Theater of Public Speaking Archives

Halfway through the second day of an accounting conference, Jean Zick often feels her brain slow down. The lights, conversations, and crowded schedule drain her energy. Her type-A instinct tells her to attend every session because she paid to be there. But experience tells her to take a break.

That push and pull is at the heart of Episode 35 of She Counts. Nancy McClelland and Melissa Miller Furgeson, sitting in for Questian Telka, share two conversations recorded at the Theater of Public Speaking Curtain Call retreat. Jean explains how she learned to work with her introversion. Terri Warren describes how a layoff and two strokes forced her to redefine success.

Their circumstances are different, but their message is the same. Understanding yourself gives you more choices. You can stop pushing against who you are and start building a career that fits.

Naming what drains you turns judgment into useful information

Jean was sensitive to sound as a child. She was also shy, timid, and quick to cry. Years later, after staying home while her children were young, she returned to the business world and began her career as a CFO. Networking came with the job, but large conferences left her depleted.

“This is just really draining me of energy,” she remembers thinking. “I need to do something about it.”

Jean learned that introverts and extroverts respond differently to stimulation. An extrovert may enter a bright, crowded room and think, Bring it on. An introvert may wonder, Where can I hide? Neither response is a defect.

“We are all on one big spectrum,” Jean says. “There’s nothing wrong with you. We’re just wired differently.”

Her process includes:

Identify the situations that overwhelm or drain you
Accept your response instead of asking what is wrong with you
Recognize that response as a signal
Decide what would help you participate without exhausting yourself

Nancy describes herself as an extreme extrovert and recognized the same pattern from the other side. She’d judged her own “spazzy extroversion” as a failure. Professional expectations can make anyone feel as though they show up incorrectly.

Once we stop making that judgment, we can move from shame to strategy.

Plan for participation instead of relying on endurance

Jean doesn’t try to turn herself into someone who loves entering a room full of strangers. Instead, she plans for the way her energy works.

Her conference strategies include:

Find a wing person. Ask someone comfortable meeting people to make introductions. Nancy and Sharrin Fuller have even invited conference attendees to find them when they need that support.
Attend first-timer events. At Scaling New Heights, volunteers at the first-timers breakfast help newcomers make an initial connection and continue checking on them during the conference.
Schedule breaks in advance. Don’t wait until you’re completely depleted.
Reset your body and mind. Jean may step outside, walk, drink water, and eat a snack before returning.

“In the early conferences, I felt like I was hiding,” Jean says. “When I do that now, I know I’m using it to re-energize.”

The action may look the same, but its meaning has changed. Taking a break is a deliberate way to remain engaged.

Jean also encourages introverts to recognize their strengths. They may be empathetic listeners, comfortable with silence, thoughtful questioners, and builders of deep one-on-one relationships. Nancy may briefly meet 50 people at an event, while her introverted husband ends the evening knowing what is really happening in a few friends’ lives.

Those strengths can also shape how firms build stronger teams.

Smaller spaces can create stronger working relationships

When Jean joined a large networking organization, she didn’t try to meet everyone. She joined a committee and gradually got to know eight or 10 people.

She uses the same approach in her fully virtual firm, whose employees work across 12 or 13 states. Slack’s Donut app pairs two colleagues for a 30-minute monthly conversation with one rule: Don’t talk about work. Her firm also holds a monthly team meeting, smaller client-service meetings, and check-in huddles every other week.

During large virtual meetings, employees begin with a three-to-five-minute icebreaker in breakout rooms of about three people. That smaller setting helps them warm up before returning to the full group.

For firm leaders, the lesson is not to assume one social format works for everyone. Use pairs, committees, mentorship programs, and small groups to make connection easier. When colleagues know one another, collaboration becomes more natural.

Jean learned to design work around how she’s wired. Terri’s challenge was learning to work with the person she had become.

A change in capacity calls for a new definition of success

Being laid off from public accounting “totally shattered everything I knew about myself,” Terri says. She built her identity around the idea of “Drive, drive, drive. Push, push, push. Work, work, work.”

With help from her community, she rebuilt her confidence and created success within her own walls. Her daughter captured that confidence in a bright pink cape covered with sparkles, crystals, and pom-poms.

Then Terri had a stroke and spent 12 months in rehabilitation. About a year-and-a-half later, she had a second stroke. Still determined to prove that the strokes wouldn’t define her, she worked 10 times harder for four months.

Eventually, she hit a wall. Work the old Terri could have done easily now drained her. Refusing to accept her deficits had become part of the problem.

“I was in the way,” she says.

Terri created a new scoreboard. She no longer needed “layers and layers and layers of work and clients” to prove she was successful. Instead, she could use her expertise to train and coach others. When her body told her to stop, she could put away the computer for the day.

Her cape became reversible. One side was bright pink, but the other used darker greens, blues, and purples with smaller sparkles. Terri was still stubborn, valuable, and fully herself. Her new definition of success simply looked different.

Build a career for the person you are today

Terri closes with two reminders: “Be graceful with yourself,” and use the GROW model (goal, reality, options, and will) to examine your needs, capacity, and choices.

Together, Jean and Terri offer four actions:

Notice what drains or overwhelms you
Stop treating your response as a personal failure
Put support and boundaries in place before exhaustion arrives
Revisit success when your life or capacity changes

You don’t owe the profession a version of yourself that no longer fits. Listen to the full episode of She Counts, then ask: What are you still asking of yourself that no longer fits who you are?

You can build a client forecast, test three scenarios, and explain risk down to the dollar. Then you close the laptop and leave the spreadsheet about your own future unopened for years.

Fear rarely introduces itself by name. It can look like a business plan you never write, a job you stay in through burnout, or constant work that keeps you from sitting intentionally with your thoughts.

In Episode 34 of She Counts, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland share two conversations recorded at the 2026 Theater of Public Speaking Advanced retreat. Katie Helle, CPA, explains why she waited seven years to start her firm. Mariana Alvarez describes how she rebuilt her identity after 17 years in an abusive marriage.

These experiences aren’t equivalent. One is about career risk; the other begins with survival. Yet both women found that change came through support – and one careful step at a time.

Turn vague fear into questions you can answer

“We should use it as information, not instruction,” Katie says. Fear can raise valid questions. The problem comes when we let those unanswered questions make our decisions.

Katie managed a CPA firm for 15 years and had long wanted to work for herself. She had entrepreneurial experience, including running a successful home-based jewelry business. Still, leaving a comfortable position felt risky because she was her family’s main income earner.

Her fears piled up. What if she didn’t make enough money? What if she was unprepared? What if clients didn’t want to work with her?

Then she used a familiar accounting tool: a spreadsheet. She calculated how much she needed each month and how many clients it would take to reach that amount.

“Once I dug into the spreadsheet and did the math… the math worked,” she says. “It was very logical. But my brain was telling me something different.”

The numbers didn’t eliminate all the risk, but they made it easier to examine. Burnout finally pushed her to act. Katie loved her job, but long hours, a small child, and running a household had become too much. Her spreadsheet showed that she might be able to earn what she needed in fewer hours.

If you are considering a change, ask:

How much income do I need each month?
How many clients, projects, or hours would produce it?
How much savings should I build first?
What do I still need to learn?
Who could help me test my assumptions?

Once the numbers are visible and viable, the next challenge is finding support.

Take a step instead of a leap

“You don’t want to take a leap,” Katie says. “You want to take one step at a time.”

That could mean researching pricing, building savings, learning a skill, or contacting someone who already runs the kind of firm you want. Katie stresses that quitting without a plan is not the answer. Small, measurable actions prepare you for a responsible change.

Community also changed what Katie believed was possible. Nancy and other women in their mastermind encouraged her to revisit her spreadsheet. Katie also learned from online accounting communities where experienced firm owners share what they know.

“We’re not gatekeepers,” she says. “There are things that you don’t know, but it doesn’t mean you can’t learn them.”

That support did not decide for Katie. It helped her trust the evidence she had already gathered.

The process was still uncomfortable. Katie argues that discomfort may show you are approaching growth rather than heading in the wrong direction. Nancy connects that idea to imposter feelings: learning begins when you enter a place of “not knowing”.

Katie cites a 2025 report that found 60% of people wanted to change jobs but were afraid to act. She challenges anyone in that situation to write down the change you want, name each fear, and place one step beside it.

But some fears require a different first step. In Mariana’s story, that step was safety.

Put safety before forgiveness

This section discusses domestic abuse.

Mariana was married for 17 years. She stayed in the relationship because she feared losing her children. At times she believed the abuse happened because she wasn’t good enough, attractive enough, or able to communicate well. After leaving, she blamed herself for staying as long as she did.

“Then I learned that wasn’t true,” she says.

Mariana is careful not to turn forgiveness into “another burden” for women who remain in abusive situations. Her order is clear: first safety, then support, and then the work of finding your own truth. Forgiveness may come later.

After leaving, anger and bitterness became a protective wall. Over time, Mariana realized that carrying the wall forward kept the experience present in her life. Reconnecting with childhood friends and family helped. They remembered her as kind, cheerful, friendly, and talkative, even when she could no longer recognize those qualities in herself.

Her recovery involved safety, stability, therapy, reflection, and steady support. She also drew an important line, recognizing she wasn’t responsible for the abuse, but she could take responsibility for her healing and future. “I had to do the work,” she says.

That work helped Mariana recover her voice, which leads to a lesson many women may recognize at work as well.

Reclaim your voice without apologizing

Mariana wanted her children to live in a peaceful home where silence meant they were safe. She especially wanted her daughter to see genuine inner strength rather than a facade.

Work initially became another hiding place. “I worked long hours. I worked a lot,” Mariana says. Healing included learning that she didn’t always have to stay busy to hide a feeling or prevent a storm.

Katie and Mariana began in very different places. Yet neither waited for fear to disappear before acting. Each found support and moved forward one decision at a time.

Your next step might be calculating a savings runway, contacting a mentor, asking for help, or beginning the work of forgiving yourself. You don’t need to see the entire path before you start.

Listen to Episode 34 of She Counts to hear Katie and Mariana share their stories in full, and then name one small step you can take today.

The Case for Building Your Accounting Career Around the Person You Are