This is Mr. Cho’s story.
How to sell an accounting practice at the right time, to the right buyer, for the right price is the question Daniel Cho, CPA had been carrying for nearly four years before he finally picked up the phone. When the right time came, he called CGK Business Sales. Daniel ran a $5.2M revenue, $1.6M EBITDA four-partner CPA firm on the Loop 1604 / Stone Oak corridor in north San Antonio, Texas. Twenty-eight W-2 employees moved through the building each week: four partners (Daniel plus Robert Chen CPA, Maria Hernandez CPA, and Brian Kim CPA), eight senior associates (four of whom were on the CPA-credential track), twelve staff associates, and four admin and billing staff. The firm ran 45 percent on small business tax compliance and planning across S-corps, C-corps, partnerships, and LLCs, 25 percent on audit and review services for SA-area middle-market private companies and SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness work for SA technology clients, 20 percent on advisory engagements (forecasting, M&A diligence support, exit planning, buy-side valuations, succession), and 10 percent on personal tax for high-net-worth individuals and family-office accounting. About 620 small business clients across San Antonio, Austin, and south Texas plus roughly 800 personal tax clients sat in the firm’s recurring book, with client retention running at 91 percent over a rolling five-year window against an industry average closer to 80 percent. Daniel was 56. He had founded the practice in 2002 in a leased Stone Oak suite after eight years at a Big Four firm, and over twenty-four years he had grown it into a four-partner AICPA member firm with a passed peer review, full Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling (UltraTax, GoSystem, FixedAssets, FileCabinet) he had migrated to in 2008, a Texas Society of CPAs member roster, and a 4.7-star Google review profile. His daughter Esther was a tax attorney at a Big Law firm in New York and his son David was a startup founder in Austin, neither was going to take the practice. Daniel’s wife Su-Jin (a Vanderbilt-trained pediatrician who left medicine in 2018 to focus on family) wanted Daniel to slow down, and Daniel wanted to focus on his board seat at the San Antonio Korean-American Chamber of Commerce and his pro-bono advisory work for first-generation Korean immigrant small business owners. The accounting M&A market had transformed dramatically since 2022 when private equity entered CPA M&A in volume, and PE-backed accounting consolidator platforms had been calling firms in his revenue band more aggressively over the prior twenty-four months. He came to us in early 2025 because he did not know who else to talk to about how to sell an accounting practice at this size, with this four-partner depth, this advisory-and-audit-mix exposure, and this PE-backed-consolidator buyer pool that had not existed five years earlier. This page is what happened next, and what could happen for you. Daniel is a composite, not a single real CGK seller, but the patterns and details are pulled from real CPA-firm engagements.
The night before Daniel called us.
Most owners who decide to sell an accounting practice have been carrying the question quietly for three or four years before they reach for the phone. Daniel was no different. He was 56. For twenty-four years he had been the Managing Partner who signed the largest tax returns the firm filed, the audit-engagement partner on the SA-area middle-market clients that anchored the attest book, the senior advisor on every advisory engagement the firm took for S-corp owners thinking about their exit, the AICPA peer-review lead who had pulled the firm through three peer-review cycles cleanly, and the operations principal who had migrated the practice off the legacy small-firm tax tooling he started with in 2002 and onto the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite (UltraTax, GoSystem, FixedAssets, FileCabinet) in 2008, the same Big-Four-heritage tooling he had used during his eight years at the Big Four firm before he founded the practice. The firm did $5.2 million in annual revenue, $1.6 million in EBITDA at CPA-firm-typical 31 percent margins, and twenty-eight W-2 employees including three other partners (Robert Chen CPA, Maria Hernandez CPA, Brian Kim CPA, all between 42 and 48 years old), eight senior associates (four on the CPA-credential track), twelve staff associates, and four admin and billing staff. The firm served roughly 620 small business clients across San Antonio, Austin, and south Texas plus around 800 personal tax clients on the recurring book, with concentrations of 22 percent of revenue tied to advisory work, 18 percent tied to a single SA-area private equity-backed manufacturing client (audit plus advisory), and 12 percent tied to a portfolio of eight SA-based real estate developers (tax plus advisory). The practice was an AICPA member firm with a passed peer review last cycle, a Texas Society of CPAs member firm, and held a 4.7-star Google review profile across more than seventy reviews. Client retention was running at 91 percent on a rolling five-year basis against an industry average closer to 80 percent, the advisory practice had grown from 8 percent of revenue in 2018 to 20 percent in 2025, and the audit-and-review book had a steady SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness mix that pulled in SA-area technology companies on annual recurring engagements.
Why owners decide to sell an accounting practice
Daniel’s twenty-four years of busy seasons had compounded into a particular kind of CPA-firm-owner exhaustion that neither his three partners nor his junior staff fully understood. The Managing Partner role at a four-partner firm pulls busy season hours in a way that running a $5.2M firm at 56 is structurally different from running it at 42. Robert, Maria, and Brian were each genuinely strong partners and each owned their slice of the book (Robert ran the audit-and-review practice, Maria ran the advisory practice that had grown the fastest, Brian ran the bulk of the small business tax compliance work), but Daniel was still the partner who signed the biggest returns, walked the largest clients through the most complex year-end planning, was the engagement partner on the audit work for the PE-backed manufacturing client, and was the firm’s external face at the Stone Oak business community and the SA Korean-American Chamber of Commerce events. His wife Su-Jin, a Vanderbilt-trained pediatrician who had left medicine in 2018 to be more present for the family during the kids’ high school years, had been telling him for the prior two years that she wanted him to slow down. Their daughter Esther was a tax attorney at a Big Law firm in New York and their son David was a startup founder in Austin, neither was going to take the practice, and Daniel had spent the prior winter realizing that the next ten years of his life would be defined by what he chose to do with them rather than by what the firm required of him. He had a board seat at the San Antonio Korean-American Chamber of Commerce that he had been holding more lightly than he wanted to, and he had been thinking for two years about expanding his pro-bono advisory work for first-generation Korean immigrant small business owners across San Antonio, the kind of work he had grown up watching his own father navigate alone. The bigger pressure was the structural shift in accounting M&A: private equity entered the CPA space in volume after 2022 (with the public-private partnership template a couple of large firms pioneered), and PE-backed accounting consolidator platforms had been calling firms in his revenue band more aggressively over the prior twenty-four months. Two peer firms in the San Antonio market had been acquired by accounting consolidator platforms in 2024 and 2025, with the buyer pool actively shopping for AICPA member firms with multi-partner depth, advisory-practice exposure, and clean peer-review track records. Daniel had been approached eleven times in the prior eighteen months: seven times by PE-backed accounting consolidator platforms in the platform-and-bolt-on phase, three times by larger top-tier consolidators like the Citrin Cooperman / Aprio / Cherry Bekaert / EisnerAmper / Ascend tier with national footprints, and once by a regional Texas-based CPA practice management group building a state platform under family-office capital. Daniel did not know what his firm was actually worth at $5.2M revenue, $1.6M EBITDA, with the four-partner depth, the 91 percent client retention, the 20 percent advisory mix, and the 18 percent revenue concentration to one SA-area PE-backed manufacturing client. He did not know whether the buyers calling him were the right buyers for Robert, Maria, and Brian, or for the eight senior associates and the twelve staff associates and the four admin and billing staff. He did not know whether the AICPA member status, the passed peer review, the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling, the SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness book, or the advisory practice growth were value drivers or table stakes in the accounting consolidator buyer pool. He did not have a single peer in his life who had ever sold a CPA practice at this size and partner depth, and the partners in his Texas Society of CPAs network who had sold had sold to single individuals or local consolidators a decade earlier under deal structures that did not resemble what the PE-backed platforms were now offering.
That is the night he found CGK and submitted the form. We called him back at 8:21 the next morning, while Daniel was at the Stone Oak office between the morning partner huddle and a 9:30 audit planning meeting.
The conversation we had on the first call.
The first call was 53 minutes. We did most of the listening.
Owners who think about how to sell an accounting practice in their mid-fifties, like Daniel, usually carry the same handful of pressures into the first call. Daniel talked about his three partners and the way each one carried a different slice of the practice (Robert had been with the firm sixteen years and ran the audit-and-review practice, Maria had been with the firm fourteen years and had built the advisory practice from a side discipline into 20 percent of revenue, Brian had been with the firm eleven years and ran the bulk of the small business tax compliance book and was the youngest partner at 42). He talked about his eight senior associates and the four CPA-track senior associates who were carrying audit-and-attest engagements semi-independently while the firm financed their CPA exam progress. He talked about his 91 percent five-year client retention rate and the way the Stone Oak / Loop 1604 client base had compounded itself into a structural moat over twenty-four years, where small business owners who came to the firm in 2003 for a first S-corp tax return now brought their adult children’s tax returns through the same firm. He talked about the AICPA member firm status, the Texas Society of CPAs membership, and the way the passed peer review last cycle gave the firm an audit-credential cleanliness many SA-area firms in the same revenue band could not show. He talked about the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite migration in 2008, the way that decision aligned the firm’s tooling with the Big Four firm Daniel had come from and made the firm’s diligence work and advisory engagements deliver-ready in a Big-Four-quality format that smaller competitors could not match. He talked about the advisory practice (forecasting, M&A diligence support, exit planning, buy-side valuations, succession planning) Maria had grown from 8 percent of revenue in 2018 to 20 percent in 2025, and the way the advisory book had pulled the firm into deeper relationships with SA-area middle-market business owners than a tax-only firm could ever have. He talked about the 18 percent revenue concentration to one SA-area PE-backed manufacturing client (audit plus advisory), and how that concentration would need to be diligenced through escrow in a sale. He talked about the 12 percent concentration to a portfolio of eight SA-based real estate developers, and the rest of the book that was naturally diversified across hundreds of smaller clients. He talked about the staffing question (CPA-credentialed senior staff were getting harder to recruit at his revenue band, and the partner-track pipeline was the firm’s medium-term retention question). We asked about the firm the way you would ask if you were trying to understand it, not the way you would ask if you were trying to win the engagement. What we were listening for was not just the financials. We were listening for whether Daniel was actually ready to sell, what he was working toward, and whether his expectations on price were grounded in what the accounting consolidator market would actually support.
At the end of that call, we set up a working session: an in-person conversation where one of our Managing Directors would walk Daniel through our valuation model and tell him honestly what his firm was likely to command. We did not promise him a written report. Written valuations involve substantially more work, and we charge for those when a seller actually needs one for estate planning, a partner buyout, a divorce, or another documentary purpose. The walkthrough was free because Daniel was clearly thinking seriously about how to sell an accounting practice, the way someone thinks about it before they actually do it. Whether that ends up being in a year, five years, or longer, we make the same call.
The valuation session was the following Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. at the Stone Oak office, before the firm’s daily 8:30 a.m. partner check-in and after Daniel had walked through the morning’s audit-engagement planning notes with Robert.
Daniel was not ready to sell an accounting practice yet. He went home and waited nine months.
The valuation session showed Daniel that his firm was worth meaningfully more than he had been hoping in some areas and meaningfully less in others, which is how these conversations usually go. The four-partner bench depth, the 91 percent five-year client retention rate, the AICPA member firm status with a passed peer review, the 20 percent advisory mix and the 8-to-20 percent advisory growth arc since 2018, the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling, the SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness exposure into SA-area technology companies, and the steady recurring book of 620 small business clients plus 800 personal tax clients were all premium-multiple drivers a sophisticated PE-backed accounting consolidator would pay up for. Two issues, though, were dragging the number down. The first was the 18 percent revenue concentration to the SA-area PE-backed manufacturing client (audit plus advisory). Sophisticated consolidator diligence teams underwrite single-client concentration above 15 percent aggressively, especially when the client is itself PE-backed and might be sold or restructured during the consolidator’s hold period. The second was Daniel’s personal book of audit-engagement-partner relationships and complex-tax-return signing relationships that had not been formally transitioned to Robert, Maria, or Brian. The four CPA-track senior associates were strong, the three partners were each running their own books, but a sophisticated consolidator’s diligence team was going to underwrite the loss-of-Daniel-relationship-continuity scenario aggressively when 24 years of senior-partner relationships were the connective tissue across roughly 30 percent of the recurring book.
We told Daniel honestly: he could go to market now and accept the discount, or he could spend nine months systematically transitioning the senior-partner relationships into Robert, Maria, and Brian’s books on a documented relationship-by-relationship basis, formally rebalancing the audit-engagement-partner roles on the top-twenty audit clients including the PE-backed manufacturing concentration, building the advisory practice’s documentation depth so the 8-to-20 percent growth arc was packaged as a buyer-grade narrative with engagement-level economics, and tightening the data-room export off the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite so the recurring-revenue, client-retention-by-tenure-cohort, and partner-by-partner production numbers came out clean for buyer diligence. We said the second path would likely command a meaningfully better number from a wider range of buyers, especially the long-hold patient-capital accounting consolidators that pay premiums for diligence-clean CPA practices with documented partner-relationship transition plans, multi-year client retention data, and transparent advisory-practice growth narratives.
This is the part most brokers skip. Most brokers would have signed Daniel that day, taken him to market, and made the commission whether or not the deal was the best one for him. We told him to wait, even though it meant we did not get paid for nine months and might never get paid at all if he changed his mind.
Daniel went home and waited. He spent the next nine months systematically transitioning his senior-partner relationships into Robert, Maria, and Brian’s books on a documented relationship-by-relationship basis, formally rebalancing the audit-engagement-partner roles across the top-twenty audit clients including the PE-backed manufacturing concentration so Robert was the named engagement partner of record on the audit work and Maria was the named lead on the advisory work, and packaging the advisory practice’s 8-to-20 percent growth arc into a buyer-grade narrative with engagement-by-engagement economics, recurring-versus-project-fee mix, and forecasted growth assumptions tied to specific named SA-area business owners moving through formal exit planning. He read up on accounting M&A through resources from the AICPA and the Texas Society of CPAs while he watched the consolidator transaction news through Accounting Today and CPA Practice Advisor. He called us back in late 2025 and said he was ready to sell an accounting practice that was finally in the shape it needed to be in.
What we did when Daniel came back.
What it takes to sell an accounting practice properly
When an owner is ready to sell an accounting practice with CGK, the speed of the on-ramp surprises them. We took Daniel’s firm to market in just over five weeks once he got us the updated financials, the partner-by-partner production reports across tax, audit, advisory, and personal tax service lines, the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite client-retention exports by tenure cohort, the recurring-revenue versus project-fee breakouts across all four service lines, the audit-engagement-partner reassignment documentation for the top-twenty clients, the PE-backed manufacturing concentration package with the audit-and-advisory revenue history and the rebalanced engagement-partner-of-record reassignment, the eight SA-based real estate developer concentration package, the advisory-practice 8-to-20 percent growth narrative with forecasted growth assumptions tied to named clients, the SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness book breakouts with technology-client retention metrics, the AICPA peer-review documentation across the standards areas, the Texas Society of CPAs membership documentation, the lease terms for the Stone Oak office, and the full P&L breakouts across small business tax, audit-and-review, advisory, and personal tax service lines. The blind teaser went out to 34 buyers we had pre-qualified, a focused funnel because the accounting consolidator buyer pool is concentrated and the highest-quality buyers actively shop the CPA M&A space in this exact revenue band. Buyers fell across five buckets we routinely use to think about how to sell an accounting practice: PE-backed accounting consolidator platforms in the platform-and-bolt-on phase (the most active band of consolidators on practices in the $3M to $15M revenue range, with multiple platforms dramatically expanding their footprints since 2022 when private equity entered CPA M&A in volume), top-tier accounting consolidators with national or near-national footprints (the Citrin Cooperman / Aprio / Cherry Bekaert / EisnerAmper / Ascend / Insight Strategy Partners / Allinial Global tier), regional CPA practice management groups building Texas or Texas-and-Oklahoma platforms under family-office or operator-CEO capital with no PE backing, individual CPA-buyers using SBA-leveraged or partner-track personal capital (typically active at the lower end of this revenue range), and a small set of strategic acquirers from adjacent professional-services verticals (multi-disciplinary professional firms internalizing audit or advisory capacity, family-office wealth platforms internalizing tax compliance and family-office accounting). Each bucket prices the same firm differently, and most of them are members of trade groups like the International Business Brokers Association and the M&A Source, both of which CGK actively participates in.
Twenty-four of those buyers signed NDAs and received the full Confidential Information Memorandum. Fourteen submitted Indications of Interest after data-room review. Eight advanced to Letters of Intent. We narrowed to five for management presentations. Three re-submitted refined LOIs after the management meetings. Two went into a final-final negotiation cycle.
Daniel decided between two of the top LOIs. They were materially different. One was a higher headline price from a top-tier national accounting consolidator that wanted to absorb Daniel’s firm into a national network of acquired practices with a conventional escrow structure, a five-year partner-retention earnout that hinged on partner-level production hitting threshold targets (a structure Daniel found uncomfortable because production targets are not fully within his control once he scales back to a part-time consulting role), an inventory-and-process-harmonization mandate that would have shifted the firm off its existing Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling and onto the platform’s national vendor stack, a partial brand-harmonization expectation that would have moved the firm toward the platform’s national identity over twenty-four months, and a fund-cycle long-hold horizon. The other was a slightly lower headline price from a top-tier accounting consolidator with a long-hold patient-capital thesis (10-plus years), no five-year fund-cycle pressure, a willingness to operate the firm under its existing brand identity and existing Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling (the platform actively used the same suite across most of its acquired firms), an explicit thesis around preserving local-firm identity, and a willingness to integrate Robert, Maria, and Brian along with the broader bench without rerouting anything through a national playbook. We walked Daniel through what each LOI would actually deliver under realistic and pessimistic scenarios, including what the cultural continuity would look like for his three partners, his eight senior associates, his twelve staff associates, and his four-person admin and billing bench under each owner. The patient-capital consolidator deal was the better one for Daniel. The cash position day one was meaningfully stronger when normalized for the absence of the partner-level production earnout, the brand-and-tooling preservation was structurally cleaner than a forced harmonization, and the cultural fit with a long-hold platform that valued preserving local-firm identity over fund-cycle exits mattered to Daniel deeply. He took it.
Through the whole process, the same CGK Managing Director who had taken Daniel’s first call nine months earlier was the person walking him through every conversation.
What the deal actually looked like.
How the deal looks when you sell an accounting practice with CGK
This is the part of how to sell an accounting practice that gets the least attention in the trade press and the most attention from owners who have actually closed a deal: the structure of the consideration package matters more than the headline number. Daniel’s deal closed roughly seven months after we restarted the engagement. The buyer was a top-tier PE-backed accounting consolidator with approximately $680 million in pre-acquisition revenue across more than 35 acquired CPA firms, expanding their Texas footprint with Daniel’s San Antonio practice as the south-Texas regional anchor (the platform had Houston, Dallas, and Austin pre-acquisition but no SA presence). The platform was structured on a long-hold patient-capital thesis (10-plus years), positioned for an eventual second-bite or strategic exit to a larger consolidator or strategic acquirer in the 2030+ window, and operated acquired firms under their original brand names rather than absorbing them into a single national identity. They acquired the firm as a stock purchase, with the practice operating as a discrete branch under the platform’s regional operating structure, retaining its existing brand identity, its existing AICPA member-firm status with peer-review continuity through the next cycle, its Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling, its 4.7-star Google review profile, its 91 percent client retention pattern, and its existing client engagement letters, and integrating into the platform’s broader Texas operations infrastructure over the first year on central admin, billing, IT, HR, and marketing.
This is also the part where the math of how to sell an accounting practice gets specific. The headline price was approximately $11.5 million, roughly 7.2 times trailing EBITDA, which is a premium accounting multiple driven by the four-partner bench depth, the 91 percent client retention, the 20 percent advisory mix and the 8-to-20 percent growth arc, the AICPA member firm status with passed peer review, the SOC 1 / SOC 2 readiness exposure, and the SA-market geographic anchor. About 72 percent of it came as cash at closing, funded by the platform’s PE sponsor capital plus the senior credit facility the platform draws on for acquisitions. About 8 percent was held back in escrow for 15 months to cover indemnification claims, a working-capital adjustment, and small carve-outs for any client-engagement-letter transition or peer-review-continuity issues that could surface during the transition window, including the diligence carve-out structure around the 18 percent PE-backed manufacturing client concentration. About 20 percent was a rollover equity stake into the platform’s holding company, structured at the holding-company level (not the firm-level operating entity), giving Daniel and the partner cohort upside exposure to the platform’s eventual long-hold exit. The rollover percentage runs higher in CPA-firm deals than in many other industries (typically 15 to 25 percent versus 5 to 12 percent in many other verticals) because accounting consolidators specifically tie part of the sale value to the partner-owners’ continued work and partner-cohort retention, with CPA M&A pricing senior-partner rollover as an explicit retention and book-continuity mechanism. Wire hit on a Friday morning at 9:47 a.m. while Daniel was at the Stone Oak office.
Daniel stayed on as the principal Selling Partner and senior advisor for the platform’s combined Texas operations for three years after closing under the consulting agreement he had negotiated as part of the deal, dropping over the first six months from full-time partner to a three-day-a-week consulting role focused on the senior-partner client relationships he had not fully transitioned during the wait period, on supporting Robert, Maria, and Brian as they assumed full-firm leadership, on personally introducing his eight senior associates and twelve staff associates and four-person admin and billing bench to the new ownership, on walking the platform’s regional operations team through the SA-area client base, on supporting the audit-engagement-partner reassignment work as it migrated through the next year’s audit cycle including the PE-backed manufacturing concentration, and on shaping the platform’s south-Texas regional growth strategy. After three years, Daniel stepped fully out and into the work he had been waiting to do: deepening his board role at the San Antonio Korean-American Chamber of Commerce and expanding his pro-bono advisory work for first-generation Korean immigrant small business owners across the SA market, the work he had been thinking about for two years.
What happened to Daniel’s people and his clients.
The people-side of how to sell an accounting practice usually weighs heavier on the principal than the financial-side, even when the financial-side is what triggers the call to a broker in the first place. Daniel cared most about his three partners Robert, Maria, and Brian, the eight senior associates including the four CPA-track seniors who were closing in on credentialing, the twelve staff associates who had grown into their roles through years of mentorship from the seniors and the partners, the four admin and billing staff who had built the AICPA peer-review and engagement-letter documentation that anchored the firm’s audit credibility, and the client population itself: the 620 small business clients across San Antonio, Austin, and south Texas plus the 800 personal tax clients, many of whom had been with the firm since the 2002 founding and whose adult children were now firm clients in their own right. The patient-capital consolidator was a long-hold operator who would actually run the firm under the existing brand identity rather than parachute in regional operations consultants from a fund-cycle integration playbook. That made the people part substantially cleaner than it would have been under the higher-headline-price national consolidator that wanted to harmonize the firm onto a national tooling stack and walk it toward a national brand identity over twenty-four months.
The buyer kept all twenty-eight W-2 employees, honored the existing pay structure across partners, senior associates, staff associates, and admin and billing, and committed to keeping Robert, Maria, and Brian in their partner roles with expanded scope including a pathway to expanded equity participation in the platform’s broader Texas regional operations. The relationship-transition work Daniel had done during the wait period (systematically rebalancing the senior-partner relationships and the audit-engagement-partner roles on the top-twenty clients) was preserved with formal partner stay-bonus packages tied to four-year performance windows. The four CPA-track senior associates were preserved with formal CPA-credential support and partner-track development packages. The eight senior associates were preserved with retention bonuses scaled to tenure and book-of-business contribution. The twelve staff associates were preserved with pay-structure protections that matched or exceeded the existing comp model. The four admin and billing staff were preserved with role and pay continuity. The Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling was retained as the firm’s tooling stack (the platform actively used the same suite across most of its acquired firms, which was part of why the cultural fit was structurally cleaner than the higher-headline alternative). The AICPA member firm status with the passed peer review transferred cleanly under the new ownership and the platform committed to maintaining peer-review credentialing across all of its acquired Texas firms. The Texas Society of CPAs membership transferred. The 4.7-star Google review profile carried into the new ownership intact. The Stone Oak / Loop 1604 lease was extended through year five with an option to extend through year ten so the firm’s physical presence in the SA-area client base remained continuous. The PE-backed manufacturing client concentration was successfully diligenced through the carve-out structure and the audit-engagement-partner reassignment to Robert was preserved through the LOI and the definitive purchase agreement.
Daniel was at the Stone Oak office on a Friday morning in early fall 2026 when the wire confirmation came through. He walked across the open-plan partner area, knocked on Brian Kim’s door, and said in Korean: “끝났어” (It is done). Brian, the youngest partner at 42, closed his laptop and the two of them walked together to the breakroom where Robert and Maria were on a video call with the platform’s regional operations lead. They finished the call, and the four of them sat around the breakroom table without speaking for ten minutes. Then Robert opened a bottle of water, raised it without saying anything, and the other three did the same. Daniel called Su-Jin from his car in the parking lot a half-hour later. They made plans to fly to New York the next weekend to take Esther to dinner.
What Daniel told us afterward.
Why owners who sell an accounting practice with CGK keep coming back
Most owners who sell an accounting practice do not call the broker again in the first year, and most owners who sell an accounting practice through any other process do not call any broker again at all. The ones who do call usually want to talk about the parts of the engagement that, in retrospect, mattered more than they realized at the time. About six months after closing, Daniel called the Managing Director who had run his engagement. He said two things that the Managing Director still tells new sellers about.
The first was about the nine-month wait. He said: “Four of the buyers who had been calling me were ready to move in thirty days, and two different practice-management consultants I talked to before you told me they could take me to market right then with the senior-partner relationship transitions still sitting in my head and the 18 percent PE-backed manufacturing concentration unrebalanced. The reason I sold with you is that you told me the truth about how my four-partner depth and my advisory practice growth and my AICPA peer review were actually being valued by accounting consolidator buyers, the truth about what the loss-of-Daniel-relationship-continuity scenario would look like in a sophisticated consolidator’s diligence, and the truth about what packaging the relationship transitions and the engagement-partner reassignments would buy me in LOI conversations seven months later. You told me what would happen to the price if I went out without fixing those things. I would have left more than 1.4 million dollars on the table.”
The second was about who he sold to. He said: “I almost signed with the higher-headline-price national consolidator because the number on the top line was bigger and the presentation was slick. The fact that you walked me through what each buyer would actually do with my three partners, my eight senior associates, the Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite tooling I had spent fifteen years building around, and the SA-area client relationships I had spent twenty-four years building, what each buyer’s hold horizon would mean for the firm three and five years out, and how a long-hold patient-capital consolidator with a brand-and-tooling-preservation thesis was structurally different from a fund-cycle consolidator that wanted to harmonize the firm onto a national stack, is a conversation I never even thought to have until you raised it. I sold to a buyer who is going to keep this firm the firm that my clients walk into and recognize.”
This is what we mean when we say we sit with you in the decision, not just the transaction. Daniel is one composite story, but the pattern is real. The owners we work with who decide to sell an accounting practice usually find their way to us through versions of Daniel’s situation, and the relationships start with a long listening session and a free walkthrough, not a pitch. The reason most sellers we work with end up choosing CGK to sell an accounting practice is the discipline at the front end of the engagement, where we are willing to tell a seller to wait nine months and protect a million-dollar swing in price, and the discipline at the back end of the engagement, where we run a structured competitive process across the full PE-backed accounting consolidator buyer pool to surface the right buyer rather than the loudest one. That combination is also why nine of every ten engagements we sign end up actually closing, against a CPA-firm-broker industry average closer to two of ten.
Ready to sell an accounting practice? Where are you in Mr. Cho’s story?
If you are starting to think about how to sell an accounting practice, we should talk. There is no commitment and no pressure. The first conversation is free. The valuation walkthrough that follows is free when you are seriously thinking about selling, whether that is in a year, five years, or longer. We only charge for formal written valuations, and only when you actually need one for estate planning, a partner buyout, or another documentary purpose. Submit the form and a senior CGK Managing Director will reach out within one business day.
If you are Mr. Cho at month 1: just exploring
You are not sure if you want to sell yet. The accounting consolidator thesis keeps shifting, your senior-partner relationship transitions are thinner than you would like across the audit and advisory engagements you personally lead, your operating metrics are strong but you have not packaged them for a buyer, twenty-plus years of busy seasons is starting to tell you something, your spouse has retired or is about to, your kids are not going to take the practice, you are curious about how a buyer would value your tax-versus-audit-versus-advisory service-mix exposure, you have a single-client concentration that worries you, or maybe a PE-backed accounting consolidator or a top-tier national platform like the Citrin Cooperman or Aprio or Cherry Bekaert or Ascend tier has been calling you. Most of our best engagements start here. Submit the form and we will schedule a working session. You walk away with a real number and a clear sense of what to do next, with no obligation to do anything.
If you are Mr. Cho at month 9: ready to go
You have done the work to clean up the firm. The financials are tight. Your senior-partner relationship transitions are documented across the audit and advisory engagements you personally led. Your operating metrics are packaged in a buyer-ready report (recurring-revenue versus project-fee mix, client-retention by tenure cohort, partner-by-partner production by service line, advisory-practice growth narrative with engagement-by-engagement economics, single-client-concentration packages with rebalanced engagement-partner-of-record reassignments). Your AICPA peer-review documentation is organized by standards area. Your Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite data exports are clean and packaged. Your office lease and equipment schedules are mapped. Maybe a buyer is already in the conversation. You want to run a real process. Submit the form and we will be in touch within a business day to talk about timing, scope, and what your first 30 days as a CGK seller would look like.
If you are not sure where you are
Most owners are not sure. Submit the form and start with the conversation. We will figure out together where you are. We are equally happy to tell you to wait twelve months as we are to take you to market in three weeks.
Or call us directly at (888) 858-7191.
Start your own story
A senior CGK Managing Director will respond within one business day. Strictly confidential. For owners of accounting practices doing $1.5M+ in annual revenue, including small business tax-and-compliance firms, audit-and-review firms, advisory-led CPA practices, multi-partner firms, AICPA member firms, peer-reviewed firms, single-location and multi-location practices, and family-office accounting groups. The first conversation and the valuation walkthrough that follows are free for any seller seriously thinking about selling, on any horizon.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK business broker, not a junior screener.
One of these eight people would lead your engagement.
When you decide to sell an accounting practice with CGK, one named senior Managing Director stays with you from the first call through the wire transfer, just like Daniel’s Managing Director stayed with him for nine months and then for the engagement that followed. Our Managing Directors come from Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, Fortune 500 corporate finance, and operating-business leadership. Cornell MBA. U Chicago Booth MBA. CFA. CMT. Naval Academy. Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch. Deutsche Bank. AIG. T. Rowe Price.
What sellers say after they sell an accounting practice (and other businesses) with CGK
I could not be happier with the experience I had selling my business with CGK. Greg did a detailed analysis of my business and helped me price and position it right for the market. After receiving multiple offers at full asking price, the rest of the process went very smoothly, and we closed in less than two months.
Hanna M.Selling my business was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m incredibly grateful to have had Wes by my side throughout the process. He brought perspective, pushed when necessary, and always had my best interests in mind. His experience and strategic approach allowed me to maximize the sale price while minimizing long-term risk and obligations. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose him as my broker.
Adam NevilleDerik located multiple interested strategic buyers that produced more than one serious offer. The negotiations were tough but Greg and Derik’s experience helped us overcome. We got a great result for our employees and for the owners. We would recommend them without reservation.
Bob TaylorWe sold a business that was 47 years old and being run by second generation within a year of working with Wes. CGK has a system that attracts serious prospects to review opportunities. Wes was able to make the overwhelming feeling of selling easy and to a certain extent enjoyable. I never felt alone or in the dark throughout the entire process.
Jennifer WilliamsWe decided to sell our company in 2025. Talked to another M&A company in the Houston area. We felt very comfortable with Greg and Matthew at CGK. Could not have made a better choice. From day 1 till final closing and even after 30+ days, they have been here helping us with documents and support during the transition. Thanks can not be said enough.
Rickey ThomasInside the Blueprint, on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News.
Daniel’s wife Su-Jin was the one who first sent him a clip of CGK on Bloomberg. She had been watching the segment on a Saturday morning at the kitchen counter and recognized the firm name from a CPA-firm-M&A trade article in CPA Practice Advisor she had clipped two months earlier. She texted him the link with a note that read “Look at this. They sound like the people you should call.” CGK Business Sales is featured on Inside the Blueprint, the syndicated business television series. Our episode aired on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News. Watch the segment, then start a confidential conversation.
The CGK office Daniel called was the CGK San Antonio office. Yours might be one of these.
When you sell an accounting practice with CGK, whichever office you reach, you get the entire firm. Daniel worked with a CGK Managing Director based out of the firm’s San Antonio office, but his deal benefited from a buyer pool we sourced firm-wide, including the patient-capital top-tier accounting consolidator that ultimately won the engagement. Click any city to learn about our local presence and the named Managing Director leading that market.
Other Questions Daniel and Other Accounting-Practice Sellers Ask Us
Practical answers to what comes up before, during, and after the kind of engagement Daniel went through, when you sell an accounting practice with CGK.