With Angela Jenkins & M. Katie Helle

Randy and Terrell team up on Episode 291 of The Unique CPA, as each of them sat down with a returning BTG attendee at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte. Angela Jenkins found the conference through a tip from Nayo Carter-Gray, who told her it was the only accounting conference focused on wellness. She booked it that same day. Angela recalls the yoga room, the speakers who weren’t parceled off from attendees, and the boundaries she took back to her remote team, like hours of operation between eight and four and no late-night client conversations. M. Katie Helle, a three-time attendee, tells Terrell why the conference’s small size matters for networking, particularly for introverts, and raves about Jennifer Diamond’s improv session that peeled back layers accountants rarely show at the office. She also shares the little workflow takeaways she picked up from Al-Nesha Jones’ session, which didn’t amount to a full overhaul, but rather a few aha moments she could implement the very next week.

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Hello and welcome to The Unique CPA with your hosts, Randy Crabtree and Terrell Turner. Today we dive into the archives to look back on one conversation each host had with a special guest at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Unique CPA is brought to you by RandyCrabtree.com. Log on to learn more.

We are at Bridging the Gap 2026, and I am sitting with a friend of mine, Angela Jenkins, and I’m going to ask her a few questions about her BTG story. But first, before we get to that, Angela, thanks for sitting down with me.

You’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure.

So your first BTG was Denver in 2025?

2025, because I was on LinkedIn in January, and Nayo Carter-Gray was giving a list of all of the conferences she was looking forward to, ’cause she figured out her conferences in January. And she mentioned Bridging the Gap, and she said it was the only accounting conference that focused on wellness. And I stopped, and I messaged her and I said, “What is this about?” She’s like, “You have to go.” She was like, “This is a conference that’s going to change everything for you.” Messaged my admin, and I said, “I need you to figure out what this is. Find the link, pay for it, whatever we need to do, but I’m going to Denver.” Then you put it on LinkedIn, “What’s making you go?” And my response was, “This is an accounting conference that focuses on not accounting,” and I think that’s important coming from a place of we are very stressed out all of the time and we don’t talk about it. And for somebody to say, “We’re going to talk about it with a room full of people,” I was like, “Alright, I’m in.” We messaged a few times and then when I got here and I saw you, you gave me a hug. And I was like, “This is where I’m supposed to be.”

So that was coming to BTG. And then what was that experience like for you?

It was amazing. It was really life changing. Because again, I’ve gone to other conferences, I know there’s going to be software and you’re talking about technology and practices and workflows and in a way of building a practice. And we do that, we come from it from a different lens. We come from it of “If we’re not good, our firm’s not going to be good. And if our firm isn’t good, healthy and communicative and clear on what we’re here to do, we’re no good to our clients.” And so for me it was the fact that you had a yoga room, you could go and just lay down on the mat or anything, I was like, “This is great.” I have a yoga teacher background, so for me I was like, “This is great.” And the smaller groups having conversations. I saw people at that conference I had always seen on stages and leading sessions, and they were sitting at the table next to me, not parceled off, and you could have conversations. Well, I connected with people on a really different level, and to this day, we’re still connected. And it’s exciting to see them.

Nice. And so after last year, after 2025. And the concentration on avoiding burnout and things that we talked about at this. Were you able to take learnings from that year and bring it back to the office?

I did. And so one of the things for me is my team is fully remote, and at the time my team was Central Time and I’m East Coast time. And it was important for me, ’cause I had seen it happen and didn’t really address it—my team works when they work. However, if you’re working late at night and a client happens to be up, you run the very good chance of them responding and you getting into a two and a half hour conversation between ten and midnight. And so for me it was important to say, “Look, the hours of operation are between eight and four, Monday through Thursday. If you can’t send a message then, it has to wait till the next day.” Because I want to protect their time. And be respectful of the client’s time. ’Cause I think sometimes a client thinks if I send them a message I have to respond to Angela. No, you don’t. You can respond when you respond. So I took some of those boundaries and making sure we were taking care of ourselves and being extra communicative on, “Are you okay? What’s going on? What’s happening at home? Do you need anything?” was important. They’re moms, my team members are moms and kids are going to school and leaving for college, and there’s some big things going on and I wanted to respect that and not be, “This has to get done because it’s month end.” It’ll get done. So those are some of the big things I took back.

Well, I am so grateful that Nayo put that post out and that you responded to it and reached out to me, and I’m glad that you’re back for the second year. And I’m hoping you get as much out of this one as you got out of the last one.

I have. I’ve gotten a lot out of it already, and we’re not even done.

Not even done. We got a full half day yet today and a half day tomorrow. And a big gala event tonight.

Yes. Excited.

Well, Angela, thank you so much for sitting down and welcome. Thanks for being here.

You’re welcome.

We’re here at Bridging the Gap 2026, and I’m sitting down with Katie because I want to get your opinion about Bridging the Gap. So tell me what brought you to Bridging the Gap this year?

Well, I’m a repeat attendee. This is my third year coming and it is my favorite conference. So, anytime I see Bridging the Gap, it’s like, “Sign me up immediately.” There’s no doubt about that.

Nice. So I guess, what was it about this conference that made it such an appeal for you to say, “Hey, you know what, I actually want to go back again?”

So there are a couple different things why it attracts me. One is the size of it. I think smaller conferences are easy to network, it’s easier to learn, there’s so many conversations that happen outside of the classrooms that are sometimes more valuable than what you’re learning inside the classroom, right? Not that the content in the classroom is not good, ’cause it is great, but the conversations between you and me, or somebody else, you’re like, oh, they can help me solve this problem that you’ve been scratching your head for months, how am I going to get this done? So I think the size of it makes a big difference. I know some of the larger conferences, it’s overwhelming, the classroom sizes. If you’re not an outgoing individual, it’s really hard to meet people. But here, even those that are introverts, it’s easy for them to feel at home, I would say.

Awesome.

The other thing too is the speaker selection is really fantastic.

Now I will say, I know this probably is putting you on the spot a little bit. So what is one speaker that really stood out to you this year?

I have two. So Jennifer Diamond’s improv session yesterday was fabulous because accountants are boring people that sit behind a desk, come on, let’s be real. But she peeled back layers of us that we were very uncomfortable at first with doing, but once we got into the rhythm and kind of did this interactive session, it was very interesting watching the room and seeing how everybody changed and how more comfortable they were once we were peeling back layers that we probably never would be doing within our firm, or when we’re engaging with clients or anything like that. So that session was incredible. And then today, Al-Nesha’s session on workflow was fantastic. One, she’s a really great speaker in general, but she adds a lot of fun commentary along the way, which is great. She knows people in the audience, and she’ll bring that into the conversation, which just makes it more fun to listen to her speak.

Awesome. I love that. I think that’s such a good point about Diamond’s session, ’cause I’ve been to one of her sessions when she’d done that improv session. And I do feel like it does allow accountants to be more of who they really are, instead of wearing this image of what we think accountants should behave like. Because as you get to know people, we start noticing, “Hey, people may be great dancers, or they may have this type of hobby, they’re a runner,” there are all these different things about them. And so I totally agree with you. So when it comes down to the workflows, I guess, what was it about the workflows that stood out to you? Was it hey, this solved the problem that you were thinking about in your firm, or was it just the way that Al-Nesha delivered it?

So, I’m a workflow queen I could say, maybe, and I love workflows. I love reviewing them within our firm, making modifications, I do that year-round. But the little tidbits that she added into it was, “Oh, I didn’t even think of that, how to do that.” So it’s just the little takeaways. It’s not like I’m needing to overhaul my system completely and my firm, so just the little takeaways were aha moments where I was like, “I can achieve that. I can go back and next week we can accomplish three of these little tiny takeaways,” which it’s nice going back with a list of things to do, but sometimes it’s really overwhelming. And have you ever been to a conference where you make so many notes and then the execution of what you’re like, “Oh, I want to do this,” doesn’t always follow through when there’s a big list of things? And so little takeaways I think are very valuable, especially for me, where I’m at with my firm today.

Nice. I love it. So if we were sitting down talking to someone who said, “Hey, I’m not quite sure yet if I want to go to Bridging the Gap,” what would you say to them if we’re thinking about, “Hey, the next Bridging the Gap, I think you should go.” What would you say to them?

Yeah, so I actually had a conversation with somebody last week, same situation, asking me, right? She’s never been to it. I told her I was coming here this week and she said, “Why do you love this conference so much?” And I said, “Well, it’s just small.” And she’s kind of never really ventured out into conferences, she kind of does local things, but not conference-type sessions. And so I told her that this was an excellent conference because it is small, so you can get your feet into it. And then also, it’s more easy to network with people here than say, going to one of the larger conferences where there’s thousands of people where this is just a couple hundred people. And even the vendors, the vendors are really great. It’s nice talking to them. It’s not overwhelming. They’re joining in on the sessions, they’re here to learn about us. Maybe not necessarily do a sales pitch, which is also something that I truly respect and I appreciate. So it’s just all around a great conference.

Awesome.

And as a matter of fact, she said she was going to come, so.

Well, thank you so much for promoting the conference. So now I guess if people are like, hey, you know what, I heard that she said she’s a workflow queen, so people are wanting to find you online or on social media, where can they find you?

Yeah, the best place to find me is LinkedIn. So you can find me, search M . Katie Helle and you’ll find me on LinkedIn and I do post a lot about firm-running stuff in general, just kind of keep the ideas fresh and getting people’s opinions because it’s always interesting to hear what other people’s thoughts are and understanding where they’re at in their firm-running journey.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me!

Important Links

Bridging the Gap Conference

Angela Jenkins on LinkedIn

M. Katie Helle on LinkedIn

About the Guests

Angela Jenkins is a the founder of Mindfull Money Matters, a boutique bookkeeping and accounting firm based in Philadelphia serving entrepreneurs and small business owners globally. With over 25 years of cross-sector experience, Angela specializes in strategic bookkeeping, QuickBooks Online setup and management, cash flow analysis, and financial systems for nonprofits.

As the owner and CEO of Scaled Accounting Solutions, M. Katie Helle’s mission is rooted in leveraging over 17 years of expertise in taxation, strategic planning, and bookkeeping services to drive transformative change in the accounting landscape. She and her team are dedicated to integrating advanced technologies to deliver unparalleled value to their clients.