From Vet to MVP | Dan Markwalder's Mission in Veterinary Leadership

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In this episode, we highlight Dan Markwalder the Chief Veterinary Officer at Mission Veterinary Partners (MVP). Dan shares his founder story including the wisdom of his mother, the thrill of a successful first practice and the challenge of a struggling second. Dan ultimately joined MVP with 22 veterinary hospitals. He shares why he partnered with MVP and the impact they are having on the broader industry.

Mission Veterinary Partners (Detroit, MI) is a veterinarian owned and managed network of general practice animal hospitals with a common goal of providing best-in-class care to companion animals. Their clinics provide wellness exams, senior pet care, vaccinations, oncology, ophthalmology, surgery, nutritional counseling, allergies and dermatology, and micro-chipping via their network of hospitals located throughout the United States.

Transcript

Introduction

Michael Burcham: Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high growth organizations. The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected pathways.

It's a journey where we learn from our mistakes fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere. Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big. And through their lessons learned, we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing and leading.

In this episode, my colleague, Anderson Williams is talking to Dan Markwalder, a veterinarian and entrepreneurial leader, and the Chief Veterinary Officer at Mission Veterinary Partners. I love Dan's story of how he became a veterinarian, how he built his own veterinary hospital, and how his career led him to his role at Mission Veterinary Partners.

Dan's story is a testament to the grit and determination to be entrepreneurial in any profession. It's also a story about how he developed himself as a leader, learning to lead through others and build something bigger than himself. I know you're going to enjoy this interview.

Anderson Williams: So will you just start and introduce yourself, who you are, where you come from?

Dan Markwalder: Dan Markwalder, I serve as the Chief Veterinary Officer here at Mission Veterinary Partner. Been a veterinarian for 31 years. Graduated from Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine. Go Boilermakers. Been married for 30 years, have four children from the ages of 14 to 23. We are a diehard baseball family.

We all have played baseball, including my wife. Probably one of the things that we enjoyed as my children grew up is going to many different ballparks. Been to 28 of the 30 professional, Major League baseball parks, except for two. Citi Field in New York, and believe it or not, right here in Detroit, which is kind of funny considering Mission Veterinary Partner is headquartered here in Detroit. But really the core of who I am as a veterinarian, first and foremost.

A Classic Veterinary Tale

Anderson Williams: Can you say a little bit about how you got into veterinary medicine? What drove you to that profession? How did that start in your early career?

Dan Markwalder: I think very early on I was the classic I wanted to be a veterinarian at a very young age. I was the one who was taking my grandmother's cats and trying to play doctor on her cats when everybody else wanted to be a fireman.

But a critical thing happened to me at the age of 15. I was in high school. I'm going to date myself a little bit. This was pre-internet, but we had to take these standardized tests in the old cabitron with the number two pencils, and the test was really geared to help guide you, direct you into a certain profession.

And then after they got the results of these tests, you had to meet with your academic counselor. And I still remember meeting with my, academic counselor and his job on that day was to convince me that I was not gonna be a veterinarian. I was a good student, but I was not academically gifted. And I remember that he did such a good job convincing me that I was not gonna be a veterinarian.

I convinced myself and I went home that afternoon. My mom worked two, sometimes three jobs just to put food on the table. But she always had an hour or two in the afternoon when we as kids came home from school just to spend for family time. And I came home, I was devastated. And my mom took one look at me and she said, son, what's a matter?

And literally every emotion came out of my body. Now my mom is probably the toughest lady, the toughest person you will ever meet. She's got a heart of gold, but I'll never forget what she did. She had me follow her to the family car, no pet. And we literally drove to the nearest veterinary hospital. And I want you to kind of picture this very determined lady and this tall, lanky boy who's emotionally distraught.

She walks into this hospital, I'm following her. She goes up to the front counter and she immediately says to the CSR, the receptionist, I need to speak with the doctor right now. Long story short, the veterinarian came out. My mom looked at me, pointed at me, looked at him and said, tell my son he's gonna be a veterinarian one day.

Well, I didn't know it then, but two months later, Doc would become, my employer, would become my lifelong mentor, and he really opened up the door of veterinary medicine. And that's really when I fell in love with veterinary medicine and never looked back. And so I had the privilege of applying to veterinary school.

Didn't make it my first time, but the second time around I was accepted. And so when I did graduate in 1991, I never looked back and I really felt I was so privileged to be a part of this profession, and it's been so good to me.

Anderson Williams: That's amazing. So when you got out of school, how did you go from practicing medicine to being a business owner, to starting to scale that business and that shift? How did that unfold?

Dan Markwalder: Yeah, so when I graduated, I did everything wrong. I did not really interview a number of different hospitals. I followed my fiance, now wife, who is a registered nurse. We wanted to practice around the Indianapolis area. So I took the first job offer, and again, this is the early 1990s. Job opportunities in veterinary medicine was a whole lot different than it is today.

The expectation was that you were gonna be on call. We were actually prepped. Whatever you do, don't ask how many nights a week you're gonna be on call. So I landed this job and I knew within the first couple of weeks I was in the wrong position. There was gonna be no mentorship. My dream, my vision was always to have my own practice.

Well, I got married that year. We had bought a little home, a little townhouse, and my wife is not a change agent, so here we are both in our first jobs right out of school. And she came home from work. She was doing the overnight shifts as the new nurse at the hospital. And I said, honey, tomorrow I'm gonna go ahead and leave my position.

And she said, well, what are we gonna do? And I said, we're gonna start our own practice. She said, where? And I said, I don't know. Well, eight months later. We would start our first practice in the suburbs of Chicago. This would again, would be in the early 1990s. I went to 10 different banks and 10 banks said, thanks, but no thanks.

And I always say this, the scariest loan to this day in my entire professional career, I went to my grandmother who was a child of the depression. And asked her for $40,000 for a loan, and she literally hears stories, how people have CDs and cash in their bed. She kept it in a little shoebox and uh, she gave me the money that started my first hospital.

I knew nothing. I didn't know business planning. I had virtually no leadership skills. I still remember doing the first payroll, calling my mom, who's a bookkeeper, and said, mom, can you walk me through how to do payroll? But that was my start, and I was very fortunate because given the lack even of my clinical experience, I had, again, no experience as a leader, as a business acumen, but I was fortunate that I landed in a great geographical area of Chicago, and that's good and bad.

The good to that is that I was able to pay off my loans. The bad is that I took it for granted what it was to build a business, and that's something I had to learn, to be honest with you, a few years later.

Building His Business

Anderson Williams: Talk a little bit about what you did build over time. Give us a sense of the scope of the business you ultimately built.

Dan Markwalder: Yeah, so my dream initially as a practice owner was to be a single location three doctor practice. So when I started my very first practice, that was my dream. It was a little 1200 square foot facility, two exam rooms, and uh, I ran outta money building that facility, building it out. So I had to finish it on my own.

Fast forward, a number of years later, one of my teammates graduated from veterinary school and he interviewed with me and he said, I want to be a partner one day. I want to run a hospital. And so I made the decision that I could either tell him that would be an opportunity or tell him that's not an opportunity. I would lose him.

So we brought him on board and I made a decision to go ahead and start another practice. Well, I just assumed that I could go ahead and start another practice. Cause after all, my first practice was very successful. Lo and behold, I almost lost that second practice. And what's difficult is when you've had a very successful practice and then you have another practice to compare to, that's difficult.

And I still remember calling my business partner and saying, hey look, we are going through cash. We're not gonna make it many more months. And I still remember, I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this story, but it's a true story. She said, well, what are we going to do? Cause we were just not getting the transactions, we were not getting the clients to come in the doors of that hospital.

And I said, I have a great idea. I've got this great marketing idea. We're gonna print up flyers and we're gonna have the name of the hospital and the telephone and I'm gonna go and spend an entire day going door to door in all these neighborhoods. And you learn a lot about people when you've got a tie and your doctor's coat on and you're going door to door, knocking on doors, introducing yourself.

And I'm about three hours into this. The next thing I know, one raindrop, two raindrops, and I'm talking, Anderson, we're one of the worst storms I ever been in my life. Well, I realized that that time I had parked about six blocks away. I made a mad dash to my car. By the time I got in my car, I'm soaking wet. All these marketing pamphlets I put together were drenched.

I drove back to my practice and I was probably the lowest I had been professionally, and I put these pamphlets on the front counter and my CSR looked at me and said, Dr. Dan, I hate to tell you this, but it's the wrong phone number. And the reason I share that story is I had to realize the depth, that valley, if you will, of my professional career.

I realized I was not the type of leader that my team needed, and that allowed me to go out and get some mentors. And along the way, I really fell in love with the business and the leadership, and I was ultimately able to build our organization in 22 locations, two ER 24 hour facilities. 20 GP practices, 10 were, startups de novos and the rest were acquisition.

And I really believe it all came from that low point in my professional career that propelled me to really make a choice and make a decision that ultimately if I was going to lead a successful organization I had to start with me. And that's why I'm so passionate about mentorship.

Leading Through Others

Michael Burcham: In the following segment, Dan shares with Anderson, his story of becoming a leader and realizing that his clinical training had in no way prepared him to be a leader.

He shares his transition from becoming a micromanager to learning to lead through others so that his business could actually grow.

Anderson Williams: When you said that you weren't the leader you needed to be, obviously something changed to then turn and build what you built. What was the challenge and what was the investment you had to make in yourself as a leader to turn from struggling with that second to building 22 successful practices?

Dan Markwalder: I think for me, the reality is as veterinarians, we are trained to be great clinicians, great diagnosticians, which is great, but that also means there's very little room to air. When you bring your pet in to a veterinarian, your expectation is they're going do the right test and get the right diagnosis.

Makes for a great clinician, but I had to realize as a leader, I didn't have all the answers. My job as a leader was to build these great high performing teams, and when I went from a single location to more than one location, it forces you to do things that otherwise you didn't have to do with a single location.

And until I realized it was less about me, because like many veterinarians, I was a micromanager. I wanted my hands in everything. And I had to realize when we opened up the second location that I had to back away from that. That I had to pour into my teams how to become high performing teams. And it took that low point to realize that.

And fortunately for me, I had some mentors in my life who showed me that, who demonstrated that, who held me accountable and allowed me to begin that journey of truly, and it continues to this day of a leadership journey cause you're never quite there.

Anderson Williams: How long did it take? Give us a sense of the timeline from initial practice to the 22 practices.

Dan Markwalder: So we scaled over about a 15 year period of time and what people don't realize the first 10 years of practice ownership for me was one hospital. So I call that my early years, really my years in the desert of learning what it was not only be a great clinician, but a great leader and developing the skills.

I was a late bloomer, but once I developed those skills and had the team that I felt would really propel us and allow us to scale, it was full steam ahead and it was something I really enjoyed.

Anderson Williams: So when you think about that, Dan, you think about your personal growth, the development, the building of the business, the people you employed, all of that over that let's say first part of your career.

What about that process are you most proud of?

Dan Markwalder: I think for me it was taking young clinicians who had that entrepreneurship, who really would love to develop their leadership skills and to see them move into a position where they could oversee a hospital and pour into their team, develop these great cultures.

Now, we have a lot of challenges in veterinary medicine today, but we also have a lot of practices that are thriving. And when you put tools in the toolbox of these clinicians who desire to become great leaders and oversee great teams and produce phenomenal hospitals, there's just something very special.

And that to me is what I'm most proud of.

Anderson Williams: And did you have that inclination always? Is that an inclination that was born out of necessity of scaling your business? Where did that sense of investing in others and growing others and mentorship and these things that you're obviously so passionate about, where did that come from in this journey or prior to this journey?

Dan Markwalder: I think that veterinary medicine is very much a people profession. I learned this from my mentor. If you want to be a great veterinarian and a great clinician, you have to be a lover of people. So for me, that was something that I recognized early on. It took me a while to truly realize to have a great hospital, it necessitates that you have to build a moat around your recruitment.

You have to recruit what we call here at MVP, the eight, nines, and tens. But you also have to develop great leaders within that hospital, cuz it's the leaders that ultimately drive the culture in that hospital, which we all know ultimately drives the behavior. That took me a little bit longer to realize that because in order to scale my business, it could not be dependent upon me.

I had to have a system in place where we could go ahead and replicate leaders at those individual hospitals. And once I realized that that was the jet fuel that allow us to really grow and scale as an organization.

Finding His Mission

Michael Burcham: In this next segment, Dan describes his desire, even with his remarkable success, to be part of something larger and more meaningful that could impact his industry.

That desire led him to his becoming part of Mission Veterinary Partners.

Anderson Williams: When you look at that journey and obviously that success building and sustaining that many practices, what was it that made you interested in, open to the conversation in, and then ultimately willing to partner with MVP?

Dan Markwalder: That's a great question.

So in the fall of 2019, I had experienced tremendous success. We were at the pinnacle of our organization, 22 locations, 250 team members, great leadership team. I loved what I was doing. I had turned 55 and I realized that we had a lot of challenges in this profession, and I wanted to be a part of something even bigger than what I had built.

An organization that really would disrupt this profession, that would truly be able to show what greatness looks like within this profession. And quite honestly, I didn't think that existed. And then I met a gentleman by the name of Mike Aubrey, who just stepped in as the CEO of this very young company called Mission Veterinary Partner.

And at that point in time I started interviewing and looking at over 30 different veterinary companies. And then I met Mike and we had an initial conversation and just the questions that he was asking me. I grew up within the veterinary community, been doing this since the age of 15, and sometimes you need somebody who can look at things from the outside.

And he was posing questions that quite frankly, I had never really thought about. Well, then in the spring of 2020, we all know and remember what happened, COVID, we call it our long courtship. And Mike and I, we just felt that we were coming back and meeting up and having conversations of what not only a partnership would look like.

But my role and what MVP's role would be in the greater veterinary community. We were really kind of feeding off each other. And then it was the time to make a decision. And what really was the pivotal point for me is Mission Veterinary Partners has a conference that they do every year is called the PAW Conference, where we bring all of our leaders from all of our hospitals together.

And I knew at that point in time I was a guest speaker something special was happening within MVP and in the fall of 2020 started with MVP and stepped into the role as the Chief Veterinary Officer in the summer of 2021 and haven't looked back, and I really believe that the last 30 years have really prepared me for this time in my professional career.

I call it my third major disruption of my professional career.

Anderson Williams: How do you talk to potential sellers who may be protective of their team? Protective of what they've built for obvious reasons, concerned about corporate quote unquote medicine. What do you tell potential sellers about your experience and about what you've found at MVP?

Really from the veterinarian perspective and the industry perspective, how do you talk to those potential sellers about your experience?

Dan Markwalder: I think for me and specifically for MVP, when I'm dialoging and communicating with the seller, it first starts with their why. And we say this, we're very transparent.

MVP is very transparent cuz we say we're not the company for every seller. If your desire is to have the highest price for your hospital, we're probably not your company. One of the things that we talk about here at MVP is this idea of legacy. My dream was when I stood in front of my team members, keep in mind, 85% of our DVMs came into our hospitals as new graduate veterinarians.

I knew many of these veterinarians from their teenage years. Their parents were clients of mine. I was invested in them and they were invested in me. My dream was to come back one year after we integrated an MVP and every single one of them would say to me, it's as good if not better than under your direct leadership.

And I'm happy to say when I went back one year later, we had the same doctor acuity. We actually added more doctors, more staff, and every single one said, we are as in as good shape as when we were under your leadership. So we talk about a legacy. One of the things that would bother me before my time with MVP is you would hear some other corporate players in the marketplace where they would buy a hospital. One year, two years later, that four doctor hospital became a two doctor hospital.

Or the seller would have to be off boarded. And so we talk about what do you want as your legacy. One of my proudest moments, my very first hospital, the hospital that I started when I received a loan from my mom, there's been three leaders of that hospital for the last 29 years. Myself, my business partner, and shortly after we onboarded with MVP, Dr. Nicole Conway, who I've known since the age of eight.

Her mom happens to be Dr. Janet Donlin, who is the CEO of the AVMA, and she just stepped into the role as the medical lead. That's a legacy and she's doing for that hospital, I mean, just operationally and the culture that she has developed, they're crushing it.

They're just a wonderful hospital in the suburb of Chicago. That's my proud moment and that's what MVP has allowed me to do in my group of hospitals. I knew even though I had scaled my hospitals, there were things that I could not do as a smaller player that MVP can do. Like these wonderful platforms that we have, like mentorship and career pathing opportunities, and a leadership program.

These are things that a small business owner, they just cannot do. And so those are the things that we talk about. And if that resonates with the seller, nine times outta 10, they're gonna be a great, great potential partner for MVP.

Anderson Williams: And given that and given your direct experience, what does your day-to-day look like in your current role?

Dan Markwalder: No day is the same. I really love it because in my previous life there were things that I had to do that quite honestly I didn't want to do, like vendor relations or HR. And now I truly get to spend 100% of my time doing the things that I'm passionate about. First and foremost, I am the voice for all of our veterinarians.

We have 8,000 team members here at MVP. We have over 1200 veterinarians, and I am their voice. I am their advocate. I am here to serve them, and we truly do look at that. One of our core values is service. And I'm here to really serve them because they're busy the day-to-day life of a clinician and a practitioner.

So on any given day, I'm meeting with my reports, we're looking at our strategic initiatives and what it looks like month by month. Are we staying on course? Any given day I'm talking to medical leaders cause I always want that pulse of our local hospitals. One of the things I'm now working on as the CVO is MVP because they have scaled, is we need to have a voice within the greater profession and community.

So I'm working with the American Veterinary Medical Association. I serve on the Veterinary Economic Strategy Committee. I meet with other CVOs throughout the United States, and we're looking at some of the challenges that we have. Look, we know that we have student loan crisis. The average DVM who's graduating today has $186,000 in debt.

38% of DVMs that are graduating have a debt of over 200,000. 13% have a debt of over 300,000. In my position how can we meet some of those challenges? We have a lack of diversity and inclusion in our profession. How do we meet those challenge? We know that we're not graduating enough veterinarians today.

We're starting to look as a profession, what that mid-level practitioner looks like. So my opportunity is to look at some of the challenges and meet some of those challenges that are affecting the profession as well.

Anderson Williams: In some ways, it's systemic to the industry as much as it's specific to MVP it sounds like.

Dan Markwalder: It really is, and that's why what we want to do ultimately, I love what Mike Aubrey, our CEO, says. We want to have it so that when somebody moves into a community and they want work at a veterinary hospital, a local animal hospital, they say, where is an MVP hospital?

But that presupposes that we are building a world-class organization that's committed to the development of every single team. And that's hard work. That's long-term planning, right. Because it's real easy to do the short term, but to really build an organization, a brand, if you will, that has a long-term sustainability.

And that's what's exciting right now, what we're doing, as you well know, that we're building these exciting platforms that's really gonna sustain and I think propel MVP into the future.

Developing Leaders

Michael Burcham: In this final segment, Anderson and Dan discussed the importance of investing in the professional development of leaders at all levels.

Helping them master the skills that not only help the organization scale, but to also positively impact those around them. Dan also describes his next phase of learning and professional development as Mission Vet continues to grow.

Anderson Williams: And talk a little bit about that, Dan, in terms of, we've obviously invested and partnered with you guys on the Leadership Academies.

We just wrapped up the fourth one. Give a little bit of the landscape of why leadership development and the types of things we've invested in and that are so important to the veterinarian. And then maybe secondarily to your larger picture of the way the industry needs to shift.

Dan Markwalder: Yeah. We are really in a leadership crisis within the industry itself.

We have now more millennial DVMs than boomer veterinarians. A lot of these boomers are gonna be retiring over the next three to five years. We are seeing a leadership vacuum, cause the reality is this, we don't get leadership training and business training in veterinary school. And so what we're seeing is we have new graduates that are coming out, they're yearning their thirsting for leadership development.

They want that, but it's not out there. And one of the first things that I wanted to do when I was onboarded with MVP I recognized that many of these sellers, they wanna let off the gas. They want to be able to pass that baton on, but it's the how. How did they do that?

And so we recognized early on we wanted to partner and that's why Shore and the Leadership Academy came available. I think we were one of the early adapters, and we said, we're going to bring this on. Quite honestly, we didn't know that we would have sufficient numbers of individuals and we were blown away at the number of medical leads from our younger medical leads to, quite honestly, even those that are in their, the mid journey and even towards the end of their professional journey.

That jumped on board and some of the stories that we've been hearing has just been so thrilling to be able to see the proof as it been in the pudding. To me, it's absolutely essential that we have a strong commitment towards leadership development for all of our leaders. Also for our upcoming leaders as well.

We know it's a need. Our new graduates talk about it, and if we can get this right, because here's the key, we acquire these hospitals. We have to have a succession planning in place, but that also means and presupposes that you've got a great leadership development curriculum in place as well. And that's really what the Leadership Academy has done for us.

Anderson Williams: And from just a business perspective, I mean, it's one thing to think about investing in your leaders because it's good for them to keep learning and develop new skills, but this has been a significant investment to the point that you've brought much of it in house over time.

What do you see as, and maybe an example of real business impact, aside from Dr. X is a better communicator now, and that isn't that great for his or her team? What are you seeing as a result from a business perspective of your investment in leadership?

Dan Markwalder: So here's what we know. Industry-wide in veterinary medicine, we have an efficiency problem. COVID didn't cause the inefficiencies.

It exacerbated the inefficiencies. And when I talk about inefficiencies, it's our ability as clinicians in hospital. To serve the needs of our clients and patients. And the reality, and we're seeing this across our profession and the landscape, is we're seeing less clients today than we did last year or even two years ago.

What we know is this, when we put impactful leaders, that have been trained up in hospitals, they produce the culture and the team that can run in efficient manner, that we can meet the needs of the clients and patients that we serve. That to me is that leading indicator as the voice of the veterinary community.

I want to meet the needs of the clients and patients, but the lagging indicator is in those hospitals and we've been able to demonstrate where we put, we have leaders that have gone through the leadership development curriculum, their revenues go up, they're more profitable. Guess what? What we call our ENPS scores, really it's a cultural metric, goes up significantly as well.

Why is that important? Because that retains the eight, nines, and tens. And we also know those are the hospitals that have an easier time recruiting as well. So the operational component to leadership development has been huge for us.

Anderson Williams: And if you were looking at or talking to a younger company that would dream of scaling the way MVP has scaled, what advice would you give that early CEO or executive team about investing in leadership?

Dan Markwalder: Not knowing the specifics of your platform, but if it's de Novos or acquisition. My recommendation is have a strong commitment to leadership development early on. Don't wait. I think many companies wait until they scale. Thankfully, here at MVP, we did it early on, and I think that's what's gonna help propel our continued success.

My recommendation, do it early. Don't wait.

The Next Phase

Anderson Williams: As you look at your journey from 15 through the successful practice you've built to becoming part of MVP, becoming an industry leader in redefining the industry in places that it needs redefinition, what is your next learning edge? What does Dan's leadership development look like in the next phase for you?

Dan Markwalder: So one of the things we're really excited here at MVP is we're looking at our de novo platform, and I look at this as a potential career pathing opportunity for young veterinarians who want that next step in their career where they've been out two to three years, they're great clinicians. And what's the next step?

That three to five year mark is when we typically see within the veterinary industry turnover, and my job is to give additional opportunities for those veterinarians. That's why I'm excited about our de novo platform. This is our ability to bring young veterinarians into an equity position within those practices, but yet, yet they're able to tap into the power of MVP.

The things that I had to do in my career, like managing inventory and marketing and HR, we know this. Younger veterinarians, they still have that entrepreneurship. They don't wanna do the things that necessarily are required as a small business owner. And so I think what we're looking at is what does medicine and ownership and partnership look like in the future, and how can we come together and tap into that entrepreneurship of the next generation of veterinarians, but to do it through the power of the network here at MVP.

So that's something I'm excited about. The other thing I'm working on, and I think this is something that we're starting to have dialogue in the profession. We take this from our human counterparts is this whole idea of the mid-level practitioner. We've got a capacity issue in veterinary medicine. We're starting to talk as a profession.

How do we meet the needs of the patients that we serve and access to care, if you will. We know that there's a shortage of veterinary technicians today. One out of four veterinary technicians, which is really the nurses for veterinarians are leaving the profession. And so how do we give them career pathing opportunities?

And one of the things we're starting to look at is this mid-level practitioner. There's many things that I do as a clinician that quite frankly, we can empower our technicians. And so we're starting to look at things like veterinary assistants, mid-level practitioners. I'm very excited about that as well.

So I think we're at one of the most exciting times in the history of veterinary medicine, as I mentioned earlier, I've been a veterinarian for 31 years. I have watched so many things come and go. I am more excited about the future of veterinary medicine than at any point in my professional career. If you look at the demographics, boomers were great pet parents and they will continue to be great pet parents.

The millennials, cause we know people are having two-legged kids a little bit later, less kids and later in life, but they love their pets. And so the future for veterinary medicine looks very, very bright. Yes, we have challenges, but where there are challenges, there's opportunities.

Michael Burcham: This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners with story and narration by Michael Burcham. Recording and editing by Andrew Malone. Editing by Reel Audiobooks. Sound design, mixing and mastering Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Special thanks to Anderson Williams and Dan Markwalder for such a powerful discussion.

This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the terms of use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.