Damion Lupo: Secrets Of Side Hustling

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

---

Hey, it’s Damon Burton from learning from others. Joined with Kyle Deidre on today. Damion Lupo, Damion is four time college dropout who became a self made multimillionaire by 25. He currently teaches and lectures has unique style of focusing on personal life experiences and developing consciousness and awareness of truth.

Damion. Now I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, it’s good to be here, guys. Hey, you know, we talked about this offline and I think it’s a comical enough to comment on air. Uh, so my wife and I have been married for 12 years and we’ve been together for 14 and her twin brother. Refuses to call me Damion Damon and calls me Damian, 14 years later.

You’re sort of stuck with Maya with the omen here. That’s that’s rough. Yeah. Yeah. We brought it up and he says, I don’t care. That’s your name? Geez. Yeah. Speaking of the Elma and how much does it actually affect you growing up Damion? Well, the fact that I grew up in Alaska probably changed everything.

Cause I think we’re about 20 years behind the times, but found out about the open until I was about 25. You’re out when you guys still have the last blockbuster up there. So I think it might still be there, but it’s mostly because it’s encased in ice. So

nobody uses is that, but it’s there. I mean, you know, global warming will have to totally complete before it actually gets on case. Well, cool. Well, Damion, um, you know, why don’t you kind of give us the crash course on, uh, what our listeners can, can gain from your experience and just, just the real high level.

And then we’ll kind of evolve into how you got there. Yeah, definitely. So the high level thing you can gain is to know that you’re not going to be eaten alive by going out there and doing things that are uncomfortable or foreign people tend to play it really safe. And you can, we can see this in, in sports where people play not to lose and they end up losing.

And what. I realized I learned pretty early on was that unless you’re either living in Alaska in the wild where you at, she can be eaten by something like in the Arctic circle. And I had a Dodge polar bears when I take the trash out because they were out there and they would eat you if they saw you.

Cause if you move your meat. And so I. I basically could have been eaten there or traveling to Africa, but if you don’t live in Alaska and you’re not in Africa, it’s unlikely. You’re going to be eaten by something that you screw up on. And I’ve just been really, really fun that I started screwing things up and realizing nothing was going to kill me.

That’s the missing element to most people being stuck in life. They’re too afraid of making the mistake cause they’re trained. From childhood that mistakes are bad. And I just realized quickly after I got thrown out of school a few times that maybe it’s not the correct formula that avoiding mistakes is good.

In fact, making mistakes is much better. Yeah. You know, you bring up a lot of interesting points. I just had posted on social media this week, that mistakes and failures is where you learn the most. And obviously it sucks to be in that position while it’s happening. But it seems like when you reflect, that’s where you really grow.

Well, and it’s interesting that yeah, that a lot of people think that it’s painful because they they’re, they’re literally letting the boogeyman drive their activity. And instead, if we think about how we can reframe that and decide how we’re going to own the experience, we can say, okay, the IX. The experience of being in the mistake, doesn’t make me the mistake.

It makes me smart for going out there and growing. And so being in something that’s melting down where you’re getting sued or you’re losing money, or nobody’s buying your thing, or you sound like a moron onstage or whatever it is, you just go, you just laugh at it and you go, this is going to be a great story down the road.

So why not laugh about it today? Make it a fun story today. That’s a great point. Yeah. Uh, you know, you had mentioned that in Alaska with the polar bears, is it true that people leave their doors open in Alaska to help people out if in case they have to Dodge bears, like they leave their doors unlocked.

That sounds like something you heard out of that we would hear out of Northern exposure that’ll show.

I don’t know if it’s true or not. We did. And we liked it. That thing. I had an ongoing nightmare that I was going to go down to the, the front door from the split level. And there was going to be a moose out there that was going to eat me and loose. Don’t even eat people. They don’t, they eat like grass, but probably cause I was shooting bottle rockets out of my entire childhood.

They, they were so mad. I had nightmares that they were going to come after me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. Yeah. I don’t know where I heard it from, but I, I, I’m usually pretty hesitant on believing stereotypes, but I, I swore that one was real funny. So, um, you know, another thing that you, you meant, you mentioned that Kyle and I, we actually kind of joked about it a couple of weeks ago.

About how, um, you know, so we’re here in it, just North of salt Lake city, Utah. And I don’t remember what the context, the original context was, but Kyle and I got talking and we said, you know, why are we, so why are people in general? So stressed in life, especially in the greater Metro area of salt Lake city, Utah, and for, and the reason I bring this up was the exact reasons you said we don’t have.

Oh, I think I remember what it was. There was a hurricane going on. I know we don’t get hurricanes. We don’t got alligators. I could Florida, the Kony too. We don’t have any real, you know, natural events. We could have an earthquake, but that’s once every few lifetimes. Yeah. And granted we’re overdue for it.

But other than that, yeah. Like why do, why are we freaking out so much? It’s, it’s an interesting thing to think about what we actually do worry about and why we worry about these things, or, you know, it just in general, people make up a lot of their own problems. And what a great question to ask is what is my problem right now?

In this moment in that where I’m sitting, where I’m standing, who I’m with, what’s the problem. And the reality is there probably is no problem. It’s just the future that we’re, we have anxiety around or the past that we have this regret around. We tend to get stuck in the future past that we have that we’re not actually in.

And if we can actually be in the moment we find that there’s really nothing that we should be concerned about. Like most times we’re we don’t have a car, that’s it that’s hitting us in the road. Like there might be a car down the road that’s going to hit us, but that’s in the future. And we tend to worry about these things.

They keep us stuck in the actual time that we’re going to experience the present the present moment. You know, I’d be curious to have your, hear your take on something I heard kind of about that, um, that. Fear in humans is because we evolve too fast. So before we used to always be, be fearing, okay, is tiger going to eat us?

What’s that noise? What’s in the dark, you know, where you can actually die, um, from, from, from another natural, you know, life form. Um, and so now that we’re not caveman anymore, and we’re not dodging these things because of, we evolved too fast, our brain couldn’t catch up and our brain still has to fear something.

And so it just. Manifest something to fear. W w would you agree with that? I would, I would say that if we understand that our brain has this amygdala, it’s hard wired to protect us from things, you know, to this whole fight or flight process. We’ve got built into our brain when we get that and we understand we’re doing things automatic.

We’ve got this amazing capacity to be able to think about our thinking. And when you think about your thinking, you realize, man, my, my normal thinking, my instinctual thinking is pretty stupid. It’s literally caveman, like you guys said. So when we started asking better questions and starting started focusing on being more present, we can remove this whole anxiety around the fight or flight and just being nervous around what might happen.

We more, instead of we start planning, having a contingency plan and for all the different elements that we’re afraid of. And then we move forward into the possibility with this positive versus the fear around the negative. Yeah, I like it. Well, why don’t we kind of talk about some of the things that you’ve gone through in your career and you know, I’m going to have you talk about some of the failures you’ve gone through and have you always had the confidence to not be sweating during these failures?

Failures or was that kind of a learned characteristic? The funny part is if I was to look back 20 years ago and, and ask or give myself advice, I would say fail faster because there were still the nervousness around making a mistake and screwing up again. That was back. That was based on. The idea that if you made a mistake, if you made 50% wrong and growing up, you were a failure in school.

And he got reinforced. If the students were the best students and they get all their certificates and the accolades, but the truth is in the real world, if you get 50%, right, you’re a freaking billionaire, like that’s a dumb programming that we’ve put into, into our brains. So I. When I look back, I go, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes.

The problem I had was that I became the MIS I became the mistakes. When I lost, when I lost a $20 million portfolio and blew up my financial life, I equated my self worth and net worth. And that was the problem. I didn’t. I didn’t totally get that. The mistakes were a thing to grow from. I became the mistake and I became a negative net worth.

So that was the biggest mistake. If you will, that I didn’t get that those things were, should not be the same thing. And so if we can really understand that the failing is, is the opportunity for growth. Just like if you’re like martial arts I’ve been doing for 20 years. You go and you learn by making a lot of mistakes and falling down and getting punched in the head accidentally or on purpose.

And it’s just part of the process. This is what we have to go through. There is no hack as much as we love the four hour rule work week and the four hour hack to everything. There is a process of stubbing, your toe that you can’t get around. And if you try to, you’re going to miss out on the experience and the actual growth.

Well, why don’t we kind of get into that the $20 million loss, but, uh, give us the before and after verse. So work us up and tell us how you acquired it. First, the before and after the, before was I went to some seminars after reaching or after reading rich dad, poor dad and, and buying a rental house on my visa card.

And I said, this is cool. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I should probably get some training. Went to seminars, spent about a million bucks over five years on mentors and seminars built up. Big portfolio all over the country. And I was pretty impressed with myself. Like it was, it was pretty amazing. I was the smartest guy.

I knew it’s called the smart plan, smartest man on the planet. And it was a very dangerous place to be because in 2008, I got, I got some evidence from the universe saying, you’re not that smart. And we’re going to give you a little less occurrence. So I had a freight train run over me and, and that was a, that was an amazing opportunity for me to really grow.

And really take a step back and say, okay, what am I doing? And why am I doing it? And what am I going to do different? And who am I going to be going forward? Because a lot of times I see this with a lot of people, they focus on making money, passive income assets, but they don’t really know why they’re doing it.

So it’s all really just more. And if your focus, your why is more, it’ll never be enough and you’ll never be happy. So that was the big shift going from the why being about impact and about contribution and letting the cash and the assets be a side effect. Do you think that, uh, you know, because of the 2008 recession was such a global event, do you think it.

You found some comfort in not being the only smartest man on the planet? It wasn’t the only one that was a problem. I isolated myself and I thought, God, I am the dumbest one out here. And like, and I’m, I can’t let anybody know. And so I kind of just hit. And that’s, that’s the danger of isolating. It’s the danger of not having a community?

My, my friend, Chris Martenson who, um, works and has founded peak prosperity with Adam, Unteger talks about the different capital accounts that we have. And one of them is social capital. When I went through my meltdown, I really didn’t have social capital where I could lean on people to go through that.

And so later I realized how many people had gone through that same process. When I, when I wrote reinvented life, people came up to me and said, I read your book. I thought I was alone, but apparently there’s at least one other person that went through this. That was that stupid. And I’m like, no, I was definitely that stupid.

Like I, you know, I blew it, but it’s, that was the big process. It was, it was understanding that we’re not alone unless we choose to be alone. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting in the last couple of years. So I’ve been an entrepreneur for 11 years and starting in my, my mid twenties. Uh, I think the majority of entrepreneurs go down the path of more.

And as I’ve had kids, um, you know, I, I wasn’t fully, the more guy, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t want to be totally selfish, but I definitely wanted a lot. And then as I’ve had kids, I’ve went, my perspective has changed from, I don’t want all the money in the world. I just want a lot of enough that I can not worry anymore.

And then I, and then I want time that the thing that you’re hitting on right now is really important for us too. To, to really dive into in terms of what, you know, what is, what, what makes us come well and what makes us feel secure? And it’s, it’s not necessarily a number. I think a lot of people make the mistake that if they have maybe some rental properties or their businesses making enough, that’s where their freedom is.

And I just disagree with that, with where people spend that time. Cause it’s, I could hand anybody an apartment building and say, here you go, it’s making 20,000. Free and clear a month and you don’t have to do anything. You have professional managers, most people would say, that’s great, I’m free. And I would say, what happens if there’s a recession and half your building goes vacant?

And they would say I’m scared to death because they don’t have the confidence. Yeah. And actually creating something. So they don’t know what to do. And that’s the lottery ticket problem. So the, the, the true freedom is in the confidence, whether you have money, whether you have assets, whether that you have a business, it’s your ability to create those, those things that sets you free.

And that’s the piece. People don’t understand that this is a contextual problem. It’s not a tool problem. I can give you the best tools, but if your context and your confidence isn’t built, if you haven’t gone to the gym of spiritual, emotional, and physiological training, that doesn’t matter. You don’t have, you don’t have the ability.

You don’t have the muscle build and that’s the first place people have to start. But I tend to do that because it takes time. We want the hack. We want to go back to the four hours. How do I make and make this happen by Friday? And it’s, it’s not, it’s not real. So a lot of people get stuck because they’re always bouncing from one thing to the next looking for the golden goose or the magical unicorn.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, why don’t we go back to, you had mentioned that you bought your first rental on a visa. So did you buy that on a cash advance on the card or how did you make that transaction? I did. That’s why it’s a good call. That’s the first time anybody’s ever asked me that, like, how do you actually buy a house on a visa card like that doesn’t even do they take visa when you buy a house?

And I said, no, I went and got a cash advance because my buddy came to me and he’d also read rich dad, poor dad. And he said, Hey, I want to do this, this house deal. And I said, great. Okay. He said, I want you to be my partner. You need to be, be the money. And I said, I don’t have any money. I’m a new insurance agent.

He said, yeah, but you got a visa card. And I said, yeah, that’s a great idea. This is what you think when you’re talking. Well, yeah. What take a cash advance property doing something. I don’t know anything about taking out $120,000 a debt. Good idea. So I don’t recommend that by the way. That’s a very stupid idea.

It doesn’t mean it won’t work. It’s just a stupid idea. So that’s what I did. I got the cash advance and closed right before the millennial new year’s. Yeah, that that’s a pretty bold move there. One way to say you’re a, you’re a psycho like that was like, you know, it was nuts, but sometimes you have to be a little nuts.

I think if you’re not looked at as a little crazy with what you’re doing, you’re probably not far enough out on the ledge. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you, so you went from the one rental to 150 rentals. Um, did, did you have property managers on all or the majority of those? Well, the beginning I had a spreadsheet and myself, and I can tell you, that’s also one of those psychotic decisions in business to rent 30 or 40 houses that are in all sorts of different areas of a metropolis, and then try to manage it.

I mean, I had one house. I remember that I did not, um, I didn’t collect rent and I had a partner. I said, Hey, do we rent this thing out? And he said, yeah, are you ready? It was like October. And he said, We rented it out in February, right after we got it. I said, I don’t see any revenue. So we reached out to the tethered.

We said, Hey, we don’t think we’ve received it anything. And they said, yeah. And we said, okay, well you owe us like nine months of rent. They’re like, we’re not paying. And they left. So this is a lesson in, yeah, you don’t do this stuff on your own. Give people that are pros and B be the strategist, be the big picture person.

But if you are trying to do everything wherever you had. You’re going to, you’re going to trip up. I mean, I guarantee you it’s a matter of time. Yeah. You know, I have two rentals, one’s commercial and one’s a residential and a. I’ve been really fortunate because I always hear about the nightmares of vacancies or damage.

And, um, to be honest, I’m scared to get another one because I think my luck is gonna run out on centers. So that’s, uh, I’m surprised. Uh, it’s it’s just fascinating to me, a quantity of 150, for that reason that I can tell you that with 150, there were, there were multiple property managers because they were in seven different States.

And so you have to have, you have to build a team. This is one of the most important things that people miss in the beginning. The first mistake people make is not having a bookkeeper. They, they. Don’t have somebody looking at their numbers and making sure their numbers are clean and didn’t in front of them.

And that, that was okay. There’s a mistake that will kill you. It almost bankrupted me six months in and three years in because I was not clear on my numbers. So just starting there and then having professional managers, these are the things that you really don’t even know. You don’t know unless you have a mentor or a coach, and that’s where you really want to have somebody that’s bald or gray around you.

That can give you insights that you’ll actually listen to. Yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Now you had, in one of your books, you had mentioned that the greatest transfer of wealth is underway and I’ve actually heard that from other people as well. Can you elaborate on what is contributing to that transfer of wealth?

Well, there’s, there’s more and more of an entitlement mentality. That’s going on. We see this with the, the shift towards socialism with guys like Bernie Sanders, and there’s just this general mentality. And so what give you a sample statistic right now night? If you take the top one 10th of 1% of the population, they have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90%.

It’s, there’s a shift where people are thinking they’re entitled, but the problem is they’re not playing by the rules of the rich and the rich make the rules. So. There’s there. There’s just a general disconnect and it has everything to do with self-respect ability. If there’s one thing that’s driving all of this, it’s a shift from being responsible to being a victim.

And why, why people are becoming poor and poor. They’re going into victim space because we’re still in America for the most part. And this is, I mean, this is why people are. Caravaning or they’re swimming or they’re flying or whatever they’re doing to get to the unit States. And it’s because they say I’m gonna go create a future.

And that’s, that’s the thing that I see. That’s so frustrating. Seeing people that are playing either playing, not to lose, they’re playing a victim, they’re playing, focusing on security and they don’t realize that if they really go out there. It’s a wide open playing field and, and that’s, that’s the missing piece that for most people that would change everything.

If they said I’m taking 100% responsibility for everything in my life, no matter what I would change it. Yeah. You know, I, uh, agree a hundred percent and I’ve always, I’ve always agreed with everything you just said, but I, I tend to kind of stay out of it for PR for political reasons. But, um, because the problem you run into is the people that play the victim mentality.

It’s just like you said, a moment ago, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think a lot of that applies to people with a victim mentality and so you can’t rationalize with them. And so it just is a. A last argument is that sadly it is. I mean, this is one of the best things about people that are listening right now.

You’re spending time. You’re investing time. You can’t get this time back. You’re in a place where most people are not going to spend their time. Most people couldn’t be bothered. They’re too busy watching football. Like it’s just not going to happen. Nothing against football. It’s just when, when somebody says, well, I’ve got, I value freedom.

I say, no, you don’t show me your calendar. Show me your bank account. I tell you what you value you value Doritos, Alabama football. Like that’s what is important to you, not your freedom, cause that’s where you’re spending your time and your money. So let’s be honest. And that first thing is telling the truth.

People don’t want to tell the truth. Ask them what their bank account, their calendar looks like. They’ll they’ll lie or they’ll, you know, they’ll, they don’t want to show it to you. So if you’re willing to tell the truth, everything could change. If you don’t, if you’re not starting with the truth, you’re stuck.

Wherever your path was. Yeah, the bank account is an interesting comment because you can use it as, not as, not as bragging rights, but just like you said, as an Indian cater of the amount of time you’ve invested in, you know, accepting responsibility and, and a lot of us surely a hundred percent. You know, we all have different circumstances, but what, but we all have the same opportunity to challenge those circumstances and make the most of them.

We, we do. I mean, it really does come down to the choice there. There’s a great book. That’s out of print called your greatest power and it’s about the power to choose by J Martin co and it’s, it’s truly coming. It comes back to that. I mean, if we just make it simple and say, okay, what are we in prison? I mean, people kind of put themselves in prison.

In fact, if you want the most security in your life, it’s called maximum security prison. People still don’t. I mean, they, they think, Oh, I’m free. No, you’re not. You’ve put yourself in prison. You’ve put shackles on yourself. So the moment you choose something different, you’ve got the ability to create a different life.

But unfortunately we’re mostly in a default life. We just sort of are going through motions, playing, not to lose living a life of quiet desperation. And it’s sad and it’s pathetic because it’s not. What’s w what’s required, but we think it’s the only option we’ve been trained to play it safe. And, uh, there’s another option up.

There’s another life that’s waiting for every single person that’s listening to this. Let’s talk about your, your martial arts background. You had briefly commented on that. Um, so did that come into play as a hobby? Did it come into play for, um, you know, self-development, did it support your career originally or did it evolve into supporting your career?

So when I, when I went out and looked at at martial arts, I was, I was looking for something that would fit. I did TaeKwonDo and karate and, and try these different things and they didn’t fit. And that was a good example of forcing something. And it’s the difference between power and force great book, by the way, by, by Hawkins and.

So there, there was this process where I was popping around looking for different, different things that might fit. And when I walked into the Aquino dojo, I, I immediately knew, and this is, we can all think about this. If the moments we knew, either we fell in love with somebody or we, or we found something that we just loved doing and we lost time.

And that’s what happened with the KIDO. And when I went in there, I said, this is what I want it. This is me. And so I started, I was training and I was doing this for many years. And eventually that led into me developing my own art called . Because if you do something long enough, you that whatever you’re doing, it shifts, it’s not what you started with.

It. It’s the essence of you combined with some ideas that you started with when you learned. And, and yo Quito was the blend of the Quito and yoga and Reiki and Italy. It is the same way. I, I am in business, the martial arts, whether it’s on the mat or whether it’s in business. It’s about, it’s about connecting with people, being in relationship, removing conflict, intention, and healing, whatever conflict might be, they’re in the process of blending and moving around it.

So whether it’s business or martial arts, to me, they’re one in the same. Uh, it’s interesting. The way that you described how. You just kind of know, uh, cause I’ve always had an interest in doing some sort of form of martial arts, but the idea of, you know, just traditional karate. Where you you’ll learn your, your combos and things like that, that didn’t click with me.

Um, but Kyle, I think Kyle’s dropped off the call, but, you know, Kyle introduced me to something that I found interesting, uh, crap, I’m going to, I’m going to slaughter the pregnancy. Um, but crab, Maga, uh, KRA the mag. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, Krav a God. He is really martial art. That is probably one of the most ruthless things that has ever existed.

But yeah, I, I find what I find interesting about it and, and my, my knowledge admittedly is pretty pretty minute, but in an understanding the concepts of it and seeing the videos like to me, that’s more interesting because you actually get into it. Doing, um, you know, the other ones where you, where you learn all the different combinations and it’s through repetition.

I think that’s a great practice and it fits certain people, but the repetition. Doesn’t work for me. And so it’s fascinating to me, this, this other, um, martial arts forum that you just kind of get in and, and it, you obviously know much more. I, but is that how it works? You just get in and you start pounding away.

Yeah, here’s the, here’s the power. I mean, the basis, the fundamentals of yo KIDO are. Presence and relationship. Those are the two things that we start off with are our conscious mind can actually get into. And, and the presence piece is the missing piece. Somebody that’s been training where they show up and they go to the Cahtos, they go through your motions, right?

You might memorize some stuff and it might even become kind of unconscious bias Emory. But if you’re, if you’ve never really dug into the presence where you’re able to be deeper and deeper present and let go of the tension, I don’t think you’re ever really going to even find anything remotely. It’s really close to mastery or the essence of what martial arts is all about.

And that’s where a lot of people miss martial arts. It’s great for discipline. I agree with you, but. Presence is the power and it’s the same thing in business or life. All the power comes from being present. The deeper present you are, the more power, the more clarity, the more purpose you have, that makes a lot of sense.

You know, one thing I’ve been fighting with a lot in the, in the last, uh, I’d say two years is, is being present. Whether whether it’s business or, you know, out of business hours. And it’s frustrating because that used to be something that I pride myself on. And I remember one example is I was calling to get my.

An oil change for my car. And I was just sitting there bored out of my mind in the lobby. And I was okay with that. I just sat there for an hour and I didn’t get off the chair and move, and then fast forward a year and I’m in the same position and I was losing my mindset in there and that’s when it clicked.

And I went, Holy cow, I’m slowly evolving in a way I don’t want to. And the reason why I’m not fully going insane over that is because I’m fully. Aware of the circumstances that I brought on myself, you know, I’m writing a book and doing all these different project conscious that I know are temporarily consuming, way more time than they would otherwise.

Um, But yeah, I think self awareness and being present is a huge deal and it’s, it’s such a simple thing that people overlook it. It’s very, it’s, it’s quite missing, unfortunately. And it’s, I can always tell when, when I’m training with somebody, when they’re, they’re not present because they, they literally end up on the mat.

And they it’s. It’s so obvious. We, we see people in the life that end up on the ground just because they weren’t present. They weren’t even, they were, they were so anxious. And so their, their brain was so hyper fixated on something there’s so much tension that they missed everything going on around them and they could get sideswiped.

And it’s because we’re not aware because we’re not willing to sit still. And when you were sitting still and you let go, you actually can see stuff to the left and the right. If you’re tense and you’re anxious, you’re never going to, you’re never going to see that stuff. And we wonder why we’re missing the opportunities and why things are so hard.

It’s because we’re not seeing them. They’re they’re just, they’re right there, but we’re too fixated on a, on a moment or a point in time. Yeah, there, there’s an interesting study. I don’t know the name of it, but it’s where they take children versus adults and they give them the most simplistic tasks or puzzles or questions and the adults.

Just lose. They just get whooped against these kids. And then when it’s just because adults in general, like you said, are there, our minds are hyperactive. And so they overthink the circumstance and it’s just right there as clear as day, if they just took a step back and eliminated all the distractions and it’s, there’s nothing to answer.

It’s just right there. Yeah. That’s, that’s a, that’s a. Big a big problem. We get more and more used to the complexity. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I get so frustrated with the financial industry with financial services and wall street, because there’s this ongoing theme that things are so complicated and that, and people are too stupid to run their own money and their own financial life.

And so they basically hand their money over and they say, okay, good. I’m gonna, I’m going to smoke a bunch of hopium and 20 from now, I’m gonna wake up and it’s all going to be good. The only thing that’s going to be good is that. Your, your industry, the financial industry is going to have your money. And, and so I, I is, there is, there is a shift where we say, okay, it doesn’t have to be overly complex, that I am smart enough.

And, and maybe it’s a bunch of marketing that everything is so complex. And I think that that’s more true than not. Yeah. It ties into what you were talking about earlier about how things really aren’t that bad in life. And I think a lot of it has to do with social media and. Information just passes so much quicker than it used to.

And so drama sells and because drama sells, that’s what gets passed around, um, through social media because social media and technology has made information so prevalent and readily available. We’re just consuming the drama. And, and not looking at the S the simplistic things to happy things. And, you know, crime is down statistically across the board, just, yeah.

Every, every negative thing you think has gone on in life usually is not true. It’s true. It’s true. That it’s not true. I mean, if you look up, I got rid of my TV years ago and I go into it, Jim, and, and all I see is red alerts across every freaking television. Even the ESPN has red alerts, you know, for something.

And it’s, we’re just, we’re, we’re baked into being on the edge to be controlled. And when you, when you step back, you realize, wow, the actual numbers, like if you study Peter Diamandis, look up his numbers on the, the nature of abundance in the world. Where things are getting better and it’s, and there’s so much that’s good.

And I guess there are problems. I mean, you know, United States has 21 plus trillion dollars in debt. That’s not a good thing. That’s a bad thing. It’s dangerous, but yeah. Is crime up or down? It’s down. Are we at war with is a world at war? No. Is there a plague and famine, you know, like all these things that we just, but we’re, we’re convinced that everything’s going to hell.

Well, that’s just not true. And so we’ve got to be more present and, and are you willing to look at the truth and not the conjecture and not the, not, not all the brainwashing that goes on from media and people that want to keep us on their agenda. Yeah, well, well, why don’t we kind of use that as an, the next topic to transition into the U S debt.

And a lot of times that comes up, people say to hedge debt with golden silver. And so you wrote a book called the quick and dirty guide to golden silver. Why don’t you give our listeners a crash course on. On the good and bad of, of golden silver. Well, here’s the bottom line with gold and silver gold and silver has been the, the natural form of money for 5,000 years.

And it’s a hundred years from now. If somebody, if, if, if a ship were to sink and it was full of us, a hundred dollar bills. And then another ship was to sink full of gold. I guarantee you, one of them would be valuable and one of them would stay at the bottom of the ocean. And it’s is because gold and silver are real.

And it’s, if you, if the way I’ve been, I’ve heard it described it’s God’s money. You cannot make it up. You can make it, you can print dollars, you can print euros, you can bring in, but there’s something inherently valuable, intrinsically valuable about golden silver, and it is a great hedge. It’s maybe it, I think we’re in a, in a, in a very, um, a very low point in terms of gold and silver.

I think it’s, there’s, there’s a high likelihood that we see a major move in. It. The reason that I like it is it because it hedges against this, these crazy psychopaths at the central banks that just print. And if you think that they’re done printing, there’s been this whole idea that they’re letting the.

Their foot off the gas of quantitative easing and the interest rates are going up. And they’re rebalancing. That is a temporary event. When we go, I can do a recession in the next 18 months, which I’m immensely. We will, there is a problem. They’re going to go right back into printing money. We’re going to have QE for.

So what happens when we have QE for printing money all over the world? Yeah, golden. Silver is a great hedge. And so I think it’s important for everybody to have at least five to 10% of their, of their liquidity in precious metals so that you’re not totally whacked and wiped out with the next round of quantitative easing.

Yeah. Don’t you love the phrase quantitative easing uh, yeah, printing money. I mean, that’s the thing. I love the creative ways that these bankers try to tell us things right. Yeah, this is what we’re doing. We’re quantity, like what? That means. You’re printing money out of thin air and you’re hurting everybody.

That’s saving and you’re hurting everybody in general, except for people that get to that money early and fast, you know, like defense contractors and, and, and big, big banks. It hurts everybody. That’s what they’re doing. They’re hurting everybody. Do you think it’s good or bad that the gold standard was abandoned?

That’s a horrible thing. It, it let Congress, it let politicians go crazy and it let the central banks do whatever they wanted. So I think that that was a horrible idea and people will say, well, it’s boom dichotomy. Now it created cycles that were unnecessary. It created crazy amounts of, uh, of, of conflict in the world that didn’t need to happen.

You can basically do whatever you want. And if you’ve got a strong dollar with a whole bunch of military, you can kind of get away with things, but it’s just, it’s not. It’s not a healthy, uh, honest way to have them functioning monetary system. There’s the it’s, it leads to massive amounts of corruption.

And I think that we’re just ignoring that because we think, Oh, everything is good, except you’re being robbed from. I mean, that’s not good. Yeah. Yeah, that’s crazy. Well, um, as we start to kind of wrap up, uh, is there any, I think that you would tell your younger self or, um, you know, that you tell the listeners that that might help them get ahead or just something simple that gets them on the right path.

The something that we started off with about the, the whole mistakes, taking a step into the unknown is that there’s a, there’s a, basically a 0% chance that it’s going to kill you. And, and what happens is these, these things, just to understand you’re going to make mistakes. And those mistakes are a gift wrapped up by the universe in a little bit of pain and a little frustration, maybe a lot.

And that’s how you grow. And that’s how you actually have a life by design versus a life by default. Missing out on that one point will keep you trapped in your own shackles, the rest of your life until you realize that’s the universe trying to give you the actual lessons that will give you a life that you choose.

Are you familiar with the entrepreneur, Jesse? Itzler I swear. I’m not sure how to pronounce is that true? Um, you know, I listen to a podcast on him one time and I, it was fascinating. What he said is, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs. They, they do a lot of research ahead of time before they launch their project, start a business with which makes sense that he had a fascinating.

Take where he just basically said he just dives into the unknown. And that’s where he has found that he succeeds the most is just jumping in and figuring out how to swim. That is where you’re going to learn how to swim, the likelihood you’re going to drown people think they’re going to, they’re going to drown like full, full grown adults or are afraid of getting in a kiddie pool.

They think they’re going to drown and it’s not because they’re drunk. It’s because they’re. Their fear is paralyzing them. And that’s, I agree with that. Think about the software industry, the software industry releases things, knowing that they’re messed up and we all buy and then they go and they fix it and they go, they learn on the fly there.

There’s never a perfect product. If you’re sitting at home waiting for all the lights to turn green, before you get out of your garage, you’re stuck until you’re dead. And that is, you just have to understand that and realize you’re going to be having, you’re going to have different iterations. You’re going to improve.

And if you’re not willing to improve, you’re basically on your way to death’s door tiptoeing safely. And that’s a stupid plan. Yeah. Well, I appreciate your time, Damion, why don’t you throw out any website, contact information, whatever you want to put out there for our listeners. Yeah, I’d love to have you guys come out to Damionlupo.com.

Okay. And, and grab the resources, grab the financial freedom book that I’ve got, um, really started diving into the numbers because the truth is the numbers don’t lie. And if you want to get to the truth, you gotta start with the numbers. But Damion, we surprise our guests at the end. We don’t give them a heads up and we have a random question generator.

So I got a no good. Yours is yours is mine. I’m kind of disappointed because, because yours is much more mellow than the ones that we’ve we’ve historically had, but it is what it is. So, um, where did you go on your last vacation? Uh, last vacation was Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, where I felt like I was going to be kidnapped as our truck exploded.

And we were surrounded by a mob and he was even with all that, it was worth it because we ended up in the mountains with the silver back gorilla was a matter of, well, really not even inches away as they walked through us and pushed us to the side. So maybe it’s a little interesting because it is kind of mind boggling to be amongst something so pure and so beautiful.

You know, every time I pick one of these random ones, it amazes me how dead on it fits our guests. There’s always some amazing story behind this random question. So I had, um, I had had a friend who just came back from, from South Africa and he had kind of a similar story where he was just surrounded. By lions, just like in the middle of nowhere.

And he said it was like one of the common things and he wasn’t even worried about nothing. And it’s a, it’s a fascinating experience to hear about. Absolutely. And I highly recommend that for people that are thinking about life changing experiences, Africa by far my favorite place ever. And it’s because it’s so real and so true.

And so raw it’ll change you. Very cool Damion. I appreciate your time. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.