THE BUSINESS OF PRACTICE: MANAGING A PROFITABLE PRACTICE


orchestrate the direction of your business? Year- end profitability? Owner distributions? Having control over your schedule, giving you time to pur- sue interests outside of veterinary medicine? It could be any of these, and likely includes a mixture of all of them. But as an owner, you have come to understand the realities of ownership. Regardless of how high your production is, or what level of expertise you attain, or even what level of status you enjoy among industry professionals, at the end of the day, you own a business, and that business re- quires you to function as a business professional. It requires planning, executing your strategy, and having a well-tuned financial reporting system. It requires daily attention to a multitude of areas to achieve any given outcome. Whether it is the deci- sion to acquire a new piece of diagnostic equipment or to expand your services to include alternative therapies, each area of growth begins with the mat- ter of where that outcome can take the practice in the future and what does it mean today? Simi- larly to any important aspect of your practice, a plan to properly convey your interest to the next genera- tion of veterinarians demands no less attention. It requires thoughtful consideration well in advance so that you can make the daily adjustments to cul- tivate the future practice owners that will ulti- mately take your place. How would a plan like that actually look? How do you know if you’re on track? How do you keep score?


Keeping Score as a Practice Owner


At some stage of practice, maybe even all the stages of your practice lifecycle, your personal production as a veterinarian is a key indicator of your value as a veterinarian. It is how you define your worth to the practice, at least financially. If you are in a commission-based practice, your personal produc- tion is vital. It is the yard stick of determining how you get paid. You become accustomed to expecting monthly, quarterly, and year-end production re- ports, and as an owner, being privy to all levels of production in your practice, it is easy to compare your production to the rest of the team. It feels good to be a large producer. But production is only one way of keeping score. At some stage, the way you keep score may need to change. Your personal production requires your personal physical effort. That realization leads to the question of how to maintain revenues at a cer- tain level without having to physically be the one doing everything, given that your time and attention are needed in so many other facets of your business. Remember, if you physically have to be there to make the wheel go round, you are operating less like a business and more like an employee. When that realization sets in, you’ll begin to see yourself more as a business owner commanding an enterprise, and less as a physical provider of professional services. Your impact can be made in a myriad of ways: by growing production, by driving caseload to the most


profitable areas of the practice, by creating relation- ships with key clients. You may focus your efforts on starting new areas of service, or enhancing the level of service to your existing clientele. In sum, your ability to transition caseload and key clientele to new associates, building their confidence and mentoring their development along the way, will be a vital piece of a successful associate buy-in, pro- vided that you have the right candidates in place. Consider your current method of scorekeeping in your practice, and whether or not you are actively cultivating that next generation of veterinarians.


Recruitment


The associates that you select, hire, and promote as your team will have a tremendous impact on your success as a practice. If you hire dynamic person- alities with high-level veterinary skills, your chances for growing your clientele, retaining exist- ing clientele, and your confidence in transferring clientele to the new associate are considerably in- creased. Do a less-than-stellar job of candidate se- lection, and you and your clients will quickly find out if you’ve made a poor decision. Consider the asso- ciates currently in your organization. How did they come to be employed by your practice? Did you select them? Did your partners select them? Did they come through any particularly well- thought-out method of talent acquisition? Are they the team you would choose if you had to do it all over again? Without a doubt, recruiting talent can be a bit of a crapshoot. But what are you doing right now, and throughout the year, to try and attract that next dynamic individual to your practice? Are you actively recruiting? Are you making con- tacts and networking to enhance your visibility? Are you making noise about your practice through the use of social media? Do you do anything beyond what every other practice does? Are you leaving recruitment to chance? Likewise, when associates choose a practice for employment, there are a multitude of factors that feed in to the decision-making equation: salary, location, type of practice, type of horses, type of clients, etc. At the top of these factors should be the existing team and personalities, the opportunity for mentorship under the brightest stars that the practice currently has, the plan for associate inte- gration, the orientation and training process, and the focus on building the associate’s caseload. As much as it is the responsibility of the owner to select the candidates that can best complement the prac- tice and drive it forward, it is the associate’s respon- sibility to understand their own strengths and what they bring to the table, where they see themselves adding value, and how they will enhance the current offering of the team. When selecting an associate, fulfilling the needs of


the practice can be complex. There are a multitude of drivers that mask themselves as needs. Take into consideration the needs of the day; perhaps you


AAEP PROCEEDINGS  Vol. 64  2018 497


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