Michael Girdley (@Girdley) is joined by Patrick Dichter (@patrickdichter) to talk about how he went from working in sales to acquiring his own accounting firm. We talked about 2 deals, a cloud accounting firm and a marketing company. Patrick used e-mail cold reaches during his search and shares his process to maximize outreach, why he decided on an accounting firm, and more.-----Thanks to our sponsors!MicroAcquire is the #1 startup acquisition marketplace. It is simply the most efficient way to buy and sell startups when you’re ready to make your next move.-----* Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.* Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!* Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.-----Show Notes:0:50 - Microacquire2:48 - Intro - Patrick Dichter4:34 - Why did you transition from a W-2 employee to a searcher?6:17 - How was your search process?7:31 - What was your strategy to find a deal 8:38 - Who is running the operation today?9:45 - How to cold reach potential sellers through e-mail? -  Applying sales experience to a search 11:16 - What would you do differently to improve your response rate? 12:34 - Deal 1: A cloud bookkeeping accounting firm15:07 - What’s interesting about this Deal?17:12 - What are profit margins typically for these companies?18:43 - How do you think about the cyclicality of start-ups as a customer?19:59 - Yellow flags on this deal23:41 - How do we think about different accounting firms and their services?26:20 - How would you grow this business? What barriers do you see? Would you recruit overseas talent?30:06 - Could we raise prices? Does this apply for an SBA Loan?32:06 - Any other considerations? What about revenue mix & seasonality on the cash flows?36:24 - Deal 2: Niche Digital Marketing Agency39:27 - What is their business model? What would make it interesting?41:44 - What happens with labor retention in these companies?43:50 - Financials, growth concerns & due diligence focus46:59 - How is the business-customer relationship on this Deal?48:53 - Why is this so pricey? How would we structure this financially?52:33 - Connect with Patrick-----Past guests on Acquanon include Nick Huber, Brent Beshore, Aaron Rubin, Mike Botkin, Ari Ozick, Mitchell Baldridge, Xavier Helgelsen, Mike Loftus, Steve Divitkos, Dzmitry Miranovich, Morgan Tate and more.-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#94 Searching with a thesis with search fund investor Steve Ressler#86 Rocketship your business with... Twitter?! - JK Molina gives a Twitter Masterclass#79 What do Investors want? - Dig into an investor’s mind with Bradford Hardin#75 SBA Loan Secrets with Heather Endresen, expertise from a Billion-Dollar Loaner