Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - The Tax Advice That Could Change Your Financial Life Ft. Karlton Dennis

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Karlton Dennis, CEO and founder of Tax Alchemy, enrolled agent, author, and tax strategist, joins The Determined Society for a powerful conversation on taxes, wealth building, identity, entrepreneurship, and the strategy behind keeping more of what you earn. In this episode, Shawn French and Karlton discuss the life pivot that took him from football to business, the identity shift that came with leaving the athlete stage, and the IRS letter that pushed him into the tax world. Karlton shares how working inside his mother’s firm helped him understand the power of tax planning and why most people overpay simply because they wait too long to think about taxes. He also breaks down the difference between a tax accountant and a tax strategist, how he built a massive online platform through YouTube and Google Trends, and why true wealth building requires more than earning money. It requires education, planning, and the willingness to take responsibility before the bill arrives. This conversation is about more than taxes. It is about reinvention, failure, financial awareness, ownership, and the determination to get back up stronger every time life redirects you. The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms.   Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You're guilty until proven innocent with the IRS. Not the other way around. You are not innocent until proving guilty. I thought taxes were grandfathered in. The wealthy are sitting back laughing because they understand that this system was something that they lobbied for. The rich get richer and the poor get poor. That's our tax system. The day you decided to leave behind that football mentality.

It's a difficult moment to talk about sometimes because I wish I would have given myself the opportunity to show up to my end. NFL Pro Day on the day that I was supposed to show up and I chose not to. I decided to show up to the career fair and land a job and that's when everything changed from me. That worked every single Saturday. It was the first year I made like $350,000 like W2, got reamed in taxes just on the W2 side. They may come up with that term, another guru, right?

I just want to be a results-oriented person. Please just go do your research. I'm not a cost. I'm an investment and I'm an investment that comes with an R.O.I. investment. If you're going to pay me $50,000, you should be saving at least $150,000. That should be your expectation coming in. What does true determination mean to you? True determination is falling in love with failure in knowing that you get better when you're willing to get back up. Imagine a young kid from Orange County super fast, fast enough to run a 4-540, fast enough to pick off six passes

in one in one season, fast enough to become a collegiate athlete and a defensive. captain. And everybody knew one thing about this young man. His future was under the lights on the gridiron with a number on his back until one day it wasn't. The man sitting across from me decided to walk away from all the expectations that people set from telling him what he was supposed to be and decided to become who he was meant to be. And one day he picks up this book, arguably one of the most boring things he could pick up, in the United States of America, which is a 75,000 page tax code. And somehow just follows in the footsteps of his mother who is from Compton

and built an amazing firm and an amazing career. And she told herself from the very beginning, she didn't want to be the one in the room left behind. And she built something special and passed it along to him. And somehow he flips a camera around and records into the void for years with nobody watching until a million people did. And now 10 million views later, plus or minus, he is now the CEO and founder of Tax Alchemy. And he gives practical advice on the internet about how to, well, beat the IRS.

So today I have with me, Carlton Dennis, man. Welcome to the show. Man, that was probably one of the strongest intros that I've ever had. I can tell you've done your homework on me. And I'm really excited to be on the podcast, man. It's an honor. It's an honor to have you. And thank you so much.

And I'm actually in your studio here. at Tax Alchemy. And, dude, it's a great pleasure to meet you, you know, found out about you. I started looking at some of your content today. I'm like, ooh, man, I love a way this Homeboy communicates, dude. It's like, you know, it's real life. It's in English. Because I don't, you know, tax code, like I said, man, it's boring, you know, to the layperson. We don't understand it. We don't know what it means. But you have a way, man, to really break it down and cut to the heart of what the definition is and how someone can really hold on to it and apply it to their life. Yeah. It's pretty cool, man.

Thank you, dude. Pretty cool, dude. Have you always been able to communicate like that? To be honest with you, I got exposed to great speakers at a young age. My mom was doing public speaking going back to when I was 9, 10 years old. And even before then, she was a big fan of Les Brown and Tony Robbins and others, other great speakers in the space. So I feel like that was just something that kind of followed my mother and eventually followed me as I started to go into the tax space. That's awesome, man.

I want to bring it back, though. I want to go to the day. Yeah. Right? the day you decided to leave behind that football mentality, the what everybody thought you were going to be. Yeah. And you decided to venture off and become who you were meant to be. Yeah.

Describe that moment, that emotional moments to me where you realize like, you know what? That's not my future. This is. It's a difficult moment to talk about sometimes because I wish I would have given myself the opportunity to show. up to my NFL pro day on the day that I was supposed to show up and I chose not to. Instead, I showed up to Career Day and landed a job with Gallo Wine Company and immediately called my parents once I found out that I landed a job and said, hey, you know, you don't have to worry anymore about me. And I think what my biggest thing was is that I just didn't want to let anybody down.

I wanted to be successful so bad. And at the time, I was kind of doing the math on other defensive backs that were 5-9, 5-10, 185 pounds. run into four, five, four, six, and just not too many of them made into the NFL. And the ones that did barely made it three years into the NFL. So the writing was on the wall, at least in my mind, that a career in the NFL is, if it does happen, is not going to last that long for you, Carlton.

So I gave myself my own, I wrote my own story by saying, you know what, you're not meant to go to the NFL. And that's when I decided to show up to the career fair and land a job. And that's when everything changed for me. I now have to go prove that I can be successful in a, W-2 job and go work for somebody. And I immediately realized that this wasn't the environment that I wanted to be in. I started my personal training business on the side because I wanted to have more

control of my income and more control of my time. And I also just didn't want to be told what to do all of the time. And eventually my world kind of collided with the IRS when I got a letter in the mail from Uncle Sam telling me that I didn't end up reporting all of my 1099 income that year. That's when I called my mom. And that's when she heard it from me. And I said, Mom, I'm sorry. I should have probably called you. I started a business. I set up an LLC. I used your primary residence address.

I called it underneath my own personal name. The IRS is sending me letters. You're going to get the letters now. How do we fix all this? And that was when it hit me right then and there that, you know, the system doesn't really teach you, you know, how taxes work. You go to school. You get a job.

You start a little small-based business. No one tells you what's a deduction, what's a ride-off, how this stuff all works. And yes, my mom had a tax and accounting firm for nearly 25 years of my life at that point, or 20 years of my life at that point, but I wasn't really interested in trying to learn taxes or be in my mother's office. Well, that was the opportunity for me to go learn taxes. When I went to her office, I found out that I could have set up an LLC the right way. I found out that I had startup deductions that I could have claimed, that I didn't claim,

that could have reduced my tax liability. And I also found out that, you know, instead of stressing out, you can get on a payment plan, you don't have to pay the IRS all back at one. So I ended up quitting my job at Gallo Wine Company, went to go work in my mom's business, and that was my first time starting a career in tax. I started off in sales, and I hit the ground running, just trying to learn as much as I possibly could. No tax license, no tax knowledge yet.

Wow, dude, that's amazing. Yeah. It's a great origination story, right? Yeah. It came from a place of pain. And a lot of things that are great in life do come from a place of adversity or pain, right? And the pain for you is like, uh-oh, at mom, I think I messed up. I didn't know, I didn't set this upright.

That moment, what did she say to you? She told me, she's like, why didn't you, why didn't you reach out to me sooner? Like, why are you trying to go through life, trying to prove so many things by yourself? And I don't, I don't know. I think it's just my, the ambition that my mom had, watching how she was the leader amongst her brothers and siblings, the fact that I grew up with three other brothers, the fact that I knew I kind of was athletically gifted. And I saw my gifts slowly starting to do.

diminish a little bit. I was like, okay, the stage that I've been on, it's leaving me. And so I just wanted to row all of that energy into something that I thought I could go pour myself into my job and then starting this personal training business. And the issue that I had is that I was uneducated. I ended up filing a tax return without claiming any of my business income or any of my business expenses. Uncle Sam doesn't appreciate that. They don't like that. They don't like that. And so, you know, I humbled myself. I called my mom and she said, listen, this is exactly why I have a firm. People think that they can just go out there and just do things and they find out later that there is an Uncle Sam and know that person was never at Christmas, was never at Thanksgiving, they don't love you. They're there to take money from you. They're actually a silent business partner. I've been trying to tell you this since you were 14. Now it's time for you to finally listen. So do you want this lesson or what? Wow. That was it. That's amazing. The part where you said, you know, I don't know, but then you gave the examples of why you didn't call her sooner, right? It's like, I'm supposed to to be this successful man.

And I need to keep that, what was it, kind of keep that persona or whatever. Yeah, the aura that I had of being successful. And by the way, I was, I was away for college. So when they heard about things that were going on in campus and what I was doing, there was always things that were positive. Carlton has a 3.5 GPA.

He's on, you know, first team all-American. Every time they're getting feedback, it's always this positive thing about sports and, you know, academics. and then all of a sudden it started coming to an end. Okay, you've been in college for five years. You redshirted you're there. Are you going to the NFL?

You're not going to an NFL. Are you going to become a physical therapist because you majored in kinesiology? Or you're not going to become a physical therapist? You're going to go to medical school and we're going to start taking out loans because you want to go to medical school? We're not going to do that. No. And I wanted to be an athlete and I couldn't see myself spending another four years in

college. And I certainly did not want to walk away from college without landing a job. That was not going to happen. Yeah. You know, when you talk, and that's a great play, right? I mean, it's so funny because you mentioned the gallo company. I mean, that was a big thing, man. There's a lot of college kids that went to that company, right?

Yeah. And did that job. I mean, so it's very reputable. But again, you know, like you said, you don't want people telling you what to do all the time. And it took me a lot longer for me to get there. But I got to a point in corporate America in sales, like in medical business or whatever sales organization I was in. I was like, yeah, I don't want to answer this call. Yeah.

What I mean? I'm 40-something years old. I need to tell you where I'm a minute. Matt. Yeah. Like, you ain't my mommy? Yeah. How my numbers? Yeah. Over quota? Good. Yeah. Over quota? Good. Yes. Awards, good. Trips, good. Not taking this call. And so I just, I got a roll, man. But every single time you switch things, right? Yeah. There's an identity shift, right? Yes, there was.

I used to call it an identity crisis because I played baseball at LSU. And I can remember in 2003, when the last out was recorded in the College World Series, and we two in barbecue. We lost two in a row, and we were done. I remember sitting there in right field corner and everybody was crying because we lost the World Series. I was crying because I didn't know who the fuck I was. Yeah. Yeah. That's deep.

How did that work for you, man, when you quit football? I honestly just buried myself into the weight room. I tried to shadow the identity crisis with bodybuilding. And I think the pain that I felt in the gym masked the pain that I was feeling in my heart and not being on the stage that I was supposed to be on that I thought I was supposed to be on. And so I told everybody, well, shit, I'll just become one of the best bodybuilders

and train myself and then train anybody that wants to be trained by me because I was already at the peak shape of my life. You know, eight, nine percent body fat, bench pressing, whatever I felt like bench pressing that day. And I felt so superhuman to not be on a superhuman stage. And I think it bothered me so. much that I couldn't just let this this success out that I felt like I had it from an athletic

perspective. And so I just wanted to route it into something else. The things that I thought were important to route it into was a career in sales where you can go hustle and then doing personal training where you're training other people because I thought, well, if I can't be on that big stage, I'll eventually work so hard to where I'll be training people who are already on a big stage. I'll eventually become Kevin Hart's personal trainer. That's dope. And I just wrote that down. I was like, I'll be Kevin Hart's personal trainer now, nor do I, you know, I want to work out with him now. Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool. But I told myself that and I was like, okay, I'll be a celebrity personal trainer. And I changed my Instagram page to celebrity

personal trainer. Had no celebrities yet. Yeah, but I was just trying to whatever's in the profile, baby. Just trying to establish a new identity. Exactly. And so that was kind of me letting people know that, you know, one, I care about what they perceive of me. So I'm going to change my identity right now and be this celebrity personal trainer. And yeah, I'm going to go work at my mom's firm and keep that under wraps until that becomes something and just do this whole personal training thing from the public eye. And then eventually I saw my mom show me what it really means to be a tax professional and help people. And I realized I was creating personal training programs, charging people $20 for a personal training program. And she was charging people $20,000 for a tax

plan. And the people that were getting my training programs, you know, said they loved it for the first month, the second month, third month they fall off. The people that were paying my mom were coming back year in and year out for those tax plans. They said, I'm doing it again. I'm doing it again. And I could not believe that she was helping people in a 45 minute, a two-hour session making $20K or $30,000 a tax plan when I'm barely charging $20 to $200 for a fitness program. But see, that's the difference, right? Yeah. Skin in the game.

Mm-hmm. Right? The value. Yes. They paid your mom that much money because it's all the value. And they knew someone with that much, someone who's going to pay 20 to 30 grand for a tax plan has millions. Yeah. That's true.

Let's, let's, maybe, right? Or pretty close to it. Yeah. So they're going to value that investment because they know it's going to make them probably another $500,000 somewhere. That's great. They know. They understand the R-LY. They understand the risk.

They understand. what it means to be hemmed up by the IRS. And I want to be clear with the audience. This is not a, you know, we're not here, you know, have him on the show, right? So we can do your taxes. We're here so you can learn about the man's story, right? And talk about the certain things that I think that you can really help the audience with

because there's so many lessons in certain things that we've already spoken about. Yeah. You know, even going back to, well, I'll just be a bodybuilder. You know, because when you're talking about that, I'm thinking, I'm like, wait a second, it you went from one stage and you want to go to the other stage because you used to being on display yes you're used to perform you're used to training you're used to eating good food you're used to performing and showing out what you can do 100% and it's all external yes god man man like that's what athletics does did to us it literally put me on a pedestal that I could not

find a way to come off of yeah man yeah and and that's I wanted to bring that out because it's deep and in somewhere the audience is listening is like I'm going through that too. A lot of college athletes listen to my show. A lot of high school athletes, dude. And the one thing that they can learn from dudes like you and me is, is you don't know what's on the other side. No.

You have no idea. You know, and had that worked out, had you been a celebrity trainer, you may not be as happy as you are now. You don't know. I don't. Massive difference, right? You know, but with the defensive captain stuff, you know, being a leader, all-American, what are some of the things that you learned about leadership that have helped you become

such a great CEO from day to day that you still implement? I'll be honest with you. I don't need to always be the person that is on display as the winner. And I learned that over being a CEO over time. You know, early on as a CEO, it was all about what it Carlton do for the company, right? Because I was working with a young team and it was, Carlton was really the show.

But over time, what I realized is I found that I got more output and more buy-in from my team the less I had to own ideas. And even if I came up the idea, I passed that idea onto somebody and I let them own that idea in a conversation or in a team setting. And as a leader, you're empowering leaders in different ways.

You can empower a leader by showing by example, which has always been my trait. But you can also empower leaders by sharing in the success with them and giving them that platform too to be able to be on that stage to share an idea or own an idea. And so those are some of the things that immediately come to mind. And then to be completely honest with you, something that is always that I'm focusing on

is just being a better listener. You know, going back to college, I think that my junior year of college, I actually lived with all girls in the volleyball house, which was insane. Sounds terrible. It was very crazy. But what I did learn was that I got to learn how impactful conversation is for women on such a deep level and how one text message, a woman can sit there and think for hours over the words you said behind a text message.

Or the fact that you neglected the conversation that they were trying to have with you. Or that they said something and it just went through, one near and out the other, you completely missed the point. And so some of the things that I learned in college, whether it's being surrounded by the volleyball players, athletes there, or being surrounded by my football players, I learned how to be a better listener. And that has translated into my role now as a CEO of Tax Alchemy and what I do for clients to help them figure out ways to mitigate their tax life.

Insightful. Is that something you realized later on as an adult, or did you realize in real time that you were learning to become a better listener, a better communicator because you were around all these girls? Absolutely not. It didn't happen until later until I met my wife, for sure. When I met my wife, she was just like, why does it feel like you're a little bit in touch with your feminine side a little bit? And I'm like, what does that mean? It's like, well, you know, come on. Be truthful. Yeah, just be truthful a little bit. You're a little bit more emotional. You can kind of understand what I'm going through. And I'm like, okay, Carlton. I'm like, you know, having to live with some girls in college.

and I actually got to see the other side of what words can truly say to somebody. And I understand, you know, the late nights and the once a month type of deals you guys go through. I try to understand and relate. Wow. And so has that helped me in my relationship? Yes. Has that also helped me in the work setting? Absolutely.

My team is predominantly females. I have 79% women on my staff. I think personally women are the best in tax. If you ask me, I would always choose a woman over a male when it comes to tax professionals, even though I would never want to discriminate. But I know that women care so much about taking care of somebody when it comes to taxes. They are the best listeners when they're trying to understand a business owner's situation. I talk about that in the art of legal tax avoidance.

One of the biggest differences between hiring a tax accountant and a tax professional is a tax account really works off of your historical data, whereas a tax professional kind of has to hear what's going on and start putting themselves into your shoes and project out your situation. It creates a different identity. Yeah, man. It's amazing, dude. I mean, and it's funny because I was my growing up, you know, I was raised by my mom until she'd be married when I was nine. I was always out with my grandma's house.

Okay. I would spend the night at my grandma's a lot of time. So I relate and understand women better than I do men sometimes. And my wife's going to watch this and be like, you don't understand shit of sometimes what I say. Sorry, babe, I do. It's just sometimes I turn it off. But, you know, you would think about it, right? It's like what you grow up around and what you are.

are what you experience kind of molds how you operate later in life. And so if I have to have a hard conversation with something, I'm much more comfortable having a hard conversation with a woman. Yes, absolutely. Me too. Having a hard conversation with a man scares a shit out of me. Yeah. Even if he's five to 140 pounds, it wouldn't matter.

Something about that that I have to fix. Yep. Right? Dig deep down into. Yep. But it's a thing, man. So I know exactly what you're talking. Yeah, I relate to you on that.

It's like dealing with conflict with me. men is almost more difficult because you've been around more women growing up, that it's almost easier to handle and conversate it with a woman through a situation, whereas you're either hot or you're cold sometimes when you're handling a situation with a man sometimes. You get too hot, you're coming too cold, and you don't feel like you landed the way you wanted to land sometimes. And then you get owned. And then you get owned a little bit. And you're like, I don't know if this went the way I wanted to go. Yeah. Because it can always escalate to something, right? Because as men were super, uber competitive. Yeah, 100%. And,

And mixing in the fact that you were a division one athlete, NFL prospect, that's another level of competition. Yes. And so when you're having a conversation with a man that can get confrontational, of course, that caveman kicks in. Yes, because you're wired to win. It's like, okay. Yes.

We're going to go right now. And then you've lost all communication. It's gone. It's done. Yep. Nothing got solved. It only created a bigger problem. Absolutely.

Right? Pride sucks. And that is honestly one of the biggest things that in business I've started to identify is understanding who I'm talking to and communicating to them the way that they need to be communicated to. Right. It's wrong to assume everyone needs to be communicated to the exact same way. And over time, what I realize is that having my leadership team and I go through different exercises to understand each other's personalities and kind of communication style has allowed for us to be able to effectively establish behavior changes relative to problems we've dealt

with in the past that allows for fluidity and communication that we're having today. The 2024 conversations that we didn't want to have were having in 2026 now because we created behavior changes that allow for us to communicate with one another around issues that we thus wouldn't have been able to do. There's a theme of communication surfacing in this conversation. And so when I'm hearing all of this and listening to how you communicate and you explain things very well, you're very descriptive, what made you flip the camera around as a tax professional? Like, you know what? I'm gonna do content. And you post things on YouTube, silent for a while, and then all of a sudden it wasn't.

Talk to me about that journey, man. You know, growing up, I always thought, like, it was really cool to be, like, famous and on television or on TV. And so early on, I obsessed over buying phones that had really great cameras on it. I remember this, like, Nokia phone came out and had, like, this three- megapixel cameras,

like, one of the first three-megapixel cameras. pixel cameras. I was like, Mom, I got to get this Nokia. And all I did was record videos in the front yard of me doing skateboarding tricks and stuff like that. These were the first videos I started uploading to YouTube. Wow. And then from there, I started making skits with my other brothers and some friends at school where we tried to do like different like jokes and try to be like the TV show Jackass and just create like different little miniature skits. And I always thought it was really cool to create content. When you said, what got you to turn around and talk about I'll be completely honest with you.

The confidence that I had, the moment that I got that tax license, it literally felt like waking up with superpowers. I already had sales training skills from working at Gallo and taking Grant Cardone's Cardone University at like 23, 24 years old. So I had so much sales knowledge, I just did not have tax knowledge. The moment I went and got my tax license, as I do, I want to tell the world about this. There just wasn't people talking taxes online. Everyone in my mom's era gate-keaked information. They're like, oh, no, you don't want to go out there and tell people about finances. No one shares how much people make online.

It looks weird when you talk about how much money you're saving people, how much money your people are making or whatever. It was. That was the era that I grew up in old-school accountants that wanted to gatekeep all their information and not talk about what they were doing for their clients. Everything was behind closed doors and everything was a referral basis. So I said, you know what, I'm going to get on Instagram and talk about taxes. The issue was, is Instagram,

Instagram was so early on to like reels and stuff that like tax videos weren't really hitting and short form content like that wasn't really cool yet in the finance space. So I ran into a buddy at my apartment complex who told me, hey, Carlton, take some of these videos and go turn them into 15 minute videos on YouTube. I listened to him and created my first few tax videos 15 minutes long on YouTube. And I set it and forget it. I uploaded only two, close my YouTube account, 30 days later, YouTube or Google's reaching out to me saying, hey, we want to send you a check for $10,000. You have 39,000 new subscribers.

Congratulations. If you hit another, you know, 50, 51,000, you'll be at 100K. We'll send you a plaque. I'm like, I'm a YouTuber now. Wow. I'm self-employed again. Now I not only am I crushing sales from my mom's company, I have 40, almost 40,000 subscribers that want my YouTube content.

I've only put out two videos. I'm going to pay $10,000. who's paying me? Google? Who's doing this? I couldn't believe the business model that existed, the following month, 20K, the next month, 30K. By then, I'm like, I don't even know if I should be working with my mother's company

selling anymore. I'm like, hold on, it's like, we need to hire somebody to take my job. I'm going to go do YouTube and just funnel as much business to your firm as humanly possible. I'm going to put your link, the booking link. I'm going to take all the calls myself. I was taking 89 appointments a week,

89 closed calls a week. I had one setter. She was setting 89. closed calls week. I worked every single Saturday. It was the first year I made like $350,000, like W2 got reamed in taxes just on the W2 side. And then I had my business of what I was making in YouTube. So that was when I decided to bring on my now business partner at Tax Alchemy, Kyle, into the firm. I showed him one of my paychecks one day getting out of my car. And he was like, what do you do to make this type of money? And then we literally was like one of those

moments in the movie. And we sat down at the barbecue pits and I shared with him how I became a tax strategist working in my mother's company and got my tax license as an enrolled agent. You want to come work with me. Talk about that too in the book. It's really awesome story. And me and my friend Kyle broke my mother's company, man. We sold so much business into my mother's firm from my YouTube channel that my mom's business went from 67% word amount or referral to 90% social media revenue. All 90% 90% of all. So they couldn't take the referrals any longer. Couldn't take referrals any longer. We only take Carlton's business. Why? Because we were able to close them at higher levels. Because I was preaching what I wanted. If you're a doctor, you're a physician, you're making this

type of income. Come book. Right. So the referral people were, we were being sold tax plans at five or 10 grand. Carlton was selling tax plans at 15, 20, 30 grand. See what I'm saying? I do. The CPAs in my mom's firm started to quit. Now we had a new problem. You do it. Carlton, Carlton, you and Kyle, you're out of the office. We can't have you here for the next six weeks. What do you mean?

We're selling. Nope, nope, we're just going to cut you a check. We can't have you around the rest of the team. The team morale is off. Everyone is drowning in work. We have too many LLCs to set up, too many cost segregation studies to do. We're setting up too many S corporations. We can't.

So they turn the file. They turned the faucet off. And that was when I created my first course. I started Tax Alchemy Academy in that hiatus that my mom gave me. And I created my first webinar. And I started building my second business, which is a course business in 2020. And I had my course rolling. And then all of a sudden these people said, hey, when I book calls with your mother's company, I'm out three months, four months. Carlton, how do we work with you? No way. Swear to God. Dude, that's such a great story. Here's why I love it because so many people have a plan. Yes.

Like, I had a plan when I started this. It was smaller and it's grown over time. Now it's bigger. And I'm sure in five years it's going to be massively larger than what I think it's going to be right now. Yeah. But I didn't have the same experience, right? I didn't have the experience that you did. And I think a lot of people that are listening right now can echo that.

Being in like, in the experience I'm talking about is not the athletic experience, is not the training. It's not any of that. It's a, yeah, I uploaded two videos on YouTube and I logged out and I walked away. Yeah. Like, that just kind of goes to show you what is supposed to be for you is going to be for you. There's nothing you can do about it. You could have sat there every single day and watch the views go up or not go up and obsess over it and gotten stressed. But what you did is you just, at that point, I think it is, at the root of it, you had the faith to just put it out there.

I'm like, okay, yeah, what's up? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it blew up. Yes. You know, and I think that's a good, good story for people to hold on to because there's too many people trying to control every step of the outcome. Hi, me included. You know, I try to control most things.

And so, you know, it's a reminder to be like, okay, dude, let go a little bit. Yes. You don't know what, you don't know which video is going to go off. Absolutely. We have no idea. I didn't know idea. Yeah. No idea.

And then I got told about Google trends. Okay. So this is how I actually did blow up on YouTube. We hit a storm from that 39,000, it only took another three months to get to 100K. And it was a very important strategy that we leveraged. During that time period, COVID happened. Everybody was inside.

For the first time, everyone rushed to the internet for answers or rushed to the TV for answers. Everybody was on CNN, everybody's looking at TV to determine what to do. that's also an opportunity where all business owners were looking for funding. If your business shut down, you were looking for a PPP loan and EIDO loan or qualifying your child for a stimulus check or a new child tax credit that the government was trying to create. Google trends showed me what people were typing on Google. It literally said, here's what's trending in tax. Here are the most searched things in tax.

I had no idea what this website was until my brother told it to me. He's like, Carlton. Just go on Google Trends and just put in how to see. save on taxes and to see what comes after that word. How to save on taxes with an LLC. Ninety, nine hundred thousand searches. How to save on taxes with an escort. How to place your children on an escort. How to place your children on payroll. And I just created every single video I saw on Google Trends. That's all I did. Those videos went viral. Then I realized I could just do this for everything that I can possibly think of in tax now.

Because this is real estate. No one owns this real estate. This is mine now. How to set up an LLC in California. How to place your children on payroll in 2024. How to place your children on payroll in 2025. I'll just do the video over again and just type 2025 on it and change the tax code to 2025. Whole system around searching tax knowledge.

No one covered all of these questions that people have. had in video format because you had a bunch of accountants that just wanted to write white paper downloads. And send out newsletters. Yes, newsletters, man. You remember those? Yes, I do. I do. I get buried with them every day in my email. You know, it's funny, man. I'm sitting here and I was like, you know, Carlton said, you want to make, you know, taxes sexy. And for the life of me, it's just, I'm like, how do you do that, right? But I think that you just gave me the answer. Yeah. Google Trends, you see what people are typing, see what people want. That is, and you see how many searches, you take the top ones, and you give the people what they want.

Yes. And they're going to find you. Yes. Because they've already searched it. So when the SEO pops up in the algorithm, it's fed to them. 100%. I didn't know about Google Trends. And I didn't know Google on YouTube at the time until I started researching Google Trends.

And I'm like, Google will push my videos for me when people type this in and there's not enough articles that explain what they're typing in. they'll just recommend a video instead. I had no idea. They're just recommending videos on Google when you type stuff in on Google. I thought you only had to go to YouTube for YouTube videos. No, no, no, no, you can type in on Google. You can get a YouTube video to pop up.

It's wild. Genius. You know, and then I started learning. I remember when, you know, okay, if I wanted to search certain thing, like determination. Yeah. And then I would pop up. I'm like, wait a second.

Like, what the hell's going on here? It still didn't put it together for me. And it still hadn't until you talked to me about Google Trends. I, until I sat down with you, I had no, I still don't know what hell you're talking about. I've never seen it. Yeah. And so now, I, so now my brain, given the knowledge, right, and now I know what my audience is, and now I can go type in things about determination to see what pops up.

I'm like, oh, boys, let's do a video on it. Let's go now. Yes, and you will start to study over, I've been on YouTube since 2020. I have trends on exactly when people are searching things at the time of the year that they're searching things down to the week. down to the day. I know exactly when to put out a video this year and when the IRS is going to release their new IRS brackets because I know when they are going to release their new IRS brackets going back to 2025, going back to 2024, going back 2003. I've already recorded the video

and I don't even know what the brackets are because I know the video is going to take me about 11 minutes to record it. So I recorded the first nine minutes and I'm going to insert the tax brackets into the bottom end of the video as soon as it comes out. And I'm going to be one of the first tax professionals on the internet to release the IRS adjusted tax brackets for. for 2027. See, that's timely. It's timely. And I'm building a system around information that I choose to be first in, right?

There's other people that could do this, but they have to go build up a library of stuff that I've already done now. You see what I'm saying? First to it, man. First to it. Now everything is just rinse repeat. Now everything's wrench repeat. Different shirt, different jacket.

It's already done. Insert new tax code. That's correct. Wow, man. Yeah, that's the system on YouTube for us. You know, let me ask you a question. Yeah. Because everything you're talking about, you know, and people are listening, they're like,

well, I don't know how to do this. Well, I mean, no one knows how to do anything until they try it, right? Until they suck at it first. Is this you filtering the information with the types of the time of year people are searching things, what they're searching? Because you know exactly when. Or is it a collaboration with you and your team? You have someone saying, okay, hey, we're noticing this and you collaborate.

Yes, it's both. So I have a team now. Thank God I have a team, but early on it was just myself. And then the first person that I hired was a copywriter. It was important for me to have someone that can help me keep my voice going without me having to come up with all the ideas. And I wanted to create momentum around putting out content. So I hired a copywriter who was writing scripts alongside me. That was amazing.

Over time, I hired a marketing team. And we started studying the trends of all the different types of videos that worked well on my YouTube account relative to what people were searching on Google trends. and we timed out when these videos that did really well match up when people are actually searching for this type of information. So even though I know how to pay yourself as an LLC is a really great viral video, I'm not going to drop that video right now. I know I have to drop that video in November. That's when people are looking up how to pay themselves as an LLC in November.

So I'm not going to time that video out right now and only get 150,000 views when I'm risking 750,000 views when I time it out in November. See what I'm saying? So just expand the years, 365 days, it's only 12 months, and we just start looking at the months and when people are searching stuff. And we're just like, okay, this is when we're going to drop this, this is when we're going to drop this, this.

There's only 12 months, and I can only post so many YouTube videos. That's insane. See what I'm saying? No, I do. Okay. I do. And the reason why I'm intrigued so much is because, you know. You're in content.

You get this. I have so many ideas swirling around on my head. The guys want to go get dinner. The guys want to go check on the beach. I'm like, I don't know. I kind of want to just stay in my room now. And look at this shit. Because seriously, like, when you look at successful creators, right, we're all different.

I'm not very camera-facing on little solo videos. I run this. Conversations that can truly give value to these people right here. 100% are watching and listening right now because you've probably changed the perspective of so many individuals right now that know now how to build this out and where to start. They don't have to create the idea. They just need to see what people want. 100%.

Why would you go try to reinvent the wheel? The worst thing you can do is create content that you think is going to work. That is literally the worst thing you can do. Like, everyone does. All right, I'm a bullet point. These are going to be my first 10 videos. How do you even know those 10 videos or even what the audience wants? Right.

Like, and sure, you can go search those videos up and find another person that's created something similar. And you might think, you might think it's still something that you should go create because you saw another creator create it. But you don't know what the timing of that video is actually going to work for the time period that you're about to go drop it. That video could have done really well back in 2023 when everyone cared about, you know,

learning how to start a prompt in chat GPT. And now you're coming out with your first video on how to create a prompt for chat GPT. There's no way in hell that video is going to ever make it to the Explorer page because no one's caring about that video as much so it's going to get pushed down so far because the relevance has died. No one cares anymore.

Because there's more about it. Yeah. If you want momentum, especially on YouTube, the number one way to gain momentum on YouTube is to start off by going on Google Trends and to search what people are already searching. And then the second way is to collaborate with already successful YouTubers, period. Number one way to go by her. It's insane, man. And I just think it's so valuable because, you know, I think creators don't get enough credit.

Like, dude, this is a full operation, man. It is. I mean, you know, in perception, right, is everything. And some people can perceive, you know, you flipping the camera around or me just hopping on with you. It's just like, oh, we're just talking. This is easy for them. They're just, anybody can do that. There's so much work and so much research.

It goes into your craft. It comes into my craft. And I can learn from you and you can learn from me. And now I'm taking, I'm going to see if I can implement some of what Carlton's did. Yeah. You know, or done. Because, and that's what I want people to understand. Like, there's a game to this.

There is a strategy to everything. You can't just film because you think you have a good idea. No. And then put it out and think, oh, man, that's going to hit hard. That hook was juicy. Not if people don't give a shit about it. Right? And so there's ways to find out, man.

I just think that it's super interesting to hear because no one's ever broken it down. Yeah. Like I've had conversations with so many creators. Yeah. That's what I do. But no one has been able to give me a straight answer on their story until now. Yeah, this was a roadmap for me, and it could definitely be a road map for another person. Now, you know, obviously there was a lot of factors that happen that, you know, I don't believe in luck.

I believe in blessings, but I was blessed by the time period that I decided to approach you to because there was a wave of people all at once that were stuck inside. There's nothing like, you know, being able to try to duplicate COVID again that worked really well for my timing of getting on the internet. But the process of how I grown has not faltered. I am still growing on those platforms doing the exact same things that have worked. worked. Yeah. I mean, that time, that time when everybody's stuck, right? I remember, that's kind of like I can learn about TikTok. I was like, what the hell's a TikTok? Oh, yeah. Tiki-talkie, right? I don't know what it is. And I can always hear that Jason Drew though, dun, dun, because that was like one of the original sounds. And he went all in on Tick-Tor. He went all in,

bro. And it's like, I learned about it. Yeah, yeah. He's like a rock star. Yeah, I mean, he really is. I'm like, dude, like, what the hell, man? It's a stupid social media platform. Yeah. And that's what I learned about it, right? And that's, That's kind of when I started creating my stuff. I'm like, it was an accident. Yeah. But I mean, I remember then I only had 800, you know, people that gave a shit about me on Instagram at that point.

You had to grow. It's changed vastly since then, not quite to where I really wanted to be. But again, man, like, it was a good opportunity in that environment to kind of see what you're made of. Yeah. It was for me, it was a reset. Wow. And it sounds like it was a reset for you, too.

It was, dude. It was. It was really cool being able to step into the creator space and to find success, you know, creating this entrepreneurship journey all over again. You know, I didn't really find the success when my personal business, or personal training business got off the ground. So having YouTube actually work, it was like something no one could take away from me. I'm like, okay, I know I've been seeing YouTubers since I was 14 years old and they still

have their YouTube accounts. If I have the ability to get paid like this and I've only put out this many videos, I know I can do this for the foreseeable future and be. happy and enjoyable because I'm teaching people something that I worked hard for. I gained this knowledge. I earn this just like I earned my body in the gym and I'm getting rewarded for it and the stage is YouTube. That's pretty cool, man. So I mean, look at the two best. I mean, the Paul brothers, man. They're killing it. I mean, they always have been. Yeah, they have. And if you look at the content early on, you're like, oh, yeah, that's who they are. Like, I remember they kind of annoying. But they, but they learned at a very,

young age on how to get under your skin to a point where it would piss you off so much, but you couldn't look away. Nope. Genius. Those dudes are genius marketers. Yes, they are. I don't care what anybody says, they figured everything out. Yes, they have.

Now they're promoting. And they're killing it right now. Dude, they're so good. And they have partnered with the right type of people to get themselves into the right type of investments to the point where there's no going backwards for them. They're going to be billionaires. They're not already. Oh, I'm sure, man.

I'm sure. So, dude, talk to you about the art of legal taxes. This is our first ever book that we decided to release. This is actually an accumulation of probably two years of writing. And to be honest with you, it's really all of the lessons that I've had from my clients over a decade of doing tax planning with them. I decided to put all of those experiences into one book, but in a way in which people can kind of understand the nuances of the tax code broken down at like a fifth grade level. I think the most intimidating thing about taxes is the fact that everyone tells you it's 75,000 pages. So like, where do you even start if you want to save money? But the truth is is just finding stories that relate to what you're trying to accomplish and determining are there patterns that you recognize that you can duplicate? Can you duplicate investing in real estate? Can you duplicate wanting to be an oil and gas or being an entrepreneur or leveraging some of the tax incentives in the tax code?

Because if you can, you can wield the tax code. I believe the tax code is an art. And if you can leverage the tax code to the fullest extent, you can reduce your liability and bill wealth. Wow. I got a weird question for you. In your book. Yeah.

Is it your voice? Yeah. You know what I'm saying, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. When I wrote this last book, when I'm reading it, I can hear me. Yes.

It's like, okay. So the reason I'm asking this question is because for the people that are going to learn about you from the show, they probably already know who you are, but if they don't, they can learn about you. They know your YouTube, and they can get used to your communication. style and seeing how you communicate through the video.

I just wanted to make sure that in that book, that's the same. It matches. Yes, they are. That's amazing. They're going to hear my story about, you know, what happened when I called my mother to and the moment I decided to walk away from football down to when I got my first letter in the mail from the IRS to studying to get my enrolled agents license, to unlocking the power of the tax code, to getting on YouTube, to helping my first million dollar client to

$10 million client to $100 million exit client. I put all those stories in the book. And I break it down in a way that honestly, it's very digestible when you think about it. I mean, the book's over 250 pages, but we cover over 25 strategies broken down in such a digestible format that anybody can pick this book up and know immediately how they can benefit. I think that's the biggest thing because I think tax, when people hear taxes, IRS, enrolled agent, accountant, CPA, they're all different. Yes, they are. Right? A lot of people don't know that. No. I grew up in and resource. I sold payroll for a lot of years. Okay, so you know

every type of a position. Dude, you people were the worst people for me to work with. I couldn't figure out the accountants. You know what I mean? I was great with insurance agents, bankers, clients, cold calling, it didn't matter.

Throw a CPA firm in front of me. I'm like, uh, what the hell, man? Because it was so intimidating and I think it's because of the language. You know, people give this, um, perception and this thought process behind tax law and the code of, I'm not supposed to understand this. I just got to give it to this person.

There's no way I can learn it. But what you're saying is you broke it down to disinvestible pieces so that you can learn it. 100% I have. That's amazing, dude. Yeah. We've been grown into a tax system that has gotten people numb to just simply writing checks. You've been born into this system, essentially. If we look back at how the United States was established,

we ran our country off of tariffs and alcohol and tobacco. The taxes were only introduced during the Civil War, because we were in a Civil War, and then they were repealed shortly after the Civil War. Then when they got reintroduced, the United States Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. And now we got the 16th Amendment that made taxes permanent. Now the IRS has a legal way of siphoning money out of every single one of your paychecks.

It just started off with federal tax. taxes and it became sales tax and it became estate taxes. Then it was gift taxes and it's just been taxes on top of taxes, on top of taxes on top of taxes. And so someone who's born in the last 25, 30, 40, 50 years, you born into this system. You're numb. All you know is taxes. It's no different than just breathing air. You're like, dude, it's always been there. Yeah, death and taxes. It's just a byproduct of what? Being successful. Wrong. And the wealthy are sitting back laughing because they understand that this system was something that they lobbied for because they knew when America got themselves in debt, America's a business and they're going to come to the big business owners

to come bail them out. And when they bailed them out, they lobbied for specific regulations inside of the tax code. We want these things to happen. We want there to be a permanent tax to be taken out. And we also want to lobby for these items to be inside of the tax code. We want investors to be able to take capital gains taxation. We want business owners to be able to deduct their employees and expenses that they need. And this is what's going to allow for the economy to continue to grow. We'll make the workers pay the highest tax rates because they won't be able to do the work of entrepreneurs and investors that requires them to start a business, to invest over here. They're not going to be able to do that work. So we're going to limit the amount of right-offs

that they have so that they continue to pay the highest taxes. And we separate the wealthy class from the poor and middle class. The rich get richer and the poor get poor. that's our tax system. Wow. None of this I knew. Oh, absolutely. I thought taxes were like grandfathered in, man. It's like it's been here forever.

Uh-huh. I mean, because the Civil War, I mean, when you look at how old America, it wasn't that long ago. Less than 150 years. Yeah. I mean, come on. That's crazy to me. It just, the more you know, man. Yes.

What, hey, what's the one piece of tax advice you could give an individual? that if they implemented right now, it could change their financial life this year. The most important thing I can tell somebody is, please don't get confused with a tax accountant from a tax professional or tax strategist. And I know it might sound kind of crazy, but most CPAs and tax accountants file tax returns and their entire business models is structured to where they're going to onboard as many taxpayers as they possibly can to complete tax returns or to do bookkeeping and accounting. They want to keep you in compliance.

They want to work off of your historical data. But most CPAs are not incentivized to forward look or forward plan for you. Most tax accountants don't actually want to do those things because it requires them to go do more research, to have additional conversations. It obstructs them from staying focused on the return in completing the tax return. Profitable tax and accounting firms have simple routine tax returns that they're doing. They may have a few complex returns and they have a few tax returns. and they have a few tax advisors that can get those done, but they want to churn as many tax returns as they possibly can

because that's how they make their profit. Tax advisory is completely different. It requires somebody to sit and look at your income for the year, back into what your financial goals are. Do you believe in retirement? Are you getting married? Are you moving from one state to another state? Do you believe in investing in real estate?

And then they build you a plan with the incentives that are inside of the tax code. And it's your job to implement that plan prior to December 31st. or your accountant takes over again, and he's just going to do his job all over again. He's going to take your W-2s, your 1099, your profit and law statement, your balance sheet, and all this other stuff. He's going to input it into his system, spit out a copy of return and tell you you were successful again,

which is why you have a tax bill again. Go max out your 401K, I'm so sorry. But they don't ever sit there and say, hey, let's go spend the next six months building your tax strategy and working on it and implementing it. That requires them to have a different business model. And if you get stuck thinking your tax account is all of a sudden going to morph one day into becoming a tax strategist, you will always overpay on your taxes.

Because there are people who go to brain surgeons to only get brain surgeries. And then there are people who go to knee surgeons to only get knee surgeries. If you go to your accountant and you're telling your accountant, I want to save money on taxes, but he is built to only file your tax return and keep you in compliance, please don't be upset if he does not come up with a creative strategy for you. Carlton. Do you know what the biggest problem is with what you just said? Most Americans don't know the difference between a tax strategist and accountant.

They think they're the same. Yes, they do. I'm going to tell you right now. You know why? Because I didn't know. It's one of the biggest myths in America. I talk about that in the first chapter of the art of legal tax offense. I had no idea, bro.

I had no freaking idea. And so you hear all of these things, business owners, individuals going, I need a new accountant. Mine sucks. I owe 20 grand last year. I'm not paying 20 grand anymore. So I need a new accountant. And the conversation goes like this. Hey, look, I'm coming to you because my buddy said, you're good.

And I got crushed last year. So can we get creative? And, you know, like, what can we? I want you. I'm not saying, do something bad, Carlton. But what I'm telling you is, can we get creative with this? And can I save some money? You know, can you help me plan?

And they're going to be like, absolutely. We'll look into it. It's fine. Everything's fine. It's lovely. And we're going to plug your damn numbers in. And whatever it comes out, that's what's going to be. You are planning to pay taxes with an accountant.

So what they do is they set up quarterly calls with you to remind you, you need to do your estimated tax payments. And you think you're planning to reduce your taxes. No, you're just planning to pay your taxes. When you meet with a tax professional, especially the tax strategist like myself, every time you meet with me, I am showing up with how much money we are going. going to save today or over the next couple of weeks or months together. Wow. There's not a conversation around this is what we got to go pay. This is what we got to go do to save.

Those are two completely different types of conversations. The tax accountant is trained to help you stay in compliance. So 365 days out of the year, I'm going to train you on making sure you make your estimated tax payments. So when we file your tax return, you don't have this huge tax bill. That's a tax accountant helping you stay in tax compliance. I am going to train you every single quarter to not write a check to Uncle Sam because we're going to route that money over into tax-advantaged vehicles

or into other deductions that reduce your tax liability. Two completely different things and two completely different muscles. One, taxpayers have become numb to because they hire their CPA and their CPA tells this is just a part of being a taxpayer. The other requires you to actually, holy snap, I'm feeling this a lot. Why? Because, well, you had to go sign a loan. now you own an investment property.

You had to go due diligence in Texas because now you're owned an oil and gas well. We decided to set up solar energy on your roof and now you're a solar energy investor. This is working different muscles than you've ever had before in real time. In the year you're making the money. Not after the fact. Most people don't know this, man. Absolutely not. They wait until January, February, March and April when the year is over, when they're looking at their profit and loss statement,

looking at all their numbers, all their bills came in, and they said to their CPA, How much can we trim off this year? Mm-hmm. And their CPA is like, well, the year's already over. I mean, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo. This is what it's telling us. Yeah. How do you want to pay for it?

Mm-hmm. There's nothing we can do. I don't. I don't want to pay for it. I wish, but the year is over. You made the money. Mm-hmm. Does this all look right to you?

No. That number's wrong. Remove a couple. You know? Remove a couple. Can we move those? Yeah. And that's when you have CPAs.

that, you know, the ethical CPAs, they're never going to tell you, you know, that we're going to change the numbers. They're going to file that return as they should. And you get some of these accountants sometimes that want to go back into the P&L and move things around that shouldn't be moved around. And that's when the audit happens. Is that the fine line between a smart legal strategy versus something that's risky that could get you audited? When you say, is that the fine line? At the end of the day, an audit's going to happen if you've made a mistake or an omission or if you make a lot of money. Those are the typical reasons that an audit happens. A mistake on a tax return, you left something off a tax return, you make so much money that you're in a bucket

that gets you more qualified to get an IRS audit. Once the audit happens, nothing is really up in alarm until something has been identified by the auditor. Oh, we notice that your marketing expenses are at half a million dollars relative to your one million in profit. It means it was like 50% or whatever. So can you send us over what all of this means on your P&L? We want to see what all of this looks like. You spent $25,000 on miscellaneous marketing expense. Do you have a receipt for that one?

That's you and your CPA right there. Went back into the books and made that miscellaneous $25,000. Did you bring your envelope with all your gas receipts? Uh-huh. You expect me to keep receipts for a whole year. And the more you can't provide, the more, it's like literally, have you ever played ping the, what is it at the, the ping things at the arcade?

Oh, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, the, yes, pinball. Pinball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, it's like pinball with, with IRS attorneys or IRS agents. The moment that you are not able to provide substantiation or the moment you request a 30-day extension on something, they may ask for something. You're like, oh, I need a 30-day extension. They know you don't have it.

Boom, ping it over here. Now we want this. Boom, and they're still going to audit you over that. So they're going to something else now that you're going to go have to give them. Then they ping over to something else. They're just playing a game with you now. Wow. Yeah.

Wow, man. You don't know why they're playing a game with you? Because until you can solve this problem, you're going to pay interest fees and penalty fees because you're guilty until proven innocent with the IRS. Not the other way around. You are not innocent until proven guilty. Oh, hell no. That's how the IRS works.

That's true. Wow, man. You know, it's interesting to me because when people, right, when they hear high ticket for tax strategists, right, they may come up with that term, another guru, right? And there's a lot of negative connotation around guru. What's your honest response to that? I don't want to be known as some tax guru. I'm be honest with you.

I just want to be a results-oriented person. Please just go do your research. I mean, if you can't see actual case studies of somebody saving people real money with IRS court cases backing that, please turn the other way. When you are examining tax strategy firms or tax advisory firms, people that you want to absolutely help you against the IRS, because that's a real government agency, you want real data, real verified tax returns that got filed. and real documentation to substantiate those claims. We put all of that on our website.

We have no problem even showing the strategies and the tax plans because we want our clients to be as educated as possible. We charge probably the most out of most advisory firms in America, probably one of the top three in advisory firms in America. So what's the point in hiding the strategies that we're going to offer? You're going to have to be okay with it. And what's the point in us hiding the documentation substantiation

that we're going to build for you? We want you to see it. So you know the work that's going to be involved before you're going to pay the prices that you're going to pay to work with us on saving the money you're going to save with us. Do I love that, man? I love that. It's a great answer, you know, because I don't feel that way.

I think that everything with high value becomes a high ticket price. Yeah. And if you have somebody that's going to plan out your future, your financial future, that's going to cost you a little bit. It is. You know, I just think people's perspective on it is a little whacked out just because of the way. And they would never even look at it if their neighbors said, hey, you go check out my guy. Well, the issue that people have is that they keep looking at us at like we're a cost. I'm not a cost.

Your accountant is a cost. he will always be a cost. Sure. Because as long as you have a pulse and you make over $16,000, you have to file a tax return. I don't care what you say. So that person will always be a cost.

I'm not a cost. I'm an investment. And I'm an investment that comes with an ROI in my investment. If you're going to pay me $50,000, you should be saving at least $150,000. That should be your expectation coming in. So the money that you're spending with me

is never going to be a cost to you. It's always going to be an investment. And if you look at it as a cost, you're not ready for tax planning. There it is. That's good. It's exactly. That's exactly the correct way to look at.

it, man. It's just, there's a difference between the two. That's right. And most people have a hard time understanding that. So I want you guys to go check out this book. What's the website they could get this book from? They can get this at the Art of Legal Tax Avoidance. It's honestly everywhere right now, Amazon, you name it. And so this is our first book. And we believe it has all of the tools that you'll need in order to get yourself on the right foot to building your first tax planning and to saving some serious money using the tax code. I love it, man. Check out the link in the show notes. And it'll be there for you to click on and you go buy, check it out. I'm going to get one.

Yeah, I'm so curious, dude, to see exactly what's in there just to make sure that my dumb ass can understand what's going on in there. And who knows? I could impress my wife. Yeah, bro, I'm going to give you a copy. Absolutely for you. Thank you, man. Thank you. I appreciate that.

One more question before we wrap it up, dude. And I have everything in your whole life, all the successes, the pivots, the failures, the seeing what your mom built, you building it, you know, having a child? What does true determination mean to you? True determination. True determination is falling in love with failure in knowing that you get better when you're willing to get back up. Fire. Good. Love it, man.

Yeah. I love to hear everybody's determination definition because they're all different. Yeah. And they're all right, right? They're always right for that person. So I just love the insight, man. I appreciate you, dude. This is a fun conversation.

This was. This was great, man. I appreciate this. Yeah, I do. It's been pretty dope, dude. So I learned a lot about you. Excited to see you moving forward, seeing that thing, getting on a list, and just seeing you keep tearing it up there, man, on the interwebs, bud.

I appreciate you supporting me. And I hope this episode does a lot for those listeners out there that are trying to, you know, bridge the gap between what the wealthy are doing and how they can start getting themselves on the right path to building true financial freedom. Man, I hope so, man. You know, I know a big YouTuber if they collaborate with it. It might run some links. But no, man.

Thank you again, dude. It's been amazing. And for you guys that took the time to listen to this, I thank you so much. Go check out my man, Carlton Dennis, tax alchemy, get the book, learn from this man, and who knows, might save yourself a whole lot of money in the future. And until next time, stay determined.