The Firmlever Weekly Roundup: Issue #41

Every week I talk to firm owners who are stuck in the same trap.

You want to grow. You know the demographics are in your favor--half the profession is retiring, clients are flooding the market, and PE money is pushing multiples to absurd levels.

Ever since I started tracking dealflow a couple years back I've watched the same pattern repeat...

Some version of this:

You see the opportunity. But when you look at what's actually available, it's the same broken menu: buy a whole firm for 1.2x revenue, inherit someone else's tech stack from 2014, absorb staff who may or may not show up after day 90, and spend the next 18 months untangling a culture that was built around a founder who just left.

Not exactly the "growth" many of us had in mind.

Here's what I've been telling people: the era of whole-firm M&A as the default growth strategy for small and mid-sized firms is shifting. Not because the deals aren't there--they are--but because there's a better move sitting right in front of you that almost nobody is talking about.

I'm calling it Micro M&A.

The Concept Is Simple.

Micro M&A is the buying and selling of client blocks--not whole firms. Five clients. Twenty clients. A book of 40 QBO clients paying $2,000/year that a mid-market firm doesn't want anymore because they've moved upmarket into advisory and CFO services.

These aren't bad clients. They're outgrown clients. A firm moved upmarket into advisory and CFO services, and the 40 compliance clients that built the practice no longer fit the cost structure.

Or a founder is easing into retirement and doesn't want to sell the whole firm--just transition a segment to someone who'll actually take care of them.

Or a niche firm doubled down on healthcare and now has 30 restaurant clients that are perfectly good but outside the lane.

These clients are generating $80K in revenue inside a firm with $200/hour overhead, and that math doesn't work anymore. So they sit on the roster, undertouched, underserved, slowly churning--while the partners know they should do something but can't find a path that doesn't feel like abandonment.

Meanwhile, three miles away (or three time zones away), there's a lean, cloud-native solo or small firm that would absorb those exact clients tomorrow.

They've got a $15/hour offshore bookkeeping team, they run on Xero or QBO, and their capacity is wide open. That $80K book isn't a drag on their P&L but a 70%+ margin growth engine.

The same clients. Two completely different economics.

Not a market inefficiency but a market waiting to be built.

Why This Hasn't Happened Yet

Three reasons.

First, there's no marketplace for it. Traditional M&A brokers won't touch a $50K client block. Their fee model doesn't support it. They want million-dollar whole-firm deals because that's where their 8-10% commission makes sense. So all this fractional deal flow just... doesn't happen. Clients get dropped or neglected instead of transitioned. Revenue evaporates instead of transferring to a firm that actually wants it.

Second, the seller doesn't realize they're sitting on equity. Most firm owners think of outgrown clients as a problem to manage--something they'll deal with "eventually." They don't see those clients as a liquid asset with a market price. Nobody has ever shown them a number and said, "You have $120K in latent equity sitting in clients you've simply outgrown. Want to sell them this week?"

Third, the buyer doesn't know what they're buying. In traditional M&A, you get months of due diligence, a stack of financials, a large QoE bill, etc. In a client block sale, there's been no standard way to evaluate fit. What services do these clients need? What's their tech stack? What's the realistic margin if I absorb them with my cost structure? Without that data, buyers freeze.

Micro M&A solves all three.

What Changes When You Think in Blocks Instead of Firms

When you shift from "buy the whole firm" to "buy the clients that fit," several things happen at once.

Your acquisition cost drops by 80-90%. You're not buying goodwill, brand, staff, or real estate. You're buying recurring revenue attached to specific clients who match your service model. A $50K client block at 1.0-1.1x is a $55K check, not a $500K SBA loan.

Your integration risk goes to near zero. There's no culture clash because there's no staff. There's no tech migration because you're only taking clients who already match your stack. And there's no messy founder transition--the selling firm isn't losing something they wanted to keep. They're passing along clients they've outgrown to someone better positioned to serve them. That's a clean handoff, not a divorce.

You only pay for the clients that stick around. Traditional M&A has retention or "claw back" clauses where if clients do not stay after X months, its discounted. Micro M&A does this but cleaner. No discounts or disruptions due to staff leaving, owner earn-outs, licensing issues, specialized E&O insurance, and all the other headaches that come with buying a whole firm.

Your growth becomes surgical. Instead of hoping that a whole-firm acquisition comes with clients you actually want, you define your buy box upfront. "Show me e-commerce clients on QBO, $1,500-$5,000/year, in the Southeast." You only see what fits. Everything else is invisible to you.

And for sellers, you unlock value that was previously stranded. Letting a client go generates nothing--and often damages the relationship. Selling that same client for 1.0-1.1x annual revenue turns a difficult goodbye into a professional transition where everyone wins. The client gets a firm that's actually built for them. The seller gets capital. Multiply that across 30 or 40 outgrown clients and you're looking at real money--money that funds the advisory pivot, the partner buyout, or the new hire you've been putting off.

The Real Unlock

Here's where this gets interesting.

The reason Zillow works isn't just because it shows you houses. It's because it shows you what a house is worth to you--the Zestimate, the mortgage calculator, the "what would my payment be" tool. It makes abstract value concrete and personal.

Micro M&A needs the same thing, and that's what I'm building inside the Firmlever Exchange.

When a buyer browses available client blocks, they shouldn't just see "40 QBO clients, $80K revenue, asking $88K." They should see what those clients would generate inside their specific firm--based on their labor model, their tech stack, their overhead. If you're running a lean offshore operation, that same block might project at 72% margin. If you're running a heavy domestic team, maybe it's 35%.

Same clients, completely different investment thesis.

That's margin arbitrage. And it turns client shopping from guesswork into clarity.

Who This Is For

If you're a firm owner sitting on 20+ clients you've outgrown--whether you've moved upmarket, niched down, or you're winding toward retirement--you're sitting on cash. Those clients have a buyer. Probably several buyers. You just haven't been connected to them yet.

If you're a growth-stage firm with capacity and a defined niche--stop spending money on Facebook ads, time-draining LinkedIn "networking", "thought leadership" podcasts and expensive SEO trying to attract strangers. Buy clients who already exist, already pay, and already need exactly what you do. The CAC math on Micro M&A destroys anything you'll get from digital marketing.

If you're thinking about a full firm acquisition--ask yourself honestly: do you want the whole firm, or do you want the clients? Because if it's the clients, there might be a faster, cheaper, lower-risk way to get them.

The Window

The accounting M&A window peaks between now and late 2026. The volume of firms looking to transition, sell, or restructure is at an all-time high. But the infrastructure to handle fractional deals at the lower end of the market barely exists.

That's what Firmlever is building. Not another brokerage. Not another public marketplace. A curated private exchange for Micro M&A--where every client block has a price, every buyer sees their projected margin, and deals that used to die in email threads close in days instead of months.

I'm opening the Firmlever Exchange to a small founding cohort before it goes to market later this year. Fifteen firms. That's it for this round. Founding members get early access pricing, priority deal flow, and a direct line to me as we build this thing together.

This isn't a free beta. I'm looking for firms that are ready to move--either you're sitting on outgrown clients you want to monetize, or you're looking to acquire clients that fit your model. Either way, you need to be an active participant, not a spectator. If that's you, we'll get on a call, I'll walk you through the platform, and we'll get you setup.

If you want in, reply to this email with "EXCHANGE" and I'll send you the details.

The firms that figure out Micro M&A first will grow faster, cheaper, and with less risk than everyone still waiting around for the "right" whole-firm deal to show up.

Stop buying firms. Start buying clients.

Marc