Did you know that there is a way for you to invest tax-free? Joining host Chris D. Roberts is Damion Lupo of eQRP Co. and the #1 expert on eQRP® (Qualified Retirement Plan). Damion is on a mission to free people from financial bondage. How? The answer is tax-free investments that the system and the IRA are not letting you in on. He explains that it is more than possible to turn your thousands into millions! Tune in to get more tips on taking control, creating your own wealth, and achieving financial freedom.

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Accelerate Your Financial Freedom With These Three Ways to Invest Tax Free FOREVER With Damion Lupo

We have a very exciting guest covering a topic that is true to my heart. Damion Lupo is here with eQRP Company. He’s going to cover all financial details about making your money work for you, how to not lose it, and how to use your IRA to invest tax-free, which is amazing. I’m sure everybody can relate to that and love that. Damion, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome.

Thanks, Chris. It’s great to be here. I can’t wait to see what comes out of our mouths.

I’m very excited particularly because you are a true expert in this space. I’m looking forward to you sharing all the stories and value as it relates to making your money work for you. I love this topic and we are going to start by asking him, what do you attribute what you define as your success to this date so far? Maybe something that you have done that sets you apart or helped propel you into this space and be successful?

There’s a combination of two things. One, screen things up and then taking responsibility for it. A lot of people may make mistakes. Nobody is older than me but they are the funniest scar tissue out there that people have gone through stuff. There’s a certain level of responsibility where people own their life. Aubrey Marcus wrote a book, Own the Day, Own Your Life, and there’s something about that that’s incredibly powerful.

When I went through my process of building up a business in real estate, having $20 million turned into negative $5 million in 12 months in 2008. When I went through that, I went through a process where I had to learn how to take total responsibility because I was good at blaming for several years. That’s the big shift when you can own everything and you have control until you own it. If you don’t have control, you are always a victim to some extent.

I was in an executive or corporate structure space for 25 years. It took me a long time to open my mind enough to understand that there are things that I don’t know. Just because I’m a hard charger and hard worker doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. You are owning up to the mistakes that you make and being open-minded enough to learn from others that have either been there. We all know because your grandpa and grandma always told you these things like, “Walking uphill both ways to school in the snow and save $1 and all this stuff.” You don’t listen, so you are broke and forced to realize some of these experiences that they have had. That’s great feedback, great answer, and I can 100% relate to that.

I did walk up both ways in the snow when I grew up in Alaska. To a certain degree, that can be true. Most people, they didn’t do that. In Nebraska, you do that but it’s all flat. It is all snowy for six months a year. It’s one of those things where I laugh because this leads to something off tangent. We have gotten soft in terms of becoming a nation of snowflakes, where most people don’t know how to charge forward.

They don’t know how to charge at all. They are expecting to have a ride because they can hit a button on an app and it will take them wherever they want to go. They expect this entitlement-mindedness. We need to start saying, “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me and own it.” That’s a missing piece for an entire generation. There’s an opportunity to where you don’t have competition if you are willing to charge hard if you are willing to own it because most people are soft and the question is, where do you want to do? Do you want to own it or do you want to be a victim?

It’s funny you phrase it that way because I have spoken with many entrepreneurs and business owners, and I’m fortunate to have a good circle of influence now. I didn’t want it when I was younger, but now I do. When you talk to a lot of these people that have some level of success, whatever you deem success, it’s not always money, it could be freedom or family, you find that there’s a common denominator. In most folks, they put in the work. They hustle, grind, do what they do every day, and there’s a deeper motivation and inspiration that keeps them rolling.

 

It’s not having another million dollars in the bank because a lot of the people I know that have money don’t live beyond their means. They live below their means and you wouldn’t even know it. There’s an internal drive in them. It’s a clock that ticks that none of us can see or even relate to until you are in that space.

What I found, at least for me, was it was a particular individual. It was a mentor that was brought into my life that opened my eyes to that way of seeing things, and then it became not so much about getting the dollar. It was more about achieving things, building things, hustling, and outdoing myself. Not anybody else around me or keeping up with the Joneses.

I found that was interesting because you almost can’t teach that. Someone has to see it for themselves. They have to figure it out and stumble our way through it with successes and failures, and then find their way through the other side and hopefully achieving some level of success for themselves. Would you agree?

I would. It makes me think about all of the people that are getting addicted to this system now that’s giving them freebies and it’s like, “You get some freebies but you are always going to be locked into a certain level.” For people, they have to decide that internal drive, “Do I want to be at a certain level?” The government is never going to make you free.

You might have enough money to go sit there and have Uber Eats delivered to you, watch Netflix, hang out and it’s a freebie but are you ever going to be at a place where you have real choice and real freedom? No, you are always going to be a slave. That’s the problem with taking on what somebody is willing to give you, especially a system. It’s never going to give you and ask you what you want, which is true freedom. True freedom is not $50,000 or $60,000 of free money. It’s trusting your own self and your skills. If I gave you $10 million, that’s not freedom because you don’t have any confidence in your ability to create something.

You are always going to be afraid you are going to lose it. People don’t understand that freedom means you have gone out there and you have built this fortitude, skillset and muscle. You don’t get muscle because somebody gave it to you. You get it by going to the gym. That’s a universal truth. That’s what people have to understand. If you want freedom, you have to go do the work.

I’m sitting here thinking, as you are talking about how this dovetails into our conversation now, which is about how to make your money work for you? A good way to do that is to avoid paying taxes legally and invest that money correctly. Maximize those funds that you have worked hard to earn and I’m looking forward to hearing you talk more about that. Let’s go into that a little bit.

If you don’t mind, maybe share with the audience because I know about you. We have done business with you. Your company is amazing. You have done some good things for our clients but they don’t know anything about you. Could you tell us a little bit about not just eQRP but your history, your background, and how you have brought much value to the world?

I brought value by getting crushed and I say that it’s this process where if you go out there and you think that everything is easy or you go out there and think you are a superhero because you have had success, you are an idiot waiting to get squashed, that’s the truth. For many years, I was investing in real estate, made a lot of money, became a multimillionaire, and then lost all of it plus $5 million.

If you want freedom, you have to do the work.

Having to start over, there was a shift into figuring out what mattered. What mattered was doing for others and letting money be a side effect. This is not some hairy fairy secret like if the money will fall from the sky but it’s truly understanding principles that Buckminster Fuller talked about doing the best and most you can for society.

For me, what’s the problem in society? The problem with society is that people don’t understand how to make money their bitch. They understand how to be a slave. It’s personal watching your parents become stuck, where they play by the rules, and then they don’t have freedom. They are always afraid and watching people being stuck in the Wall Street system that’s not giving them choices.

They are sitting there being fed on by the system. Ultimately, when I went through this process after having lost everything plus that $5 million, I spent a couple of years asking, “What is the purpose? Why am I doing the next thing I’m going to do?” It was because there’s an internal drive for me to teach and it’s to break people’s shackles.

The eQRP Company what I do in the entire mission of this organization is to figure out how to give people tools, teach them how to fish, and then give them confidence by educating them constantly. What we are doing is we are giving people that big control of that big pile of money called their retirement money, and helping them do what Peter Thiel did, taking $2,000, turning it into $5 billion and not pay taxes.

If you can teach people how to create it and then how to be a good steward? How do you manage it? How do you be a smart investor? People do have a chance of being free. If you teach people how to save money in a 401(k) and they give it to a financial advisor, it doesn’t matter how much money is in there. They are never going to be free because they don’t understand what they are doing.

I don’t do this often but I have a real-life experience of a client of ours that signed up with the eQRP program. I want to give this brief example of how there’s so much power behind this knowledge if it’s applied correctly. Let’s say, for example, I have a client that was going to retire and sharing with me what their financial advisor was going to do for them. The amount was around $1,000.

After 40 years in the same industry, this individual was going to get $1,000 a month from their $650,000 retirement account. They would deplete it down to approximately $250,000 by reaching 80 to 85 years old, somewhere in that timeframe. Twenty years they are going to deplete it $1,000 a month all the way down to $250,000 or so.

We took those funds, put them into in eQRP program, allowed them to convert and invest that money into a multifamily asset, which then turned into approximately $1,800 a month in cashflow using less than half of the retirement amount of money that they were going to use by putting into a conservative bond fund and giving them a small dividend to live off. They are depleting instead of growing, and they had half the cashflow they could have. Now with this system, they not only have $1,800 in cashflow roughly, but they also have the other balance of their retirement account that’s kicking them out $50 to, $600 a month. In essence, they grew that retirement amount in distributions by 2.5% or 2.5 times multiple.

What’s interesting is they had no idea that a vehicle even existed to allow them to invest in this type of asset, nor did they have access to it. They came through Sterling Rhino and they had access to it but then what vehicle do we use to convert those funds from these different accounts we have them floating around them? Damion, if you don’t mind, that’s a real-life story.

 

We took someone that had $1,000 and turned it into technically $2,300 when it was all said and done. The sky is the limit because, for another several years, they are going to do it again, the principal is going to grow and so on. Would you mind digging into that a little, maybe talk about one of your clients and how that relates?

It’s interesting because people look at this and they go through three phases. First one, I watched this live in front of people. There will be 100 people in front of me. I watched the faces, the emotion and I heard people’s voices like, “This seems too good to be true that I could have more than 2%.” If you are getting 2% or 3% in your investments with a financial advisor now, you are doing great. If you are getting more than that, you are in a hyper bubble stock market, which is going to hurt you when it does pop. People say, “I can control, I could do real estate. I can put money into an apartment. I could make $1,800 a month on half of my $600.” It’s 4X of what they were going to do and they go, “That’s weird. If that’s true, if this is legal, then I wish I had done this many years ago.”

The question is, “How do I do it now?” I watched people go through this process and what I see very common, Chris is I see people coming in and they have enough resources but they don’t know how to deploy them. They don’t know what to do with them and what they have done is. They have been talked into a system by an advisor, by a Wall Street marketing mechanism that says, “You are too stupid to control your money. You need to give it and leave it up to the professionals.” It makes me crazy hearing people say that. People don’t realize but that’s what they have bought into. They go, “It’s too complicated.” No, it’s not too complicated. I don’t care if you have a fifth-grade education. You can do this.

I have seen plenty of people over the years that had less than a high school education and ended up buying some rental property because they were out there willing to do some work and learning. I have watched them become financially free. It was because they built the confidence. What happens when you get self-directed control as we do with the eQRP program, you are building muscle.

You are not being handed your money and being wished well. You are developing a muscle that’s going to truly make you realize that it’s not about the money. It’s about your ability. Financial freedom is not about a pile of cash. It’s not about an asset. It’s about your ability to turn nothing into something. That’s where wealth is. It’s where you use your mind. This is like a trick. People don’t realize that eQRP is a personal development program that is shown up as a retirement vehicle, but it’s about empowering people to be in control and to be free based on their minds.

That’s great for somebody maybe who doesn’t understand solo 401(k)s, eQRPs or self-directed IRAs. There are all these terms. Oftentimes, I can relate to this because when I first started, it was like, “I’m making a little money. What do I do with this money? I will save it.” A friend says, “No, you’ve got to put it in retirement.” “How do I do that?” He’s like, “You put it in here and you get this tax advantage.” You sit there for 10 to 15 years and you are $50,000 turns into $60,000 or whatever the number is after ten years. That’s great but I can’t touch it until I’m maybe 50, 60, 70 years old. Who knows and as if you are in a position to quit working. All of that or that it’s enough.

No education goes into being financially savvy, where to put your money, and how to make your money work for you but what vehicles could you use? If you are taught anything, it’s put your money into a retirement account or a 401(k). It was almost introduced as a joke. If you go back in history, it’s crazy. I know I touched on an example but you can use an eQRP for many things. It’s not just like multifamily real estate investing. There are other things you can do. If you don’t mind, run us through that whole process and how it all works?

What happens is people have a 401(k) typically, and then they leave the employer, then they say, “What am I supposed to do?” They roll that money into either a new employer’s plan or move it into an IRA. What’s happened over the last several years, people have said, “I’m going to put it into a self-directed IRA.” That has been the default, which was a great idea with limited information, and that allowed people to take that money and invest it in certain things. The default is 401(k) and mutual funds. That was great for Wall Street because it added a whole lot of extra money for people to put into their system and they’ve got fees off a bit, and then people got fed on. That’s what happened, and then they rolled it into IRAs.

All these different retirement vehicles are tax shelters. The government said, “We need to incentivize people to put money away and not spend everything because they are going to get to 60 to 65 years old. We aren’t going to have the resources to pay for them because Social Security is broken. Our coffers are empty.” They said, “We need to incentivize them.” We started evolving and the Tax Laws changed.

If you can teach people how to create wealth and how to be a good steward, people actually do have a chance of being free.

Now we have these self-directed other types of accounts. Self-directed 401(k) and eQRP are types of accounts that are set up for individuals, small business owners or people with 50 employees. Whatever your situation is, there are options for you to control your money. What does that mean? Does that mean you get to pick your stock? Yes, but it’s beyond that.

You can pick your stocks, real estate or physical gold and silver. You can buy Bitcoin and hold it. There are all these different options people are like, “What else can I do?” Done anything you want. It’s the IRS says, “Here’s what you can’t do.” Everything else is wide open. People go, “That seems crazy.” I was laughing. I’m like, “What do you think Wall Street is going to do? They are going to market and tell you can control your money so they can lose all their fees? They are going to tell you what makes them money, not what’s in your best interest.” If they talk about anything, they are going to say, “Look at all these choices you have. They are all stocks we sell you.” That’s what they are going to tell you. It’s in their best interest. You have to follow the money.

There’s nothing wrong with companies making money but they are not having a complete conversation because they want to tell you what it takes to keep you with them and keep chewing on you. It’s like a dog that won’t let go of your ankle. They are going to keep doing that because it’s like a security complex. The dog needs you to pet the dog and feed the dog. What does Wall Street do? It holds onto your ankle and you get used to it. This thing is attached to my ankle and it’s going to stay here until I’m dead.

Wall Street and financial advisors are lying to you because there’s an agenda. The bottom line is not that I haven’t used financial advisors or invested in Wall Street but it’s funny when you think about the world. The world is full of sales. It’s all selling and pushing an agenda, generally. Of course, Damion owns his company, eQRP, and he’s got other things going on. He has a vested interest in helping people.

As a result, to help people, he drives more business because people refer if he does what he says he’s going to do. What he’s doing is he’s delivering a vehicle, another option for you. What I encourage people to do and others as well, readers, is to tell people about it, “What’s your retirement plan?” Open up the conversation. It doesn’t have to be taboo. We don’t have to all think about money as this weird thing that no one can talk about. We should have been talking about this all along.

A lot of us would have been savvier and probably had better returns overall, had we known about things like this? What Damion is saying is, “I’ve got this vehicle that I built out based on a need to help people.” We drive business, we do great business and we help a lot of people but it’s a matter of opening up your mind to absorb the knowledge and know that there are other options.

It’s not putting your money into the mattress, investing in gold or the stock market. Other specific options allow you to control how that money goes in and out, whether it be giving yourself personal loans and all kinds of other cool things you can do with some of these types of funds. That’s great, Damion, thank you.

This is about self-control and you, choosing. Ultimately, a lot of people feel like they are not supposed to control. We have this agenda now where the US government wants to tell us, you have to do certain things. You have to take certain vaccines. You have to do these things. They don’t trust people to make a decision that they feel is the best for them and their families. They want to be the dictator and the entire system is set up, whether we are talking about pharma or finance. It’s all about you need to do these things. You can’t have information. You need to be doing what we tell you to do because you are too stupid, weak and quite frankly, we have an agenda.

I have a huge problem with that. Our agenda is based on a mission. I have never seen a financial institution that had a mission that had to do with doing good. They might speak to it as if that’s real but our mission is to free a million people from financial bondage. We don’t do that by raping, pillaging, piercing people’s accounts, and peeling off 1%, 2%, 3% or 4% every year.

 

We do it with a fair exchange like when somebody is a client and we are working with them, we are going to give them 10 or 100 times the value of that $500 they pay us every year. Anybody that’s truly authentic and genuine should be thinking, “How do I give somebody 10 or 100 times more than they are paying? How do I make this outsized and over-leveraged in favor of the person I’m serving?”

It’s like having an investor. You always do things in favor of the investor, no matter what. There’s no exception to that rule. It’s never about you. It’s always about the investor and that’s how we look at our clients. It’s making sure that we are serving them, not how do we get 2% or 5% off of their money every year, and then as they get bigger, we get bigger. What in the hell is that? That’s the most asinine thing I have ever heard of unless you are trying to figure out how to scrape, pillage and rape your clients.

It’s not about the product you are offering. It’s the service after the fact. I can attest to this because my own clients have utilized your guys’ services, is the fact that they can reach somebody. The fact that someone will hold their hand all the way down to, “My money has gone into this bank account. How do I use this bank account?” The average person doesn’t understand anything concerning this in-depth financing, utilizing these funds, how to use the money, and where I can use it. How do I deal with my CPA when they start asking questions? There’s such a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It’s not that complicated but if you don’t know, it’s like riding a bike for the first time.

One thing you guys do well is you answer your phone. You can get a human being on the line and it’s important because when someone gives $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 into this new thing that they are not used to, it’s important that they have someone to hold their hand and walk them through it because somebody might not realize that you can use retirement funds to pay for some of these services. You have a checking account that you control and there are all these things you can invest in. Some are better than others with regard to avoiding some of those taxes. Your bits and all other crazy taxes that are out there.

It is important to have a good CPA, but even more important, your money is in with the right company that can dovetail and works within the realm of that CPA and their experience, then to help you as well. I can’t stress enough that you want to pick the right company that will service you after the sale. That’s something we pride ourselves on as well, is answering the phone. It’s one thing to throw your money in a rabbit hole and get a return. What if you have questions? What if you have concerns? Are you going to get a call center person? Are you going to get somebody that’s affiliated with the company?

There is this sad move towards full automation and AI. These are some useful tools but the problem is you don’t have deep trust in AI. Let’s be honest. We are in a system of hacking and automation that’s meant to rip you off in every direction all the time. Everything is sales. Now AI is in sales, there’s this AI that’s trying to pull stuff from you. What we are seeing in the retirement industry, whether it’s fidelity or people that are offering IRAs, is there’s more and more automation and they are taking away the human touch. We don’t see high human touch where you have competent people. We see massive amounts of delays and automation.

In fact, there’s one company that is fairly well known called Kingdom Trust. They don’t do phones anymore at all. They stopped doing phone calls. You have to use their system. It took me several weeks to get an email back. I was a client for many years, I’ve finally got this email back and they said, “We don’t do calls. We stopped doing calls.” I was like, “Here’s the model.” The model is to get a bunch of people that are sold.

They bought into the system, you’ve got a bunch of eyeballs, you’ve got 10,000, 50,000 or 100,000 eyeballs. The people that are paying some type of $10, $15 or $50 a month fee, and then you sell the company to Goldman Sachs or Northwestern Mutual and there’s an X factor. That’s the entire model in FinTech with all these financial institutions and companies.

That’s what people are doing when you see all these companies going public or they Are being sold to private equity. Can they do that with high-tech? Are we set up as a perfect model to be sold to another company? Hell no. We Are set up as a long-term relationship-building company and it’s based on people. The idea here is to keep nurturing relationships with people that fit into our system. It’s not about saying, “How do we have 100,000 eyeballs that we can sell to Goldman Sachs? There are different ways of approaching business now but most companies, if you look at them, that’s what they are doing. How do we scale this thing up to sell it off?

Financial freedom is not about a pile of cash. It’s not about an asset. It’s about your ability to turn nothing into something. That’s where wealth is.

That reminds me of a story. I don’t like to dwell on long stories but this is relevant. I have a good friend who sold his last company for over $100 million. He owns all kinds of cool entertainment parks and things like that now, but he was a software engineer. That’s how he built his business. He sent a post out the other day and he was frustrated with it, I’m not going to name it but it’s a large social media company. He has an issue with his account. It’s a big issue and he spends lots of money with this company. After six weeks, he could not get anyone to address this issue. He’s savvy. He’s a software engineer. He’s very successful.

He started a petition on social media. It’s turning into this big thing now. I’m sitting here thinking to myself if Damion or Chris has a problem with social media and even in ad spend or a financial institution and decide that we are not going to answer because if you can’t get the answers through automation, you are out of luck, then it is what it is. I cannot stress enough how important it is to find credible companies that you can do business with, whether it’s a human touch. That may go away eventually, who knows? Now, they still exist. We run two companies that are that way and it is critically important.

It’s not as important when things are going well but it’s important when you have questions, issues or constraints in your life that you need answers to. I appreciate you diving in on that because it’s critically important. It goes back to what you said earlier about Wall Street, advisors and things like that. There are a lot of power-grabbing out there. There are a lot of people making a lot of money but it’s the service after that is lacking, which is unfortunate.

There’s somebody that people miss and this is important for us to think about. The question that we have to ask ourselves is, “Am I paying an appropriate amount for whatever I’m expecting?” People have gotten used to this Walmart thing where I’m going to get more and more for less and less. There’s a term called a formulation that Buckminster Fuller talked about, where you create more and more for less and less and ultimately, you get everything for nothing. What people are expecting is that to happen is they go and say, “I can get this bottle of pickles for $2.” Even though it costs the pickle maker $3 to do it but they want some market share.

When you go out there and you are looking at anything and saying, “How do I get it for less?” If you are thinking about everything as a commodity, you are going to lose humanity and the ability to have the best stuff out there. If you want the cheapest stuff, it’s called IKEA and I get it but then you move at one time and it breaks. Do you want long-lasting relationships? Do you want people that are part of a trusted network?

The power of a network and a team is how you create wealth and freedom. A lot of people are missing that formula. They think, “I’ve got this cheaper thing. I’ve got a free IRA at Charles Schwab or Fidelity. I’ve got a free 401(k). I’ve got a free this or that.” If it’s free, you are the damn product. Have you seen Facebook? That’s the model.

There’s a different choice and that’s called paying the appropriate amount. It’s like I see masterminds. There are lots of masterminds that are $2,000, $3,000 or $5,000 a year and there are some that are $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. You have to ask yourself, “What are you paying for?” I’m part of something great but you are paying $2,000. What value do you think you are getting?

If you are paying for something and 100,000 other people are paying for the same thing, how much attention are you giving? We have to think about the appropriate exchange. I think about that all the time. Somebody says, “I’ve got a great deal.” I’m like, “Am I going to get the best value? I need you to charge me enough to where you will pay attention. If you are not going to pay attention to me, you are not charging me enough.” That’s how I look at things.

It goes to what you are saying about programs. Some people are seminar junkies and constantly going to seminars to spend thousands of dollars. Seminars are great but what action are you going to take when you leave that next seminar? Are you going to take those principles, values, tips, and tricks you learned, go out and build a business from it or are you going to go and say, “I went to the latest and greatest seminars and I heard another speaker?” Those speakers are out being successful. If your goal is to be successful, go out and build something or developing an eQRP account, going and building retirement, there’s an end goal.

 

I’m going to explore, learn, and vet these companies and figure out how I can make my money work as hard as it can possibly work for me. I’m not going to sit there like a mindless drone and dump my money into a retirement account, thinking someday it will be worth more than I put in or whatever. After fees, taxes, and who knows where all that’s going, it will probably be worth negative. It won’t be any Social Security for any of us, at least you and I Damion for sure.

That’s something that people need to consider that there is a guarantee that if you don’t take control of your retirement money, I guarantee you, you are going to have a poor retirement than you have a lifestyle now. I guarantee because the system is set up with inflation and fees to pillage you until death do you part, and you are not going to wake up one day magically.

This is not the ‘50s and ‘60s when America was on its rise. We are in the 21st century, where China is on the rise and America is getting beaten up. Our dollar, pharma dollar, and petrodollar that has been a dominant global power player are dying. You see deals with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, India, and Africa that are changing the dynamics geopolitically of what it means for America to be able to do what it’s doing. It can’t do those things.

If you are not in control and you are like, “I’m so long for the ride.” That ride is going off a cliff. You’ve got to be smarter and more engaged. The way it used to be is not the way it’s going to be. Unfortunately, people think somebody will save me, which is why we are getting into this divisive political environment where people are saying, “So-and-so, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, somebody is going to save me.” No, you are going to save yourself. If it’s going to be, it’s up to me like you’ve got to engage this stuff and take control. It’s not uncommon for people to take thousands of dollars and turn them into millions of dollars like Peter Thiel took $2,000 and turned it into $5 billion tax-free for life.

Are you going to do that? Probably not. Could you take $2,000 and turned it into $2 million or $20 million? I took $6,000 and turned it into $20 million. It took me five years. Can you do it? Yes. Am I smarter than you? No. I’m a college dropout. I’ve got thrown out multiple times but the point is, it’s about your commitment. It’s about your work. It has very little to do with your smarts. It’s a question of how committed you are and most people are not committed to anything.

I can attribute to that. I grew my net worth six times in several years, which was astonishing to me. I never thought it possible until I learned the real true power of money. Where to invest it? How to get higher returns? How to leverage the write-offs, depreciation and all the stuff. The real challenge, Damion, it seems, is that their attention is being taken away from their health and financial futures.

We go down a rabbit hole and health. That’s what we eat and all this stuff. I know you are a physical guy. You can relate to this stuff and thinking how do we get someone to not spend one hour on those reruns and educate themselves on eQRP to learn a little bit more about maybe all my money shouldn’t be going to the retirement account. If it is, maybe I should convert some over that. I can then maybe use that to invest in some other assets. If you don’t mind, would you dig into some of the things that they could use an eQRP for? Some ways they could use that type of fund to invest in certain types of assets.

Two things are important. One is the investments and one is the other way you can use your eQRP to better your life. In terms of assets, you can invest in damn near anything. We are talking about mutual funds, real estate, crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, physical gold, notes, private equity, all of these things that are out there. A 711 down the street, you wanted to become a franchise owner. If you like big gulps, I don’t know why but if you do, there are all these things. The other thing that people don’t realize, and because you can’t do this with an IRA or even a self-directed IRA, is you can invest in yourself.

Chris, people always ask, “What do you think is a great investment? What’s the best investment? Is it a 20% return good or is an 8%? Those are terrible. What about 30% or 40%?” I’m like, “Probably if you are being pitched, you are about to lose all your money if it’s going to be 40% but here’s the best investment. It’s in you. It’s in your own personal development and masterminds.” We were talking about something that made me think about how you can shift.

You’ve got to take control. It’s not uncommon for people to take thousands of dollars and turn them into millions of dollars.

Are you going to spend an hour instead of on a rerun learning about a new financial tool, about a freedom type of thing like an eQRP? Are you going to do that? Not if your peer group is going and watching reruns, not if you get together with the girls and get drunk every Wednesday and that’s your idea of a good time. If that’s what you are doing and that’s what you are going to do, the alternative to that is you start engaging with other people and normalize a freedom-focused self-responsibility lifestyle.

How do you do that? Sometimes it’s about saying, “I’m going to build it.” If you are going to build it, maybe you say, “I’m going to go find a mastermind.” How do you do that if you have no money? One way is you tap into an eQRP and use $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 of your retirement money to build yourself a new network. Can you do it? Yes. Can you do it with an IRA? No.

It’s another way for you to set yourself up for success because if you are surrounding yourself with your past, it is going to equate to your future. Your future is going to look a Groundhog Day and it’s the same thing. You’ve got to start asking, “How do I reframe or rebuild my environment?” A lot of people don’t realize that the single-handedly most important thing that you can do is be rational about your environment, and then retool and rebuild so that you have a chance to normalize your life based on your vision, not on your past.

Reframing your environment is critical to one success because we get stuck in these habits. Tony Robbins said, “We were born to survive, not to succeed.” He probably didn’t coin it originally but that sticks out with me all the time. It comes up in a lot of my conversations because you have to force change, shift, open your mind and try something new. Get into that uncomfort zone as the Navy SEAL says. I will probably dive into that on my two takeaways after.

Damion, let me ask you this. You mentioned getting out of that circle and maybe recreating it. Who is someone in your life who may be that, either mentored you, inspired you or someone that you look to when you get down or when you are challenged? It could be a book, an individual or a person. We are asked the question a lot like what are the right books to read? It’s not the same size fits all for everybody. Is there someone that stands out for you and if so, how do they positively influence you?

There’s a guy that’s passed away named George Leonard. He wrote a book called Mastery. There’s another book called Mastery by Robert Greene. This one is special to me because he and I are both Martial Art practitioners. We started off with Aikido and one of the pieces of his book Mastery that’s powerful is the idea of plateauing, where you do something, you are working on it and it seems like nothing is happening. In Martial Arts, you could do the same thing, the same kick, throw, punch, movement for years and you are like, “Nothing is changing.” One day, you pop. All of a sudden, it’s like, “That was like magic.” It’s the same thing in investing. You make 100 or 1,000 offers, and nothing is happening, then all of a sudden, three of them land. You are like, “What happened?”

Something about you pivoted but it was the plateau. It’s almost like the universe is testing you to see if you are serious, then it says, “We are going to open the gates. We are going to take away the break.” That’s what people don’t realize is that plateauing is part of the process. People go, “I’m making progress.” If you are plateauing, you don’t feel like you are making any progress. You are like, “This sucks.”

In reality, plateauing is a huge amount of progress but it happens all in a moment. Sometimes people miss the moment. They are at the 1-inch line and go, “I’m never going to get there.” It was one more step. Sometimes, it’s 100 more steps but you don’t know. It’s a question of how committed you are. I look at George Leonard and that idea, I read that book several years ago and I remember going plateauing.

It made sense because in Martial Arts, after studying for many years, I get plateauing but also in investing and money. I have lost everything and more three different times. I have had people come and go. I have had dozens, if not hundreds of employees. I have had people killed on my projects. I have gone through hell. I kept going because part of this is plateauing and part of it is how you go bald. Part of it is how you are a human when you are fully engaged.

 

That at the end of your life, you don’t look back and go, “I regret not playing all out.” I am not going to have that experience. I’m willing to go all out and keep pushing. I’m not going to stop because you are either growing or dying. That’s how the universe works. There’s expanding or contracting. People go, “I want to be on cruise control.” I’m like, “That’s called death.” Tiptoed safely to death store, sweet. That’s going to be embarrassing for you and everybody around you. If that’s what you want? Stay away from me because I don’t want your influence.

Have you ever run as fast as you can to see how fast you can achieve running a mile? Have you ever tried to climb a mountain? Have you ever tried to take a Martial Art and push yourself through the pain and suffering to see how good you could get at it? If anything, for your mental stability, physical strength and we go in with these agendas. If we can’t achieve the agenda, that’s it. We quit. We walk away because there’s no one to hold us accountable. You are not on an island yourself trying to survive. You are out there in a world that forgives you, that has participation trophies and hands out checks constantly.

I would say to the Charging Forward readers, for us, when you reach that plateau, that’s almost where it begins. You have to keep hustling and pushing through that adversity in that strife. That brings me to a question I would like to ask you, Damion, talking about plateauing. Any successful entrepreneur has had failures. We have had challenges, which most of us look at as another part of the process.

We don’t look at it as a way to hold us down. We learn from it, we move on, then we go. You hear that from any entrepreneur that you know that’s out there achieving things. Is there a time that stands out for you what that was a failure in terms of definition but an a-ha moment, maybe that was a pivot or a tipping point for you or whatever it may be where you are like, “This was the one and this is what I learned from it?”

The easy one for me to answer is when you take a $20 million portfolio and you turn it into the negative $5 million in 12 months, that’s a big blast for it. It looks like a failure, and then there’s an opportunity to learn from it. That’s all well and good, and I’m not wishing or you are telling you that what you have to do to go through the process of creating success and fulfillment. One of the most powerful ones was when I had a long-term relationship years ago. My girlfriend was desperately trying to help me figure myself out. She was going to therapy without me, inviting me and I was rejecting it. She was giving me books like The 5 Love Languages by Chapman and His Needs, Her Needs by Harley.

She gave me these things as an act of love. My arrogance was big. My ego was huge that I said, “I don’t have an issue. You have an issue. Your issue, you need to fix it, go to therapy.” We broke up and then I was like, “She’s stupid.” She was doing everything she could. I read the books, I looked in the mirror, and then I was like, “That was all me.” That was the biggest failure and the biggest gift because I needed to go through that to understand who owned my life and nobody can fix your life except for you. There’s nobody that can do it for you and I am grateful for that. I look back and I’m like, “Okay.”

It’s like an Armageddon. There was a speech by the president before they go up in the rocket to blow up this meteor. The president is talking about all the wars they fought, people that have died, mistakes they made got us to the point now where we are capable of saving humanity. That’s our life. He was talking about our lives. We go through all these pains, struggles, and problems so that we can live and live completely. We have to do it. There’s no pill. You have to go through it. I’m grateful for those things. All of the matter and if we are mad about any of them, we are missing the gift.

For the Charging Forward crew, what’s interesting about that is, you don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. You need to be in a position where you can equalize, open your mind, and listen to others because success is sometimes an entrepreneur’s worst enemy. You are out there. You are achieving. You are doing things. You’ve got this self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ve got money in the bank or you have built something. Now it’s like, “I’m on top of the world. I must be doing everything right.” When in reality, life is a marathon and there are multiple facets and levels to our lives.

We always have to be open to learning, educating ourselves, and humility. Leave the egos at the door, if you will. Go out there and listen like you said, “You couldn’t even see that she was trying to help you,” whether it worked out or not down the road, it’s amazing that you were able to go back and realize that. Read the books and learn through that process because that is the best gift of all. It’s learning from your mistakes and moving forward. Not being arrogant and shutting people out. That’s not a happy life, in my opinion.

If you’re surrounding yourself with your past, your past is going to equate into your future.

I wish that I was smart or humble enough to knock it back into that space but I constantly do it and then I will go, “I look backward.” It’s easy to look backward. It’s hard to look forward and be present. It takes a different level of focus when you drop into your presence and say, “What’s happening now? What’s true?” That’s the greatest gift you can give to yourself is asking the question of what is true, and then answering honestly. What is true about now, right here, right inside me? It was something that I was able to go through with her and I learned a lot. I lost that relationship and it happens over and over in our lives where we don’t see it because we are emotionally charged.

I wrote about this in Reinvented Life back in 2012. It was after this whole meltdown, after losing everything, losing my dog, and having to live in my car. It’s this whole process and one of the chapters, the end was stillness. It’s one of the most powerful things that any of us can learn how to do. It’s interesting to say that, “To learn how to do stillness.” How do you do stillness? Maybe that’s prayer, meditation, walking in nature. It doesn’t matter what your form is. It’s the stillness to where you could hear God. I say that because there’s something that comes through us if we can get rid of the noise. How do you get rid of the noise? You have to find stillness.

Whatever you believe in it doesn’t make any difference to me, the universe, God. It doesn’t matter. It’s hearing the voice and the truth. The truth wants to come to you. We all want it for the most part. Some people are a little sociopathic and delusional, and they are like, “I don’t want the truth.” It’s like Jack Nicholson, “You can’t handle the truth.” Truly, that’s how our lives become our own. When we decide it’s important for me to have the truth and live the truth, no matter what the truth is.

Everyone has their own version of the truth but many of us are busy. We are not even stopping to figure out our own truth. If you start doing some breathing exercises, you say that to somebody. They go, “That’s stupid. I’m not doing that.” It’s like, “Are you all stressed out? Are you overweight? Maybe we should shift the way you eat. Don’t go on a diet but let’s change your eating habits a little or let’s get you breathing a little.” If anything to give you 2 to 3 minutes of your own time with your own thoughts of clarity. Get your lungs full of fresh air, your brain oxygen but most people won’t even stop to try that, and then realize the benefits if they do.

I’m looking forward to reading that. I have not read the book but that sounds amazing. I’m looking forward to reading specifically, that chapter because I can relate to that. Someone who is a grinder, keep going. I can tell finally my body told me something is not right. You are not feeling right. I didn’t have a health scare but I knew. Through my business partner, he opened my mind to a different way of eating. Healthier, not anything dramatic or dieting but I feel unbelievable and amazing. It was a little shift being open-minded. Instead of trying to buy something that can help you lose weight quickly or whatever it is. That’s good stuff.

It’s a different place where we go the truth versus the pill.

Damion, is there anything you would like to tell the audience, maybe at least how we can find you, eQRP, some of the other things you have done? Talk about your books. I know you have written a couple of them. I have had a couple of on eQRP and they are amazing. Please share with them as we exit here.

The thing that you can take away from this seminar is you can go down a rabbit hole with Damion Lupo on the internet if you want. If you want to understand how to control the money piece and start to take that away from Wall Street and everything else, learn about each eQRP. It might be for you or somebody else because what we don’t realize sometimes is the key information is a big gift we can give to somebody else if we have to give it.

Here’s what I want you to do. Text me the word, eQRP, to 72000 and get the report. It’s a summary of the eQRP book, and then I will give you a copy of the book too. I want you to have the report because once you text that one-word, eQRP, to 72000, you will have the report. You can text it to your friends, somebody you know that’s retired or getting $1,000 a month off of $650,000 or some other idiotic move that their people believe that they are supposed to do.

You can be a superhero if you help people. It’s funny because people get weird about information but think about information like love. When you love somebody, does it take away love from you? No, it’s adding to the pie. It’s abundance. We are confused about scarcity and abundance. We think, “If I give somebody some information, it’s going to take it away. I need to protect it, patent it, trademark it and hide it.”

The reality is when you share information, you get to be a superhero because you help people break their own shackles. That’s what I’m hoping that you all will take away from this that there’s a way to break shackles and to become truly financially free. It’s not a pill. It is the work and this will be maybe one of those steps in that process.

To comment on what you said is one of the greatest gifts you can give is knowledge. We talked about someone taking one hour from their reruns, their busy family or whatever to educate themselves by suggesting this company, and learning a little bit more about some of the opportunities that might be out there for you is a gift. I know for me personally, I have suggested all things to people throughout the years.

Some have reached out after the fact that said, “I invested in this thing and I had extra turns. I started this business and you helped me originally or you helped me build a business plan several years ago and look at the success I have now.” That was free. It wasn’t like I was charging for that. That’s what Damion is saying. Share the word, let people educate themselves. If we do business with them, that’s fabulous. If we don’t, that’s okay too but at least they are going to be better off for it.

It’s empowering people to choose. People are smart and capable. I know that is a funny perspective because most people, especially in financial systems, look at people with a sense of arrogance like, “I’ve got all these letters behind my name. Therefore I’m smarter than you and you are not capable or you shouldn’t be in charge of your money.” I believe that you are going to care about your money more than anybody else will. I want to empower you with better tools and ideas. This is the education process. As you said, “If we do business, that’s amazing and if we don’t, at least you’ve got something better to work with than you had before this conversation.”

Thank you so much. That’s Damion Lupo with eQRP Company. We will see you next time. Thank you.

Important Links:

• eQRP Company
• Own the Day, Own Your Life Kingdom Trust
• Mastery – George Leonard
• Mastery – Robert Green
• The 5 Love Languages
• His Needs, Her Needs
• Reinvented Life

About Damion Lupo

Best-Selling Author of a dozen books on personal finance, investment and retirement strategies, Damion is on a mission to free 1 million people from financial bondage. He hosts the Financial Underdogs podcast, ripping conventional wisdom apart for the Main Street investor looking for truth about money and investing. Not only has he started 50+ companies, he even founded his own martial art, Yokido®. Damion developed the ultimate investor retirement tool called the eQRP®. His strategy gives individuals total control of their retirement money to invest in real assets like real estate, gold, and crypto.

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