After 12 years of running my own veterinary practice, I was ready to walk out the door and not come back. Income wasn’t the problem; we were tracking the receivables, sending out the bills and collecting the money. My wife was tight with a dollar. Other than that, I had no management skills.
I had a lot of staff, and they did whatever they pleased, whenever they pleased. For instance, one associate refused to write up tickets after treating patients. Instead, he wrote up all his tickets once a week. I didn’t think he could remember it all and wondered how much he was putting on the books and how much he was putting in his pocket. He also liked to criticize me to clients.
I had no fixed procedures or company policy in my practice—the result was chaos. My personal life was not much better. I worked day and night, seven days a week, and never saw my wife and kids. Sick of it all, I wanted out. I had heard about a local Sterling seminar and went to check it out. In the end I signed up for the Sterling program. I took their management courses and received management consulting to solve the problems in my practice. It wasn’t long before I realized Sterling was providing powerful management tools.
Sterling put order and sanity into my practice. They trained me so I was able to make an organizational chart, assign job functions, write job descriptions, formulate company policy, and train the staff. Every employee was assigned a “statistic” which measured their productivity so we could see who was actually doing what. Sterling helped weed out the bad staff and hire better people with their hiring procedures. We became organized and efficient.
I am still a Sterling client to this day. As a result, our income has increased by almost 500%. I used to be mad at the world. I’m not mad anymore and no longer want to quit my profession. I work hard, but that’s by my own choice, because I love what I do. I also have more time to spend with my family and do what I want outside of the practice.
I would not be a practicing DVM were it not for the Sterling program. It gave me my life back.
Bud Farr, DVM
