Questian Telka

What Losing Your Best Bookkeeper Reveals About How You Price Yourself

Earmark Team · June 1, 2026 ·

Alicia Katz Pollock, founder of Royalwise, published author, and host of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, spent two years training a bookkeeper named Brenda. It started as a coaching relationship, but ended up with Brenda earning $10,000 a month and giving notice because she’d outgrown Alicia’s “tiny little clients.”

That’s absolutely a success story. But when Alicia shared this story with Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland on a special crossover episode between The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast and She Counts, they heard something Alicia hadn’t noticed.

“Oh my God, I’m undervaluing myself,” Alicia admitted. “But it wasn’t part of my narrative, and I wasn’t thinking about it that way at all.”

That moment of recognition became the foundation for a brutally honest conversation. Three experienced professionals with decades of combined expertise discovered they all struggle with the same thing: chronically underpricing themselves. As a result, Alicia decided to build a paid bookkeeper incubator that turns her expertise into a scalable training model.

The episode dug into the invisible forces that cap the growth of technically brilliant professionals who can untangle any set of books but can’t bring themselves to charge what that skill is worth. As Alicia put it, “The ability to expand really happens when you step into your own worth.”

When Your Best Employee Outgrows You

Brenda’s journey from a coaching client to a $10,000-a-month earner unfolded gradually over two years. She asked insightful questions during Alicia’s coaching sessions. Then she began handling Alicia’s smaller bookkeeping clients. She bought a few personal finance accounts from Alicia’s book of business. She landed her own clients. Finally, a church hired her for $4,000 a month.

“Hey, Alicia, I need to give you notice,” Brenda said. “I can’t do your tiny little clients anymore.”

Alicia’s first reaction was panic. “What am I going to do now? Am I going to take these back and do them myself? Am I going to sell off my book of business?”

Nancy, who’s run a Chicago CPA firm for 25 years, had her own parallel story. Her first employee left without warning to start a competing firm after Nancy trained her from scratch. “I taught her everything she knew,” Nancy said. “And she didn’t tell me that’s what she was doing.”

When Nancy shared her frustration with Hector Garcia, he offered another perspective: “Yeah, but what if you don’t teach them everything they need to know and they stay?”

Questian, founder of a fractional CFO firm focused on nonprofits, cut through the emotion. “When that takes place, it forces us to realize the value of what we’ve built.”

That’s the mirror moment. When someone you’ve trained walks away making more than you charged for the same work, it stops being a staffing problem. It becomes a pricing problem.

Rather than shrinking after Brenda’s departure, Alicia asked herself, “If it worked for Brenda, can I repeat the success? If it works for one person, can I scale it?”

Why We Undervalue Ourselves

When Questian asked why technically excellent bookkeepers undervalue themselves, Alicia’s answer was immediate: “Human beings are wired for insecurity.”

Nancy wanted that line as a promotional clip. But the conversation identified three specific patterns that keep even accomplished accounting professionals from charging what they should.

Poverty consciousness hits hard

When Alicia calculated her incubator program’s value at roughly $19,000 a year, her first thought was “Who the heck is going to pay $19,000 to be part of this?” The discomfort was physical. “Everybody wants to spend a minimum amount of money,” she said. She worried about being seen as greedy.

She’s not alone. Nancy’s husband jokes she’ll eventually come home with a live chicken from bartering with clients who can’t pay. Then one client actually started raising backyard chickens and gave them eggs. Alicia’s husband trades Apple training for eggs, too. Someone recently told Questian she “runs her business like a nonprofit.”

“It’s not entirely untrue,” she admits.

Helper mentality runs deep

When your identity centers on serving others, asking for significant money feels wrong. Alicia genuinely worried that some clients would only do bookkeeping if she kept prices at rock-bottom levels. Nancy confessed she hasn’t embraced value pricing “at all.” The instinct to help can override business sense.

The expertise blind spot might be worst

Nancy explained it perfectly. “Oh yeah, I know how to do that. It only takes me ten minutes.” When years of expertise compress complex tasks into quick execution, experts discount the outcome’s value because the effort felt minimal. But clients aren’t paying for your ten minutes. They’re paying for the decade that made ten minutes possible.

Reading Blair Enns’s book The Four Conversations at Hector Garcia’s Reframe conference, Alicia encountered the expert’s mantra: “I am the expert. I am the prize. I am on a mission to help. I can only do that if you let me lead. I accept that not all will follow.”

“My value is not me being able to untangle complicated books,” Alicia realized. “That’s what I do. And it has value, but that’s not my value.” Her real value includes a master’s in teaching, two decades of QuickBooks expertise, practice management knowledge, and industry relationships so deep she can text Intuit product managers directly.

Nancy connected this to value pricing. “When everything depends on you and your hands and your knowledge, your time fills up, and there’s a cap. But when you multiply your expertise through others, your impact expands.”

Building the Incubator

Alicia did something most business owners wouldn’t dare. She asked her community whether her idea was any good.

At a Royalwise OWLS membership meeting, with Brenda present to tell her own story, Alicia asked, “Is this a good idea or a stupid idea?” The response was immediate. Members wanted hands-on experience with real clients because “every single one is different.”

The training model follows a deliberate progression. In month one, Alicia does the bookkeeping while interns watch. In month two and beyond, interns do the bookkeeping while Alicia talks them through it. By month five or six, they work independently, with Alicia only reviewing.

But the incubator goes beyond bookkeeping mechanics. She’s enrolling interns in Mariette Martinez’s accounting lifecycle course. She set up a roundtable with business coach Richard Roppa-Roberts without Alicia present so interns have a safe space for support or, as Alicia put it, “a grievance panel if it’s needed.” Everyone takes her hands-on QuickBooks training course built from her published textbook.

The financial structure makes it work for everyone. Interns earn 60% of client fees as salaried employees. Her lawyer insisted on employee classification, which meant Alicia unexpectedly doubled her company’s size and had to navigate employment registrations across multiple states. “Some of them were like twice as much,” she said about certain states’ requirements. “But for me, that’s exciting because I’m learning something new.”

She secured sponsorship from Double and converted it entirely into scholarships. She offered payment tiers and prorated fees for existing members.

The pricing felt right when she considered Brenda’s trajectory. If working with Alicia can lead to $10,000 in monthly income, then $19,000 annually is a clear investment.

Behind the incubator sits strategy. With 10 to 15 years until retirement, Alicia wants something she can sell. “Right now, Royalwise is based on Jamie and me. We are the product. But that’s not something you can sell.”

She’s also thinking about the profession. With outsourcing and AI reducing opportunities for US-based bookkeepers, the incubator invests in domestic talent. “We need to have talented people here.”

This is explicitly a pilot program. “We are building this together,” she told her cohort. Her exit strategy is still up in the air. It might continue with new cohorts, become permanent staff, or scale differently.

Questian, navigating her own business transformation, offered the episode’s emotional core. “I’m on the right track because I am absolutely terrified.”

Nancy pushed back against advice to “not be afraid.” Fear is human. Your brain is protecting you. The answer is to act anyway. “Be afraid,” Nancy said. “And do it anyway.”

You Get What You Have the Courage to Ask For

Three successful women in accounting discovered (again) that even people others admire struggle with insecurities. Alicia didn’t realize she was undervaluing herself until Questian and Nancy reflected her story back to her. Nancy still catches herself working for free. Questian is navigating changes she’s not ready to name publicly.

None have figured it out. All are moving forward anyway.

Here’s what their conversation teaches us:

Your best employee leaving is data, not a disaster. When someone you’ve trained outgrows your practice, it reveals what you’ve built and whether you’re pricing accordingly.
Technical mastery isn’t business authority. Knowing QuickBooks doesn’t mean you know how to price services or lead others. Those require separate skills, community, and practice.
Undervaluation has specific causes. Poverty consciousness, helper mentality, and the expertise blind spot are patterns, not flaws. You can interrupt patterns once you see them.
Scaling expertise multiplies impact. Training others creates value for clients, team members, the profession, and yourself.
Fear is a compass, not a stop sign. If the next step terrifies you, you’re probably headed in the right direction.

The accounting profession faces change. Outsourcing and AI are reshaping US-based bookkeeping. Professionals investing in domestic talent, including Alicia’s incubator, are investing in the industry’s future.

But these breakthroughs didn’t happen alone. Every pivot came from honesty about fears, mistakes, or unknowns. Community and vulnerability are business strategies.

The episode closed with Oprah Winfrey’s quote, “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”

So ask. Ask for fees reflecting your expertise. Ask your community about your ideas. Ask for help building what you can’t build alone.

Listen to the full episode and share your own undervaluation story in the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast LinkedIn group. When you undervalued yourself, what helped you move past it?

If you’re thinking “who would pay me for what I know,” you’re in good company. Three experts had the same thought, caught themselves, and chose to charge anyway.

Alicia Katz Pollock’s Royalwise OWLS (On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions) is the industry’s premier portal for top-notch QuickBooks Online training with CPE for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and small business owners. Visit Royalwise OWLS, where learning QBO is a HOOT!

What Happens When Your Best Employee Outgrows You?

Earmark Team · May 31, 2026 ·

Alicia Katz Pollock teaches thousands of accounting professionals how to use QuickBooks. She’s built a training empire at Royalwise, published textbooks, and earned the unofficial title of “QuickBooks Queen.” So when she joined the hosts of She Counts for a special crossover episode, she thought she knew exactly what story she was telling.

She was wrong.

“Oh my God, I’m undervaluing myself,” Alicia said after hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland reflected what they heard. “It wasn’t part of my narrative. And I wasn’t thinking about it that way at all.”

This crossover episode brings together She Counts and the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast for a conversation that digs into why technically brilliant bookkeepers chronically sell themselves short, and what it takes to finally stop.

When Success Becomes a Mirror

Alicia’s story starts with a bookkeeper she calls Brenda. Brenda was a coaching client in Alicia’s Royalwise On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions (OWLS) program who had the quality Alicia prizes most: curiosity.

“I could tell she was thinking about the material,” Alicia explained. “Even if she didn’t know what to do, she knew there was something that needed to be done.”

At the time, Alicia was running a small bookkeeping practice alongside her training business. She had about 30 clients, mostly micro businesses, solopreneurs, and therapists. They’re the kind of clients who say, “I don’t need a bookkeeper” or “I can’t afford a bookkeeper,” even though they really need someone to handle monthly reconciliations.

So Alicia brought Brenda on to help. For two years, they developed systems together: Slack communication, technology processes and review protocols. Brenda got better and better. Then she started growing beyond Alicia’s small clients. She bought a couple of Alicia’s personal-books clients that didn’t fit the Royalwise model. She picked up her own $400-a-month client, then a $1,000-a-month client. Finally, a church hired her for $4,000 a month for bookkeeping and administration.

“All of a sudden, she found herself making $10,000 a month,” Alicia said. “And she’s like, ‘Hey, Alicia, I need to give you notice. I can’t do your tiny little clients anymore.'”

Nancy’s reaction captured what everyone listening probably felt. “Two completely opposing feelings at the same time. On the one hand, a huge freaking success story. On the other hand, you taught her everything she knows, and now she’s leaving.”

This wasn’t abstract for Nancy. Her own long-time employee of eight years gave notice just two days before recording. “I feel left behind. I feel trapped,” Nancy admitted.

But then Nancy shared wisdom from Hector Garcia that helped her reframe the problem. When she complained about training someone who left, Hector responded: “Yeah, but what if you don’t teach them everything they need to know and they stay?”

That’s the real mirror moment. As Questian observed, “It forces us to realize the value of what we’ve built.”

From Loss to Expansion

Faced with losing Brenda, Alicia had safe options. She could take the clients back herself, sell the book of business, or drop bookkeeping entirely. She chose none of them.

“If it worked for Brenda, can I repeat the success?” she asked herself. “Can I scale it?”

Showing remarkable vulnerability, Alicia went to her Royalwise OWLS members (the people who pay her for coaching). She asked point-blank, “Is this a good idea or is this a stupid idea?” Brenda was actually there to tell her own story.

The response was enthusiastic. Members said things like “I would love to study under you” and “I would love hands-on experience in real bookkeeping scenarios because every single one is different.”

So Alicia built something ambitious. The incubator model works like this: First, trainees watch while she does the bookkeeping. Then they do it while she talks them through it. After five or six months, they work independently while she reviews.

Beyond bookkeeping, the program includes:

Mariette Martinez’s accounting lifecycle course (because knowing QuickBooks isn’t the same as running a practice)
Richard Roppa-Roberts Roundtable Labs for peer support
Alicia’s intensive hands-on QuickBooks training
A grievance space where trainees can discuss problems without Alicia present

“I love that you created a space for grievances,” Questian said.

The $19,000 Question

When Alicia calculated what all these components would cost if purchased separately, the number came to roughly $19,000 per year.

“Who the heck is going to pay $19,000 to be part of this?” was her first thought.

Questian pushed, “How did it make you feel at that number?”

“I was distinctly uncomfortable with asking anybody for that,” Alicia admitted.

Nancy dug deeper. Was it fear of being seen as greedy? Alicia identified multiple layers, including poverty consciousness, a desire not to price anyone out, and the tension between the need for fair compensation and the need to keep opportunities accessible.

But the trainees are paid employees earning 60% of client fees for their work. When Alicia’s lawyer said they had to be employees rather than contractors, she suddenly found herself hiring five part-time salaried employees, effectively doubling her company overnight.

She also secured sponsorship from Dext to create scholarships, offered payment plans with discounts, and gave credits to existing members. People signed up across all payment options.

What ultimately justified the price was Brenda’s success. “The demonstrated outcome of working with me is somebody who is pulling in $10,000 a month,” Alicia reasoned. “$19,000 a year is a valuable investment to be able to get to that place.”

Why We Can’t See Our Own Worth

A notable pattern emerged during this conversation: None of the hosts could see their own blind spots without help.

Alicia didn’t recognize her burnout until hearing a She Counts episode. She didn’t see her undervaluation until Questian pointed it out. Nancy admitted she’d still be doing every webinar for free if Questian hadn’t pushed her to charge. And someone recently told Questian she runs her business like a nonprofit.

“Human beings are wired for insecurity,” Alicia said simply.

“You can look at the QuickBooks Queen herself right here struggling with undervaluing herself,” Nancy said, putting the conversation in perspective. “To me, that says I’m not alone.”

The conversation also brought up a critical distinction. Technical mastery doesn’t equal business leadership. As Nancy said, “Technical mastery of something doesn’t prepare us for stepping into authority and leadership.”

Alicia drew the parallel. “People think that because they know how to use QuickBooks, they know how to do bookkeeping. They’re not the same.”

Do It Anyway

What makes this story powerful is that Alicia is building her pilot program publicly, in real-time, with complete transparency about not having all the answers.

“I got the idea two months ago,” she said. “Asked my folks six weeks ago. Got the yeses and have been actively putting it in place.”

She doesn’t yet know whether there will be a new cohort next year or whether trainees will become permanent staff or become trainers themselves. “I don’t know what next year is going to hold,” Alicia said.

This level of public uncertainty would terrify most people. But as Questian shared about her own business transition, “I’m on the right track because I am absolutely terrified.”

Nancy pushed back against toxic positivity. “Don’t tell somebody not to be afraid. Of course we are afraid. Our brains are trying to protect us.” The point isn’t to eliminate fear. It’s to act despite it.

“The ability to expand really happens when you step into your own worth,” Alicia said, connecting every thread.

Your Turn to Look in the Mirror

This conversation between three accomplished women in accounting proves we all have blind spots about our value, and we need community to see them clearly.

Alicia’s story shows that when someone you’ve trained outgrows you, it’s not a failure; it’s proof of the value you create. The question is, are you capturing the value you clearly know how to build?

Listen to the full episode to hear all the vulnerability, specific numbers, and moments where the hosts surprised themselves with their own revelations.

Then ask yourself: What’s an example of when you’ve undervalued yourself, and how did you move past it? Share your answer on the She Counts LinkedIn page or in the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast LinkedIn group to keep this conversation going.

Because if the QuickBooks Queen can have this blind spot, you’re allowed to have yours too. The difference is what you do once someone helps you see it.

Grieving, Relieved, Scared, and Strong All at Once: None of That Has to Cancel the Other Out

Earmark Team · May 15, 2026 ·

Imagine you just finished reading 31 pages of divorce paperwork. Your hands are shaking. Then a package arrives. It’s a gold star chart, the kind you got in elementary school, sent by your podcast co-host and friend. You stick a gold star next to “getting through it” on your to-do list, and cry because you’re happy and sad at the same time.

That moment kicked off the Season 3 premiere of the She Counts podcast. Co-hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka had a raw conversation, with Questian opening up about navigating divorce while running her nonprofit-focused accounting firm, raising kids, speaking at conferences, and watching her client base lose government funding all at once.

The thing about divorce is it doesn’t wait for a convenient time. It crashes into tax deadlines, client crises, and keynote presentations. The women navigating it don’t need permission to feel relieved and devastated in the same breath. They need radical acceptance, a practical framework for stopping the fight against reality so they can redirect that energy toward the decisions that actually matter.

What Radical Acceptance Really Means (And Why Your “It Is What It Is” Mug Might Be Right)

Nancy learned this lesson from a mug.

Years ago, while doing consulting work, she constantly tried to rewrite the past. “If only this had happened, then we wouldn’t be dealing with this.” The company’s COO was blunt, “Dude, it is what it is. Let it go.” She eventually bought Nancy a mug with those words printed in big letters. It became one of Nancy’s favorite possessions and a simple summary of a concept that sounds academic until you desperately need it.

Radical acceptance comes from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). “Dialectical” means acting through opposing forces. Two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. The framework doesn’t ask you to like your situation or pretend pain isn’t real. It asks you to stop burning energy arguing with reality so that pain doesn’t turn into prolonged suffering.

“You can choose something and still grieve it,” Questian explained early in the episode. “Relief and struggle can sit at the same table and neither one cancels the other out.”

Nancy tested this with an exercise therapists use regularly. She asked Questian, “What is something you keep wishing were different?”

Questian’s answer came fast. She wishes she’d chosen a partner who fit her better. She was young, didn’t fully understand herself, and after 13 years of marriage, she knows her ex is a good person, just not her person. The “what ifs” circle endlessly.

But Nancy pressed, “You can’t go back in time. What changes when you stop arguing with that reality?”

“It leads you to acceptance,” Questian said, “which ultimately gives me a lot more peace.” Then the crucial follow-up, “What can I do?”

That shift from fighting what happened to focusing on what’s possible transforms radical acceptance from therapy-speak into a tool for business, parenting, and survival.

When Professional Success and Personal Crisis Collide

Divorce doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For Questian, the paperwork was just one layer of challenges that had been building for over two years. North Carolina requires an excessively long separation period before divorce proceedings can begin, prolonging the emotional and logistical limbo.

The financial fear hit first. “When you have a partner, if one of you is having a tough time professionally or financially, you have the other person to lean on,” Questian explained. Remove that buffer, and every business decision gets heavier. She became noticeably more risk-averse. Each client contract or slow-paying invoice shifted from uncomfortable to existential.

Then came the client crisis. Questian’s firm serves almost entirely nonprofits. During her separation, they started losing government funding. She was managing her own anxiety and emotionally supporting executive directors who were terminating employees and watching their missions shrink. “I feel like I should change my LinkedIn profile to nonprofit therapist,” she joked, but the exhaustion was real.

Through it all, she kept showing up on stages, looking polished in front of 500 people while privately unraveling. But she refuses to fake being fine. “Divorce rates are high,” she pointed out. “There must be so many other women in our industry going through this at the same time.”

She shared a moment from the Advisory Amplified tour. When Valerie Heckman asked how she was doing, instead of the automatic “I’m fine,” Questian told the truth: her stepfather, who was like a second father, was dying. Valerie responded with genuine warmth and compassion. That exchange reinforced the idea that honesty permits others to be honest too.

In an ironic twist, Questian’s professional success contributed to the divorce. Her partner wasn’t supportive of her conference speaking, travel, and growth. “When the person you’re doing life with isn’t cheering you on,” she said, trailing off. Nancy filled the silence by sharing how her partner, Mark, travels with her, helps with her neuropathy treatments, and celebrates every win. She offered it as heartbreak, not comparison, knowing how much that support matters and wanting every woman to have it.

Building While Everything’s Still Burning

Questian isn’t waiting for neat closure before rebuilding. She’s emotionally reconstructing while still deciding whether to divorce in the first place. “I don’t think it’s ever like, okay, I have to have this thing done before I start making plans for what comes next.”

Resilience built through years of practice gave her courage. “I will figure it out. I always do,” she said, half-joking that she should stick it on a Post-it above her computer.

Nancy offered her own mental escape hatch for feeling trapped: “I can burn it all down.” Knowing that option exists changes everything. “When I remind myself that’s an option, I realize, ‘oh wait, I want to stay here. I have agency. I’m choosing this.’”

The hosts referenced a Winston Churchill quote that Nancy’s former colleague kept above her desk: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Sometimes forward is the only direction that makes sense.

Nancy led Questian through one final exercise. For 30 seconds, she had Questian imagine the worst-case scenario. Revenue drops. Custody shifts. A soul-crushing job with zero flexibility. Just sit with the fear.

Then she asked, “Is it happening right now?”

No. It wasn’t.

That gap between imagined catastrophe and present reality is where distress tolerance lives. You can picture the worst and survive the picture. The actual worst case is probably unlikely. But even if it happened, you’d survive that, too.

The Practical Moves That Can’t Wait

The hosts distilled their conversation into guidance that comes from someone still in the middle, not reflecting from the other side:

Practice radical acceptance like exercise. It’s not a one-time revelation. Catch yourself in the “what if” spiral and redirect to “what now.”
Know your earning power and numbers. Always understand exactly where you stand financially. This gives you confidence to act and clarity about actual worst-case scenarios.
Don’t outsource your financial awareness. Women in accounting manage everyone else’s money. Make sure you’re managing your own with the same attention.
Build contingency plans before crisis hits. Think through “what would I do if…” while you’re calm, not panicking.
Lean on your network. Questian named her professional and personal connections as her number-one resource.
Take care of your body. Nancy quoted Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata. “Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.” Eat. Exercise. Rest. Connect. It’s infrastructure, not indulgence.

Questian delivered the line that anchored everything: “My marriage ended, but I didn’t. And neither will anyone else.”

Let It All Be True

This conversation is about being honest that sometimes you show up at conferences while reading custody paperwork on the plane. Sometimes you teach others while desperately needing to be taught. Sometimes you grieve and feel relieved in the same moment.

Nancy mentioned she’ll be teaching about vulnerability as strength at Scaling New Heights in June. This episode demonstrated there’s strength in admitting you don’t have it figured out, in asking for gold stars when you need them, and in saying “thank you” when someone calls you emotional because, yes, you are, and it’s your superpower.

As Questian said in closing, “I’m grieving. I’m relieved. I’m scared and I’m strong. And none of that cancels the other. I am just learning to let it all be true.”

If this resonated, whether you’re navigating divorce, rebuilding after upheaval, or holding opposing truths, listen to the full She Counts episode. Nancy and Questian walk through exercises you can do alongside them. Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is admit you’re human.

A Simple Practice to Help Professional Women Stop Feeling Like They Haven’t Accomplished Enough

Earmark Team · April 25, 2026 ·

When Questian Telka texted Nancy McClelland a photo of her newly framed diploma, she couldn’t help but undercut the moment. “I know it’s not a big deal because everyone has one,” she wrote, “but I never thought that I would actually do it.”

This degree took multiple attempts and years to complete. She’d been chasing the goal and finally crossed the finish line. And her first instinct was to shrink it.

Nancy wasn’t having it. “It’s actually a really big deal,” she fired back. “To say that it’s no big deal is silly. It’s a big deal because everyone else has one and you didn’t.”

That text exchange became the seed for the season two finale of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. Hosts Questian and Nancy brought on Valerie Heckman, accountant community manager at OnPay and keynote speaker, to dig into a concept that started as a single line in Valerie’s presentation at Scaling New Heights and became the thing everyone wanted to talk about afterward: the ta-da list.

Women in Accounting Are Wired to Overlook Their Own Wins

Valerie has spent nearly 15 years working alongside accountants and bookkeepers. She’s not an accountant, but she’s watched the profession long enough to spot patterns that run deep, especially among women.

“Very high internal standards,” Valerie said, naming it plainly. “The goal is getting things done, getting things done right, solving big problems, and staying on top of deadlines.”

That’s what makes accountants exceptional. “I think that can also come with a lot of focus on what’s left undone,” Valerie said, pointing out the shadow side. “Your brain is always managing, ‘Okay, we got this thing done, but now we’ve got to do this.’”

Nancy recognized herself immediately. “You just described my brain when I go to bed at night. I don’t go, ‘Oh, look at everything I did today.’ I go to bed and think, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t get this, that, and the other done today.'”

Then there’s the self-effacing reflex Valerie has heard countless times. “Oh, well, this is just what I do. I’m here to help. It was nothing.”

The problem compounds over time. When you only focus on what’s undone, Valerie explained, “We get very critical of ourselves. We start comparing ourselves to others. We start doubting ourselves.”

She spoke from personal experience. Before discovering the ta-da list, Valerie was burnt out, although she didn’t fully recognize it then. “I was on that constant hamster wheel of getting things done, but not necessarily feeling like I accomplished anything.” She’d write everything on post-it notes, stick them on the wall, and tear them down as she completed tasks. But every day brought more post-its. The wall was never clear.

“This is not a cure for burnout,” Valerie was careful to add. “I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna or suggest we’re fine if we just focus on the good things. Absolutely not.” But it can be one tool in your toolbox.

What is a Ta-Da List?

The concept came from Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where it was mentioned almost in passing. A ta-da list runs alongside your to-do list but captures the opposite: what you got done, plus anything that enriched your life.

“You still need to-do lists,” Valerie emphasized. “Sometimes people get confused. They think I’m saying don’t keep a to-do list. No.” The ta-da list is the complement that captures what the to-do list doesn’t show you.

To prove the concept works, Valerie asked the hosts to name three ta-da moments from the past week.

Nancy had one instantly. She’d repotted two plants in her garden. Questian struggled. “Three things? That’s, uh…” The difficulty was the point. When she finally landed on something, it was huge. She and Nancy received their trademark for She Counts that week, after nearly a year of applications and responses.

“Circle the one you’re most excited about,” Valerie instructed. Nancy deliberately chose the smallest, the plants. “Because the small things are the big things,” she explained.

Valerie validated the choice immediately. “That’s such a great example because it’s something you did for yourself. Those are the most important things to celebrate. You actually stopped the busyness of life and did something for your own enjoyment.”

For Valerie, keeping a ta-da list in her planner with pen and paper made things tangible. But she’s seen people use voice recordings, photos, or digital notes. The method matters less than consistency.

What shifted for her went beyond feeling better. She felt more grounded, more capable. She started recognizing effort, not just outcomes. But the most surprising discovery was what was missing. Personal goals she’d been announcing every January but never pursuing became impossible to ignore. Speaking on more stages was one of them, and the gap in her data pushed her toward that Scaling New Heights keynote.

The list isn’t just a nightly ritual either. “On a bad day, I can look back at the ta-da list and be like, I’ve been there before. I’ve done this before. I am capable.”

Nancy was floored. “So you’re not just making this list before you go to bed. You’re going back and looking at these lists when you’re having a bad day.”

That’s the resilience piece. It’s documented proof of your own competence, waiting for exactly when self-doubt shows up loudest.

The Magic of Sharing Your Ta-Da’s

The practice transforms when you let other people in on it.

An accountant named Nancy Jacobson approached Valerie at an event with a story that made her tear up. Jacobson started doing ta-da moments with her son at dinnertime. “I ask my son about his day and what his ta-da moments are. Then I share mine and we talk about it as a family. It’s made us closer.”

There’s also Ali Szymanski’s story. Nancy’s right-hand woman at The Dancing Accountant emailed Nancy when she completed her first wage reconciliation. “I know this is silly, but…” she’d written. It wasn’t silly. It was a ta-da moment worth celebrating.

Valerie suggested teams open meetings by asking, “What’s one good thing that happened in the last week?” One group she worked with realized they always jumped straight into tasks, everyone already overwhelmed before the first agenda item.

The conversation turned to something that made everyone laugh: gold stars. “We grew up being very motivated by gold stars and scratch-and-sniff stickers,” Valerie said. We don’t have to stop giving them to ourselves just because we’re grown ups.

Nancy had proof this works. During a weight loss journey, she used an actual sticker chart with foil stars. Her husband Mark offered to make an Excel version. She told him that was nice, but she needed real stars on real paper. She lost 20 pounds and kept most of it off for over a decade.

But celebration doesn’t mean ignoring struggle. “Gratitude doesn’t have to cancel out your struggle,” Nancy said. “It doesn’t mean you are not also struggling.” You can be drowning in a software transition during tax season and celebrate that someone helped you at 10 p.m. on Zoom. You can be exhausted and notice that your repotted plants look beautiful.

Your Ta-Da List Starts Tonight

Valerie’s keynote slogan crystallized the whole concept: “Less to-do’s, more ta-da’s.”

If your days are so packed with tasks that there’s no room for anything worth celebrating, something needs to come off the list. As Valerie put it, “Mick Jagger does not tune his own guitars. What are the things that only I can do?”

Here’s what you can do starting today:

Write down three things tonight. What did you accomplish or what enriched your life today? If you can only think of one, that’s fine. The difficulty means you need this.
Circle the smallest one. The little things are the big things, whether that’s repotting plants, calling difficult clients, or making it to the airport on time.
Keep old lists. On bad days, they’re proof of your competence.
Notice what’s missing. The gaps reveal goals you keep announcing but never pursue.
Share your ta-da’s. Text a friend. Open team meetings with wins. Say names out loud when people help you.
Make room for more. Eliminate, automate, delegate. Create space for things worth celebrating.

For women in a profession that measures value in accuracy and completed tasks, learning to see (and say out loud) what’s going right is an act of resistance against the voice that says “it’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. Frame the diploma. Put the gold star on the chart. Ta-da!

Listen to the full episode to hear Valerie’s live exercise and the Marge Piercy poem that closed the show. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share something you celebrate that might seem silly to others.

Why Women in Accounting Keep Losing Credit for Their Own Ideas

Earmark Team · April 13, 2026 ·

Nancy McClelland is sitting at her desk when a WhatsApp message lights up her phone. It’s a screenshot from her friend Dymond with a simple question, “Aren’t those your slides?”

They are. A live QB Power Hour session was using the distinctive slide deck Nancy used for three-plus years of 1099 presentations, the one she built, refined season after season, and shared with co-presenters last year. She wasn’t even invited to the session. She later learned presenters were making edits to her slides even five minutes before going live.

“The heat just came up to my head and my face, and it felt like it exploded out the top of my head,” Nancy says, describing her physical reaction on a recent episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting she co-hosts with Questian Telka. “I got a little shaky and I was just furious.”

This moment became the catalyst for a candid discussion of how women’s intellectual work gets absorbed, reused, and reattributed in the accounting profession, and what if anything we can do about it.

When Credit Disappears, So Does Opportunity

When your slides show up in someone else’s presentation or someone repeats your idea in a meeting as if it were their own, it’s not just about bruised feelings. It’s a systematic pattern affecting women’s advancement in accounting.

“When credit is taken away, it doesn’t just affect that one person,” Nancy explains. “If we don’t enforce these boundaries, it affects all of us.”

The impact goes beyond individual harm. As Questian points out, it “prevents diversity of thought” because when people repeatedly lose credit for their work, they stop creating and contributing. The entire profession loses out on those perspectives.

Nancy isn’t early in her career or insecure. She’s a recognized expert in 1099 compliance who’s been writing for MSN and speaking on the topic for four years. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. And it does, repeatedly, from barely perceptible “borrowing” to blatant theft.

The Full Spectrum of “Borrowed” Ideas

Credit theft ranges from literally reusing your slide deck to repeating your idea without reference, seconds after you said it in a meeting. Understanding that spectrum matters because most of the harm lives in the gray areas where it’s hardest to call out.

Nancy’s QB Power Hour story falls at the blatant end. Last year, she co-hosted an episode with Rich Kane, volunteering her existing deck for the session. This year, the same session ran with her slides but without her. When Jennifer Dymond and Sharrin Fuller recognized the slides, they called it out in the live chat. Nancy fired off an email, deliberately replying to the original thread where she’d shared the deck to make the paper trail unmistakable.

Dan DeLong, the host, responded quickly and apologetically. He said it hadn’t occurred to him that reusing the slides was a problem. He’d just grabbed last year’s deck and asked Rich to update it.

“I named plagiarism and he responded with process failure,” Nancy says. That gap between how women name harm and how it gets institutionally reframed is crucial. As Questian points out, “You can plagiarize work without it being intentional.”

But this wasn’t Nancy’s first experience with credit theft. Earlier in her speaking career, she applied to present at the National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives conference. To add “credibility,” they paired her with their head of education as co-presenter.

Nancy created everything, including slides, research, citations, and examples. When presentation day arrived, her co-presenter had her sit at a table beside the podium while he stood at the podium for the entire session. At one point, he gestured to the screen and said, “When I prepared this slide…”

“I just swung toward him and looked up and my jaw dropped,” Nancy recalls. She wanted to correct the record but wondered, “How much of this do I say out-loud? I don’t know how it’s gonna reflect on me.”

The session was popular enough to warrant a journal article, but only if Nancy listed him as co-author. She refused, offering instead to properly cite his prior article that inspired her research. The publication was denied entirely.

“The lesson I took away from that is you can have exposure or you can have ownership, but you can’t have both,” Nancy says.

Questian’s experiences with credit theft have been on the subtler end of the spectrum. She regularly shares ideas in meetings only to have someone repeat them moments later and receive the credit. “It’s happened to me so much in my life that I’ve just gotten used to it,” she admits. Recently, her partner witnessed it happen multiple times in a single social setting and was stunned.

Then there are the gray areas. After She Counts launched, Questian noticed another female podcaster using specific language and ideas from their episodes. It happened at least three times, but rather than confront it, Questian stopped watching that person’s content. “I have this fear of calling out and hurting someone’s professional reputation,” she explains.

“When is it theft and when is it overlap?” Nancy asks. That’s the question at the center of most situations. The blatant cases are easy to identify, but most credit erosion happens where you know something is off but can’t quite prove it.

Why Credit Systematically Drifts Away from Women

If these were isolated incidents, the solution would be simple. But women often don’t receive credit for their ideas because of deeply embedded biases and hierarchies that operate even when everyone has good intentions.

Nancy discusses the Matilda effect, a term for the systematic under-crediting of women in science. The examples are staggering: Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallography was central to understanding DNA’s structure, but the Nobel Prize went to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars as a graduate student, but the Nobel went to her supervisor. Lise Meitner’s work was key to understanding nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“This kind of thing has been happening so much and for so long in science that they actually have a name for it,” Nancy explains.

In accounting, the angle is different but equally problematic. “So much of our work is process, systems, teaching, and translation,” Nancy notes. “Those kinds of things are generally more likely to be reused without attribution. They’re more likely to be absorbed rather than credited, even though they’re highly valuable for our profession.”

Higher-status individuals are disproportionately credited as sources of ideas, regardless of who introduced them. As Nancy explains, “Men are often assumed to be the owner of knowledge and women, the contributors.”

Questian adds another layer, referencing Vanessa Van Edwards’ research on competence versus warmth. “If you are perceived as too warm, you can then be perceived as less competent, even though you are often still highly competent,” she explains. People who are naturally collaborative are especially vulnerable. The very qualities that make you a great colleague make you easy to overlook.

There’s also source confusion. People remember ideas better than where they heard them. Nancy’s experience with Jason Staats illustrates this. She’d discussed her Ask a CPA community with him, specifically about bridging tensions between bookkeepers and tax professionals, and shared her community plans in a class he taught. Weeks later, he posted about the exact topic without attribution. When multiple people tagged Nancy in the comments and she emailed him, Jason explained he’d forgotten the connection.

The consequences are real. And women who claim their credit are evaluated more negatively than men exhibiting the same behavior. “I don’t want people to think I’m a bitch,” Nancy admits, “but that’s how I feel like I am viewed.”

The Power of Collective Action

What works most effectively to combat idea theft is having someone else see it and say something.

Dymond and Sharrin called out Nancy’s slides in the live chat. Multiple community members tagged Nancy when Jason posted about her topic. Nicole Davis reached out directly to address a perceived overlap. Her partner pointed out that Questian had just made the same point. In every case where things went right, it was collective action.

“When we speak up for each other, two things happen,” Nancy explains. “We make it safer for someone else to name harm, and we actually retrain our nervous systems to recognize that just because something is uncomfortable and we speak out about it, it doesn’t mean we’re overreacting.”

The hosts offer practical strategies:

Say names out loud. When discussing ideas, credit the source. For example, Nancy notes Debra Kilsheimer is the one who told her about the Matilda Effect.
Men have a specific role. When someone repeats an idea in a meeting, men can simply say, “That’s what Questian just told us.” It requires attention, not heroism.
Address it directly when it happens to you. Nancy emailed using the original thread where she’d shared her slides, making the trail clear. “We’ve gotta say these things out-loud because maybe there’s a misunderstanding,” she explains.
Speak up when you see it happening to others. Reduce someone else’s risk by lending your voice. Tag creators in comments. Mention names in chat.
Handle misunderstandings with grace. Nicole provides the model. She spoke up when she thought her work had been borrowed. Nancy explained the timeline, shared evidence, and Nicole graciously acknowledged the misunderstanding. They agreed to co-present on the topic later that year.

The episode closes with three essential questions:

Where are you sharing work that represents your expertise?
Who benefits when your name is removed?
What would change if you treated your ideas as assets instead of favors?

Your Name Belongs on Your Work

Credit theft in accounting isn’t about villains. It’s about a system where biases and expectations consistently funnel attribution away from women, even recognized experts, and even when people have good intentions.

The same number of women enter the accounting profession as men, but they don’t make Partner at the same rate. So the systematic erasure of women’s intellectual contributions isn’t minor. Every uncredited slide deck, repeated idea, or template passed around without attribution chips away at professional capital women need to advance.

Nancy closes with a quote from Virginia Woolf: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

In accounting, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Listen to the full episode of She Counts and share your own story on the She Counts LinkedIn page. Have you ever had your work passed off as someone else’s? The more we name it, the harder it becomes to ignore.