The Veterinary CEO

Category: Path to Ownership

For veterinary students and associates considering practice ownership.

  • Buying Your First Practice: A Step-by-Step Guide

    I’ve been on both sides of a practice sale. The buyers who do well aren’t the ones with the most money. They’re the ones who prepared, put good advisors around them and knew what they were looking at. Here’s the process, in order.

    Step 1: Be honest about whether you’re ready

    Before you look at a single practice, answer three questions:

    • Clinically: Can you run the medicine without a safety net?
    • Financially: Is your credit solid, and do you have savings and a debt load you can manage?
    • Personally: Do you want to lead people and manage money, or do you just want to practice medicine?

    Step 2: Build your advisory team

    You need three people before you need a practice:

    • A CPA who knows veterinary practices. They’ll read the financials and tell you what’s real.
    • An attorney who handles practice transactions. Purchase agreements, leases and non-competes are where buyers get hurt.
    • A lender who specializes in veterinary or healthcare practices. They’ve seen a lot of deals and know what a healthy practice looks like.

    Ask owners you trust who they used. Good advisors pay for themselves many times over.

    Step 3: Get lender-ready

    Practice lenders will want to see:

    • A clean personal credit report. Check all three bureaus and fix errors early.
    • A business plan and financial projections for the practice.
    • Proof you can handle the debt you already have, student loans included.
    • Sometimes, life and disability insurance. Underwriting for those can take 4 to 6 weeks, so start early.

    How much cash do you need? Usually less than people assume. Some lenders that focus on veterinary practices offer up to 100% financing for strong buyers purchasing healthy practices. SBA 7(a) loans can also be used to buy a practice, up to the program’s $5 million cap. Terms vary by lender and change over time, so apply to more than one and compare.

    Step 4: Find the right practice

    The best deals often never hit the open market. Owners planning to retire often want to sell to someone they know and trust. So:

    • Tell owners in your area you’re interested in owning.
    • Ask your current owner whether a buy-in is possible.
    • Talk to brokers and practice-sales specialists.
    • Use peer networks, study groups and veterinary associations.

    Keep this in mind: in one survey of owners who sold to corporations, 71% said they would rather have sold to an associate. Plenty of owners are looking for someone like you. They just don’t know who you are yet.

    Step 5: Evaluate the practice

    With your CPA, go through at least three years of financials and the practice’s key numbers:

    • Revenue trend. Growing, flat or shrinking?
    • Active and new clients. Is the client base healthy?
    • Average transaction. How does it compare with similar practices?
    • Labor and cost of goods as a percent of revenue. These are the biggest expenses you can control.
    • The owner’s production. How much revenue walks out the door if the seller leaves?

    These overlap a lot with the 7 numbers I track every month at my own hospitals, so that post is a good way to learn what healthy looks like. Then look past the spreadsheet: the team, the facility and equipment, the lease or real estate, and the local competition.

    Step 6: Agree on value and terms

    A practice’s value is usually based on its profitability, adjusted for the owner’s salary and one-time expenses. Get an independent valuation. Corporate buyers can pay prices an individual buyer’s lender won’t support, so don’t let a corporate number become your benchmark.

    Terms matter as much as price. Negotiate how long the seller stays to help transition clients and staff, the non-compete, what’s included (equipment, inventory, receivables) and whether you’re buying or leasing the building.

    Step 7: Due diligence and closing

    This is where your attorney and CPA earn their fees. Verify the financials, review contracts and leases, check licenses and inspections, and confirm which liabilities stay with the seller. Then sign, fund and close.

    Step 8: Your first months as owner

    Meet the team before you change anything. Tell clients about the transition warmly and clearly, ideally with the seller next to you. Watch cash flow every week. Your first job is keeping what already works. Improvements come after you’ve earned some trust.

    Other ways in

    Buying a whole practice isn’t the only way in. A buy-in lets you purchase part of a practice over time as a partner. A start-up means building from scratch, with more risk and more control. I’ll cover both in a separate article.

    Sources

  • The Student & New-Grad Roadmap to Ownership

    Most vets who end up owning a practice didn’t plan it in school. They fell into it when an owner asked, “Would you ever want to buy in?” Some were ready. A lot weren’t.

    You can do better than that. You don’t have to know today whether you’ll own. You just have to keep the door open. Here’s how, stage by stage.

    In vet school: build the foundation

    Join VBMA. The Veterinary Business Management Association has student chapters at many vet schools, and its Business Certificate Program covers finance, operations, management and ownership. Texas A&M’s chapter says more than two-thirds of the required hours apply to every student, not just future owners. It’s the cheapest business education you’ll ever get.

    Learn to read a P&L. You don’t need an MBA. You need to know what revenue, cost of goods, labor cost and profit mean in a practice, and why they matter. Ask an owner to walk you through theirs during an externship. Most owners I know would say yes.

    Watch your debt. Preliminary numbers from AVMA’s 2026 senior survey put average debt at about $185,000 across all graduates, and about $228,000 for those who borrowed. Every dollar you don’t borrow is a dollar you can put toward a practice later. Federal loan rules changed recently, so check current options at studentaid.gov, or with a loan advisor who works with vets, before you graduate.

    Notice how practices run. On rotations and externships, pay attention to what makes a practice a good place to work: scheduling, culture, how the owner talks to the team. You’re building a picture of the practice you’d want to run.

    Your first job: pick a teacher, not just a salary

    Full-time new grads averaged about $132,000 in starting pay in AVMA’s preliminary 2026 data. Offers vary, and it’s tempting to grab the biggest number. If ownership might be in your future, weigh one more thing: will this employer teach you the business?

    Questions to ask in interviews:

    • Does the owner share practice numbers with associates?
    • Has an associate here ever bought in or become a partner?
    • Is there mentorship beyond clinical skills?
    • Would the owner consider selling to an associate someday?

    A practice that says yes to a few of these is worth more to your future than a few thousand dollars in salary.

    Years 1 to 3: get confident clinically and ready financially

    Get good at medicine first. Clients and staff trust confident doctors. Ownership is a lot harder if you’re still finding your clinical footing.

    Get your financial house in order.

    • Choose a student loan repayment plan on purpose, not by default.
    • Build an emergency fund that covers several months of expenses.
    • Protect your credit score. Lenders will check it.
    • Skip big new debt, like an expensive car, that hurts your debt-to-income ratio.

    Know your own production numbers. Know your revenue per day, your average transaction and how your pay is calculated. If you’re paid on production, you’re already learning to think like an owner. When you’re ready for the bigger picture, here are the 7 numbers owners should track every month.

    Build your network. Get to know owners in your area, including ones who aren’t your boss. A lot of owners would rather sell to a vet than to a corporation, but they have to know you exist.

    Around year 3: decide if you’re in

    By now you’ll have a feel for whether ownership excites you or wears you out. Be honest with yourself. If you’re in, your next read is Buying Your First Practice.

    If you’re not, that’s fine too. You’ll be a better associate for understanding the business, and the door stays open.

    Sources

  • Why Practice Ownership Still Pays

    If you’re a young vet, you’ve probably heard some version of this: ownership is dead, the corporations bought everything, and the smart move is to take a good salary and stay out of the business side.

    I don’t buy it. I’ve been an associate, a partner, a seller and a buyer, and I own two hospitals today. Here’s what the numbers say, including the parts that don’t flatter owners.

    Owners still earn more

    AVMA’s 2025 economic report, which covers 2023 income, has owners of companion-animal-only practices averaging $191,352. Associates in the same type of practice averaged $146,196. That’s a gap of about $45,000 a year. The medians are closer, $160,000 vs. $133,000, but that’s still $27,000.

    And it isn’t just small-animal. Owners out-earned associates in every private practice category AVMA reported: companion animal, mixed animal, equine and food animal.

    Now the honest caveat. In AVMA’s census, owners averaged about 24 years of experience and associates about 13.5. Some of that income gap is seniority, not ownership. But the pattern shows up in every category, and it isn’t small.

    The paycheck is only half the story

    An associate’s income stops when they stop working. An owner’s doesn’t have to. When you own a practice, you’re building something you can sell, bring a partner into, or keep earning from when you step back.

    That’s hard to see at 30 and obvious at 60. A lot of the owners selling today are cashing in decades of equity. That option only exists if you owned something.

    The real costs

    Ownership isn’t free, and anyone who tells you it is wants something from you.

    • More hours. AVMA’s census has owners at 47.2 hours a week, vs. 40.9 for associates.
    • Debt and risk. You’ll probably borrow to buy, and that loan is yours in good years and bad ones.
    • A second job. Payroll, hiring, conflict, marketing, cash flow. If you hate all of that, you’ll need a strong practice manager and the humility to let them run with it.

    Fewer owners means more opportunity

    The share of vets who own their practice keeps shrinking. AVMA’s 2024 census put owners at 23.8% of private-practice veterinarians. A 2025 paper in Frontiers in Veterinary Science estimates that corporations own about 25% of primary care practices and about 75% of specialty and emergency practices.

    That sounds like bad news if you want to own someday. I think it’s the opposite.

    The same paper cites a Veterinary Management Groups survey of owners who sold to corporations. 71% said they would have preferred to sell to an associate. And when asked why they didn’t, 59% said the associate couldn’t afford it.

    Read that again. Owners want to sell to you. What’s in the way is preparation and money, and you can solve both with time, a plan and the right lender.

    The paper also notes that about 55% of associates said they’d rather work in independent practice. Plenty of vets want independence. Far fewer have a plan to get it.

    So should you own?

    Not necessarily. If you want predictable hours and no business headaches, being a great associate is a great career.

    But if you want to set the standard of medicine, build a team you’re proud of and own the value you create, ownership is still the best path this profession offers. It just takes more preparation than it used to.

    That’s what this section of the site is for. Pick your path: the student and new-grad roadmap, or the associate’s guide to buying your first practice.

    Sources

The Veterinary CEO

Free, practical business education for veterinary practice owners — from a veterinarian who owns and runs the business, too.