7 Things to Know If You're Selling a Practice

This presentation highlights seven key factors that can significantly impact the sale of a veterinary practice, from valuation and deal structure to tax planning, timing, and protecting your team. The core message is that successful transitions are built through preparation well before going to market, not just by finding a buyer.

• Presentation covers the things most advisors won't tell a seller until it's already too late to act on them.
• Generalist advisors require you to be sale-ready before they'll even take you on — unclean books, unpolished EBITDA, or a loose structure gets you turned away.
• A decade ago, most transitions were associate buy-ins or small-practice handoffs. Today, the dominant buyers are corporate groups, and deal structures are fundamentally different.
• The practices that close well are the ones that prepared — not the ones that were already perfect.
• A specialized advisor finds the value a generalist misses — understanding both sides of that math before going to market is where the fee gets earned.
• Purchase price is only part of the equation.
• Tax planning has to happen before going to market, not during or after — that's where smart sellers protect proceeds.
• Corporate buyers have a vested interest in retention, but their standard terms don't automatically protect a seller's people. Associate contracts, non-competes, and partnership agreements all need to be negotiated with the practice's culture in mind.
• Two dimensions of timing: market conditions (interest rates, consolidation cycles, buyer appetite all shift) and personal readiness (emotional, financial, operational — equally important).
• What matters is having the right conversation now, not after a costly decision has already been made.