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I was recently scrolling through a lively thread on an online veterinary group that started with the question: Is practice ownership the only way to make money as a vet? In Part 1 I unpacked this question and started with the (mostly financial) downsides of being an employed vet. But every yin has a yang. And in Part 2 we discussed that although owning a clinic is probably your best bet for making money, it’s definitely not a guarantee, and that extra income has a cost.
I know a vet who, according to a reliable source, once bought a $24 million property at auction just to impress a visiting friend. Another told me how nice it feels to arrive at your vet school reunion in your own helicopter. A third lives in a mansion in California next to a famous A-grade celebrity.
These are clearly not employed veterinarians.
I share these stories to illustrate two points:
Now, these are clearly the outliers. To call them ‘practice owners’ is an understatement – ‘empire builders’ would be more accurate. I suspect individuals like these are wired differently from most of us. (Also, don’t discount the effects of timing and luck.) But it does show what’s possible.
Possible, but far from a given.
Because for every multi-millionaire practice owner I know, there are twenty others who are struggling financially. Profit margins that you can count on the fingers of one hand are common, and margins on the wrong side of zero are not unheard of. I’ve had depressing conversations with individuals who have committed decades of their lives to a practice that provided massive value to their communities in return for modest financial returns at best, and now, nearing retirement, these vets are finding that their practices are not really a saleable asset. Imagine facing the prospect of one day having to shut the doors for the final time, and walking away with lots of memories and empty pockets.
No – making money from owning a vet practice is not a given.
Between those two extremes, there exists, as with most things, a bell curve. And somewhere along that bell curve are the practice owners whose lives most appeal to me. They don’t spend sixty hours a week doing clinical work. Their businesses do not depend directly on them doing the vetting. They have teams that deal with the everyday fires that need to be put out. They live in nice homes in good neighbourhoods. They probably drive a Land Rover, or a Tesla (which they’ll be quick to tell you they bought before Elon went crazy). Or a Land Rover for him and a Tesla for her. Their kids went to high school at some prestigious private college. They’ll sit in their beach cottages complaining about the work ethic of youngsters and how ridiculous wages are these days, teeth stained red with hundred-dollar-a-bottle wine, without even a hint of irony. And then they’ll discuss their next ski trip to Europe – business class of course – those airline points sure do add up when you’re paying the drug bill with the practice credit card. (If I sound jealous – I am!)
But here’s the thing: their kids probably went to the free local public primary school, because back then the practice wasn’t making much money. In fact, back then they didn’t actually see the kids all that much, because they were at the practice ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME. And more than once, a well-deserved break to spend some time with the family had to be cancelled because the locum bailed on them the day before. (You guys go with Dad – Mummy has to stay at work…)
That’s partially why they’re so grey now. But also because they’re typically in their late forties or well into their fifties. That’s because it takes a long time to build a practice to this point – and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. And anal gland juice. (There are, of course, exceptions. I have one friend who bought a practice, worked so hard that we, his friends, told him that what he and his vet wife were doing was not sustainable, until he sold it less than ten years later and pretty much retired before he was forty – or at least retired enough to do whatever the hell he wants. Which, in his case, was to start an environmentally friendly running shoe brand. Go listen to my interview with Sam, and buy yourself a pair of his epic shoes instead of more boring Hokas!)
**Quick bit of advice from the sidelines: There are a handful of people who are naturally good practice owners. They seem to have the business gene, and leadership comes easily to them. But most of us kind of suck at it. If you’re going to do it, don’t just try to rely on your IQ to ‘figure it out’. Get help – do a course, get a coach, read lots of books. You’ll never get it right, but you’ll have more fun on the way, and make more money in the process.
Everyone has problems.
All along that bell curve, and off it in the land of the employed vet – I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t. And I mean work-related problems – personal problems are a given.
Your problem as an employee might be that the roster sucks, or you don’t like the way your colleague changes your treatment plans when you’re not there, or THAT client, or your pay ceiling.
Left-of-the-bell-curve vet: many issues, magnified by money, or rather, the lack thereof. Tesla and red wine? ‘I employed the wrong manager and now the culture that I worked so hard on has gone down the toilet.’ One friend just spent two years in the legal system fighting completely fabricated HR-related allegations and eventually had to pay a large amount because the lawyers said trying to fight the claims would cost even more. (F***ing lawyers – if they loved justice they’d do it for free, right?)
Helicopter/mansion tycoon: ‘we opened a new clinic in the wrong spot / the economy has taken an unexpected downturn, so I’ve lost the investors five million dollars’, or ‘the commission found that we are a monopoly – and now what?!’
(I recently had drinks (yes, red wine) with a bigwig businessman (non-vet) who lamented, close to tears: “I have a 1.8 million dollar tax bill – I can’t afford that!” I don’t know him well enough to say what was on the tip of my tongue: ‘Yes, but didn’t you have to earn like four or five million to get a tax bill like that?’)
But that right there is probably what appeals to most practice owners even more than business class flights and a Tesla: where you end up on that bell curve, and which problems you choose to face, are to a large extent up to you.
Autonomy. Whether you want to halve prices and attract all the bargain hunters, or double prices and piss off the old clients – your choice. Want to run cheap ten-minute consults or thirty-minute consults, but with an expectation of an average transaction fee of $500? You decide. If you want to fire Dave because of the way he speaks to clients, or because he can’t bill properly, go for it. Yes, the repercussions of firing Dave are also yours, but all things being equal, would you rather be that owner or Dave? (Or the people who really liked working with Dave!)
But just don’t think it’s easy.
I have a couple of final thoughts on this topic that we’ll wrap up with next week, mainly around some less binary thinking about income generation with a vet degree.
This opinion piece was first published in The Vet Vault 3.2.1 email on Friday, 17 October 2025
Hubert Hiemstra is the friendly voice behind The Vet Vault and Vet Vault Clinical Podcasts. With over two decades of veterinary experience across three continents, he's on a mission to help fellow vets fall back in love with veterinary science. When he's not in the clinic or podcasting, he loves hanging out with his wife and energetic boys, catching some waves, going for a run, or just soaking up nature. Stay current with the Vet Vault’s practical, on-the-go clinical CPD episodes that are anything but boring. Explore the library here https://www.thevetvault.com/p/clinical-content/
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