Dominique Molina is the President and founder of the American Institute of Certified Tax Planners. Prior to founding Certified Tax Planners, she successfully managed her own practice, a San Diego-based, full-service tax, accounting, and business consulting firm, serving hundreds of business owners and investors across the country for seven years. Preceding this, Dominique assisted a variety of clients for the largest independently owned CPA firm in San Diego. She is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Tax Strategist. She received her bachelor’s degree in Accounting from San Diego State University.
Dominique frequently appears as a tax expert and TV guest in regional television markets, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and New Orleans. Her excellent media credentials, professionalism, and outgoing personality allow her to provide expert advice on tax issues for thousands of Southern Californians. She is also a best-selling author of 7 books on taxation. A frequent lecturer and speaker, She often teaches at Professional Accountant Associations, and instructs continuing professional education for various organizations.
Here are the highlights from this interview:
- She shares that it’s every working moms struggle that we want to give our best to our kids and our family, but we also want to give our best to our career as well
- The challenge that came with having both a family and a career became the catalyst that changed the trajectory of her career
- Once she had her son her priorities and perspective shifted
- She started her own company so she could have more control over her schedule and the clients that she chose to work with
- She had another pivotal moment once she had her own firm when her toddler stopped himself from asking her a question because he knew it was “Mommy’s tax season”
- At that moment she realized she had built her business but it wasn’t meeting her needs
- She loved helping people, the relationship with her clients, the problem solving, and strategizing
- She realized that she wasn’t being paid extra for those things so she set out to find a different way to do things in her firm
- She realized that trading time for dollars was a huge issue in the accounting industry
- She set out to figure out how she could get paid more but do less, disconnecting the time quotient from her compensation
- She switched to value-based pricing and everything changed for her business and for the balance she could have in her life
- Her focus became tax reduction for her clients, focusing on the amount of money she saved her clients in tax strategies
- She framed her business as a tax strategy business with advanced tax reduction
- As she created more money for her clients and herself, she was also able to create better boundaries around her time as well
- In some instances she was able to charge 30x what she charged before, but her client’s perception had changed about the value she was offering them in tax reduction strategies
- Once she shifted her business in this way, other accountants wanted to learn what she was doing so successfully
- She started training groups of accountants and eventually co-founded the American Institute of Certified Tax Planners
- She teaches accountants how shift from being tax preparers to being tax planners and how to quantify the value they offer their clients
- She wants to remind accountant moms how in demand we are, not just because of the current situation with the law changes
- If you are interested in finding out more about becoming a certified tax planner you can go to www.certifiedtaxplanners.com
- Dominique is also happy to offer our listeners a free copy of her book “Getting Paid What You’re Worth” which you can get by sending an email to admin@certifiedtaxplanners.com