Empowering practice owners to achieve successful transitions

During this interview with dvm360 at Fetch National Harbor, Christopher Rocchio, DVM, CEO and founder of Monarch Practice Transitions, talks about what veterinary professionals can do to get better prepared to sell their practice, whether that is something practice owners are looking into now or plan to down the road.

Below is a transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Christopher Rocchio, DVM: Hi, I'm Dr Christopher Rocchio. I am the founder and CEO of Monarch Practice Transitions. I'm a veterinarian and a practice owner, and over the past 10 years, we've been helping practice owners transition out of their practices and sell their practices, either to private buyers, to their associates and an associate buy in, or to corporate consolidators.

My wife and I sold our practice last year. We did a joint venture, so we're still part owners, and in that transition, we were able to get ownership for all of our associate doctors, our licensed [technicians] and some of our management staff.

dvm360 staff: What is one piece advice you have for veterinary professionals currently looking to sell their practice?

Rocchio: It's very important to have a very organized process, and take your clinic out to as many of these corporate consolidators as possible. We start with evaluation, we organize all your financial documents, and we're going to show your practice to maybe 10 to 20 corporate consolidators. And so with a wide market and getting multiple offers, maybe 5 to 10 offers, all different and all different values and different structures. You're going to have a lot of options to kind of pick and choose, the deal structure you want, the price that you want, and, really who you're going to sell to. And I think that's more important than anything, is really picking a good company that's going to support you, because many times you're going to be working for them for 3 to 5 years.

dvm360 staff: For professionals not ready to sell yet, what can they do now to be better prepared for when they are ready?

Rocchio: I think the important thing is to really find out where you are today, right? We would do evaluation on your clinic. Look at all the expense structures. Find out. You know, are your costs of goods too high? Are your prices too low, as you're spending too much on labor? How are your vets paid? So it's always nice to get a snapshot in time of where you are today, and also start talking about the different structures that are out there for selling your practice and develop a strategy of, okay, how am I going to not only increase the value of my practice, but how am I going to assure a successful sale and structure down the road?

Want to learn more from Rocchio and the Monarch team? Register for their upcoming webinar on November 18, 2025, at 7:00 PM EST here.