The value of planning your exit carefully - and keeping in touch

This account by Rory Robinson (Previous owner of Robinson & Lamb Opticians in Egham, Surrey) highlights the value of planning your exit and keeping in touch with the latest trends and outcomes in the practice sales market with truly independent advisors.

This account by Rory Robinson highlights the value of planning your exit and keeping in touch with the latest trends and outcomes in the practice sales market with truly independent advisors.


I first encountered Myers la Roche at an optical conference where the essential message was: if you want to get the best value for your business you should start planning 3-5 years ahead.

I love planning but had not even thought about how I would prepare the business for its eventual sale. I was always going to sell my business and would hope to get a good price for it if I eventually got around to it.

My goal was always to do something different by the time I was 55 and I was 52.  I thought I’d best speak to these guys and quickly.  

Being a person who hated bureaucracy and anything that took my time away from my customers, I realized I would never be able to get the time to sell my business and definitely not get the best price for it.  

That was the real benefit of Myers to me, they gave me time to continue to grow my business while they found a buyer.

We met Dominic where he laid out exactly what would be involved, how long it would take and how much it would cost us.  We arranged for an evaluation of our business as well as a valuation.  

I must say the money we paid for the evaluation was probably one of the best value pieces of advice I personally have ever paid for.  The suggestions of how to improve the practice were fair, practical and positive.   Nobody likes to hear their business is not perfect but the professional and detailed assessment I received from Myers about a month later was constructive, professional and a fair assessment of the practice.  The result being that we clearly added serious value to our business over the next 18 months.  

I particularly liked the fact that we had made clear we were not wanting an immediate sale of the practice and Myers respected this and were never pushy.  We would catch up with Dominic about every 6 months or so and on the 2nd anniversary of our original valuation on hearing the market had picked up considerably for practices of our size we decided to place it on the market.

Almost every prediction and time scale we were given came to fruition.  Undoubtedly that’s where experience and know how came in to play.  They marketed to the right people, and very importantly to myself, to people I would be happy to sell to.

 I had been warned selling our practice would be hard and emotionally gut wrenching: it was, and I am in no doubt had I not had Myers to help negotiate and resolve the inevitable hurdles that get in the way, the sale would have fallen through on numerous occasions.  

I am sure that Myers La Roche not only added value to the net proceeds of my business but found a buyer I was comfortable with.

This final paragraph I would like to dedicate to the whole team at Myers.  I have tried always to give a first class service to my customers and only dealt with companies and individuals that can help me do that in an efficient but also kind and caring manner.  The Myers team fulfilled this re-requisite in every aspect.  I highly commend them in every aspect of my dealings with them and fully intend to keep in touch with them. 

Yours sincerely,

Rory Robinson

To learn more about the our current experience of independent optical business values, take a look at our article about why the traditional 3x EBITDA calculation is flawed.