What defines entrepreneurial energy? According to David Lyons PhD,

“Entrepreneurial energy is the force that sustains the momentum and velocity of progression in the venture. Energy can rise through excitation/agitation and fall through decay of the energy as a result of predicaments or failures.
Entrepreneurial energy is an endogenous force that fuels motivation and sustains entrepreneurial action and momentum. Encapsulating hope, optimism and obsessiveness, the nature and experience of the entrepreneurial energy provides meaning to the entrepreneurial pursuit and venture. Entrepreneurial energy is a motivational construct characterized by positive intense feeling, emotional arousal and internal drive and engagement in the pursuit that is salient to the self-identify of the entrepreneur. The positive affective state also generates positivity in the cognitive state fostering creativity and recognition of new patterns of information critical to opportunity recognition and exploitation in the external environment.
Entrepreneurship, after all, is a science of turbulence and change, not continuity. Turbulence is caused by certain force. Such is the force in entrepreneurship, like the wind is felt but not seen; or seen through the ruffle of the leaves but not the wind itself.”

Most of you reading this article can relate to those attributes, especially early in your career.  Remember talking to your friends in chiropractic school and making plans for your practice? Remember the excitement of updating your new practice? Remember the hours put in behind the scenes to get the practice where you wanted it?

Do you still have that energy in you? If you do, this is a great time to be a chiropractor entrepreneur. Consolidation is happening and it will favor the big and the bold.

What if you don’t? That is okay also, but the time to consider harvesting your practice asset is now.
In my exit-planning training, coaching our clients to either grow or sell their businesses was absolutely paramount. Stasis really is an illusion. Equipment gets older. Technology becomes dated. Marketing plans become obsolete. Business values decline.

So ask yourself, grow or sell?

As you get nearer and nearer to retirement and are preparing to sell your chiropractic practice, there is something you need to ponder that many doctors do not think about.  That is the emotions you will go through during and after you sell your practice.
Selling space or even charts is easy.  It’s just an object that you are giving to another doctor to own.  But, I’ve had many doctors who realize their life will be different going forward after their transition.  They may have staff they have worked with for 25 years or more.  They have seen patients grow from being a child to being a parent and some even become grandparents.  Now their children and grandchildren are patients of the office.  You have vendors and your CPA that you have gotten to know personally and confide in.  Staff, patients and the vendors have all become family and you will not be seeing them as often as you have in the past. 
You will also be changing your life in that you no longer are the owner, manager and decision maker with people relying on you to lead them.  You may no longer have to wake up and go to work every day.  Believe it or not, you may even have “spare” time and have to find new hobbies, rekindle old ones or maybe even find take care of the honey-do list.
The good, if not great news, is that the staff, patients and vendors are thankful for the years of service you have provided them in addition to your friendship.  They want you to enjoy life and spend time with your real family – spouse, your parents, kids, and grandkids.  Preparing for this emotional aspect of your chiropractic practice sale will help make your practice transition into retired life a much smoother process.