I Started a Dream Business and Will Hit Nearly $300,000 This Year

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Dr. Tom Vega, founder and chief medical officer of Concierge Companions Vet Med and DVM Ambassador at Roo, a platform that connects veterinary professionals with flexible relief work opportunities. 

The Chicago, Illinois-based entrepreneur Dr. Tom Vega launched his career in corporate telecommunications with U.S. Cellular, and helped build call centers for the Affordable Care Act. Although he enjoyed the leadership aspects of the job, having to lay employees off burned him out and inspired him to pursue a longtime dream: to open a veterinary practice.

So, after completing veterinary school, he began working at a clinic. Soon after, in October 2025, he opened his mobile veterinary practice, Concierge Companions Vet Med. The business is tracking toward approximately $284,660 in 2026 gross business deposits at the current run rate. 

Here, Vega shares his story in his own words. This piece has been edited for length and clarity. 

I started working shifts with Roo in April 2025

I graduated vet school in 2020 and started at a general practice where I received six months of mentorship. In the last two months, I discovered veterinary relief work — filling in for other vets. Sometimes veterinarians are told, “Well, you can’t go out into the wild or onto your own until you’ve been in practice for two years or three years,” or things like that. But after deep thought and talking to my mentor, I decided to try Roo, a platform that connects veterinary professionals with relief work opportunities. From there, in April 2025, I began working relief shifts just to test it out.

I made a lot more money and had better work-life balance, so by May 2025, I fully left corporate to go with veterinary relief work. Roo gave me flexibility, but also guardrails. I can’t work past a certain amount of time, or if I do, then I’m required to be compensated appropriately for that. Once I saw how much money I was making and how quickly, the mobile unit I’d envisioned for my own veterinary practice went from two years out to two months out. In August of last year, I worked 18 shifts in a row with Roo and earned $23,000 — essentially the seed money I needed to get my business off the ground. 

Vets must be licensed for two years before getting a business loan

It’s important to note that for veterinarians, you cannot get any type of business loan to build out or buy a practice unless you have been licensed for two years. It doesn’t matter if you have everything in order: finances, credit, etc. — which I had. So that’s where Roo has come in for me. With Roo, it’s like my business has an investor without having an investor. I officially launched the mobile business in October 2025.

I planned out the months ahead and considered cash flow. I used the cash flow analyzers through my bank. I’d been a Roo relief veterinarian from May 2025 to December 2025, finishing the year at about $103,000 in income from the platform. Q1 of this year on the platform has also been amazing. That’s how I’m able to ensure my mobile practice has cash flow. 

My business’s overhead is fairly low. I have a technician at $22 an hour for 30 hours. The mobile unit payment is $4,400 a month. That’s pretty much it. Then gas, which is really high right now. Plus supplies, but supplies I can order at a lower level. I don’t need to order in a bulk amount that would support a huge hospital operation.

My business expertise is self-taught; I don’t have an MBA

All of my business acumen is self-taught. I do not have an MBA. My husband has an MBA. I was thinking about going to get an MBA, and he said, “Tom, you already got an MBA by doing this.” All of this is self-taught. I picked up books. I used Google too. What is cash flowing? What is a key performance indicator? I know what that looks like in a call center, but what does that look like in vet med? What does ordering look like? What does payroll look like? I had to learn all of these things that I wasn’t responsible for in the past. 

I just ran the numbers of Concierge Companions’s Q1, and I’m at $91,000 in gross revenue for the year so far — January to April. When I factor the model in and times it by three, assuming that revenue stays at minimum constant and not above, that brings me to about $280,000 for when we close out Q4 at the end of 2026. 

That’s a fantastic projection for a new mobile practice. Currently, we have about 88 clients that are active, meaning we see them more than one time, and that we have regular recurring revenue from, whether it’s through preventatives, medications, diagnostics, things like that, versus our one-time clients. 

Launching a concierge retainer model in July

We are preparing to launch the actual concierge retainer model in July. The ultimate goal has always been a concierge retainer model, where no different than how you have a personal trainer or medical doctor on staff, you can have your veterinarian on staff. So if you want to call me at 10 a.m. and tell me that Fluffy is breathing weird, go ahead. I can look at Fluffy over Facetime and let you know that Fluffy is in REM sleep, and we all breathe like that when we’re in REM sleep. I should be able to support 80 clients on that retainer model. Eventually, in another five to 10 years, the goal is to have a fleet of these mobile practices. 

I want us to continue to grow sustainably. Some of my competitors have gone out of business because they scaled too quickly. I don’t want this to collapse. I’ve worked too hard. People are counting on me; patients are counting on me. 

As a founder, you have to know your audience, but you also have to accept that sometimes the audience you intended isn’t your audience. That’s okay, as long as there’s still an audience somewhere. My original target demographic was anybody who values convenience. I thought that would be a lot of millennials. It’s actually the senior population. 

Partnering with senior living facilities streamlines operations

So I’ve started to pivot and partner with senior living facilities. Because I noticed I’d make repeat visits to the same facilities. I approached the administrations of these facilities. I said, “Hey, you know, I’m noticing a lot of visits here to your residents. How about we set up a partnership where the third Wednesday of every month, I’m here? I’m here the whole day, for whoever needs something.” 

Those partnerships also keep us from losing revenue traveling from place to place, house to house. That’s helped me optimize the travel schedule. It’s sort of similar to the trucking industry’s focus on routes. We drew from that model a little bit to route everything appropriately: the least amount of mileage and time traveling. 

The business’s main revenue drivers will come from the retainer model launching in July and our partnerships with the resident facilities. Even if I see three to four seniors, it works, because my average client transactions are around $300. If I see four appointments five days a week, that puts us right where we need to be. Another great thing about the concierge model is that I can have a lower average client transaction, and because my overhead is so low, I’ll still see returns. 

Focus on why your business will succeed — not why it won’t

Looking ahead, I’m most excited about spreading the word. I want other veterinarians to graduate, and I want them to get a mobile unit, and I want them to go out there and run their own practice, if that’s what they want to do. I want them to see that tenure doesn’t mean anything. It’s about the experience and your comfort level. 

Also, I want other entrepreneurs to see, whether they’re in veterinary medicine or not, that you can do this. Make sure you have someone who believes in you, but also knows when you’re on the ledge. For me, that’s my husband. He gave me the push to go to veterinary school and the push to see this business through. A lot of times, people don’t see that — there’s always someone supporting a founder, even if you don’t see them on screen or in the reports. 

There are a million reasons why we may not succeed as business owners or as founders, but I encourage and challenge everyone to rather than focus on all the reasons why your business is not going to work, focus on the one reason why it’s going to take off. 

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Dr. Tom Vega, founder and chief medical officer of Concierge Companions Vet Med and DVM Ambassador at Roo, a platform that connects veterinary professionals with flexible relief work opportunities. 

The Chicago, Illinois-based entrepreneur Dr. Tom Vega launched his career in corporate telecommunications with U.S. Cellular, and helped build call centers for the Affordable Care Act. Although he enjoyed the leadership aspects of the job, having to lay employees off burned him out and inspired him to pursue a longtime dream: to open a veterinary practice.

So, after completing veterinary school, he began working at a clinic. Soon after, in October 2025, he opened his mobile veterinary practice, Concierge Companions Vet Med. The business is tracking toward approximately $284,660 in 2026 gross business deposits at the current run rate.