The Overqualified

You know your salary.
But do you know what your time is worth?

Two minutes of inputting numbers that most clinicians go their whole career without doing once.

There are three numbers attached to every day you work.

The first one you know by heart — it's your annual salary, the number on your offer letter. The second is what the practice brought in because you were there. And the third is what your time is actually worth — your true hourly rate for every hour you spend building someone's business, including the ones nobody counted.

It took me most of my career to understand how much power sits in those three numbers together. That's the whole reason this page exists.

Not knowing them isn't a character flaw. Nobody teaches it, the report is usually three clicks deep in the practice software, and asking for it feels rude in a way that asking about drug protocols never does.

You can't have a conversation about what you're worth using only one of the two numbers.

This does the arithmetic. Nothing leaves your phone — it's all running right here in the page.

Run your day

One day, all of it

Works for an employed shift or a relief day. If you're relief, put your day rate in as the pay and don't skip the travel box — it's usually where the number changes.

Salaried? Start here

Your annual salary Base, before bonus or production.

Days you work per week Your normal week, not counting extra shifts.

Fill these two in and I'll work out what one of your days is worth — then use that figure as your pay below.

What the day generated Your production for one shift — invoiced revenue from your appointments.

What you were paid Your gross for that same shift, before tax.

Scheduled hours What the schedule says.

Hours you actually worked Including records, callbacks, and the part after close.

Travel time, round trip Door to door. Matters most on relief days.

Miles driven, round trip Optional. Log it — your tax person will want it.

Your share of what you generatedOf every dollar that came in because you were there.

For referenceThe commonly cited band for veterinary associates on production-based pay is 18–25%, with 25% treated as a ceiling rather than a target. It means little without knowing what counts as production, whether it's production or collections, and how much your benefits are worth — so treat it as a reference point, not a verdict.

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Your hourly on paperWhat it looks like on the schedule.

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Your real hourlyPay divided by the hours you actually worked, records included.

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Your door-to-door hourlyRecords and travel time both included. This is the honest one.

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What the unpaid time costs youOver a year, at four days like this a week.

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You — — Everything else — —

Enter your own numbers above — the ones loaded are an example, not yours.

Important

The second number is not the villain

The gap you just looked at is not all profit. It pays for the building, the lights, the lease, the techs and receptionists, the anesthetic machine, the drugs, the insurance, the software, the person who sat on hold with the lab for forty minutes. A practice that gave you all of it would close by March.

So the number isn't evidence that anyone is stealing from you. It's evidence of the scale you operate at — and that is the thing worth knowing, because you cannot advocate for yourself in a language you don't speak.

Two doctors ask for the same raise. One says she feels underpaid. The other says she generated a number she can state out loud. They are not having the same conversation.

What to do with it

Four steps, this month

Find your production report. It exists. Every practice management system has one, and in most practices you can simply ask for yours. Asking is normal — it will feel enormous the first time and completely unremarkable the second.

Track your real hours for two weeks. Not scheduled — actual, records included. Write it in your phone at the end of each day. Most people are off by 90 minutes a day and have never once measured it.

Learn what your work is worth elsewhere. Relief and locum day rates are public and easy to find. You don't have to want to leave to benefit from knowing the number.

Then, and only then, have the conversation. With numbers, on a scheduled day, not at 6:40pm in a hallway. And if it's a conversation with real money in it, take it to someone licensed to advise you — an employment lawyer or a CPA.

I'm building the rest of this

Training and fueling for people whose schedules aren't their own, my actual numbers and the mistakes underneath them, and introductions to the licensed people for the parts I'm not. Waitlist first, and small on purpose.

Get on the waitlist →

Dr. Julia Carlin, DVM. I'm a veterinarian and a certified endurance coach — not a lawyer, a CPA, or a financial advisor. Everything here is arithmetic on numbers you entered yourself, plus my own experience. It isn't legal, tax, employment, or financial advice, and it isn't a substitute for someone licensed to give you any of those.