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She Tried to Sell Her Firm Three Times Before Moving It to a Beach in Mexico

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Sandra Koch tried to sell her accounting firm three times over ten years. She was burned out and ready to quit. Today, she runs that same firm from a beach town in Mexico with dirt roads and one stop sign. And she’s never been happier.

In this episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, hosts Rachel and Marcus Dillon talk with Sandra, founder of Aurora Consulting Group. She shares her journey from owning a building in California to running her firm remotely from Baja California Sur. The conversation gets real about the anxiety of closing an office, the grief of letting go, and the unexpected freedom that followed.

The Dream Building That Had to Go

Sandra did everything by the book. She founded Aurora Consulting Group in San Diego in 2011 with one assistant. Three years later, she was juggling two offices—one in San Diego and one in Visalia, deep in California’s farmland. For 16 months, she went back and forth between the two locations. Eventually, she closed the San Diego office. “That wasn’t really working too well,” she admits.

Then came the building in Visalia. Sandra searched for a year before finding it. She bought it, remodeled it, and made it exactly what she wanted. “It was ego feeding, and it was a status symbol,” Sandra says on the podcast. She’s not embarrassed. It felt like success.

Marcus gets it. He grew up believing the ultimate achievement was having your name on a brick building where clients came to you. “That meant you made it,” he says. The day before recording this episode, Marcus and Rachel had just sold their own “forever building.”

By August 2023, reality hit Sandra hard. Clients weren’t coming to the office anymore. Some staff had moved away and were already remote. She was paying for an empty building.

“I wouldn’t wish the anxiety that I experienced during that time on anybody,” Sandra recalls. “But I knew it was the right thing to do.”

When Aurora Consulting Group went fully remote, Sandra was surprised by the grief she felt. “I had this dream, and then the dream kind of fell apart,” she explains. “Letting go of the dream felt like, wait, what do I do now?”

Marcus admits he also tends to remember only the good parts about having an office. You forget the commute, hiding from walk-in clients when you don’t have time, and dealing with frozen pipes. “I only remember the good days,” he says.

Sandra went through the same mental battle. “I’ll get sad about it. But then I’m like, Sandra, do the math. The math says it doesn’t make sense.”

A year after going remote, Sandra realized she could live anywhere. She wasn’t tied to Visalia or even California anymore. In 2024, she moved to Baja California Sur, Mexico, a coastal town with 1,800 people, dirt roads, and 25 varieties of whales passing by.

“The freedom I have from letting go of a physical location has been profound,” Sandra says. Every morning, she watches the sun rise over what Jacques Cousteau called “the world’s aquarium.”

She keeps a small office in Visalia for when she visits and has a part-time assistant who handles the occasional bank deposit. She learned some lessons the hard way, like discovering U.S. banks require a physical presence in the country to maintain accounts.

But that building with her name on it is gone, and she’s more proud of her firm now than ever.

Staying Close From 1,500 Miles Away

Going remote created new challenges. How do you stay connected to clients you genuinely care about? How do you keep a scattered team feeling like a team?

Sandra’s approach to clients is simple. She flies back three or four times a year and takes them to meals, one-on-one. No group events or presentations. Just food and conversation.

“I care about them and miss them. I want to see them just like I would want to see my family,” she explains. The one-on-one format is intentional. “That’s where the magic is. They tell me what’s really going on with them.”

Her clients’ warm response surprised her. They’re genuinely excited to see their CPA up in person.

Marcus shares a similar story. When a client who had sold his business invited Marcus to visit his farm, Marcus took him up on the offer and saw the excitement in the client’s eyes. They spent the day at the farm. No tax talk, just relationship building.

Building Team Culture Without an Office

Sandra’s team of six is spread across California and beyond. Her first remote hire four years ago turned out to be the right fit and set the standard for what worked.

Three things make remote work function, according to Sandra: training, culture, and communication. “You have to be religious about it,” she says.

The centerpiece is their Tuesday morning meeting at 10 a.m.. The key to this meeting is it’s not about work. The team shares what they need help with, their wins, and their struggles. Then they discuss their monthly book, with a $100 bonus for anyone who finishes it. They wrap up with “happies and crappies” (highs and lows).

Rachel points out that putting even modest money behind expectations shows the team you value the activity. “Start lower than you think,” she advises. “You can always increase an incentive, but it’s nearly impossible to reduce one.”

Sandra also discovered her team loves company swag. Nice jackets at Christmas had everyone excited. “It makes me realize they’re proud of the team they’re on,” she says.

In-person moments matter too. Sandra took the team to Intuit Connect in Las Vegas, where some team members met face-to-face for the first time. “They still talk about it,” she says. These investments show “I’m putting my money where my mouth is.”

As a result, Sandra believes she’s actually better at her job now.

“My clients get a better version of me,” she explains. “They get a less stressed-out version of me. I’m more present for them now because I’m not dealing with all the things attached to a physical location.”

The Science Experiment That Changed Everything

Sandra managed a lot of change in a short time period by changing how she thinks about trying new things.

“I used to think trying new things meant it would either succeed or fail,” she says. “When I changed to thinking ‘I’m doing a science experiment to see what happens,’ it really helped me.”

A science experiment doesn’t fail. It gives you data. You try something, see what happens, and decide whether to continue or pivot.

“I don’t have to commit to anything,” Sandra explains. “Not to software, not to a staff member, not to a client. When I go in thinking ‘I don’t have to commit, but I’m willing to try because I’m curious,’ it takes all the pressure off.”

This requires humility. You have to be honest about what’s working. Sandra’s team serves as a reality check, and her husband keeps her grounded when her curiosity pulls her in too many directions.

The results speak for themselves. “Our internal workflows went from practical nonexistence to a well-oiled machine very quickly,” Sandra says. “When something wasn’t working, we dropped it and went on to the next thing.”

Her 2026 goals show how far this mindset has taken her. Aurora has just three goals this year, down from 29 last year and 52 the year before. The three words: align, refine, and define. No big initiatives. Just steady improvement of what’s already working.

Finding Her People Made the Difference

Sandra credits one encounter with saving her firm. In November 2022, she heard Marcus speak at Intuit Connect. She got on the mailing list for Collective by DBA and signed up for their first in-person event.

“I heard a message of hope,” she remembers. “Aurora would not exist today if I hadn’t met you.”

Before that, she felt alone. Now, “I feel like I’m part of a community for the first time in my career,” she says. “A community that cares about me.”

She hasn’t missed a single Collective event. She brings team members. She reads every email, asks questions on the forum, and shares what she knows with others.

“It feels safe,” she explains. “I can be my messy self with you guys.”

When Rachel asks about her best advice, Sandra doesn’t hesitate: “Trust God, clean house, and help others.” Keep your side of the street clean. Look for opportunities to serve. Know you don’t have to control everything.

That philosophy carried a burned-out firm owner from trying to sell her practice to running it from a beach in Mexico. And she’s more proud of her work than she’s ever been.

Your Turn to Experiment

Sandra tried to sell her firm three times. Today, she wakes up to the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez and runs a thriving practice. Her transformation required questioning one assumption: What does a “real” accounting firm look like?

Here’s what she learned:

  • Physical space isn’t mental space. Without a building’s demands, Sandra became more present and effective. Her clients and team got a better version of her.
  • Remote doesn’t mean distant. One-on-one client visits, weekly team meetings that skip the work talk, book clubs with incentives, and company swag can build stronger connections than any conference room.
  • Make everything an experiment. Calling new initiatives “science experiments” removes the fear of failure. You’re just collecting data.
  • Nothing has to be permanent. You don’t have to commit to software, locations, or structures forever. Curiosity beats fear every time.

For every firm owner wondering if there’s a better way, Sandra’s story says yes. But only if you’re willing to run the experiment.

Listen to Sandra’s full conversation with Rachel and Marcus on Who’s Really the Boss? The details that don’t fit in an article make her story even more valuable for any firm considering remote work.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 26 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, mastermind groups, and one-on-one advisory.

The Off-Season Work That Makes Tax Season Manageable

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Imagine it’s mid-March, and an accounting professional just left for spring break with her family. The business tax deadline is days away, and she’s at the beach.

Meanwhile, at firms across the country, accountants are settling in for another late night, sustained by the promise of a half-day Friday sometime in June (if they’re lucky). Blackout dates stretch from January through April, and the unspoken rule is that personal lives get shelved until after the deadline.

These two realities coexist within the same profession during the same tax season. The difference isn’t luck or lighter client loads; it’s deliberate design.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, owners of Dillon Business Advisors, have spent 15 years building a firm where tax season looks remarkably different from the industry norm. Their team of about 30 remote professionals works 36-hour weeks year-round, maintaining “Flex Fridays” even during peak filing season. Team members take spring break. And by mid-January, they’ve already filed dozens of returns because the real work happened months earlier.

During a recent episode of the Who’s Really the BOSS? podcast, the Dillons responded to a LinkedIn discussion that had been making the rounds. Their friend David Cristello asked, “How do you keep your team motivated during tax season?” When another friend jokingly suggested pizza parties—a tongue-in-cheek reference to the go-to perk at many firms—it sparked a deeper conversation.

The Foundation: Improvement Season Sets Up Success

When Marcus responded to that LinkedIn post about keeping teams motivated during tax season, his answer surprised some readers: “The hard work starts outside of tax season.”

It’s not a deflection. It’s the foundation that makes everything else at DBA possible. The firm operates on what they call “improvement season,” the period right after each tax deadline when the team identifies what went right and what went wrong and implements fixes before the next cycle.

The results speak for themselves. By mid-January 2025, DBA had already filed dozens of returns because the books were already closed. When you send financials to clients by the 15th of every month throughout the year, there’s nothing to catch up on in January.

This year-round engagement creates a ripple effect on tax season workload. The firm conducts tax projections in Q4, so clients already know roughly where they stand before the new year begins. When a business owner learns in October that they might owe $80,000 with their return, and the final number comes in at $50,000, that’s actually good news rather than a crisis. The cash flow conversation happened months ago, not in a panicked April phone call.

“We just try to minimize surprise as much as possible,” Marcus says.

But even with these systems in place, the Dillons are quick to point out they’re still learning. After acquiring two firms in 2025, they’re dealing with a higher volume of annual-only tax clients than they’ve had in years. This influx has highlighted some stark contrasts.

Take 1099 preparation. For monthly clients, the groundwork happens throughout the year. Client service managers review vendor payments quarterly and request W-9s as soon as they spot gaps. By January, there are usually only a handful of forms to chase down.

Annual-only clients are a different story. “We have no idea what’s been going on all year long,” Rachel explains. “We have no idea how many 1099s they’re going to need, if they’ve asked for W-9s or not, if they can get a hold of the people, if we can get a hold of the annual client.”

The experience has Marcus questioning whether they should even offer 1099 services to annual-only clients. “If you’re not engaging us for monthly recurring accounting services, you can do your own 1099s is kind of how I’m feeling at this point,” he says. Though he adds with a laugh that since team members probably listen to the podcast, they might hold him accountable for that change next year.

Team Structure That Creates Real Flexibility

Having year-round client touchpoints only works if you have the right people consistently delivering those services. At DBA, that happens through their “Team of Three” model, a structure Marcus calls “one of our biggest wins by far.”

For monthly clients, the model assigns three distinct roles to every client relationship. The Client Service Manager handles all communication and administrative tasks. The Client Controller focuses on preparation and review. The Client CFO provides complex review, planning conversations, and quality control.

This separation might sound simple, but the impact runs deep. When administrative tasks get pulled out and assigned to someone whose specific job is coordination, preparers and reviewers suddenly have hours back in their week.

“Breaking out the administrative parts and giving those to a professional who can handle them and communicate with clients gives a lot of time back to preparers and reviewers,” Rachel explains.

The same structure now applies to annual-only tax clients, a recent adaptation as they handle more of these relationships. The Tax Administrator manages all client communication, including sending organizers, accepting documents, generating engagement letters, and handling the back-end filing process. The Tax Controller handles preparation, often reviewing simpler returns. And their Director of Tax and Financial Planning provides oversight, education, and handles complex returns.

This structure creates essential coverage. When someone takes time off, two other team members understand each client relationship. Work doesn’t pile up while someone’s away.

The coverage philosophy shapes how DBA handles time-off requests. Before approaching leadership, team members coordinate with their Team of Three to ensure coverage. “You have to let your team of three know the dates and make sure it doesn’t put somebody else in a weird spot,” Marcus explains.

This approach makes possible what would seem impossible at traditional firms: client controllers taking spring break in March, right when business tax deadlines hit.

Rachel addresses the human reality behind these decisions. “When someone takes more than a day or two of PTO, it’s rare that they’re going alone somewhere. Most of the time, they’re traveling with their family, extended family, or friends for a special occasion.”

The Dillons understand this firsthand. They started taking spring break specifically because it was the only time their daughters’ swim practice and school schedules aligned. Expecting employees to forfeit those windows because of arbitrary blackout dates ignores how life actually works.

Marcus doesn’t mince words. “If you have blackout dates and you tell people they can’t live life during four months out of the year, they’re not going to leave your accounting firm for another accounting firm. They’re going to leave your accounting firm for another profession or another industry altogether.”

The team also maximizes efficiency through technology. Every deliverable, from financials to tax returns and projections, includes video commentary recorded through Vimeo. Clients watch explanations on their own schedule, rather than booking meetings just to review numbers. Zoom phones enable text messaging that looks direct but feeds into practice management systems, meeting clients where they communicate while maintaining boundaries.

Marcus notes that team members are often most productive right before vacation. “You are most efficient and effective right before you go out of town,” he observes. The team plans accordingly, with people getting ahead on work before time off rather than dumping it on colleagues.

Building a Culture Beyond Temporary Perks

The LinkedIn discussion that sparked this podcast episode revealed something telling about the profession. When asked how to keep teams motivated during tax season, someone jokingly suggested pizza parties, and everyone got the joke because nearly everyone has worked somewhere that tried to make up for brutal hours with free food.

“For us, as a remote team, that would cost a lot of money to send everybody pizza,” Marcus notes about their 30-person team. But cost isn’t the real issue. “Being in different roles over my career, knowing my voice is being heard means way more to me than a slice of pizza.”

At DBA, that philosophy takes concrete form. The firm maintains a shared spreadsheet where any team member can nominate a client for exit at any time. Leadership might see completed work and paid invoices, but they don’t witness the difficult phone calls or patterns of disrespect that make certain clients exhausting to serve.

This isn’t just lip service. In what they’re calling their “year of refinement” for 2026, DBA has shortened its tolerance for poor-fit clients. “In the past, we would give people a couple of different opportunities to tell us no,” Marcus says. “Where we’re at today as a business, it’s just one time to tell us no before we exit that client relationship.”

The same philosophy of actually listening to the team’s needs shaped their benefits evolution. Half-day Fridays started as a summer perk to give back time worked during tax season. Then it expanded to most of the year. Now it runs year-round, including during tax season. A full-time employee at DBA works 36 hours, not 40.

“We didn’t want to take it away from people,” Marcus says simply. “A lot of clients aren’t around on Friday afternoons either.”

PTO evolved similarly. In 2025, the firm extended paid time off to part-time team members, in proportion to their hours. But tracking PTO across multiple systems created an administrative burden that defeated the purpose. “Ultimately, you want people to use their PTO and have time off, not necessarily be worried about tracking their PTO,” Marcus explains.

Effective January 1, 2026, DBA moved to unlimited PTO with guardrails around approval and booking limits. The policy includes part-time team members.

Marcus addresses the common criticism head-on. “I know it’s been discussed that people take less time off with unlimited PTO. That is not our intention at all.”

For individual tax clients who might otherwise only appear at filing time, DBA offers its Tax Advisory Plan (TAP). This monthly recurring service includes tax preparation plus two annual projections, one mid-year and one year-end, each with a consultation. Clients get introduced to their dedicated team, so when questions come up, someone familiar with their situation responds without hours of research.

“We have solved for that with our tax advisory plan,” Rachel says. The service transforms annual relationships into year-round engagement, turning filing-time scrambles into predictable workflows.

“Allowing your team more freedom to go home at a normal time, every day and all year long, is going to go a lot further than a one-time meal or party,” Rachel says, capturing what actually matters to team members.

Taking Control of Your Firm’s Tax Season

The Dillons freely admit they’re not perfect. They’re dealing with integration challenges from two recent acquisitions. They’re still figuring out whether to offer certain services to annual-only clients. Marcus is currently working from a poorly insulated sunroom in an Airbnb because their Fort Worth house renovation isn’t finished. But their approach offers a blueprint built on three principles that any firm can adapt.

Start improvement season immediately after tax season

The work that makes January through April manageable happens in the months after the previous deadline. When clients know their tax position from Q4 projections and books stay current monthly, there’s nothing to scramble over in March.

Structure teams for coverage, not just efficiency

The Team of Three model distributes work and creates redundancy. When someone leaves for spring break, two others understand every client relationship. Breaking out administrative from technical work maximizes everyone’s strengths.

Listen to what teams actually want

Sustainable practices beat temporary perks every time. Team members want their concerns heard and acted on. They want to attend their kids’ events, travel when their families can travel, and not have their lives dictated by arbitrary deadlines.

“We’re not up against the CPA firm down the street anymore. It’s a different ballgame,” Marcus says, putting the stakes in perspective. Talented professionals have options beyond public accounting, and firms that don’t adapt will lose team members to other industries.

Listen to the full conversation on the Who’s Really the BOSS? podcast for additional insights about managing life transitions during busy season, specific tools for client communication, and how the Dillons are applying these principles during their own busy season. As Rachel notes at the end, “All of these things eliminate the need for staying at the office until midnight doing actual work because all you’ve done all day is put out fires.”

Tax season doesn’t have to control your firm. But escaping that cycle requires doing the hard work when everyone else is taking a breather. The firms having calm tax seasons aren’t lucky; they’re prepared.

Listen to the complete episode to hear how DBA is navigating tax season, managing team growth from recent acquisitions, and keeping their Flex Friday promise even in the thick of filing season.

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

Leading with Empathy: Building Accounting Teams That Thrive

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Earn free NASBA-approved CPE for listening to this episode. Visit Earmarkcpe.com, take a short quiz, and get your certificate.

“Star performers aren’t immune from accountability,” says Lisa Gilreath, Managing Partner at Acuity. “Often they perform really high. But you’re going to see the other half of your team suffer in terms of their performance.”

This frank observation cuts to the heart of one of accounting’s toughest leadership challenges—dealing with talented but toxic employees. It’s just one of many practical insights shared during this episode of the Earmark Podcast, recorded live in Atlanta during the Advisory Amplified tour.

Host Blake Oliver sits down with Lisa Gilreath and Valerie Heckman, Accountant Community Manager at OnPay, to explore what empathetic leadership really looks like in accounting firms. Their conversation goes well beyond feel-good management theories to address the real challenges firms face when deadlines hit and pressure mounts.

Why Empathy Makes Business Sense

When Blake asks Lisa why firms shouldn’t burn out their people, her answer is refreshingly honest: “They’re really hard to replace right now.”

This practical reality drives home why empathetic leadership isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for survival in today’s talent market. Lisa explains that with staffing shortages and people tired of 60-80 hour work weeks, firms have to build healthier workplaces to succeed.

But deadlines don’t disappear. Tax seasons still come. Clients still have needs. The key is finding ways to meet those demands without destroying your team in the process.

Building Breathing Room Into Your Firm

Traditional firms plan for 100% utilization, assuming everyone will be productive every single day. Lisa takes a different approach at Acuity, planning for 75-80% capacity instead.

“You can’t run the people to the absolute end and expect not to be in a crisis situation if somebody has an issue,” she explains. This isn’t about accepting lower productivity. It’s about building resilience into your workflows.

Personal crises illustrate why this matters. “Personal crises, tragedy or challenges never check your calendar to see if you have time to deal with them,” Lisa notes. Over 20 years at Acuity, she’s seen it all—employees who unexpectedly passed away, team members losing spouses, medical emergencies that required immediate attention.

These aren’t rare events. They’re the reality of managing people over time. The question is whether your firm can handle them without falling apart.

Lisa recommends having your “phone a friend on speed dial”—an HR expert or advisor who can provide objective guidance when emotions run high. Small firms especially struggle when close relationships make it hard to separate business needs from personal loyalty.

How Systems Create Space for Humanity

Many firms see standardization as rigid and impersonal. Lisa flips this completely, showing how standard processes actually enable empathy.

“If you do have a standard scope of services for your transactional stuff, you can plug and play people,” she explains. “Paying bills is paying bills. Doing payroll is doing payroll. It’s just a matter of where you get that source data.”

When every client engagement follows similar patterns, any qualified team member can step in during an emergency. This protects both the employee who needs support and the client who needs continuity.

Acuity spreads work throughout the year using recurring CAS engagements rather than accepting the traditional feast-or-famine cycle. “We’re focused on being proactive in those interactions all year long,” Lisa says. This creates predictable workflows that allow for coverage when life happens.

The approach helps team members too. Lisa tells her people: “Build our workflows and build our communication patterns so that if you need to leave unexpectedly, we’ve got your back. Help us help you.”

Reading the Warning Signs

Technology provides new ways to spot problems before they become crises. But Lisa doesn’t just watch productivity metrics. She pays attention to communication patterns.

“I’m noticing when people are no longer engaging in Slack conversations at the same pace that they once were,” she explains. “They’re not showing up in meetings and being as talkative as they once were.”

These changes signal that something’s wrong before performance completely deteriorates. A normally responsive team member whose emails slow down. A strong performer whose deliverables lag. These whispers often matter more than what people explicitly say.

Valerie adds another important metric: PTO usage. “If people aren’t using it, that’s a sign,” she notes. “Are they afraid to use it? Do they feel like if they use it, they’re not contributing enough to the team?”

Her own mother exemplifies this problem, going years without taking vacation because she worried about work piling up. “She would never, ever take a day that payroll needed to be run or the day after in case there were mistakes,” Valerie recalls.

The flip side matters too. Excessive PTO usage might signal disengagement or job hunting. These patterns hide in payroll data most firms already collect but rarely analyze for team health insights.

The Toxic High Performer Problem

Every firm faces this dilemma eventually: what do you do with someone who delivers great results but poisons team culture?

“Toxic workers will take you down,” Lisa states plainly. While star performers deliver individually, the rest of the team suffers. The math is clear—protecting one toxic high performer often means losing multiple good employees.

But Lisa doesn’t jump straight to termination. “I start from a place of curiosity,” she says. “How did we get here? What’s going on with them?”

Sometimes it’s a personal crisis. Sometimes they don’t understand expectations. Sometimes they genuinely don’t realize they need to collaborate. Starting with curiosity creates space for course correction.

The same principle applies to clients. When Blake asks about unreasonable client demands on her team, Lisa’s response is swift: “They’re probably not going to be a client for much longer.”

Acuity holds both team members and clients to their values. “This is how we intend to operate,” Lisa explains. They regularly review their client base to ensure alignment, not just to cull unprofitable work but to protect team wellbeing.

Navigating Industry Change With Compassion

The pace of change creates another empathy challenge. Many experienced accountants built careers on consistency and process. Now they’re asked to develop entirely new skills.

“We liked that about them for a really long time—that they followed the process and they didn’t question the process,” Lisa observes. “Now we’re asking them to talk to clients, and they’ve never had to talk to clients. They just had to fill out the form.”

With AI transforming the profession, these changes feel overwhelming to some team members. The empathetic response isn’t to abandon these people but to “bring those people along at their pace as well as the pace of the industry.”

This is where hiring for adaptability becomes crucial. Lisa looks to new graduates who see AI as normal, not threatening. “They’re unafraid. They will just try anything,” she says. These digital natives may help bridge the gap for more experienced team members struggling with change.

Taking Action This Week

Valerie offers practical advice for leaders wanting to be more empathetic: pause.

“Taking that time when something happens, when there’s an experience with a worker or team dynamic and saying, okay, we’re going to sleep on it,” she suggests. This fights the instinct to immediately jump in and solve problems.

Pausing allows you to ask better questions rather than make assumptions. It could be personal challenges, professional struggles, or something else entirely. Without that pause, you might treat symptoms instead of root causes.

Lisa adds another suggestion: engage your team in discussing a problem and just listen. “They will often lead with things that are coming from a place of fear or concern,” she notes. Understanding these underlying worries helps you address real issues, not just surface problems.

Your Role as an Advocate

Perhaps the most important mindset shift involves how leaders see their role. “I am their number one advocate,” Lisa says about her team. “My role is not just to drive them to production, it’s really to advocate for their needs.”

This means creating multiple channels for support, recognizing not everyone feels comfortable approaching their direct supervisor. “If I’m not the person that you can reach out to, I promise you, I have paths for you to go raise your concern,” Lisa tells her team.

The business case remains clear throughout the conversation. In today’s environment where good people are “really hard to replace,” protecting team culture isn’t charity—it’s strategy. Firms that recognize their people as “the engine” and act accordingly will outlast those clinging to the burnout model.

Listen to the full episode to hear more practical strategies for implementing these changes in your firm. Lisa and Valerie share specific tips on creating buddy systems for coverage, working with HR consultants, and building workflows that respect both deadlines and humanity. Their insights offer a realistic path forward for firms ready to lead with empathy while maintaining business success.

Time Blindness and Trader Joe’s Paralysis Doesn’t Define This Accountant’s Career

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Jina Etienne stood in Trader Joe’s, paralyzed by eight different ice cream flavors, unable to choose between them. This moment perfectly captured what her decades-long accounting career had felt like, not because she wasn’t capable, but because her ADHD brain was processing every decision through multiple filters at once.

In this episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland sit down with CPA and speaker Jina Etienne to explore a reality affecting countless women in the profession: living with undiagnosed ADHD while maintaining the appearance of having it all together.

When Your Child’s Diagnosis Becomes Your Own

For both Jina and Questian, ADHD recognition didn’t come through self-awareness; it came through their children, as many late diagnoses do for women in their forties.

Jina’s story began when her husband couldn’t understand their son Dominic’s behavior. “Dominic was really into this project,” she recalls. “He worked really hard on the project. My husband takes him to school, drops him off, and then he says, ‘So, Dominic, where’s the project?’ He forgot to bring it to school.” Her husband wondered how someone could be so invested in something and completely forget it. That bewilderment sparked a diagnosis journey that would circle back to Jina herself.

After Dominic’s diagnosis, Jina asked the psychiatrist how to parent an ADHD child. The doctor gave her a book called “Driven to Distraction.” Reading through the diagnostic criteria, Jina found herself checking off symptom after symptom. “If you have more than 12 of these characteristics out of 20, you might have ADHD. Well, I had 12. So I called back and I said, ‘Can you diagnose me?’”

Questian’s path was similar. Watching her 14-year-old son navigate challenges that mirrored her own childhood, she recognized patterns she’d never connected before. “We have so many similarities between the two of us,” she shares, though her son hasn’t wanted to pursue formal diagnosis yet.

The Gender Gap in Diagnosis

ADHD in women often hides behind a carefully constructed wall of competence. The diagnostic tools themselves were designed around boys’ behaviors, focusing on the bouncing-off-the-walls hyperactivity that disrupted classrooms rather than the quiet inattention more common in girls.

“We make gender assumptions about boys and girls,” Jina explains. “Girls are quiet, girls are thoughtful. Girls are nice. So if a boy is boisterous and he’s busy running around and can’t sit still, then it must be ADHD. But if a girl is sitting still, maybe it’s not ADHD.”

This gendered lens means countless women slip through diagnostic cracks. Questian’s grandmother used to say she was “bouncing off the walls all the time,” even “climbing furniture, hanging from the ceiling, just all over the place.” The solution was to put her in gymnastics. No one connected those dots to ADHD because she could also sit still when required, even if her mind was racing.

The biological component adds another layer of complexity. Estrogen helps regulate dopamine, the neurotransmitter already inconsistent in ADHD brains. “As our estrogen levels start to drop, the struggle becomes more obvious,” Jina notes. “It was always there, but as we get older, it can feel like things got harder.”

Nancy adds important context: only three to five percent of adults have ADHD, though informal studies suggest higher rates in accounting. When people dismiss it saying “everyone has ADHD now,” they’re conflating normal distraction with a clinical condition that, as Nancy’s therapist reminds her, “doesn’t become a clinical diagnosis until whatever it is that you’re dealing with interferes with your life.”

The Exhausting Art of Masking

After decades of compensating and overachieving to hide their struggles, women with ADHD reach a breaking point. Jina describes it perfectly with an analogy. “Imagine picking up a 10-pound weight. You’re holding it halfway up, and you just have to hold it like that for ten years. At first it doesn’t seem that hard. Eventually it gets heavy, but you can do it. And then it gets to the point where it’s so heavy, you’re struggling to do it, and you ask yourself, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ And then at some point you just throw it down.”

“I constantly overprepare for everything and feel like if I don’t overprepare, I’m not going to be able to manage what’s happening,” Questian says, describing her version of this weight. But even this strategy is failing. “I’ve gotten to the point where it’s become very difficult for me to emotionally hide my overwhelm.”

Women tend to internalize the physical manifestations in professional settings. “If I’m in a meeting, trying to hide that,” Questian explains about suppressing her fidgeting, “if I can’t express it and move my body the way that I need to, then it becomes internal agitation. It moves inward.”

Decision paralysis adds another layer. Back to Jina’s Trader Joe’s story, “Instead of coming home with two things, I come home with eight things because I’m overloaded with the decisions I have to make, and I’m afraid to make the wrong decision.” This extends to work, where Questian describes having multiple big projects. “I get into a spiral in my mind. Which one do I start with?”

Time blindness creates special challenges in accounting. Jina explains there’s actual neuroscience behind it—something called scalar expectancy theory. The brain’s internal “pacemaker” runs inconsistently in ADHD brains. “It has nothing to do with not managing time,” she emphasizes. “People think it’s time management and I think it’s time processing.”

What Jina calls “imposter syndrome on steroids” compounds everything. Before diagnosis, the negative self-talk was relentless. “I felt like something was wrong with me.”

From Shame to Strategy

Diagnosis transformed self-blame into self-understanding for both women. “My whole life made sense to me,” Questian reflects. “Getting that diagnosis helped me understand myself a lot better and prevented me from feeling this level of guilt about who I was.”

For Jina, diagnosis brought vocabulary to experiences she couldn’t previously articulate. The revelation about difficulty reading social cues moved her to tears during the conversation. “Those words were not in my vocabulary. I just thought something was wrong.” But awareness brought empowerment: “Now I watch for things I didn’t watch for before.”

The practical strategies are highly individual. Questian found medication helps. She takes “a kid dose of Ritalin” because Adderall was too strong. Jina’s neurologist explained that different medications affect ADHD brains differently. “For anybody listening, if you had a reaction to one medication, try another before you dismiss it altogether.”

Technology is an ally when configured correctly. Jina’s iPhone has focus settings that automatically silence notifications on Monday writing days. “My phone automatically turns off all notifications at 9 a.m. It doesn’t ring. Nothing shows up on my screen.” She maintains 16 different Google calendars, color-coded for visual processing. At 11 PM, her phone grays out all icons, removing even visual temptation.

Communication strategies matter, too. Jina and her husband developed what she calls the “junk drawer” method. While he thinks internally before speaking, she needs to verbally process everything. Their solution was to let Jina talk it out. “I can just talk, and then I have to say, ‘This is the part you need to hear.’”

However, workplace disclosure remains complicated. “Some people worry about self-disclosure,” Jina notes, “because if you disclose something to your boss, sometimes the HR team feels an obligation to do something.” Her advice? “You don’t have to reveal that you have ADHD if you can explain what your strengths are.”

The Superpowers Are Real

ADHD brings legitimate strengths alongside its challenges. When Questian mentions her “high sense of intuition and emotional awareness” and extreme empathy, Jina confirms, “Those are markers for ADHD and so is high creativity.”

The same brain struggling with executive function excels at ideation. “You don’t even have a box to think inside of,” Jina explains. The hyperfocus that makes her work until 3 AM also allows her to solve complex problems others can’t crack. “When I’m in the zone, I can really work and knock stuff out.”

Nancy, who doesn’t have ADHD, offers perspective about the double-edged nature. “I don’t have the same creativity that y’all do, but I also don’t have to deal with idea overload.”

“We all have some of these things from time to time, but some of us have a lot of these things all the time,” Jina says, emphasizing an important distinction. Having occasional struggles with focus isn’t ADHD. It’s about having “ten, 12 or 14” of the chronic disturbances, not just a few.

Moving Forward with Understanding

This conversation reveals that ADHD in professional women isn’t about inability; it’s about brains that work differently in a world designed for neurotypical processing. The exhaustion comes from constant translation and compensation.

When someone dismisses ADHD saying “everyone has it,” they miss the clinical reality. As Questian shares, “I’ve actually had people make this comment to me, and I’m sitting here going, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, have you lived in my life? Have you walked in my shoes?’” Yet by speaking openly, Questian creates space for others to recognize themselves and seek understanding. 

“The labels we’ve been using do not reflect the beautiful, complex diversity that lives within each of us,” Jina reminds us. “Inclusion isn’t about them. It’s about how we show up for others.”

For women in accounting who’ve spent years perfecting their professional masks while struggling with focus, time management, and mental chaos, you’re not alone, you’re not broken, and there are strategies that can help. Whether through diagnosis, medication, technology, or simply understanding that your brain works differently, there’s a path from exhaustion to empowerment.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about specific strategies and the transformative power of understanding your own mind. Then join the conversation on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page, where we’re continuing this discussion about ADHD in the accounting profession.

Saying No Is the Ultimate Power Move for Women in Accounting

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Years ago, Nancy McClelland sent a text to Questian Telka that would eventually birth the She Counts podcast. “What if our default wasn’t saying yes?” she asked. As two self-proclaimed yes-aholics who regularly got themselves “into a lot of trouble with how much we say yes,” Nancy wondered what life would look like if they flipped the script entirely, making “no” their default and forcing themselves to justify every yes.

That text conversation planted a seed that grew into episode 14 of She Counts, where Nancy and Questian sat down with Brandy Jordan, a self-proclaimed “Jane of all trades” who’s made a name for herself as Catalyst at Woodard and Concept Alchemist at High Rock Accounting. Brandy knows something about saying no that most of us desperately need to learn.

When “New Scenery With the Same Inbox” Becomes Your Vacation

“For years, vacations were just new scenery with the same inbox for me,” Brandy admits during the conversation. She’d work through every trip, checking emails poolside, taking calls from the beach. No one demanded she stay online. It was her own inner superhero insisting she needed to be available.

The kicker? She was coaching other professionals about boundaries while burning her own to the ground. “The irony was painful,” she says.

Sound familiar? If you’re nodding along, you’re in good company. Nancy hasn’t taken a vacation without her laptop since before the pandemic. Questian can’t remember the last time she took a full weekend off. When she recently took her kids to the pool on a rare day off, she remembers thinking, “Wow, this is a nice feeling. Like I’m not actually working.”

This is the reality for women in accounting, where the pressure to prove your worth through constant availability feels like oxygen: invisible but essential for survival. As Brandy explains from years of coaching high performers, “These are bright, capable people driving themselves into the ground because saying no felt like career limiting or a personal flaw.”

Your Yes Reflex Is Actually Killing Your Career

Here’s the brutal honesty Brandy drops early in the conversation: “Every time you say yes, you’re saying no to something else whether you mean to or not.”

For women in accounting, the pressure runs deeper than just workplace expectations. The industry rewards responsiveness and that service-oriented mindset. It sounds great until you realize you’ve become the default note-taker in every meeting, the organizer of office birthday cards, and the coordinator of team events, all while maintaining your full workload.

“These smaller yeses create patterns of taking on all the extra things that need to be done,” Questian observes. Meanwhile, colleagues who don’t say yes to all the extra stuff actually get their work done while you’re in what Brandy calls “that constant state of feeling like you have to catch up.”

Nancy confesses she literally remembers the last time she felt caught up: 19 years ago, sitting on her front porch at age 34, choosing between the beach and yoga. “I’ve spent the past 19 years trying to get back to that moment.”

Part of the problem is what behavioral economists call the planning fallacy. As Brandy explains, we tend to underestimate how long tasks actually take, even when experience proves us wrong repeatedly. Questian nails it: “I recognize that it takes me about twice as long as I think something’s going to take me, but I still don’t want to acknowledge it.”

We’re not just miscalculating time; we’re completely ignoring mental bandwidth. Some tasks drain us more than others, yet we schedule them back-to-back as if our brains are machines. As a result, we keep telling ourselves we’ll figure it out or catch up next week. But as Nancy points out, being an adult has become “saying I’ll catch up next week, every week for the rest of your life.”

The Revolutionary Difference Between Saying No and Starting With No

“Starting with no is not about being negative or difficult,” Brandy clarifies. “It is about installing a new operating system for your decisions.”

Drawing from Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Brandy explains how our reflexive yes belongs to System 1, the quick, emotional, people-pleasing response. Starting with no forces System 2 thinking, where you actually ask whether you can afford the cognitive load, the hours, and the context switching this demands.

Think about budgeting money, Brandy suggests. “If you constantly spend first and figure it out later, you always feel behind and stretched. But if you start each month at zero and consciously decide exactly how to allocate your funds, you’re going to feel empowered and in control.”

The same applies to your time and energy. But you need concrete criteria. Brandy’s approach is to write out five personal values that align with everything you do. Then identify your top three or four career goals. Every request gets filtered through the question, “Can I do this without compromising my other priorities?”

“I’m writing that down,” Nancy said. It’s the question that changes everything because suddenly you’re not asking “Can I squeeze this in?” but “What am I willing to sacrifice?”

How to Actually Say No (Without Feeling Like a Jerk)

“Don’t start saying no to the biggest thing that comes your way,” Brandy advises. “Start small because you have to get comfortable with saying no.”

Her practical framework:

  • Use clear yet empathetic language: “Thank you for considering me, but I cannot take this on right now”
  • Offer alternatives when possible, such as suggesting a colleague who might benefit or be better aligned
  • Give yourself time by saying, “Let me review my workload and get back to you tomorrow”

That pause is crucial. “It gives you space to thoughtfully assess the request without the stress of an immediate reaction,” Brandy explains. “Your fear will diminish because now you’ve thought it through logically.”

Questian admits the pause is her biggest challenge. She recalls immediately wanting to volunteer for a speaking opportunity, even reaching out to Nancy when a colleague declined it. Nancy’s response? “No, I’m going to protect you from yourself here.”

The shift changes how you think about no entirely. “Stop thinking that saying no is inherently selfish or inflexible,” Brandy insists. “By thoughtfully evaluating your commitments, you respect your own capacity and your team’s capacity and ability to rely on you fully when you do commit.”

The Day Brandy Told Herself No

The hardest no Brandy ever said wasn’t to a boss or client; it was to herself. After years of preaching boundaries while working through every vacation, she finally drew the line. The laptop stayed home. Not in the hotel room, not in the bag. “I knew if it was in my bag, I wouldn’t leave it be.”

Notifications went off and she warned her team, “I will be unreachable. Carry on. Don’t break anything.”

The hardest part was silencing that voice insisting something might implode. “It never does,” Brandy reflects. “There’s nothing life-threatening in our line of work that would need anything right away.”

The payoff was immediate: real rest, a fresh perspective, and the end of that hypocritical guilt. Now everyone at work knows, when Brandy’s on vacation, she’s unreachable. Period.

Nancy’s taking her first laptop-free vacation since pre-pandemic after hearing this. She’s even built in buffer days before and after. Her new philosophy? “If this all burns down while I’m gone, then that wasn’t the business I wanted to be running anyway.”

Why Your Team Secretly Wants You to Say No

“Modeling is essential,” Brandy emphasizes. When leaders protect their bandwidth, they demonstrate that focus is a competitive advantage, that thoughtful prioritization—not endless accommodation—delivers excellence.

Nancy discovered this when she vulnerably told her executive assistant, “I need you to help me. I’m not good at this.” She even offered a raise if her assistant could help her survive through July. “That took a lot of vulnerability and it was a little embarrassing,” Nancy admits. “But they’ve really been stepping up for me.”

Something magical happens when you actually disconnect. “It’s amazing what they can figure out when you’re not around,” Brandy observes. Those urgent emails? Already solved. Your team becomes highly self-sufficient when given the space.

The transformation extends beyond individual teams. As Questian discovered, “When I take a vacation and really put everything away, I am so much more efficient. My efficiency level increases substantially.”

Brandy puts it bluntly: “Self-abandonment is unsustainable leadership.”

Your Challenge: One No, Two Weeks

The path forward isn’t complex, but it requires courage. As Brandy says, you need to practice because “anything new is work” at first, but it becomes a habit when you consistently ask, “Does this align with what I want to do?”

Nancy and Questian are committing to trying this approach. Will you? Choose one request in the next two weeks and apply Brandy’s framework. Pause. Evaluate against your priorities. Ask, “Can I do this without compromising my other commitments?”

If the answer is no, practice saying, “Thank you for considering me, but I cannot take this on right now.”

Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share your experience. Because you’re not alone in this struggle, and you shouldn’t have to figure it out by yourself.

As poet Nayyirah Waheed writes, “I don’t say yes because I’m strong. I say no because I am.”

The accounting profession needs leaders who model sustainable excellence, not martyrdom. That transformation starts with two letters: N-O.

Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode above where Nancy, Questian, and Brandy explore every nuance of moving from exhausted accommodation to strategic leadership.