Acquisition Collective
This Podcast is your go-to hub for buying, building, and scaling businesses—designed for entrepreneurs, professionals, and investors looking to escape the 9-to-5, gain financial freedom, and take control of their future through business acquisition.
Acquisition Collective
I Bought an Accounting Firm Without Being a CPA
In this behind-the-scenes conversation, we hear from RJ, a former software developer who transitioned into real estate, and then into the world of accounting firm acquisitions. After leaving his tech job in 2018 to pursue more freedom and purpose, RJ took a risk—buying a fully remote, five-person bookkeeping firm with no prior experience in accounting.
What followed were long nights, unexpected client churn, and hard lessons about due diligence, employee retention, and systems that didn’t exist. But it didn’t stop there—RJ went on to acquire a second firm just a year later, one with higher-paying clients, more revenue, and even bigger problems under the hood.
In this episode, RJ shares what it’s really like to go from builder to buyer, and what he’d do differently if he started over.
Timestamps:
00:00 Leaving software development for real estate
02:00 From flipping houses to remote real estate investing
04:00 First steps into entrepreneurship
06:00 Why he chose to acquire a bookkeeping firm
10:00 What he missed during due diligence
13:00 Lessons from buying a firm with five employees
17:00 Going all-in on remote work and offshore talent
22:00 Building systems, SOPs, and internal structure
27:00 When to not buy an accounting firm
30:00 The second acquisition: bigger clients, bigger mess
36:00 Rebuilding a broken firm from the inside
42:00 What matters more than price in any deal
48:00 The truth about client churn and team dynamics
52:00 Ideal size, structure, and timing for buying a firm
56:00 Final advice for first-time firm buyers
Whether you’re an operator, an aspiring acquirer, or a founder thinking about outsourcing your accounting—this conversation is a deep, honest look into small business M&A.
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