Brendan Morahan built his firm without a single full-time hire, running it almost entirely on contractors, and he’s convinced it’s the model most accounting firms are too slow to see coming. In this conclusion of a two-part conversation with John Randolph on Episode 94 of CPA Life, Brendan argues that the tax manager role has become an impossible trade: firms won’t offer equity or partnership, and the people qualified for the job already know they can go build something of their own. So he’s assembling a roster of vetted senior tax managers willing to work as contractors, embedded in pods, splitting time between client work and their own emerging practices. John pushes back on the obvious tension. What happens when a firm owner wants loyalty, not a bridge to someone