Patrick Dichter

Updating my bio for new followers - I’ve acquired 3 accounting firms. Appletree provides bookkeeping, tax and consulting to small businesses nationwide. Previous background was sales and advisory. Dad of 3 boys.

@tailor_hartman Nice!

@patrickdichter Ours is in May too! A bit smaller though 🙃

Planning our company retreat in May and it always feels high pressure to make each hour worth it. It’s a huge time and money investment. But the reality is it’s the meals together, down time and one off conversations that matter just as much.

@tailor_hartman Always feels so worth it afterwards

@patrickdichter Love it!

@clintmwallace Yeah $25k for flights, hotels, food, etc and a lot of time

@patrickdichter I did one and I was shocked by the dinner bill! But it was worth it 🤣 at the time I only had 20 employees. I couldn't imagine your bill!

@LoganGrafTax I don’t mean calculator….look at the examples: kaizencpas.com/pricing

@patrickdichter I've been seeing some firms create some slick pricing calculators with Claude.

Why don't you have pricing transparency on your website? Accountants: We're not a commodity Also Accountants: *Price so low they are a commodity*

@chandlerreed Damn. Hope you recover ASAP

@patrickdichter My First game of pickup basketball in 8 years

Not a bad week to be on bed rest

@bonapartay 80% of the time it’s not about math or logic. They don’t want to leave you money. Math negotiations don’t work

So I've exchanged emails w/ seller. She's telling me my NWC num is wrong and that she had an expert look at it. He says it's $500-750k depending on the time of year. She can't share the calcs bc he would charge her a lot of money for that. I look him up, he's a business broker

@JackieHirsch_ Yeah that was a mess express…glad to be working on it

@patrickdichter I’m so happy you are now on one of my deals and your team is fixing all the problems from the previous CFO that screwed up everything.

Bookkeeping has a perceived value problem most days. Good bookkeeping is the foundation that most people want to overlook. It allows tax planning, budgeting, profitability analysis, industry benchmarking, data insights, cashflow forecasting, loan readiness, and higher sale multiples.

@CHFtax Just feeling it more recently

@jarett_busacca We usually see owner DIY or they let an office admin handle it who’s not trained

@patrickdichter Especially challenging when a lot of cases the end user doesn’t even know what good bookkeeping actually looks like and probably doesn’t want to know too. They’re mostly just relying on some other professional that they trust to tell them if it’s good or bad.

@PeteCarlsonRock Yeah usually don’t understand the difference until a bank loan gets denied, bad tax surprise, want to sell, or join a coaching group

@patrickdichter The bookkeeping is easy bit is getting old from some business owners, smart ones know how crucial it is, a lot of times you don’t see the benefits until something goes wrong, it’s part value add advising, part compliance, & part insurance. The list goes on and on.

@DannyMagazu Agreed

The best thing you can do for your company is to constantly cycle out people who are not a cultural fit or underperforming. This does a couple of things: 1. This keeps your A players happy because they're working with really good people. 2. This creates an environment where mediocrity is not okay. My company is growing really rapidly, and we probably let go of just as many people as we hire, constantly improving our team. I I think a lot of people underestimate how much time you should put into making a really strong team. It's not easy to manage a company of 50 people if not all 50 people are good. They don't all have to be great, but if they're not at least good, it's really tough to grow when you have people who aren't contributing, and communication is off. You always have to be constantly cycling people out. Look through your team today and really decide who's making an impact and who's not. Firing used to be hard for us, and the moment we decided this wasn't going to be something we put up with anymore, we experienced real scale. That's my hiring piece of advice for the day. I would love to hear how you guys tackle this and how you view team building.

@resetbasis Swing by and let’s smoke some meats

Here's some cool shit I did over the past few days. I decided to take a more active role in understanding where my family's food comes from. How the animals are treated, what they're fed, what type of business am I supporting? So, I went out and met some farmers. BuckleDown Farm: I met Jack and his cows. Family business in New Hampshire. Pasture-raised, grass-fed, never any fillers/GMOs/antibiotics. Happy cows on tons of beautiful land. I bought a half cow, about 200lbs of beef. Dreamer's Farm: Local guy, passionate about regenerative farming. Pigs live, eat, and play outdoors. They eat an all-organic diet and are cared for like family. I bought a whole pig, about 150lbs of pork. Nallie Pastures: Small, local poultry farm run by farmer Steve, who's passionate about agriculture and animal welfare. His chickens live outside and have 25 acres to run around on. I ordered 20 chickens, about 80lbs. Everyone I met cares deeply about their animals and was excited to tell me their story. It seemed daunting at first, but having a direct relationship with a local farmer was much easier than I thought. If you can, I highly encourage you to do the same.

@mountainwesttax I love that park…so many good memories there

I love cold mornings I love the mountains I love people who love REI I love water bottles with stickers and ugly houses and dry air and Subarus

@_agarner I’m ready to get hurt again

@patrickdichter we made it work for one of the largest bookkeeping firms in the US. Just renewed for 6 months. Happy to share more info on strategy if helpful

Fool me three times, can’t get fooled again. We tried cold email marketing again for a 3rd time with zero results. 👍

@patrickdichter How many emails did you send per month on average ?