Ryan Leech returns once again to talk about our 2025 predictions. Ryan Leech is the creator and host of The Bird Bath Podcast, and joins Dr. Andy Roark this time on The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast to explore veterinary industry trends and predictions for 2025. They discuss corporate consolidation, AI integration, emerging pet health technologies, and the potential for significant shifts in pet ownership demographics. Ryan shares insights on the future of pet care, including advancements in pain management, diagnostics, and wearable tech. Whether you’re curious about industry growth areas or preparing for upcoming challenges, this episode is packed with valuable insights for veterinary professionals navigating a rapidly evolving field.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Ryan Leech on LinkedIn: Connect with Ryan
The Bird Bath Podcast: birdbath.io
Business Consulting Services: First100.io
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Ryan Leech is an experienced leader with a history of growing businesses through highly scalable sales models. With a background that spans multiple industries, Ryan led sales for startups that raised over $100MM in funding and ran his own sales consulting firm. In his role at Digitail, he is responsible for overseeing collaborations and integrations with industry leaders and innovators to drive digital transformation in veterinary medicine.
In addition to his professional experience as Director of Business Development at Galaxy Vets and Hippo Manager Software, Ryan is also the host of “The Bird Bath” podcast.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a great one for you today. If you enjoy the industry as a whole, I’m talking to the one and only Ryan Leech. He is the creator and host of the Bird Bath Podcast. We talk about industry trends. We talk a lot about what happened with corporate consolidation in 2024, what it looks like is going to happen in 2025.
Ryan’s got big predictions. He predicted some big stuff in 2025. We talk about the pharma industry. We talk about technology. We talk about what segments of the industry are going to perform well in 2025 and which ones might struggle in 2025. And again, it’s just crystal ball gazing, but Ryan’s got such a great perspective. Anyway, if you’re interested in that stuff and thinking about the future, this is a fantastic episode. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Ryan Leech. It’s good to have you back, my friend. How are you?
Ryan Leech: Great. This is our biannual get together. This is our end of year celebration now.
Dr. Andy Roark: We do an end of year summer six month touch base is what we thought we found in Nevada. It’s funny, that’s not a plan on my part. It’s just, around the end of the year, I start getting philosophical. And I start thinking about where is this going? What did the last year mean?
What did I learn? What do I think is going to happen in the next year? What sort of emerged? And I try, probably against my better judgment, I try to figure out what I think is going to happen in 2025. And so I haven’t– if you look back at the podcast, you’ll see there’s a group of people I really enjoy talking to around future casting and looking at things.
And for those who don’t know you, you are the host and creator of the Bird Bath Podcast, which is a great podcast. I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s it hits my it hits my phone every Tuesday. You are also a growth consultant at First 100, which is your own consulting firm, and so you do a lot of work with industry.
The reason that you come into my mind when I start thinking about the future is I do enjoy the birdbath, and so it’s always a great reminder of the things that you’re doing and what you’re thinking about and talking about. But there’s not a lot of people who look at the industry from a more zoomed out perspective than I do.
I love being in vet medicine, but I’m really focused. I love medicine and I love the place where medicine interacts with operations, like the bigger, like way the practice runs, and you tend to sit outside of that and look at operations across the industry. And so you’re like, you definitely a level farther out in your perspective, which is why I enjoy talking to you so much.
let me bring this around to the matter at hand. So 2024, when you think back about it. What are the sort of, what do you think were the sort of defining characteristics of 2024 looking at the vet industry? Were there significant trends that you saw? What were your takeaways?
Ryan Leech: I think 2024 gives us a lot to be thankful for which rhymes, but it was, I think it was a great year for a lot of people in the industry. I think people can be extremely optimistic about the caliber of medicine that’s being practiced.
I think we’re seeing a lot of medical and technology advancements that are improving the way the practices are working. So I think that’s just, if you take away all of the rhetoric around everything else, I think that animals are being well taken care of.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I agree with that. And, so I love the fact that you called out like the way animals are retained care of like the systems and processes. Boy, we’ve had some great drug releases in the last year or two. I don’t want to name names, but we’ve had a couple of the people know that have come out within the last two years and really just gained traction in 2024. And I’m going, man, we’re doing new things.
Ryan Leech: Yeah, cancer screening, pre diagnostic screening,
Dr. Andy Roark: Our monoclonal antibody medications that are really catching on and taking off. We’ve got new things for pain control, like significant things for pain control and I’m always a big fan when we see new breakthroughs in controlling pain, reducing suffering, increasing quality of life as well as quantity of life.
And I’m just like, man, we’re getting new tools in the toolbox and they’re really good. And so somebody asked me recently, how do you feel about vet medicine? I was like, I gotta be honest, I’m pretty positive.
Ryan Leech: Yeah. I think there’s a ton to be positive about. Bad news always gets better headlines, which is like, doing a news podcast is one of the harder things. I try not to just ruin everyone’s day on Tuesday. But bad news gets better press. Oh, this is down. This is no one’s doing.
But I do think, we are seeing a systematic, across the industry we are seeing the number of visits per clinic down but we’re seeing the dollar spend per clinic up. Or the dollar spend per visit up. Which, you can slice it in a lot of different ways. I believe that it’s important. And that’s actually a re-adjustment to where prices should have traditionally grown over the last 10 years, where they were down, they were artificially low, and then they spiked, then they artificially went down, and I think we’re, if you were to map out this period over a 25 year linear graph, it will be a very clean and linear line.
It’s not going to have this hockey stick that people think is happening right now.
Dr. Andy Roark: Are you talking about pricing? Having a hockey stick?
Ryan Leech: Pricing. Yeah, I think people are thinking pricing has a bit of a hockey stick right now. And I think that when we look at it like you had said earlier, zooming out it’s not going to have that feel five years from now that people went, Oh my gosh, it’s not like how we’re feeling inflation right now.
I think that’s going to continue to hurt.
Dr. Andy Roark: I think, so I hear what you’re saying and I’m on board. I don’t know that you’re right about the hockey stick thing and I’ll tell you that. So here’s my, pitch to you. I think that prices in vet medicine were artificially suppressed not for 10 years or 25 years. I think it’s been a hundred years.
I just think, I think vet medicine has artificially suppressed prices. It’s always just been the prices have always been pushed down because it’s so important to practitioners to make it work. You know what I mean, go all the way back to James Herriot. James Herriot was not doing, price increases across the board to calculate standard of living. He was like, Oh, I guess I’m getting paid in eggs. And that’s it.
Ryan Leech: The perfect introduction that I had to that was when I started working with Ivan Zach, Ivan and became…
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Ivan’s great.
Ryan Leech: And he does the veterinary innovation podcast. And we’ve been good friends for a while now. And I started working with Ivan because we were consulting and he said he would write up a proposal, he’d have it sit in front of him for a group we were consulting with, and it was 20 grand.
And he’d say, as soon as they said, what’s the price, he would say 15. And he’d be looking at the number 20. And then by the end of the call, he would have talked himself down to eight.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, no!
Ryan Leech: And he was going, Ryan, I just need you to mute me when it comes to them asking the price and say 25 and then get them to 20.
And I said, okay, I can do that. But I think it’s when you’re, I think the way that veterinarians are wired historically is to want to find a way to care for animals. And money can become a difficulty around that. So people there’s, I think everyone knows a vet clinic you could walk into that is selling something on their shelf for less than they pay for it because they haven’t updated their inventory.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. But I think, so I think we’ve been, I think prices have been really low for a long time. And I can see there being, like, when you look at the grand scheme of things, I do see a significant little jump. But I think ultimately we end up at a place that makes sense in the world. You know what I mean?
I don’t think we shoot through the roof. I think that there’s a lot of discomfort as we get back to probably, where we should have slowly been making our way to
Ryan Leech: I think so.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I totally buy into that. I’ll tell you one of the things that I’m excited about in 2024 that I did see.
I think that, and you can tell me I’m wrong. With corporate consolidation slowing down this last year, my perception was that there were, at least I’m seeing, more groups that have shifted over into kind of paying attention to their own operations. So I think that there were a lot of groups that were in a buying growth phase for years.
And now maybe the exit is not as clear as it used to be or maybe they’ve just reached a point where they’re like, okay, now we got to actually run these. But I felt like there was a significant uptick in clinics that were like, all right, let’s start actually making these practices run together more smoothly. Do you agree with that?
Ryan Leech: Agree. I think that if you are listening to this and you’re someone that wants to help practices find operational efficiencies, you need to strike while the iron’s hot because the money is coming back. The private equity is reinvesting in the veterinary space. They’re beginning to buy practices again, and people have very short memories.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.
Ryan Leech: I don’t think we’re gonna get to this, that crazy 2021 numbers 30 calls, 30 offers per practice. And it was just dumb money throwing at anything that existed, but we are going to start seeing more practices being acquired that we did see in 2024, 2025. It’s going to have that.
And we’re going to see groups buying other groups.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay. So you think that the end game is coming around? Dr. Bob Lester is someone I’ve had on the podcast. I’m a super smart guy. I always am interested what he says He has said for years that the cycle of consolidation is quite predictable because it’s happened to getting a different industry and he keeps saying we’re going to end up with about seven players.
Do you think we’re closing in on that second round of consolidation when we go from however many we have now down to half that many You
Ryan Leech: The European market played that out in the veterinary space. There’s about five large players in the European consolidation market and they’re, and they got there by buying each other and doing those sort of things. Dental does the same thing. Chiropractic did the same thing.
Car washes did the same thing. Any business that sees private equity because private equity works by taking someone else’s money. The private equity people, they’re rich because they get people to give them money and the best way to make money is with other people’s money. And so they get someone else to give them a mountain of money.
They go and spend it as quickly as they possibly can. But then they have to return it back to those original partners, the LPs. And what happens is the pool of groups that can absorb something for, there’s a lot of private equity firms that can buy something for 15 million. There’s a lot fewer that can buy it for 100 million.
There’s a lot fewer that can buy it for 500 million. And there’s a very small echelon that can buy things for 1 to 8 billion. Okay.
And so it just continues to consolidate upwards to those smaller groups that do have the deeper pockets. And then the deeper the pockets are, the longer they can usually hold things.
So then that’s where you start getting into companies like JAB, who do a longer term hold strategy, because they can cycle through their money in different investments, while still having this large portfolio that sustains their funding. So yeah, Bob’s spot on. And he obviously knows very well what the industry is doing.
And he sees it firsthand from the beginning of consolidation and the beginning of when PE groups joined into the vet space. I think that’s going to happen. It’s not going to finish in 2025, but before the end of the year, I think we’ll see the big announcement around two groups that a lot of people know it’s not fully confirmed by them.
So I’m not going to say which two they are, but Google veterinary private equity, massive acquisition, and you’ll find it or you’ll, or it will have been done by the time this episode comes out. But it’s an 8 billion plus deal. And then I think we’ll see groups like Thrive maybe by a 15 group practice group and we might see some 30s buying other 30s and we’re going to start seeing multiple several hundred practice, several hundred numbers of practice groups existing.
And then it’ll get into the thousands and that’s where we’ll start to see the ultimate consolidation.
Dr. Andy Roark: What do you think about technological advancement in the next year? Do you think that, do you think that there’s an AI plateau? And so I’ve heard that sort of debated. Some people say, you know what, we have AI. We came out, we did some stuff with it.
It looked like it’s going to take over the world, but now people use it to write customer service emails, but that’s a, we tapped out in what we can do.
How bullish are you in AI in practice in the next year?
Ryan Leech: Bullish. I went from at the beginning of 2024 not using any A. I. Probably at all. Maybe some chat GPT or something like that. Looking for a recipe, something like that to now my first gut instinct whenever I’m looking for something is to utilize an AI tool to be able to access information or assist with anything.
And it’s. Yeah I think the gateway drug was the GPT type models and people being able to write an email or write a recipe or Snoop Dogg can write my email. ha That’s just teaching the model. And I think any under
Don’t be scared of the robots, but don’t turn your back on them, right?
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Leech: It’s incredible. There’s companies from overseas that I see that are doing image recognition. There’s a company that does pill counting, utilizing an AI video. So you’re not going to be sitting there counting pills.
You can take a picture across the room. It can tell you what’s across there. There’s audio, there’s AI scribing. That’s just going to become the absolute norm. Radiology. It’s just, I think the adoption right now is so low compared to what it’s going to be. I think it’s going to seem foolish ten years from now that people are going.
Oh my gosh. We used to type like I don’t type that much when I text anymore. I Yeah, I voice dictate into my phone the majority of times when I’m doing something now
Dr. Andy Roark: I just got the new Siri update on my phone, like Apple just did the big update and the new AI and I’m like, Oh, this has got,
Ryan Leech: it’s
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s suddenly much less frustrating than it used to be.
Ryan Leech: It really is incredible if people haven’t played with it in a while like just doing that and just saying like you Hey Andy, I’m running five minutes behind. Send.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.
Ryan Leech: That takes so much less mental effort and we’re all over capacity on mental effort right now. And we have the tools to be able to offload a lot of that.
And I think that’s going to be beneficial and it’s going to allow us to not just turn your brain off in that extra time. Use that time to be creative and or engage with humans and be around your family. Like It should be giving you time back. That’s what technology is for.
Dr. Andy Roark: Looking ahead, when you think about pet health, so not vet medicine necessarily, but pet health, the larger sort of category where are you anticipating significant growth in the next year?
Ryan Leech: I think we’re going to continue to see growth in pet owners seeking external information to guide them on the care of their animals outside of the veterinary channels.
Dr. Andy Roark: You mean like influencer or you mean artificial intelligence guidance
Ryan Leech: Or tech wearables that are going to give them a scoring that says fluffy was perfect today. Fluffy was very active today. And they’re going to say, cool. Fluffy was, is healthy. Or yeah. Or like external food providers that maybe don’t have a veterinary nutritionist on staff that are going to be telling them this is the best thing for your dog.
And I think that we’re as an industry going to need to be very, vigilant in continuing to be the voice of reason and not allowing it to become just a marketing play. So I think that’s gonna be a big thing that we’re gonna see in, pet health. And I think that the maybe 20, 25 year, 2025 may be the year of the cat.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah?
Ryan Leech: I think we’re gonna con,
Dr. Andy Roark: You’re singing crazy optimism. I don’t know. I’ve had that for a long time.
Ryan Leech: I don’t want it to happen. I’m a dog person, so you cat–
Dr. Andy Roark: No! Stop talking! We do want it to happen, cat people!
Ryan Leech: people can come for me.
Dr. Andy Roark: Trust me. No, you don’t want them. They will come for you. It’s happened to me before. I’m just telling you. I’m kidding. I love cats. It’s just the year of the cat has been thrown around for as many years as I have been in vet
medicine.
Ryan Leech: Cats are absolutely exploding in Europe.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah?
Ryan Leech: They’re massive in Europe right now. It is. huge, cat adoption and cat spend numbers. Rivaling, not fully rivaling dog, but in a one to three ratio versus in the U S one to five. So it’s definitely there’s growth there.
I think as well as inflation continues to happen, cat ownership can be significantly less expensive than large dog ownership.
Dr. Andy Roark: You think it’s a financial driver where people go, you know a cat they eat less they take up less space. I was wondering if it was a space issue as people it tended to move towards smaller living quarters. I was in Asia earlier this year and you know there’s a lot of people living in 400 square foot apartments and that’s it.
That’s the whole family there and I’m like, oh they have cats because it’s just it’s such a small space.
Ryan Leech: I think that, but then also people are waiting longer to have kids. And, but when you start being a double income, no kid, what comes with that is additional travel. And the additional expenses, someone that owns two large golden retrievers, I’m on vacation in Kansas city right now. The biggest expense of my trip is the boarding expenses for my dogs.
Dr. Andy Roark: Me too. It’s funny. I’m leaving after we podcast to go travel with the family and my dog is going to the Noble Dog Hotel and it’s going to, it’s going to break me. It’s going to be by far the most expensive part of the
Ryan Leech: It’s very expensive. And, so I think as you have a generation that’s waiting longer to have kids, so they’re more apt to travel, they want more freedom, but they are looking for that additional companionship. All the data shows that they’re finding weight. They’re adding additional anthropomorphic characteristics to their animals.
And so those tend to them wanting to be with the animal very often. So I think if they are going with dogs, they’re going to go smaller so that they can be with them in more places, or they’re going to be looking towards cats because they can find an easier or less expensive opportunity to be able to travel with their partner, with their maybe disposable income or no disposable income, depending on inflation and the job market for that generation.
But I do think it’s going to be something to see. And then the boomers, their pets, are passing away. They’re, and they’re not replacing those animals. So the younger generation is going to be the larger population of pet owners.
Dr. Andy Roark: When you think about the vet industry and the corporations that we tend to see at the vet conferences, things like that, your nutrition companies, your pharma companies, your pet insurance companies is there anybody like you need to talk about in categories, any categories that you’re seeing as potential big winners in 2025? Are there any categories that you think might be in trouble in 2025?
Ryan Leech: I think anyone that is stubbornly opposed to AI. Like, when I walked the conference floor at AVMA earlier this year, there was one company that had a sign that said, no AI. touting it as a feature for their product. And I think that, if they want, if they stand behind that too long, it’s going to be like, no email, fax only.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah
Ryan Leech: And I could see that being one of those things. So I think less so a category and more so a position. Where if you dig your heels in too hard on certain things, you’re going to find that you look around and all of your clients that aren’t looking to retire in a few years have left you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I got it. That totally makes sense. All right, cool Ryan. Thanks so much for being here. Where can people find you besides The Birdbath which they can download wherever they get their podcasts where else can be on you?
Ryan Leech: Yeah. So I’m always on LinkedIn. You can also go to first100, the number 100.io to find out about my consulting business, but check me out on LinkedIn. That’s where I, that’s where I’m always open or the birdbath. io for the show and any podcast platform.
Dr. Andy Roark: That sounds great, dude. I’ll put links in the show note guys. Thanks for tuning everybody. Thanks for listening. Take care yourselves gang Talk to you later
And that’s what I got. Guys, thanks for being here. Ryan, thank you for being here. Guys, check out The Birdbath. It is a really great podcast. I have been listening to it since right around the time it got started. I found it and it stays on my phone. It’s great. He’s great.
I just want to end here and restate, I’m really positive about our profession. I love that medicine. It’s got challenges. It’s got some hard stuff. I think we’re headed into a lot of change. I don’t know if change is scary, but I am, there’s so many things that are going well and it’s just such a good job to have.
And guys, it’s great to have a profession that genuinely has and gives purpose. So I’m not worried about the future. I’m, and so I am just, I’m just optimistic about that mess and where it’s going and we’re going to have to navigate, but guys, we got a good thing here.
I’m glad to be aboard. Anyway, take care everybody. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
