I can't afford this.

Well, that's pretty narrow focused, all right, because there's an expense side to every profit and loss and a revenue side to every profit and loss.

And so it's understanding that for every dollar you make that comes through the door, credit card, check, whatever it is, A portion of that is going to pay for your staff.

A portion of that is going to pay for the doctors, including yourself as a producing doctor.

A portion of that is going to pay for all of those things that allow you to deliver veterinary care, also known as cost of goods or cost of professional services.

And then there will be a whole bunch of nickel and dimes that will suck the life out of you, such as merchant services, insurance, telephone, website, etc.

But in a well-managed practice, let me back up just a minute, the average American veterinary hospital, We'll have an EBITDA, a profitability, a net, whatever you want to call it, of about 10% to 12%, which means for every dollar that you take in after you pay everything, as the owner, you will take home an additional 10 to 12 cents.

mortuary?

What do you say to that?

Peter? Well, since this is a G-rated podcast, I will just say bull.

In fact, I would suggest this is the best time to go out there and start a practice because many of the national aggregators or aggravators, whichever it is, have been having their own financial challenges.

And this is the time when you can build a homegrown business and talk about the fact that you're locally owned and operated and that your employees are working and paying taxes locally to the community and you give back to the community.

And so I would suggest this is the best time to get out there and build a practice.

There are so many different opportunities depending upon the communities that you are looking to live in.

And down the road, as we continue to see some of the discomfort that the consolidators are going through, you might find some great employees.

Peter, could we talk about maybe the market if I wanted to buy a practice? And maybe let's talk briefly about should I buy one or should I

Yeah.

I think they're, There's a difference between a private practice whose focus is on stakeholders and a private equity whose focus is on stockholders.

And so in my practice, I worried about my clients, their pets, my staff, my doctors.

But when you add an extra layer of investors who want to get a return on in a quick fashion and then flip it so they can get their return, we start to see extra layers of costs that are then reflected back to those practices that are then reflected to clients to help maintain those profitabilities.

Now, many of the private equity hospitals that were purchased were more profitable to begin with.

And then so to try to keep that level up, required increasing costs as well.

And again, it's a very competitive marketplace, especially where we are in Los Angeles, where there's a veterinary hospital every 50 feet.

And do you find that there is a difference in the veterinary companies that have been acquired by private equity groups versus those that are owned by conglomerates such as like Mars owning VCA Antec? That's a great question.

Well...

Well, when this all started, we didn't think it was gonna be a podcast.

It was a conversation on June the 5th, 2020, I believe.

What was that like to put something so vulnerable out there for an audience to consume?

I don't think we knew because we were recording...

We recorded a whole bunch before we actually decided that there was, there might be an audience.

Things will be innovated and come out of this time, don't you think?

Absolutely.

I mean, there's no shortage of innovation.

Application, integration, utilization, we need to do all of that, but it's all driven by people.

And so the top integration that we've seen with I- with AI in the recent year or so has been, um, AI medical record keeping.

So if AI medical record keeping allows us as veterinarians to get home a couple of hours earlier and maybe does a better job to ensure compliance through communication-Wonderful.

But it's not gonna stop the requirement for a veterinarian to get down on his hands and knees and hug Chip when he comes in the door.

But is there any other thing that you're, you know, like, "Hey, guys, somebody needs to pick this up for us, please."