Waiting Can Be Expensive
Don't discover what your practice is worth the year you retire. Discover it years before, while you can still change the number.
Every year, PPS sits down with retiring chiropractors and delivers hard news: “Doctor, your practice is worth less than you thought.” By that point, the game is largely over. The decisions that set the value were made five, ten, and fifteen years earlier.
The sentence PPS hears most from these doctors:
I wish I had known this five years ago. I would have done things so differently.
The PPS ValueStack was built so you never have to say those words.
What is The PPS ValueStack?
The PPS ValueStack is a monthly program from Progressive Practice Sales that combines professional bookkeeping, chiropractic-specific financial reporting, practice value tracking, and strategic guidance in one ongoing advisory relationship. Instead of calling a broker the year you decide to sell, you work with the brokerage years in advance, so the business decisions you make today build practice value instead of draining it.
You already pay for bookkeeping. Is it working hard enough?
Most chiropractors spend thousands of dollars a year on bookkeeping. That money buys tax-ready books, and that’s where it stops. The question is whether that same investment could also be protecting the value of your single largest retirement asset.
Here’s the problem. Traditional bookkeeping is designed to prepare tax returns. Good tax strategy intentionally shrinks your taxable income. Meanwhile, buyers and SBA lenders evaluate your practice on profitability, cash flow, and transferability. You’ve been keeping score on one scoreboard while the people who will one day write you a check are watching a completely different one.
Bookkeeping tells you what happened. Profitability tells you how you’re performing today. Practice value tells you whether years of decisions are creating more choices for your future, or fewer.
The PPS ValueStack makes your existing bookkeeping investment do double duty: clean books for tax season, plus the reporting that shows what your practice is actually worth and how to grow that number.
Here's what your CPA can't see.
Your CPA is excellent at taxes. Ask them what your practice would sell for or how to build value and they’ll have an idea. But that number usually comes from a rule of thumb or a general small-business formula, because valuing a chiropractic practice for a sale isn’t a CPA’s specialty, it’s PPS’s.
PPS works with dozens of banks and negotiates directly with hundreds of chiropractic buyers every year. That’s how PPS knows which decisions raise your value, which ones lower it, and exactly what will hold up under lender scrutiny when it counts. Your current advisors, as good as they are, simply don’t have that vantage point.
Keep your CPA – they are experts at your tax strategy. The PPS ValueStack works alongside them, not instead of them, and hands them cleaner books in the process.
Building a great practice and building a valuable practice are two different skills
You already know how to build a practice. Patient care, referrals, a strong team. Protecting the value you’ve built is a separate skill, and nobody teaches it in chiropractic school.
Adding an associate. Dropping a service. Signing a new lease or buying a building. How you minimize your taxes. Buying equipment. Each of these can raise or lower what a buyer can pay by tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes more. Very few business decisions are universally right or wrong. There are just informed decisions and uninformed decisions. The PPS ValueStack shows you the full impact of your choices before you make them, so you decide with a clear view of the tradeoffs.
Don't become the clinic that is difficult to sell
You’ve probably watched it happen in your own town. A respected clinic serves its community for 30 years, the doctor retires, and the doors simply close. No sale. No payout. Decades of work, gone.
Your practice is your legacy, and for most doctors it should also be one of the largest retirement assets they own. The real fear is discovering at 65 that a better outcome was available at 55, and there’s no going back to fix it.
Maybe you’ll sell in three years. Maybe you’ll practice another fifteen. Maybe you want an associate buy-in, a partial sale, or to keep ownership while stepping back from the table. You don’t have to know today. The goal is keeping every one of those doors open, so you’re never trapped by a decision you made ten years earlier.
Retirement shouldn't begin with surprises. It should begin with options.
Three levels of support
Foundation
For the doctor who never wants to say “I wish I’d understood my numbers.”
- Professional bookkeeping and monthly financial reporting
- Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (your true take-home profit) tracking
- Add-back analysis and true profitability reporting
- Estimated practice value, updated as your numbers change
Growth
For the doctor who never wants to say “I built a great practice. I just never built a valuable one.”
Includes everything in Foundation, plus strategy for doctors actively building. This level makes sure today’s growth also grows tomorrow’s sale price.- Annual Opinion of Value and Exit Readiness Assessment
- Semiannual strategy sessions
- Annual value building review
Founding member pricing: $999 $699/month for the first 24 months
ExitReady
For the doctor who never wants to say “It was worth more. I just couldn’t prove it in time.”
Your practice is probably one of the largest assets you own. This is what managing it looks like. Includes everything in Foundation, plus behind-the-scenes sale preparation, because timing rarely arrives on schedule. Whether the right offer shows up early or life forces a sale you didn’t plan, ExitReady means the value you’ve built is documented, defensible, and ready to command full price on any timeline.- Comprehensive valuation and final pre-listing valuation
- Listing readiness and practice narrative review
- Transition strategy consulting and ongoing sale preparation
- Professional marketing package with full-color practice profile
Founding member pricing: $999 $699/month for the first 24 months
Common questions
Will you work with my existing CPA or tax preparer?
Yes. PPS partners with your CPA all year to keep your books clean and current, so nothing piles up at tax time. At year end, PPS acts as the go-between and makes sure your tax preparer has everything they need to file accurately and on time. Don’t have a CPA? PPS will point you to tax partners we trust.
How fast can we get started?
Most practices are fully set up within the first 30 days, including cleaning up whatever came before. PPS uses QuickBooks and handles the switch for you, including moving your history over and setting up the reporting.
Switching bookkeepers sounds like a headache. How much work is this on me?
Less than most doctors expect. PPS handles the setup, the file transfer, and the cleanup. After that, the bookkeeping component runs on about one hour a month of your time. Growth and ExitReady ask for a little more, mostly the strategy sessions where you get answers to any current practice challenges and questions.
How is this different from the bookkeeping I have now?
Traditional bookkeeping is built for taxes. The PPS ValueStack delivers clean, tax-ready books plus a second layer of reporting built for value: true transferable profit, add-back documentation, and an estimated practice value you can watch over time. Your books stay ready for your CPA and also become ready for a buyer, a lender, and a valuation.
I’m not selling for ten years or more. Isn’t this premature?
No, this is important at every career stage. A more valuable practice is usually a better-run, more profitable one too, so improving value pays off whether or not you sell soon. Practice value reflects years of cumulative decisions, and buyers and lenders review multiple years of financials. By retirement, the game is largely over. Doctors who start early get to change the outcome. Doctors who wait get to hear what the outcome is.
What does financing have to do with my practice value?
Because lenders fund so many business sales their standardized valuation method has become the market standard that sets practice values. Lenders decide what to fund based on one thing: transferable profit they can verify in your financials. Whether you ever sell or not, this transferable, verifiable profit defines your practice value. Clean, well-documented reporting raises the number banks can say yes to, and that raises what your practice is worth.
What is my practice worth right now?
Most doctors have a number in their head based on collections. Buyers and lenders start from profitability, transferability, and documented cash flow, and the two numbers are often far apart. Growth and ExitReady members receive an annual practice value update, so you always know where you stand and can watch the number respond to your decisions.
How much does it cost?
Plans start at $499 per month, in the same range many practices already spend on bookkeeping alone. For most doctors this is a reallocation of an existing expense, upgraded to protect the asset that will fund their next chapter.
I don’t have plans to sell. Why would I start this now?
Because the timing isn’t always yours to pick. If something happened to you tomorrow, your family would be handling the sale of a chiropractic practice, a transaction they’ve never done and don’t have the records for, during the worst month of their life. Members have current books, a documented value, and PPS on the phone. That alone is worth the monthly fee.
What if my practice is running fine and nothing needs fixing?
Good. That’s the best time to start. Practice value is built over years of ordinary decisions, and the doctors with the most room to improve their number are the ones who still have time to use it.
Start while you can still change the outcome
Peace of mind here is simple and concrete: knowing your true profit, knowing your practice value, and knowing that no decision you make this year will eventually cost you six figures at closing.
Schedule a practice value conversation with PPS. You’ll walk away knowing where your practice stands today and which level of support fits your timeline.
Start planning now. Build more value. Exit with options.