Patrick Dichter: The Outsider at the Gate

Patrick Dichter was never supposed to own an accounting firm.

He is not a CPA. He is not an enrolled agent. He is a salesman by trade who cut his teeth selling door-to-door in college before helping scale a digital marketing agency from zero to $35 million in revenue. When he decided to leave the world of consulting to acquire a business of his own, he zeroed in on the unglamorous world of bookkeeping, convinced it was the bedrock of small business success.

The industry gatekeepers slammed the door in his face.

There is a cottage industry of brokers who specialize exclusively in selling accounting and tax practices, and when Dichter reached out to them, they refused to take him seriously. They told him that without a CPA license, he was an unacceptable buyer. Their advice was dismissive and blunt: go partner with a CPA and come back later, or don't come back at all.

Dichter ignored them. Today, he is the owner of Apple Tree Business Services, a New Hampshire-based firm generating $1.2 million in annual revenue. He closed the deal without a broker, retaining every single client and growing recurring revenue by 10 percent in his first two months.

Dichter’s obsession with bookkeeping began during his tenure at Cultivate Advisors. As a consultant, he spent three years looking under the hood of dozens of small businesses, ranging from marketing agencies to drywall contractors.

The pattern was unmistakable. Business owners were flying blind. They would run their companies based on the cash balance in their bank accounts, only to hand a shoebox of receipts to a tax preparer once a year. They did not understand their acquisition costs or their project profitability because their data was nonexistent or inaccurate.

He saw an opportunity in a fragmented market. He wanted to buy a firm, modernize it, and use it as a platform to offer high-level advisory services. But first, he had to find a seller willing to talk to him.

Shut out by the brokers, Dichter decided to build his own deal flow. He treated the search not as a financial transaction, but as a sales campaign.

He hired a virtual assistant to build a list of accounting firms in his target geographies of Colorado and New England. He drafted a direct email sequence that was short, personal, and respectful. He sent out 500 emails to firm owners, bypassing the intermediaries entirely.

The response was immediate. While brokers saw him as unqualified, actual business owners were curious. They were tired, they were looking for an exit, and they were intrigued by his background in small business growth.

The campaign generated twenty calls with sellers. From those conversations, Dichter submitted six letters of intent.

One of those conversations was with Steve, the owner of Apple Tree Business Services.

Apple Tree was an anomaly. In an industry filled with exhausted solo practitioners grinding out tax returns, Steve had built a machine. The firm was part of PASBA, the Professional Association of Small Business Accountants, a trade group that shared best practices on pricing and systems.

Steve ran a "productized" model. Clients did not pay hourly rates for reactive work. They paid a flat monthly fee for a bundled service that included bookkeeping, payroll, and tax. More importantly, the business did not rely on Steve to function. He managed only two clients personally while his staff of managers handled the other seventy-plus relationships.

It was exactly what Dichter was looking for. The firm generated $330,000 in Seller’s Discretionary Earnings on $1.2 million in revenue. It was stable, profitable, and systemized.

Dichter closed on the business at the end of 2021.

The transition that brokers warned against never materialized. The staff did not leave. The clients did not revolt. Steve helped sell the transition by assuring the team that Dichter, unlike a corporate roll-up, would keep the office and the culture intact.

Two months in, Dichter is already looking toward expansion. He plans to pivot the firm’s marketing from a geographic focus to an industry-specific one, targeting trades and professional services nationwide. His goal is to reach $5 million in revenue within five years.

He also allowed himself a moment of quiet triumph. After closing the deal, Dichter emailed every broker who had rejected him. He told them he had successfully acquired a firm doing over a million dollars in revenue without their help, and suggested they be more open-minded next time.