Selling a CA Practice

My December blog is 2 weeks early.

The process of selling my community acupuncture practice has revealed some interesting insights to me, about myself and about the CAN practitioners. Contrary to my lifelong view of myself as a garden-variety middle-of-the-road person with occasional creative bursts, I am now beginning to realize that perhaps I am really brave, resourceful, hard-working, and maybe just a little twisted (with a real penchant for truth)! If that is the case, then this applies to all the rest of you sister-brother clinics out there.

Here’s how this conclusion is forming. I’ve had two serious lookers at my practice for sale. The first is a recent graduate, quite young, fit and healthy, from a great family with a strong interest in natural healing. He also has a real affinity for the plant world (say herbs) and has worked his way through school, in addition to taking out a sizable student loan to finance his AOM studies. The second is an older practitioner, with more than 20 years’ experience doing acupuncture in different styles and locations, and struggling all this time to survive financially, as most acupunks have. This person has had excellent training and education, and is spiritually oriented. Both are beautiful people, and great candidates for my practice.

They both pulled out of candidacy this week. What was missing? It wasn’t the financial picture I showed them, though they both seemed to focus on the numbers a lot. My numbers look good, and they are getting better and better as time rolls on. When I dwell on what was missing, I think it was the almost rabid commitment to social justice that most CANers express. No, I guess rabid is a rather extreme word, but I wonder if that is how we appear to some folks? (This is where the “twisted” descriptor comes in.)

What both candidates stated as their reason for pulling out was that they didn’t feel comfortable with the fast pace and tremendous amount of work in running the practice single-handedly. The first one decided to open a standard one-at-a-time-with-herbal-consultations type practice. The second one decided to work for another, more successful acupuncturist. I personally don’t feel any regret about this outcome, because it was the best one for all three of us. It made me realize that the right person for this position has to be full-heartedly committed to the basic principles of our network: to deliver affordable care to boatloads (I’m quoting another CANer here) of the middle and lower classes and to share our success with others in our profession.

I also realize that our schools are not training their graduates to step into this kind of practice, thus making a CAP less attractive to them. It takes real thinkers like David, Patricia, Blythe and her friends to look past their academic training for an alternative that better suits their conscience and logic.