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When I moved into the first house I bought in 1997, Sarah and Simon lived next door.

Simon is a philosopher; he was a world traveller and one of the most relaxed guys I ever met (I haven’t seen him for years now and I’m not quite sure why)

Two amazing conversations with Simon stick out in my mind that I was reminded of in the last few days:

One Sunday night he tried to get me to take a ‘sickie’ from work the following day to go and play golf. I don’t take sickies from work, it’s ingrained in me probably by my father, but Simon was insistent that I do it.

When I told him I would never do it because of the responsibility I had to work he said to me “If you take the day off tomorrow and we go and play golf you’ll never forget it. If you go to work you’ll never remember it”

I did go to work and I can’t remember what decade it was.

I’m not suggesting people should take time off work to go and play golf, I’m just suggesting that people should make memories so that they can remember what decade things happened in.

But the second thing I remember from Simon was a conversation about some time in the future and running my own practice. I didn’t know if I would and I didn’t know if I wanted to but I remember Simon telling me that I was one of the few people he knew who had the opportunity to create a business which might be worth something and I would be able to sell. At the time I didn’t seem to pay too much attention to that but I was reminded of it recently.

A few weeks ago I met someone who would buy my practice now.

This person buys practices all the time and has bought many. They gave a rough valuation of what my practice is worth right now.

That valuation was beyond anything Simon has suggested to me and beyond anything I would have ever believed and I have no reason to think they weren’t telling the truth.

And so there it was… all those years after the conversation with Simon, I was sat there looking at a number which was more than I could ever possibly have imagined. A number which would allow me to stop work forever (after my earn out period) a number which would probably allow my children to never have to work if they didn’t want to.

So why not just do that? Why not cash in and go?

Now to a separate conversation with another Simon, Simon McCarthy my cycling coach. On the bike yesterday I told him the story about the practice valuation.

His first response was “f*£ks sake” but then quickly his second response was “but what would you do next?”

And so that’s it, right there, that’s why I wouldn’t sell my practice. What would I do next?

What will you do next is probably the most important question you could ever ask yourself. What are your plans, where are you going, what are you doing and why?

At the moment for me it’s really clear that the answers to those questions are obvious and they resonate with me and I know what is going on.

To cast aside plans to become my future self for money just doesn’t sit with me.

This is not in anyway a comment on anyone else who may have sold their business, nor does it mean that I never will depending on how the circumstances of my life change, but at the moment it’s most important that I stay truthful to myself; to the ideals and philosophies that I have developed and to continue to ‘walk my talk’ and be the thing that I said I would be.

It’s not that it isn’t hard and it’s not that I don’t sometimes want to go on my bike or lie on the sofa and watch a movie instead of going to work, but I know that pretty quickly that would wear out and pretty quickly I’d crave to be back where I am now.

So Simon was right, not about selling my practice but about creating circumstances and instances which mean I won’t forget tomorrow and what year or decade it was.

Blog Post Number: 1686