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Questian Telka

“I Don’t Deserve This” and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves During Awards Season

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Imagine finding out you’ve been nominated for one of the most prestigious recognition lists in your profession. Thousands of ProAdvisors across the globe, and someone thought you belonged among the best. But your first thought is, “I don’t deserve this. I’m not good enough. I don’t know enough.”

That was Questian Telka’s immediate reaction when she learned she’d been nominated for the Insightful Accountant Top 100 ProAdvisor list. And the kicker is, at that very moment, she was preparing to deliver a session on imposter syndrome at a major industry conference.

How do we know this? Because Nancy McClelland shared the actual WhatsApp text thread on Episode 29 of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. In this episode, Nancy is joined by guest co-host Melissa Miller Furgeson, stepping in for Questian. This topic is near and dear to Melissa’s heart, having applied for the Top 100 ProAdvisor list for five years before making it.

Together, Nancy and Melissa pull back the curtain on the messy, complicated emotions that swirl around professional awards. The desire. The dread. The jealousy. The shame about feeling envious. All of it, out in the open.

 

The tug-of-war between wanting recognition and dreading rejection

Let’s go back to that WhatsApp thread – it captures something many women in accounting feel but rarely say out-loud.

Questian’s first instinct after her nomination was not to tell anyone. “I am embarrassed even to share it because I know I won’t make the list,” she texted Nancy. She was already preparing her public disclaimer before celebrating the achievement.

Nancy admitted she wasn’t going to post about her nomination either. Then she saw a colleague share theirs and watched friends rally around them with congratulations. Nancy felt sad nobody was lifting her up before catching herself: “I hadn’t even given them the opportunity.”

Nancy’s reframe stopped the spiral. “Literally, not a single soul will see the final list of who wins and think, ‘Oh, of course Questian and Nancy didn’t win. I figured they wouldn’t.'” The fear of losing publicly is a movie playing in our own heads, not in public theaters.

What makes this fear even more frustrating is the enormous amount of work these applications require. As Nancy explained, most of them demand extensive documentation. The Insightful Accountant application requires you to track all your continuing education throughout the year, not just CPE. “It’s a huge amount of work when you’re applying,” Nancy said, “and it’s actually a huge amount of work throughout the course of the year.”

When the system fails you, you have to advocate for yourself

Both Nancy and Melissa experienced something that adds another layer to the vulnerability: system glitches that initially left them off finalist lists.

In 2024, Nancy discovered she wasn’t on the Top 100 ProAdvisor finalist list despite completing the grueling application. When she reached out to Insightful Accountant, their system showed she hadn’t submitted. Nancy knew better. She’d kept records of her answers because the application was “very difficult.” They added her name to the list, but at the bottom, out of alphabetical order, where fewer people would notice and be able to vote for her.

The same thing happened to Melissa in 2025. The system lost her application, but showed she’d spent significant time on it. They let her use points from her 2024 application, adding her name… also at the bottom of the list.

“I am really proud of both of us for being brave and following up,” Nancy said, “and finding out it was a system glitch rather than a failure on our part.”

This adds another dimension to the courage required: not just applying, but advocating for yourself when things go wrong.

The middle school energy nobody wants to admit

“You want recognition, but you fear rejection,” Nancy said, naming the tension directly. “You want visibility, but you fear judgment.” Then she compared the entire awards cycle to middle-school popularity dynamics.

Melissa said she’d literally discussed this exact parallel with her therapist that day.

Nancy’s philosophy is, “We don’t grow out of the people we were when we were younger. We just grow into a different version of that person.” The worry about belonging never fully disappears. Awards season dials it right back up.

Nancy illustrated this with a story about discovering Financial Cent’s Top 30 Accounting and Bookkeeping Firm Owners to Follow list. Her emotional journey included:

  1. Opening it, excited for recommendations
  2. Feeling proud seeing friends on it
  3. Realizing she wasn’t listed
  4. Spiraling into jealousy and shame
  5. Feeling shame about feeling jealous

She made herself breathe and refocus on gratitude. When she returned to finish reading, there she was at number 30. She’d spiraled through five emotions before finishing the article.

“Happy-jealous-proud should be a word,” Nancy suggested.

Even successes can trigger hesitation. Nancy was thrilled to make the Forbes Best-in-State list this year. It’s an award where you don’t even know you’re being considered until you win. But she’s been hesitant to share it because Forbes charges a fee to use its logo and name in promotional materials. “I’m kind of waiting to figure out how that works exactly before I tell people about it,” she admitted.

Breaking the shame spiral through honesty

Melissa was candid about jealousy. “It’s so real and natural and something I feel more often than I care to admit.”

She reframes her mindset by saying, “We want other people to do well,” Melissa said. “We love our colleagues and friends, but we also want a little bit for ourselves.”

Nancy’s therapist keeps it even simpler. When Nancy worries about being jealous, her therapist asks, “Do you want what they have?” When the answer is yes, “Well, that’s just a fact.”

No moral judgment. No character flaw. Just information.

The power of community courage

If these feelings are universal, the solution isn’t to eliminate them. It’s to act despite them, together.

Nancy organized nomination sessions for Ask a CPA members. People showed up thinking they were there to help others apply. The idea of applying themselves hadn’t crossed their minds.

Then one usually introverted and quiet member spoke up for the first time, to say, “I’m just gonna say this out-loud in case I’m not the only one. Does anybody else in here feel like an imposter?”

Every hand went up.

The group rallied. Members nominated one another, worked through applications together on mute during virtual study halls, and held one another accountable. As a result, 15 Ask a CPA members made the Top 100 finalists list.

Among them was Sandy Rehart, who’d been working in accounting for decades but never applied. Like Melissa years earlier, Sandy assumed “they weren’t talking about me.” Nancy got emotional describing Sandy’s joy at finally seeing her name on that list.

When the nomination matters more than the win

Nancy’s experience with the AICPA Global Women to Watch award proves this point. The hardest part was asking a colleague to nominate her, essentially saying out-loud, “I want this. Will you help me?”

When she posted about the nomination on LinkedIn, talking about the women who inspired her and what it meant personally, the response was overwhelming. But when she actually won, “practically nobody said anything.”

The vulnerability in sharing the journey resonated more than the achievement itself.

Understanding what awards really are makes sharing easier. “Awards are visibility events. They’re not objective truth,” Melissa observed. Vendors benefit every time you post about a nomination. That’s the business model. You’re not bragging, you’re participating.

Practical permission: Scripts for showing up

Nancy calls it “flexing the Ask muscle,” or pushing through fear to ask for what you want. Every time you do it, it gets a little easier.

As Melissa tells her adult kids, “What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t have it now. If you go for it and don’t get it, you’re in exactly the same place.”

For those ready to post but unsure how, here are suggested scripts from the episode:

  • “Look at all the incredible people on this list. What an honor to be included.”
  • Share that tooting your own horn is hard, and why you’re doing it anyway
  • Tell the personal story of why this award matters to you
  • Express gratitude by tagging people and vendors who made it possible
  • Frame it as paying it forward. “I want to be the example for others that someone was for me.”

Nancy teared up when Melissa said, “We are not rooting for each other to lose. We celebrate each other.”

Raise your hand. Someone behind you is watching.

The most important takeaway from this conversation is to show up for the awards process, even when you feel undeserving. It creates permission for others to show up, too.

As Nancy said in that original text thread, “If we don’t show up, then other people don’t feel like they have reason to show up, either.”

For women in accounting, especially in a profession that hasn’t always rewarded self-promotion, these conversations matter. Every woman who posts about her nomination, asks for a recommendation, or fills out an application after years of assuming “they’re not talking about me” is lighting the path for someone behind her.

Melissa closed the episode with a quote from Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space: “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination, and never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”

Listen to the full episode of She Counts to hear the complete text thread and the unfiltered emotion in Nancy’s and Melissa’s voices. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share: What’s an opportunity you’ve been too afraid to pursue, or a time you went for it anyway?

The shiny trophy is nice. But the courage to raise your hand is what actually changes things for you and for every woman watching who needs to see someone go first.

You Don’t Have to Feel Confident to Act With Authority. Here’s the Hack

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Picture a sixth-grader in the mid-1980s, standing at the edge of a school dumpster, working up the nerve to climb in. Cassie Divine had accidentally tossed her orthodontic retainer onto her lunch tray and into the trash. This $150 device might as well have cost a million dollars, in her household. Her mother insisted she  find it. So in she went, alongside the school janitor, digging through the garbage until she came up with the retainer in hand.

The retainer got sterilized, but her reputation didn’t. Word spread, and in an era when Garbage Pail Kids were having their pop-culture moment, a classmate landed on the nickname that followed her for years: “Trashy Cassie.” She was certain her life was over. She begged her mother to let her switch schools.

If that middle-school logic sounds familiar, you’re in good company. On this episode of She Counts, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland both admit they made the exact same plea to their own mothers. “Can I just change schools?” seemed, at the time, like a completely reasonable solution to an unbearable problem.

But this episode isn’t really about surviving middle school. It’s about what that scrappy, humiliated, dumpster-diving version of Cassie became, and how, three decades later, Cassie discovered she could summon her on demand.

From Dumpster to Boardroom: Meeting Your Alter Ego

Fast-forward thirty years from that dumpster. Cassie Divine is a former Intuit SVP who led QuickBooks for nearly two decades. But Cassie found herself in another impossible situation. She was leading an initiative where tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line. But her senior male colleague kept talking over her, dismissing her ideas, and twice called her boss to complain that she was being “too aggressive.”

“I remember driving home on my commute and thinking through like, what are my choices?” Cassie recalled. The adult version of “Can I switch schools?” had arrived.

Nancy and Questian immediately recognized the double standard. “With a man, it’s leadership and confidence,” Nancy pointed out. “But with a woman, it’s aggressive.” When they asked if either had met a woman who hadn’t faced this, the answer was unanimous: never.

Stuck in traffic and dread, Cassie thought about Trashy Cassie, the girl who climbed into that dumpster and survived the humiliation that followed. “She can deal with this,” Cassie realized. So she channeled that sixth-grader’s resilience long enough to text her colleague and set a clear boundary: “You can’t treat me like this. You can’t treat our team like this.”

“You don’t have to become someone tougher,” Cassie explained. “You remember that you already are her, and she’s available for you to be in this moment.”

The beauty of this approach is that you’re not pretending or manufacturing a new personality. You’re accessing real strength from your own history. When Cassie needed to advocate for a team member, she remembered being “the toughest mom you’ve ever seen” as she advocated for her daughter in a hospital room. That’s who she became in the meeting.

Building Your Catalog of Courage

The alter ego only works if you can summon it intentionally. That means building what Cassie calls a “catalog” of the times you’ve survived hard things.

“You’ve survived 100% of your hardest days,” Cassie said, borrowing a line from Peloton instructor Robin Arzon. Those survival stories can include advocating for someone in a hospital, surviving an illness, or even finding the right words to console a teammate who lost. Each memory is proof that you’ve already been the person who could handle whatever you’re facing now.

Nancy suggested turning this into a journaling exercise. Name your alter egos and write down their three strongest traits. What makes Trashy Cassie powerful? What about the version of you who comforts someone through loss? “Reject everybody else’s definitions for you,” Cassie advised, “and decide the ones that you are.”

The shift is profound. Instead of asking “Can I do this?” you ask “When have I already been the person who could?”

But we often believe you need to feel confident before you can act that way, and that trips up many ambitious women.

Confidence Is Something You Do, Not Something You Feel

“You’re not going to feel confident until you act that way,” Cassie said, cutting straight through one of the biggest myths about professional authority.

Nancy, drawing on cognitive behavioral therapy, explained the mechanics. Your thinking, feeling, and doing selves don’t need to align in order for you to take action. Her shorthand is “putting your yoga pants on.” You can dread the class, doubt you need it, and pull the pants on anyway as you head there. The action doesn’t wait for the feeling’s permission.

Cassie keeps the wisdom “Just act as if” on a Post-it note. The feeling follows the behavior, not the other way around.

For Questian, this revelation reframed her entire early career. “I looked up to women who were farther along and assumed they felt as confident as they appeared,” she admitted. “The idea that they might be projecting confidence they didn’t feel was a foreign concept.”

To trigger this shift on demand, all three women use specific cues. Cassie keeps a picture of a goldfish wearing a shark fin. It looks like a shark in the water, but it’s still just a goldfish underneath. It’s a good visual reminder.

Then there’s the music. Cassie maintains “imposter syndrome playlists” to hype her up beforehand, and one called “Victory Lap” loaded with ridiculous anthems like DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” for celebrating afterward. Nancy rediscovered Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” during a brutal tax season, hearing it as proof she’d survived before and would again.

Each time you act confidently and survive, you bank more evidence. The behavior gradually becomes genuine confidence. It’s a hack that builds on itself.

The Guardrails: Clarity Over Cruelty

With this kind of power comes the need for boundaries. Cassie is clear that “this isn’t permission to be unkind. This is permission to be clear.”

The alter ego is situational armor. It’s something you put on for a specific moment and take off when it’s done. If you feel yourself ramping up the “tough lady” too much, that’s your signal to recalibrate. The goal is always clarity, and you never want to lose alignment with your values.

Cassie’s most powerful reframe might be to lead with the outcome rather than the feeling. “So many times our feelings affect what we say and how we say it,” she explained. “If instead I’ve shifted to why it’s important to give this feedback or why it’s important to raise my prices, it sets the tone for everything.”

Her final guardrail, written on another Post-it, is “Talk less, say more.” She learned this after spending 15 minutes explaining her feelings to a difficult colleague and getting nowhere. In a similar situation some months later, she kept it simple. When he said “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, “I think you do,” and that was that. It was far more effective.

The group shared their favorite conversation-enders. After drafting 17 angry email responses to a jerk colleague, Cassie finally sent just one word: “Unsubscribe.” He read it exactly as intended (“I’m done with you”), and it led to their most productive conversation ever.

For accounting professionals, these tools apply directly to our daily challenges, including pricing conversations, scope creep, and difficult clients. The same playbook works whether we’re setting boundaries with a bully or holding our rates with a demanding client.

Permission to Be Powerful

What Cassie offers is permission to access the strength you’ve already proven. Her mission with Career Hack reflects her goal of helping more women gain power and use their voices more often. Not everyone needs to be a CEO, but learning to act with impact makes the profession better for everyone.

“Women don’t lack capability or intelligence or ambition or work ethic,” Cassie said. “But I do think we lack permission.”

The next time you face a hard conversation, a big project, or a room full of people who underestimate you, remember you don’t need to become someone new. You just need to remember who you’ve already been.

As Nancy put it, “When have I already been the person who can handle hard things?”

Listen to the full episode, and then join the conversation by following the She Counts LinkedIn podcast page and share your answer: When have you already been the person who can handle hard things?

What Women in Accounting Gain From Conferences Has Little to Do With CPE Credits

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Picture standing in a crowded expo hall, trying to reach a single vendor booth, but you can’t make it more than a few steps without someone pulling you into a hug. The problem gets so bad that a colleague appoints himself your personal handler, physically steering you through the crowd like a celebrity bodyguard.

That’s what conferences become when you’ve invested in relationships over the years, and it’s exactly what happened to Nancy McClelland at a recent conference when Tony Proctor had to escort her through the expo hall. On the other end of the spectrum, her She Counts podcast co-host Questian Telka once attended Intuit Connect with the goal of walking up to just one person and introducing herself without having a panic attack.

In their latest episode, Nancy and Questian dig into why professional conferences matter so much more than the CPE credits they offer, especially for women in accounting, tax, and bookkeeping. They’re even taking their own advice. She Counts recorded live at WAVESeattle this year, moderated by conference organizer Erin Pohan.

Why Conferences Matter Beyond the CPE Credits

Yes, you can earn CPE credits online. Yes, conferences are expensive. And yes, if you’re an introvert who works happily from home for days without seeing another human, the idea of walking into a ballroom full of strangers might sound terrifying.

But as Questian puts it, CPE is just “the baseline reason to be there.” Nancy earns more than double her required CPE every year, so that’s not why she keeps going back to conference after conference.

For Questian, an admitted introvert who can work alone for days, conferences offer conversations with people who truly understand what she’s all about. “It’s not like when you’re talking to your spouse or significant other, your family member, where it just completely goes over their head,” she explains.

Nancy frames the conference experience through a story from a favorite childhood book, Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood by Ellen Conford. A girl arrives at summer camp feeling completely out of place while everyone else runs around hugging old friends. Then a stranger runs up and hugs her – confiding, “Look, I know we don’t know each other. It’s okay. I was just feeling so left out.” The two start hugging other lost-looking kids, and soon the entire camp is connected.

“Conferences kind of remind me of that,” Nancy says. “I can’t necessarily promise somebody’s going to run up and hug you and pretend like they’re a long lost friend, but it’s a little bit like that.”

These relationships are professionally transformative. Questian met nonprofit expert Greg Bossen at her second Intuit Connect simply by walking up and saying, “Hi, I work with nonprofits. I heard you work with nonprofits.” She had no idea who he was. It still took her five minutes to work up the nerve. That conversation turned into shared clients, co-teaching opportunities, and an ongoing professional partnership.

Nancy met Katie Helle through a community post about the Digital CPA conference. Katie is now helping Nancy navigate her first season with ProConnect Tax. “You’ll meet people you’ll be friends with forever,” she says.

Why Women Need These Spaces Even More

Nancy believes strongly that building these relationships is “two, three, ten, twenty times more important for women than men.”

For women in accounting, conferences offer personal validation and visibility. You can watch another woman take the stage and think, ”I could do that too.”

“Confidence gets built in real time,” Nancy explains. “We get visible, we take up space. We imagine bigger possibilities for ourselves when we see other women.”

The relationships you build become your safety net when life gets complicated. When you’ve invested in real conference relationships, you have people to call when everything falls apart. That’s something a webinar simply can’t deliver.

Questian’s favorite conference moment captures this perfectly. At WAVE-Seattle last year, Jen Posner mentioned listening to a podcast by two women in accounting on her drive up. “Is it called She Counts?” Questian asked. It was. “That’s my and Nancy’s podcast.” Early in the show’s life, that moment proved their work was reaching people in meaningful ways.

Choosing the Right Conference for Your Goals

“The best conference isn’t universal,” Nancy emphasizes. What works brilliantly for one person might leave another feeling completely out of place.

Before registering for anything, ask yourself what you’re actually looking for:

  • Technical learning? Deep dives on tax approaches or software implementation
  • Networking? Meeting potential collaborators and referral partners
  • Inspiration? Keynotes that help you dream bigger
  • Visibility? Opportunities to speak and take up space
  • Tool discovery? Hands-on software evaluation in expo halls
  • Community connection? Women-focused events or niche gatherings

Nancy once sent her senior accountant to a conference with one mission: find the best project management software for their team. That trip led them to Double (formerly Keeper), which Nancy calls “transformational” for their organization.

Size and Format Matter

Not every conference needs to be massive. Local pop-ups and touring events offer accessible starting points. Erin created WAVE-Seattle because she was tired of traveling around the country and wanted something for women in the Pacific Northwest. Jason Staats takes his On Firms events on tour. The Bridging the Gap Road Show and Advisory Amplified travel city to city, offering lower-cost options.

For larger conferences, each has its own personality:

  • Scaling New Heights: Heavy on accounting technology with a massive expo hall
  • Intuit Connect: Essential for QBO-specific firms
  • Digital CPA: Carefully curated vendors in shared social spaces for deeper conversations
  • Bridging the Gap: Focus on sustainable firms with an inclusive, come-as-you-are culture

Don’t overlook industry conferences outside accounting, either. If you specialize in construction or dental practices, you might find your next clients at those events.

Budget Solutions

If cost is the barrier, check out the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. This nonprofit covers airfare, hotel, and admission for first-time attendees who can’t afford it. Multiple members of Nancy’s Ask a CPA community have already received scholarships and describe the experience as unparalleled. And if you understand the impact conferences make, consider paying it forward and becoming a donor.

Making the Most of Your Conference Experience

You’ve picked your conference. You’ve registered. Now what?

  • Set concrete goals. Come with one to three specific objectives. Maybe it’s meeting five people, evaluating two tools, or attending three  sessions. Nancy brings a notebook listing client issues to resolve and vendors to meet.
  • Connect beforehand. Check whether your online communities, such as Bookkeeping Buds or Ask a CPA, are organizing meetups. Having familiar faces changes everything, especially for introverts.
  • Don’t overpack your schedule. Nancy admits she’s a “maximizer” who spends 2.5 hours planning for each session slot. “Don’t be me,” she cautions. It’s okay to sleep in, take a nap, or skip sessions for hallway conversations.
  • Branch out from familiar faces. Nancy and a friend deliberately arrive early and stay late at conferences to have quality time together. This frees them to meet new people during the event itself.
  • The hallways matter. Relationships form in the informal moments, like meetups, dinners, and wandering at expos. When Tony had to physically steer Nancy through the expo hall because she kept getting pulled into conversations, it proved how deep conference relationships can become.
  • Start small if you’re introverted. A few years ago, Questian’s goal was simply to introduce herself to one person without panicking. That single step catalyzed speaking engagements, teaching opportunities, and eventually co-hosting a podcast.

Your Next Conference Could Change Everything

Sometimes the most valuable part of a conference isn’t what you learn, but who you become after being in that room.

CPE is the floor, not the ceiling. The real value comes from relationships, visibility, confidence, and belonging you can’t build behind a desk. Choose strategically based on what you need right now. Go in with goals. Connect with your community. Give yourself grace. Push yourself to meet one new person, even if it takes five minutes to work up the nerve.

These spaces are incredibly valuable for women in accounting. Seeing other women lead, share vulnerably, and succeed gives you permission to imagine bigger possibilities. The relationships become collaborations, partnerships, and the safety net you need when life gets complicated.

This profession can be isolating, especially if you’re running your own firm or navigating spaces where you’re one of only a few women. Conferences are an investment in who you’re becoming.

Your Camp Timberwood moment might be one introduction away.

Listen to the full episode for Nancy and Questian’s complete conference recommendations.

Nobody Is Going to Hand You Power, So Here’s How to Build Executive Presence on Your Own Terms

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Lindsay Patterson’s very first day as a reporter should have been routine. Twenty years ago, she walked into a small community meeting in Uvalde, Texas, fresh out of college, holding a notepad and recorder, ready to cover a state representative’s remarks for the local paper. She sat down, pen ready. Then the representative stood up, scanned the room, and asked whether anyone from the Uvalde Leader-News was present. When Lindsay raised her hand, he announced he wouldn’t speak as long as she was in the room.

She didn’t stand her ground or fight back. She walked out, sat in her car, and cried.

Today, Lindsay is the CEO of CPA QualityPro, a compliance platform that helps firms navigate licensure and CPE requirements. She’s served as executive vice president at the Institute of Internal Auditors and spent years at the AICPA working on accounting standards and the CPA exam. She holds multiple certifications, including CPA, CIA, and CAE, all earned while working full time and raising kids.

In Episode 30 of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, Lindsay joined hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland to unpack a frustrating phrase in professional development: executive presence. It’s the vague feedback that shows up in performance reviews as the reason you didn’t get promoted, without anyone explaining what it means or how to get it.

Women are often told that executive presence means adopting traits traditionally associated with male leaders. Lindsay argues that the real measure is much simpler: whether the people around you leave interactions believing you’re the right person for the job.

 

Redefining Executive Presence

Many of us absorbed a version of executive presence without questioning it. “I had a very traditional view of executive presence. It’s like the three-piece suit guy pulling out a pocket watch,” Lindsay said, admitting where she started. “He’s speaking aggressively and assertively. I’m like, oh, that guy has executive presence.”

Nancy shared her own assumptions. For women, she thought it meant Chanel bags, specific jewelry, and perfect polish. “I will tell you, if we’re going to judge me on my ability to make that happen, I will fail,” she said. “I look like I’m dressed up for a high school play or something.”

But Lindsay’s working definition is simpler. “If you were to distill it into simple terms, it’s just instilling confidence in people. Are people confident I can do a good job? Can I lead the team? Can I deliver results or do what I say I am going to do?”

The research backs this up. Lindsay cited the Coqual findings that gravitas, or how you present yourself, is what people overwhelmingly evaluate for executive presence. Communication makes up about a third. Appearance is only 5%.

This is good news for anyone worried their personal style disqualifies them from leadership. Lindsay owns a fully sequined black suit and has worn floor-length tutu gowns to office meetings. She’s also been a CPA Practice Advisor 40 Under 40 honoree and runs a successful company. The two things work together just fine.

But Lindsay was clear that executive presence is not “overtalking people, interrupting, being really aggressive and mean.” She added an important caveat. “I say that’s not what it should look like. But we have to recognize it is viewed that way in some office cultures.”

She shared a story that made Nancy ask if it was real. At one company, a man criticized another executive for wearing a Rolex because it showed “new money.” If you wanted to instill confidence as a leader, apparently you needed at least a Patek Philippe. “What?” Lindsay said. She didn’t last long in that culture.

The story might be absurd, but it shows something important. In many places, executive presence gets defined by an unspoken code written by and for one specific kind of leader. When that code becomes the standard for measuring women, the game is rigged from the start.

The Double Bind: When the Rules Work Against You

Even with a better definition, women face a structural problem. The same behaviors that signal confidence in men get labeled as aggression in women.

“How often do you hear in performance reviews that a male was aggressive? Never. That gets assigned to women,” Lindsay stated plainly. Being direct, standing firm, and pushing back in meetings gets men praised for “standing up for their beliefs” while women get called “difficult” (or worse).

Then there’s what Questian called the competence-warmth trap, referencing Vanessa Van Edwards’ research. If you’re warm and approachable, people see you as less competent. You need both warmth and competence to hit the sweet spot, but too much warmth works against you.

The research on competence perception is even tougher. Lindsay delivered her “good news, bad news” moment. “If I show up and I am just as good as my male colleague, I’m probably going to be viewed as less competent. And there is a whole body of research to show this.”

Women don’t just need to meet the bar. They need to clearly exceed it, just to be seen as equal. That means overpreparing is essential.

The dynamics shift with race, too. Lindsay acknowledged their position, noting, “We’re all three white women.” She’s seen firsthand what she can get away with that a Black female colleague cannot. Nancy put numbers to it. If white women prepare at 120%, Black women face pressure to deliver at 170%.

Then came the episode’s most provocative moment. Questian asked if coaching women on executive presence puts the burden on them to fix a structural problem. Lindsay’s answer was direct. “Yes, we’re asking women to do this. You know why? Because nobody else is going to do it for us. People in power are not just going to hand us power. That’s not how power systems work.”

“The world’s not going to dominate itself,” Nancy said, summing it up.

But Lindsay distinguished between assimilation and strategy. The goal is to work strategically within existing systems by pushing boundaries, gaining influence, and reshaping culture from within. “As we rise to power, not only are we going to instill our own cultural norms, but then you’ll start to see cultures change.”

Your Practical Playbook: Build Presence Through Preparation

Lindsay’s closing advice was the episode’s most powerful line. “Confidence is just preparation. If you do something enough times, you will come across as confident. You will have that executive presence.”

Executive presence is a skill built through practice. Here’s Lindsay’s concrete playbook:

  • Start with an audit. Record yourself before a difficult conversation or presentation. Watch the playback and ask, Does my body language say what I want? Do I sound knowledgeable? Am I the confident person I want this audience to see? You likely already have the material, since most meetings are now recorded on Zoom.
  • Separate sound from sight. Listen to your recording with no video. Just evaluate your speaking. Then watch with no sound to evaluate body language. Then watch both together. This lets you see what each channel actually communicates.
  • Rehearse with your circle. If you have trusted professional friends, use them. Practice difficult conversations. Do dress rehearsals for interviews. Ask for feedback on how you plan to challenge your boss. Lindsay does this with her own circle, and she extended an invitation to listeners. “If you don’t have that and you’re listening and you’re like, ‘I have this interview coming up,’ literally connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to help. Other women did that for me.”
  • Prepare for disruption. Anticipate what typically derails you. “Is Bob going to interrupt me like he always does? Well, how am I going to respond?” Plan your response. When the moment comes, hold your ground without escalating.
  • Master the context. Your presence should shift based on your audience. As Nancy noted, the best version of you when meeting with nervous small-business owners differs from the one you use when meeting with a board chair. Both are authentic, but context defines what instills confidence.

For virtual meetings, have the camera on (especially when presenting), use good lighting, choose a quiet location, and avoid multitasking. Nancy made the trust connection clear. If she can’t see someone’s eyes on Zoom, she doesn’t trust them.

In person, make sure your shoulders are back and your head is up. Look confident and take up space. Lindsay admitted to intentional “manspreading” in meetings. “I have every right to be here, and I’m going to show that with my body.”

Don’t forget the practical details. Rehearse in the shoes you’ll actually wear. Nancy learned this after nearly injuring herself while presenting in heels. Now she presents in go-go boots that match her Dancing Accountant brand. Lindsay shared a cautionary tale about a team member who wore a tube top to an external Zoom meeting. Over a year later, the client still talked about the tube top instead of the meeting content.

The Scared Child Inside Us All

Lindsay shared what she wishes someone had told her 20 years ago. “Most people are faking it. We are just doing our best, trying to get by.”

Nancy connected this to waiting for the moment she’d become a confident adult. “When I realized that line doesn’t exist and a lot of us are carrying that scared child inside us until we die, then you’re like, oh, cool. Well, then I can start taking care of that scared kid because I’m also a confident adult.”

Lindsay offered one more insight from experience. “You could be the most round, juiciest peach on the tree. And there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like peaches.” You won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can focus on instilling confidence in the people who matter to your goals.

Your Presence Is What People Remember

Executive presence has been weaponized for too long as vague feedback that holds women to standards built for someone else. But Lindsay’s definition offers us something useful: instilling confidence in the people around you.

The double bind is real. The bar for perceived competence is measurably higher for women and higher still for women of color. These are structural realities, not personal failures. Recognizing them means understanding the terrain so you can navigate it.

The antidote is preparation. Record yourself. Rehearse with trusted peers. Anticipate the disruptors. Adapt to context. You build confidence through repetition.

No one will hand women the keys to power. The work of getting inside the system and reshaping it falls on us. As more women rise by carrying their own authentic executive presence, they can redefine what leadership looks like for those to come.

Questian closed with Maya Angelou’s words: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That’s executive presence.

Listen to the full episode, and if you take one thing from this conversation, share it on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page. What will you try differently the next time you walk into a room or join a Zoom call?

What Losing Your Best Bookkeeper Reveals About How You Price Yourself

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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!