Veterinary Practice Ownership Leads to Higher Income

Karl Salzsieder, DVM, JD, CVA, owner of Salzsieder & Associates, TPSG, LLC / DBA Total Practice Solutions—­Northwest, says your income can potentially double if you’re a practice owner.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“Veterinarians can never make the money as an employee that they can as an owner if they buy an economy size practice that will generate a bigger bottom line. After all expenses, we’re talking about return on investment. Whether you become an employee there and take doctor pay, or you just become the owner/manager and take the profits, there’s a big difference that the employees will never get, which is that bottom line which ought to be somewhere in the 12% to 20% of gross amount. That’s a huge amount of money for a well-managed practice.

So, ownership is going to give you that extra 12% to 20% on top of your 21%, give or take, as production pay as an employee. So, you can potentially double your income if you’re an owner. And even if you have profit or earnings of 12 or 13 to 20 [%], your payments out of that are probably going to be 5% to 10%, so it’s paying for itself and you still have earnings on top of your paycheck.”