Episode #68 – Owen E. McCafferty

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders in trailblazers. The People of Animal Health podcast highlights, incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You’ll be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions with our wide range of expert guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the People of Animal Health podcast. Today I am honored to welcome Owen McCafferty, an industry trailblazer and veterinary practice management. With more than 40 years of experience, Owen has transformed how veterinary practices operate, grow, and thrive. From co-creating foundational valuation formulas to helping establish the AAHA Chart of Accounts, his contributions are woven into the fabric of the veterinary profession. A prolific author, speaker, and advisor, Owen has guided veterinarians across the globe in building successful sustainable practices. I look forward to discussing his remarkable journey, influential insights, and a legacy he’s built in the veterinary profession. Owen, welcome to the People of Animal Health podcast. Welcome to the show today.

Thanks, Stacy. I would ever hope that I could live up to even a monocle of the comments that you made, but thank you.

Well, so happy to have this conversation with you today. I know we connected at the VMX Conference earlier this year in January and have been talking about having you on my show, and it’s hard to believe that we’re halfway into August or almost at the end of August, but I’m honored to have you here today. Owen, I’d love to start off at the beginning, what was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

I was lucky enough to grow up in the best location in the nation, Greater Cleveland. I was born and bred in St. Patrick’s West Park Parish. Attended and graduated from Ignatius High School and anybody who has a Jesuit background, hopefully would recognize that, and then continued as a university and then took a lot of graduate work at Cleveland State, became a CPA. Very proud to say that I’m a certified veterinary practice manager, and I acquired it through a grueling narrative by the VHMA. Of course, I was president at the time, so if I didn’t pass it, boy would that be embarrassing.

I am certified in financial forensics from the American Institute of CPAs as well as a certified global management accountant. Growing up, I was lucky enough to have an undergraduate degree in English, and I think that’s pretty much one of the greatest gifts that my parents gave me, and that was a Jesuit education, and then the ability to have a baccalaureate degree that was not a trade school activity. Too often today people enter the university expecting a trade school that they’re going to come out with a skill set. A baccalaureate degree is only the start. It teaches you how to know, how to understand, how to learn, how to discern and communicate hopefully. But what’s happening is that in the universities today, the students expect to come out with a trade school, and that’s not the case. In the area that I’m in, I’m in accounting, which was founded by a Neoclassicist, Fra Luca Pacioli, a priest in Venice who designed a balance of nature approach to a business activity.

So I think English is a perfect route. I think the sciences are excellent, but the problem is that we’re trying to educate people who think that it’s a trade school, that they’re going to come out and do something with it. It’s only the start. That’s why you enter a professional school. Professional schools are by their own nature trade schools. They teach you a body of knowledge and hopefully you assume and respect a code of ethics, and then that allows you to proceed. So your question, Stacy, is what’s my life like? Well, we can start right from the beginning. A whole variety of great people. I started working in veterinary medicine because of my undergraduate degree in English. I was lucky enough to secure a big A job offer from a CPA firm, and they were looking for someone to write an article on valuing and veterinary practice.

One of our audit clients was veterinary economics. Well, no CPA was really interested in writing. My partner was, Ed Douglas, who was a manager at the time with Deloitte Haskins & Sells, and we wrote an article, it was published in 1978. It was presented in 1977 at the Ohio Veteran Medical Association meeting, and then was accepted. The Irish used it in the estate tax division. Really, there wasn’t a lot of things that were written. The American Institute hadn’t really started its valuation section, but it was the basic premise of a calculation of expected earnings and using the cost method for actual cash value on things like equipment. And that was used as what we call intrinsic worth and was used for many, many decades. Then around 1986, Veterinary Centers of America, now known as VCA, but at the time they were Veterinary Centers of America was formed and a great group of guys.

They started to buy practices based upon a multiple of earnings. It really wasn’t a valuation per se, it was more convention that they tried to use to buy a practices while they were very dedicated and hardworking people. Bob Antin, Neil Tauber, Art Antin, and they basically formed the basis upon which quite a few veterinarians now transact their practices and what we call investment value, and in some instances, strategic value. That’s why you get these wacky multiples that are occurring, and it’s not really because of the intrinsic worth of the practice, but what the purchaser is going to be doing with the practice. How close are they to a recapitalization of that? What are they going to do with it? How desperate are they to take a flip? So I started out with an accounting firm. At the time it was known as Haskins & Sells, then it became Deloitte Haskins & Sells and now any souls that are working for it’s a great firm.

It’s now known as Deloitte and Touche, and there’s quite a few different people that are functioning. But it was because of my English degree, my accounting background, my certification as a CPA, being very fortunate to run into a great group of people, one of whom recently died. Mark Opperman, good friend, great person who’s done phenomenal things for the veterinary profession, but it was a great sadness. Mark died way too young, and then he contributed massive things to that which would occur. So he’s been, I’d say a good part of the reason why the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association started. Well, when I was president for the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association, a gentleman named John Sheridan and I connected. John’s from England. He was [inaudible 00:09:34]. And John sat and passed the CBPM exam was a long time proponent, and he said, “You know what? We ought to bring the knowledge base of the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association across the pond.”

So John and I went over to England and we formed the Veterinary Practice Management Association of Great Britain and I like to say the Republic of Ireland because Great Britain and Ireland are two different areas. So I was awarded lifetime membership in the Veterinary Practice Management Association, and they developed their own CBPM designation. So there’s a whole group of people, my family, unbelievable, my dear dad, a great proponent, my sainted mother, I knew how much she loved me by how hard she hit, and any of you that have had Irish mothers understand exactly what I’m saying. I was blessed to have a wonderful wife and four great children that allowed me to function and do what I did. I was gone quite a bit, so my wife had to take the mantle of responsibility of raising four great children. So things are different now. It used to be in the old days, you’d work 65, 70 hours a week and think that’s an amusing start.

That has changed, and in some instances people are missing out on a great career because every hour that you work in that what you do, be it an occupation or a profession, you learn things, the longer that you work, the more difficult things that you encounter, the more you have to study, the greater you become. And I think we’re losing that in all of the professions. Law, accounting, architecture, veterinary medicine, human medicine, registered nursing, primary and secondary teaching, actuarial science. And I know that I have missed many other designated and accepted professions, but we’re missing that. We’re not working towards that which would be, we’re basically working at what we can do to get paid as much as we can and work as little as possible. A lot of things. We could go on forever. Stacy, I don’t want to bore you. This is a soliloquy probably you didn’t anticipate, but that’s what happens when you ask an English major of Irish descent.

Well, first of all, I love that you’re an English major because English was always my favorite subject in school. And then I got a journalism degree in college. My husband is a CPA. He got his start at Deloitte and Touche in public accounting on the audit side. And I have five children. In fact, we just sent our youngest son to college on Monday. We moved him to the University of Oklahoma. So I drove home after dropping him off at school as an empty nester, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That was hard. I didn’t anticipate how, I knew what would be bittersweet, I didn’t anticipate how sad I would feel on the drive back home because you’re with him for 18 weeks. And then they go off to college and I’m happy for him. But I was sad to go home to… There was nobody upstairs in my house.

It was very quiet. Well, I really appreciate all the things that you said, and you’re right, I wasn’t anticipating to go this direction, but you’re absolutely right with what you said, because there is a trend right now to work less. And as a recruiter, I see that in my search practice where people are asking for very high amounts of compensation, and the trend is to see how reduced of a schedule I can work for that. And I go home every night and I go, “I must be doing something wrong because I’m still working like 70 hours a week.”

And I’m starting my 29th year working in the veterinary profession, and I see the reduced schedules a lot of other people are working, and I’m going, “What is wrong with me?” But I truly enjoy my work. I love coming to work every day and having the opportunity to talk to all the people that I get to work with on career transitions. But I think that’s a valid point in a conversation that it’s worth continuing. But I want to get to my next question, Owen, you have co-developed one of the first widely used formulas for valuing veterinary practices, which was published in Veterinary Economics. Can you walk me through the genesis of that idea and how practice valuation has evolved since?

Sure. Pretty much we did talk about that. Starting with Veteran Economics, there was a gentleman named John Villardo. Some of your audience might remember John and Alan Kichler who were key with Veteran Economics Magazine. They started it. They were old employees from Pet Publishing, and they were asked by Dr. Jim Rosenberger, who at the time was the president of the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association to come up with a formula for valuing a veterinary practice because there was a dearth of knowledge. There was the old rule of thumb, one times gross. And then you would say, “Well, why would that be?” I don’t know. But that’s the rule of thumb. Rules of thumb are not logic. Their perpetration of mythology and the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association knew that. So Jim went to his buddies over at Veteran Economics. He sat on their editorial board, so it was a logical query, and they then went to their auditors.

And Deloitte Haskins & Sells were the auditors for Veteran Economics. And of course, as I said before, most CPAs had very little interest in writing. Subject and predicate are two foreign concepts, and putting them in the same sentence is very foreign to them. But I was lucky enough to be asked as a second year employee to work with again, my good friend, Ed Douglas. And we wrote this formula on valuing. It was a very simple thing, just logic, assets minus liabilities equal net worth. We didn’t discount for minority interest. That’s great if you’re doing estate work. But to be quite frank, in a veterinary practice, if I own 5%, I have quite a bit of say, in fact, almost as much say as the person who owns 95%. Because in a profession you respect each other. There’s a whole area that we can get into, Stacy, and that is the what’s occurred with the aggregators, accumulators and assimilators, how they’ve affected the methodology of thinking and practices, what options are and what’s occurring now within veterinary medicine.

But that formula for valuation that had intrinsic worth was planned so that a doctor of veterinary medicine could acquire an interest in whatever that interest would be from the excess expected earnings, would have the capacity to make payments of principal and interest and retire the debt on an installment note over 10 years. To be truthful, most of them didn’t take 10 years because practices grew and it grew partially because they were involved in it. The best way to grow practice is to have owners, to have that transcendent capacity to want to work the hours to grow the practice. And I was lucky enough because I started out, in fact, at the graduation ceremony in 1974 of one of my closest friends, Dr. Dennis Zewe, and I was at his graduation at the Ohio State in the arena, if you want to call it the football field. And that basically started my knowledge base back from ’74 onward.

So the task of coming up with a valuation formula was pretty simple. It was basically just codified logic. And since then there’s been so many different complications. There’s been calculations and discounted cash flows. There’s terminal value issues, there’s buildup of cap rates. But the end result is that when you buy a practice, you have to be able to deliver the goodwill. And it is truly, truly something I would encourage every doctor to do, and that is to work into a situation to be able to buy in. It’s great to be an employee, but frankly, the equity ownership provide you with a chance to basically become a multimillionaire. And we have many multimillionaires in veterinary medicine today, and part of it is because they worked hard. They took risks, they were devoted to their profession. You notice I keep using the word professional instead of an occupation.

They were devoted to their profession. And as a result of that, they grew to the point of having a wonderful activity and a stream of income. That’s when cash flowed out, provides them with a way to provide for their family on the current income yield and a long-term appreciation with an increase in worth of their practice that is transcendent to anything that any governmental entity could throw at you from an inflationary standpoint. So it’s really a wonderful profession. It’s a wonderful opportunity, and we can talk forever on valuation. And again, I don’t want to bore you, but you’re so kind to let me ramble.

Well, it’s interesting to me to hear the history because you’ve been doing this a while and you mentioned some names earlier in the conversation. You talked about Art Antin, Bob Antin, Mark Opperman, all of who had tremendous impact on this profession. I first had the opportunity to connect with Art Antin back in 1997, and then Mark Opperman had a tremendous impact on the profession. He did so many things and was so well-loved, and he developed the ProSal model, which is a very popular model for compensating doctors. And you’re right, he did have a early passing and we miss him. But going back to your firm founded in 1978, it’s grown from Cleveland to Florida and Nevada. What were the most pivotal moments in the expansion of your business and what drove your decision to make Jacksonville your main office in 2009?

Well, that’s easy. And it’s just one word, taxes and an environment that is without [inaudible 00:22:02]. We did a lot of research of where we were going to put our office. We knew that Cleveland was a wonderful place, a great place to be from, and we knew that if we wanted to grow the practice, we would have to be in an environment that would allow capitalization of earnings. Florida was perfect. There’s no income tax, there’s no estate tax. There’s an enlightened government. There’s a few states. We also had an office in Texas, no income tax in Texas. We had an office in Nevada, no income tax in Nevada.

We did not have an office in Tennessee, nor Washington State, nor Alaska, nor South Dakota. So you can see the theme that if you’re looking at setting up a key practice activity, going into a low cost area where you can consume a lot of capital, not in paying to the government, but rather using it to grow, you’re going to be in a far better advantage. So we moved to Florida and then we did something very simple. We did an analysis of where hurricanes were going, and they’re following the Gulf Stream. And if you look at where Jacksonville is, it’s in the bend in Florida, that’s away from the Gulf Stream. We’re like 60 miles away. So that gave us a shot of knowing that there will be hurricanes, but maybe we can survive.

We were in Cleveland. We set up the office in Las Vegas for a couple of reasons. Number one was because of the taxes. The other one was the climate. Anybody who’s been to Las Vegas, even in their hottest of days, knows it’s a glorious place to be. Florida is perfect because I work the hours that I work, I really didn’t take any vacation, but every day I can bike to work. It’s an hour and a half bike ride each way, but it gives me a chance to do something that I really couldn’t do in Cleveland. When there was a couple feet of snow on the ground, it’s tough to bike. So that’s the reason in the logic. I’m still licensed in Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Nevada. But we have our main base now in Florida. So that’s the logic.

Well, that makes so much sense. With more than 160 articles and 300 lectures worldwide, your influence spans continents. How do the challenges facing vendor practices in the US compare to those places like Japan, the UK or the Caribbean?

To be quite frank, practicing in the United States of America is the finest opportunity that anyone will ever have. And being in an environment that is not only pet friendly, but pet respectful, and I use that in the greatest of senses because pet owners in the United States are very respectful of their pets. And unlike other countries, and I may get in trouble with some good friends, I hope they can forgive me, [inaudible 00:25:48], but because there is no cost containment activity resulting from massive influence of insurance for pets, there is not the same impediments that there would be in the United Kingdom where there is a major portion of the population that does buy pet insurance, and therefore the pet insurance companies have a big impact in terms of what fee structures are. If you look at what’s occurred in the United States, we’ve had some major fee increases occurring to the point that maybe we have to start watching that a little bit.

We may be increasing fees a touch too much, but in the United States, because there is no cost containment, there’s great interest in the profession by private equity groups, by the aggregators and accumulators. The other factor is we are blessed with some of the finest schools of veterinary medicine in the entire world. The doctors, the graduates, especially those from the land-grant universities are so well-educated, so articulate, they are the lifeblood. So I can tell you for sure that the United States of America and it’s Northern neighbors, I know Canada and the US are having some words, but most family members do from time to time. But the universities in Canada, I should say really North America are some of the finest in the world.

Japan has a great, great group of doctors. I spoke in Tokyo, Osaka and [inaudible 00:27:50], and the practitioners were phenomenal. I had to use a translator boy, and that anybody who’s ever lectured knows that when you have to use the translator, the right responses aren’t always given by the translator to the audience, but they’re great doctors. The only problem is that Japan has been suffering a recession for probably the last 20 years, and the impact of the economy has a direct bearing in the capacity of the pet-owning population to afford responsible and gifted veteran care. So we in the United States are really, really lucky. Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland have challenges that we in North America do not have. So I would say it’s more than just the United States. I’d say the United States primarily, but our Canadian brothers and sisters have very similar advantages that we do stateside.

Well, Owen, as someone who’s worked with organizations like Veterinary Study Groups, CAPNM and Mixed Animal Veterinary Practices North America, how do you view the role of collaboration and group models in enhancing practice equity and long-term sustainability?

That’s really a very excellent question. I worked with Companion Animal Practices North America. It was formed to never, ever, ever be sold. It was a group of great doctors that got together, some of the finest doctors from veterinary management groups and other places that formed and worked towards excellence. And the idea was never, ever to sell. Unfortunately, in 2014, Veterinary Centers of America was sold. When it was sold the multiple was never fully ever disclosed that the word on the street was it was pretty high. Some of our shareholders said, “Well, gee whiz, we have a group of people at Companion Animal Practices North America that are some of the finest practitioners in the country.” That was true, they were. And we were charged. We, Dr. Dennis C. Law, Dr. Sandy Siemens, myself, Dr. Al Pagani, Dr. Dan Broad, we were charged with going out and seeing what a pricing structure would be for Companion Animal Practices North America.

So we went to New York, we picked out an investment bank. The investment bank ran through a process, not to bore you with everything that goes in that, it’s like making sausage, but the end result is that the multiple was phenomenal and we were eventually joining the Veterinary Centers of America family. So in the process, what are some of the things that you find out? Well, improving your earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization is a phenomenal way to increase practice value. And the way you can do that is what we call the Socratic method. Now, you remember Socrates, anybody who… And I’m sure you would, Stacy, if you have a degree in journalism, you remember the Greek and the Roman contributions to Western thought.

Well, the Socratic method of learning from each other, from asking questions, having those be answered, work together towards common good really did show itself in Companion Animal Practices North America, so much so that a second group, Dr. Scott Spaulding specifically and I, along with Dr. John Ismay, Dr. John Bitter, Dr. Randy Bimes, and a whole group of other very, very gifted and talented people said, “Mixed animal practice has the same things to offer, specifically equine medicine, bovine medicine, porcine medicine, bovine medicine, as well as canine and feline.” They’re different than a companion animal practice.

Absolutely true to the point where they formed a group somewhat similar to Companion Animal Practices North America, never intending to sell out, but were victim to their own success. They became a wonderful group of people, improved the standing of medicine and surgery within the group. And as a result of that, they were attracted and very attractive to a wide variety of people wanting to eventually secure that kind of competency. So they were eventually sold. And again, the things that affected them were number one, earnings, qualifying those earnings by the classic synergies of income costs and expense.

And in addition to that, going in a group and becoming in essence a very organized and structured business as well as a series of members in a very dignified and distinguished profession. And the capitalization factor, that is the number of the multiple that is used times the earnings increased significantly over what other practices that were basically one-off practices were acquiring. So Mixed Animal Veterinary Associates North America, MAVANA as we would call it, did very well and sold to a very distinguished group, Pet Vets, and many of the members are still functioning and doing well today.

That’s a tremendous story.

Oh, it could go on forever, Stacy. But like anything else, there’s only so much time.

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Well, Owen, you’ve earned certifications in financial forensics and global management accounting among others. How does some of these credentials shape your advisory work with vendor practices, especially in today’s complex regulatory and financial environments?

It’s interesting that you did point that out. Things are very complex. There’s a lot of rules, a lot of regulations. There’s a lot of wasted profit that is used in doing nothing more than conforming to statutes. The accounting statutes are very important, how the magical word tariff is going to impact the costs that are incurred. Ironically, tariff is nothing more than a VAT tax when you think about it. Other countries have had to endure VAT taxes, especially over in Europe, gosh, for several decades. So I don’t know how it’s going to affect us in the United States. It will have some bearing. So that regulation is still, as of yet to be written, federal income taxes, constant issue. Our job is to pay the least possible legal tax. In fact, I submit that’s our patriotic duty. Congress initiated statute, therefore, it’s our job to pay the least possible tax so we can be the best Americans, the best patriots.

So there’s a lot of regulatory requirements to go well above and beyond just taxes in terms of drug administrations, US food and drug requirements, statutory requirements in the veteran profession. These are all nothing more than conformist activities that cost each practice yearly. So there’s a lot of complications in being in practice today, but to be quite honest, they’re all worth it. Some of the statutory requirements cause people to be better than what they could have been if they didn’t have it. For example, just in the area of accounting, there’s generally accepted accounting principles that are used by only 1/10th of 1% of the veteran population. There’s other comprehensive bases of accounting. Usually the income tax method, they have a difference in bearing, but they confuse people because the results of operations differ. Financial position clearly does differ. The disclosure of liabilities, both stated, unstated and contingent differs.

So to become a doctor of veteran medicine today, you really do have to engage a lot of people that know not only what’s going on from a legal standpoint and an accounting standpoint, but other aspects. And I’m going to throw a very real need. And that is finding the right people for practice and finding the right people is not merely just setting a signal out there, but engaging competent people who know you, know the practice and then bring the right people together.

And Stacy, I’m looking at you specifically when I say that because what you’re doing is God’s work. You’re bringing the right people to the right practice. A horrible mistake is bringing the wrong type of person to the right kind of practice. And it takes the skill set, takes the knowledge base, takes the heart of a poet to really understand not only the needs of what a candidate would be being brought into practice, but more importantly what the needs of the practice would be. You can ruin the life of a candidate and really devastate a practice by bringing the wrong person in. So I have to say right now, thank you very much because you’ve helped a lot of our clients.

Well, thank you so much for saying that. And you said God’s work, and I’ve truly always believed that because the people are one of the most important things to a business, finding the right people. And like you said, if you bring the wrong person, it could be devastating. So that’s always been my prayer to God is help me find the right person for this position. So I appreciate you saying that. Looking back at your time as president of the Veterinary Practice Managers Association and your recognition by both US and UK professional bodies, what leadership lessons have stayed with you throughout your career?

The number one leadership is to be don’t be a hypocrite. If you ask someone to do it, you better be able to do it yourself. If you ask someone to work, you better be working harder than anybody else in the practice. If you ask people to learn, you have to be committed to continuing professional education. So the number one tip I can give anybody in terms of leadership is not to be a hypocrite, not to tell people what to do, but to show them what to do, to be committed not only to your practice and to the people in the practice, both the clients as well as the staff, but also be committed to the profession. I found that the most committed people, the hardest working people, the most knowledgeable people are also the most successful people.

Yeah, I agree with you. And going back to one of the original questions I asked you, and you made a comment about that, about today, there’s this trend to work less, and I saw something about how we’re the lowest productivity in our country than we have been I think since the beginning. And there’s this trend now to want to work less. But you were saying the more that you work, the more experience that you’re gaining and the more of an expert that you become. So how do we convince people? How do we train people to have that knowledge?

In a way you can’t train them. Heroes are born, not taught. That’s the one thing. And to work in a veterinary practice, you have to be hero. You have to have a commitment towards the competency. A friend of mine, Clyde Johnson, an equine practitioner said many, many years ago in a meeting that I was chairing, he said, “You know what, veterinary medicine, contrary to popular belief is a people profession.”

It is.

“We serve the needs of the patient. What we minister is to the well-being of the client.” And that just struck me with an unbelievable wisdom because when you think of it to be in veterinary medicine, it’s the only profession in the absolute world that has to worry about both a client and a patient. I worry about my clients, physicians worry about their patients, but nobody has to worry about both, but a doctor of veterinary medicine. It’s a very challenging activity. So in order to bring people to this level, they have to be born into it. They have to be committed, they have to love what they do, but they have to have a reverence for the patient and a respect for the client.

Such a good point. Such a good point. I just placed a veterinarian this year who’s in his 70s, I think he’s 72. And he told me that he had retired five years ago and got bored and decided to come out of retirement. And so I placed him in a job this year and he made a comment. He said he was doing relief work in several practices, and he said some of the people that were working in those practices were complaining about the client. They were saying this would be a great profession if it weren’t for the clients. And he said, “But the clients are why I went into this.” And he commented how sad it made him when he hears other veterinarians make comments like that.

And I understand that because he graduated in the ’70s, as did I. and I’m 72 going 73, and I’ve cut down to 55 hours a week. But they’re honest because we have to account for our time. No hyperbolic representation of excess time there. But I remember as he does that, many of the people that entered the profession in the ’70s and the ’80s were absolutely positively committed to what the profession stands for. And that is the well-being of the patient and the client. So I respect the gentleman that you made reference. He’s probably a buddy of mine. Maybe when we get off mic, you can tell me who it is.

But that was the tendency, and there’s a lot of people today that graduate that have that same heart. If your parents were in a profession, if they worked the requisite 60, 70 hours a week, if your parents had their own business, if your parents were farmers and work gargantuan hours, if you were brought up committed, if you’re the child or the grandchild of immigrants that came into the United States that were so grateful for just the opportunity of work, you have a different view than if you think that people owe you something. There has to be a debt of gratitude to become great, in my personal opinion. You have to be so grateful.

It’s the opposite of entitlement, right?

Exactly. Exactly. You have to have a servant’s heart as opposed to part of the aristocracy. The [French 00:47:14], as you might say in French, the elect. It’s a lot different.

Well, going back to veterinary practices, in your opinion, what are the top three financial or management mistakes that veterinary practice owners make today and how can they avoid them?

The top three, number one, to realize that you have to spend money to make money. A lot of people think that they can cut corners, not pay people a fair wage, work in substandard premises and the practice will grow. The answer is it doesn’t. You have to have a top-notch promise. You have to have the best people. You have to have the morality to pay a fair and living wage. You have to charge a fair fee. Second mistake is you got to make sure that you’re not buying love in all the wrong places. You have to understand that charging a fair fee is a duty because you can’t function in the future unless you charge that fair fee.

You can’t pay people fairly unless you charge the fair fee. You can’t have premises that are phenomenal that welcome people into the practice unless you charge a fair fee. And the third thing is to say that I can give something for nothing. That’s a big mistake. You can’t, you’ve got to work. You have to be willing to be part of what it means to be transcendent. So those three things, you got to spend money, you got to charge fairly, which means you have to make sure that you’re charging an amount to be moral. Then you have to be willing to work hard, be transcendent, and be grateful.

Well, that’s good advice. And I love the topic of being grateful. Owen, with more than four decades of experience, how do you envision the future of vendor practice ownership, particularly in light of increasing corporate consolidation and new technologies entering the space?

In the words of Sydney Carton from the Tale of Two Cities, and the first part of that Dickens novel, you probably remember this, Stacy, but he talked that these were the best of times, these were the worst of times. And a lot of it just depends on your attitude. Right now, these are truly the best of times to be a doctor of veterinary medicine today with a fee structure that exists with the marketability and the opportunity. You couldn’t find a better time. If you don’t excel, there’s something wrong with you. You chose the wrong profession because these truly are the best of times. It means that you have to do a couple things. First of all, you to put in the time, you have to make sure that you’re always constant. You have to be a member of associations. I’m a strong believer in AAHA, AAEP, the VMGs, going to every possible national meeting you can, but you have to be willing to invest in the future. And that’s very important, I think.

Well, Owen, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

The most surprising thing is that the profession has enjoyed the highest possible capitalization of the earnings for potential sale. There is no profession that has practice value greater than veterinary medicine. Absolutely none. That did surprise me. When you look at what’s occurring in dentistry or human medicine, no one has the multiples. No one can sell their practice at a level. I have friends and clients that tell me, “I wish I would’ve gone to veterinary medicine.” And I look at a physician and I tell them… I say, “Well, you weren’t smart enough.”

Because it’s harder to get into vet school than human medical school.

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. A doctor of veterinary medicine intellectually is 1/10th of 1% of the intellectual toll. And that’s there is professional envy. And that did surprise me because I thought all professions were equally as noted that would generate an income stream, but it’s not. If you’re a doctor of veterinary medicine today, you work hard to build up a practice and it’s easy to build up a practice today, nowhere near as difficult as it was in the ’70s, in the ’80s, ask your buddy, he had to work hard for what he did. It’s not that difficult today. The rewards are phenomenal. And that surprised me. It surprised me that of all the professions in the world, being a doctor of veterinary medicine can generate the highest value.

What do you think the future will be like in the veterinary profession?

Very good question. I think it depends upon those that enter the profession. The profession is determinate based upon those that are in it. If you enter the profession and you are centered towards your profession, you’re going to do phenomenally well. Therefore, if in the undergraduate programs and in the admittance to schools of veterinary medicine, we bring in the best possible candidates that are devoted, not only X-raying the head through test scores, but really looking at the heart. Is this candidate going into a school of veterinary medicine really going to be a great doctor?

Or are we picking them because they have the highest GPA? But if the deans of the schools of veterinary medicine admit those that are dedicated to the profession, it’ll be a phenomenal future. If we don’t bring in the right type people, and that involves not only doctors of veterinary medicine, but also the licensed technicians that are admitted and the practice managers that are admitted and develop and grow, then it’s going to be somewhat of a challenge. But it’s all people-based. And that’s why I look at you, Stacy, and I say, “There’s a woman who’s doing something to really impact the future of an entire profession.”

Well, it is all people-based, it’s all about the people. What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening today?

Be grateful. Work hard. Remember that there are reasons why clients come to your practice, be available for the clients because they have pets that could be in major distress. What you consider not to be an emergency could be epic in the mind of the client. So you have to be respectful to them. That’s basically what I would say. Work hours, work long hours. If you see this as an occupation, then you’re not going to grow. And in five years you’ll be looking for something else. If you see this as nothing more than capacity to generate an income stream, it’s the wrong profession for you. If you see this as a way of life, you’re going to have a phenomenal success.

I love that. Well, Owen, some of our guests say they’ve had a key book that they read that made an impact on their life. Is there a book that you’ve read that’s impacted you the most?

Being an English major, you got to remember, I’ve read a lot of books, and it’s not the most current [French 00:56:16] that you’re really focused towards, but really that which is important. And to be quite frank, it’s a poem that impacted me the most. And it was a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson. And there’s something called the heroic couplet. You probably remember that from your poetry classes. And the last stanza of the poetic couplet of Ulysses is to strive, to seek, to find and not to heal. And I think that that has affected me the most. That everything you do is an ability to strive, seek, and find, and not be happy with being complacent, not yield. That’s basically where I believe that it becomes important.

Strive, seek and find and don’t be complacent. Good advice.

And not yield.

And not yield. Well, Owen, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of the People of Animal Health podcast before you drop the mic today?

That’s easy. Number one, be grateful. Number two, don’t believe all that you hear. You are in a wonderful profession, but that profession requires dedication. That’s an easy thing. Go to national meetings. In the old days, there was a lot more camaraderie and some of the older guys know exactly what I mean. One example, I mean, you see today I wear a shirt and tie and I wear that every day. And those people that know me know that I’m committed to acting as we did in the ’70s and the ’80s. Those of you that are classic members of the American Animal Hospital Association, remember that whatever regional or national AAHA meeting you attended, pretty much everybody wore a suit, and if you wanted to dress down, you wore a sports coat.

Not with an open collar, but always with a tie. You dressed as a professional. So conduct yourself accordingly. I’ve always said that adding a tie in the exam room can add 15 to $20 per transaction. Let people know that you are a doctor. Don’t try to hide it. Don’t try to be one of the many. Be special. Be unique because your client has to respect your opinion. You have to conduct yourself as a professional. And that requires that you realize that at every moment, at every time, and you demand the same in your practice. You demand that everyone speaks the King’s English, that they understand and can speak clearly, especially with an aging population.

My age group is aging, graying, [inaudible 00:59:48] and balding, and sometimes their hearing is not as good. So as a person who’s serving in a wonderful profession, you have to remember the client needs to hear what you’re saying. So that means speaking distinctly, speaking with the client, not away from the client, being a person who is devoted to what they’re doing as opposed to a person who is trying to transact and then move on. And I know it’s difficult, especially those of you that might be in practices that are owned and governed by those who are not in a profession, be that veterinary medicine or any other profession where they don’t understand the poor souls, that there is a duty in a profession that is transcended and you have to work in that environment. Those of you that are in privately owned practices, you don’t have the same burdens, but regardless of what your mistress requires of you, you can always be transcended and remember that eventually you want to be in a position where you can have equity ownership.

That is so important that equity ownership becomes the basis, it’s far more important than a 401K and Roth IRA than an intention plan because it has the most favor tax advantage, and it allows you to have the capacity to direct your own life in your own existence. In fact, I’m not ready to make an announcement on it, but maybe a little teaser that I’m working with a group of people right now, and we’re working on a series of specific partnerships that are doctor owned, not owned by others, but that are completely doctor owned, that can then be used to generate an income, to provide a service, to save the lives of patients and not be burdened by the lack of knowledge of people who maybe they’re over worked.

And we’ll have that, I’d say within the next month available for announcement. But right now, we are right at the edge, and I’ve amassed some of the finest people that I can think of. And we have fused. There’s a little tip. We have fused together that group, and not only veterinary medicine, but other respected and honored professions. So there’s a real future, real opportunity, and that’s why I get so excited when I have the capacity to be with you, Stacy, because you’re making the difference. You’re putting the right people in the right practices for the best opportunity. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Owen. And like you said before, there’s never been a better time to be a veterinarian, and it sounds like there’s some amazing opportunities out there for veterinarians. I so appreciate you taking the time to be on the People of Animal Health podcast today, Owen, I’ve enjoyed our conversation.

I have too, Stacy, and thank you for the opportunity. I really do appreciate it. Thank you for all that you do.