The speaker, a tax advisor, explains how he leveraged social media to grow his business by creating provocative content, such as featuring attractive women asking tax-related questions, which went viral and attracted both clients and online "haters." He shares personal stories from his Italian-American childhood, including family lore about his great-grandfather hiding Al Capone and his own mischievous adventures, like stealing from a police impound lot as a child. He also discusses his professional journey, transitioning from pre-med studies to accounting to pursue financial stability, inspired by his father's work ethic. Despite facing criticism over his appearance and methods, the viral attention significantly boosted his client inquiries, demonstrating the effectiveness of his unconventional marketing strategy.
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I did a lot of videos showing the things that I do for clients, even getting on the phone with the IRS, getting on the phone with clients, and also videos that my clients did. Success stories that were tied into my website. But then it's become clear to me, I got to, what really happened is people started hating on me for my hair. And I was, to be really honest with you, at first I was surprised because I guess because I have hair, I don't think much about my hair. And I was absolutely blown away at how many young people were seeing. Take off the toupee, grandpa, you know, who's your plastic surgeon, grandpa, and you've got hair of a 15-year-old and a face of a 75-year-old. People are very brave. Yeah, they're keyboard warriors, right? Yeah, they could get on the keyboard. And at first I'm like, what? Like, does my reel here know it isn't, and you're just lying? So then I posted a video and said, okay, we're going to turn this into a wager, right? Okay. My 500,000 to your foot, 500,000. Anybody? How sure are you? There you go. So let's meet somewhere. Let's, you know, let's turn this into a wager. Let's turn into some money for either of you or for me. You can bring in your lawyer, your doctor, your girlfriend, anybody you want. And in fact, let's go a step further. I'll cut off all my hair. Now, I'll do that for a million because I'm not just going to, and then we'll grow it back. And if it doesn't grow back, you get a million plus the million you gave me. Or if it does grow back, I get another million. How sad. So I'll cut it off for, I'm not doing it unless I get the million, but hey, if you're right, if you're right, and it isn't my real hair, you're going to get that million plus another million. How about that? You think anybody took me up on it? Of course not. And then they were saying, well, now we think it's, we think it's real, but you're coloring it. So, you know, I just got all that. So that's how it started. And then hate for other things. Oh, you're, you're not really five, seven, you're four, eleven. Oh, listen, I'm five, you know, because I'm five, six. Oh, I get it all the time, all the time. I even had a chick show up here the other day. She walked in the door, was talking to Colby, and I, she was, and I stood up and walked over to her, walked over, was like, oh, hey, what's up? She's, she turned to me. She's, oh, wow. She's, I had no idea you were so short. So the first thing she said to me, and I went, oh, okay. I said it. She's like, no, I mean, I just didn't expect you to be four, eleven. What? I'm like, I'm five, six. She's, she's like, okay, sure you are. I mean, yeah. It's like, it's a whole, but and she during the whole podcast, like, was making comments. It was, that was super funny because I'm used to it. Right. And then I give it back, I started giving it back to him. I said, you know what, your parents failed to it. You can get on here. Oh, I got, so I started giving it to the Gen Zs and millennials big time. So your, your parents failed to you. And then I had weightlifting gloves on in a tight restaurant. I had weightlifting gloves on and they're like, what are you a stupid or whatever? I said, so let me get this tree. You guys care about my weightlifting gloves, but you're vaping every day. You're smoking your drug addicted. You got tattoos everywhere. You know, and you worry about my weightlifting gloves? Like, why don't you get your life together? So I started giving it back to him and then they started hating on me more. Right. And now it really only helps the videos. Yeah. Which I didn't know Mike. And so my social media manager, Carlos, I don't know if you met him. He's like, Mike, we got to continue this. And I just, my hate was blowing up more than what I wanted. I wanted like clients. Now, I've ended up getting a lot of clients in through all this kind of in a odd sort of way because of the, you know, the, the videos that are going viral, like that one that you saw of Alexa and me, she's on my content team. In fact, she's here in South Beach. You know, they talk, oh, so you, you're, you're paying, you're paying a hooker to be in a, in a, in a Rolls Royce with you. And, you know, she's got fake boobs and, you know, just everything, all the kind of hate you could imagine. Right. You know. And so as long as they're watching, they're watching. Yeah. So I got, I got, and I went to 2.7 million, and that was just like Carlos Lucy. Hey, get back, getting back to the Rolls Royce. And let me do this quick video. That's, that was that one. It wasn't even like, we didn't even plan it. Right. It just like happened. And I've gotten people that who are business are like, that is the greatest commercial I've ever seen. Um, I got on yachts and I got 12 hot girls, 15 hot girls to ask tax questions. Like nobody's going to look at me talking to another older guy about tax or something, but I got one million views on that. Right. Just hot chicks asking like, what's the difference between a W2 and a 1099, Mike? That's it. Yeah. And then I answered a question, one million on that particular video. And so, and so I realized where I was missing the boat because I had a lot of success stories on my website. Nobody looked at them. Yeah. Nobody. Now, not only that, I am literally getting new client, um, what we call data input requests. I'm getting to a day, two new potential clients a day, just on that sometimes five. My office is like going crazy, trying to, um, you know, put all these new clients together and, you know, put them into our software and everything and respond to them. So, and I'm answering new clients every day on my phone. Like I'm texting them, you know, all the time. They're coming in like crazy because, like you said, the haters and getting hot chicks on your boat. Anyway, uh, yeah, that's what I do. That's what I do. I do all this content stuff. Let's start with like, you know, where, where you're born. What was your, you know, what were your parents like, you know, what was your childhood like, right? Well, I was, I'm assuming you didn't rob any bank. So let, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got close a few times though, but, um, me and my brothers were real true and true were rascals, but, um, yeah, my brother, Gino, but, um, I grew up in the New York City area, old school Italian, um, my brother, Gino is my older brother, my sister Linda and my younger brother, Anthony Tony, uh, Gino and Tony. That's those aren't Italian. Yeah. Yeah. So Gino and Tony, Gino seniors, my father, Gino. And then my grandfather's Gino also. Okay. All right. So, and so he came in from, uh, his, my great-grandfather came in from Calabria, Italy in the late 1890s. Interesting story. Real quick here is a lot of people don't know that Al Capone was a gangster in New York before he was in Chicago. If actually he grew up in Brooklyn, New York City, his, his father came in around the same time as my great-grandfather. They came from, from a, didn't area. He was, I believe, coming from Northern side of Italy. Turns out that my great-grandfather and Al Capone's father were very good friends and a family story, which I believe because, you know, my family has a few stories and this is one of them. We were connected. We, you know, we were connected. Um, my grandfather was connected. He was part of an Italian family as my uncle was but not my father. My father wanted nothing to do with it. He felt it was, you know, the mafia was a black mark on Italians. So my father wanted nothing to do with it, but my grandfather was connected and my uncle Ralph was connected. Um, he ran a fish store and my grandfather ran a butcher shop. And, uh, you know, the story, one of the stories is, you know, he had a lot of competitors and all of a sudden one day he didn't have any competitors. And, uh, but the story I'm telling you about is the family story is that my great-grandfather hid Al Capone and three of his truant gangsters from, I want to say it was the fifth, uh, they called them the fifth side gang, I believe. Yeah, they had a little gang. He started off as kind of like a little thug. Like, we're like, uh, why don't I say, I don't gangster. I don't mean like a gangster. Like we think, he was like like a gang like a little street guy. They were robbing. They, they, he had a number of different little ones, but then he, it was called the, uh, the fifth side gang, I believe was called, that was a little bit of a bigger gang. And when he was part of that is when my great-grandfather, for four months, hit him in his cell or we might not know the Al Capone that we know. He hit him. Yep, he did. Why do you hide him? He was in trouble. Like the cops will go, these guys, listen, from what I was told Al Capone, these were dangerous kids. They were killers. They, they would fist fight, they would kill. Okay. And so, um, they were, they were involved in, um, you know, in, uh, with knives, they were involved with, uh, you know, gambling. That's how he, he, he was in that gang, he was like a teenager when he got the stuff. They were doing all that stuff. They were involved in, you know, prostitution, bootlegging. In fact, I was told, uh, through the, through the family, my father told me that, uh, he, he, they would, they would stuff ballots for the politicians. They just stuff ballots, you know, and they pay them. So this is what they did. And so, yeah, that's the true story, the family story that Al Capone was saved by my great-grandfather, or we might not know the Al Capone today. You know what nobody tells you about dinner? It never stops. Every day around five o'clock, it rolls around again. 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Free meals applied as a discount on your first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. One of the key stories when I was a kid, he was telling me when I got a stretch to tell this story. So I want to make it clear, we weren't criminals me and my brother. We did steal things. We did. And we did it in the context of for us, the winners were so long and the summers were so short when you were a kid. I say to people so often I wish I could have given my kids my childhood. I had a great childhood. We were out in the streets, fishing, hunting, catching snakes, turtles. We were just always doing something, climbing trees, like you were talking about earlier. And one day, there's a police impound lot that was about half a mile from my house. And I was probably eight. My brother was probably ten. And here we are, just poking around in regular summer day and we get to thinking and we saw a little. And we were with one of this, by the way, me and my brother were really good athletes. And there was nobody like within in our high school. He was probably my, by the way, let me back up. My brother was a nationally ranked eight on a meter runner in the United States in 1978. Okay, like now top 10. And I was a really good athlete as well. I could run a hundred yards in under 11. Okay, not 100 meters, 100 yards. That was really fast. Okay. So we were fast. We were like the fastest kids around. And we had this kid, Steve Steven Johnson. And he, he was with us one day. And at the police impound, we found a crease in the fence. And so we're like, we're seeing all this stuff in the cars, you know, and so we get in. And we're poking around and we're, you know, we got a, we got a, a pillowcase that we're putting stuff in. And all of a sudden, we see these dogs that they let out. They knew that somebody was inside. This is a police impound line. Okay. And we're stealing stuff. We're still like watches and, you know, bulls and, you know, coins and, and, and monies in there, you know, because when the impound a, a vehicle, they don't take anything out. Yeah. So we're going to take it out. Right. So we're taking this stuff out. We're putting it. It's money is every oldest jewelry, you know, everything like rings and watches and necklaces. So all of a sudden, they let these dogs out. And I was too far in. My brother got through the fence again and he took off. And he's running through the forest. And I'm go, I go under a car immediately. And so this kid, Steven Johnson, he's slow. We don't, I don't know what happened to either of them. I'm under the car. I stayed under for four hours until they closed because the dogs were going to get me. The dogs know you were there. No, they didn't. I didn't make a peep, man. Okay. So they finally closed up and then they put the dogs inside. So I finally, after that, I got out four hours under the car. Maybe a little longer. I get out, go, you know, and it's closed. Nobody's there anymore. It's like six o'clock, six thirty, whatever it was. And I get through the fence again and I got this two sacks of stuff. I mean, I stayed there longer to get more stuff, right? It's like, these two, I'm his little kid, but I'm, you know, holding it home about a half a mile. I get home and lo and behold, I go through the back door. I'm like, hey, everybody, guess what I got? And there's two cops. But they caught their brother. Yeah, they know they caught my, the slow kid, Steven Johnson, whose father made him tell on us. And it turns out that my mother's high school friends were the two cops. They let me go. But that's the true story. So I could have, you know, I could have been a lot of trouble for that. But we were those kind of kids. Yeah. You know, I wasn't going to do, like, I was in a mean kid like trying to hurt people, right? We just did it out of adventure and, you know, just trying to find something to do, you know. So me and my brother were caddies. That's what we did. And I helped myself, but I put myself through college as a caddy. Well, we caddy, the place called Willowridge Country Club in Harrison. And my brother was so fast as I told you that a guy named Nick Rattini, who was a mafia hitman, who was a, um, honorary member. He was an tank, but he was an honorary member of a Jewish country club. Okay. How that happened? I don't know. We were just kids. And Nick Rattini would ask for my brother to caddy for him every time because my brother was capable of getting balls really fast and getting him out of the woods wherever he put them. And they were gambling on the, you know, on the course, Nick and all of his Italian guys. And he had a bodyguard with him all the time. And he, if you look him up, Nick Rattini, he was, uh, he was one of the top guys in New York that was, that was a confirmed mafia hit guy. Okay. Um, and so, yeah, he was a confirmed mafia hit guy. And so that was the guy that my brother caddy for. And he, um, any caddy from like six or seven years, and he, and he paid my brother like $200 a loop, which was unheard of. But they were bet, you know, they were doing whip out, which is on every hole they were whip out 1,000, 2,000 on every hole just to bet. Another story was, um, my brother and I were on a boat. My brother and I were on a boat. We would go out my, my uncle Ralph, who was connected to the mob. He had, you know, he had his own fish store and he was connected. Uh, he, we were, he would take us out on his boat along with some of the mafia guys. Sometimes there would be five or six of them and my father, even though my father was not, you know, didn't want any part of it, but he was on a boat with us. And I never forget hearing those guys talk about, you know, whacking people. Right. And whores. So I, I get home with my father after, you know, being on the boat. I'm just like 10 years old. And I said, Hey, hey, Daddy, what is, uh, what does it mean to, to whack somebody? And what is a whore? Right. And he, he said, well, she's a woman that sells her own body, you know, and to what he says, don't worry about it. So don't worry about it. It means to whack people. It just doesn't mean anything. That's true story. When you were a kid growing up, like, I mean, is that like, so you're an Italian neighborhood. I mean, what, what do you think you're going to do for a living? You're thinking, you're thought, I'm going to be an account. I wanted to be a, I liked animals. I wanted to be a veterinarian. And my father wanted to be a, be a doctor. But when I went to school, I went to, uh, a college state university in New York at Albany. You know, I didn't really like school the most, but I was really smart. I did well on the standardized tests. And I got into SUNY Albany, which is like a poor man's Ivy League school in New York. And, um, when I got to, I got serious. Like, I got, I said, I gotta get serious with the academics. Um, so I was pre-med, didn't like it, and took business courses and ended up graduating from the business school with the, with the degree and, um, accounting. And, uh, having to be in a vet. I just, I just, you know, well, I was pre-med and it was going to be the doctor thing. Yeah. Yeah. I know what really happened is when I got into college and then I got out of the pre-med program. First of all, one of the reasons I got out, I should mention this is because I realized, oh my gosh, I'm going to be like 20, 20, and I'm before making any real money. I wanted to make money. My father was an old school of time. I loved my father's to death. He's passed away. He's been going since 2011. He was a great father, a great man taught us how to play basketball, baseball, football. Um, he works so hard, but he always had time for us. You know, we'd throw ball to us in the backyard when he, you know, when he finished his job, he worked for Sparrow Univac. And he was a computer tech on the old, uh, 1180 system, the mainframes. That's what my father did. Went into Manhattan every day on the train for 25 years, and then eventually he worked in white planes, but every day on a train, he showed me and he modeled before me and my brothers a great work ethic. Right. Okay. That's the, that's the climate I grew up in. And he was a man's man, but he was compassionate and, um, and he was a family man. Um, and he stayed in my area to my mother, you know, forever. So, um, that's the, uh, that's where I, how I grew up. And then I went to college. Uh, I wanted to make money. Right. I love my father. Never forget, I was 17 years old. I said, Papa, I want to get rich. He said, I believe in you son. You know what? I told people, that's all I needed for my father. All I needed for my father is to say to me, I believe in you. And that was it. That's all I needed. And I hit the ground running. I'm like, if I get out of here at age 22, I could get a job with a good accounting firm and I could start making real money, which is exactly what happened. And I ended up working for Ernst and Winnie, who is now Ernst and Young. Okay. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. I've heard of Ernst and Young. Okay. They're, they're a big forefront of one of the biggest ones in the world. I was with Ernst and Winnie in New York City. And I was with them in the tax department. I actually did the tax returns for the, um, I was in the IFFM department, individual family and financial management. I did the tax return for, for New York senators, um, for the New York Yankees. When they had like Christchamblist, I want to say, um, it's some of the old school, uh, uh, New York Yankees, uh, you know, thermon months, and I believe we even did his, you know, work talk and wait a long time ago, 30 plus years ago. And so we did the tax returns for high net worth people in New York City. And that's, that's how I started off. And then how long did you work there? I was where there, I was with Ernst about five years, then I worked, then I left there into the financial audit department of Price Waterhouse, which is another big four firm. Now it's Price Waterhouse Cooperers. And I was with them for six years in the financial audit department. So I learned the tax side and I learned the financial audit side with two different firms, which really kind of completed, you know, the kind of experience that you needed to eventually then after that, I want to walk into my own firm. I started my own firm, which I've had now for 30 plus years. Okay. How did you start that? I mean, well, what happened was I got recruited for the new homes to Chicago program after I had a short stint in North Carolina. And I was engaged to, I was 29 at the time, I was engaged for 19-year-old girl that didn't work out. She was like a young kid. And I was, I was a really serious young man, making money. So that didn't work out. When that didn't work out, I got recruited for the new homes to Chicago program under the Clinton administration. The Clintons were given Chicago incredible amount of money for the new schools, all the buildings and everything. And so I got recruited to run that program from a financial standpoint through an executive recruiter. When I got here, I finished that program around 1994, '95 is when I started my own firm. So right just around 30 years ago, when I finished that program, I just stayed in Chicago. I didn't go back to New York. And I was in Chicago, built my own firm with a lot of the subcontractors that were using for that program. I got a good reputation. One of the things that I did that did happen, though, was interesting. And that really catapulted me was I found a close to a $20 million fraudulent, a $20 million fraud with Walsh construction. I was doing work for a company called Crasse on Tuck Pointing in Chicago. And Crasse on Tuck Pointing was the biggest, Hispanic Tuck Pointing company in the city at that time. And they were just getting all kinds of work. Walsh construction used them and they issued change order to city and didn't pay them. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I found that out. It was almost $20 million. They ended up settling. And as part of the deal with Crasse on Tuck Pointing, I made $4 million off of that. And that was the biggest payday of my life at that time. It just put me into a different category. And after that, I got a reputation in Chicago. A lot of the contractors and subcontractors wanted to use my services. And my firm was often running. And I finished that program. My firm was often running and I stayed there. So that's how I got to where I was in my accounting field. I mean, is it set up where you hired, you know, it's enough accounting firm? I mean, do you have how many accounts? Yes. Is the bulk of the the way it's made up bookkeepers? No, no, no, we have other CPAs. They call them bookkeepers. Yeah, we have, we have some bookkeepers, but I don't just hire regular bookkeepers. I hire people with an accounting degree because they bring theory not just to practice, although I could train somebody to be an accountant who just got their enrolled agent and and passed their enrolled agent exam, I could turn you into an accountant because the bottom line is what you're learning college, you don't know anything until you actually get out in the field. And many professions are like that. Not just mine, but believe me, most of these kids have not even done a tax return. They even even done a bank reconciliation and they're walking out, but I hire intelligent people with a good work ethic. So my top three managers, we're about 15 people, but I can get independent contractors if I need more, okay? My top three managers are Asian, Chinese and Vietnamese. They're all co-blooded assassins. They are absolutely unbelievable co-blooded killers in terms of the work. All they do is work. My sorry, one of my favorite scenes is to have you ever seen the big show? Did you ever see the big short? Yeah. Where he's like, he's like, am I sure of the math? He's like, look, this is my, was he my quantum or whatever? Look at him. You noticed anything? He's Asian. Exactly. They get done my top three tax managers all came in with no experience, okay? They're all making the kind of money that they would make with the big for firm. They're making doing very well. They don't make mistakes. They get 10 times the amount of work that an American gets done in a given week. And they don't make mistakes. I mean, it's just absolutely unbelievable. All they do is work. Most most of the time Americans and I've been through this. They're on their phone. They're texting, you know, sexting. They're their boyfriend, their girlfriend. You have to watch them. I have cameras everywhere. When I go away, I'm like, oh, here they are. They're looking at YouTube videos, again. Not the Amations, man. They are serious about their lives. They are serious about the work. And I have a really great staff now. It's been hard to put something like that together because it's hard-finding quality help. But you have to pay people well. And I believe in hiring somebody with two things. Really superior intelligence and a superior work ethic. And we have that right now. I have a job. I'm sorry. You can't do it. Appreciate it. Yeah. So what? So we were going to talk about, yeah, interesting cases you've come across. So I was, I did a full field audit for an internet marketer. I call him John. He came to me through a referral of someone else. I did a full field audit for a full field audit, by the way, is a full field IRS audit where you get a request. It's called an IDR information document request. And they're coming in and they're going to look at everything. Well, the books you can get what's called a correspondence audit or a limited audit. But this is a full field audit, which means they want to see everything. Okay. All your books and records, everything, all your income. And they want to meet with you for a given time period. Yeah. For usually a year or two years. Okay. Okay. In this case, it was, it was three years. We, I knocked him down from only around 1.4 million to 200,000. From him, I got a referral to a guy in Vegas, who was also involved in internet marketing. What had he done wrong? It's not that he did anything wrong. He had an accountant that did not put all his books and records together properly. He was allowed. He was enabled to do a lot of extra deductions. In addition to that, his accountant did not know that he had net operating lost carrybacks because he lost money in a couple of years. After that, we were able to carry back. You can't do that anymore. The internal revenue code is changed now. Okay. The regs are different. You can't carry back losses. But back then, in 2008, you could carry back losses or I carried back losses that he had in his business. For two years, I carried him all the way back. Plus, the bookkeeping wasn't done correctly. He had all kinds of deductions that traveling expenses, a lot of expenses for computers, networking expenses that were not done adequately. So we knocked him down from 1.2 to around 200,000. It took a long time, but that was the end result. Well, he was giving us referrals to all his people in the internet marketing business. So we came in. I got a call from a guy in Vegas who was somebody who was working for this guy. He was the top, but I was told at the time, programmer, top five in the world programmer for internet marketing. What does that mean? What does that? Yeah, I had to learn that. It means the guy who is doing the programming for, let's say you go on the internet, you fill out a form like for a doctor or a new dentist or an auto mechanic. You're going to fill out a form looking for somebody. When you fill out that form, it goes somewhere. Somebody pays for that. They pay for you to fill out the form, right? The doctor pays for it or the medical practice or the dentist pays for it. What have you or an insurance company? They pay to have those forms filled out. A marketing company. That marketing company has, they paid the programmer who programmed it. They pay the actual marketing company that's helping to market it. So there's several different people that make money off of, let's say, that $50 form that gets paid for. Makes sense? Yeah. Okay. Well, that guy is doing millions of them a month. He might be making, I don't know, $1.20 off of every one of those forms that's filled out, but he's going worldwide. So he was making around three million a month, like just himself. He hadn't set up an LLC. He hadn't set up anything. We're doing it in 2008. And so we get called in. I get called in. Was he going through an audit or just he was going through an audit. He was going through a full field audit for three years, but it was worse than that. So when I, so they dropped a downstroke on me for 40 grand, because I said, I need a downstroke. If you guys want me to come to Vegas, went to Vegas, dropped 40 grand on me. I said, these, you know, these people are serious. Got on a plane for the first time went to Vegas. I get in this house. All these people are standing around the kitchen. You know, they're like, his entourage, but they're all like, you know, just getting paid by him because he's the guy that's rich. Yeah. I said, you know, where is Jeff? He said, he's downstairs. Literally, you get down there. He's this overweight guy's 300 pounds, literally eating a bag of Cheetos and corn chips, and he's at a computer. Like he's the like, the picture of a guy like, and he's a genius. Right. And he's there programming and making money. First thing he turns to me and says, yeah, I said, who are those people? He says, yeah, well, there's just people that are kind of feeding off of me. And, you know, I don't believe in anybody, except my father and Jesus, and they're both dead. That's the first thing he said. He didn't get rid of that. Yeah. But you know, they're people that are on his team. He's getting an audit, not just a full field audit, but he already has another other agents in Las Vegas that have identified money that he gave to people, particularly he had like about 10 girlfriends that he was buying cars for Lamborghini's, Maserati's, houses for. Okay. And he says, you know, overweight guy, and you know, you know, we can obviously get girls is the money. Yeah. And so he was not only getting a full field audit, but they were attempting to seize these assets because the IRS is seizure rights under code section 63 32. They can seize assets of a third party if they believe that those assets, the cash that you used to buy those assets was cash that you should have used to pay them. They sense? Yeah. So they can seize third party assets if they believe it was a fraudulent transfer, which would be a fraudulent transfer. Why? Because the IRS is saying, this is our money. Right. Okay. So I'm being brought in not only to do a full field audit, but to help get these people out of this. In addition to that, his parents, he had sent or them around 2 million. That was complicated because his parents, they were, you know, they were trying to seize the assets, this 2 million that was sent to his parents. So the very first order of business I was asked to do from this guy Jeff is, you got to get my parents out of this seizure. So I focused on that. I was able to do that because I was able to establish the fact that they had assets that they used to buy some of this real estate in California. He was in Vegas. He was wiring them money in California. And I was able to get them out of that seizure. But then the IRS wanted to him to report that as a gift to his parents, which we were able to get out of because we essentially called it a loan and we established a loan document with repayments that were being made. So none of that money had to be given back to the IRS. They couldn't seize that because we created a essentially a loan and, you know, loans that were made and also the loan payments that were being made. So that worked. But in the end of the day, a number of these young ladies, these women got their assets seized. And in addition to that, he had a he had a he had a party at Caesar's Palace in the penthouse. Like he was he dropped like, because I was now his account, he dropped like 100 grand for one day night in the penthouse. And he had like, there was like 50 to 100 people up there. There's all these young people. And at the time, I was like, you know, what was like 48? I was probably 48 at the time, but they were all easily at least 10 years younger than me. And I'm like tired and everything. I'm like, is there any place to sleep? Because I'm not going to go back to my hotel. It's like really late in the morning. And I just, you know, went into a room. I was basically sleeping on a floor. I slept on floor as many times. I just needed to get rest. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghost bed is here to help you fix that. 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The makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply, see site for details. And then he comes in with like three girls that he's screwing, you know, for the rest of the morning. And I'm listening to him screw to three different girls and I got up and and went back to my hotel and I went home. And, you know, the end of the story is we eventually had to do a lot of additional work. But some of those women did get the rest it seized. He got out of it. We basically were able to establish get him as low as we could on those audits because he got 1099s. And we set him up on a payment plan to end it up paying off. And that's what happened. But a lot of people don't know the third party can get your you can get your assets seized as a third party. Right. So is it is there like a calculation they use where they say, okay, well, right now we think you owe us 15 million. You currently have three million. So, but we know where that money went. They made an assessment. So here and it went here, here, here. So we're going to go ahead and start seizing these these assets. Yeah. What if those women, what if those, what if they had performed a service like it, if it was, it's actually were like a, had a legitimate company that was performing a service and they, it was they were payments. Instead, these were just, he's just gifting them. Yeah. Well, they actually, that was one of the arguments that, you know, was attempted to be made, but the problem is there was nothing that there's no service. Yeah. But I mean, if it was not a legitimate, like they were, yes, you can. And but then they're, they're going to be responsible for reporting the income. Oh, so what if they had, so if they had already reported the income, then that, but they just took the money and that's it. Then then the answer to that is, that's a great question. Then the IRS is getting their money. So for example, let's say, let's take the $400,000 Lamborghini. Right. Okay. I don't even like Lamborghini. By the way, I'd rather have, I have a, I have a, you know, 2010 Camaro six feet. I love that better. But you know, I said, the $400,000 Lamborghini. So let's say the IRS says, okay, that Lamborghini was for your services, you're going to have to pay income tax on that money. So the IRS is getting their money either way. Right. Now the rate is going to be different. He might get a $100,000 or something. Exactly. Right. But in this case, these girls, you're saying he never 1099. He just not an asset and never 1099 or anything. Yeah. And it is, you know, either a gift or income to them or then let us seize it back. And he's going to be responsible and get rid of it. Otherwise, you're going to be responsible for paying for paying the debt on his taxes that he owes because you have the asset, namely the cash that's been turned into a car that he should have paid. If you don't want to do it that way, you pay the tax and like, no, here, take the car. So the assets were seized. But yeah, you could have done that. You that could have been done. But these girls were in such a panic. Right. You know, I mean, they everybody thinks they're going to jail and everything. And I, you know, that's, that's it. They did get a, he did get a, he did get a 50% fraud penalty as well because. Okay. So we were able to negotiate that down as well than five years in prison. Yeah. And very rarely does somebody go to jail. If you come to my office, I have a number of cases where people came in with fraudulent tax returns, you know, crying in my office. I had one lady Diane. She came in with four years' tax returns that were getting a full field audit. And she was just a regular nurse with four kids, single mom. And she came in in tears, literally in tears, like within the first two or three minutes, she's like, I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to go to New Zealand. I had to comment on what's going on. Show me the tax return. All three years might have been four, might have been four years. She, the accountant reported like 70 to 80,000 in salon losses for like four years. Okay. Just to get her an additional eight or 10,000 back. Right. So yeah, it's fraud. Like that's clear. It's a fraud. Yeah, you did. So she had gotten the initial IDR information document request and a request for a full field audit and to show up in an IRS office in Chicago. Big time stuff right now. So she comes in my office. And I said to her, I listened to her's whole story and I looked at everything. Okay. So the very first thing is if you want me to represent you to be your POA power of attorney, you can never talk to the IRS. Okay. You're never going to talk to the IRS. Even if you get a subpoena, you're going to give me that subpoena and you're not going to talk to the IRS. That's fine. Let them subpoena you. Okay. Because she's panicking. Are they going to come and literally put me in jail? Say no, they're not. They can't do that. Okay. They can't just come and put you in jail like that without due process. Okay. So due process is they are auditing you. That's to do process. They want to know. Did you really have 70 to 80,000 dollars of salon losses for four years? Right. And you didn't. Okay. So I'm going to represent you. They're asking you to show up in this meeting. You're not going to show up at the meeting. I'm going to show up at the meeting. But are they going to rest me if I don't show up at this meeting? No, they're not. They could subpoena you though, but don't worry about that. Okay. I'm going to take care of this. But you cannot talk to the IRS. Why? Because you might put yourself in a trick back. And if you lie to the main concern is if you are in a fulfilled audit meeting and there's a manager there and there's a couple of agents there and you lie to them. That is charged. You can't lie to a federal agent. Correct. They're law enforcement. Exactly. Now you've just perjured yourself on top of that. You have a professional return. It's like lying to an FBI agent. You got it. So we never want you to be in that position where you're tempted to lie to them because you don't even know what they know. They might ask you a trick question. They already know the answer to it and they just quote you lying. Now you're in real trouble. And what can I do? Also, I can buy time. You can't buy any time. If they ask you a question, if they ask you a question right then and there and you know the answer to it and you don't answer it and you answer it wrong, that's a problem. But I can buy time. You can't. Okay. So I can say, you know what? That's a great question. Let me write that down. Look into this. Exactly. Get those those bank statements. You know what? As you mentioned that. I'll be back with you. Exactly. Exactly. And you also have, you also have things come up and you, I can't meet next week. I'm so I'm booked for next three weeks and I, you know, yeah, you can push, you can push back meetings and responses and where she's kind of, you know, exactly. So now I have a, I've had cases like this, but this was an interesting one. So she's like, well, what are we going to do? I said, first of all, let me think about everything. Let me see everything. Let me pull all your iris transcripts and let me talk to the iris agent. Okay. And after doing that, the strategy that proposed was we're going to fight it a little bit. I'm going to fight it a little bit, but we're eventually going to accept the results. Okay. You're going to probably get a hundred percent fraud audit. I mean, a fraud penalty rather. Don't worry. But am I going to jail? I said, no, you're not going to go to jail. Okay. I'm confident of that. Okay. So we accepted the audit results without, you know, too much of a fight, but we did a little pushback. Got the audit results. She ended up owing more than 160,000. That includes all the penalties, fraud penalty, late payment penalty, et cetera. Okay. Interesting on penalties. All of that was around 160,000. And I said, now what we're going to do is we're going to strategize an ultimate compromise. She says, what? Yes, we're going to strategize an ultimate compromise. And I, this was my plan all along. We're going to accept their results. But to do that as a nurse, you cannot be making 140,000. So you're going to have to ask the hospital if you can do no more over time for the next year. Why? Because I need you making 90, thousand with four kids. If you're making 90,000 with four kids, I can do a successful offer and compromise on you. I can knock 160,000 dollars down to 500. That's basically almost poverty. It is like four kids plus her. That's what it gets her. So here's the deal. When you do an offer and compromise, there are two things you have to evaluate, the assets and the income. She didn't have any assets to speak of. She had a house, but it was underwater, meaning the IRS takes the house. Let's say it was worth 200,000. They take 80% of value of 200,000 and then they subtract out from the mortgage. Well, she was underwater if you do that. So they took 80% of value. She's still owed 195,000. Correct. So she would have been should need a bill. And then they take your income. They add those two things together to calculate what's called your reasonable collection potential. Your reasonable collection potential is the amount of debt that you owe the IRS that you could pay back. That's your reasonable collection potential. So we have to get you where your reasonable collection potential is close to zero with all of the federal limits that are allowed. So you have to calculate your food and miscellaneous and there's federal limits to that. So even if you're spending 6,000 a month, there's there only allowed certain limits to that. Let's say it's 2800 in Chicago. Your housing and utilities, even if you have a $7,000 mortgage, they don't give you 7,000. They just give you, let's say whatever that allowable limit is depending on where you're living in the country. It's depending on the city or living. Okay. And let's say that that's 2500. So we give you the allowable limits, which includes transportation. It includes out-of-pocket medical. It includes other things like student loan debt, which she had still various different expenses. And we calculate your reasonable collection potential. And in her case, it came close to zero. We were able to do an offer and compromise. So she agreed to knock her wages down and not do any overtime for a year. I said, because in order for you to get an accepted offer and compromise, it takes a long time. It takes nine months to a year, possibly a little longer. So I need you to agree to this for a year. She says, is it legal? Yes, it's legal. You don't have to work this much. You can agree to not do any overtime. She's got four kids. Exactly. So we took her down to the 90, it was around 92,000 for the year. Later on, the IRS still checks to see that she's making that amount because the initial filing on the 656 and the 433A, which is the documents that we have to supply, showed that she's only making the 90s. So they check it later on to make sure that that's the case. And it was, and we got a successful OIC through. We knocked her down from 160,000, 160,000 down to 500 hours paid that off over five months. And she was done. She that was the strategy. That's what I do for people. I strategize how to get them compliant for an offer and compromise. Can how long does the IRS have to come back and check? Once it's done, it's done. Okay. But you have, you have to file the next five years and pay your taxes or they can reverse the OIC. Okay. So a lot of people don't know that and we make sure that I say, look, let us do your tax for the next five years just to make sure they'll go around. Yeah, they they'll revoke it. So that is one of the requirements. But yeah, once an OIC is done, it's done. You got a, you got a, you got a final OIC letter that says, you know, we've accepted your offer. It is an offer to the IRS. We've accepted your offer and you're done. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. And I've done hundreds and hundreds of them. If you go to my website, you'd see that, you know, I have all those success stories. And what I wanted to say and I'm going to interject this like, it's not, I've made a lot of money in this profession. Okay. I do, I've done very, very well for myself. It's not just about that for me because people say, I will lay in bed and I will read tax court cases. Right. While other people are playing monsters and aliens, like I'm reading tax court case, I'm reading code, I'm reading regs, I'm reading revenue rulings. For me, it's a chess game. It's like, I say to people like Bobby Fisher, like he played chess. He was great at it. But I mean, he made some money at it. But it's like anybody that likes to do anything. Like pick a game you like to play pool, whatever it is. You're not making money at it. Are you necessarily? I feel the same way when I'm in an IRS audit. It's like a great challenge for me. And I want to do something. I want to take on the hardest problems that no one else can fix. Right. That's who I am. If you really want to know who Mike Fideli is, I want those dead-and-a-water problems that everyone has walked to every other account and has walked away from. Give them to me. Right. That's how I feel. I mentioned this yesterday when we were talking, we interviewed another guy. He did the legal work and I used to say, the best legal work I've ever gotten in my life is been in federal prison from prisoners because they're not trying, they're not making money. You're doing it because if Pete's doing a case or Frank is doing these are guys that worked on my case that got me 12 years off by sentence. By the way. So if they're doing it, they're doing it because they want to win. Exactly. Like they love the process and doing this. If we have, they're going to say this. If we argue this, the only thing they can say is this. So whole strategy with them and what they're not doing is giving another $40,000. They're not trying to pay off their boat and doing it just for the money. They're doing it just for the win. And those are the best guys. Exactly. If I could hire, they could go to court for you. It'd be perfect. I take my brother, Jr. would say to his Mike, you know what he does? You're just like Daddy. You take everything personally. I don't care if you're a $125 tax account client. I take everything personally when I am in battle, when I am going to war for someone and it's a battle, it's a war. You know, you're trying to fight for your client legitimately. You're trying to find, you know, tax court cases or, you know, code sections that are going to fight for your client. And you know, a lot of people don't know this in an audit in a full field audit at the end. So somebody might say, I have another case I want to say, but so many might say, well, you know, but I don't think I could get that as a deduction. Let's say, for example, you have these, I've been in, you know, in, you know, kind of a like a little battle with people on Instagram that says, no, you can't, you can't take jewelry and Rolexes as a deduction. No, you can, depends on the business you're in. For example, if you're a music promoter and is part of your brand to show potential musicians who you are, you have to wear certain clothing, you have to look a certain way. And that is your brand, okay? Or if you're actually selling music like 69, for example, he sells, you know, he has the tattoos, he has the jewelry, he has the clothes, he has the cars, that all is part of his brand. And if you're using it to sell your music to a certain clientele to a certain audience, you need to look a certain way. And I would argue, even though a lot of accountants would be scared to take those deductions, I would argue them in a full field audit. What people don't know is even in a full field audit, at the end, you're going to be sitting with a manager or even two managers and an auditor in what, what we call a closing meeting or maybe something before the closing meeting. And you're going to argue your case. In some cases, you're just going to have estimated expenses. In other case, you're going to have aggressive expenses you took. Like, for example, the Rolex and you're going to make a case for your client under section 162A, which is ordinary and necessary business expenses are allowable as a deduction. Ordinary means common in your profession. Like for a music producer or a musician, you know, jewelry and tattoos and Rolexes and certain vehicles that they drive are common. And then the necessary is it's necessary for your particular business, for you to be successful. So it's got to satisfy both of those requirements. I would fight that in a full field audit. I would make a case for it. And at a closing meeting, you're going to negotiate that with, typically, you're going to negotiate that with an audit manager, an IRS audit manager. And you're going to be sitting there saying, okay, look, if you don't want to accept these, I'm going to, I'm arguing 50% of these expenses, these estimated expenses we should take and another 70% of these aggressive expenses that you're not allowing. I'm going to argue with this, you know, and I'm not going to budge on this. And if you don't, then I'm going to go to appeals in 30 days, right? They don't want you to go to appeals. They want to get this case off. And if you go to appeals, it's going to go to a separate IRS agent and appeals agent, not that one, but it may, they may very well find it back in that office. So they want to get cases off their desk. Most accountants who don't do audits don't understand that. So you can negotiate expenses, even if you don't have the backup for all of them. And even if you, you know, they're somewhat aggressive, you can use that as a negotiating point at the end of an order. In addition to that, once you're in appeals, there's something called the hazards of litigation, which means the IRS in the internal revenue manual that IRS agents have, they are asked to evaluate what are the hazards of litigation if then there is a petition filed in tax court. And they have to evaluate that. So they're looking at appeals, they're looking at possibly going to tax court and evaluating, you know, the hazards of litigation. They look at all of that and they say, okay, let's, we'll give you a, let's say, instead of 70%, we'll give you 40% of the expenses you're asking for for your client. This is what you do with the end of a full field, but okay. So you spend 100 grand at Walmart. And I know you spent, you had office expenses, you had supplies, you bought there, you bought food from office parties, you bought a number of different things. Whereas the average account says, you don't have any expenses, you don't have any receipts for these expenses, we can't take anything. No, under the co-hand rule, you can estimate what that of that 100 grand, how many of that would be office, a business expenses. And so I would argue, let's say 50%, they're going to say 30 and we settle on 40%. All right. That's what you do, that's why you, you know, that's what you can do at the end of what we call a full field audit. Now, you might get, you know, a lot more pushback than that, but that's what you're trying to negotiate at the end, because they don't want to go to appeals, they don't want to go to tax court. And even then, after that, you could say, you know what, I might not go to appeals, I might not go to, not go to tax court, but I'm going to do a request for order reconsideration, which means you can request, even if it's 10 year old audit, you can request for that order to be opened up from scratch, again, one time. Right. They don't want to do that. That's four different what you got, you got the, you got the negotiating at the audit table of the initial audit, you got appeals, you got tax court, and you got a request for order reconsideration for different ways that you can win for your client. And the IRS doesn't want to just things to drag on. They're told to close cases, because guess what, all of that's resources in time, even for the IRS. You just got to still got 35 more cases behind you. You got it. So you use the, you know, you use the, the, the idea of has a litigation to your advantage for your client. Right. What's the next one? The next one is the next one is so this is what brought me to Miami. So over 10 years ago, a referral came into me for two XNFL players who I will keep nameless. And I have a non disclosure agreement with them. I cannot ever mention their name. Okay. And I can't even mention a team that were on. Okay. But I met them in South Beach. Right. Okay. Once again, through a referral, I got a downstroke from, they were both being audited and they knew each other for two full field audits. Okay. Different reasons, but they got two full field audits and why they both got at the same time. Maybe it was just a stroke of luck. What have you? 101.6. The other world. 1.4 million. A couple of years. I met them in South Beach. I met them at Ocean Drive, Ocean Boulevard Ocean Drive. All right. And we're sitting there in a corner and, you know, for away from everybody. And they started to tell me their story. They didn't bring any documents. I didn't even agree to be a POA at this point. I just wanted to meet them, but they all dropped both sent me 10 grand each. So, you know, that was enough for me to come to South Beach. They're telling me their stories. It's like incredible. And then they're like, you know what? Let's go to my, let's go, you know, my condo here. So we went to the condo. And we're over there. And, you know, they're showing me everything. And then they continue to tell the story. And the story is like, he's got, well, let me back up. So when we were in the condo, he's got like seven phones. And that he was, you know, going back and forth on him. And I'm like, well, what did he roll these phones for? It's like, yeah, I got a, you know, I got a manager on my women. So I never see seven. He says, yeah, I got this one there. I went when I'm with this one, you know, I got these phones off. And I got these phones off when I'm with this one. I said, dude, that's a lot of work. He says, yeah, man, but they, they, they can't handle it, man. They can't handle it. So I thought that was funny, man. I thought that was hilarious. But anyway, they were in a fulfilled audit. Once again, it was a disaster because they didn't have a proper bookkeeping done. I mean, they had bank accounts all over the place. They had credit cards that, you know, we're not taking, credit card expenses that were not taken into consideration in a booking that was done. They, they just had a terrible account. Okay. We pulled it all together, including how many years are they going back? One was three years. The other was two years. One of the things what I brought up was 162A. We took one of them was in the music business already. They started a music company and we were able to take aggressive deductions on the jewelry on some of the cars aggressive positions on the vehicles of bling. Yeah, the bling, especially as, you know, he was in music. And then the other guy had a casualty loss because he lost his house and he and the insurance didn't cover a lot of it. So on a 4684 casualty loss, we took like more than 850,000 in a casualty loss that his accountant didn't know about. I mean, that was huge. So we, we did a full bookkeeping. We took the casualty loss on him. And we took aggressive defect deductions on the music company that this other guy started, who we also lost money on. He would losing money on the in the music business that he, you know, he had just started out on and we took them down one ended up on 600,000 to about 400,000. So from 1.6 to 1.4 about a million each. And, and we saved them, you know, about a million each. So that's the story. But the real, there's a lot of these knuckleheads. Miami. I need to move here or get it off. I didn't start it. You go there. There you go. So I came here to start an office to, to create content and to create a presence to attract these people to my business and to help save them. And I am discovering that there is more than this than I even imagined going on here. Yeah, we talked about, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, a lot of these crypto guys are, you know, I tell them, you know, you think your smartskate and under the IRS radar, they're going to get you, bro. They're going to get you. Let's get you compliant because if they catch you, not only they're going to catch you via taxes, they could potentially get you for a fraud penalty through tax evasion, tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not. And if you don't file your returns for a certain period of time, knowing well that you need to because you have income, that can be constituted as tax evasion. So we've got to get you compliant. And on top of that, you can get late panel payment penalties, late filing penalties is 25% on time. It's fraud. You go to prison and fraud if you go to prison. Yeah, correct. Everybody ever thinks they're going to go to prison. For I can't tell you right now, I've met multiple guys that were locked up in prison for for tax evasion. Exactly. For fraud, you know, they tax fraud, whatever. And these were guys that like, though, I'm like, you know, they were like three businesses and they were just taking deductions that they couldn't prove, and they did it multiple. If you get caught like twice, you get caught once, and it's not that, you know, they, and they, they hit you. And then three years later, you get caught again. Well, that's probably going to, you're probably going to go jail. You know what I'm saying? Like if you can't pay them back and work it out, there's a good chance you're going to go to jail. I knew a guy that got three years. Yeah. At least the fraud penalty, which could be 100%. So, and then, you know, you could end up only three times the amount of tax due with all the penalties is my point. So, um, but that's why I went to, that's why I specifically went to Miami, not LA. I'm in Chicago. I didn't go to LA and I didn't go to New York. Not that that's not going on there, but I knew that this stuff is happening in Miami. And so I came here to provide my services to people who really need to become compliant. And, and that's why I came to Miami. And I like I said, I'm discovering a lot of it. Um, but because I'm on Instagram over the country, I'm getting people in California and getting Vegas, getting in New York, but definitely getting in Miami too. There's a, like I said, there's a lot of only fans. Girls that need to be compliant. I mean, they're saying it right on Instagram. Yeah, we, we, before the podcast started, we talked about how there was, I was, I was just flipping through my TikTok or something. I don't know. And uh, this, these two girls were talking about how much money they were making on, I want to say, was only fans. And at the one girl, you knew the video I was talking about. And I was like, I don't know, she was like, Oh, I'm making, you know, whatever it was, you know, a million dollars a month or whatever I forget how much it was. I think you said like 40. Well, there's one girl that she said, I made 43 million. And I actually got on it during answer said, number one, keep your mouth shut. A little sit there. Why are you telling the world you need 43 million? Yeah. Well, because you know, she craves a lot of rich number. Why is somebody going to come after you? Somebody might kidnap you first of all. They're clueless. These are clueless shit. But, but she says that she says it and the other girl says, Oh my God. Like, how what are you paying in taxes? And she says, what do you mean? She's like, they take the taxes out. Like, no, they don't. And she's like, yeah, they do. You see you're like looking around and you're just like, Oh, God, baby girl. Like, you know, you're 25 years old. You're making more money than God knows you deserve. And you know what I'm saying? It's out rages. And that's the problem people get on social media. And they start getting these checks for 12,000 or 30,000 or 5,000. And they just start blowing the money. It's like, wait a minute. It's the end because they don't think it was only 5,000. Oh, it's 12,000. Wait a minute. The end of the year, you just made $200,000. And it was 1099. And then if they're smart, prior to that, they're already making, they're already making quarterly payments, right? But if they get there and they go, I made 200,000, well, well, what do what do you mean? I have to file taxes. Oh, and they go to, they have, let's face it. There's not a ton of, there is not a ton of, of, um, write offs. If you're using your phone to do an Instagram or to do or whatever. And then suddenly, suddenly, it's like, Oh, you owe 50, 60,000. And they're like, Holy shit. That's three months of, of my next, that's my next three months. Yeah. That's your next. And you have no bookkeeping set up. You don't really know where the money went. This is why these people need even a floor where there's no state income tax, except if you have the C corp, there is a state income tax. People don't know that your federal maximum federal rate is 37%. That is more than a third of your money. You better get a good tax accountant. You better get one that knows what they're doing. And then that kid legitimately and legally get your taxes down as much as possible. People are like playing with this. This is not something to be played with at all. It's really once you get the system in place, like right now, like my wife, you know, we have a CPA. And it's just, you know, at the end of the month, listen, they're, they're, they're smart enough that they even contact her to say, Hey, yes, we need this. And she sins it. And so there, it's, it's a constant thing. But once you get on a system, it's not that hard. It's, it's just, because really if you're sending it to your account, I'm not saying if you're doing, I'm saying, if they're sending it to their, their accountant, like if you're a regular person trying to do your taxes yourself, it's difficult, bro. Well, what happened with the crypto, there's a lot of crypto people in Miami and other places. What happened with the crypto is because over the last, whenever crypto really started, you weren't getting 1099 for crypto. There was no 1099s. Now they are, now that's changing. So all these people, when I say they were skating under the radar, they're not getting 1099, but that doesn't mean you didn't make the money. Right. You could get caught, you could get audited anyway. So they, they really felt they were just like rolling a dice, you know, hoping that, you know, because yeah, because the IRS transcript, the ways you income transcript didn't show any income from crypto transactions, you know, and that would be capital gains. Right. And this is, so this is, this is when these companies are notifying the, the IRS that this person made, this much money. And you think, oh, I didn't get anything. Okay. But the IRS, you know, like the, the, like, in that, it's reported to the IRS. In that case, they're thinking, I didn't get a 1099, the IRS didn't get a 1099. I'm okay. But if that money still ran, like, there's still a record. It's still ran through your bank account. You still spent the money. You made the money. Right. But it's worse if it's reported to the IRS, because actually then they're going to send you a deficiency notice, but you're assuming, if you're assuming, if you don't get a 1099 as an individual, you're assuming they, they didn't tell the IRS, but you're saying they could be telling the IRS. No, I don't think they are. Okay. No, no, no, um, we don't know. That makes me feel better. No, no, they're not telling the IRS. Um, I don't think on, now, I've been told that Chase Bank really worked closely with the IRS. So I would not advise anybody to work with Chase Bank. But they don't, the banks do not just give your information to the IRS. Right. There's no, but no, no, I meant like a company, like this company, your customer, your customer is required. If you were an LLC or an individual to give the IRS 1099s for you, however, most people don't know this. And I just went through this with a new client. I have a Miami. You're not required to get a 1099 as an S corporate or a C corp, even though they're giving it to you. Um, so, you know, you're not required to get one for a C corporate and S corp was an, an LLC and an individual, yes, you were required to get a 1099, uh, from your customer, either in 1099, Mr Lane is 1099, any C 1099 K for if you're, you know, if you're swiping your credit card, all of that's going to be reported to the IRS. But you're right. Even if it's not reported to the IRS, you're responsible for paying these taxes on your income. Of course you did. But once again, I'm saying that they think because they didn't, it didn't get reported to the IRS that there's going to skate onto the radar. And I said that I'm, you're not going to, especially if you got on Instagram and say you made 43 million dollars. That just makes no sense to me. Why would you even tell the world any of that? Just keep your mouth shut. I hear a 25 year old. Yeah. You know, chick who's never really trying to flex. Yeah. It's a really had a real job. So she's, you know, this is, they're not, they're not thinking clearly. Things have been going pretty good. Yeah. So I don't know if you want to pivot to some other legal thing. We sure. Okay. So I don't know if you know this. I built an orphanage in a school in Haiti in 2001. I, I, I have a, not for profit called www.lifeoftheworld.com. And what is it? You said it so quick. What? www.lifeoftheworld.com. That's my charity. Yeah. I built myself in 2001. I'll back up when I sold my first practice. When I was 37, I decided to take a year off. You know, I was at that point in millionaire. I'm like, I can't believe it. Like I finally, you know, got real money in my life. You know, um, and, um, and then that occupied your time for about three months. And then you thought I got to do. Well, it's very unusual because I had two small children at the time. I'm like, who just quits? Like I quit. I killed my senses. I've been 13. Yeah. Working really, really hard. And I said to myself, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? All right. I said this to myself. And I obviously had money. So I wasn't worried about that at all. But I took a year off. I told myself, I'm going to take a year off. And what I did during that year is I meditated. I read books and I exercised. That's what I did. I spent my two boys who were very young at the time. And one of them was six. The other was three. Okay. Two boys. So, um, and I was criticized for a lot of people by doing it. I like, I don't care about what people think of me. You're living a very boring life to me. And you're not me. Okay. And I really don't care. Um, but, um, so I, I would go to the library every day. And I ended up picking up a book called and neglected and abused the physicians here in Haiti just toward the end of that year. I picked up the, I just like stumbled across it. And it was written by an Italian Catholic. What was it called again? It was called the neglected and abused physicians here in Haiti. Okay. All right. I said that kind of fast. You say everything out of fast, by the way. Sorry. Do I? Should I slow down to this? I'm trying to get a lot here. Okay. Um, so I have a lot of my head about all these stories. I can't, but, um, it intrigued me. I literally just read the book like in two to three hours, however long it took. And it was a couple hundred pages long. And it was an Italian Catholic. So that intrigued me because he was Italian. And at the end of the book is this, this country is a hellhole. And all these diseases that are here, um, you know, tuberculosis and, um, you know, obviously AIDS, yellow fever, um, uh, malaria. It's just five hundred miles from the shores of Miami. I'm like, what? And it intrigued me. And because my uncle, and I go back to this, my uncle was, um, handicapped and he crawled on a floor. And I grew up next, right next to my told you earlier, I grew up right, you know, right next to my grandfather and my uncle lived there forever because, you know, he was, he was a cripple. Okay. He had a bone disease and he literally crawled on the floor. And I always had a heart for handicapped people and say real quick, real quick story short, um, my father went, I never forgot I went to my, my aunt's wedding. And I'll never forget my father and my brother will make a phone of a fat guy at the, at the wedding. And my, my father who had, you know, 18 inch arms, he was this, this tough short Italian guy. He grabbed us and he put up against the wall. He said, don't you ever, ever make phone of anybody ever again. And I never did, man. And that was because his own brother wasn't, you know, wasn't, and he says, you don't know what people have ever been through. So I grew up right next to my uncle who crawled on the floor. So I'm, I'm trying to give you a right picture. And I always felt called to help people who were kicked to the curb, the misfits, the broken people, you know, the, the island of misfit toy. So he's saying, you know, I grew up the red nose reindeer. I really did feel like that. So here, I can't forget about this book. And I, and I told my kids mother, I'm going to Haiti. This is, this is who I am. Like, I'm going to Haiti. So I, I know what I was doing. I didn't speak French. I didn't speak Creole. I've never been any police but Canada. And I got myself together. And in 2001, I put eight suitcases together. I was smart enough to say I'm going to hide my cash in different suitcases. I brought all kinds of clothes at me. That's mostly what I brought with me. And I hid my cash in it. Well, you can't do that now. They had too many scanners. You know, they're going to find your money. And here I was. I got on a plane to Porter Prince Haiti from Chicago in 2001 by myself. I knew nothing and no one. Well, I mean, you're going to Haiti for, for, for how long? I had no idea. At least two months. I was thinking. I'm not even lying. Fuck that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So this is what I did. You can get on the, my, you can get on the, I had three and a 50 YouTube videos. If you ever want to get on there, you can see them. They're all there from 2001 on through, you know, essentially, last couple of years. I've three and 50 doing food distributions with me, the kids in the school, situations where I was ambushed and they tell the story afterward. I'll tell a couple of those. And I was held at gunpoint. And so here I was. I came into the Porter Prince Airport airport. And I literally said, does anybody know English in this guy, taxi driver in Brooklyn English? Says to me, yeah, I speak in English. I say, you know, it's place called city. So lay in this book. He says, yeah, but you can't go over. You'll be killed. So I said, well, um, he says, where do you, what, where do you want to go? You can't, I can't take it. I says, I don't know. Other churches around here. So he took me to a church. Here, I mean, eight, two cases, I had another car to do that. So it was four and one car, four, and the other and they brought me to this. Now, they can just like kidnap me and kill me right there. Anyone be out of the story, but they didn't. Yeah. So I brought me to this church. I ended up staying here for a couple of days. And then I wanted to go to this place called city. So lay that I read about in this book where all these kids were starving to death and there was AIDS and everything and dysentery and tuberculosis and all this stuff. So I finally found somebody that was able to do that. I rented an SUV. Even notade is like a, it's like a seventh world country. There's almost nothing there. And at the time when I was there, you couldn't even find a cash machine. There's no cash machines. Okay. Um, there's banks, but no cash machines. So I decided to go to this place called city. So lay, and I was just shattered. My, I was like flabbergasted and, and like, I, like, was in tears. Like, I really wasn't like literal tears to see this poverty, like real extreme poverty. Kids running around no clothes. Um, you know, people, you know, um, living in mudhuts. So I ended up staying in a mudhut in city, so lay for about 35 days, which is, you know, very difficult to do. Staying in a mudhut for 35 days is hard because number one, you have no water at night. Even if you have water, it's like, it's 90 degrees and Haiti. So you, you know, you're going to drink warm water. The mosquitoes are coming at you like kamikaze all night. Really big mosquitoes. I didn't even know what I was doing. I didn't ever took malaria pills. I, I never did any of that. And, you know, they could have given me yellow fever. And when I found out later on, I never caught malaria. In fact, my blood is clean to this day. And I, my, my body has been in every dangerous place in Haiti. You can imagine. I didn't even catch tuberculosis. And the doctors at the hospital in Port of Prince, I had to go there because I got sick. I got double pneumonia twice. They said to me, you went to that area of cities to lay. I mean, that consumes all of our tuberculosis medicine. We got to check you. I didn't even have TB. Like it was, it was amazing. So after the end of the 35 days, I'm with my guide in Haiti. And he says to me, is it the taxi driver? No, no, no, no, from the church. Okay. He says to me, what are you going to do? And just so you know, I had been protected during this time because the, the, the chiefs of the village that I was in, like they were protecting me because I was helping the kids with money. Now, I didn't keep all my money. In the mudhop, I had some of the church that was being watched by the pastor's son, one that had become a friend of mine, his name is John John Laffertoon. But I did have some money there, but they never stole it. Like I was like, they were protecting me because I was feeding the kids. I was feeding the villagers, you know, I was tripping. And they don't, you know, they do take American money, but they deal with Haitian gourds. So Haitian gourds is, it got translated. And I was just feeding the kids every day. I was helping the villagers. I was, you know, doing, you know, the, that kind of work. So what happened is at the end of it, I'm like, you know, I'm just going to go and visit another area. Well, my guide says to me, in Creole, these kids just said, and I'm going to speak to you a little bit in Creole. The kids said to me in Creole, new beds went, lemon papar new mem. We want him to be our father. What? We want him to be our father, like 12 kids. So he says to me in Creole, he says to me in English, rather, what are you going to do? Because he spoke English, but he also spoke Creole. So what are you going to do? I said, I, I mean, I don't know. I said, okay, here's what we'll do. We'll get them close. We'll take them to a hotel and get them out of the mud hut. When I did that, within three days, some guy came to me from the Perch Church I was going to, and he said to me in Creole, through a translator, he said, God sent me to help you. Bon Jé voya, women. Oh, God sent me to help you. I heard that there was a man helping the children in misery. And I said, okay, what do we do? He said, I have a house. I have a place. I've had a piece of land. We can take the kids there and we can start a school and an orphanage. And in October of 2001, Maranatha orphanage in school started in a place called Susmet La Hady. And since then, I have graduated more than 5,000 kids from Maranatha orphanage in school. I've spent half my net worth. I spent literally half my net worth over 20 years. That is the absolute fact. And my time risked my life on the streets every day. And for the first five years, it was only me. After the five years, we did get donors. And since then, outside of my money, we've raised about three and a half million over, well, it's the first five years was all me. So, in 2006 to the present, we've raised about three and a half million. It's not a lot. And my money's a lot more than that. But we graduated with 5,000 kids. I've put four through medical school. One of them is in France route now. And three of them are in Haiti. And now the kids are in their 20s. That were just little kids when they were in my orphanage in school. And I'm still the president of it. It's called Life of the World. And you can see it on the website. You can go to YouTube videos and see all my YouTube videos. And they're all there. But now to get to the point. So, the danger, okay. So, one time we were buying supplies for the orphanage in a school. And I needed new tires also. And it wasn't city, so lay, city, so lay is a dangerous place. And there's no street lights in Haiti. Literally no street lights, okay. So, when 738 o'clock rolls around, like it's pitch dark. And in the areas I go in, the only people in Haiti that are white are missionaries. Right. And then me. I wasn't a missioner. I just a regular guy. And there is no white people on the street. And I'm the only guy you could see. And people say to me, "Where are you scared?" And I got to say, except for a few limited cases, I was never scared. Right. I just wasn't. It's not my personality to be scared. I was more, you know, I'm an adventurer. I'm a risk taker. And I wanted to help people. And I knew, you know, there were some dangerous situations. But, and I'll tell you one. So, I went to buy some tires for my SUV that I had already transported over. And I transported a number of vehicles from port in West Palm Beach. It took them to West Palm Beach. West Palm Beach, they go to Port of Prince or St. Mark. And I go to get, we're going to this place to get tires. And I'm with my operations manager, who was a Haitian guy. And he was a poor guy. All the people I dealt with, by the way, were not rich people. Even though there was some pastors that a little had a little money, they always tried to bring me into their entourage. But I wasn't interested. My friends were the kids and the people in extreme poverty. Those were my friends. And those are people that ended up working for me. I'd hired them to be the teachers in the school. So, as soon as we get there, we're walking over. It's a casual, you know, and he's a little over to the side. And I'm just standing there waiting for some guy to come out and show us the tires he's going to buy. And immediately somebody grabs his arm and puts it going right to my skull. And the other guy puts, I have two guys. One grabbed my arm, one put it going to my skull, and he grabbed my hand like this. And I'm like, okay, I mean, it happens so fast. And he said, Tally, Tally, wait. Like, I think he didn't want me to do anything. Wait, Tally. Simone, my operations manager, turns around and the guy says, come on, bam, I'm going to Cobla, bam, I'm going to Cobb, Ugi Ambla. Give me all your money, white man. Ripee, Cornier, fast now. You know, a revolver. And I said, I said, you know, Tally, you know, okay, okay. We're talking on peel. I don't have a lot. He said, blah, oh, yeah, blah, oh, yeah. White man, you have it. You have it. I know I said, hey, you know, hey, pose pose, you know, I'm peace. And then Simone, my guy comes over. We're trying to be really good. You got to be cool, right? If you make any jerking movement, he's just probably going to shoot me. You know, so I know he wants money. I know he doesn't want to shoot me. If he wants to shoot me, he'll just shoot me already, right? So, and this is not the first time that happened. So Simone comes over and he says to him in Creole. He says, "Ukone Leimem, do you know him?" No, I don't know. We don't know him. He says, if you believe in God, "U prao pafe, your Moveba guy, Poo Leimem." You won't do a bad thing to him. Pascay, because Lee Ed Ampil Timonio, Ampil Mounio, non Le Plain, he helps many children and many people in Le Plain, which is Susmet, where my orphanage in school is. And he said, "Bongier prafe, Moveba guy, Poo Leimem." God will do a bad thing to you. So, "Ukone Emboje?" The guy says, "Yes, I believe in God." He said, "Muem paun say, "Ukone Emboje, I am Poo Leimem. I think you'd better not do anything to him." That's what he says to him. And I'm not saying anything. They're talking, the good thing was Simone, they're both in extreme poverty. Like they spoke the same language, you know, the ghetto. In fact, my Creole is ghetto. Yeah, and people, I've gone to New York and they say, "Oh, Fidelio, you're Creole, so ghetto." Because I learned it on his street. I learned another classroom. And so, he says to me, "Okay, we'll get this $100. You have $200?" US. And I said, "Yeah, yeah, man, sure." So, you know, I don't, I have my money in like three different places in my body. In case you're kidnapped or you're robbed, you think you'll leave. So, I pulled off my shoe. I had, I pulled off my shoe. And out of that, I had like 500 and I pulled out 200 and I gave it to him. And that was it. He let us go. He could have taken the SUV, could have killed us, he could have taken everything we had. I mean, it's almost a miracle, you know, you would think, because usually when people do that, but my operations manager Simone, it was an intelligent guy, he's super cool, and he convinced the guy just to, hey, let him go. I gave him some money and that was it. Amazing, huh? No. So, yeah, he just can't imagine spending that much time in that environment. That's why I told you you never met anybody like me. You've never met a wife I like me before. I promised you you'd never have. And you may never. And I remember I went to Jamaica and we asked the cab driver to drive us like, "Hey, where can we draw?" You know, I forget the name of the town, and we're like, "Oh, we want to go here." He's like, "No, we're not taking it there. You're not going there." He was like, "No." He's like, "You'll get Rob killed. It's no." I mean, like, basically, they had the tourist areas you could go to, and that was it. You ventured anywhere outside of those areas. They were like, "It's extremely dangerous. You could get killed. You'll get Rob for sure." Yeah, they often say to me in Haiti. I have another story where I got ambushed. We were also buying furniture, and I, with the same guy, Simone, and we were in a place near City, Soleil. I mean, so he said, "Well, are there any safe places?" Not really. They're not for a guy like me. There is no safe place. You could be in Central Plateau, where there's just coconut trees and lime trees, and village guys could just come up on you and just cut your throat and take what you're got. Like, there is really no safe place. The Haitians would say to me, "Nucle de Bonge Avel, we know God is with you." Or you'd be dead, because you're helping the children. They would tell me that. But yeah, so in another case, I was buying furniture, and me and Simone were walking over, right? I was just going to find a couple pictures. We're me and Simone were walking over. Obviously, I have money, and we're in a pickup truck, but more than just, it's more than just, here, this is me with all my kids that I found and put in the orphanage. At one time, that was like 375. So that's me in the early years. We're going to get the furniture, and immediately when I get there, I could see that these guys have guns in their pockets. Just kids, 16, 17, 18 years old. So not normal to see that many. So they were part of the gang. I'm sure they were part of the gang. And Simone, once again, my operations manager, he's a cool customer. He knows his people. He knows how to move among anybody. So we're buying the furniture, and then he says to me, "So we're standing off on the side." And they're saying to us, "Go this area is dangerous. If you go back the same way you came, it's going to be, these other gang members are going to get you guys. So why don't you go around this way?" And it'll be a little safer for you. And later on, Simone told me, I knew they were going to just ambush us and tell us. Yeah, yeah. They may be telling you where to go so they could have already waited for you. Exactly. And at that point, I understood enough Creole to know what they were asking for. And so, we together, this is interesting because we didn't even talk to each other. We're just doing this together. Yeah, sure. We're going to go that way. No problem. And we're like real cool, like, yeah, yeah, we're going to go that way. And so I paid and they didn't even negotiate a higher price for the furniture. And I'm confident it's because they knew they were just going to kill us and take everything. Right. So they just agreed to the price. And that was very unusual. That even that itself told me they're going to kill us and take everything. Right. Okay. So I give them the money. And then, and then as we're walking, Simone says to me real quietly said, I'll be right, Pete, go fast. And I already know. Okay. So we're walking, we're not walking fast. We're acting like, you know, and we got four girls in the back who were the teachers in our school. Four girls. Now, probably was a bad idea to bring them with us, but they wanted to come. And I thought maybe they might be helpful. So it's not just me and him. It's, you know, four other lives in the in the back of the pickup truck. And they were going to hold the furniture, you know, so it didn't fall off. So we, I get in, I get in my Toyota and I want to make sure everything was, you know, I was ready to goose it. I was ready to, you know, to go, you know, pretty fast. And so I just, you know, hit the gas a little bit and I took off. And as soon as I took off, they shot at us. We ducked. I ducked. We told the girls to duck because, you know, you have a, you have a bed. Yeah. The bulls didn't get through. They hit the side of the bed and we got away. So they were just going to just execute everybody. Yeah, they were shooting everybody. Okay. And so we all got away. And there's a video on there where Mike, I'm not really escaped death in City, so like 2005, I got that actually on. He told the story immediately after that. Someone told the story of how we got away. And he said, God save us. It's a two-story man. So I was in West Palm Beach delivering container to Haiti. Okay. There's a port there. You take it from Chicago to West Palm Beach. And I'm there at a bar just having a glass of wine. I worked all day to get the thing delivered and it's all done. And I'm going to go home tomorrow, but I'm still in my hotel. So I just said, let me go on West Palm Beach and hang out for a minute and I found my bar to hang out. It was a dance club when everything looked pretty nice. And somebody says, and I'm by myself. And somebody says to me, one of the wait waitresses says, uh, yeah, there's a lot of rich people. That guy over there. In fact, that guy's a really rich guy. He's like an extual or whatever. So somebody then buys me a bottle of wine. And the waitress says, by the way, uh, that guy over there has bought you a bottle of wine. The guy that she just talked about that was rich, bought you a bottle of wine. He asked what you were drinking and he bought you a bottle of wine. And then he waved to me. He was like, that waves at me. He and, um, I said, yeah, come on over, man. I mean, I, I don't know, he was an older guy. Yeah. And, um, he sits down and so we're sitting there talking and I said, hey, man, you know, what's with the wine? He said, no, I just, hey, man, you look new here. You look here, you know, you haven't been here before. I just, you know, I'm a regular here. And I just thought about way about a wine to look like you by yourself. I said, oh, yeah, it's cool. It's cool, man. And what do you do? Well, I'm retired. I, you know, I'm a jeweler from New York City, a Jewish guy. So, you know, he's got the guy's probably loaded, right? And, um, so he says, yeah, I cycle every day. It's what I do. I'm 70 city. I think he said he's 76. And I said, yeah, man, that's cool. So, um, then he says to me, so which direction you go? What? It's like, what, what are you straight? Are you gay? I said, uh, no, I'm straight, man. He goes, you never, like, you never try to have sex in a man before, or something. Here's your bottle of wine. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not finished. I'm not finished. I said, no, man, I don't do that, bro. I've, I've had guys hit on me. I told right. I've had a lot like this. I had a friend. I had a guy that I worked at IBM when I was an intern in college, uh, hit on me one time. And, um, and I might not do it, man. I, you have the wrong guy. Just, I just don't do that. And he said, uh, he said, well, so I was telling him about my war finish, right? My war finishing school. And, uh, he says, uh, and I said, yeah, right now, he says, really, what does it, what does it cost to like run that kind of thing? I said, well, right now, we're running into it for around 30 to 40,000 a month. You know, that includes all the food, the teacher salaries, everything. Um, and so he says, you know, that's, you know, that's a lot of money. And he's, and he's like, well, so I said, so I said, obviously, I guess what do you know, reason you're talking like this is, I mean, are you gay? Says, yeah. But I said, yeah, I said, you just told me like you have grandchildren and, and you're married. He says, yep. I mean, only when I really got retired, did I get into this, you know, life, I said, how do you do that? Like, how do you just become gay? And, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not asking this loud. We're talking low, right? How do you just become gay? He says, you know, it's just like I ended up having, you know, sex with a couple of, you know, younger guys like, and, uh, and I turn gay, man, and I'm, pretty much just want to do this. I said, okay, man. And, and then he says to me, listen, um, it all started with a bottle of wine. And he says, listen, uh, what did you say, the, um, would you say that you, you spend in the orphanage every month? It's around 30, 40,000. He says, um, I'm going to, I'm going to offer you a proposition. Okay. He says, uh, you come down to visit me a couple of times a month on a plane. We go out to, we go out to, uh, you know, play golf or go cycling like I go to, and, um, you know, you hang out with me, stay with me for a couple to a couple of nights a week. I'll give you a 40,000 a month. What? He says, yeah, I give 40,000 a month. I'm assuming he's just, is this, is this including sex? Is that what he's thinking? Yeah, obviously, obviously. And I'm like, but dude, I just told you, I said, he said, I'll take care of your whole orphanage for 40,000. I'll take care of it. I said, you have that kind of money since I'm filthy loaded. And I said, he says, to be honest with you, then he goes like to be honest with you, I'm 76 years old. And I want what I want at this point. And I'm filthy rich. I said, I believe you since you're a jeweler from New York, I believe it, but I said, dude, I just don't do it. He goes, here's my car. Do you think about it? Is that incredible? Obviously, I didn't do it. But then, I get, no, no, but then I get back to my look. There's probably some people that wouldn't do that. I mean, I don't know what there probably are, but I go back and I talked, I talked through this one guy Richie on my board, his Haitian. And he goes, Mike, do it for the team. I said, no, dude, I can't. So I didn't do it, but that's a true story, dude. I don't know if it was really would have happened. But everything looked legit. And then when I, when I finally parted and my wages came over, I said, how rich is that guy? I said, that guy is filthy rich. He was not lying to you. That guy is lured. But no, didn't do it. Sorry, dude. I can't, I can't, don't go that direction. I just ran in Miami half marathon, by the way. So I was warming down the last two days on the street, doing warm downs and walking and running. And I got stopped by guys, hey, man, can I take a butcher with you, Mike? Mike, I saw you're the guy on Instagram, right? And they want to take pictures with me now. So it's, it's turning. Like I now have a following. And the messages I get every day are, hey, man, would you mentor me? Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's interesting how this is, now I got the haters too. But I, there's a, there is a real following of Gen Z's, particularly Gen Z's, the guys in their 20s that are saying, hey, man, what did you do in your 20s to, uh, to set you up for the, you know, the life you're living? Like, what, what would, what would you recommend to a guy like me, 21 and unbroken? What would you do? Yeah, there are a whole, there's a whole loss generation of these young guys that are just aimless. They have no purpose. Exactly. They need, they need somebody to say, look, this is, this is, every time I talk to one of these guys, I'm telling them the most basic advice, right? And they're like, they're always, they act like it's, it's like, like, wow, like I've never heard that. Like you've never heard that. Yeah. You've never heard, like get a job, work, work out, work on yourself, be a better person. Do the right, you, like these things that are foreign to them. It's, it's fucking horrible. It is. I actually got on there one time and I was responding to what a guy asked me. He said, one guy said, he said, this guy's confidence, he was talking about me has to be, has to be studied. I don't think I come across, I, I, I, I hear you. I don't think I come across that confident. I'm just a regular guy. I mean, I don't come across like, you're, you're, you might think that you're probably not a regular guy, but let's assume you are a regular guy. You're a regular guy for, for your, and really my generation, right? Like, how old are you? I'm 56. So we're, we're pretty close, you know. But I mean, you know, you, like you said, you know, you, you can, you can sit here and tell stories about your father who was trying to build, who was, you know, it's so funny because I hear this all the time. I thought these, like, my father's my best friend. Really? My, like, my father was a lot of things. He was not my friend. He was, he wasn't concerned about being my friends. He was concerned about building someone that could survive in life. Absolutely. Being, you know, being, and being nice about it wasn't even, you know, really that, he wasn't that interested in having to be nice. He was like, this, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do, you do, you know, the way I say to do it. Why? Because I said so, you know, he wasn't trying to explain to me why to do something. It was, listen, I tell this story when I was, um, I got two stories. Oh, I love these stories. We're like, one time I was laying in bed. It had to be like eight o'clock in the morning, let's say. Uh, yeah. And I was, I'm in an apartment. I'm living in a apartment. I'm in my 20s. Right. And my dad, the phone, this is back when he had phones. Yeah. The phone ring. Right. You would have a phone by your bed. It was not a, we're not, we're not a cell phone. So it was connected to the wall. Right. So, and the phone rings that I reached out, and I'm with my girlfriend at the time we were living together. I'm in college. I pick up the phone and my, I'm in a dead sleep. I'm like, fuck, what the fuck? You know, and then he goes, Matthew, and I mean, I sat straight up in there. Yes, sir. And he goes, your mother needs some, some boxes, get, uh, put in the Atticies. I need you to come over here right now. Yes, sir. I'll be there in 10 minutes. Boom. I got the phone got up and my, my girlfriend was like, Jesus Christ. She's like, who was that? I was like, that's my dad. I got to go put on my pants, put on my, and I was scared. It's not going to beat me up or anything. Yeah. But it was respect. Yes. My other favorite one is I was in college. Uh-huh. And he paged me out of pager. You know, there's a little, he had a cell phone, he had the one in the car. Right. Right. When they had the pagers. Yeah. But he had the cell phone, you know, he had one of the first cell phones, where it was connected to the car. Right. Right. Right. But he pages me. I get up. I go to the, to the, uh, to the pay phone. They had these things called pay phones. Um, and so I find it and I pick it up and I start talking. And I, I call, I'm like, hey, Dad, what's going on? He said, Matthew said my, my tire, my car is a flat. I'm on the corner of 56 and Bush Boulevard. I need you to bring me your car. Keep mine. I have a BMW. He bought me a BMW. I'm in college. Wow. He's paying for this. He's paying for college, right? But so I, I go, okay, um, one, I'm in the middle class that I, I don't get off. I won't be out of class till like five o'clock. And he's, and I said, don't you have triple A? He was triple A triple A 2000 a semester for your, your college. He has another thousand dollars for, uh, supplies and books. He said, uh, uh, $750 a month for your, for your rent, $400 for your car payment, uh, $500 for fucking, you know, for food. He's, you're my fucking triple A. Get your fucking ass over here. And I said, yes, or I'll be there in 10 minutes. Boom hung on the phone, bolted. I'm walking right out as I'm walking out of class. My teacher's like, he's like, where are you going? I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go straight there. When I got there, I pulled my car up. Get out with my keys. As where he holds up his keys, we're walking by, we swap keys and he goes, bring the car back when you have the tire flat. Wow. Got in the car. And he wasn't a dick, right? I mean, he wasn't, he was just like, I don't even appreciate you saying triple A. Motherfucker, you know, don't even say you're costing me a couple grand a month plus this plus that. And you know, but that was, and I was like you said, he wasn't saying, do you could have a sit-out and have a conversation? Sure. Sure. Sure. I was a good guy. But don't, don't question me like I'm, I'm your father. Absolutely. No, that's the way it was. In fact, in fact, you break up the word fuck and let me just say this, the, I won't say only the generation, but it was the generation. But in the area where I was, these Italians, you couldn't use the word fuck in front of a woman. You never heard a girl say fuck. Right. Now a days, and even now, even now, I hesitate. It's weird. I, I have content, girls, and you know, you see everybody, but I hesitate saying fuck in front of a girl. Right. Because if I did that in front of my mother, my father would have taken a weightlifting belt and, and, and, and beat me from here to China. Right. You just never, and my grandfather, if I ever sit in front of him, are you crazy? It just wouldn't have happened. So it was a different world and even in terms of how people talk. And now a days, everybody is bitch this, that pussy, this, and it's like, don't you know the English language? You know, and it's so, it's, it's so, it's so juvenile and, you know, just trashy and dirty. But we couldn't even do that. You couldn't even talk like that back then. That was a part of the respect. And my father, a short few, so my father's short few is a great man, but he had a short few. It's like, he was like, I remember me and my brother one time, my mother and father went out, you know, for dinner or something. I might have worked like a date night, whatever it was. And me and my brother, as we did some time, my older brother, we got into a fist fight over something stupid. I was, if my brother watches this, he could be mad at me, but I was strong, my, they're my older brother. I could beat my older brother up. Okay. Even I was two years younger. And I remember one time, we just went at it. And my brother had like a black, by the time my parents got home, my brother had a black guy, fat lip, at least. And I might have had a, I might have had a black guy. Like he was a lot more beat up than I was. And we just stopped at some point. My father, my brother's face was all beat up. My father came in and he said, you got it. You changed my friggin' room. And he took a belt to both of us. I'm still feeling that well today. I mean, he let it. He just ripped into us. Get pull your damn pants down. You stupid juvenile rats. You know, just he let us have it. Right. You are brothers. You never, you fight with, you fight with each other against people. You don't fight each other. That's the way it was. But you know, we were, this is what, but nowadays kids don't even fight. My young, my, my son, I have two sons, one in 29 and 32. Like, because they, they know, seems the videos of me, you know, me messing with my brother and everything. And even he said, that guys might, we don't fight anymore. People don't fight. They just pull out guns. They don't even know how to fight. I mean, I probably had 50 fights before I got out of grammar school in a school yard. I was 50. I mentioned this. I saw a video. I mentioned the other day. It was some, like, a, like, generation X guy talking or something. And he, and he mentioned, and then I mentioned it to my wife and she was like, fuck, you're right. Like, you never, never see kids with casts anymore. I had, when you grew up and I grew up, there was always some kid who had a cast. He had a broken arm. There was pretty good broken legs. There were, I don't think I've seen anybody with a cast. Yeah. In a decade, since I got out of prison, for sure. Like, nobody has casts. Like, because I don't think that, because they don't climb trees because they don't climb on the house because they don't, they don't do crazy stuff. Like, to me, that was normal. They just don't do those things. There's rivalry. You can't get out of bicycle or skateboard. They got, they got elbow pads and knee pads and helmets and goggles and I still have fingers that aren't set right. Right. This is a broken finger. I have, I have, um, switchblade cuts. So look, that's a switchblade. When I was 15, that's a switchblade. I almost got killed two. I got two, uh, a switchblade cuts that have never gone away since I was, uh, yeah, 15 and 16 years old. No, there's no, this kid, no, that's not happening. And that was the block, the guy, the kid was coming after my face and I blocked it. So he got my hands and, you know, I ended up in a hospital, but you don't, they don't even do that anymore. Yeah. You know, and I mean, I'm talking about you know, really like throwing hands, man, we, we got into real fist fights, you know, and, um, I used to fight with my best friend every day when I beat him in basketball. We would just get into a fight, a fist fight. It was like normal. If you got, if you got my brother, you know, in a photo, he's like, yeah, you and Robbie O'Bell, like for every day, literally like fought like, you know, throwing punches at each other and it's crazy. But it was, and then the next day, your friends. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's very different now. And, um, very, very different. But yeah, my father was a no nonsense guy. Great father, great compassionate man. Um, I don't even know any fathers around. Like, I mean, you know, everybody says it about their father, but in this case, he was a great man. And the greatest thing was what he modeled to me. You know, he modeled a man that went to work every day at 530. And I can still remember him shaving every morning with, you know, real shaving cream and shading and getting up, you know, putting on his, putting on his clothes, eating the breakfast and he did that for 25 years, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I'll just say my, my father worked probably six days a week, woke up in the morning, maybe dropped us off at school, usually not, usually just gotten his car and left, came home around five to six o'clock, maybe six or seven. Right. Monday through, you honestly worked most Sundays too. Just that was just, it was this whole life. Like, that's just what he all he wanted to do was, was work. And, and I think that that's probably how he just felt being a provider was that that was his job, his role, my mom raised four kids. He provided and that was just very simple. He, they, he would, they did go on vacation periodically. They would go on vacation because my mom said we have to go on vacation soon. Okay. He played, you know, here, here's the budget. Yes, plan. Yes. You know, and then she would, uh, at the end of the day, would he come home after he would eat, we'd eat dinner, he'd go into his din, sit down with either the book or the newspaper or something. And my mother would come in and sit down with things, things that were going on in the house that she needed to ask him, okay, here's what's going on. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Do you, uh, can, can she go? What do you think? Or what do you, what do you think? She'd be like, well, I think it's fine. They, they've been friends a long time. I know her parents and they're good. Yo, okay, that's good. You know, he would say like, that was it. Like it was a little meeting. It was like another little meeting for him to determine what was going to happen and what he needed his input on. Sometimes it was agreed that you don't get, she makes those decisions. Usually it was money related. And that was it. Yeah, it was just a totally different, you know, well, I could say my grandfather, my father, who I grew up right next to my grandfather, the two most influential men in my life, they were leaders of their own house. You know, I mean, my father was in charge, you know, he was the boss. And so was my grandfather. And I, that's the, I guess you could say the traditional world like, and all my friends as well. And the women, most of them women, there were some exceptions. It is like my mother, she worked when we were like, you know, 16, 17, but when we were growing up, no, she was a stay-at-home mom. They called stay-at-home mom. Now, they didn't call stay-at-home mom when my entire house was like, yeah, it was housewife. And all my friends were the same. The mothers stayed home with the kids and the father went to work. I mean, this is the whole area that I grew up in. So it's all different now. And we don't have garbage anymore. We got, there's something else, sanitation workers. We don't have stewardesses. That's not a good word now. It's something else. They're not stewardesses. There's some, I mean, in fact, you know, most of the, there's more women in college now than there are men. That's kind of tragic. And also, if you went to the Dominican Republic, which I'm gonna lie about, 90% of the classrooms are filled with women. 10% is men. It's really tragic. So everything's being flip-flopped. And, you know, women, of course, you know, if they're making more money, and I've had many, many clients, and I can just honestly say this, when a woman is making more money than a man, that's a bad sign for you, bro. Something bad's gonna happen. And on almost every case that I've ever seen, and I've had, could I save in more than 200,000 clients in my career? With very rare exceptions to this, the woman does not respect him. She might stay with him. She gets angry with him, or they end up, you know, she just ends up leaving. And it's just not a happy marriage. Women are not designed to be the providers. They're just not. With rare exceptions. I'll say rare exceptions to that. Even if she even if she's making, you know, 30 or $40,000 more than you, you could see the disrespect. They'll be in my office, and she's ripping him a new butt right in front of me. You know, so I can imagine, I know what's going on at home. It's just, it's a horror show for him. And my advice would be either you make more money, or, you know, you can't do this anymore to yourself. You're a masculine yourself, dude. You're doing it to yourself. You know, get out of this, but you see it all the time, so women, so back then, though, the men made the money, you know, and the women were in the house. And now that all that has been flipped up, so especially the money that women are making now. Yeah, but you also see that, you know, what is it in? Is it even like five more years from now? Like more than 50% of women are going to be childless and, and no unmarried, unmarried and childless. I mean, tragic. And I love the women that are out there that act like that's a, you know, oh, that's a good that that really. Well, so those four, those four women that I just showed you, I did the video with the three piece, I asked them all, um, or do you plan on having children and getting married? No, to both of those questions. No, I don't plan on getting married, no, I don't plan on having children. That's why all these businesses are are putting tons of money into, you know, cat food and boxes of wine. And, you know, because the truth is, when you're in your 50s and you start thinking, fuck, I'm old and I'm lonely and all my friends who have kids that and are married, they seem so happy and I'm, I'm lonely and I'm, you know, I fucked up. I should have had a kid and, you know, and when, when they're in their 50s and they're compliant and out too late, because nobody wants a date of 50 year old woman. So, you know, now, now you're miserable and you've got these high standards that nobody's going to meet and you're 50 and you got no kids and no fucking husband and you're bitching him on and, and you know, you could look back and say, oh, well, I had a great career. Like nobody's on their deathbed saying, I wish I'd spent more time at work. Yep. You know, it's always, you know, it's like, I wish I'd spent more time with my kids or my wife. You're not going to, there's going to be nobody. Yeah. You're going to be 50 years old. There's no family left. Your parents either passed away or they're, you know, they're, they're going to pass away. Yeah. You have no children. You figure out what's important when you're laying in your bunk bed in prison. Thank you. Because nobody, nobody says, fuck, I can miss my Lambo. Nobody. Nobody says that. I believe it. You know, nobody says that. There's always kids, my parents, my, that's what everybody cares about at that moment. When you're at your lowest, that's when you like, it's suddenly your priorities become, you know, streamlined and it's become super, super obvious. And then you get out of prison, you say, you're going to change all that. And then two years later, you don't and you're a douchebag again. Right. But the society's drowned that with an artificial way, the artificialness of social media, like you have connection, but that's just, that's not real connection. Okay. So we've drowned it with more stuff, more social media. It's just this huge, constant noise that these younger people have used to replace family, but it's not the same thing. And it's not going to be the same thing. It's, it's, and you see the emptiness and you see the lostness and you see how these kids are turning to more drugs. And, you know, now these guys, like, you know, they got a laundry list of drugs. Really bad ones. You know, and all of this stuff is, is because of the emptiness and the brokenness and the loneliness that I think they're feeling. They're escaping into it, right? It's an escape. Yeah. There's a, there's a deep hole that's going on. But anyway, this is very depressing. It's depressing. This is going off the deep end. This is horrible. No. This is a horrible podcast. No, no, but, but I have, I mean, I have a couple of solutions for it. But, okay. Well, number one, I know, I mean, they're going to come at me as they already did. I, we got to get real point number one, because when men are spanking a monkey, um, they're not chasing women. Exactly. It's real simple. The biology of that is real simple. Um, and when you get to release, uh, there's no motivation to be a provider. There's no motivation to chase women. There's no motivation to go through the difficulty of getting a woman. Yeah. Because it's difficult or improving and improving yourself to improving. Yeah. Right. So improving yourself, getting women, all of that's part of the same thing, right? And when you got a hard package that, you know, you know, you know, hey, I want to find a woman, uh, to, you know, to get the proper amount of release for that. And also to, you know, give me motivation to be a provider when, when you're, like you said, when you're spanking the movie, all that just gets sucked right out of you. That's that. That's one of the things it has to be done. The other thing is, women cannot be have access to mental over the world. That's got to stop somehow. Because women back in the day, when I'm, you know, let's take me in high school to college. I knew the women in my town or maybe to town over, uh, they knew me, the women knew the men in their town to town over, the women knew the men in their college. And a few other people and that's it. Now you can get on social meeting, have 50,000 people from every country in the world and you can get flown out of Dubai or Colorado or wherever if you're a woman. You have unlimited access to men. So here, you got a boyfriend and you guys are having a hard time or you guys, you know, work into things. I don't like them anymore. I don't want to work through this. And so you get on social media and you know, you, you, you message some guy over in, um, you know, can't cool and you just get on a plane and go. It's too easy for women to give up on a man. It's too easy. And then also the money. So somehow the men got, we got to make legal somehow. And I'm not trying to ruin anybody's business, okay? I'm really not. I'm trying to think about how to save the world, okay? You know, get rid of and I really think you just have to get rid of the access that women have to men around the world. Now how you do that, but I know that that is the solution because if they have this kind of access, they're, they're just not going to be committed to a man. Yeah. What do you think? No, I would, I would actually throw video games in there too. Video games. I think video games are just fucking horrific. I, I, I, you know, I have horrible every, I just don't know anybody that successfully playing six hours of video games a day that is successful. It's just, it's too much and it, it's, it takes place of, you could be spending time with your girlfriend, chasing girls, working, you know, I mean, I've got, I've, people that I'm in my life that I'm just, you know, it's, and it's, it's work. Like, I hear, I've actually had a conversation with someone one time recently within the last few months that was like, well, I mean, yeah, but, you know, if I get a job, then what am I going to be doing? I'm making, you know, 12 bucks an hour and, and I'm going to be bringing home what, like a hundred, like a hundred dollars a month, or I don't know, a hundred dollars a day, 120 a day. And I was like, yeah, well, that's no money. You got nothing now. Yeah. Everybody started like that. Well, I started like this. Of course. I said, and you know, should you have, is in a month, you got $2,000. You, right now you have, right now you have, you're playing fucking video games. Like, you, you get it, as soon as you get a job, it's very easy to get another job. You know, you don't have, it's, it's like having a girlfriend. If you're married, you have a girlfriend, you no longer have the stink of desperation on you. It's very easy to go from one girlfriend to the next girlfriend. It's easy to go from one job to the next. If you're a shop with no job, you, you, there's a different vibe about you, and they're not necessarily wanting you working there. And you can, now you have experience. You worked here for six months. Somebody wants to hire you. They know somebody else took a risk on you, and you kept that job for six months or a year or two years. You could build off that, you know, these, it's kind of like being sometimes these people, they get married. What was his name? James Sexton. Remember the lawyer, the, he's a lawyer, a divorce lawyer, and he talks about how I can tell you who's going to be divorced by the spectacle of their marriage, the bigger their marriage, the more they spend, the more, you know, gaudy and audacious, and, and the more of a spectacle, they create the faster that marriage is over. He's like the, the people that, I know, he said they went to the justice of peace, got married, said they're married for 20 years, you know, like spending a ton of money on it. That doesn't mean you need to be more concerned about the marriage than you are the spectacle that you show in front of all of your friends. That should not be what it is. And you know, going back to the, the guys and one guy, they asked me this a lot actually on Instagram, they say, how can I, like getting back to that confidence thing? So I said, okay, I mean, yeah, I guess I'm, you could say I'm confident. What I would do, then they'll say, how do you develop confidence? What I would do is I would do extremely difficult things by yourself with no one's assistance successfully over time. That builds confidence that no one will be able to steal. You did extremely difficult things by yourself with nobody's help. And that will make you into a man. But now everybody's cleaning you up instant. They're cleaning and they're cleaning you up. You have a problem. You run to mommy. You have another problem. You run to daddy. You run to the government. You're not becoming a man. A man is someone who now has a certain level of self-reliance. You know what I said to my two boys? I told him this not recently a couple of years ago and they were older. I said, there was one thing that I absolutely had to give you. Did I want to give you an education? Yes. Did I want to give you, you know, a place to live? Yes. What I wanted to give you was self-reliance, self-reliance, and they got it. My two boys are really one of them runs his own construction company. The other is an auto mechanic manager, manager of an auto mechanic shop and they really are young men. And I said, that is what a man is. He is self-reliant. I don't mean that he doesn't believe that, you know, he can't believe in God or anything. That's not what I mean by that. I mean that you can rely on yourself to get something done when nobody's there to help you. Right. That's what I'm, that is what I'm talking about. And the generation of men that raised me were those men. And that's what they tried to do for me as well. So you don't see it as in these young kids that the video games is destroying. I mean, you're just wasting your life every day you're doing that, every single day you're doing that. That is one more day that has wasted. And thank God I was smart enough and we're talking about more, you know, 30 years ago. My son was born. I never let them do the video games. I never let them do that. We did other things. We learned, I taught him how to play football, baseball, I threw the baseball with him. Yeah. And I know I've never even played. I mean, unless you know, we do want a little Atari, so I don't even know what these video games are today. I have no idea. They're extremely addictive. I won't even, I won't even have it. Listen, you know why? Because when I was on the run, I bought a Xbox or whatever at Halo. You know, is that Xbox? Yeah. I don't even know. And they had Halo 2 had come out. And I spent an absorbent amount of time playing that video game to the point where I realized like, this is, what is happening? Like the weeks gone, a week just went by. And I'm like, yeah, I can't, I can't. And after I played with it for a few months, because I mean, I was on the run. I see. And I'm frauds, not a full-time job. So it just became my full-time job for a few months, and then eventually I just applied. I said, hey, I'm done. I took it and I chucked it. Actually, I think when I up and moved, I think I left it. But because it's a secret service after me. So, anyway, yeah. So I knew then something's wrong. And now when I get out and I see the way these guys play it for fucking 10 hours and they play it on the headphones with people all over the world. They're talking to them in the headphones playing the bit. So I do this. This is how old I am. These guys say, so there's no video. There's no, now it's this. So while they're playing, like, when I was looking to hit Pong, it was. Oh, I remember Pong, a tower. Yeah, a tower, you Pong. And there was space invaders. And then there was asteroids. Yeah. And then there was, yeah. Oh, shoot, I forget. Anyway, yeah, Pac-Man, Pac-Man. Yeah. Yeah. That was high tech. That was high tech. Yeah. Yeah. It's a waste. And the problem is, while you're doing that, it's all that time you are wasting. It's time you could be cleaning your house. You could be working out. You could be jogging. You could be training yourself to do something else. It's more that that gives you bet more confidence and makes you more makes you a living. Yep. I got out of prison. I've taught everything I know on like to editing YouTube. Everything was all YouTube. I just walk start watching these videos and just watching videos. And then I just, okay, well, hold on, watch it and stop it. Okay, let me see. Okay. Wait, what did he do? I mean, he ended back and forth back. I don't have, I can't hire somebody. There's nobody's, nobody's, nobody's training you on how to, how to edit software. You watch everything on YouTube. So that's what I did. And eventually I was able to do all those things. And, you know, and I was, an old man was 50 years old. That's, you know, head and seat and iPhone had never seen an iPhone. I had 13 years of prison went in and we texting it just come out. Wow. It was just tech on the flip phone. I had the razor from the razor. Yeah. Flip phone. Yeah, I had a razor. And then I got out and now there's iPhones like, I don't know, this thing's like something like magic. Yeah, you have to take the initiative yourself to see what's going on today. If you're a young person, uh, to not get absorbed in all of this nonsense. And, uh, you just have to do it yourself because even if your parents failed to, and I tell them, I don't read it. And I'm saying that to parents too, especially to father. I said, for you to be talking to a man like me with this kind of disrespect, your parents, especially your father. And I don't know your situation failed you. Period. That's the way I feel about it because I would never talk to an older man like you're talking to me because my father would have whipped my ass. I was not even grow up like this. You just immediately give somebody older the benefit of the doubt and you respect them. Right. Okay. You don't start talking about their hair or talking about their 411 or, you know, every day, you know, and saying to them, they look 80 years old, you know, and then I get neck wrinkles. This is just disrespectful. I heard it all. I am laughing because I've heard it all. And, um, and it's, there's no honor. And how are you going to make it through life talking like this? Well, it's the people that talk like that behave like that. Like these, these are art, these are not successful people. These are people that are living at home or they're, they're barely getting, like nobody's successful talks like that. Nobody's successful. You know, so I, I would never talk. I don't talk down to people that I think are trying to make a come up. You know, I'm saying, I don't talk really down to anybody or talk bad about it. There's just no benefit to, to being rude at rude and disrespectful to anybody at any level. It's, it's just not a smart move. It's not going to help you and it doesn't help. And it might think it doesn't, first of all, it doesn't, it doesn't doing good for you to, to talk a bad about other people like that's a, just negative energy to you and you become just kind of a, you're just a douchebag. You just be, and you pick up and the more you get away with it, the more you do it, the worse of a person you are. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Also, if you want to get in touch with Mike, we are going to leave his social media links, which is Instagram and any other links he's got. We're also going to leave his contact information. If you would like to donate to, I'm assuming you can donate to the, the orphanage, right? Yeah, you can. On the website. Yeah. We're going to leave the, the website so you can donate to the orphanage if you want or you want to contact him or his organization. Once again, I really do appreciate you guys watching. Also, we're going to leave our website in case you want to be a guest. You go to, go to the website, go to the be a guest page, fill out a form, leave a video. We will get back with you. Thank you very much. I appreciate you guys watching. See you.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The speaker is a tax professional who gained viral social media attention by creating controversial content, including using attractive women to discuss tax topics, which attracted both clients and online criticism.
He shares personal anecdotes about his Italian-American upbringing, including family connections to historical figures like Al Capone and childhood mischief, such as stealing from a police impound lot.
His career shift from pre-med to accounting was driven by a desire to earn money sooner, influenced by his father’s strong work ethic and family values.
Summary:
The speaker, a tax advisor, explains how he leveraged social media to grow his business by creating provocative content, such as featuring attractive women asking tax-related questions, which went viral and attracted both clients and online "haters." He shares personal stories from his Italian-American childhood, including family lore about his great-grandfather hiding Al Capone and his own mischievous adventures, like stealing from a police impound lot as a child. He also discusses his professional journey, transitioning from pre-med studies to accounting to pursue financial stability, inspired by his father's work ethic. Despite facing criticism over his appearance and methods, the viral attention significantly boosted his client inquiries, demonstrating the effectiveness of his unconventional marketing strategy.
FAQs
Shopify offers the best converting checkout on the planet, designed to help businesses increase sales and win in their market.
He created videos showing his work with clients, including success stories and direct interactions with the IRS, which he tied into his website.
Engaging with online critics and creating viral content, such as videos with attractive women asking tax questions, significantly increased his views and attracted new clients.
According to family stories, his great-grandfather hid a young Al Capone from the police for several months, which may have saved Capone's early criminal career.
He grew up engaging in outdoor activities and minor mischief, like sneaking into a police impound lot, which fostered a sense of adventure and resilience.
He initially wanted to be a veterinarian and later considered pre-med, but switched to business and accounting to start earning money sooner.
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