Bizora Brews

Jim Chapman enlisted in the Army as a private and retired twenty years later as a major. After stints as a county budget analyst, in insurance and investments, and running a fine art print business, he joined H&R Block in 2004, became an enrolled agent as part of the first computerized exam group, and has run his own practice since 2010. Since 2009 he has represented more than 3,000 tax returns in face to face IRS audits.

Adam and Jim met at the NAEA conference in New Orleans. In this episode they talk about why the number of active enrolled agents dropped by roughly 10,000 names in a year, and what Jim believes every EA should do about it.

In this episode:

• Jim’s path from Army surveyor to enrolled agent
• Why he tells every candidate to take Exam 2 first
• What 3,000+ audits taught him about representation, manager conferences, and knowing when you’ve reached the end of the road
• A Form 3115 case headed to Tax Court over one administrative step
• Next steps after the EA: NTPI, advanced training, and the USTCP exam
• His case for every EA recruiting at least one more

What happens when an information systems graduate gets handed a sales tax audit and a tax engine implementation before she has ever filed a return?

Olga leads indirect tax at Avanos Medical, a medical device company recently acquired by private equity. She studied management information systems at Wayne State University and fell into sales tax when a small Detroit company she interned at got hit with a Michigan assessment. Her path since then runs through Citrix, Ryder, RockTenn during its WestRock merger years, and Workday. She treated each stop as a deliberate step in a field with no formal degree behind it.

Together they explore how tax engines like Vertex depend entirely on the data your ERP feeds them, why use tax often creates more audit exposure than exemption certificates, and how AI first entrants are pushing indirect tax professionals toward advisory work while states expand sales tax on SaaS and digital products.

Olga also explains why she left a sales tax manager title at WestRock and took a pay cut to join Avanos as it spun off from Kimberly Clark. It meant building the sales tax function from scratch, through an SAP to S/4HANA migration and a Vertex upgrade, and years later that process held up under private equity due diligence. She closes with an audit that ended in a minimal assessment and a thank you email from the auditor. Tune in for a conversation about building a sales tax function that survives audits and acquisitions.

What does it take to sell AI into the largest accounting firms in the country when the hardest part has nothing to do with the technology?

This founder series episode features Cosmin “Cos” Nicolaescu, CEO and co founder of Accrual, the AI native platform built for Top 100 accounting firms. Before Accrual, Cos was CTO at Brex, an early engineer and manager at Stripe, and started his career at Microsoft. Two years in, Accrual has grown from individual tax returns into a full platform spanning tax, audit, and client advisory services, with Armaninoamong its first customers.

Together they explore why Cos treats accounting as an enterprise market and sells to firms above $100 million in revenue, how Accrual rewrites a firm’s SOPs with its leadership and L&D teams so practitioners stop reviewing work the AI no longer gets wrong, and why the models can handle roughly 90 percent of a complex return while the real value is pinpointing the 10 percent that still needs human judgment.

Cos also walks through how a K1 prototype built in a couple of weeks turned into a yearlong partnership with Armanino, why Accrual acquired Puzzle after he spent years closing his own books on it every week, and the launch of Arc, which brings the Claude Code way of working to CPAs. Tune in for a conversation about building AI for the firms that set the pace for the profession.

What does it take to run a top 100 firm’s entire tax department when your career was built in sales and use tax, not federal compliance?

James Ortiz is the Head of Tax at REDW, which just climbed to No. 96 in the IPA rankings. His path started in the call center at the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department while he was still finishing a finance degree. From there he moved into gross receipts tax audits, then to Moss Adams reviewing the same refund claims he used to audit, and then to Gap’s shared services center filing sales tax across every state, Canada and Mexico. REDW recruited him to build its state and local tax practice from scratch, and he ran it alone for five years before leading the whole department.

Together they explore how REDW unified tax work across Albuquerque, Phoenix, Salem and a 14 person team in India under one set of workpapers and one shared prep and review pool, why the firm moved to flat fee engagements with a 55/45 billing split, and how James uses time tracking to find inefficiencies instead of chasing realization.

James also shares how the firm grew from 120 people to nearly 400, why every office finished by 4 p.m. on April 15 for the first time, and why he believes AI will turn tax compliance upside down in the next 12 to 18 months. Tune in for a conversation about building a scalable tax department while the industry shifts underneath it.

What does it take for an established accounting firm to put its name behind an AI native ERP that had no money, no clients, and a very big pitch?

This is the first live taping of Bizora Brews, recorded in front of an audience at Armanino’s San Francisco office during SF Tech Week. Adam is joined by two returning guests. Dean Quiambao is a Partner and the Northern California Market Leader at Armanino, where he spent his first twelve years in audit. Stephen Hedlund is Head of Finance at Rillet, the AI native ERP that recently reached unicorn status. Their partnership started at an a16z dinner in New York that both of them almost skipped.

Together they explore how Armanino became Rillet’s first accounting firm partner, why the old line that nobody gets fired for buying NetSuite is starting to reverse, and what changes when an ERP has to be built for agents as well as people. They also get into continuous close, what a year end audit could look like when both sides are running agents, and how Rillet is thinking about pricing AI work as token costs shift.

Dean shares the moment he overheard a Rillet prospect at a conference say she would switch if her accounting firm signed off, and the lunch where an Armanino colleague who had implemented NetSuite at a San Francisco unicorn put the Rillet team through a technical grilling. The episode closes with questions from the live audience on token economics, data privacy, and customization. Tune in for a conversation about how AI native finance tools earn trust with the firms CFOs already rely on.

What does it take to walk away from a partner seat at a top 40 firm at 38, with no equity path and no real plan, and start over at a six person shop?

David Barbeito is the CEO and managing partner of DPB PLLC in Miami, one of the fastest growing CPA firms in the country, and a recognized top 200 accounting leader. He started out doing bookkeeping for Domingo Alonso while still at FIU, then spent 16 years at Morrison Brown Argiz & Farr (MBAF), where he made partner at 30 and eventually led the audit department as the firm grew from about 50 people to 400. His career reads as a bet on control over comfort.

Together they explore why your personal brand matters more than the name of the firm you work for, why lateral hires have outperformed acquisitions as a growth strategy, and how a midsize firm competes for middle market clients while the largest firms keep merging.

David was the audit partner on the Denver Broncos for years and later brought in the Miami Dolphins, then left it all to build an audit practice at DPB from zero, back to ticking and tying his own work papers. Since then he has grown the firm from six people to about sixty without buying a single practice. Tune in for a conversation about choosing control over certainty in public accounting.

What does it take to turn a two person practice with a few hundred thousand dollars of business into a $35 million firm, when nothing in your accounting training taught you how to run a business?

Michael Stephano is the Managing Partner of Stephano Slack, a top 200 CPA firm based in Wayne, Pennsylvania with roughly 130 people. A Villanova graduate and the son of a CPA, Michael made manager at Rainer and Co and partner at Carrow Doyle before leaving in 2004 to start his own practice with Blake Chapman. His career is a study in what happens when a strong technician decides to become a business owner.

Together they explore the revenue thresholds where a firm owner has to change how they spend their time, from $1 million to $5 million and beyond. They walk through how Stephano Slack grew through acquisitions, why culture comes before price in every deal, and why Michael has walked away from deals after talking with roughly 250 firm owners. They also discuss private equity's push into the top 200, and why Michael expects technology to cut the people needed to double the firm by about half.

Michael's first acquisition came when his mentor, Jerry Geisel, called to ask if he would buy his practice. That deal, and the Ken Slack acquisition that followed, were financed through seller payouts of 20% a year for five years and a bank line of credit, a model the firm used for 25 years. Tune in for a conversation about working on the business instead of in it, and why Michael calls public accounting the great equalizer.

What happens when a software engineer who hated writing billing code ends up building the AI agent that does it for everyone else?

Bailey Spell is the cofounder of LedgerUp, a Y Combinator backed company automating billing, accounts receivable, and revenue workflows through its AI agent, Ari. Before LedgerUp, Bailey was a software engineer at Microsoft, where he helped take Viva Learning from zero to one. He then moved to San Francisco to join Respell, a workflow automation startup later acquired by Salesforce. His path runs from big tech, to a three person engineering team, to building inside the accounting stack with no accounting background.

Together they explore why LedgerUp started as an AI bookkeeping firm doing the work by hand before automating it, how contract heavy voice AI companies like Bland and Happy Robot became its core customers, and why the billing inbox holds the context that actually speeds up collections.

Bailey shares the August 2024 call with a CFO who brushed off bill amortization and said revenue recognition was the biggest pain in his business, the moment that pointed LedgerUp toward contract to cash. He also recalls the advice a YC partner gave the team: so many AI bookkeeping companies had already been funded that if LedgerUp failed, it should fail differently. Tune in for a conversation about building AI for billing, where a single invoice can touch twelve systems and the agent cannot be wrong.

How does someone who calls himself a terrible auditor become the person clients ask for by name?

Dean Quiambao is Chief Relationship Builder and Northern California Market Leader at Armanino, where he has spent the last 25 years. He joined in 2001, when the firm had two offices and 80 people. It now has 30 offices and close to 3,000 people. He started out planning to become a financial planner after interning at Charles Schwab, took one piece of advice about getting his CPA, and built his career under Andy and Matt Armanino. His arc runs from audit, to the partner track, to leading relationships for one of the fastest growing firms in the country.

Together they explore how Dean turned a stalled start as a new partner into a new trajectory by making his fellow partners successful, why he believes losing teaches you more than winning ever will, and why he has spent the years since 2019 showing himself on LinkedIn instead of selling himself.

Dean shares how Armanino won a publicly traded audit away from a Big Four firm by asking the audit committee chair one question: what would make choosing us safe? He also tells the story behind Armanino becoming Rillet's first partner. It started with a client conversation he overheard at an Operators Guild happy hour in February 2025 and led to a dinner in New York he almost skipped. Tune in for a conversation about building a career by helping other people win.

What happens when a firm owner decides the only real fix for busy season is building the software himself?

Dave Haase is the founder and CEO of Juno, a tax prep automation platform built by CPAs for tax firms. He came into the profession sideways: a finance degree from Indiana, brand work at General Mills, and an MBA from Stanford. Then in 2015 he turned down a product management offer at Salesforce to buy his mother's Bay Area CPA practice. He earned his EA and CPA after the purchase and started out as a preparer inside his own firm. He then grew the practice through three more acquisitions, and it became the testing ground for Juno.

Together they explore how Juno got accurate extraction and a working ProConnect integration without any public APIs. They also cover why a K1 with a few thousand possible fields is a completely different problem than a W2, and what it takes to sell software to accountants who expect ROI on day one.

Dave also explains how automation pushed his own firm past 50% net margins, and why he expects Juno to get to 97% of a return quickly and to 100% very slowly. Tune in for a conversation about what AI tax prep looks like from someone who spent a decade doing the returns himself.