Starting your own veterinary practice can be both exciting and overwhelming. You’ve likely devoted your career to caring for animals, but running a business involves much more than just providing medical care to furry patients. If you're thinking about becoming a practice owner, understanding the steps involved can help you feel more confident and prepared. If you’re at a point in your career where you’re considering going out on your own, this article explores the paths to veterinary practice ownership and step-by-step instructions to help you start your own veterinary clinic.
Key considerations
- The two ways to start a veterinary practice are buying an established practice and starting from scratch, each of which has pros and cons to consider.
- It’s important to define your goals and create a detailed business plan, so you understand the hard work that goes into starting a practice and what lies ahead.
- Veterinarians can obtain funding through small business loans, SBA loans, and seller financing to help them realize their dream of practice ownership.
Choose your path to veterinary clinic ownership
There are two main paths for veterinarians who want to make the leap to become business owners.
Buy an existing veterinary clinic
Purchasing an established practice means you inherit an existing patient base, established systems, and possibly even a trusted team. This can be a smoother transition if you’re concerned about finding patients or the financial impacts of going for a period of time with no income.
Start a brand-new veterinary practice
While there are obvious hurdles with starting a practice from scratch, you’ll also have complete control over everything from the company name to the hours you’ll serve patients. While this path involves more challenges, like building a patient base and defining new processes, it allows you to create a practice that aligns perfectly with your goals and values.
Assess your professional goals
Your professional goals will significantly impact how you approach starting your practice. If you’re in the early days of working as a veterinarian, you might decide it’s too soon to branch out into business ownership while you’re still honing your skills as a practitioner. On the other hand, if you’ve been working in someone else’s clinic for the last decade, you might feel well-prepared to handle the various aspects of practice ownership.
Craft a business plan
Creating a thorough business plan is crucial for laying out your vision and strategy. A well-crafted business plan gives you the opportunity to think end-to-end about your business goals, from the name of your business to your eventual exit strategy and everything in between. As you create your plan, consider these key sections:
- Business vision: Outline the vision and mission for your business in as much detail as possible. For instance, you might aim to provide high-quality, affordable care for underserved communities or have a mission to give back a portion of your profit to animals in need.
- Competitive intelligence: You’ll want to assess your market fit as it pertains to current competitors. How many vets are in the area you want to set up shop, and how will you differentiate? Will you serve a type of animal others don’t, like birds or exotic pets, or do you offer financing through your office that no one else can beat?
- Pricing and income: Go into detail on how you’ll price services and projected income. Will you offer a monthly retainer to see pets as frequently as needed or charge a flat fee per visit? How much do you anticipate making per patient, and how many patients can you realistically serve in a week, month, or year?
- Hiring and organizational structure: Employees are crucial to the success of your practice, so consider how many people you’ll need to hire, their titles and responsibilities, and how much you’ll need to pay them.
- Exit strategy: How will you eventually transfer ownership of the practice? Do you plan to bring on other vets in time and offer them the opportunity to buy into the practice? Will you sell the business outright when you retire? It’s never too early to think about the end goal and set up your practice to ensure you can recognize that goal.
Discover your financing options
The one great certainty of starting a business is that it’s going to cost money. Depending on where you live and whether you’re acquiring an existing business or starting a new one, how much money you need varies dramatically. Based on your business plan, you’ll want to step through key expenses and determine how much money you’ll need to borrow. From there, you can begin to look at financing options, which may include:
- Veterinarian Practice Loans: A veterinarian practice loan is a type of loan specifically designed with veterinarians, in mind. These loans can be used to cover the day-to-day clinic expenses, buy equipment, or pay for facility costs. With loan amounts of up to $500,0001,2 and repayment terms of up to 12 years1, BHG Financial can help you find funding tailored to the needs of veterinarians.
- Small business administration (SBA) loan: SBA 7(a) loans can give vets access to capital for various needs. Through the SBA 7(a) program, you may qualify for loan terms up to 25 years to purchase commercial real estate for loan amounts up to $5 million.*
- Seller financing: If you’re purchasing an existing business, you may have the option to finance through the seller. This means you purchase the business from them and then make monthly payments until the amount is paid in full. Seller financing can be beneficial since you can negotiate interest rates and loan terms that best suit your financial needs.
Secure your office space
If you choose to acquire an existing veterinary practice, you may have a leg up on securing a space. Keep in mind that you may still need to negotiate the terms of a lease or purchase on an existing business.
If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll want to research optimal locations for your practice. Working alongside a qualified real estate agent may help you quickly find spaces that match your needs. As you search, consider:
- The size of the office, including rooms for surgery, exams, and waiting
- Parking and accessibility, specifically for those who need to access the building via a wheelchair
- Proximity to competitors
- Visibility of signage and the likelihood of walk-in patients
- Zoning to ensure the office is zoned appropriately for veterinary use
Make your business official
Once your business is eligible for funding and have a physical space, you’ll need to get set up as a tax-paying legal entity. Consider working alongside a business attorney as you get set up—it may be the most effective way to ensure you check all the boxes.
- Choose your business structure (limited liability company (LLC), sole proprietorship, partnership, S corporation, etc.)
- Apply for a tax ID/employer identification number (EIN)
- Set up your business bank account to separate personal and business finances
- Look into insurance for your business and employees
- Make sure you have the right licenses in place
- Check on local and state-specific business requirements
In addition to doing paperwork like the above, it’s also important that you prioritize setting up your digital business channels. You may want to work with an experienced digital marketing agency to help you secure a domain name, set up your website, and ensure that people searching for your business online can find and interact with you easily.
Purchase business supplies
If you’re fully outfitting an office from scratch, you’ll need to buy everything from chairs your patient’s humans can sit in while they wait to the scales you’ll use to measure vitals. While you may have outlined some expenses in your business plan, consider what you’ll need to buy in the categories of:
- Office furniture
- Technology (hardware, including laptops, printers, phones, and payment processors)
- Technology (software, including patient management and billing systems)
- Prescriptions and medications
- Diagnostic tools, including X-ray and ultrasound
- Gloves, masks, and other protective equipment
Hire staff
Even if you plan to maintain a small practice, it’s likely you’ll need to hire a few staff members. Consider finding an administrator who can field phone calls, schedule appointments, and manage billing. You may also want to have one or more assistants who can take the vitals of animals and understand owner concerns before you come into the room. If you plan to rapidly expand the practice, you may also consider bringing on additional veterinarians to maximize the number of patients you can serve.
Launch and grow your veterinary clinic
With all of the preceding steps taken, it’s time to launch your practice, monitor results, and grow. Keep in mind that business may be slow during the early days. However, with persistence and effort, you can establish a name for your veterinary practice and create a thriving business.
Learn how BHG Financial can support your veterinary practice
Compared to other lenders that offer low amounts or short repayment periods, BHG Financial provides Veterinarian Practice Loans up to $500,0001,2 coupled with extended terms of up to 12 years1, making it more affordable than ever to achieve your goal of veterinary practice ownership. BHG Financial offers personalized concierge service, tailored to meet the unique funding needs of veterinarians. You can quickly view your personalized estimate without affecting your credit score by using our online Payment Estimator.
