Starting a veterinary practice is one of the biggest decisions in your career — and it usually happens faster than expected. Many veterinarians don’t plan to become business owners; an opportunity appears, and suddenly they’re juggling financing, leases, payroll, and marketing all at once.
Before you make the leap, take time to get your financial foundation in order. Review your credit score, build cash reserves, and secure pre-approval for a loan so you know your options before choosing a location. Create a pro forma — a simple projection of income and expenses — to see what success looks like on paper.
Launching a practice isn’t just about opening your doors; it’s about building something that supports your goals long-term. With the right preparation, you’ll start from a place of confidence, not chaos.
Ready to explore ownership? Schedule a quick chat at flveterinaryadvisors.com/contact.
Transcript:
Let’s talk about buying a business. Let’s even go a little deeper than buying a business to actually starting a business. So most people who become business owners didn’t tend to actually become a business owner by intention. Most of it is done by accidents. And to get a little bit deeper into this, I mean, let’s say that you are a veterinarian practicing.
You’re an associate working somewhere, making your money, seeing your clients, and then all of a sudden maybe an opportunity gets thrown in front of you. Maybe you get in all this chatter from other people. saying, hey, you need to go start a business. Maybe you want to make more money. Oftentimes what we see is that people will jump into ownership and then they have no idea of business acumen, certain financial acumen that they should have. This isn’t a problem. The biggest question here though is, well, having the mindset of “hey, can I be a practice owner? Can I actually run this business? And then what are the actual steps I need to be taking from a personal side to make this a reality?”
First off, when we talk about wanting to start a practice, we really wanna focus in on like, what are your current finances look like? Your credit score is super important in this equation, because you’re often gonna need to borrow some money. And depending on the business you’re in, well, the business might be very, let’s say low risk, risk averse in a way to where lenders are willing to give you lump sums of money with no problem, but they’re gonna wanna look at your credibility, like how well are you paying your bills? But then you also wanna look on the flip side here of well, what kind of reserves are you keeping on hand personally? Is all of your money shoveled away into restricted retirement accounts where you are gonna be penalized and taxed on them when you take them out? Do you have any cash? Do you have any accessible investments? How do you keep yourself afloat once you actually start this business?
Because usually with a business, it might not generate enough cash in the beginning part to where you’re even able to pay yourself to cover personal expenses. There needs to be some type of a bridge in the meantime to be able to get you to that next spot. If you’re looking to start a business, the first spot that you want to start is being able to see, can I actually get pre-approval to be able to, let’s say lease a location, build it out, have operational capital? Then you want to be able to start sourcing the location.
Ideally, you might wanna look at leasing first unless you’re very set on, I wanna have my business here. Otherwise, you might wanna look at maybe buying a location, which is gonna be a little bit more costly. This is a good time to go work with a real estate agent that can be able to go out there and oftentimes they can negotiate on your behalf to make sure you’re getting good terms of where you’re going. So you make sure you can get some financing. You look at the real estate person to be able to help source the location for you to make sure it’s gonna be a good spot.
And then on the other side, what you really wanna be able to do is make sure you have someone there to be able to build out the location for you. And then there’s a lot of other steps along the way of marketing, making sure you have the right equipment inside the practice, being able to start hiring people. All these things are super important, but right out of the get-go, if you’re looking to start, you wanna look at lending, and then you also wanna look at being able to find a realtor to be able to help source a location for you, specifically when it comes to commercial real estate. And beyond that, as a business owner,
If you haven’t started looking into a pro forma, pro forma is really what are the expectations if I’m gonna open this business? Well, how much money can I assume to collect? What are my expenses gonna be? What am I gonna make? And then being able to look at that out in time to make sure, okay, as I go to do this, am I running on track? Am I running behind? Am I doing better? So then you have a general idea of expectations from your business. Look, we help people with this all the time.
If you want to chat further or if you’re looking for someone to connect with to start this process, reach out to you. Reach out to us and we’d be happy to schedule 15 minutes to chat.
This material is intended for general public use. By providing this content, Park Avenue Securities LLC and your financial representative are not undertaking to provide investment advice or make a recommendation for a specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents, and employees do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation. Tom is a Registered Representative and Financial Advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS). Securities products and advisory services offered through PAS, member FINRA, SIPC. Financial Representative of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. Florida Veterinary Advisors and The Next Step Planning Group are not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or Guardian. California Insurance License #0K80141. AR Insurance License #15823672. Florida Veterinary Advisors is not registered in any state or with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a Registered Investment Advisor. The individuals associated with Florida Veterinary Advisors do not maintain specialized licenses or qualifications for the financial services provided to veterinary professionals. 7989827.1 Exp 5/27