Loving your work, leaving work behind, and returning refreshed

Jen Wilson admittedly loves her work. As partner and co-founder at ConvergenceCoaching LLC, she’s on the road often, advising accounting firms and profession leaders. Sometimes, that travel and love of work can give her colleagues cause for concern.

“It troubles them if they can’t see me unplug,” Wilson said.

This episode of the JofA podcast, the second of a three-episode Midwest series focusing on summer travel, features Wilson talking about the value of time away. It was recorded in person, at her house in Bellevue, Neb.

Wilson discussed the benefits of a two-week, end-of-year closure and why despite understanding the importance of a refresh, she sometimes takes work with her on vacation.

Additionally, as the independent facilitator for the National Pipeline Advisory Group (NPAG), Wilson is plugged in to the talent issues facing the profession. She provided an update on where things stand with accounting talent with 2026 about four months away.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Wilson’s background as a longtime resident of Nebraska.
• The reasons she travels often for work in the summer.
• Why Wilson sometimes takes work with her on vacation – and her family’s reaction to that decision.
• The benefits of an extended, full-company closure.
• Her assessment of the accounting talent pipeline.
• The meaning she finds in the quote, “Your direction is more important than your speed.”

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. I’d like to welcome Jen Wilson, partner at ConvergenceCoaching LLC. We’re recording in her home state, in her home city, even in her home. Very thankful for that, that we can have a little Midwest road swing and visit with Jen Wilson. Welcome back to the podcast.

Jen Wilson: Thanks, Neil. I’m so glad to have you in my home and in my home office. It’s fun.

Amato: It’s great. You’ve talked a lot about remote work, and I’m getting to see your setup here, and it’s beautiful. It’s professional and it looks great. Excited to talk. First thing, we’re in Bellevue, Neb., officially, just south of Omaha.

My reasons for knowing Omaha are silly. This is my first time in Nebraska, just a matter of hours. But besides Warren Buffett, the College World Series, a Counting Crows mention in the song Omaha – for you, it’s home. Tell me some about it. I guess, did you grow up right around here?

Wilson: I grew up in Bellevue, where I live. My parents were stationed here. There’s Offutt Air Force Base and they were stationed here back in the late ’60s, and my dad used this as home base to serve in the Vietnam War. When he came back, they made the decision not to make the next move with the Air Force, and we stayed.

I am an Air Force brat, No. 4 of six, but I barely moved. I got kindergarten through college right here. Then I got out as soon as I could and moved to Southern California, Orange County, Mission Viejo, and did 10 years there and then moved back in the late 90s to start having babies and get back to the Midwest to raise them.

Amato: I guess for your work, the Omaha airport is not too far from here, in the center of the country. What is that like and was that part of your thinking as far as moving here at all? I know you said it was family-related, but how does it work workwise to be in the center like this?

Wilson: It’s perfect. I did not consider it. I considered moving home. My husband, really, Brian was the driver to get us home. He said, if we were going to have babies, we were going to raise Nebraskans. It wasn’t really an option. But I’d been flying from the West Coast, and I’d lose a day doing it and have a hard time getting out after 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon. And it was just a really tough place to fly from.

When I got here, I had the wonderful surprise or recognition that I was going to be able to get almost anywhere. As long as I don’t care about the carrier, I can fly direct a whole bunch of places, which is surprising to people, but I can. And the airport’s 21 minutes from my house, and it’s tiny, comparative.

Amato: Easy to get through.

Wilson: Not two hours ahead and all that stuff. You can park. You don’t have to take a train to get back to the airport and all that. It’s pretty great for travel, for sure.

Amato: It’s the airport that I’m going to fly out of. Again, I’m on this little Midwest road swing talking to CPAs and leaders in the profession who care about the profession. One of the themes of this summer road swing is also just summer travel in general. Do you have or have you had recently any big trips this summer?

Wilson: Yes. First of all, I travel a lot for work in the summer because my work is conducted in person a lot with firms during their non-peak seasons. For sure, I’ve had a whole bunch of work travel. But personal travel: Brian and I took our daughters and one son-in-law to Kiawah Island, S.C. We went to the beach for a week over the Fourth, and we think that’s our seventh year in a row.

We took COVID off, so seven years with one COVID year off. I just got back from Colorado, helping my daughter move. Brian and I went there and did hard labor. Even though she had movers, it was still two serious days. The highlight of that trip was Sunday we climbed the Manitou Incline, and that was super hard and cool.

Amato: Sounds cool. Also hard. What like, 2,800, 2,900 steps?

Wilson: Yep, 2,862, 2,000-foot elevation gain from 6,550 start, really uneven steps, lot of step-ups. At about 500 steps, I realized I was leading with my right foot all the time. I realized I wasn’t going to ever use it again if I didn’t start leading with my left more deliberately, but it was really a super tough physical challenge, and I’m glad I did it. I got it done.

Amato: Certainly. Different people have different views of what a vacation is or what time away is. Probably not helping a family member move is part of that, but it’s still unplugging. It’s still being away from the laptop and meetings and everything.

Wilson: Big time.

Amato: How does that time away help you, I guess, feel refreshed when you return to work?

Wilson: Well, for sure, I love my work and I would say that I have a fair addiction to it. Many of us that work in technology-related fields are stuck to the phone, stuck to Teams, stuck to Outlook and all the different platforms that we’re communicating on social media. Also I’m a night owl, and I do a lot of work at night.

I work a lot and I really like it. I don’t dislike it. I don’t dread it like some people might. It’s hard for me to let go of it. But then when I do, I’m so glad that I have. It’s hard to go back. I don’t know how long before I feel refreshed. I feel really refreshed after a week. It’s difficult to get a full week.

I am one of those time management people that thinks on the flights there, I’m going to work and on the flights on the way back, I might work. Now, if I’m reading a really good book – I read three or four books in South Carolina – sometimes I can stay that way.

Another thing about being unplugged, at Convergence, we close for two weeks every year at year end, completely close the business. The business is 25 years old, and we started probably the third year doing that. I got the idea. I was formerly a principal at BDO, and they did it. They closed for a week in between the holidays there.

So I thought, gosh, if they could do a week, I think I could do two. My team obviously thought it was a good idea to try and we did and we’ve trained our clients, and we all shut down. It’s really not allowed to be emailing or communicating in any way with each other about work unless there’s a dire emergency of some kind.

Amato: I think it’s a good policy. You definitely have to make some sort of clean break, even if it’s just for a few days. Anoop Mehta, you know who Anoop Mehta is? Former AICPA chair. Before that was a CFO who I knew well before he became chair. But he said to me one time, I’m really happy just sitting in a chair by a pool, possibly responding to a few emails, possibly not, but if I feel like I can keep things moving and be on vacation, that works for me. For some people, it does to stay plugged in a little bit.

Wilson: I do that some. Our team looks at it like if Jen’s still communicating on vacation, does she think we’re supposed to be, too? I also think that it troubles them if they can’t see me unplug, they worry about sustainability of Jen. I have to demonstrate that.

Plus, I’m usually with family when I’m vacationing, and they have strong feelings about me sitting with the laptop or being on the phone on email or on a call or something. Occasionally, it happens. Sometimes you can’t make a project stop. The [National Pipeline Advisory Group] project was like that. It came to South Carolina with me because we were finalizing the report in July and it had to be published, final, July 31.

So, I had a little bit of NPAG on that vacation, but tried to do it at night when they were sleeping. And I didn’t do a lot, but I did some. Sometimes you have to, but mostly I think it’s good to be principled about demonstrating for everybody else that you’re doing it, and then when you do it, you feel better, too.

The other thing is a trend in flex and remote, kind of a remote forward or flex forward sort of thing, that firms are doing and we’ve been doing it with that closure for two weeks at year end, is everybody off work at once breaks. So we’re seeing firms close for the first three days of the Thanksgiving holiday because they were already closed Thursday and Friday.

Or closing down around the Fourth of July, depending on when it falls or taking time off like we are at year end or closing every Friday in summers. When everybody closes, everybody goes away, that’s a totally different break because your whole pileup of communications from the internal team stops completely, and that makes it so much easier to get out and come back.

Amato: That’s a really good point, because you don’t have to worry about someone expecting you to work versus they’re working or they’re on vacation and they feel guilty or whatever. Really good point. Other issues related to the profession, I know the pipeline topic is a big one. Where do you think things stand right now, as we record in early August 2025, with the accounting talent pipeline?

Wilson: Well, 2025 is spongy and strange as a year in our country. People are worried about economic health, tariffs, administration policies, whatever it is that’s creating this softness or sponginess. Job creation isn’t what we need it to be. People wonder about a recession here as we come into the second half.

I think, in general, people are less worried about talent this minute because they feel like their talent is staying put. They’re not seeing the turnover that they’ve seen. It’s classic when you have a softer economy potentially heading into recession that people don’t quit their jobs with the same frequency.

We’re seeing retention rates higher than normal. People are still adding in their interns and their first-year hires at same volumes presently. Maybe not the Big Four, but the rest are. They’re kind of up on talent. I would tell you that the micro conversation at most firms is “Well, it’s a little better. It’s easing.”

I tell people, hey, you’re in a false bubble, because we know what demographics are like and we know that we’re going to see more and more retirements. We know the economy will lift, at least we pray it does – and then people will leave. We’ll have this pent-up turnover that will happen. Then we’ll have all kinds of pressure for talent.

I’m encouraged by a lot of folks are increasing starting salaries, as we’d asked them to in the National Pipeline Advisory Group report. However, other professions have raised their salaries, too, and we’re still sitting in that lower-paid business grad place, and we need to solve that.

I’m encouraged to see more accounting students starting and declaring their major and graduates starting – the pipeline’s filling maybe better at the front than it has in prior years. But we’re still not back to prior levels, and so there’s still work to do, that’s for sure.

Amato: That’s well said. I’m going to ask this to close. I see on this calendar, you have this 365-day calendar with some quotes, and I know a little bit about you. I know it’s probably running-related, and the quote is, “Your direction is more important than your speed.”

I think that applies outside of running. What do you think when you read those words, “your direction is more important than your speed”?

Wilson: I agree. Knowing where you’re going, where’s my vision. As an individual, I know that’s a run quote, so of course, that matters. But as an individual, just knowing, what does my next three to five years hold, and where do I want it to be? Over there, if you look under the desk over to the right, there’s a big board with a bunch of pictures on it.

That’s Brian’s and Jen’s five-year vision plan. Knowing where I want to go, setting my direction, having a picture of that, that’s crucial. Then business for our firms. Where do they want to go? Where will they be in five years’ time? Where will the leaders be? What do they want for their people and their clients and then for the talent to have the same clarity of direction? That’s crucial for them to want to stay.

Amato: That’s great. I like the vision board, and it’s not just a thought in your head or a Google Doc that is hard to see. You actually see it every day in your office. That is great. That’s a great example. Thank you, Jen. Thank you for being on the podcast.

Again, this is Neil Amato. I don’t get to say this often, but I’m live in Bellevue, Nebraska, saying, thanks again for listening to the Journal of Accountancy podcast.