we risk losing a generation of highly talented people if we continue to expect them to pay their dues and work long hours.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
in 2006, dominique molina was overworked and burned out at her accounting firm. but instead of throwing in the towel, she drastically overhauled her firm: she pruned her client base from 300 to 30, focused on her expertise in tax planning, and shifted to value pricing.
more podcasts and videos: dawn brolin says grow your firm by shrinking it | jason blumer & julie shipp: move leaders out of client service | james graham: drop the billable hour and you’ll bill more | karen reyburn: fix your marketing and fix your business | giles pearson: fix the staffing crisis by swapping experience for education | jina etienne: practice fearless inclusion | bill penczak: stop forcing smart people to do stupid work | sandra wiley: staffing problem? check your culture | scott scarano: first, grow people. then firm growth can follow |
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that transformation was “beyond my wildest dreams,” molina says. “i never could have predicted the joy that i feel in my life, the satisfaction and fulfillment i feel from my work” by helping her clients with their own business transformations.
she reports, “it’s made me a better parent, a better spouse, and a better friend.” there’s a sense in public accounting that “we’re missing out on some of those things,” molina says. when we’ve been “removed from the richness that life has to offer,” it’s easy to just push through and wait until we have more time to make the necessary changes. but “we’ll never be on our deathbed wishing that we put more charge hours in,” she reminds us.
with 90% fewer clients, molina still makes “a decent living, but with 90% less deadlines, 90% less unexpected situations that arise, 90% less communications to juggle, and 90% less relationships to manage,” she reports. “it’s a whole lot easier.”
an early adopter of value pricing, she started that out of desperation. even though she loved the puzzle of tax work, molina explains that “i had really reached the point of no return with my business,” saying she was ready to “get out and walk away and shut the door on both experience and knowledge.”
she studied pricing in other service-oriented businesses with customized services and realized that “our pricing model was terribly broken.” the high volume of clients needed to make a living was “a big part of the problem.”
so she asked herself, “if i had just 10% of these clients, but i knew that my financial obligations were met, how would things be different in my practice and in my life?” after reading several books by ron baker, she started implementing value pricing. “it wasn’t easy at the time,” she recalls. not many others were using value pricing, so she was figuring it out as she went and “getting a lot of bumps and bruises.”
making that change not only helped dominique improve her own life but has allowed her to make a deeper impact on her clients. “i’ve had clients that have been so thrilled and said to me things like ‘no one has ever asked me those kinds of questions before,’” she reports. “at the end of the day, they don’t see my cost as a sunk cost of doing business. instead, they’re seeing it as an investment.”
11 more takeaways
- value pricing means you have one focus: creating value for your clients. everything becomes about that focus. what else can you do to add value?
- highly customized services require higher pricing to compensate for scope creep, overages, and service management from start to delivery.
- accounting and tax are consultative services, but we use a transactional business model. our highly customized services do not work in an assembly-line business model.
- because we’re stretched thin, we may not fully understand the client’s situation and may not fully serve our clients.
- with lower client volumes, you can do more for your clients. they no longer see your services as a sunk cost of doing business but as an investment with a significant return.
- time is irrelevant when you are creating transformation for your clients. the billable hour doesn’t accommodate accountants’ years of education, experience, and expertise.
- instead of measuring results in terms of hours spent, measure in terms of the results you get for your clients.
- if we continue to expect the younger generation to pay their dues and work long hours like we did, we risk losing an entire generation of highly talented people.
- ask yourself some questions about what you want. do you love working long hours and accomplishing a lot? or are you settling for those long hours because you don’t think there’s another way?
- just because you’re capable of doing something or learning how to do something doesn’t mean it’s in your client’s best interests or your own to offer that service.
- what are you really good at? how can you build a business service around that? bring in others to collaborate and build a team to get the best results for your clients.
about dominique molina
dominique molina, a cpa since 2000, has devoted her career to enhancing the expertise of accounting professionals while helping small businesses minimize their tax burden. she emphasizes proactive tax planning strategies, enabling small companies to leverage tax laws in the same way large corporations do. molina founded the american institute for certified tax planners (aictp) in 2009 to share her approach with other accounting professionals. the non-profit organization trains and certifies tax experts in proactive tax planning, with over 1,200 certified tax coaches, planners, and strategists across the nation serving over 360,000 entrepreneurial businesses.
aictp aims to elevate the accounting profession, attract younger generations, and offer an enhanced value proposition beyond traditional tax services. molina advocates for a shift from reactionary reporting to strategic knowledge, providing clients with guidance for tax savings and wealth building.
dominique molina remains a champion for modernizing and elevating the accounting industry, highlighting the value cpas offer in guiding clients toward better business outcomes.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host, liz farr, from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is dominique molina, co-founder and president of the american institute of certified tax planners. how are you today, dominique?
dominique molina
i’m doing very well, liz, thanks for having me.
liz farr
well, we’ve got a lot to cover. in this series, i am talking to owners of firms in practices with ideas for running firms that are little bit different from our fathers and grandfathers cpa firms. they’ll first can you tell the listeners a little bit about your company, where you’re located, what services you offer that kind of stuff?
dominique molina
sure. so i’m still actively practicing as a cpa, i’m based in southern california and sunny san diego. and i have been in this business too long, almost 25 years now. and got my start, like most of our listeners, probably got my degree, got licensed, worked for a large national firm, and decided that i didn’t really enjoy some of the characteristics of working in public accounting. and i thought that the solution to all my problems was just to run my own business, and then i could just run it my own way. and i wouldn’t have those headaches and stress anymore. and so i started out on my own as a cpa, and it wasn’t very long before i realized, oh, there’s a reason why the firm was being run this way. and why there were some things i didn’t like about it is just kind of inherent in our culture. and as you said, liz, you know, we’re, we are very traditionalists typically in the business, and we do it the way that our fathers and grandfathers did it. and that same as last year, saly. and so it took me a while to realize the the root of the real problem that was going on. but initially, i really just thought you can’t escape this if you are in public accounting.
liz farr
that’s right. and now you and i have spoken before i interviewed you for the journal of accountancy and an article on value pricing. and you were one of the early implementers of that way back in 2006.
dominique molina
right, right.
liz farr
yeah. can you talk a little bit about what brought about that change in your business model?
dominique molina
it was pure desperation, liz. i had really reached the point of no return with my business, i decided that i either had to get out and walk away and shut the door on both experience and knowledge, expertise. at but also on something that i really loved doing practicing is is wonderful. i love it. i love the numbers. i’m on the tax side, and i love the puzzle. and but the conditions were just really beating me up. and so i reached a pinnacle in my career where i felt like okay, this is really just a problem with public accounting. it’s not for me, and i’m, i’m at the fork in the road, i’ve got to get out. and as i said, the i was kind of throwing a lot of things out with that choice that i wasn’t, i was very reluctant to do that. and so i thought, well, why don’t i just give this another really good college try and really analyze and look at what is making me so miserable here. and i started really studying business in general. you know, people come to us for business advice and strategy and i felt helpful in that regard with my clients. but when it came to my own business, it was really hard to take that outside perspective. and so i learned a lot reading different journals and reading about pricing makes matrices and profit margins in business, especially in service oriented business with highly highly highly custom services like we do in accounting? and i realized that our pricing model was terribly broken. and so i thought to myself, you know, i got to a point where i kind of started figuring out that might be the actual issue was a pricing issue and sort of taking on high volumes of clients in an effort to make a decent living and make the efforts worthwhile. and that was actually a big part of the problem. at the end of the day, i just had too many clients, i had too many deadlines to juggle too many unexpected issues popping up. too many phone calls out of nowhere. and too many client emergencies where they feel like they’re the only one. and, and i knew that was the problem, because i asked myself the question, if i had just 10% of these clients, but i knew that my financial obligations were met, how would things be different in my practice, and in my life, and it was major, major differences there. and so i began to picture a potential business that would allow me to do that. and so i started researching value pricing and other pricing models to get a feel for, you know, which process or methodology might be better suited for public accounting so that we can increase our profit margins without the volume. and so i started researching, i found ron baker and his work and, and got a hold of a couple of his books that are intense, to say the least. i adore ron. he’s extremely well educated, and he’s thorough when he explains concepts. and so i thought, you know, if i can make this ago in my business, i think i might be able to, to shift this to the point where it makes sense for me in my life and my family. and so that’s just what i did, i set out to make major changes. and it wasn’t easy at the time. as you mentioned, this was many, many years ago, and there were not a lot of people doing this at the time. and so i was kind of just figuring it out for myself along the way and getting a lot of bumps and bruises. as i discovered what, what worked and what didn’t work.
liz farr
well, i gotta hand it to you for being a pioneer on that path. now, at the beginning, how did you figure out how to restructure your services and your fees?
dominique molina
yeah, i really had to get real with what service i was offering. and so harvard business review actually does a really detailed analysis. it’s old, obviously, it’s several decades old. but they do a detailed business study where they go in and they analyze lots and lots of different types of companies, some that produce products and some that do services. and what they determined is that the more customized and individualized a product or service is, the more necessary it is to have very high pricing in order to cover things that we worry about all the time as accountant scope, creep. and overages and, and being able to manage that product and service from start through delivery. and that was one of the first things that i learned is that, you know, of course, that’s what we do in this profession. everything is highly, highly custom. i’ve never done two tax returns that were exactly the same, never done two tax plans that were exactly the same never done two audits that were exactly the same. so when we talk about the scale that harvard uses, it’s like off the charts in terms of how customized our services yet we don’t price it accordingly or even adequately so that we can deliver well on those promises and remain profitable at the same time.
liz farr
that’s that’s kind of that’s a really good insight that is because it is so customizable. you and there are so many unknowns sometimes, right? that means that we really do need to price it much higher than the $500 for a tax return that is still being kicked around.
dominique molina
absolutely. and when you think about the type of business that we’re running, you know, really accounting and tax is a consultative style business, we build relationships with our clients, so that we fully understand their unique needs, their circumstances, where they’re trying to go, what their dreams are, and what their goals are. and yet, when we look at the model of how we’re operating, we are operating with a transactional business model. it’s almost like the assembly line. and i have to say, i enjoy mcdonald’s hamburger every now and then. but that assembly line model does not work in a business that relies so heavily on intimate knowledge of our clients, and highly customized solutions for them. and so there’s really this mismatch of how we’ve been trained to run our practices. and we’re seeing that we’re seeing the conflict. and i think the conflict has been there for decades. but i think our the previous generation didn’t say much about it, that was done before them, and they kind of sucked it up. and my generation, we sucked it up. and the new generation isn’t willing to suck it up anymore. and i think it’s causing us to take some really good hard looks at the profession to see what isn’t working with it.
liz farr
that’s right. now, you mentioned that you had a vision of what it would be like to have just 10% of your clients, then did you actually get to that point?
dominique molina
oh, absolutely, i got to less than that point. turns out, you know, when you’re when you’re 10x, in your pricing, the volume thing, issue goes away, right, i think we end up taking on high volumes of work for two reasons. number one, because when we’re following a traditional model, we are just doing what was done before us and more clients means more money. and that’s actually different in a consultative approach and a consultative approach. less is more, we actually want to be able to do more for our clients. and if you think about it, we’re so stretched thin, that we have to cut corners, our focus is on coming in under budget, coming in ahead of schedule. and what that means is we sacrifice something in exchange for that. and so whether that means i stopped short of fully understanding my client’s situation, i’m not adequately probing for information that i need, or i’m speeding through something. and if there are missing documents, i don’t pick up on that fact, because i’m in a hurry, and i’m rushing to the next deadline. and so that really is the major change when you get out from under the volume. and especially when you take on the approach of value pricing, it becomes very simple. you have one focus, and that’s client value. and everything becomes about that focus. what else can we do to add value? what else can we do to add value? what else can we do to add value because the more value i create, the more i can get paid. now there’s a methodology that goes along with that. and we have to follow the law in terms of the pricing. but it really resolves a lot of the inherent problems that we see the long hours. and, you know, we get paid well, there’s there’s not anything on its own. that’s bad with our compensation. but when you’re working 60 to 80 hours a week year round, suddenly the take home pay doesn’t seem worthwhile anymore. and so, you know, when you think about comparing high volumes to low volumes, you can do more for your clients. and here’s the truth in what we do. it takes however long it takes to get the job done. and when we connect our pay to that time factor, that’s where we end up losing out because we have a mismatch and what it’s actually taking and outputs to produce that outcome. and we also have clients that have a certain going rate in mind. and there’s a mismatch there. and it allows us to not adequately realize everything that’s gone into a project. and as a result, we see write offs and eating time and all kinds of things that we do in this business to try to stay afloat. and we don’t have that with value pricing, when you’re simply focused on creating the maximum value. it takes however long it takes, and i only stop once i found the all the value that there is. and it just really simplifies the process. so instead of having over 300 clients, i can have 30 clients and still make a decent living, but with 90% less deadlines, 90% less unexpected situations that arise 90% less communications to juggle 90% less relationships to manage. and so it’s a whole lot easier.
liz farr
wow. yeah. and and when you’re only serving 30 clients instead of 300. what kind of impact does that have on your clients? yeah,
dominique molina
i think that was the really incredible, incredibly fulfilling thing that i i’ve realized that i didn’t predict. in this, obviously, i knew i was trying to have a good outcome for myself. but the response from the clients has been amazing. in fact, i’ve had many people cry, have tears well up in their eyes, when i have the time available to take and sit and just be with them and hold space and be present with them. you know, they’re they trust us with a lot of information and a lot of struggles that they have. and what i realized was in rushing through some of those relationships, i was kind of skipping over the personal side of it. and that’s okay, i’m doing a fine job, i think on the tax side and reporting and doing compliance work. but there’s so much more that goes in if you allow yourself that space. i’ve had clients that have been so thrilled and said to me things like no one has ever asked me those kinds of questions before. i’ve had couples that run small businesses that say, you know, my spouse, and i have never had those conversations before, but because you asked us those questions that forced us to really talk about these things. and we’ve grown as a family and as a business as a result of looking at these things. so i think i didn’t anticipate how much better i would be as a practitioner, how much more i’d be able to do for my clients how happy that makes them. and at the end of the day, they don’t see my cost as a sunk cost of doing business. instead, they’re seeing it as an investment. and they get a return on that investment in both savings because i focused on the tax reduction side, but also in terms of business growth and transformation that they’re able to see in their life and in their business.
liz farr
i love that you’re talking so much about transformation, because that really is the highest use of our skills.
dominique molina
right? right. and that that’s what really distinguishes us right from, especially in the tax industry. being that you don’t have to have a cpa license, for example, to practice. there’s a lot of choices out there. there’s over 1.3 million independent tax business owners. and that means a lot of choices for our clients and they it’s a word commodity in their eyes, we’re all we’re seeing is all doing the same thing and all offering the same level of service and and that’s just not true even taking somebody with decades of experience that were has worked with 1000s of different types of businesses and you compare that to someone that’s transitioning into to a new career and just hasn’t had that kind of exposure yet immense, immense experience there that is helpful in tackling the problems that our business owner clients face every single day. right.
liz farr
and no, perhaps more importantly for our listeners, how did that impact your life?
dominique molina
oh, oh, i have to tell you, liz, i, i wake up at times, and i this is just beyond my wildest dreams really, i could never have predicted the joy that i feel in my life, the satisfaction and fulfillment i feel from my work, the transformations that i helped become a part of both on the business owner side with my tax clients, and also on the tax practitioner side with individual tax business owners that are trying to make this transformation in their own businesses. my son was very young at this time, when i started adopting this shift in my business. and for a while there, i really had to dig deeper. and i was already maxed out and burned out at that time, i didn’t think i could go a little bit more, but i had to, because i really wanted to try to give this a fair shot. and it took a good 18 months. but after 18 months, i started seeing dramatic changes in my business. and it made me a completely different parent to my son, he was a toddler at the time. and for him when i think about what that’s done not only for him and his life, he’s now a senior in college and starting his journey, but also just allowing me to experience the rewards of being a parent and being able to be there for his development, and to just he’s having a rough day. so you know what, we’re just going to sit and be here together, not because there’s a school play on the calendar, because there’s a dentist appointment, but just because that’s where i want to be. and that’s what he needs at that time. so it’s made me a better parent, a better spouse, a better friend, you know, having fulfilling relationships. and i think there’s a sense that we have in public accounting, when we’re missing out on some of those things. but there’s also this denial that we find ourselves in, and also just the unknown, you don’t know what you don’t know. and if if you’ve been so far removed from the richness that life has to offer, it’s easy to kind of put that aside and say, no, i’m fine. and i’m just going to push through or i’m going to wait till i have time. and so i think from a life changing standpoint, those are some of the big ones for me, you know, we’ll never be on our deathbed wishing that we put more charge hours in. but it’s about those fulfilling things in life that we tend to have regrets over. and i’m really, really happy. and it was so worth the effort. it was a lot of a lot of hard work and a lot of tears and a lot of trying to figure it out. and a lot of falling down and getting back up and a lot of falling down and saying i’m not getting back up anymore. but but it’s been so worth it for sure.
liz farr
oh, absolutely. yeah, is accountants we tend to just kind of keep doing the same things over and over and over again. what is one thing you stopped doing back then that made a difference?
dominique molina
i think the biggest shift for me was when i stopped considering my value, as coming from the amount of time that a project took. and i see this in my own life and i see it with other practitioners and cpas that i work with. sometimes we feel the need to justify our price and and our natural instinct is to go well, it’s going to take so much time, you know, it really is going to take a lot of time to figure that out or to complete that process or whatever it is. and really time is irrelevant when you talk transformation and results that you’re able to help people create. and that was a huge shift for me. number one, it felt a little like being naked, like leaving, leaving the charge our goals and results behind. getting it in my mind that if i look at something and identify a solution in five minutes, it doesn’t translate into a bill for five minutes, because it took me years of experience to be able to see that in five minutes. and that’s something that our billable hour just doesn’t accommodate for is the years of education and experience and expertise that we have. and so it was something i stopped doing that was a very difficult shift. think about it, it’s ingrained in us. our hours are charged our codes, our charge our results, coming in, under budget coming in ahead of schedule. and so to let that go and instead measure something else, and and we measure it in terms of results that we’re getting for our clients, that was a major change, but it absolutely makes all the difference.
liz farr
that sounds just amazing. and i love the disconnect between, you know, you the value you provide to somebody, and the time it takes. yeah.
dominique molina
and if you think about it, it just makes logical sense, right. but it’s so it’s such a deep habit. and it’s almost like, i see so many cpas that have a lower sense of self worth. and i think that might have something to do with it. because we’ve been beat up over this throughout our careers. and of course, we’re getting beat up by the clients, because they want us to take as little time as possible. when in the whole scheme of things. when we talk results. it’s really about how much more you can do. you know, what else can i find? if i spend more time on this? what more? am i making sure to not leave on the table? and, and so that’s a that’s a scary thing. it’s a difficult habit to change. and it does kind of become wrapped up in our identities. and i’m not a psychologist, but i know there’s a lot of psychological change that has to happen as a result of that.
liz farr
yes, absolutely. and now, since you are the you’re operating the american institute of certified tax planners, you’re teaching what you have learned to other accountants and cpas. right? what are the impacts that this has on the people you work with?
dominique molina
oh, it’s absolutely incredible. and that is one of the funnest things that we have at the office every day. i have a small but mighty team here in san diego. and we love celebrating successes with our practice owners. and so to see them realize some of the same benefits that i’ve been describing that i have experienced, but to see them experience it and to celebrate their wins with them, we’ve got a bell that we ring in the office, for example, when someone calls in with success stories. and it’s just such a joy. you know, we get to know people. we work with people for years and years and years. and we get to know them, we get to know their families. and so to see things shift and change, and everybody goes at their own pace, you know, so some people do it more quickly than others. others take a little bit longer to shed some of these old patterns or beliefs. but it is really incredible to watch people fulfill lifelong goals and dreams to retire their spouse for example, or to buy a retirement home and move to be able to run a tax business passively through retirement and do one project a month to keep themselves fresh in and involved in the business. but with steady income that’s not dependent on them. it’s really been such a fulfilling and just a rich experience for us. and we’re really proud to be able to be a part of this journey with so many people.
liz farr
that’s remarkable. and and i congratulate you on sharing your knowledge because so many of us, we think that this is our secret sauce. and if we don’t, if we keep it to ourselves, that makes us much more valuable. but i can see that by multiplying the people that you can help, that also multiplies the people who were served at a deeper level.
dominique molina
absolutely. in fact, that’s really what sparked the idea of this to begin with is that when i started making these transformations in my own practice, and started limiting the number of people i was working with, and in fact, shedding some of the high volume of clients that creates scarcity. right. and so i started developing this waiting list that kept get long, getting longer and longer and longer and longer. and simultaneously, i love to go to educational events and learn and continue developing my expertise. and so i’m sharing some of my experiences with colleagues around the country. and they’re, at the same time that i’m having this waiting list saying, you know, how did you do that? and what kinds of documentation do you provide? and, you know, what was the client’s response? and how do you price it and, and i’m thinking there’s a disconnect here, i can’t help everybody. and i’m, in fact choosing to do more for people by working with less clients. and at the same time, we’ve got practitioners that want to be able to offer this level of service, they just don’t know how they don’t have the education. and from an advisory services standpoint, in the tax business, you know, we focus on planning or advanced tax reduction, irs doesn’t care. irs doesn’t come and tap you on the shoulder if you’re overpaying your taxes. and in fact, it’s not a minimum education requirement for entering the profession. but that doesn’t mean we can’t, we can’t pull together we can’t join resources, we can’t offer training and education for people to help others in this arena. and, and the truth is, is that there is more demand than there is supply. and that’s never been truer than it is right now. we have so many clients in need, and not enough talented practitioners to help. and for the first time, and i don’t know how long, we’re seeing less new people enter the profession than are exiting. we’ve got lots of retirees and this new generation of new grads don’t want to come into the profession. and that’s just sad. so to protect the profession, i think we owe it to ourselves and our future generations of cpas and accountants to to make a change. it’s it’s truly broken what we’re doing now. and it doesn’t have to be that way. we just have to forge a new path.
liz farr
i love how you’re bringing that back to making this profession more attractive to the younger generations. we talked a little bit about that before we started recording. and i think that that will really help us with the pipeline problem.
dominique molina
if right, if we can we can. we can empathize, right? i mean, we’ve all put in the long hours, we’ve paid our dues. but there is a point where we say, we dig in and we say i’ve paid my dues, and you have to pay your dues to or we say you know what, i did pay my dues. and i, i would hope that there’s a better way. and i’d love to be part of a solution. we aren’t so that we don’t go extinct, so that we can have people i truly love what i do. and i can’t imagine having been steered the wrong direction. you know, just by making a different choice in college, for example, or by starting out in public and walking out on that first day. i’ll tell you, i was terrified that first day it was tagged my very first tax season. and i just thought, oh my goodness, what have i gotten myself into? i knew it was going to be tough that first day. but who says we have to perpetuate that and and to miss out on an entire generation of talent, talented people that would really truly thrive and love this business. it’s an opportunity i would like to be part of to help those folks get connected with these with this business, because it’s very rewarding.
liz farr
yes, i agree to and you’re not the only one who has cracked the code in some way. so that you can have a good living, you can serve clients at a deep level. and you don’t have to work a million hours.
dominique molina
right? absolutely. and you can and i think it’s about impact as well. what we’re seeing with the millennial generation is they want to have the feeling that what they’re spending their time on and spending their money on. makes a difference. make difference in the world? and what better than way to impact the world than to influence businesses, small businesses? that’s what is the heart of our american economy? what keeps us going, and to have a role in that as a coach to our clients and to be there as support for them? and to help guide them? that’s such a thrill. yes.
liz farr
now, thinking about the way that you operate your own little practice, what are some things that you wish other firm owners would do themselves?
dominique molina
oh, well, that’s a hard question to answer for me, because i have a deep understanding for why we’re in this position. and i have to raise my hand and say, i was guilty of things for many years of the fallout from running a business this way from being fatigued and exhausted. and that’s not operating at our peak performance levels. i always tell my clients, you don’t want me working at 10 o’clock at night, do you? so that’s a hard one to say, because i have empathy for that. but i what i would say then is accepting that there just is no other way and resigning yourself to this way of working. and just assuming that there’s no other opportunity out there, i think is a huge mistake. and there’s nothing wrong with good old fashioned hard work. i love tax season, i love when we are working hard together, we’re just churning out good products and services. but there’s a limit. and and that’s certainly not being done entirely by choice. so i would ask that firm owners really ask themselves, how do i want this to be? and am i just settling for something because i think there is no other way or because this is the way it’s always been done. we are doomed to repeat it. and if you love to work, and you love the hours, and you get a rush from accomplishing all that stuff, more power to you, and more power to you that you’re intentional with that and that you’re creating the business because that’s what you love to do. so that’s what i would say is to really ask yourself some questions about what you want. and a lot of us got in this business because we like to help people. and we can’t help anyone unless we help ourselves first. and, and so that’s a question i think a lot of practitioners can benefit from.
liz farr
a lot of people who have gone out on their own and broken away from the old saly routine, have a lot of trials and tribulations along the way. what would you say is the most valuable mistake you ever made?
dominique molina
hmm. oh, that’s a tough one. because there’s so many. there’s so many mistakes. we all have our breaking points. you know, i think a mistake is really only a mistake when you stop getting back up and learning from it. and there’s definitely times where i’ve reached my limit and i’m going that’s it. i’m not getting up anymore. but as long as you’re not as long as you’re not throwing in the towel, then i think that’s that’s what’s important in terms of valuable mistake.
liz farr
hmm.
dominique molina
gosh, that’s really a tough one. i guess i can just look at and and realize that i wish i had had the realization sooner. when i think of what more i could have done for my clients don’t during those earlier years, when i was practicing with a transactional model, it didn’t allow me to really give them the type of service they deserved. and that’s that’s a valuable lesson not only for me, but it’s benefiting others as well. because now that i see the difference, it’s really it’s something i’m not proud of and that i can say that i have some shame around that. but i was doing the best that i could and i think that’s all we can ask of each other is that you do the best with what you can in the moment. and that’s one thing though, i wish i could have done is have this realization much sooner?
liz farr
yes, yes, i think that, you know, i looking back on my career, i wish that i had known that there were firms out there who had a different model who weren’t doing the, you know, billable hours and realization rates and chargeable, our quotas and all of that nonsense that right? i realized pretty early on was just nonsense, right?
dominique molina
and i think you you hit on it earlier when you asked a question about keeping this to yourself as a competitive advantage. and really, there just isn’t a competition, there’s so much work out there to do that we don’t have to compete with one another. and besides, it’s way more fun to collaborate together, it’s fun to be able to share, it’s fun to be able to bring in the right expertise, when your clients results are primary in your mind as your objective, you don’t let your competitive advantage stop you from bringing them solutions that are the absolute best for them. and that means we have to be willing to collaborate with one another. and the truth is, there’s plenty of work to go around. and so for us to behave like that’s not true, is a little bit of insanity. really. there’s just too much really. and it’s time that we start supporting one another and being more open with these things. and had that been the case earlier in my career or in your career? no, we might have known about this sooner, because it’s not something you need to keep to yourself. absolutely.
liz farr
now, what other advice do you have for firm owners and firm leaders who want to create better firms and better lives?
dominique molina
yeah, i think a good place to start is i started here, and it’s a little cliche, but you know, when you’re dating someone, and you’re trying to figure out, you know, is this a relationship that i want to continue, you kind of do the t account. and you’ve got the pros on one side, and you’ve got the cons on the other side, you’re looking to see you know, which side gets longer. that’s an important step to take in what we do in our businesses, because people rely on us for a lot of things. but just because we are capable of doing something doesn’t mean we should, it doesn’t mean that that’s the right decision for us or even for our clients. and i’ll give you a specific example of that. i’m here in southern california, i’m very close to the border of the us and mexico. and so there are a lot of cross border businesses here. they may have a maquiladora in mexico, for example. and i had a client one time come to me, that was spanish speaking and english speaking. and they asked, during our initial intake if i had if i was comfortable working with cross border businesses, and of course, i said yes, because that’s what we’re trained to do. and i’m pretty resourceful. and i love education. so i wouldn’t mind taking a few classes. but that’s not in the best service of a client. i was receiving financial statements written in spanish, i don’t speak spanish. so i’m trying to translate these financial statements. and this is at a time you know, where we didn’t have google translate. so it was much more difficult to try to decipher. but that choice that i made really was not in the best service of my client, nor was it in my best interest either. because you think of the amount of time that i’m having to put in on that project, it was not profitable at all. so just because we’re capable of learning something or doing something doesn’t mean that that’s in our client’s best interest or in our own. and it comes down to what are the core areas in which we thrive, that we do better than anyone else. and you can connect and collaborate with people to fill in the gaps. i certainly could have worked on tax reduction for that client all those years ago, and i could have collaborated with someone who has that specialty in that expertise and speak spanish. and when you have a spirit of collaboration, that’s how your focus shifts? and so i’d encourage you really to look at first of all, what are you really good at doing? and then look at how can you build a business service around that and everything else you collaborate, you bring in a team of others, and teamwork really helps us get ultimately the best result for our client.
liz farr
i love that emphasis on teamwork, because it’s all too often that we as tax professionals just have this kind of lone wolf outlook.
dominique molina
right. and there’s, there’s definitely perks to that, right. we don’t have anybody bossing us around or telling us what to do, or telling us how to run the business or who to hire. but it’s a very lonely spot. and it’s difficult to in the line of work that we’re in, take ambiguous concepts and try to make sense or make them fit into black and white law, for example. and so we really need one another, we need the ability to work together. you know, i don’t have the ability in my solopreneurship to call my national sales tax expert for the firm, to get them to weigh in on a problem i’m dealing with. but i have over 1200 colleagues across the country that i can ask, and we all have different specialties and experience that we bring to the table. and that’s just an amazing thing to tap into.
liz farr
i think that spirit of collaboration is the perfect note to end our conversation on. i want to thank you so much for talking to me, dominique. now, if listeners want to connect with you, where’s the best place to find you?
dominique molina
i’m all over liz. they can find me just by going to certified tax planners.com. so it’s planners with an ass. and i have a i actually have a passion project that i’m working on right now. can i tell you about my podcast? please do. it is just for fun. it doesn’t help my business in any way. but i am a fan of true crime. i love to read court cases and books about true crime. i love the detective piece and the mystery and solving the puzzle. and i know a lot of other accountants can relate to that. so i have a podcast that i host with tom burzynski. and it’s called tax crime junkies. again, it’s just for fun. we cover tax crimes and kind of tax ancillary related crimes like embezzlement and things like that. and it’s just pure entertainment. so if that sounds like something that you’re interested in listening to, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. and and if not, then don’t worry about it. no hard feelings. i know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
liz farr
well, i will certainly look out for it because that sounds like a lot of fun.