From Reception Desk to Clinic Dealmaker
Know your numbers. The clinics that sell well are the ones whose owners understand their finances, their lease, and where revenue really comes from.
Joshua Catlett
Show notes
Joshua bought his first physio practice at around 22 and chose to sit on reception rather than treat patients, because he could see the business, not the clinical care, was what needed fixing. He grew what became BodySet into a 36-site group before a private equity sale.
Now running Verilo, an advisory firm that has handled around 120 transactions, Joshua describes his real job as part dealmaker, part agony aunt, keeping fragile deals alive. He shares the deal that nearly collapsed over a missing insurance policy, and the framework buyers actually use to judge a clinic: concentration risk, premises, and maintainable EBITDA.
He is candid about the danger of not knowing your numbers, recalling a business he found to be insolvent only after digging into the data. He and Jared close on the technology moment, why clinic owners split between eager early adopters and heads in the sand, and why knowing where you sit on that curve matters.
Key takeaways
- Sitting on reception taught Joshua more about a clinic than any other seat, and he calls the front desk the heartbeat of the business.
- Buyers judge a clinic on three things: concentration risk, lease security, and maintainable EBITDA.
- Over-reliance on the owner or a single star clinician is a concentration risk that makes a business much harder to sell.
- Finding a buyer is the easy part, since most of a broker's work is managing expectations and stopping deals from falling apart over details.
- Not knowing your numbers is dangerous: Joshua once found a seemingly healthy business was actually insolvent, propped up by expensive locums.
- Clinic owners tend to split into early adopters and heads-in-the-sand, and knowing where you sit on the adoption curve is rare and valuable.
“I spend more time talking people down from the ledge than anything else.”— Joshua Catlett
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