282 - How to Make Your Practice More Attractive to a Young Buyer

It's like all these things that people describe as like the bragging rights of what makes their practice so great is exactly the list of things that's going to make it almost impossible to sell it.

Hello and welcome to the Remarkable CEO Podcast, a show dedicated to chiropractors who want to transform their job into a business so that they can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one. With your hosts, Dr. Pete Camiolo and Dr. Steven Fransen.

What's up, Remarkables? Hey, it's Dr. Steven Fransen. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable CEO Podcast, chiropractic's number one business podcast. And we're going to talk business today because I brought one of my business buddies onto the call for you guys today. It's Dr. Kevin Meisenheimer from PPS from Progressive Practice Sales, the 800 pound gorilla in business brokerage, meaning chiropractic business brokerage in our industry. Kevin, thanks so much, man, for bringing your big brain on this call and sharing all of this gold with our listeners.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here, man.

So your wife has probably become more famous inside of the Remarkable Practice as she's co hosting and co coaching with me through the Remarkable exit program. So she often refers to you as a big part of the brains in the operation. So I was like, you know what, let's get Kevin on here. I want to pick his brain. As you have been living in this chiropractic practice brokerage space for what, 10, 12 years as it stands right now.

10 years now. Coming up on our 10 year anniversary.

10 years. So I'm just so impressed, man. It's like I get to talk to everybody in the industry and you guys literally get five star rating from every single person that I ever talk to, which I love. I love having you guys as part of our remarkable expert team. And it's awesome to be able to have such a trusted partner who just knows this space well and has such a heart for chiropractors and chiropractic. Right? So we all love the profession and it's awesome that we get to serve it in different ways. So today I'd love to have a conversation just, just if we could just glean from your experience of being in this, selling my chiropractic practice, my chiropractic business conversation for so many years, you've talked to, dare I say, probably 10,000 chiropractors or more in that same time period about this very specific topic. So I'd love to just kind of like walk down, you know, what, what do people need to be thinking about sort of in the before, during, after perspective of getting ready to sell their practice? What are some of the blind spots and missteps? Let's, let's help people see around corners and avoid stepping in it or the pain points and brain damage that associated with one day. Eventually, you know, it's death, taxes and exiting. Everybody exits. Right. So I'd love to hear from you, like just from a super high level, just drilling down on some of the do's and don'ts of getting your business ready for sale. And then once we do go to market, what are the things that we, you know, want to be aware of? So let's get after it. So we. Why don't you first give us a little bit of your background? How'd you get into this? And, and then we'll just get into it.

Well, back in the day I was practicing chiropractor and really unexpectedly I graduated Parker in 2000. I just started having severe health issues. As soon as I started practicing. I had some autoimmune and chronic fatigue and stuff like that. And so I built my first practice. I think I was doing 400 a year, something like that. And but I, you know, I was in year two, year three, I had to sell that one and so sold that practice. And I would, I would try to take a year off and learn more things on how to get well. I was going to every chiropractor in town, every functional medicine doctor in town. Long story short, I ended up selling three practices in 12 years with all the other brokers that were kind of around since like the early 90s. And you know, my, my sales were, I would say they were successful in a way. I, you know, I found a buyer and I got paid, but those sales were very problematic. Post sale I seem to be always carrying a note and two out of three times the buyers defaulted on my note and were very problematic. I had to lawyer up and go get my money. And that was, you know, it's very unpleasant. And so after the last one, Crystal and I just looked at each other. We both always been very entrepreneurial and creative types and we just kind of looked at each other. It's like, maybe we should be practice brokers next and maybe we should open a practice brokerage for the profession instead of another practice. And that's what we did. Long story short, with that we, by the end of year one, I think we had a hundred listings and you know, we've been the Biggest broker for the profession ever since.

Fantastic man. So if you could just, from a super high level, just to frame out the conversation, I'm going to put you on the spot here. If you could just walk us through the, let's call it the almost timeline or criteria for like man. The best, the best practice deal situations, like when it comes to like the remarkable exit. Right. So here's usually how they start. This is part of the process. These are the, these are the do's on the do's and don'ts list. Right. So these are the things that people should really be thinking about and doing. Just from a super high level. Again, to frame out our conversation, what are the things that'd be like the high points of like they gotta do this practices that do this do really well. This is a really important part of it. And then there's these last three steps before exit, like give us a sense of that framework. And then I'm gonna ask you to do the same thing for the don'ts. It's like, oh man, the, the, the wrestling matches, the bar fights, the real heartbreakers, the. They end up having this issue, this issue, this issue. And then we can just unpack those.

Sure. Well, you know, I think I've heard you say this from the stage and Crystal and I say a lot the, that famous Stephen Covey line, you know, begin with the end in mind. That seems like the most relevant thing to say to most of these chiropractors. So with practice sales, it's all about beginning with the end in mind. Meaning you've got to have a vision and you've got to have a plan often many years before you're hoping to get to that remarkable exit. So remarkable exit, you know, probably means that you're going to maximize your retirement, you're going to maximize that sale, you're going to get the most out of that practice that you possibly can. Certainly you want to be paid what that practice is worth. And ideally you'd be want to sell that practice at a little bit of a peak. You'd want to build it up to a peak and then transfer that the wealth of that practice before it starts to decline. And so what we see all the time, constantly is doctors will just practice, practice, practice, so build a nice practice, but they have no plan. And so then they call someone like me, I call the broker and you know, they just got a bad report from the doctor. My shoulder's going out, my back's going out, something's going on with my heart. I've Got to sell this practice in a hurry. And then they're selling something that was worth many hundreds of thousand dollars more just a short time ago. And they're taking this huge hit on what it's worth. It's, it's crashing their retirement, it's crashing what they had hoped to do in their retirement with their family. And it's all because they just didn't have the planning. They didn't have a clue what their practice was worth. They didn't have a clue how to, to manage the books in a way that, that, that value could be more transferable. And it's a value that we can prove to any buyer and banks and advisors and anybody that's looking at that practice for purchase. So it was mostly lack of planning. And the other thing that we see is that someone is they were hoping to transfer the practice to an associate. So they had the forethought to hire, train, groom and associate to one day take over. They did a lot of things right. Some of these doctors will even have a niche practice. I see that happen most often in a niche practice where there's extra training involved. Someone's an expert at AK or functional medicine or soft tissue or chiropractic neurology or something like that. So they're a really educated doctor, they've got really educated associates, but they got all the way to the end and they didn't have any of the critical conversations under their belt. So they don't even know what the associate doctor's credit score is. How much student loan is that debt? Is that associate carrying, what kind of access to down payment money does that associate have? They need about 10% down a little bit more with closing costs. So you know, most of our sellers, we get our sellers paid 100% at close, you know, usually with a bank loan, usually that's a 10 year SBA loan with the buyer bringing about 10% down. But if you don't have the conversation and your associate needs 80,000 down to buy your $800,000 practice, you get all the way to the end and find out you're, you're too far apart. And so, so let me do this.

I'm going to pick up where, what you're laying down and organize it in a way that I'm teasing out the to dos versus the do don'ts. And what I heard from you so far was making sure that you begin with a clear vision. Right. So I love that you started there. Right. So you and I both had less than remarkable exits. Perhaps personally so we love to say we teach from scar tissue, right? We coach from scar tissue. It's like, trust me, trust me. Listen up, listen up. Right? So this is that oak tree conversation that we always allude to, right? So it's like, when's the best time to plant an oak tree? 50 years ago, right? So when's the next best time? Today. So hopefully what you're laying down here is gold. I hope people are picking up on it, right? So to turn this into a checklist for them, so to speak, that vision is beginning very clearly with the end in mind. And you don't have to be married to the vision, but you'd like to be able to say here, this is what I would love to see the outcome look like.

It would.

I would love to have an outcome that looks like this, right? So for most people, they don't even know where to start because they don't even know what they're. What are my choices? What are my options? Like what, what are the different types of exits that are out there? Right? So is it an internal exit where I have an associate that I'm going to sell to, or is it an external exit? Is a Main street exit versus a Wall street exit? Right? There's all these different combinations. So we've got to begin with, like, begin with that end in mind. What are you trying to accomplish, we like to say, and why? Like, why do you want to exit? Like, why are you exiting? Like, do you understand that you own an appreciating asset that's cash flowing, right? So.

You'Ve done a lot of the hard part right now that people try to put themselves in a position that you're in now. Are you sure you want to exit and why do you want to exit? Once you understand the why do you want to exit? Or you can answer the why do you want to exit? Are you sure you want to exit? You can then ask, well, what are your priorities? Like, so when it comes to your exit process, in your vision for a remarkable exit, what are the priorities for you? Like, is the priority. I want to have the greatest return of my value, right? So do I want to get the highest asking price? Is that the. Is that the highest priority? Is the money or is it time? I need to do this as quickly as possible and there's some time pressure, right? Is that the highest priority? Or is it your successor? Right, and my successor for that highly niche practice, that's my priority. I want to make sure my legacy lives on with great care for my patients or Is it something else? Like, what is the priority? And it's important that they start there and they understand, like the vision of what does their remarkable exit look like. And then you mentioned associates, but I'm going to back that up a little bit because in a conversation I had offline, we talked about first looking at the systems of the business, right? So making sure that, I mean, if you have team, if you have associates, you have to have systems in place, right? So you have to operationalize the business, right? So we call it operationalizing the business. So having those systems in place, attraction, conversion, retention, the team building and the collections, financial systems, right? So those have to be in place. I heard you mention team who comes with the deal, right? So it's like, do you have team members? And I'd like to unpack that a little bit. And then of course, the associate doctor question is like, do you have associate doctors in place? Because obviously that makes the business far more attractive. If the business, if you're not going to sell it to the associate doctor, then the business should be able to come with the associate doctor. And now you're selling somebody a business, not a job. And then there was the financials, right? So the financial system, right. So making sure we have financial reporting in place. So, Kev, there's a lot there. Talk to me about, you know, the team. Like, what does it mean to have like a team that comes with the deal, so to speak. What kind of awareness does it does in an ideal situation? What is, what is the, what does the selling doctor need to know about the team that comes with the deal?

Well, it seems, it seems really obvious, but I think that it's not obvious to most docs while they're practicing because it happens so often where they hadn't even given it a thought. So doc is selling doctor is 65 or more. He's had a great staff and they've been with him 15 years. And he's retiring. And we start asking about staff. And Susie at the front desk has been here 15 years. Barbara, my biller in the back, she's excellent. She's been here 20 years. I said, oh, how old is Barbara? She's 68. You know, it's like they're up there, right? She had planned to retire, you know, when the selling doctor did. So that is not transferable. That's the opposite of transferable. And many times it's not like one or two is like many times. We've gotten all the way to the finish line with a doc. You know, we've done evaluation, we start talking about getting them on the market. And you know, what might be the potential hurdles for your sale? You know, based on. Now we understand the practice and the numbers and everything, but what are the other hurdles? Well, that's a big one. If you, if you don't have a transferable staff. The other one is like, you know, your spouse has been working in the office for 20 years and she's been trying to get you to.

And then you've got this young associate, wet behind the ears. You know, they're pretty confident they can deliver the care. They're confident enough to adjust and do the, you know, 200 adjustments a week that you're doing, but they know nothing of billing and running the desk and the systems and everything. And you know, also Doc, you haven't marketed in 20 years because you've been referral based. While your practice would also be much more transferable to the young doc if you had some marketing in place. So it's those kind of things like team staff, marketing, all the systems that you've got to think about at the end of the day. All the systems that a very young doc, usually someone in their early 30s, if not younger, is taking over. And, and the biggest funnel of buyers that we see is an associate doc. They may have been an associate two to five years, but they don't know all those systems on how to run your practice. And what you need to think about is when you sell it, someone's going to have to train them on all those systems.

Hey Doc, Steven Fransen here. If you're like me, you know that we're in the business of saving lives. And when business is good, everybody wins. That's the good news. But here's the bad news. Most chiropractors don't own a business at all. They own a job. It's a job they love, but it's a job. And far too often it feels like that job owns them. Is this true for you? Do you own a business or a job? Have you built and do you run your practice on brute force? Does it rely fully on your time, your effort, a pound of your flesh? Are you responsible for all growth, for all new patient generation? How about new patient conversions? Is it all up to you? How about patient care and delivery? Are you a sole practitioner, an owner, operator who owns the practice but is also the only one that is head down and bum up taking care of all the patients? Is revenue generation or collections all up to you? Let me ask you the most telling question, Doc. What would happen if you took 90 days off? What breaks in my experience, most on purpose chiropractors do not lay awake at night worrying about their practice. They worry about their business. Let's slay that dragon. The Remarkable CEO program has helped hundreds of chiropractors just like you turn the job that they love into the business that they've always wanted. Are you ready to run and build your own practice on leverage instead of brute force? Do you want to create the scalability and durability that will allow you to make a bigger impact and a bigger income? What would it mean to grow your practice, increase your productivity and your profitability? Do you want to get your time freedom back? Are you ready to turn your pirate ship into a battleship? If this sounds like you, then the remarkable CEO program is for you. Just last year, 53 of our remarkable clients received the Seven Figure Club Award, meaning they hit the million dollar mark for the first time or their next million dollar level, be it 2 million, 3 million, 10 million, up to 36 million and growing. Now, Doc, is it crazy to imagine that your practice could be next? Click the link below and learn how to apply for the next cohort of the Remarkable CEO Program. We look forward to working closely with you and creating the business that supports your remarkable life, not competes with it. I'll tell you, Kevin, every time I speak to you or Crystal, I walk away with this same impression is how counterintuitive the valuable practice is. It's counterintuitive, right? So it's almost the opposite of when everybody stands around bragging at the bar at chiropractic seminars about their business. It's almost the opposite of that. And it sounds something like this, oh, marketing, we don't market. I haven't marketed for 20 years. I've been here 20 years. All my patients are by referral, right? So it's like, okay, well that's not transferred. That's not good, Right? So what do you mean it's not good? It's like, well, you don't have a digital footprint. You have no SEO. You have no setup systems for digital, external, and internal marketing. This is like, like literally that doesn't transfer, right? So, and then, then, oh, you know, oh, my team that everybody in my team's great. They're so loyal. They've been with me forever. You know that like you said, they're, they're, they're all in their 60s and they've got 20 years of experience and the place runs like a clock because I don't have to do Anything. And Martha's out back and she does everything. It's like, well, does Martha come with any help? Oh no, she's going to retire with me. Right. Or, you know, all my patients love me, right. They, you know, my patients become me forever. And you know, I've got magic hands and I do this very specific, special technique that no one else knows how to. Like all of the things my associate, all, all she has to do is show up and she just, I taught her how to do my technique and you know, she's, she's a little shy and she doesn't want to do any market anything. She, so she loves it here. She just, she just adjusts the patient. She doesn't have to worry about any of the attraction or the conversion. Right. So she doesn't do any of the business side of it, she doesn't even do financial, but she just adjust. It's like all these things that people describe as like the bragging rights of what makes their practice so great is exactly the list of things that's going to make it almost impossible to sell it. Right. So, um, can you speak to that? Am I, am I, I'm, I'm taking that from my conversation with you guys. It's like, it's very counterintuitive. You've got to be thinking, it's like, congratulations, that has served you well as an individual. But because it's non transferable, you're going to need to spend the next year, two, three years with a Runway towards exiting and making sure that you are, you are backfilling some value in this practice that would actually be transferable and make your business attractive to somebody who knew what they were looking at.

Yeah, I think, you know, the way that we've always thought about practice sales is it's a, you know, it's a, it's a marketing problem and it's a transferability problem. So what you have to do is just exactly as if you were thinking of, well, what kind of patients do I want to treat in my office? And then if you got even more granular, did that deep dive, you could, you could sit around and strategize with your team, say, who is the perfect avatar? Who are the perfect avatar of the perfect patients? The perspective families that we want in here to treat. And then, then you go after the perfect avatar. Well, when you're getting ready to sell your practice, you need to think, who's the perfect avatar buyer for my practice? And that matters. It matters on so many levels. Like, matters a lot. The kind of town you live in. Like, are you a small town in the Midwest? Because you probably are going to get a local boy or local girl that grew up in that community, family still nearby. It's a different dynamic than if you're selling a practice in Greenville, South Carolina, Austin, Texas, Jacksonville. Like everybody's moving from out of state to those places. You're going to have an out of state buyer. They may have practiced somewhere for years. They may be the more entrepreneurial doc that moves across the country and, and lives where they want to live. So it's, it's like different avatars. And then it's like of course, the skill set of, of that buyer. Well, if you, you know, if you have a family practice and you do just standard diversified adjusting, that's probably a bigger funnel. But a lot of practice practices are not like that. There's like so many different methods, people, levels of complexity deliver the care. So even if they're subluxation based, there's like 30 different ways that people do it.

Yeah, I do, I do. Hio. Oh, we do. Best technique. Oh, we only do cbp. Right.

So yeah, some of these legacy techniques, like a gonstead practice is actually a very difficult practice for me to sell. If a guy's been doing Gonstead for 40 years and he's a Gonstead purist, he visits Mount Horeb every year and goes to the extravaganza. Like, it's unbelievable how many doctors will have to weed through that, will be shy away from that practice. That, yes, they love the location, they love the cash flow, but they can't wrap their head around doing that. They're a long way from. And you're not set up a T1.

And cervical chair like everybody's used to. Right.

So, yeah, so, so you have to really think about who you want to transfer to and what, what skill set they, they're going to need. And then really you have to get even deeper. Like you have to think about today's average buyer. So they're, they're millennials. You know, there's articles about them, there's, there's news stories about them. They have a certain mindset. They, they, they like balanced lifestyles and things like that. And you know, they're a little apprehensive. Those young chiropractors are already apprehensive. So you have to think about how can I take that avatar and make them a good buyer for my practice and at the same time, how can I make my practice more transferable to the likely Sort of young chiropractic avatars that are likely to show up to purchase my practice. 100 we Crystal and I have to sit around and brainstorm on that all day. Otherwise we wouldn't sell them. So, so people need to realize, like back in the day when I was selling my practices, those brokers, they just posted them on the classified section of the school site. That's all they did. Yeah, it's not like that anymore. You know, if I've got a, an AK practice that's different marketing, I've got someone's advanced proficiency activator out in a small town that's a completely different method for me. So, you know, I've got a, I've got a market to put the right avatar in the door. But you've got to help me by making your practice more transferable when I get that young doc in your door.

That's exactly right. All right, so let's recap here. So in the remarkable exit program, what we teach is practices aren't bought, they're sold. So you've got to understand that you'll be selling your practice, right? So nobody's going to just come up and knock on your door and be like, hey, I really want to pay you a premium for this practice. It just seems great. Are you ready to retire? Right? So you're going to need to understand how to sell your practice. And to your point, you got to become as intimately aware of the attributes and the traits of your ideal buyer as you are intimately aware of the wants and desires and traits of your ideal patient. Like, as you're running your practice, you became very familiar with like, hey, what problems do we love to solve and who do we love to solve them for and how do we love to solve them, right? And okay, so let's build our practice that way we, we understand who we want to attract. We, we understand what, what problems we're really good at solving. We understand who we love to work with and how we love to do it. That allows us to reverse engineer, you know, the way we deliver care. It created the narrative that we would use to market to attract those specific people. And that's. And we learned that, right? If you haven't learned it yet, you just learned it, right? So that's the key to creating a remarkable practice, right? So same thing when it comes to your ultimate, ultimate customer, which is the person that's going to buy your business, your ultimate customer, your final customer will be the one that buys the practice with you, right? So when you go to Sell your practice. You need to have that same level of awareness and sensitivity around. Okay, so, well, who would be the ideal buyer? Who's the ideal buyer for my practice, My business? What do they want? What are they looking for? And here's the most important question. What would make my practice attractive to my ideal buyer? Right. So that question is, what's so key? Because selling a business is a lot like selling a house, right? So it's like, what would make this house most attractive in my town to our ideal buyer? So I actually have people. If we make it irresistible, people will be competing to buy the business, right? So they'll be competing to buy it, which creates, you know, that horse race where the chances of selling the practice go up exponentially.

Right?

With the. When you have multiple buyers, the price goes up, the time compresses, the stress comes down. All the things that we want. It's all about making your business more attractive to that ideal buyer. Right? So, and once you have that awareness, what are the. What are the things that the ideal buyer is concerned about? What do they want? Well, number one, you said it. You want to reduce the risk, right? It's like buying a business is risky. It feels like, oh, my gosh, well, what happens if. Right, so you want to mitigate their risk. You want to reduce their risk. In other words, increase my certainty that I'm going to be successful being able to reproduce what Dr. Kevin did here. Right? So make me confident about that. Right? So, and be. Make sure that you're very clear on, like, what are the things that would make the business attractive? Well, we have systems in place, and you get to.

You.

You get to assume those systems. There's already a, you know, a patient base here. So there's a. There's a heft, there's. There's revenue, there's profit here. That's what you're buying, Right? We have a team that knows those systems, that run those systems, and they come with the deal. In fact, we've got an associate doctor who comes with the deal, right? So we have our financial books in order, our houses in order. Here's our reports for the last 36 months. You can look and see. The fastest way, you know, to build trust is to have clean books that are accurate. And. And somebody can look at it and be like, wow, these are the financials I can see. The fastest way to lose trust is to have either incomplete books or not have your books or have monkey business going on in your books, right? So the. The fastest way to blow up the Deal is to lose the trust to the finances. So Kevin, what I'm hearing you say is you've got to be crystal clear on who is my ideal buyer and specifically what would they be looking for, what do they want when they're shopping for a practice to buy and reverse engineer that thing and making sure that I have a Runway to actually reverse engineer it and have the, and have the time it's going to take for those things to, to really settle and take and take root so that we can reap the benefit from it.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So it's, you know, it's all about planning early and you know, you, you mentioned this at the beginning. Like what would I, you know, like to say to these chiropractors? You know, young, old, early in your career, late in your career is you really got to start early. You know, we, we do, we give a lot of free advice on, on exit strategy and things like that. A lot of people will, will do a low cost valuation with us early on. So it's not like you're spending tons of money on this. That's planning either. But you know, you have a low cost valuation, you understand your, your present value today in your brutal facts. Then we can give you strategies on hey, well if you do this, this and this, you could manage your books a little bit better. You could prove a little bit more cash flow would be more transferable at the end of the day. You know, we'll understand also, you know, what's going on with your billing and your staff and other things that might affect your, your transfer ability at the end of the day. That's great. Another one we see is, you know, a lot of docs, a lot of older docs, they, they never really upgraded their, the EHR or something. They've got, you know, paper files somewhere. They're like, I've got 10,000 paper files. Well, the difference in 10,000 paper files versus 10,000 files that are in segment the email list software that you can market to. It's, it's night and day. It's, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars because what the buyer is going to want to come in and be able to do is like I need to do recall, I need to do email blast out to that patient base. I need to get them in here, you know, give them a free visit, give them a discount, give them some reason to come back in and meet me and see me. Well, they can't do that. If it's 10,000 files in your garage.

Somewhere and we come with solutions for that. Right? So, you know, I love that you got so specific with that. This is an example of like a misstep where if you walked into that negotiation with that kind of, those are the facts, right? So we got 10,000 paper files. I'm like, yeah, but that's not valuable because I want them in your EHR system. I want digital records and I want a segmented email list so I can market and reactivate those people. Well, the bridge between those two things is very simple. We bring in a virtual assistant, you know, somebody who's offshore virtual assistant who can get in there and grab those paper files and turn them into digital files, right? So you invest a couple hundred bucks, and like you said, that could be worth a couple hundred thousand. This is an example of, like, you can get tactical guys. So hopefully, I mean, what you're hearing from Dr. Kevin, hopefully is an eye opener. And this is when you want to have your eyes open before you have to have your eyes open, right? So now we have our eyes open and just recognize that there's a lot of detail here and there's action steps to take to reconcile this and put yourself in the best position to have your remarkable exit, to have, you know, a graceful and profitable exit. Kevin, I know that you're an expert, that you're very generous with your time. So is Crystal. I want to give them an opportunity to be able to reach out to you and to be able to do consultation with you and to talk it down. Because you said something beautiful earlier, before we got on the call. It's like, there is, for me, there is no wasted conversation with a chiropractor, regardless of where they are in their career, whether they're in launch, build, scale, or they're serious about exit. Now, there's no wasted conversation. I know that's your heart. I know that that's how you operate. So I want to make sure that they can, you know, we'll get. We'll get a link down below here in the show notes so that they understand how to reach out to you and your email and contact information. We'll have that included in the show show notes so you can speak to that in a moment. But I also, Crystal and I created a list called the value drivers that I want to give away. Now that you just said that, as far as, like, what are the things I need to be aware of? We listed our. Our top 20 favorite value drivers, which is, you know, like we said earlier, selling a business is a lot like selling a house. Right. So there's two checklists, one checklist that you have to follow. These are the things that you have to do the stepwise sequential checklist in order to legally sell a house. And the second checklist is these are the things that you could do and therefore should do to make your house more attractive to your ideal buyer. In other words, make the price go up and the time compress and the stress come down. Same thing for a business. Right. This is that second checklist. Right. So it's called the value drivers cheat sheet. I want to give that away. This has been a great episode. I think there's lots of value there and it probably will help frame the conversation they know they need to have with you. So I'll put a link down below, we'll give them the value drivers and we'll put your contact information. What type of conversations do you welcome? Be like, hey guys, if you have questions about this, this or this, get in touch with me and I'll help you talk, talk you through it.

Yes, so many. I love to have a conversation. Probably the most conversations I have is about practice, value. People always want to know how much is my practice worth? What is it likely worth today? And I, and I don't always say, you know, you've got to pay me for evaluation today. If I can give you the ballpark over the phone and that's all you need, you know, we'll start with that. But you've got to understand the value of your practice throughout your career. There's different levels of valuation too. So you know, we can do a lot for like a thousand dollar valuation, works for a lot of practices. But as you know better than anybody, practices have really grown up now. There's a lot of multi million dollar practices out there. So, you know, we've had to get way more sophisticated where we have these much bigger valuations available for people and they have many more moving parts. So if you've got a big practice like that, you need an in depth professional time. You need much more strategy about the different types of buyers that might show up. You know, there's, there's corporate buyers, there's private equity groups, there's different types of buyers. So we could have a conversation about buyer, you know, who the likely avatar type of buyer that would show up for your practice. And I can speak with you in depth once we understand your model. You know that if you're a straight chiropractic practice and you know, family care, that's a very different avatar of a buyer than if You're a functional medicine practice or you're a neuropathy practice, or you've got 10 certifications and you use all of them on all the patients. You know, sometimes docs are incredibly educated and then it's very difficult to fill their shoes. So that's right. That's all about having a plan. We, we have a lot of conversations about associate buyouts and just the other contracts that occur in, in the middle of someone's career, you know, with their associates or with their staff or with their team and setting, setting things up for a transfer that may be, you know, many years from now, but set yourself up. Like as we were saying in the beginning, begin with the, the end in mind. And I want to circle back to that, that larger practice idea. You know, I think your audience, as much as anybody would really appreciate this is that with chiropractic growing up few years ago, I would talk to like a private equity group or an investor group or big buyer like that once in a while, you know, a couple of times a year or something like that. Now it's like two or three times a month and they're contacting us. That's right. Looking for groups of chiropractic practices in, in every state. And so if you have a large size practice, you know, that conversation needs to begin many years ahead of time.

So that you can again reverse engineer your business so you become irresistible to your ideal buyer, which would be that.

And so, you know, over the course of years, you know, we may introduce you to some groups, we may introduce you to some other similar size practices in your state and you know, along with coaching groups to help pull that off. Because that'll be, you know, not only life changing money for everybody, but that'll be very important for the profession, those patients, those communities and how that all goes down. That's going to take a lot of planning on all of our part to maximize it, but also that it doesn't, you know, water down or, you know, destroy some of the message of chiropractic.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Making sure that we give these practices a future right. And it's not a sell off right. It is the future trajectory of the profession as a brand, chiropractic as a brand. Nationally, there's a consolidation that's happening and we want to make sure that there's a principled chiropractic message, if that's what's important to you in your business right now, that you bring together a, a group of practices that are, are going to carry on true chiropractic. And we don't just get absorbed into the underbelly of, of, you know, of a giant corporate roll up. Right? So I appreciate your heart around that, buddy. And it is exciting, right? So more than ever now, we have so many, there's so much interest around chiropractic and if you have the chops for that, like, because it does take special chops, it's not for everyone, right? So, and it's not an overnight thing. You've got to have the business chops and you've got to have the desire to say, I'm going to spend the next three, maybe four, maybe, maybe five years in this process of getting my business to the place where it's going to be a win, win, win. Right? And optimize that, that exit. Kev, this has been awesome, man. I'm so excited that we have you on our remarkable exit expert team. I'll make sure that their contact information is down below for people to reach out to you in the interim. Man, just thank you on behalf of chiropractic. We appreciate all that you do and you've just been serving at such a high level. You have delivered such a great service. Your team's amazing and wonderful. So we're just proud to be associated with you guys. So thanks so much, Kevin.

Thank you, Doc. Really, really appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the remarkable CEO podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic. And what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, share with a friend and leave us a review. And if you'd like to connect with us personally, direct message us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram.

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