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She Fired Every Client She Had and Made More Money Within 24 Hours

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Life has a way of interrupting our best-laid plans. As this episode of She Counts begins, co-host Nancy McClelland is racing to handle another family crisis. Her mother must be moved from her nursing facility with just two days’ notice after Medicaid refused coverage. It’s the kind of real-life emergency that women in accounting juggle daily while trying to run businesses and serve clients.

Stepping in to help is Candy Bellau, CFE, co-host of the Unbalanced Podcast and a fraud expert who knows firsthand what it’s like to manage a parent’s care from another state. “While I was in it, it was hard. It was so hard,” she shares. “I got a lot of insight afterward. What am I doing with my life? What am I doing with my family? Why am I running my business this way?”

The two had a raw conversation about how chronic underpricing affects women across accounting and how to break the cycle.

From Six Figures to Financial Ruin

Candy’s story sounds impossible until you realize how common it is. At 16, she was already supporting her entire family, negotiating a full-time salary for part-time bookkeeping work. “They hired a full-time person to do the job, and they couldn’t do it,” she recalls. When asked to fix the mess, she saw opportunity. “Why don’t you pay me what you were paying her? I will come in every day after school. You should send a car to pick me up.”

That teenage negotiator became a New York powerhouse. “I would get bonuses that were 100% of my salary,” she explains. “I was making so much money.” Her credit was so perfect that a BMW dealership handed her keys to a convertible without even a down payment, telling her to “go show off to your friends.”

Then she moved to New Orleans for love.

“I immediately brought it way down,” Candy admits. Despite years of experience in turnarounds and investigations, she started charging $25 an hour. “I thought, oh, these people can’t afford New York prices.” Soon she was charging $350 a month to run entire businesses—handling bookkeeping, HR, compliance, even picking up mail. “I did everything.”

The financial collapse was swift. “I did everything I would never let a client do. I depleted my retirement account.” Credit cards maxed out. Cash advances followed. While living in a 600-square-foot house with a baby, she maintained a 1,500-square-foot office she couldn’t afford. The breaking point came when she couldn’t pay the minimum on her credit cards while two mortgages loomed.

“I was lying about my reality,” she confesses, “trying to live the same lifestyle I had in New York without making the money.”

The $6,000 Wake-Up Call

Desperate for solutions, Candy enrolled in a $6,000 marketing course for accountants. What she found shocked her. “It was ‘tired of doing hair? Be an accountant. Don’t want to fix cars anymore? Be an accountant.’”

These complete beginners were using scripts to close $4,000-per-month deals while asking questions like “What’s QuickBooks?” and “What is a bank reconciliation?”

“Literal morons in this group,” Candy says, still incredulous. “And here I am charging $350 a month.”

Even more infuriating were her male colleagues. They’d invite her on sales calls, knowing she had the expertise they lacked. After she’d solve all the problems and outline the work, they’d ask what she would charge.

“I might say, I know what I’m doing. I would do this for like $5,000 a month,” Candy recalls. “And they’d say, ‘$5,000 a month? Are you insane? I wouldn’t do this for less than ten.'”

When she asked if they knew how to do the work, they answered, “I have no idea, but you’ll clearly do it for five and I’ll charge them ten.”

The Real Cost of Underpricing

The research confirms Candy’s perception. Women in professional services charge at least 25% less than men, sometimes up to 50% less. “The median woman in an online labor marketplace in the US sets a bill rate that’s 13.5% lower than a median man,” Nancy notes.

But statistics don’t capture the human cost. When Candy asked her team what would make them happy, the answers broke her heart.

“I would love it if I could take my kid to the doctor when they were sick,” one employee said. “I would love to be able to go to the doctor when I get sick. I don’t have health insurance.”

Another employee, after receiving a raise, shared something that changed Candy’s perspective. She said, “This is the first time in my life that I’m living with somebody out of choice and not need. For the first time in my life, I am making enough money to leave.”

“Everybody needs to make a wage that they can live off of without a man,” Candy resolved. “That became one of my driving forces.”

The irony wasn’t lost on her. “I can’t help anybody if I have to shut this place down and get a job. The person I wasn’t helping was me or my team. I was helping everybody else buying second houses, boats and stuff. And here I am thinking we’ll just have spaghetti again tonight for dinner.”

The Day Everything Changed

After the marketing course revelation, Candy did something drastic. “I fired every client I had.”

Her husband was stunned. When he asked about the office rent she couldn’t afford, she told him, “I no longer have low-priced clients.” His next question: “Do you have any leads?” Her answer: “Nope, but now I can take them.”

Within 24 hours, she got a call about a potential client. “I said, sounds to me like it’ll be $3,500 a month. She just paused and said, ‘That sounds fair. Where do I sign?’

She replaced all her fired clients with just two new ones, each paying what dozens had paid combined.

Breaking the Cycle

The conversation reveals five essential strategies for escaping the underpricing trap:

  1. Reframe from cost to value. “Because it’s easy for us, we price that way,” Candy explains. “Instead of charging for what we are bringing to the table: the education and the years of experience.”
  2. Practice raising rates incrementally. Start with specific client groups rather than everyone at once.
  3. Build community. “Don’t just go at it alone,” Candy urges. “Call somebody you respect.” During the episode, co-host Questian Telka realizes she’s underpricing a current cleanup. “I was underpricing it in my mind already,” she admits.
  4. Model confidence for others. Show other women what’s possible through your own pricing decisions.
  5. Recognize the long-term impact. When women underprice, they perpetuate industry-wide disparities and create businesses too fragile to provide security for their teams.

Candy now uses specific language that commands higher prices. When prospects aren’t ready, she tells them, “You’re not ready for a firm like me. Here’s where you need to be. When you hit this point, I’m the exact firm you want.”

For cleanup work, she tells clients, “If you need 12 months cleaned up and my monthly rate is $3,000, it’s the same monthly amount for the cleanup. If I discount it, you’re going to say, why did I sign on monthly?”

And always, “If you don’t pay me up front, I don’t lift a finger.”

No Margin, No Mission

Nancy shares a piece of wisdom she heard from a client: “No margin, no mission.” Without sustainable pricing, there’s no health insurance for teams, no living wages, no ability to weather crises like caring for aging parents.

Candy dropped her own family’s health insurance until everyone on her team could have it too. “Until we all have health insurance, nobody has health insurance,” she announced. The urgency drove her to find the revenue quickly.

“These things that are important to me,” she says now. “If clients don’t want to work with us the way we’ve got things set up, they’re not our client.”

Your Next Step

This episode strips away the polite veneer covering pricing discussions in accounting. The gender wage gap isn’t just about employment. We recreate it every time a woman undervalues her expertise.

As Oprah says, “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”

The conversation already changed Questian’s pricing. It just might change yours too.

Join the conversation by following the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page and comment under “Marking Ourselves Down.” Do you struggle with pricing and asking for what you’re worth? The hosts want to hear from you about topics for future episodes and would love your reviews to help other women in accounting find this community.

Find Candy on LinkedIn and learn about her firms, Kramerican Business Solutions for controls work and Vandelay Forensic Group for fraud investigations. Yes, both are Seinfeld references, and yes, she just passed her private investigator exam.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Candy’s story, including details about her financial recovery and the specific strategies she uses to maintain sustainable pricing today.

When Auditors Look Away and AI Gets Scammed, Who’s Actually Protecting Investors?

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In a recent episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary tackle the mounting pressures facing the accounting profession, from private equity’s growing influence to corporate lobbying’s impact on tax policy. As the longest government shutdown in history finally comes to an end, the hosts examine how financial incentives reshape both public accounting and tax preparation services.

Government Shutdown Finally Ending After 40+ Days

The episode opens with news that the government shutdown—now officially the longest in U.S. history at over 40 days—is coming to an end. The shutdown cost the economy approximately $15 billion per week, with 650,000 federal employees furloughed without pay.

“The shutdown got real this weekend,” David notes, describing how his wife’s flight was repeatedly delayed, forcing her to abandon her travel plans. The ripple effects have been substantial: the Small Business Administration couldn’t process $2.5 billion in loans for 4,800 businesses, and 42 million Americans on SNAP received only half their November benefits.

Democrats in the Senate broke ranks to vote with Republicans to reopen the government, though they failed to secure an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies they were seeking. As Blake observes, “It’s a game of chicken. Who’s going to blink first? And Democrats blinked on this.”

The Death of IRS Direct File and Rise of TurboTax Stores

The swift elimination of the IRS Direct File program reveals how corporate influence shapes tax policy. Despite achieving 98% user satisfaction and processing 300,000 returns in its second year (up from 140,000 in year one), the program was axed shortly after Intuit donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

“It really grosses me out,” David says. “Intuit compromised its own values just for the almighty dollar of getting a TurboTax competitor eliminated.” He points out the hypocrisy on both sides. Intuit, one of the first companies to offer same-sex marriage benefits, abandoned its progressive values, while MAGA Republicans embraced a “woke company” once the check cleared.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed Direct File as underused, claiming “private alternatives are better,” despite it being an unmarked pilot program still expanding its reach. As David notes, even 300,000 electronic returns represents “300,000 paper returns the IRS doesn’t have to touch.”

Meanwhile, Intuit announced plans to open 20 new brick-and-mortar TurboTax stores following an “Apple Store model.” Customers will work on their returns at in-store computers, then seek help from CPAs and EAs when needed, what the hosts imagine as an “EA Bar” instead of Apple’s Genius Bar. Combined with 200 additional TurboTax expert offices, Intuit is positioning itself to dominate every segment of tax preparation.

The First Brands Audit Failure: A $700 Million Warning Sign

The collapse of First Brands under BDO’s watch illustrates the potential consequences when private equity interests intersect with audit responsibilities. BDO signed off on financials showing $5.23 billion in debt in March. Six months later, the company collapsed with $11.63 billion in actual obligations—more than double what was reported.

Bankruptcy lawyers accuse founder Patrick James of inflating invoices by up to 50 times to secure fraudulent financing. One $179 invoice was allegedly inflated to $9,271. Over $700 million allegedly flowed into James’s personal accounts, funding 17 exotic cars, properties in Malibu and the Hamptons, and a $110,000 six-week Southampton hotel stay.

“How could you audit this company and not be aware of this?” Blake asks. “Here’s all this debt. Money came in because of the debt. Where did the cash go?”

The situation is complicated by BDO’s financial relationships. Private equity investors had loaned BDO over $1 billion, creating what the hosts describe as “financial stress” significant enough to force layoffs. These same investors were reportedly shorting First Brands stock.

“The public thinks your job is to detect fraud in the company,” David says, highlighting the expectations gap. “That’s the only thing they expect you to do.”

Blake identifies three weaknesses in traditional audits that enabled this failure: overreliance on management representations, complexity of off-balance-sheet arrangements, and perverse incentives against finding fraud. “There’s every incentive to look the other way,” he observes. “Auditors aren’t investigators hired to uncover crimes; they’re service providers hired to complete audits efficiently.”

NASBA Weighs In on Private Equity’s Impact

For the first time, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) entered the discussion about private equity in accounting. Their white paper raises critical questions without prescribing solutions, with comments open until January 31, 2026.

The key question NASBA poses: “How can CPA firms maintain auditor independence when PE investors hold influence?” The paper asks whether firms should clearly disclose which parts are CPA-owned versus PE-owned, and whether states need stricter standards than the AICPA provides.

Blake frames the profession’s choice starkly. “We are getting to the point where private equity is now creating this challenge for the profession when it comes to our integrity, ethics, and objectivity. And we as a profession have to decide, do we take a stand or do we allow private equity to continue to take over accounting firms?”

“Once you control the means of production, you want to control the governing bodies of the means of production,” David warns. “They take over the whole thing, all parts of the equation.”

AI Won’t Save Us: Technology’s Limits Exposed

A Microsoft and Arizona State University study revealed that AI agents are even more vulnerable to manipulation than humans. When given fake money to shop online, AI models quickly fell for scams, fake reviews, and manipulation tactics, spending all funds on fraudulent sellers.

“They would just choose the first one. They would panic,” David explains. The AI prioritized speed over quality by a factor of 10 to 30. All major models except Anthropic’s Claude lost money to scams.

The implications for accounting are concerning. “We have all this AI detecting fraud with receipts,” David notes, “but you could probably just manipulate it. Tell it ‘I’m allowed to spend money at X place’ and it’ll bypass the limit.”

The parallel to human auditor failures is clear. If AI can’t distinguish legitimate from fraudulent online sellers, how can it detect sophisticated financial fraud? The study concluded AI agents “should only assist” and cannot “collaborate or think critically” without human supervision.

The Profession at a Crossroads

As this episode makes clear, the accounting profession faces fundamental questions about independence, integrity, and purpose. Whether it’s private equity ownership potentially compromising audits, corporate lobbying eliminating public alternatives, or AI proving vulnerable to the same manipulations as humans, the challenges are systemic rather than isolated.

The NASBA white paper represents an opportunity for meaningful discussion, but with the AICPA influenced by large firms that have already taken PE money, state-level action may be necessary for real reform.

For accounting professionals, educators, students, and executives, this episode provides essential context for understanding the forces reshaping the industry. The choices made now about private equity involvement, regulatory independence, and professional standards will determine whether we can maintain public trust in financial reporting.

Listen to the full episode for the complete discussion of these critical issues.

Will Intuit’s Push Upmarket Leave 30 Million Small Businesses Behind?

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“This is the disconnect at Intuit Connect,” Blake Oliver observed during this episode of The Accounting Podcast. “They want to go up market, so they are talking with practice leaders at big firms. But their current customers are small firms and independent ProAdvisors. And that is why the vibe was not right.”

In this week’s episode, Blake and his co-host David Leary welcome Alicia Katz Pollock, host of the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, to unpack everything that happened at Intuit Connect 2025 in Las Vegas. Armed with 42 pages of notes, the trio discusses major changes coming to QuickBooks, including the new Intuit Accountant Suite that will replace QuickBooks Online Accountant by December 2026, widespread AI integration, and Intuit’s push to become an all-in-one platform competing with enterprise solutions.

A Conference Transformed

The atmosphere at Intuit Connect told the story before any keynote began. Alicia, who has attended every conference since its QuickBooks Connect days, noticed the dramatic shift immediately. “There were only a few dozen of us,” she said, referring to independent ProAdvisors who once filled the conference halls. Instead, she met “tons of first time attendees who were all employees at firms.”

David, who spent years at Intuit building the QuickBooks marketplace, remembered when the conference was “a celebration of accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses.” The company would display lists of ProAdvisors who’d been with them for years and give out ProAdvisor of the Year awards. “You used to get the chills because you’re like, I love all these people,” he recalled. “And now it’s like all about Intuit.”

Even the conference exit changed from cheerleaders with pom-poms to a drum corps, signaling a shift from celebration to something more corporate and impersonal. As Alicia put it, “They used to treat us like kings. This was much more about professional upskilling, like a normal conference.”

AI Everywhere—But Does It Work?

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi’s keynote made the company’s direction clear. Seven years ago, they “bet the farm on AI,” and now the entire platform is moving in that direction. The promise sounds revolutionary: AI agents handling routine bookkeeping tasks, smart categorization, and automated workflows. The reality, according to users and the hosts, tells a different story.

David’s experience captures the frustration many feel. “Every time I go to the bank feed screen, my list of pending transactions just keeps going up,” he explained. Despite the promised AI agents, his unmatched transaction numbers keep climbing. “Nobody’s doing the work,” he said. To clear transactions, he had to manually fix broken connections from Expensify and reorganize how transactions were coded—exactly the kind of work AI was supposed to eliminate.

The hosts read a detailed email from a listener who outlined five critical problems with the forced AI rollout: miscategorized transactions, inaccurate reporting, bank feed errors creating double entries, a slower interface requiring more clicks, and most importantly, no ability to opt out. “I can’t get over my anger and frustration with this forced rollout,” she wrote, noting that she’s lost hours to troubleshooting instead of doing strategic work.

Alicia offered a more measured perspective, explaining that AI “still has to be trained” and needs to learn from each company’s specific patterns. “You have to give it one of everything,” she said, suggesting it might take “a quarter of data and probably a year” before the AI becomes accurate.

But David pushed back on this defense. “Intuit just spent $1 million on a conference and talked about how magical this is. Nobody said I need to train the agents. The marketing says it’s just going to do it.”

Blake offered a technical critique that cut to the heart of the problem. “AI is statistical and probabilistic and is not 100%,” he explained. Rather than replacing reliable rules with unpredictable AI, Intuit should “automate the creation of rules” that work accurately every time. He pointed to competitors like Ramp that use AI to create rules rather than replace them entirely.

The All-in-One Platform Play

Beyond AI, Intuit is transforming QuickBooks from an accounting platform that integrates with hundreds of apps into an all-in-one solution that does everything internally. The new features include integrated Mailchimp functionality, CRM tools, customer surveys, appointment booking, and marketing campaigns, all within QuickBooks.

During his keynote, Goodarzi made the strategy explicit: “You’ll pay less because you’ll need to pay for fewer apps.” This message, delivered while 75-80 third-party app vendors were exhibiting at the conference, created what David described as a “weird vibe.”

The hosts compared this approach to a multifunction printer. As Alicia explained, while it can print, copy, scan, and fax, “you’re not going to be able to put out a poster that you can put up on the wall.” Similarly, QuickBooks might do “a little bit of everything,” but businesses needing robust, specialized solutions may find themselves limited.

Blake expressed deeper concerns about this strategic shift. Having built a successful firm by combining specialized apps, he worries about the implications. “I know what happens when an app tries to do everything. It does everything, but it does it in kind of a mediocre way.”

The New Intuit Accountant Suite

One of the biggest announcements affects accountants directly: QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) will be replaced by the Intuit Accountant Suite (IAS) by December 2026. 

The new suite will have three tiers. The free version will include all existing QBOA functionality. Two paid tiers (Core and Accelerate) will add new features like customizable dashboards showing KPIs across all clients, books review capabilities that let accountants fix issues without entering individual client files, and capacity management tools for firms.

“For the first year it’s going to be free because they have to develop it and design it and see if we like it,” Alicia explained. After that, some features will require payment.

The capacity management feature revealed another strategic shift. When firms reach capacity, the system will suggest hiring an “Intuit expert” or assigning clients to QuickBooks Live. As David observed, this essentially positions independent ProAdvisors as “labor for these bigger firms”—a fundamental change in how Intuit views its ProAdvisor community.

The Upmarket Push and Its Risks

The hosts identified a fundamental strategic risk in Intuit’s approach. By chasing an estimated 100,000 businesses that might need enterprise features, Intuit could leave “its flank exposed” to competitors targeting the tens of millions of small businesses needing simple, affordable solutions.

Evidence of this vulnerability is already emerging. Quicken, which Intuit spun off years ago, now offers business features for just $8 per month, compared to QuickBooks’ Simple Start at $38 monthly. New players like Digits offer free APIs to attract developers that Intuit’s ecosystem changes might alienate. Personal finance apps like Monarch Money are adding business features to capture the entry-level market.

“There are tens of millions of small businesses that don’t need enterprise features,” Blake argued. He shared how his firm succeeded by serving the low end of the market with streamlined, automated services at a few hundred dollars per month. “Sometimes it’s better not to try and compete with everybody in the same small pool and go to that bigger one that’s underserved.”

Alicia used a metaphor to describe the risk. Intuit has evolved from “a table with a single post in the middle of QuickBooks” to one with four legs including TurboTax, Mailchimp, and Credit Karma. But the QuickBooks leg was built on small businesses and their bookkeepers. “If that table leg collapses, the table’s going to fall over.”

Looking Forward

Despite the criticism, some developments show promise. Alicia highlighted genuinely useful features in development, including AI that considers industry context when categorizing transactions and dashboards that surface anomalies in client data. Intuit is also working on allowing users to create custom dashboard widgets using low-code tools, though David questioned whether this solves real business problems or just provides “fancier reporting.”

The conversation revealed a company at a crossroads. As Blake summarized, Intuit is building for “users who don’t yet exist while alienating those who made them successful.” The question is, as AI transforms accounting, will Intuit remember who they’re transforming it for?

For accounting professionals, whether these QuickBooks changes represent progress or problems depends largely on your firm’s size, client base, and willingness to adapt to Intuit’s vision of the future.

Listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast to hear all the details about product updates, pricing changes, and what these shifts mean for your practice. The conversation between three industry veterans who’ve watched QuickBooks evolve for over two decades offers warnings and opportunities for those paying attention.

From Stuck to Strategic: How Top CPA Firms Break Free from Endless Problem Loops

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Picture a CPA firm owner sitting across from the same colleague at the same conference, one year later, complaining about the exact same problems: the same staffing issues, same client complaints, and same technology frustrations. Marcus Dillon sees this scene too often, and it breaks his heart. “One of the most disappointing things to me,” he shares on the latest episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, “is whenever you have a conversation with somebody a year later and they’re in the same exact place they were when you previously talked to them.”

But in a packed ballroom at Hotel Vin in Grapevine, Texas, 105 accounting professionals gathered this October to make sure they’d never be that person stuck in an endless loop of unaddressed challenges. Over two and a half days in October 2025, firm owners, leaders, and carefully selected team members came together for Gather 2025, an event that offered CPE credits but delivered something far more valuable than continuing education.

About two-thirds of attendees were firm owners and leaders, while the remaining third were team members positioned to create ripple effects back in their firms. “You want to bring a team member who can learn and take part in table discussions, but then also take what they’ve heard and learned back to others on your team,” Marcus explained.

From Growth to Excellence: A New Chapter in Leadership

After a year focused on “the goal is growth, not comfort,” Marcus introduced a new rally cry for 2026 that signals a shift in how successful firms approach leadership: “Lead Change, Create Impact.” This evolution is more than a tagline change; it marks a maturity in thinking about what drives firm success.

“We’ve had a very large growth year,” Marcus reflects. “We added a couple of director level positions, did a couple of acquisitions, and continue to grow Collective by DBA very intentionally. So now we’re going into a season of refinement and then excellence.”

This natural progression, from growth to refinement and excellence, mirrors a cycle that successful firms navigate intentionally. But growth isn’t just about numbers. As Rachel emphasizes, when they adopted their previous rally cry, “We’re really thinking about growth personally and professionally, of what does it look like to delegate to someone else? What does it look like to upskill and learn that next new thing, or say yes to something we don’t feel we have the skill set for?”

Rachel shares a particularly striking insight she heard recently from author Ruth Chou Simons, “You don’t have to be blooming to be growing.” Sometimes the most critical development happens underground, in the roots and foundation of a firm’s culture. These invisible victories, such as saying no to wrong opportunities, developing team members’ skills, or refining internal processes, often matter more than year-end revenue numbers.

The data from Gather 2025 validates this approach. While participating firms showed revenue increases, the standout statistic was a 10% decrease in owner production hours. For an industry where firm owners routinely work 2,000+ hours annually in production, this reduction shows genuine progress. As Marcus points out, this matters enormously for succession planning. “If there was a firm owner working over 2000 hours per year, as a buyer, you probably have to hire two people to replace that outgoing owner.”

The Four P’s Framework: Your Roadmap Through Change

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it, but because leaders haven’t provided the clarity teams need to embrace it. The Four P’s Framework, which Marcus discovered through his C12 leadership group, transforms vague announcements into actionable roadmaps.

“We used to talk about change and how we communicate change to the team,” Marcus recalls. The standard three questions (What’s changing? What’s staying the same? How does this impact me?) weren’t enough. The Four P’s provide a complete structure:

  • Purpose answers “Why are we changing?” But “the lens that you answer that question through should be your mission, vision and values,” Marcus emphasizes. “You’re not changing your mission vision values based on a change. You’re seeing the change through the lens of those mission vision values.”
  • Picture addresses “What does success look like?” Marcus admits this is his personal weakness. “You have to paint a great picture of what it looks like on the other side of this change and what it looks like going through this change.” Teams need to visualize both the journey and the destination.
  • Plan tackles “How do we get there?” This includes specific milestones. “You’ll know when you’re 20%, 50%, or 80% there and you can celebrate and then maybe push or sprint to that next threshold,” Marcus explains.
  • Part clarifies “What is my role?” This component “helps foster ownership, provide clarity” by making it crystal clear how each person contributes.

The framework came to life during DBA’s recent acquisitions. Purpose aligned with their mission of “impacting others and creating a great place to work.” Picture showed “a fully integrated team under one brand, serving very similar clients in very similar ways.” Plan mapped out specific 30-day and 90-day milestones. And each team member received a clearly defined part. Some continued with existing clients, others mentor new colleagues, and  others take ownership of new relationships.

Rachel’s reflection provides crucial context. “We have not always done it this way. We communicated the change, but rarely thought through all four parts.” The difference is dramatic. “You as the leader will not be in it on your own, trying to drag people along,” she notes. “You will have people who step into their role and know what it looks like to be successful.”

Solving Problems Together: The Power of Collective Intelligence

While firm owners tackled KPIs and succession planning in one room, team members gathered in another for a revolutionary session called “Borrow a Brain, Share a Solution.” With over 24 anonymously-submitted real firm challenges, participants tackled everything from lead generation to remote team connectivity to AI adoption.

“Even staff members had great ideas for lead generation,” Rachel observes. “It’s not always up to the leader to solve every challenge in the firm.”

The structured approach went beyond brainstorming. Teams identified questions needing answers, developed solutions, assigned implementation responsibilities, and specified necessary tools. They documented all frameworks and made them available through the Collective Community Resource Center, creating a permanent library of tested solutions for the 300+ team members now on the platform.

Angel Sabino, Jr., Dillon Business Advisor’s Director of Technology, demonstrated exactly how firms could build their own AI agents using Microsoft Copilot. “He built this AI agent for internal DBA team members to ask questions,” Marcus explains. “What’s our PTO policy look like? What firm holidays exist? What do I need to do to get this approved?” The agent pulls answers from the firm’s knowledge base, providing instant, accurate responses.

“He can also break it down into simple enough terms and pictures,” Rachel notes. This wasn’t about showcasing technology for its own sake, but solving the real challenge of making standard operating procedures accessible and useful.

The case study sessions added another dimension. Firm owners could submit data anonymously and pose specific questions to peers. Marcus calculated the value. “I did quick math. It was about $20,000 per hour in that room.” But the true value transcended hourly rates. It was about getting honest feedback from people who “truly care about you without having a vested interest.”

Putting It All Into Practice

The event’s structure reinforced its practical focus. After sessions on everything from KPIs to AI implementation, the final afternoon wasn’t filled with more presentations. Instead, teams and firm friends gathered to process what they’d learned and create action plans. “What did you hear? What are you going to work on?” became the guiding questions as DBA and Collective team members wove through conversations offering support.

The result? As one attendee shared with Rachel, “This is the first time I’m leaving feeling confident about what I’m going to do and not feeling overwhelmed and defeated that I’m not doing enough.”

Even the venue contributed to the experience. The Hotel Vin’s European-style food hall offered variety without leaving the building, while The Baked Bear ice cream truck (featuring customizable cookie ice cream sandwiches) provided a sweet networking opportunity in perfect October Texas weather.

Your Next Step Forward

For Collective by DBA members ready to continue this journey, Recharge 2026 awaits in Mexico (April 22-25) at an all-inclusive, adults-only Marriott resort. “We’re going international,” Rachel announces, promising two days of CPE, karaoke, collaborative dinners, and the option to extend your stay. Given that the group will occupy over 50% of the boutique hotel, spaces are limited.

But you don’t need to wait for an event to start implementing these insights. The frameworks, tools, and collaborative approaches shared at Gather 2025 offer immediate value for any firm ready to move beyond the cycle of unsolved problems.

Listen to Rachel and Marcus Dillon’s full conversation to discover how two leaders who’ve “been in this game since 2011” learned to stop dragging people through change and started leading them toward impact.

As Marcus reminds us, when you look back at your biggest wins, you won’t remember the change itself. You’ll remember the people who journeyed alongside you. The question is, will you be remembered as someone who helped others navigate change, or as someone who kept showing up with the same unsolved problems? The choice (and the tools to succeed) are yours.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a Texas-based, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 15 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, groups, and one-on-one advisory.

The Hidden Gender Gap in AI That’s Reshaping Accounting Without Women’s Input

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When Apple launched its revolutionary health app in 2014, it tracked everything from blood pressure to copper intake, but somehow forgot that half the population has menstrual cycles. This stunning oversight, which took an entire year to correct, perfectly captures what happens when companies design technology without women at the table.

In a revealing episode of the She Counts podcast, CPA and AI educator Twyla Verhelst joins hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland to expose a difficult realization about the accounting profession’s AI revolution: women are being systematically left behind by design. Verhelst, who serves as Vice President of Industry Relations and Community at Karbon and co-founded TB Academy to empower accountants with AI training, brings personal experience and industry-wide perspective to this critical conversation.

While the accounting profession races to embrace AI technology that promises to transform how we work, women accountants face unique barriers to adoption that go beyond straightforward reluctance. From juggling disproportionate caregiving responsibilities to battling perfectionism in male-dominated spaces, these challenges create a system where the tools shaping our industry’s future are being built without our input.

This conversation uncovers why women fall behind in AI adoption, what happens when technology evolves without diverse perspectives, and most importantly, how women can claim their seat at the AI table, even if they have to bring their own folding chair.

The Perfect Storm: Why Women Fall Behind in AI Adoption

The gender gap in AI adoption isn’t about capability or interest. It’s about a perfect storm of societal expectations, time constraints, and deeply ingrained psychological patterns that create unique barriers for women in accounting.

Verhelst knows this struggle intimately. Despite her current role as a leading AI educator for accountants, she spent two full years feeling paralyzed by overwhelm. “I sat with AI saying like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so far behind. I haven’t even opened ChatGPT,” she admits. Even at AICPA Engage 2024, surrounded by industry innovation, she found herself thinking, “I still haven’t done anything. I still feel behind.”

This paralysis stems from something deeper than mere procrastination. Women, Verhelst explains, carry an ancestral caution that shapes how they approach risk. “If you go way back to our ancestors, men went out to hunt, while women stayed home or back at the tribe to care for the children and the elders. We were cautious by nature.” This evolutionary programming still whispers in our ears when faced with experimental technology, urging us to proceed with caution while our male counterparts dive in headfirst.

The perfectionism trap compounds this hesitation. Women in accounting already fight to prove themselves in traditionally male-dominated spaces, and using AI can feel like taking a shortcut that undermines our credibility. Verhelst observes, “Women feel like they’re cheating by using AI while men are looking for any way possible to ‘do the thing.’”

McClelland’s confession during the conversation highlights another crucial barrier: the gaming gap. “I didn’t grow up playing video games. I didn’t grow up taking apart electronics and putting them back together. Those were considered ‘boy’ hobbies,” she shares. When colleagues tell her to “just go play with it,” she responds with genuine confusion, “I honestly don’t even know what you mean when you say that. I don’t know how to play with technology.”

But perhaps the most insurmountable barrier is time poverty. While AI adoption requires experimentation and play, women simply don’t have the capacity. “I don’t have the capacity in my day to play. That just doesn’t happen,” Verhelst states bluntly. “I’m looking after children. I’m looking after senior parents and managing a household. I have a career. I have a part-time job on the side.”

The irony is that AI could actually help alleviate this time poverty, but women need time to learn how to use it effectively. It’s a Catch-22 that keeps women perpetually behind the curve, watching as male colleagues who started experimenting early become the go-to AI experts in their firms.

When Products Aren’t Built With Women in Mind

The consequences of women’s delayed AI adoption extend beyond individual careers. They’re shaping the very DNA of the technology that will define our profession’s future.

The Apple Health app story is an example of what happens when technology evolves without diverse input. In 2014, Apple’s revolutionary health tracking app monitored everything imaginable, yet somehow missed that 50% of the population experiences menstrual cycles, an aspect of women’s health that affects heart rate, body temperature, and breathing patterns throughout the month.

“No matter who you are as a woman, no matter what phase of life you are in, our whole rhythm revolves around the 28-ish day cycle,” Verhelst explains. Without this critical data point, the app sent false alarms about potential health issues while missing actual problems. Women worried unnecessarily about elevated heart rates that were actually normal for their cycle phase. It took Apple an entire year to correct this oversight.

This pattern repeats across industries. McClelland shares her own revelation about automotive safety: “I used to date an engineer who designed seat belts for cars. He explained to me that for many, many years, they only had male models.” The very devices meant to save lives in vehicle accidents were tested exclusively on male bodies, leaving women—particularly petite women—vulnerable to injuries that could have been prevented with proper testing.

The same types of oversights are happening right now with AI in accounting. “ChatGPT and other AI tools are built off of user input,” Verhelst warns. “If most of the users are men or the earliest adopters are men, then it’s being trained on and continues to evolve on how males use the platform versus how women will use the platform.”

Every prompt, every interaction, every piece of feedback shapes how these tools develop. When women don’t participate in that early development phase, the tools optimize for male communication patterns, work styles, and problem-solving approaches. The technology literally learns to speak a language that may not resonate with how women naturally interact with technology.

“AI is not a fleeting technology,” Verhelst emphasizes. Unlike temporary disruptions like Covid-19, AI is fundamentally shifting how accounting work gets done. The patterns being established now will shape the profession for decades.

Telka’s reaction during Twyla’s WAVE Conference presentation captured the urgency perfectly: “That really blew my mind. Because we tend to be later adopters, these tools we’re using are being built without our input.” She realized something as adaptable as ChatGPT, which changes based on user inputs, could evolve into something fundamentally misaligned with how women work.

Bringing Your Folding Chair: Practical Strategies for Women in AI

Despite the barriers, women have unique strengths that position them for AI success if they can reframe their approach and find the right support.

“Women need to pull up their seat at the table. And if that seat’s not there, you just bring your folding chair,” Verhelst declares, offering both a rallying cry and a practical philosophy for women ready to claim their place in the AI revolution.

The first step is recognizing an advantage many women don’t realize they possess. Ashley Francis, a recognized AI innovator in the accounting space, points out that women are actually better positioned to excel with AI than their male counterparts because women tend to have stronger language and communication skills.

Verhelst confirms this. “The number one roadblock to not getting what you need out of AI is poor communication.” Since women generally excel at thorough, nuanced communication, they’re naturally equipped to craft the detailed prompts that make AI tools work effectively.

Instead of diving headfirst into complex automations, Verhelst advocates for a pain-point-first approach. “Take some steps back to recognize what it is you want from AI today. Start with a pain point you experience. How can you leverage AI to solve for that pain point?”

Community learning is perhaps the most powerful accelerator for women’s AI adoption. Verhelst discovered a TikTok creator who opened a Slack channel specifically for female founders and entrepreneurs to share AI experiments (both successes and failures) in a supportive environment. “With women we can be a bit more vulnerable,” Verhelst explains. 

The practical applications Verhelst shares do away with the myth that AI requires extensive technical knowledge. Her “restaurant flex” perfectly illustrates playful exploration. She takes photos of menus and asks ChatGPT which wine is driest, which meal fits her dietary goals, and even requests recipes to recreate favorite dishes at home. “It’s embracing AI for things that aren’t just work,” she explains.

For professional applications, meeting transcription tools have become game-changers. Tools like Fathom, Otter.ai, Read.ai, and upcoming Karbon integrations with Vinyl and Abacor allow women to fully engage in conversations without worrying about note-taking. “Meeting transcripts have certainly changed my life,” Verhelst shares. Telka agrees emphatically, “I cannot take notes and focus.”

Women also use AI to handle emotional labor that often goes unrecognized. Verhelst describes how women upload screenshots of ambiguous emails, asking AI to decipher tone and suggest responses. “That saves a lot of headache and sleepless nights in some cases,” she notes.

Perhaps most importantly, Verhelst rejects the “do more with AI” messaging that dominates tech marketing. “I don’t want to do more. I already do a lot. I want time back to do what I want with it, not more tasks.” She shares how AI helps her handle overwhelming projects, like reformatting documents based on meeting transcripts. “That task would feel incredibly daunting and very tedious if it wasn’t for AI.”

There’s also liberation in accepting that expertise is impossible in this rapidly evolving field. “I don’t believe there are experts in AI,” Verhelst insists, even about recognized leaders like Chad Davis, Jason Staats, and Ashley Francis. “They can’t be. It’s moving too quickly.” If no one can be an expert, then everyone is learning together, and starting later doesn’t mean permanent disadvantage.

Some firms are already seeing creative applications. One TB Academy participant created a custom GPT that sits on their website, allowing clients to ask questions as a first stop before contacting the firm directly. These innovations come from experimentation, not expertise.

The Future We Choose to Build

The gender gap in AI adoption isn’t a personal failing. It’s a systemic challenge rooted in time constraints, societal expectations, and technology designed without our input. But there’s hope in Verhelst’s message.

No one is truly an expert in this rapidly evolving field, which means the playing field is more level than it appears. Women’s natural communication strengths align perfectly with what AI needs to function well. And participation doesn’t require perfection, but curiosity and small experiments.

Telka closed the episode with a quote from Sheryl Sandberg: “No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential. This is especially true of science and technology, where women with a surplus of talent still face a deficit of opportunity.”

The path forward is about bringing our unique perspectives to tools that desperately need diverse input. Every prompt from a woman teaches these systems something new about how half the profession thinks, communicates, and solves problems.

“Even listening to this podcast tells me you’re not behind,” Verhelst reassures. “It tells me you’re curious, you’re engaged, and you want to learn.”

Listen to this transformative episode of She Counts to discover how you can overcome the barriers holding you back from AI adoption. Learn more about Verhelst’s work at TB Academy (tbacademy.ai) or connect with her on LinkedIn. And check out Tam Nguyen’s free AI prompts at Tech with Tam for an easy way to get started.

The future of our profession is being written right now, with or without us. Will we let it be designed without us, or will we grab our folding chairs and help build a future that works for everyone?