen minutes, you know, half an hour, maybe.

If the rest of the time, what are they doing? The average pet owner has a few questions a week. So they take those questions. They go to Google, and then they start their search.

They go to Google. They go to search engines. They're going looking for information. And so what what I'm waving the flag and beating the drum on is veterinarians have to take much more seriously their job as a information provider, and to build your website as an information rich resource because veterinary care truly from the perspective of the of the client, veterinary care is about information first and services second.

If they they need to have the information so they can okay the services, so they can even bring their pet in to know that the pet needs services. They need that first. They need to get that information. And every veterinarian that I talk to can connect with the stories of, you know, people coming in, and they wanna talk about they're all proud of the research they've done online to try and deduce it themselves.

And, you know, they feel like they've done a good thing. Then they're often coming in misinformed. Bad information that's out there, you know, because they're not getting it directly from the veterinarian because their veterinarian who they're coming to didn't actually, you go to their website and there's like eight bullet points. We do wellness care.

We do preventative this. We do senior care. We do dental. And there's like no information about what does that mean and what does that go into, and it's not answering people's questions.

So really important to put on that that hat of the information provider and then to empower the staff to train them well on the right information and to to allow them to, you know, to do what they can to contribute to that ecosystem of giving good information to pet owners. I think that's a tremendous opportunity. But I also happen to know you're one of the more most, probably most productive individual vets in the country. You have a very high level of productivity.

Do you mind sharing with the audience where your productivity is at in your practice?

My personal productivity?

Yeah. Like, you're just a high producer.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so, as present, it's a little little lower than, than, it would be You only have another full time job that's taking it.

You're right.

The yeah. I I produce over two point six million, a year.

And that's just I mean, this this year is gonna be a little down just because of the time away from from home. But two point six is is because of my staff. It is not because I'm something really great that I'm doing something different than everyone else. It's because I train my staff.

Every single day. I train them and retrain them, and and we get better every single day. And that attitude of of I've made it is not there. We we wanna say we can improve on everything that we do. Every day, we can do something better and be more successful the next day.

And so, it's really What what is your what's your support staff ratio for you?

I have almost seven seven point one to to one.

Seven point one to one support staff. So, yeah, it's interesting because I've talked to other very high producers. You're you're producing significantly. I think that's the highest individual production number that that I've come across.

And I've also talked to other other vets that are doing, you know, one and a half, one and six, something like that, but they're using they're using a lot of staff. They're using ten staff, twelve staff, support staff. So the fact that you're able to do that with with a a number that the the old a couple years ago, the reports said that, you know, kind of the bell curve seemed to be between six to eight staff, support staff per veterinarian is kind of a sweet spot for productivity. And you're right there. Seven, seven point one. Sure.

So Incredible. But we've got we've got eyes on something much bigger than that. See, I think, as a as, an a doctor that utilizes their staff to its fullest, you can go way go way over three million, way over three million, per doctor. It's just what do you want out of practice, and do you want people to stay with you?

If you do, you you have to utilize them because they're not there to watch you work. And that's that's, I think, one of the biggest things I see when when veterinarians come to my practice. They're they're just like, well, I wanna do that. Well, okay.

Yeah. But that's their job.

And they're not gonna stay if they're not able to do their job, because, you know, you you wanna use your mind for something great. And if you make it great for them, they're gonna make it great for you. And Yeah.

That's the number one reason for vet tech burnout, right, is that they thought they were gonna get in and do all the stuff that you would see like a, you know, a nurse doing in a human doctor office. They do the majority of it. The doctor swoops in and out maybe, you know, but the nurse is doing everything. And then they get in in a lot of veterinary practices. They're, you know, treated like a glorified receptionist. They're not allowed to do higher level stuff. You know?

And every high producer that I've talked to, one thing they consistently always say is, you know, you let you let the lowest paid employee do the highest level of work that they're capable of doing capable of doing. Let them let them get up so the doctor's only doing the real smart doctor stuff that only you can do.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah. It's, it's more fun for me to practice than when I started.

Yeah. When I started, I had to do all that kind of stuff, and and, I didn't I came in with a staff that that really didn't have training, and it's an evolution. And you don't get there overnight. You don't get there in a day or or a year or two years.

You get there over a long period of time and make it what you what you want it to be. Your vision of practice is gonna be different than mine. Yeah. But, make that vision happen and take some people along the way with you.

Yeah. And I think that's, the best advice I could give give people is take people along the way.

Show them how to do their job, and, I think you're gonna be better off in in the long run for it.

Yeah. I love it. Well, thank you so much, doctor Thomas, for taking some time out of your incredibly busy schedule to, to spend with us here, to share your wisdom. We're gonna send this far and wide as we can, try and get this in front of as many, veterinary practice owners and managers, as we possibly can. Any parting words of wisdom or advice, recommendations, what you think practice owners should be looking at and doing right now?

Yeah. Staff retention is your biggest is your biggest, issue. And I think if you look at how do I retain my staff, that's the biggest takeaway I have.

I have most of my techs have been with me for, ten, fifteen years.

And they're they're they're they're not gonna go anywhere else because they're not gonna be utilized like we utilize them. They're, they're able to do their job. So, keep that in mind, how much it costs you for staff turnover. Yeah. And then make sure you realize that when someone's struggling that, oh, this is gonna cost me fifty thousand dollars if they leave. So try and figure out how to make it so that they're not so not not struggling so much.

Make it a better place for them to work, and everyone's gonna benefit from that.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I love it. Well, again, thank you so much, for your time here today.

And to everybody who tuned in, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day. Hey. We got a lot of stuff, coming up for you in in future episodes. So continue to check those out.

And remember, right now, your veterinary practice already has on genius vets dot com a full page profile. It's true. It's live. It's right now.

Go check it out. Go to genius vets dot com. You can look for we got a little search bar. You can put in your address.

You can see your veterinary practice profile, full page profile. You can claim it for free. It's a hundred percent free. These rank really well in Google search results.

And what you want is when anybody goes online looking for anything related to pet care in your area, all roads online point to you. That's what you really want. This that helps you do that. Go make sure that the information about your practice that's on there is correct.

If you see anything incorrect, hey, claim that profile. We're going to help you correct it, and it's really easy to take care of.

Lot more stuff that, you know, we can do for you. Check it out. And, again, look, look for our next episode next week.

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 and 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.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 to the GeniusFets Show. I'm your host, David Hall, cofounder here at GeniusFets.

And today, we've got a fantastic episode lined up for you, an incredible guest, doctor Mark Thompson, currently the American Animal Hospital Association president and also also, at the same time, an owner of two veterinary practice locations.

He's in here. He's doing an incredible career. Earlier this year, doctor Thompson was kind enough to join us, as GeniusFets put on the veterinary practice ownership symposium at, WVC.

We had a panel discussion where we brought on some, some, industry thought leaders to talk about what the trends, the threats, and the opportunities are that are facing veterinary practice ownership today. Doctor Thompson joined us on that panel and led some real wisdom. So wanted to invite him today to the show to dive in and talk about some of those issues a little bit more as well as talking a little bit about his time, as the president and, what that's been like, what he's been able to accomplish. So without any further ado, doctor Thompson, thank you so much for joining us here today on the Genius Pet Show.

Great. Thanks thanks, David, for having me. Yeah. I, I'm honored to be be a part of this.

Yeah. But, just give you a little history of of my journey. Yeah. I grew up on a farm, so I, applied to veterinary school to be a mixed animal practitioner, went through three and a half years before I decided small animal is for me.

And, it's specifically, things like surgery and and advanced diagnostics, you know, really interested me in which, then led me to practice ownership.

I've been a practice owner, for almost twenty four years now, and, I practice in, rural Wisconsin. So, believe it or not, our practice is considered a a rural practice, Pam, as far as, if you look at the the demographics of where I practice. I have two practices, and, and I do this with two doctors, one at each location, myself at at one, you know, which is a highly productive practice, and the other one I have an associate at. And I, currently am the president of the American Animal Hospital Association. I've been on the board since two thousand and and nine, and, I loved that journey, to help others, simplify their journey to excellence in in veterinary practice.

That's our whole whole key with So, Yeah.

And that's fascinating. You know?

Is such an incredible organization leading the industry in terms of standards, and so much. Can you tell us a little bit? I mean, I I know you've been on the board for quite a long time. So you've been you've been shape shaping policy. You've been shaping direction and all of those things for quite a long time. And now for this past year, stepping into the role of of being the president, again, while while continuing to run your two practice locations, amazing, can you tell us a little bit? I think that a lot of people would be interested to hear, you know, what's been involved with your role as the president?

What what type of responsibilities do you have? What have you been able to to see and do, and accomplish, you know, during that time?

So it's it's been an incredible journey.

I didn't realize even as a board member how much work it is to run an association. Yeah. I'm just a day in and day out. It's incredible staff that we have that is running from meeting to meeting at all these conventions.

I've been lucky enough to travel with and see a lot of the the country and meet a lot of, previous presidents, a lot of members along the way, which gives me huge insight to what we do and how much it means to people. It's incredibly, eye opening to see the perception of of and, its membership.

People look for us to guidance, and they follow standards of care, which gives them kind of a backbone to, build their practice on. And everyone practices differently, but, in general, we're just looking at improving the standards of care everywhere.

I know that.

Japan. Yeah. So, we're in Canada, United States, and Japan now. And there will be, extension probably soon into to South Korea. And so we are truly going international.

Wow. So going international, I mean, that's no small deal.

Going international, I mean, the and and not the least of which is translating everything that you have into into new languages, which is a really big deal, and really doing a lot of content myself. I mean, you can there's so much there that can be lost in translation, so there's, you know, a lot to that. Right?

I think that's our biggest hurdle with going internationally is is finding out how translation I mean, you can you can translate something, but it can lose its intent if you are not really working hard on it. We've been working on this international accreditation for Japan for years. Yeah. It's not something that happens overnight at all. Yeah. And I think we've got a good business model to to help them through and extend what they're already the practices that are already there. I think we have eight right now that are accredited, extend what they can do as far as standards of care also.

Love that. Nice. What about any particular, initiatives here at home in the in the states?

Oh, we've got a lot of irons in the fire.

Our strategic, plan is really focused on membership and communication with the membership. We had, a lot of communication with membership, of what direction they want us to go in and what they wanna see, how they would they would like to see, the standards of care change, which we're in a a complete revamp of standards of care right now, which is, nine hundred standards of care that have to be, have to be reevaluated and updated, and, that's something that it was an ongoing process. But this this new process is really looking at where we can extend into things like physical therapy and business management, and, some of the things that go on in in private practice like holistic medicine that we don't touch right now.

So those are things that are on the forefront for us. Yeah. But standards of care is really what we do. Guidelines, for care is another really big thing.

I was a part of group that did the guidelines for utilization of technicians.

I'm really proud of that work, and it's getting a lot of lot of traction.

But one of the bigger things that we're looking at, this year, we published a white pair paper on, staff retention and attrition and, reasons for that. And that has been very eye opening as far as why do people leave, why do they stay, and how do we address the overall culture of our our veterinary practices in really in the US right now is where we're focused, but, that extends to all of our accreditation.

I love that. Absolutely love that.

It's really important work, that stuff that, you know, where do we talk about constantly at Genius Vets? Doctor Drake, recently just finished writing her book that's being picked up by Wiley Press, that that really gets into that, that that building a culture so that you can both attract and retain staff. And once you retain them, that you can actually may have get them all bought in all the way and performing at their highest level. Right?

I mean, you know, it's funny, when you get into all the training stuff, I had a a one practice owner, in a big group discussion say, well, what if I train these people up and, you know, then they leave? But, you know, the antithesis of that is, well, what if you don't train them and they stay? You know? Like Right.

Really gotta do that. So that that's that's fantastic to see that that Oz putting out such great recommendations and all of that. Encourage everybody to take a look at that. You know, when you talk about putting up recommendations, on utilization of text, I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit because something that I happen to know about your practice, and because you recently become a Genius Vets client, I know we're building you a new website.

It's not live yet, but we're working on that stuff for you. But it really opened my eyes to realizing how incredibly productive you are as a veterinarian in your own practice. I would absolutely love if you would talk about that a little bit, you know, today as we go through.

And and, you know, earlier as I said earlier this year, you joined us on a panel discussion, talk about the trends, the threats, and the opportunities. I think that's an opportunity that I really wanna get to. But let's go ahead. Let's do some of this in order. When you talking about the trends, the threats, the opportunities that are facing veterinary practice owners today, what do you think the the the big macro trends are that everybody needs to be paying attention to?

Well, your trends are gonna be where is your where is your pharmacy gonna go?

And, and, really, who's who's gonna be providing care for your patients when you're not there? And is this, truly, a place where telemedicine is gonna come in? Is this something that's gonna gonna happen as far as, emergency clinics. We've had some closed, across the US, and, trends are really, really optimistic for me as far as the efficiency part of veterinary practice and getting out of those dark ages where the veterinarian has to do everything.

So so you're seeing, efficiencies? It sounds like technology driven efficiencies, as well as, being able to, to take care have a good plan for taking care of clients when when the practice isn't open and and managing their pharmacy. So sorry about those a little bit more. On the pharmacy side, what are you talking about? Are you talking about practices putting you know, utilizing their own online pharmacies?

Absolutely. So online pharmacies is is one thing that we do, but we've also, looked at what happens when someone comes and wants to get products somewhere else. And are we gonna be fighting that battle, or are we gonna be charging the appropriate amount for our services that we're billing? And I chose to go the direction of of, making sure I'm charging for the services that I'm billing, and pharmacy would be a bonus in that situation, not, the old way of thinking, which is pharmacy as a subsidy of some kind to our services.

So, you really gotta have things that are are profit centers that stand on their own. And, part of that is trying to figure out what are my costs. You know, what are my costs of my my, staffing? And that really, for us is is around twenty percent, twenty percent related to our veterinary, veterinary billing part of it and, then forty percent of your cost of goods sold. So, if you look at things like dietary, products, your diets and that kind of thing, Unfortunately, they are probably the the least desirable for a practice because of their footprint, to, their their markup value. So, when I look at at food, it's really hard to make a huge margin on food because the retail value and our cost of goods, it does not match any of the other things that I I produce in my practice.

And quite frankly, I can use that footprint for something else that is more productive, such as we're putting in a hyperbaric chamber, in the next, two months here.

Laser treatments, we have physical therapy. We do a lot of physical therapy, and, just advanced imaging, that's becoming more and more available to practices as they look to provide more of that care as some of these emergency clinics struggle to see all of our patients. We have to we have to help them in some way. And part of that is using technology, telemedicine to try and get images looked at, make sure we're not missing things.

All of that stuff is really exciting stuff and really great opportunities for the general practice.

And it sounds like when you're talking about telemedicine, you're talking more like, having radiology specialists that as a doctor you're sending out to collaborating with specialists through telemedicine.

It doesn't sound like you're talking about client facing telemedicine, or are you?

Correct. I am only, yeah, I'm only talking about, the the help that you can get your staff and your doctors to to be more efficient within the practice itself. Not outward facing, not looking at, telemedicine as a whole different ballgame, and in some, states who just can't, can't do that for non non clients. But we've been doing telemedicine, facing the client for for as long as I've been a veterinarian. Yeah. And it's just now going to the talked about it's talked a lot about going to non client telemedicine, which is very different, and trying to gain clients by using telemedicine.

Whether whatever your viewpoint is on that, right now, it's just not a possibility in some states.

Right. Right. Absolutely.

Let's talk about, any other you know, you mentioned that you're you're excited about other efficiencies, maybe technology driven efficiencies.

Do you have any sort of a list of those that are particularly, exciting to you?

Yeah. There's there's a lot. Yeah. Most of my efficiencies come with data entry.

So you you can now even get someone that can phone the not even at your location, be listening and and doing data entry for you in your exam rooms, out, in your treatment areas.

You can have them answering phones remotely. There's just a tremendous amount of help that you wouldn't have to have a staff member, with the expenses of a staff member to to do.

So, I think it's a fairly exciting thing. Obviously, with all of these exciting things, you can't do everything, and you gotta do it with a little bit of care as to how your your particular clients perceive that that additional service that you're providing.

And make sure that you're not, you know, overstepping where some of these technologies get rid of, some of the things that really make our profession great, which is that interaction between client and and veterinarian and client and staff. For my my point of view, it's clients and staff because we use our entire staff to serve our clients, not just the doctor.

Yeah. I think that's such an important point when looking at at anything from, you know and you're talking about you mentioned some technology. I thought you were gonna go, like, AI scribe, you know, scribing direction, and you're actually talking about utilizing people as as, you know, remote workers, right, virtual assistants who can come along. And perhaps, you know, there's a marriage of some of those things.

But as we enable, you know, technology to come in and create efficiencies and stuff, I agree that the wrong way to do it is is sticking it in between the interaction and user experience and saying, hey. Technology, you take care of the client experience. No. No.

No. No. If you keep people, you know, keeping that high touch, you build those relationships. It solidifies those things.

It it brings comfort. It it's that. And where you can allow, you know, the technology to supplement work that you would be doing on the back end that people aren't really seeing anyway, I mean, that's really, I think, the right direction to be looking for these efficiencies.

And that's for my practice, that's exactly what we've done. I don't think our clients really know how much technology goes into the backside of it, whether it's, the AI tools or telemedicine tools that go into radiology, or if it's, just help, from remote remote, employees.

Yeah. That's that's very cool.

If people are looking to get it, how did you go about finding remote employees to what? It sounds like there's they're on the phone with you. They're listening. They're typing.

There's, yeah, I mean, there's a a number of companies that that do that. And, you know, again, there's a pushback of how do you utilize everything.

It really needs to be best practice for you.

And I I think, really, when you look at utilizing stuff like that data entry, positions, you really need to make sure that you're not getting in the way of yourself. Meaning, don't hire someone just to hire someone so you have this technology. Hire someone with a a really clear purpose of this is what's gonna help me to spend more time with my clients. This is gonna help me send more patients.

This is gonna help me do a better job. Those things you have to have to have to figure out before you start implementing every new thing under the sun because there's a whole bunch of them, and they're coming from a lot of different companies. Some of them which are not located in the US, and some of them are right here, you know, next door. So Yeah.

Just make sure that you're doing the right thing for your clients and patients foremost and and firstly before you before you start adding in technology.

I will tell you that I'm a I'm a early adopter of of things. And so, when you become innovative, you have to realize that innovation, requires that you'll fail.

If you're not failing, you're not innovative.

So some of these things will fail in your your practice if you try too many at a time and you don't really ask the questions before you do all. So make sure that you you figure out why and not just because, doctor doctor John's down the road is doing the same thing and it works for him. So, yeah. Yeah. That's that's my advice to people is make sure you you don't let technology over overwhelm you or get in the way of what you're doing.

Yeah. That's spoken. That is advice sage advice spoken, as somebody who I can I can just hear the way you describe that that you are you are dedicated to being an early adopter and an innovator, and realizing that that, yeah, through some fits and starts and some mistakes in hearing something that you have hope into and it not working out, saying no? Well, it doesn't mean I'm not gonna innovate.

It means I'm gonna become more disciplined, and I'm gonna learn from how can I how can I mitigate, you know, the times that that maybe don't go the way as planned? And and having that clear plan is is really the key to that. That's that's very good advice. Hey.

So you we talked about the trends. What do you think some of the threats are that are facing veterinary practice ownership today?

Well, I think, the biggest biggest one we talk about a lot is pharmacy.

However, if you really look at pharmacy, pharmacy could be it could be an opportunity also. An opportunity to run a lower, inventory number, and that is helpful so that you can actually spend that money on other things like service, which are higher margin things.

But pharmacy is a it is a threat, for the general practice because there's so many of us that rely on pharmacy to subsidize our service. And, and a lot of times, we don't even realize what's our what we're doing. We don't even realize that it's really a subsidy for my service.

And so then if you are using it as a subsidy, you need it in order to provide your service, or you think you need it, to provide your service.

So, I think that is a threat for most general practices.

My my feeling is I've decreased my, my inventory and also I've decreased my, pharmacy sales to about sixteen to seventeen percent of my gross income.

And the it's done on purpose. Yeah. I sell the things that they need right away. I start to move towards using online pharmacies, and, allowing people to get a script without punishing them for asking for it. And, by doing that, I'm still providing good quality care, but I'm also, in the position of seeing what my clients want and need and charging for the things that really make me money and find out what those things are before you you start changing everything.

But, when we look at at pharmacy, pharmacy is something that can be easily competed for. It is not easy to compete for, type of, procedure that you do, physical therapy or laser treatments or, even having your your lab work laboratory or imaging, it's very hard to compete for that kind of of income, but it's really easy for someone to pick off your pharmacy.

And, especially, you have to make money. You cannot compete with with these pharmacies that are ordering a million dollars worth of product, and you're ordering forty thousand. Yeah. Just dollars and cents. So that's a that's a threat as far as, but it's an opportunity for us to to grow and get get a little bit better too.

As far as other threats, I think our our biggest threat is ourselves. We, you know, we lose a lot of money when when we talk about staff turnover.

That's one of the biggest threats that I see coming down the the line here is is not being able to retain our our staff.

And, we did a study at did a study that talked about what is the financial impact, and it's somewhere between forty and fifty thousand dollars a staff member.

A trained staff member. Yeah. But I always look at training as as an ongoing thing. We don't get through a training.

We start a training, and we continue to train over and over and over and over again. So, but the biggest threat there is they can find a job, with the same same income that you're providing. You need to give them reasons to stay there, and I think we have those. We are a unique business.

Our business is is animals, helping animals, and there's a reason why they come to to work for us. So we need to really embrace that, figure out what keeps them there, and do our best to say, I've hired them for a reason, so I need to try and work with them to get them up to speed, train them, retrain them, train them again. Yeah. So that you can retain them and save that turnover value.

Yeah. Lot you made a lot of really interesting points there. And the the the two big ones being focusing on your staff and really getting them focusing on that culture, getting them to really enjoy, wanna stay for the long haul, avoiding that turnover, you know, wherever you can.

So important. You know, it's it's amazing to me when I hear practice owners really kind of burning out on their staff, right, and the process of dealing with them. And that's just I mean, it's such a massive and ongoing, never ending part of that's what you do. Right?

When you when you're a a practice owner or a manager, constantly just, that's farming. You know? That's that's nurturing your your field there. They're they're your producers.

You want them to yield fruit, so gotta nourish them. I love that. The other thing is I think it's a really interesting framing for you to talk about, pharmacy as actually subsidizing services. And I think as as soon as you say that, you go, oh, wait a second here.

That's not the way it should be. Pharmacy can't be subsidizing this. This has to the services need to survive on their own, and be profitable on their own. And the pharmacy, to what extent you're doing it, it needs to also it needs to be profitable on its own.

And so Ronnie, it almost like they're two separate businesses so that you're cutting the line of that dependency. And then if you're able to really do that, you don't it doesn't have to be bring the stress. You're not feeling the stress of your threat of pharmacy because you know that your services can can stand on their own. But the the other part that we're looking at, say, we're talking about threats.

A lot of the feedback we got from practice owners around the country is, you know, they're feeling their profit margins being squeezed. Right? And they're and and the offsetting fear of that is they raised their prices. A lot of them for the first time during COVID, just in recent years, first time they've raised their prices in way too long.

You know? Most prices have gone, like, a decade, hadn't raised their prices or more. They raised their price a little bit, and now they're they're feeling like maybe they hit the top of the price elasticity curve. Right?

I mean, we are actually finally seeing prices in different categories across the country coming down. So that that's a that's an effective company saying, hey. Prices ran up. Consumers are pulling back.

If we wanna maintain sales, maybe we have to come down a little bit. But it seems like, you know, to make your services stand on their own and really hold that profit margin, if anything, maybe more people are you suggesting maybe prices need to go up a little bit further so you can solidify, you know, that business to be profitable just on a service side?

You know, how does this there's probably a lot a lot of people who are listening who are dealing with this, you know, these conflicting desires and things that they're dealing with. You know?

Yeah. And one of the things that we've done is offer wellness plans. So they offer, monthly payment plans to their clients. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting to see. I I look at I don't look at prices anymore, other than when I'm changing things. I have my staff deal with it because I'm more sensitive to price increases and say, oh, maybe we shouldn't do that than than, presenting that to add well, from the staff to the client. And we see less pushback, to the staff than we do to the doctor.

But, yeah, I do think that we need to make sure we're we're profitable on our services. And if you're not figuring out how much that cost you, everything that goes into it, staffing is a big part of that. Twenty percent of your your, cost of of a services you're staffing.

So make sure that you're calculating that out and finding out how much does it cost me to do a nail trim. Because if you're losing two dollars on a nail trim, you don't need to do more. You need to do less or move your price.

If you wanna do something for less than what it cost you, more power to you. But figure it out and find out what you wanna lose money on, what you wanna wanna make money on. Because at the end of the day, you should start with a profit margin and work your way back. Instead of start with how do I raise my prices, I would go to the end of it and say, I wanna make twenty percent at the end of the day and then take out everything and say, how much am I making at the end of the day?

I like it.

Yep. Pragmatic approach to evaluating your price structures, throughout and maybe costs and looking at where can you be more efficient, on the things that are going into cost of goods and all of that. Fantastic. Hey. One more big question. Next the last big section here, really wanna get your advice on, is what do you think the opportunities are? Opportunities facing veterinary practice owners today that they can take hold of, grab hold of so that they're running thriving businesses today and for years to come?

There's there's a lot. I mean, veterinary medicine, I'm really optimistic for what what we have. Yeah. We can we can do so much nowadays, and people are are asking for it. They're asking for physical therapy. They're asking for innovative treatments like hyperbaric oxygen, chiropractic, acupuncture. That doesn't mean that chiropractic and acupuncture should be going through your doctor's schedule.

What I'm talking about is is making your practice as efficient as it possibly can. And we have we have more tools to increase our efficiency in both marketing and, actual day to day workload than we've ever had. Meaning companies can help you do that just like Genius Beds can can help you with marketing goals that you have.

But, also, when you look at opportunities for for innovative treatments, physical therapy didn't exist when I I started this profession. And, I look at it, and we've been doing physical therapy now for, a little over twenty four years.

We started small and just worked up, and now it's its own profit center. And, we do well with it.

But find what you're you really like doing and and expand what you can do. But the the possibilities are really great for veterinary medicine today, and I think people are looking for better ways to treat their animals. We can do so much with the help of technology to help us provide better service at point of care.

So that clinic, when you get a fine needle aspirate, you can actually send that out and have someone look at it. See, I'm a pathologist look at it. You don't have to be perfect at everything that that you do. You just have to know where to find the answers, and you have to know where to use the technologies in your practice to your benefit.

And, again, that's gonna be different for every veterinarian. So every veterinarian has an idea of what they wanna do in their career.

Mine was not, to hold puppies and kittens. Mine was, more of, idea of how many people can I help and how, how many people can I touch? Not necessarily how many animals can I touch? How many people can you touch?

If you touch people, yeah, and you help animals, this profession's bright for everyone. And it and I've I had a I had a student that came to me, about two years ago, and she's she was, watching in the clinic. And I said, why are you here? She goes, well, I I don't wanna deal with people.

And I said, oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, I'd hate to tell you this. You're in fourth year veterinary school, but you went to school for the wrong thing because that's what we're doing.

We're helping people help their pets.

And, indirectly, it's it's translated into how can how can I do a better job every day? But, but we're helping people, and that's really the key of how do you use technology? How do you use your staff? How do you make money at this?

And do all of that and balance everything with your your life outside of veterinary medicine.

Yeah.

Well, you know, if that absolutely is a people business, you know, and and I think that goes you know, it's something we talk about a lot. I always try and set the mindset for veterinarians, because vets are and particularly practice owners, but, you know, you're typically, most veterinarians are so focused on on the service delivery to the pet. They love the pets. They're dedicated, passionate about the medicine.

They want to practice good medicine. They want to do a good job for the pets. You know, but you're you're you're examining and operating on and and prescribing to pets, but it is the the the pet parent. It's the pet owner that is with that pet all the time.

If you really wanna make that pet's life better, you gotta start by educating that pet owner. You know? And they're the decision maker. They're the caretaker.

They're the ones that's with there's eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in a year. And how much of that time does does a pet owner actually get to spend with a doctor asking questions and getting good information from the veterinarian? If the fifteen minutes, you know, half an hour, maybe.

If the rest of the time, what are they doing? The average pet owner has a few questions a week. So they take those questions. They go to Google, and then they start their search.

They go to Google. They go to search engines. They're going looking for information. And so what what I'm waving the flag and beating the drum on is veterinarians have to take much more seriously their job as a information provider, and to build your website as an information rich resource because veterinary care truly from the perspective of the of the client, veterinary care is about information first and services second.

If they they need to have the information so they can okay the services, so they can even bring their pet in to know that the pet needs services. They need that first. They need to get that information. And every veterinarian that I talk to can connect with the stories of, you know, people coming in, and they wanna talk about they're all proud of the research they've done online to try and deduce it themselves.

And, you know, they feel like they've done a good thing. Then they're often coming in misinformed. Bad information that's out there, you know, because they're not getting it directly from the veterinarian because their veterinarian who they're coming to didn't actually, you go to their website and there's like eight bullet points. We do wellness care.

We do preventative this. We do senior care. We do dental. And there's like no information about what does that mean and what does that go into, and it's not answering people's questions.

So really important to put on that that hat of the information provider and then to empower the staff to train them well on the right information and to to allow them to, you know, to do what they can to contribute to that ecosystem of giving good information to pet owners. I think that's a tremendous opportunity. But I also happen to know you're one of the more most, probably most productive individual vets in the country. You have a very high level of productivity.

Do you mind sharing with the audience where your productivity is at in your practice?

My personal productivity?

Yeah. Like, you're just a high producer.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so, as present, it's a little little lower than, than, it would be You only have another full time job that's taking it.

You're right.

The yeah. I I produce over two point six million, a year.

And that's just I mean, this this year is gonna be a little down just because of the time away from from home. But two point six is is because of my staff. It is not because I'm something really great that I'm doing something different than everyone else. It's because I train my staff.

Every single day. I train them and retrain them, and and we get better every single day. And that attitude of of I've made it is not there. We we wanna say we can improve on everything that we do. Every day, we can do something better and be more successful the next day.

And so, it's really What what is your what's your support staff ratio for you?

I have almost seven seven point one to to one.

Seven point one to one support staff. So, yeah, it's interesting because I've talked to other very high producers. You're you're producing significantly. I think that's the highest individual production number that that I've come across.

And I've also talked to other other vets that are doing, you know, one and a half, one and six, something like that, but they're using they're using a lot of staff. They're using ten staff, twelve staff, support staff. So the fact that you're able to do that with with a a number that the the old a couple years ago, the reports said that, you know, kind of the bell curve seemed to be between six to eight staff, support staff per veterinarian is kind of a sweet spot for productivity. And you're right there. Seven, seven point one. Sure.

So Incredible. But we've got we've got eyes on something much bigger than that. See, I think, as a as, an a doctor that utilizes their staff to its fullest, you can go way go way over three million, way over three million, per doctor. It's just what do you want out of practice, and do you want people to stay with you?

If you do, you you have to utilize them because they're not there to watch you work. And that's that's, I think, one of the biggest things I see when when veterinarians come to my practice. They're they're just like, well, I wanna do that. Well, okay.

Yeah. But that's their job.

And they're not gonna stay if they're not able to do their job, because, you know, you you wanna use your mind for something great. And if you make it great for them, they're gonna make it great for you. And Yeah.

That's the number one reason for vet tech burnout, right, is that they thought they were gonna get in and do all the stuff that you would see like a, you know, a nurse doing in a human doctor office. They do the majority of it. The doctor swoops in and out maybe, you know, but the nurse is doing everything. And then they get in in a lot of veterinary practices. They're, you know, treated like a glorified receptionist. They're not allowed to do higher level stuff. You know?

And every high producer that I've talked to, one thing they consistently always say is, you know, you let you let the lowest paid employee do the highest level of work that they're capable of doing capable of doing. Let them let them get up so the doctor's only doing the real smart doctor stuff that only you can do.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah. It's, it's more fun for me to practice than when I started.

Yeah. When I started, I had to do all that kind of stuff, and and, I didn't I came in with a staff that that really didn't have training, and it's an evolution. And you don't get there overnight. You don't get there in a day or or a year or two years.

You get there over a long period of time and make it what you what you want it to be. Your vision of practice is gonna be different than mine. Yeah. But, make that vision happen and take some people along the way with you.

Yeah. And I think that's, the best advice I could give give people is take people along the way.

Show them how to do their job, and, I think you're gonna be better off in in the long run for it.

Yeah. I love it. Well, thank you so much, doctor Thomas, for taking some time out of your incredibly busy schedule to, to spend with us here, to share your wisdom. We're gonna send this far and wide as we can, try and get this in front of as many, veterinary practice owners and managers, as we possibly can. Any parting words of wisdom or advice, recommendations, what you think practice owners should be looking at and doing right now?

Yeah. Staff retention is your biggest is your biggest, issue. And I think if you look at how do I retain my staff, that's the biggest takeaway I have.

I have most of my techs have been with me for, ten, fifteen years.

And they're they're they're they're not gonna go anywhere else because they're not gonna be utilized like we utilize them. They're, they're able to do their job. So, keep that in mind, how much it costs you for staff turnover. Yeah. And then make sure you realize that when someone's struggling that, oh, this is gonna cost me fifty thousand dollars if they leave. So try and figure out how to make it so that they're not so not not struggling so much.

Make it a better place for them to work, and everyone's gonna benefit from that.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I love it. Well, again, thank you so much, for your time here today.

And to everybody who tuned in, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day. Hey. We got a lot of stuff, coming up for you in in future episodes. So continue to check those out.

And remember, right now, your veterinary practice already has on genius vets dot com a full page profile. It's true. It's live. It's right now.

Go check it out. Go to genius vets dot com. You can look for we got a little search bar. You can put in your address.

You can see your veterinary practice profile, full page profile. You can claim it for free. It's a hundred percent free. These rank really well in Google search results.

And what you want is when anybody goes online looking for anything related to pet care in your area, all roads online point to you. That's what you really want. This that helps you do that. Go make sure that the information about your practice that's on there is correct.

If you see anything incorrect, hey, claim that profile. We're going to help you correct it, and it's really easy to take care of.

Lot more stuff that, you know, we can do for you. Check it out. And, again, look, look for our next episode next week.

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 and 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.