Joe Sanok 00:00:00  I'm so excited to introduce you to the best website designers out there. We have a brand new partnership with session sites. It is where good therapy meets brilliant design, and they get your website switched over or built in less than two weeks. They fine tune your messaging, use science backed user experience methodology, and work exclusively with mental health professionals. In fact, new clients right now are going to get three free therapy marketing strategy calls with their creative director of session sites. If you book today, you're not going to want to miss this. Head on over to session sites.com/joe again that session sites.com/joe get the website of your dreams today session sites.com/joe. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Santa Accession number 142. I'm Joe Santa, you're host. And welcome to the practice of the Practice Podcast. Welcome to our year end series. I am so excited. Ashley. One of our consultants, group practice owner and, actually former owner, because she sold her practice, she's going to be talking about that and was talking about that in the last episode.

Joe Sanok 00:01:25  today is going to be talking about preparing for the sell, the sale of your group practice. And so, these things to think about. And I know for me, in 2019, there was a lot mentally I had to think through before I sold my group practice. And ash is going to be walking us through all those different things. in the next episode, she's going to talk about negotiations and due diligence. She's going to talk about finalizing the sale, all the things she wishes that she should have known before selling the group practice. So many great things are on selling a practice at this year end. Here we go.

Ashley Mielke 00:01:58  Welcome back to another episode of The Practice of the Practice podcast. I am your host, Ashley Mielke, and today we are kicking off part two of our seven part series on selling your group practice. In the first episode, I shared my personal journey how I came to the place where I was ready to sell my group practice, and I shared a little bit about what I'm doing today in my career, moving into the coaching world, continuing my journey as a group practice consultant with the practice of the practice, and just opening my heart up to other opportunities.

Ashley Mielke 00:02:38  The other thing I'm doing that I did forget to mention in the last episode is that I'm still completing my doctorate. That's something you know, my husband always says, do you forget that you're a doctor of a psychology student? Like, have you ever thought that that is something you need to juggle in to everything else you do? And the funny thing is, I do forget, even though it's such a huge part of my world. So I am in my fourth year of my doctorate. I kicked off year four in May of 2024, and I'm now moving into chapter two of my dissertation or my doctoral project. So I've got chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, and I will officially be a doctor! Woohoo! So I am really excited about that. not only just for the credential of coming this far, but because I'm also studying a topic that I'm really passionate about, which is suicide bereavement. So my research question is, what are the key factors that promote post-traumatic growth in adults bereaved by suicide? So it really all ties into why I started my group practice 11 years ago after my dad died by suicide, selling my group practice, moving into grief coaching, Specializing in suicide, bereavement and now actually researching this topic in my dissertation.

Ashley Mielke 00:04:03  So I'm really excited about what God has in store for me in my career. Now that I've just moved into this kind of new chapter of my life. So anyways, today we are going to be talking about how to prepare your business for sale. So we're going to be digging into some of the nitty gritty. And really the objective of this episode is to provide you with actionable insights to prepare your practice for sale and maximize its value. So you definitely want to get cozy with your pen and paper, take some notes, and even start to think about what action you can take today in your business. Even if you don't have any plans to sell in the next couple of years. Because this is still going to change your business for the better. When we start to look at the strategic parts of our business and really positioning ourselves in a really healthy way so that we are profitable and maximizing our impact in the community as well. So we're going to be talking about strategic planning for selling, enhancing your practice value, and marketing your practice to potential buyers.

Ashley Mielke 00:05:23  So I know I've shared my story and what I'm up to now, and why I decided that selling was the right decision for me. But I want you to reflect in your own life, in your own circumstances, your own situation. What are some reasons you might want to sell your practice? Is it about a desire for a career change? Is it time to retire? There are group practice owners that went into private practice later in their career. So they, you know, maybe they only started within the last five years and they're already planning their asset. That's wonderful. Maybe it's a financial opportunity for you. Maybe you're like, wow, I'm doing my business is really profitable, and there is great opportunity here for me to get an awesome return on investment, on all of my hard work and really maximize the money you can make through a sale. Or maybe it's kind of like me, where you really just want to connect to your deeper purpose and focus on a new way to give back, a new way to serve a new venture in your life.

Ashley Mielke 00:06:43  Book. So some some key considerations when we're taking this into account is timing. Timing is really important not only to prepare your business for sale. But your personal timing. What's going on in your life and in your world? And how can you make sure you take those things into consideration when you're looking at a timeline? Like if it's a 24 months out, you're looking to sell? What's that going to look like in the next two years? What have you got going on? we also want to look at the market conditions. What's happening in your area? Are there interested buyers, like actively seeking people to sell their practices to them? Are you noticing that other group practices are also selling their businesses? Is it becoming really overly saturated and competitive, and you're looking for an opportunity to kind of get out of the industry? Like these are all things we need to think about in our particular area. I believe it is very oversaturated. It might even be the same for you. That doesn't mean that we can't be successful, because I think when we really leverage our unique value proposition, we really allow our purpose and our why, our bigger vision to drive us.

Ashley Mielke 00:08:07  There is no competition because there's only one you, right? And no one can be you. No one can be your business. So when we focus on the value that we bring to the community, there really is no competition. And when we have an abundance mindset, we know that there's always enough, there's always enough, there's always enough clients, there's always enough money, there's always enough opportunity to grow. with that said, though, it's also okay to look at, you know, what is going on out there. And, you know, do I want to be a part of this market anymore? So this is something I notice is there's a lot of group practices. There's many stable group practices like what we had. You know, we're around for over a decade. We had really strong brand awareness. But I also noticed a ton of new group practices popping up the last couple of years and a lot of solo practices as well, which is great. So we know people are getting the help, but I really felt like people are interested in buying businesses right now.

Ashley Mielke 00:09:04  People are interested in selling. I'm going to take this opportunity right now. Like, what is it, strike while the iron is hot. I probably said that wrong, but it's something about iron being hot and doing it now. And that's really how I felt was like, I, I don't want to miss this opportunity or allow fear to stop me, or the uncertainty of my future to stop me from taking this opportunity because I have a buyer that's ready to buy now. So these are the things that you're going to be thinking about, or I encourage you to think about, and just your personal readiness for this big change. As I shared with you, a couple of times now, my sort of key reasons were wanting to simplify, wanting to really focus on the priorities of my family. Having a new baby and having a very active, almost eight year old son and wanting to really nurture my marriage and in many ways like growing my business. I really neglected myself and my family a lot of the time, because we know that balance is really difficult when you're in business.

Ashley Mielke 00:10:15  I don't even know if it's possible, honestly. I think you're either you're either pouring into your family and you're neglecting your business, or you're pouring into your business and you're neglecting your family. And, I really just felt like the where I'm at in my life right now really wanted to prioritize being available for my kids, my family, and simplifying my life and really getting back to that core purpose, and being in that place of service for others. Okay, so let's talk about strategic planning for a smooth transition. Now, nothing's ever going to be perfect, so you can already let go of that expectation that when you're ready to sell, everything's going to be smooth sailing. It's not because you're a person, you're dealing with humans, you and there's things that are going to come up that you just can't predict 100% or can expect. So make sure you go in with that mindset of flexibility and seeing it as an opportunity for learning. But you do want to start a couple of years early before you want to sell at least a year or two.

Ashley Mielke 00:11:28  You want to take steps now to position your practice well for buyers. So what are these steps? Look, what do these steps look like. We're going to talk about that and have a bit of a transition plan. So if you are currently immersed in your business seeing 20 clients a week or more and most of the revenue comes from you. And most of the operations and everything done in the business rely on you. It's really important to look at what can I put into place so that someone else, a new buyer, can easily move into your position and recognize that, wow. You know, the position I was in was very desirable. As the CEO of my business, I really had nothing to do with the day to day. I had a great admin team. We had a strong leadership team. I was not seeing clients, so my position was easily replaceable, if that makes sense. Like replaceable, interchangeable with a new buyer. They didn't have to now say, oh well, Ashley's clinical hours, right? She generates all this income.

Ashley Mielke 00:12:38  And once Ashley is gone, what happens to the business? Everybody relies on Ashley. And I think even our clients, like, I wasn't even on the website by this point. I was on our leadership team page, but I was not listed as a clinician, so people probably didn't even know that I existed, which is great for a potential buyer coming in because then they can easily move into that position. The other things with the transition plan kind of high level, we want to think about staff retention, continuity of care for our clients. What is that, you know, ethically, what is that transition going to look like. What's that going to require of me. And of course, a smooth transfer of ownership, all the nitty gritty details that come with that. So one thing that's going to be really important for you do this anyway. Even if you're not planning to sell, have your books cleaned up. Make sure your financials are organized. This is something I wish that I was taught from the very beginning because I, to be very honest and transparent, was not very good with money.

Ashley Mielke 00:13:43  And it's only recently that I've I've introduced the profit first approach in my into my business and into my life, and it's now a money management sort of lifestyle for me that I really love and I'm really passionate about. But before it was kind of like, I make a dollar and I spend it. And so when we were making very little money, so if I was generating like 5000 a month from my company, I would just spend it, all right, spend it all through my owner's comp or investing in the business. And, and then when we were making, we almost did 2 million a year revenue before we sold. It was that same mentality. So it really didn't have those skills in place that I wish I would have. I really encourage you to do pick up the profit first book for profit First for therapists. We're huge advocates here at the practice of the practice, of this approach, and it will really transform your life and your business. So it's really important to have accurate financial statements.

Ashley Mielke 00:14:41  Your buyer is going to ask for at least three years, and it's as far back as your business has been incorporated. They're going to want your corporate year end. They're going to want to look at your numbers. They're going to want to look at what is your gross revenue. What is your net profit. What are your profit margins? What are your expenses? What can they sort of expect coming into this business? And not only that, what is the percentage growth you've had each year? So I was really grateful and proud to share the significant growth we had every single year in the business. So it was not just a business that was sort of stagnant, which stability is not a bad thing, right? That's great too. They want to see stability, but they wanted to also look at what is the growth potential in this company. So if they were starting to do financial projections the next couple of years, which was a conversation we had, they were able to look at, okay, if the Grief and Trauma Healing Center had this amount of growth over the last three, 4 or 5 years, here's what we can expect looking at market conditions or the change in the market since Covid, that kind of Covid crisis has died down a bit in terms of people like, you know, going out and everybody getting help.

Ashley Mielke 00:15:53  So there's all these considerations that they had in looking at projections for the business moving forward. So again, all these really valuable conversations I had with the buyer, understanding their process was really valuable. So I'm excited to share these things with you so that you can kind of have some insight on what you might be able to expect. Ensure your corporate book is up to date. This might be a Canadian thing only. I did share this with our group practice boss community yesterday and they were like, what's a corporate book? And I actually asked my lawyer the same thing. I had no idea. And my lawyer said, it's like a binder that you get after you get incorporated and you keep all of your annual filings, right. That's the money you pay to keep your corporation alive and well. You put your corporate year end tax statements in there. Any meetings you have with partners or board members, which I didn't have any of that. So it was a very quick fix for me to get my corporate book up to date.

Ashley Mielke 00:16:53  But I panicked when the buyer said, we're doing our due diligence. Can you send us your corporate book? And I'm like, what's a corporate minute book? And, so that was something I learned. So make sure you talk to your accountant. And if you have a corporate lawyer to make sure that if there's anything you need in terms of corporation taxes, legal stuff, you have all of that in place, because I think I had to pay my lawyer, like, I don't know, a couple thousand dollars to have that up to date, which if I had just done it the first time, it would have already been in place. You also want to understand your key metrics. Your numbers are everything in your business. So if I were to ask you right now, do you know how much money is in your bank account today? Have you opened up your bank app to see what your cash flow actually is? Because when you get your tax statements, your profit and loss, or your corporate year end.

Ashley Mielke 00:17:48  And they say, here's your net profit. That net profit is not what's actually in your bank account. It's almost like this, this imaginary number. So you have to know what's actually in your account. And as my accountant says, follow the cash. Cash coming in, cash going out. And if you have a profit first approach, then, you know, you take your big plate and you divvy it up into your smaller plates so you can look every single day. How much is in your profit account, how much is in your owner's comp, your taxes, your operating expenses? And if you've got salaries, really getting comfortable and clear with your numbers, those are very important. What is your gross revenue? What's your net profit? What are your profit margins every month? Are you operating you know under 20%. Is it above 30%? I mean, it would be awesome if your profit margins were between 30 and 40%, right? Then you know you're profitable and you're doing well. What are your expenses? What is that overhead in your business and what is the percentage from your gross revenue? How much of that is actually going to your expenses? And are you overspending? Is there opportunities to trim the fat, so to speak, out of your business and eliminate some of those nice to haves? And then the big number that you want to look at, and you can have your accountant do a simple calculation.

Ashley Mielke 00:19:14  You don't need to spend $100,000 to get this number. Your accountant can whip this number up for you and it's your EBITDA, your earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization you're going to sell to get an idea of what your company is worth is going to be your EBITDA times 3 or 4. So whatever that number is, it's going to be similar to a net profit number. So your EBITDA is not going to be well my gross revenue is $1 million a year. So a million times three. My company is worth 3 million. No. What? What they're going to be looking at is the bottom line. So the top line, right gross revenue bottom line is your net profit. We want to maximize your net profit, your actual profitability so that it's very desirable to a buyer. This is more important than the size of your team how many locations you have. Because oftentimes when we kind of bloat up, we have a big administrative team. We've got a lot of staff, we've got a lot of salaries, we have a number of leases we're paying for that can actually work against us.

Ashley Mielke 00:20:21  Okay, so don't think that you can't sell your business just because you're small, a small but mighty team that actually might be more desirable to a buyer. So we want to really maximize that EBITDA. So make sure you have a conversation with your accountant about that.

Joe Sanok 00:20:44  I am so excited about alma. When I had my private practice, I struggled building my caseload, attracting the right clients, managing the business side. And honestly, one of the reasons I didn't take insurance was it was so difficult to navigate. So many of my consulting clients deal with these problems as well, and almost supports clinicians in building rewarding private practices with simplified insurance credentialing in under 45 days, enhanced reimbursement rates, and guaranteed two week payback, plus a free profile in their searchable, filter able directory. Making easy for clients who are the right fit for your practice to find you. Learn more about how alma could support your private practice at. Hello, alma. Com forward slash Jo. That's hello alma.com/jo. To learn more.

Ashley Mielke 00:21:39  Connect with your accountant and your lawyer.

Ashley Mielke 00:21:42  If you don't have a lawyer, you need to find one. star to interview lawyers that sell businesses that are in there. They've done acquisitions before, and it would be a bonus if they've been a part of sales with group practices, which I was really fortunate because my friend that I, that I talked about, that I'm going to be interviewing in this series. Doctor Jenny Ward, her husband, happens to be my lawyer, and she sold her practice a year before me, and he has years of experience with these types of acquisitions. So it was I was just really, really fortunate to have someone that just knew exactly the process. So I was very comfortable working with him. So you want to interview some lawyers, get some idea of what that would look like, what their experiences. Talk to your accountant about it, talk about some of the plans. Get an idea of what your accountant thinks your business is worth, and make sure your bookkeeper has all of your books up to date. I think that's a really, really strong start.

Ashley Mielke 00:22:43  Just really understand your numbers. And again, your business is here to serve you. You are not here to serve your business. So start to shift that mindset around opportunity. You are the one that took risk in starting this business. And so you should get all the reward. And I truly, truly believe that. So what are some ways to enhance the value of your practice? We want to boost profitability where we can. So this might involve increasing revenue streams like diversifying your services. You might maybe you specialize in working with adults. And now you want to bring in a child therapist or family therapist or couples therapist, or you want to start offering groups or workshops. You want to do corporate services. That's really popular, too. Or maybe it's coaching. Like there's opportunities to diversify your services to open up and expand. Even if you were like me and have a very niche kind of specialty practice. So we specialize in grief and trauma. And we had adult therapists, child therapists, couples, families.

Ashley Mielke 00:23:48  We did groups, we did corporate, we did trainings, we did talks. We did all sorts of things to really expand our reach and be able to work with people from all walks, from the little littles, you know, 2 or 3 years old to, working with elderly people and again, just all sorts of people. And we had great contracts for third party referrals to really open up those revenue streams. Another thing is you can hire more therapists to increase service hours. So if you're noticing we do have a demand, the more the more sessions we have each week, the more money we make as a business. And it just, you know, it kind of takes on that life of its own. It has that sort of momentum effect on the business. You can also look at how you can optimize your scheduling, filling gaps and cancellations coming up with Processes in your business that follow up with cancellations that pre-book clients right for accountability and consistency and following up with inquiries, we started implementing a number of these things the last couple of years and it made a tremendous difference.

Ashley Mielke 00:25:00  Just following up with inquiries, I think increased from those people not booking in. It was like a 40% increase in new people booking in just from that. That wasn't even spending more money on marketing. You might also look at reducing overhead expenses, as I as I mentioned a little bit earlier, right, trimming the fat and eliminating those nice to haves. Now, I know it's a lot of fun having awesome things in the office like specialty coffee and snacks, a snack bar for the clients, for your therapists, and you just create this zen, beautiful, welcoming space. and I 100% agree with that. But we can also look at what are the ways that we might actually be able to save, you know, up to $1,000 a month or even if it's 500 a month. Let me do the math. How much is that over a year? If it's $1,000 a month, I'm saving on, nice to have. That's $12,000. That goes to my bottom line at the end of the year, or I can reinvest into the growth of my business.

Ashley Mielke 00:26:08  Or it can be to pay off debt or pay our taxes. So we want to look at what are those nice to haves that you can eliminate. They really don't need and don't actually move the needle in your business. And as I already mentioned, cash flow and profitability is more important than the size of your company, the size of your team. You can be highly profitable with a very small team, so don't let that get in the way Of you making a decision around selling. Operational efficiency is also something you want to look at in terms of enhancing the value of your practice, putting the systems and processes in place. So it's this well-oiled machine, a machine that doesn't need you for every single part of the process. So do you have your policies and procedures in place? Do you have handbooks for your contractors and your employees? Do you have a list or a folder of how to's? One thing we started that was really valuable was a video library. So I would just hop on my my phone.

Ashley Mielke 00:27:22  I would do quick videos because I'm, I really much prefer honestly sending voice notes, doing videos. That's just me over sitting and typing. So if someone said, well, how do I do this? Or how would I handle this situation, I would sit down, do a two minute video, pop it in the drive. So then when someone has a question, we really encourage their, problem solving skills and taking initiative to figure it out on their own first before they would come and ask. So they would go to the video library and look up. Okay. Do a little search. See if they can find anything. Look in our policies and procedures. If they couldn't find anything on it, we would create one just immediately. So how do we do this in the business actually. So it might be like how do I do an internal referral as an example. Oh, we don't have a process for that. Let me whip this up. I'm going to send it to the clinical team, the clinical leadership team.

Ashley Mielke 00:28:20  Get them to just ensure it it fits ethically, clinically. And then we integrate it roll it out to the team. So build it as you go and start to put these things together so that your business is really this well-oiled machine, and a buyer doesn't have to come in and implement all of those things. You want to streamline the use of your technology as well. So looking at things like your EHR, does your EHR serve your business and where you're at, is it going to serve you as you grow? So we are huge advocates of chain, and what I loved about working with Jane is the reporting capabilities. So, you know, month end reports, client retention, therapist retention, billing. We use Jane for absolutely everything. Everything was just a click away. And that's what I really love about that particular EHR, just because it really did serve us. And it provided me with really great data points to look at our growth, look at how our therapists were doing, look at how our clients were doing, and have those month end reports available for our bookkeeper.

Ashley Mielke 00:29:24  Another thing to enhance the value of your practice, which is really key, is retaining a strong client base and clinical team. This will impact your evaluation. So things like, you know, how many new clients are getting? Do you have a consistent number of new intakes every month? And then what is sort of the lifetime value of each client? How long are they staying with you? How frequently are they coming? How long are they coming? This is also going to be determined by therapists, capabilities and how well they retain their clients. So when you have an A player team, they're likely going to have a very high retention. Our retention was on average 91 to 94% a month as a clinic, which is incredible. That means we basically retain nearly 100% of our clients. And like I'm talking long term. And because of the work we do in grief and trauma, that makes a lot of sense. We were doing really great, deep work with these clients and really helping them to transform their lives.

Ashley Mielke 00:30:24  So these are things you want to think about, right? Like what is our client retention look like? What is our therapist retention and how long are clinicians staying on your team? Have you created a culture and an environment that It inspires them to want to grow their practice with you. Stay long term, really stabilize in your company. That's going to be very appealing to a buyer. So when they say, okay, tell me about your clinicians. You've got all these players, they're highly experienced. They're able to serve a number of different populations. And you can say, you know, the average time that they've been with me is five years or longer, right. Or maybe you say, I just started a couple of years ago and they've been with me from the beginning. That looks really good, because you've created a brand and a culture that will hopefully be stabilized through the transition of ownership, marketing your practice to attract buyers. So thinking about who your ideal buyer might be, maybe it's like me and you want to sell to a mega group practice that can acquire and has the capital, the business acumen, the resources, the team to take over your business for me.

Ashley Mielke 00:31:38  I knew that it was going to have to be someone that was experienced and confident taking over a large business, because we did have multiple locations and we did have a lot of therapists, and we had a lot of moving parts in our business. And I just that's I really felt that I was going to feel confident working with a buyer that knew the business very well and had experience running multiple locations. So this practice that purchased us had seven locations and over 50 therapists, and they've been in business for 25 years. And, so I was very, very confident in their abilities to continue the legacy in the brand. You might also find that there's an individual therapist in your practice that's interested in buying. Maybe you've had conversations with them. Maybe they seem like they'd be a great successor. So what are some qualities that really stand out? Well? Do they have a business mindset to the understand the Intricacies of running a group practice. Do they understand the you know how the money works in a group practice? brand awareness marketing.

Ashley Mielke 00:32:46  Are they showing an interest in even coming on as a partner? Start to look and notice these things, and you can start to have conversations about maybe how they would see themselves growing in your business. there's also the opportunity of an investment group coming in and purchasing from you as well. Or even the case of an allied professional like a psychiatrist might be interested in having a group practice as well. A big question to ask yourself is, you know, is it important to me to have whoever buys this business continue this legacy? Or would I be okay if they dissolved, dissolved the business and just acquired and carried on and kind of added it to their business? Right. They kind of take the clients, they take the Assets, the marketing strategy, and they carry on like what really matters to you at the end of the day? For some, it doesn't matter. It's like if someone's going to pay me money to buy this business, they can do whatever they want with it. That is totally A-okay.

Ashley Mielke 00:33:51  if you're like me, where I. I was so deeply connected to the purpose of this business with my own personal journey, my dad's death, really wanting to be of service in the grief space, really wanting to create a safe space for people to ask for help, to share their vulnerable stories, to take courageous action, to heal and move forward. I really wanted the buyer to maintain the brand and the entity of the Grief and Trauma Healing Center. So when this buyer said they respect my story and legacy, they want to honor the legacy and carry it on and build and scale the brand. That was really meaningful for me because it means the story lives on. And, you know, I don't know what the future holds for the Grief and Trauma Healing Center, but that was really meaningful for me at the time. And now they are expanding into a third location in another city in our province. So that means more people get helped. There's more brand awareness, and it's all a part of my legacy.

Ashley Mielke 00:34:56  And that is so, so meaningful for me. In terms of marketing your practice, you can have, like I said, one on one conversations with your staff. You can connect with other group practice owners that might be interested in an acquisition, sort of like what I did. Like, hey, here's a business opportunity, would you be interested? And I had communicated with other practice owners and had several lunches and meetings looking at what that could look like. And, you know, ultimately, I came to a decision with this current buyer that felt like the most. Right. You can also look at your professional networks for opportunities. Or you can do. What I'm noticing other people do now is go into your local Facebook group. I'm sure you have one where it's local therapists in your area and put an anonymous post. Create an anonymous Gmail account so people don't know it's you and say, hey, anonymously. I'm interested in selling my my practice. If you are interested, please email me here with a anonymous email account that you've set up.

Ashley Mielke 00:36:01  The reason why it's important you do this anonymously and you have private conversations, is because the last thing you want is it to get out that you're looking to sell and everyone gets scared, and then your team decides that they're going to jump ship and leave because they don't know what this means. And, you know, this creates a lot of uncertainty and fear for people when they don't have all of the information. And we would not want that to happen. This is a private journey for you. So when you are having these conversations, just make sure you have them sign an NDA before you open up and talk about what's happening so that you know it can truly be in confidence. That would even be for any one on one conversations with staff on your team as well, if you think that someone might be interested. And lastly, when it comes to marketing, you want to create sort of a proposal which we call a prospectus or a business sale prospectus. And it's like a proposal. So imagine just getting on your Google Drive, opening up a new document, and putting a proposal out about all the highlights of your business.

Ashley Mielke 00:37:06  So that would include things like your business name, how long you've been in business, your location and premises, information about your lease, your practice offerings and specialties, your unique value proposition, brand awareness in the community. Any awesome updates from like on your website, videography, social media support? You know how many followers you've got on Instagram? Like what is that? Brand awareness and leveraging those things. You also want to share annual revenue and percentage growth. Growth increases over the years. Talk about your staff. How many staff do you have? How many admin team do you have? What are your marketing statistics that really stand out? So I had my marketing team generate a number of, just data points that really leveraged the organic listings, the organic brand awareness we have on Google. And that was really appealing as well. because, 90% of our new intakes came from organic listing from our SEO. So we're very, very, like, almost unusually powerful SEO. And that's something that I invested years ago.

Ashley Mielke 00:38:14  So we, you know, we've been organically listed on Google for probably eight, seven years. And over that time, Google has really recognized us as sort of a a go to for grief and trauma support in our area. You can also list things like your referral sources and third party relationships and contracts, and an ideal transition period for you. So maybe you say, I'm looking to sell in the next 12 to 24 months. Here's how I'm willing to stay on as a part of the transition, and I will talk about that in future episodes as well. So, deep breath. As we wrap up this episode, I just want you to take a minute and just reflect on the following questions that I have for you. If you imagine yourself five years from now after selling your practice, what does life look like? What are you doing professionally and personally? How much did you sell your group practice for? Clarity is key in creating a vision for our future and and creating that reality. What do you want your group practice to be known for after you've stepped away? How do you hope your clients, your staff and the community remember your work? What personal goals do you hope selling your practice will help you achieve? What current challenges and running your practice would you be relieved to let go of after selling? How do you feel imagining those responsibilities being off your plate? And lastly, what actions can you take today to plan your exit one day in the future? So I hope you found this episode valuable.

Ashley Mielke 00:40:03  Start planning now. Really focus on maximizing the value of your business, even if you're not ready to sell, and you will start to see a positive return on investment just by making a few small changes in your business. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I feel very honored to be sharing my journey with all of you, and I really look forward to seeing See you in our next episode.

Joe Sanok 00:40:39  We are so excited to bring these types of things to you as much as we can, so that you can level up your practice in a way that's just amazing. Head on over to Alma's website. Hello alma.com/jo, if you want help with credentialing, if you want help with reimbursement rates and a guaranteed two week payback again, that's hello alma.com/jo. Thank you for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band silence. Sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered.

Joe Sanok 00:41:15  It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.