Time Flies…

This is true whether you’re having fun or not. 

Last year, when the UCAN board first started talking about the opening of our clinic, snow was beginning to fall and people were focused on the holidays. From that perspective, the passage of a year seemed interminable. But we needed a deadline to work towards, and we chose November 1, 2006.

It proved to be an ambitious target for any number of reasons, proving not only that time flies, but that when it comes to planning a project like this, everything from lease negotiations to fundraising takes twice as long as you think it will.

Yet the most significant issue involved in reconsidering our November timing had more to do with common sense than anything else: Is it smart to open a spay/neuter clinic in November, when everyone’s thinking about the holidays, not fixing their pets?

The fact is, most puppies and kittens are born in the spring and summer. So in the clinic business, that’s when we’d expect to be busiest, too. (Hey – we said it was common sense!)

Talking about running a business, first and foremost you need to be able to cover your fixed expenses or you won’t be around very long. Again, that’s not rocket science, but it’s a whole lot harder to do when the income stream is at its lowest, as it would be in the slower months of winter, than it would be later in “kitten season.”

So setting your timeline with this basic lesson in mind is important. Spring is better than fall or winter when it comes to opening a clinic because it allows you to hit the ground running – with income better able to meet fixed expenses, and client volume meeting expectations right from the outset.

It wasn’t something we thought to consider when we chose our target opening date, but it’s something important that we learned along the way.

Hope it helps someone else! 

(By the way, our new opening date? March 2007.)

Comments

[Nadia W.]

Your comments just seem too eager for dreaded kitten/puppy season to come because you'll have more customers. From my perspective, opening in the winter is "common sense" because you can prevent the birth of those kittens and puppies. While there's a lot to be said for taking the business approach to spay/neuter, there is another side that needs to be considered. After all, we are all in this for the animals.