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There is a famous Aesop’s fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The race starts, and the hare races ahead and soon leaves the tortoise far behind. Confident of winning, the hare takes a nap towards the end of the race, and when he awakens, he finds that he has lost the race.
I find myself thinking of this fable often when selling veterinary practices.
What happened to the hare in this fable is what happens all too often to veterinarians in practice ownership. In their final years, many veterinary practice owners take a metaphorical nap (just like the hare).
Sure, they still turn up to work, but burnt out by years of working hard and confident that they have a successful practice, many practitioner owners (too many) start to commit various combinations of the following business sins of success. They:
They figure that they are comfortably ahead and that whatever the above indulgences cost, it is worth it because of their increased level of comfort in their practice. They figure that there is enough time left in the race to make it all up.
When they decide that it is time to sell their practices and retire, these practice owners “wake up” to the realisation that:
The result is that what they are able to achieve when they sell their practice has been compromised by fatigue and over-confidence in the final stretch of their career.
There are two key lessons that every business owner should take from the story of the tortoise and the hare.
When you are looking at selling, buyers will not judge you based on how good you were as a grad coming out of university, or how far ahead of your peers you were at the halfway mark of your career. When you are looking at selling, you will be judged harshly by your performance in the final stretch (the last few years) of your career.
A business owner should plan their exit with a vague timeline in mind for how long they will own the practice and pace themselves, so they can ensure the final years closely reflect the practice’s usual performance.
If a practice owner is in the final stretch of their career and becomes fatigued, if they feel like slowing down or taking more time off and are worried about the impact these changes will make on the fortunes of the business, if they see the business’s fortunes deteriorating for other reasons and don’t have the time or inclination to turn it around….they can simply choose to sell sooner while they are still ahead and work post sale in their practice as a non-owner.
The practice owner has the ability to move the finish line to wherever they slow down and declare themselves the winner BEFORE they take a nap!
If the hare had this same ability, it would never have lost!
Simon Palmer is the Founder and Managing Director of Practice Sale Search, Australia’s leading vet practice brokerage. With more than 20 years’ experience in practice sales, Simon has extensive knowledge of and insight into the vet industry. He is a licensed business broker and real estate agent. His company, Practice Sale Search, sells over 100 dental and vet practices every year. Simon is a regular contributor to major Australasian vet publications, and presents seminars on Exit Planning which are essential for any veterinarian thinking of selling their practice with the next 5 years.
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