The dissection of PMV
How and why Personalised Mobile Vet works the way it does
TLDR
PMV is a one-man mobile vet business for cats and dogs in Brisbane. There are no time limits on consults. Instead of fixed appointment times, I work with arrival windows. The business is driven by patient care and job satisfaction, not metrics, growth or a spreadsheet. It isn’t aiming for the ASX. Its aim is to let me survive in this world of capitalism.
01 / Comparative Anatomy
A Different Animal
Most vet practices run on a similar model. Appointments are booked back to back in set time slots, throughput is managed closely, and performance is measured through revenue per hour and production metrics.
I deliberately started PMV with no model at all, so it could be shaped over time into the service I wanted to deliver. Consults aren’t built around a time slot. Each one runs until I’ve done all that I can.
What follows is what it’s made of so far: how it started, how it’s structured, who it suits, who it doesn’t, and where it falls short.
02 / Embryology
How PMV Started
I spent many years in veterinary practice, including time in senior operations roles. The clinic system is focused on metrics, and medicine, service and staff are left wanting more.
Those metrics influence everything from consult times, equipment, staffing and pay through to the clinical recommendations made in the consult room, directly or indirectly, whether I’d like to admit it or not.
Over time, that wore on me. I knew things weren’t being fully addressed, and that it was happening regularly rather than occasionally. That kind of awareness eats into job satisfaction, and it compounds.
On top of it was the constant moral battle between practising necessary medicine and practising revenue-generating medicine to please the metrics and improve my wage, which was $20,000 less than the average Australian annual wage at the time. So I wasn’t getting satisfaction from the work, and I wasn’t being compensated for it in pay either.
On the other side of the consult room table are the people and pets who fall through the cracks. The question held back because the vet was clearly running behind. The concern raised and deferred to another appointment. The finding that deserved a careful explanation and got a brief one because the next patient was waiting.
Things get moved to “next time”, and next time doesn’t always happen. When it does, it’s often just as rushed.
The results are quiet, but they add up. Clinical signs get missed or caught late. Owners leave with directions on a label but no demonstration of how to actually give the medication, and the treatment fails.
I understand the frustrations and pressures from both sides: the vet watching the schedule slip, and the owner who still has questions when the consult is wrapping up. I wanted to make sure those people and pets were seen to, so I made sure the business structure allowed for it.
Before PMV, I’d done some home visits through booking agencies, and it clicked. Pets were calmer at home, and I could take the time the work needed. I also noticed how much more I learned about a patient in its own home.
A history is just as important as a physical exam, and at home I saw so much that clients forgot to mention in clinic, or didn’t think was relevant, but that played a big role in the disease and how it was managed, or in the client’s ability to follow directions. Things like the stairs an arthritic dog had to climb to get to bed, or who in the household actually ended up giving the tablets. Seeing that meant I could adapt treatments so they were achievable in that home.
In December 2023 I went out on my own. I had a veterinary qualification and many years of experience, but no qualifications in business, marketing, HR, accounting or anything else a business owner is supposed to know.
I literally had no idea what I was doing. I dived in head first at the deep end as a life-changing leap of faith and hoped for the best.
Luckily I’d built up a buffer and had support at the time. It took a while for the income to be survivable, so it had to be supplemented with contract work, but eventually PMV became my only source of income.
As expected, many mistakes were made and many opportunities were missed. Early on I overcomplicated just about every process and system I set up. That still hasn’t entirely changed. It was a rocky start, and it’s still a bumpy road.
03 / The Skeleton
How PMV Is Structured
A mobile vet business doesn’t carry some of the fixed costs of a clinic, but it adds a time limitation a clinic doesn’t have. A clinic books patients back to back in one location. I travel between every visit.
That travel time can’t practically be billed, and it caps how many patients I can see in a day. This forces a low-volume business model.
There are no revenue targets, production metrics or KPIs. That lets me focus on the animal in front of me and make clinical recommendations without the influence of metrics.
This probably doesn’t make much sense to the business folk out there, but that’s ok, because I don’t share the goal of constant financial growth and scaling, with the dream of floating on the stock market so my backyard can float on the Gold Coast canals. I just want my needs met.
Arrival windows came about because I could never make appointment times. That disappointed clients, and it disappointed me. I was always chasing my tail.
My buffer times were never right, either too short or too long, and I was forever updating clients on my timing. To manage expectations, take the pressure off myself and still spend as much time with each patient as they needed, I moved to arrival windows:
These are the windows I’m scheduled to arrive within, not the start and finish time of the visit. If the visit before yours needed longer, it got it. “It just takes time” came out of exactly that.
I work from midday to midnight every day except Wednesday, and the fee changes from 9pm. I cover Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, Redland City, Moreton Bay and the Lockyer Valley, with the Gold Coast and Toowoomba by arrangement (travel fees apply).
What this model maximises is patient care, attention to detail, addressing every concern a client has, and client education. It also maximises job satisfaction, and the two go hand in hand.
Job satisfaction is what makes the work sustainable long term. Not the pay, not colleagues, not holidays. Finishing a visit knowing I’ve done all I can for that pet and that owner is what keeps me going.
04 / The Nervous System
Who I’m here for
The people I’m here for are the ones who fall through the clinic cracks and get left behind. People who need to ask something again, or have it explained a different way, before it makes sense. People who struggle to get to a clinic because of transport, work or other commitments. People who find clinics overwhelming, or who are simply more comfortable at home.
The pets are the ones who are too big for the car, or who hate the car. The ones who stress in clinic, or cause a scene. The ones who aren’t social, or are very reactive. The ones who freeze and won’t let a vet do a physical exam, and the ones who take time to get comfortable with a new environment and a new person.
At home, the new environment part is taken out of the equation and the rest happens when they’re ready, which is where “their space at their pace” came from. The nervous ones, especially, are where “your anxious pet will thank you” came from.
You get the idea. They’re my target clients because I’m that client myself, and I’ve owned these exact pets.
They aren’t the only ones I see, though. I visit any client, and any cat or dog, anxious or not, who requests a visit.
PMV won’t suit everybody, and I’ve finally made peace with not being able to please them all. When I researched running a business on my own, the same message kept coming up: find your niche. Knowing who it doesn’t suit is part of that.
05 / Blood Typing
Not Every Match Works
It won’t suit you if you need a fixed appointment time, or a fixed appointment length. A quick visit is fine if your pet is calm and the job is simple, like a nail trim for a relaxed dog.
What I won’t do is rush a nervous pet to get it over with. If you need the visit done quickly regardless of how your pet is coping, or you can’t allow extra time for your pet to be handled without stress or force, it won’t be the right fit.
06 / Accessory Organs
Working Alongside Your Local Clinic
PMV provides most general practice services for cats and dogs at home, but not all of them. That includes health checks, vaccinations, microchipping, parasite prevention, sick pet consults and ongoing management of chronic conditions like arthritis, blood screening, nail trims, toxic ingestion treatment, and at-home euthanasia.
It doesn’t try to replace a brick-and-mortar clinic, and it isn’t capable of it. A brick-and-mortar clinic has an in-house lab, an imaging suite and a surgical theatre. Pathology samples from my visits go to an external lab, and for imaging and surgery, I proactively coordinate and collaborate with your local clinic.
Having those facilities myself would mean having a brick-and-mortar clinic, which would pull me off the road and out of people’s homes. Being in people’s homes is the whole point, and it’s what I love.
Working alongside your local clinic also means that when a pet can’t easily get back in, like a large dog at risk of injury travelling after orthopaedic surgery, or when it’s after hours, I can see them at home.
PMV works alongside clinics and complements them. It couldn’t operate without them.
07 / The Heart
PMV Core Values
These values could be a challenge to uphold in a corporate clinic. Running my own business means I don’t have to weigh them against anything else.
Transparency
Pricing is kept fair and out in the open. Where it saves a client money, I write prescriptions for online pharmacies.
Their pricing, and sometimes a human chemist’s price for a human-equivalent medication, is often below what I pay wholesale. I can’t match it without running at a loss, so the script is the cheaper option for the client.
Honesty
Being honest builds trust, and it’s how I manage expectations, including my own limitations. This page is part of that.
Adaptability
Little gets in the way of a pet receiving treatment or a client receiving service. I’m not bound by rigid protocols or SOPs, because animals, people and life aren’t rigid either.
The working principle is simple: if there’s something I can do personally to help, I’ll do it. If pathology results are needed urgently, I’ll drive the samples to the lab myself instead of waiting for the courier. If a client’s nominated crematorium can’t collect their pet at an appropriate time, I can help with the handling and logistics to bridge that gap.
Patience
Over my career, and through my own pets, I’ve learnt that patience is invaluable. Giving an animal time to decide whether it feels safe is crucial for safe and successful handling, whether that’s an examination, a nail trim or a blood draw.
Losing your cool with an animal doesn’t make it more cooperative, even though we instinctively expect it to. The exact opposite happens: the animal loses trust, retreats, and puts up more barriers to protect itself.
So it was a pretty easy lesson in the end: be patient with my patients. If an animal isn’t ready, we wait, try another approach, or come back to it. “Where patience meets care” came out of that.
Compassion
There’s a constant reminder that I’m working with people’s pets, and to those people they’re invaluable. It keeps my standards at a level I’d be happy with for my own dog, Reggie.
08 / The Solitary Kidney
A One Man Band
PMV is far from a polished, corporate experience, and it doesn’t set out to be one. Being a one-man band has real limitations, and the biggest is communication.
When I’m mid-consult, I can’t answer the phone. When I’m travelling between visits, emails wait. From a potential client’s point of view, it can feel like no one is there to help. That’s frustrating in an urgent situation, and inconvenient when you only had a short window to call.
I’m aware of it. I’m continually looking for and trying new things, and I always will be, until I hopefully reach a point where a paid receptionist is viable. Until then, there’s no perfect solution.
If you’re already a client, I hope this explains why you experienced what you experienced: the window instead of a time, the visit that ran long, the call that went unanswered. If you’ve only just found me, I hope it sets some expectations. Or, depending on how you read it, some warnings.
Either way, that’s what PMV is made of, for now. It’ll keep changing.
09 / The Prognosis
So, That’s PMV
If it sounds like the right fit for you and your pet, you can book online, call or email and we’ll find a window.