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Today we’re joined by an exceptional guest, Damion Lupo, a 
lifelong entrepreneur and founder of EQRP, one of the leading platforms for self-directed retirement accounts. Damion Lupo’s journey is nothing short of inspiring—after building a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio, he endured a dramatic collapse in 2008, losing $25 million and finding himself homeless. That moment became the catalyst for radical transformation, shifting his focus from just wealth accumulation to helping others achieve true financial freedom.
Hosted by Dave Wolcott, author of “The Holistic Wealth Strategy,” this episode takes listeners beyond the numbers game of wealth. Together, Dave Wolcott and Damion Lupo unpack the mindset and emotional intelligence needed for lasting wealth, diving into the differences between success and fulfillment. Damion Lupo shares how EQRP empowers individuals to break free from Wall Street dependency and take control of their investments, from real estate and precious metals to innovative assets like Bitcoin.
Listeners get a behind-the-scenes look at Damion Lupo’s latest venture, FrameTec—a construction technology company on a mission to solve the housing crisis through speed and innovation. The conversation highlights how patience, visionary planning, and purposeful work create not just wealth, but a deeply meaningful life.
In This Episode
- Damion Lupo’s journey from loss to transformation and financial freedom
- The power of mindset, emotional intelligence, and long-term vision in wealth building
- How EQRP works and strategies for self-directed investing
- Innovation in housing and the importance of finding work that creates true fulfillment
There’s Chinese and Japanese philosophy on planning, and it’s not based on quarterly reports. It’s based on decades and centuries. And we need to be thinking about that. In general, our vision needs to expand so that we can see the big picture of where we’re going, where we’re not trying to take shortcuts. And I don’t think we’re really programmed, especially in the United States, to do things where there’s a lot of patience. Most people are just in too big of a hurry for everything. And it’s a huge mistake that I’ll make from time to time, but I definitely made it way too much 20 years ago.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast, where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Most people think wealth is just a numbers game. More money, more freedom, more happiness. But what happens when you build it all and then lose it? Today’s guest has lived that story at the highest level. Damian Lupo is an entrepreneur, investor, and the founder of EQRP, one of the leading self-directed retirement account platforms designed to help people take control of their investing future. But before any of that, Damian went through a massive real estate collapse, losing $25 million, and it became the catalyst for a deeper transformation. In this episode, we unpack the foundation of financial freedom: mindset, emotional intelligence, patience, and the pursuit of fulfillment beyond net worth. Damian also shares how EQRP works, why self-directed IRA investing is accelerating, and how he’s now applying innovation to one of the biggest problems in America—housing—through his construction company, FrameTec.
If you’re building wealth and you want it to actually mean something, this conversation will challenge you, sharpen you, and give you a more powerful framework for the journey. Let’s dive in. Damian, welcome to the show.
Hey, Dave. It’s good to see you.
Yeah, great to have you on. And I think this is going to be quite fascinating for the listeners to hear about your journey, hear about what you’ve done with EQRP, and really how you’ve actually transcended that into what you’re doing now at FrameTec and some of the possibilities that are available to investors and entrepreneurs out there. You know, I always try to tell people that the most important real estate is the real estate right between your ears, right? So it takes a change in thinking and mindset to be able to expand that, especially past the traditional type of thinking that we all have been exposed to and continue to get exposed to, frankly. So it really takes a lot of courage and innovative thinking to go past that. So I look forward to drilling down into your story today. For those who aren’t familiar with you, why don’t you begin with your origin story and actually how you got to building EQRP from the beginning?
Well, the origin story was kind of interesting because I grew up in Alaska, and that’s sort of unusual because there’s like seven of us. People say, “I’ve never met somebody from Alaska.” And I always laugh. I’m like, “Yeah, well, here’s one of the seven,” or “eight is enough,” or whatever. And when I left there, I did kind of the traditional thing based on the programming I had as a kid, my parents and such, and went to college. I ended up getting thrown out of college for starting a bookstore on campus that put the other bookstore out of business. And I just realized I was in the middle of doing the norm, at least what the masses do, and it wasn’t a good fit. I was running into walls because I was trying to—like, I’m a builder, I’m a creator.
And if you try to trap an entrepreneur, builder, creator in a cage, which is basically our system of school, it doesn’t end well. They do something, they put something out of business, they blow something up. They’re really bad in a chemistry lab. So I ended up leaving there and pretty quickly ended up in the middle of real estate. I started buying houses and doing seminar stuff, went to a seminar, said, “That’s a cool trick,” and went out and did it in the real world. I was kind of playing Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow game in real life and having a good time doing that. And that went really well.
And I thought I was ten feet tall and bulletproof until 2008, and I ended up losing $25 million that year, with all my projects going sideways at once, and ended up homeless. And that was really one of the biggest gifts that happened. When it happened, I say it happened for me. And on the other side of it, after a couple years of sucking my thumb in the corner, I said, “You know what? I think that there’s something else out there.” And it was a shift from trying to figure out how much money I could make or get or take to a place of how many people can I help, and in a way to create more freedom for people. And that was really the origin of where EQRP came from, because I was like, “I don’t think my life is about just more.” And that’s what I was really focused on for probably ten years.
So I had to go through that in the beginning. Some guys said, “Hey, how many times have you been bankrupt?” Because we were talking about doing business together. And I said, “None.” They said, “Well, after you have a couple of times, come back and talk to us.” And I thought that was the stupidest thing ever. But I understand now what I didn’t then, which is until you’ve gone through these cycles, until you’ve lost things, until you’ve had the bruises and the beatings, you can’t think you’re going to go from zero to a billion or whatever that is and it’s going to stick, because you just don’t have the emotional intelligence, the wisdom, or the staying power. It’s easy to make money, hard to keep it, and especially as the numbers get bigger because everything changes. So I was really grateful to do it and be done with it. I don’t want to do it again, but I understood that that was part of the process.
Freedom is the ability to move forward without fear.
Yeah, it’s interesting—Keith Cunningham, one of the original Rich Dad mentors, talks about when he lost several hundred million. He says he’s been to one of the most prestigious universities out there, one that cost hundreds of millions in tuition. And he got that wisdom based on that experience, and of course he was able to make it all back and then some. So great point. And it is something I wouldn’t take lightly for the listeners out there. Let’s really underscore that journey. Losing $25 million—at that time, that was probably massively significant to you emotionally and spiritually in so many ways. And I’m sure you probably hit some dark periods in there. But through those biggest challenges, it’s great to see that you’ve come full circle and can say that was your greatest gift, and that challenge is what turned into opportunity for you.
It was. And one of the lessons, one of the biggest lessons—and most people don’t realize this until they think about it and they go, wow, I’m doing the same thing—is people tie their self-worth and their net worth together. I mean, they’re married. And when your net worth goes to negative five million and that’s your entire self-worth, it’s very, very dark.
One of the solutions back then was, oh man, everything’s going down. And I had a lot of life insurance, and I thought, oh, I can solve a lot of problems if I’m not here. And a few years ago, I had a friend of mine who took his life because his big problem was like a fifty-million-dollar problem. And he offed himself. And it was a brutal time because right before he did it, he actually asked me what I thought. He kind of gave me this framework that he was in a bit of a pickle. Didn’t really tell me a lot of the details. Found them out later. He said, “I’m not really sure how to solve it. I’ve got some options. Like, I can solve this, I can face it, or I can run for a different country, or I can kill myself.” And I was like, man, you’re asking me that? That’s like—I don’t know how to answer that. Like, what does your wife say? That was actually my response. It was, “What does your wife say?” And he said, “I should face it.” And he killed himself like a week later. And so, having been through some dark times where things were really tough, you don’t really understand that until you go through it.
There’s no intellectual way to learn what that feels like, especially in the spaces I’ve been in over the last twenty-five years with other people’s money. And both Keith and Robert talk about OPM, and Keith’s written Keys to the Vault, talking about other people’s money. It’s been, in large part, pretty flippant in the last decade, where people think of it like it’s no big deal. It’s a really big deal because when you have people’s money, that’s their energy. That’s like their soul. And I learned some big lessons. I don’t take it lightly at all. There has to be a lot of respect.
You can, like hedge funds and private equity, leverage a lot of other people’s money. There’s a reason that most people are excluded from doing the type of big opportunities that can make four, ten, or a hundred X, because it’s really risky. And most people—I see a lot of people doing crazy things. They shouldn’t be doing crazy things. And it’s been a humbling experience to have to call people and say, “Hey, I’m really sorry this didn’t work, and I’m really sorry that your money is gone.” Unfortunately, that’s happened a lot in the last few years. And it’s part of investing. It’s part of creating net worth. There are going to be losses. There is no straight line.
It’s a roller coaster. And you only understand that—you only get super bald by going through a few of those things, and your hair just goes away because of the stress. And I think people really need to think about that. In general, no matter where you’re at, whether you’ve got a million or two or ten or a hundred, speed kills. I think Keith even probably said that at one point—speed does kill—and people are in way too big of a hurry. What I like is that there’s Chinese and Japanese philosophy on planning, and it’s not based on quarterly reports. It’s based on decades and centuries. And we need to be thinking about that.
In general, our vision needs to expand so that we can see the big picture, where we’re going, where we’re not trying to take shortcuts. And I don’t think we’re really programmed, especially in the United States, to do things where there’s a lot of patience. Most people are just in too big of a hurry for everything. And it’s a huge mistake that I’ll make from time to time, but I definitely made it way too much twenty years ago.
Yeah, one hundred percent. So many good points in there, Damian. And I think investors—the quicker you realize that not everyone bats a thousand, you’re not going to get it right all the time. There are going to be some losses. But let the learning be more important than the loss, right? And then what you gain on the next one is going to be so much larger. It’s going to become exponential. So trying to leverage all of those learning experiences is really key because, to your point, not everything is up and to the right, and life comes at us. There are so many unpredictable things out there.
This is really across asset classes. One of the stories I remind people of—my wife was gifted a nice amount of stock from her dad in Kodak, right, because he lived up in New York. And just overnight, it was devalued. It went down to nothing as digital cameras came out. And that was a blue-chip stock. Every investment advisor out there was recommending it. There was no recourse. There was nothing. We also saw over one hundred eighty-five banks go down just in the past eighteen months. So there is failure at every level in investing.
And I think part of being a great investor is learning a few things. Number one, learning about advanced strategies where we can protect ourselves. We can diversify—not by Wall Street’s version of that—but by looking at different asset classes and things that will mitigate risk, and also setting up infrastructure around our wealth to mitigate some of those losses.
And the last one I’ll mention, which is such an important takeaway, is that so many people not only have their self-worth tied to their net worth, but they’re codependent with it. The same thing happens with relationships—relationships with their spouse or their tenure at a company. The more you can become completely independent and sovereign in how you feel and who you are outside of these external factors, that is really true fulfillment.
Let the learning be more important than the loss.
Yeah. There’s a lot there. And especially now, I’m seeing and feeling like it’s harder for people to find fulfillment. There’s more angst, and this is at all different levels. People feel like they have less and less control. We have a manipulated, completely corrupt monetary system that’s hurting everybody—unless there’s a thing called the Cantillon Effect, where if you’re closest to the money printing, you do very well. If you’re JP Morgan, it’s great for you. But most people are getting hurt by the way our system is set up.
So it’s harder and harder to find fulfillment when most of us are in a state of survival, and it doesn’t really matter how much money you have. Even ultra-high-net-worth people are often stressed. There are different stresses, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that people don’t start in a place of gratitude. They think more is going to somehow make them happier. And there have been studies showing that after a certain level of income or net worth, doubling it doesn’t give you twice as much happiness.
That’s really important. How do you have twice as much happiness? You find things that are more deeply fulfilling, like relationships. I’m in a mastermind called R360, and it’s really mostly about relationships, experience, and longevity. There’s some money talk and business, but it’s really about what I’m going to do while I’m on this planet that’s good for the planet, good for relationships, and good for my heart and soul. And we don’t really think about that.
Most people are focused on how do I get a raise, how do I make more money, how do I flip a house, how do I buy a new syndication, what’s the next tax strategy. And they forget about all this other stuff. One of the things I love about the EQRP community that I started a decade ago—this is our ten-year anniversary this year—is that it brought people together who wanted more freedom. And more freedom opens the space for more fulfillment.
Because if you’re just chasing money all the time, if your money is in someone else’s hands and you don’t have confidence in what you’re doing, you could have millions and millions of dollars, but if it’s sitting with a financial advisor and you’re just hoping the market goes up, that’s not a lot of freedom. There’s a lot of anxiety. Shifting back to fulfillment and making sure it isn’t just based on more money is critical, because that’s an illusion.
I can tell you—from making millions, losing millions, then making tens and hundreds of millions, and helping a lot of people become millionaires through EQRP, precious metals, FrameTec, and other work—that crossing the finish line or getting the gold star isn’t deeply fulfilling. I wrote about this in Reinvented Life, in the chapter called “Success vs. Fulfillment.” People chase success or watch other people’s highlight reels on Instagram or X, and they don’t develop fulfillment through the slower, deeper, calmer things that take longer.
That’s where mastery comes from. It’s the process we go through. That’s fulfilling. The idea of making quick money or hitting a win—that’s success. And I think a lot of people miss the point of life. It’s more about fulfillment and mastery, not the moment you happen to hit the thing.
Yeah, that’s so spot on. And really, we’ve had Charlie as a guest on the show as well, and he really talked about the six forms of capital. Because financial capital is fluid, right? It comes, it goes, it’s energy. But some of these other forms—spiritual capital, emotional capital, intellectual capital—you can always be working on and developing these things. And ironically, it’s almost counterintuitive: as you grow some of those other forms of capital, money actually starts to flow to you.
So it’s quite interesting, but I think people just don’t think about it in that context.
No. And one of the things that Charlie and I have talked about is the holistic nature of everything. When we’re out of balance, people try to have a balanced life, but I really think it’s more about harmony. You’re not going to have— I used to think about this when I was doing some mentoring with Keith like twenty-five years ago. People would try to build a perfect schedule and say, “Okay, I’m going to have an hour of fitness, an hour of faith, an hour of family,” every day. And that’s not how life works.
There are seasons to things, and there’s a harmony where you know that, like, if you’re on your honeymoon, you probably shouldn’t be focused on your finances that day or that week. That’s really about love and relationship and being in harmony with the ebbs and flows. People generally don’t get that, if they ever get it at all, until way late in their life. And I think it’s really valuable to dial into that as early as possible.
That’s also why I think it’s—there’s a book I read called Die With Zero. It was one of the most powerful books, probably the most powerful book I read in 2025. It really made me think about these things. When you’re going for wealth, most people make the mistake of not having experiences early enough. They wait so long, and then they miss the leverage of those experiences over years and decades.
They get to replay them, they feel them throughout their life. Instead, they say, “I need all the money first.” Then they die with all the money. And it’s like, how much of your life did you actually trade for the money? You missed the experiences completely. Unfortunately, that’s very common.
I think it was Boone Pickens who was at UT teaching, and someone said, “I wish I had your money.” And he said, “I’ll trade you. You can have my money, and I’ll take your age. I want to be twenty-one. You can be eighty.” And that really hits. There’s value in youth, and I don’t think most people appreciate that when they’re young. They just take it for granted.
Yeah, one hundred percent. That’s one of the missions of our show: to get people to do the hard work, which is the deep thinking about what you’re trying to get out of life. This holistic wealth is counterintuitive. You could have a thousand dollars or a million dollars in net worth and still be the most fulfilled person on the planet if you have these other forms of capital and that’s your focus.
We see so many corporate executives and others who have a ton of money, but no time, no relationships, no purpose. In fact, sometimes it’s the opposite—their purpose is stepping on others to move ahead. Unfortunately, a lot of the system is like that. So I really appreciate the insights around this, and I encourage people to take this conversation to heart. You’re not going to hear this in too many places, and it comes from real war wounds, growth, and wisdom over the years.
I also really want to talk about what you’re doing at FrameTec, but before we do that, let’s give a quick overview of EQRP for those who aren’t familiar. What is it? How does it work? Why would you use it? Who’s the right fit for it? Let’s start there.
Yeah. So EQRP was this idea I came up with. It’s a different version of a self-directed retirement plan. What’s interesting is that self-directed IRAs and 401(k)s have been around since the seventies, but most people don’t understand what they can actually do with them. If you have control of a self-directed IRA, you can pick your own investments.
What most people still don’t know is that you can do virtually anything inside a retirement account if you’re in charge of it. That’s what EQRP is all about—taking IRAs and 401(k)s and putting them in your hands so you can control what you invest in. A lot of people love real estate. People love gold and silver right now. Bitcoin. EQRP allows people to truly diversify.
We’ve been taught that diversification means stocks, bonds, and international funds, but it’s all paper. True diversification is about different asset classes. EQRP is meant for people who want to take an active role in their investing. It doesn’t mean doing it alone, but it does mean caring enough to learn or apply what you already know instead of handing your money over and hoping the market goes up.
Smoking hopium isn’t a strategy. EQRP is for people who say, “I’m done with that. I’m going to engage and create my wealth.” Who’s going to care about your money more than you do? Loving your money is healthy because it’s energy. If you don’t love it or take care of it, it tends to go away—just like anything else in life.
People misinterpret “the love of money is the root of all evil” and end up sabotaging themselves. There are laws of entropy. If you don’t put energy into something, it decays. Relationships are the same way. Money is the same way. EQRP gives people a way to put energy into their assets, nurture them, and be good stewards of their wealth.
EQRP was created because people were afraid they’d reach a certain age and not have enough, with no control. It empowers them to say, “I’m the pilot of my ship. I’m not riding in the trunk hoping we don’t go off a cliff.” And it’s been powerful to see thousands of people take control, come together, learn, grow, and become more free together.
Yeah, that’s awesome. And when would you use this versus a self-directed IRA?
One of the biggest. So there’s a couple of main differences and the reasons that it’s fantastic. One, if you ever have any leveraged real estate, which is very common, IRAs have a tax called UBIT, unrelated business income tax. That can be a giant tax that you’re exempt from with an EQRP. So that’s a perfect example. A lot of people have self-directed IRAs. They’ve invested in real estate, and nobody told them that when the property is sold, for example, there could be a big tax.
And they don’t realize that, and then they get hit and they say, wait, it’s my IRA, even a Roth self-directed IRA. And so if you’re in an EQRP, you’re exempt. And EQRP gives you even more control because you’re the trustee, which is what most people are, which means you’re in charge. With an IRA, there’s always a custodian, somebody. It’s kind of like having big brother with your retirement account. And so you have different limits, it’s under a different part of the tax code. And so EQRP gives you actual control.
Some people, it scares the crap out of them. Like, I don’t want to be in control of my money. I need somebody to babysit. And that’s okay. But this is a really powerful thing to be able to say, okay, I want to have control of my assets, I want to make decisions. And there are cases where you’re able to take control and physically hold things, for example, like gold and silver. As a trustee, you could hold it. In an IRA, you can never hold your metals yourself.
There’s actually court cases where people have had their retirement accounts, their IRAs, hammered by the court and become disqualified or distributed with taxes and penalties because they said, we want to hold some gold at home. And the court said, yeah, you have to have a custodian involved. So the EQRP is really more about more control, and you’re not getting hammered by some of these taxes that are in place for IRAs.
Yeah. Looking ahead into 2026, where do you think are some of the best asset classes or opportunities to invest in?
I think we’re looking at. And so this kind of goes into what I’m spending most of my time with, which is FrameTec in the construction space. We’re seeing the softening, unsoftened, we’re seeing new home starts, we’re seeing things happening. And what we’re seeing is a really bright future. I mean, there’s a couple of spaces that I’m very familiar with, and I think we’re going to see a lot of momentum. The silver and gold market, I think especially silver, is going to go crazy. It’s going to continue to go crazy because of the shortages, global demand. I mean, you have companies that are going in, like Samsung and Tesla, that are going to mints and miners in Mexico and saying, we want all of your supply.
So I think you’re going to see continuation of that market and that asset class. I think that with all of the crypto support internationally and with the US administration under the Trump administration, there’s a lot of support there. I think you’re going to see that take off again. I think we’re moving towards that. And I think a lot of the companies that are leveraging AI and the technology, like FrameTec, the reason the company is called FrameTec is because it’s high-tech and there’s a lot of technology, a lot of AI, a lot of robotics. The companies that are positioning themselves, even in a company that doesn’t do any type of change like construction, those types of companies are great to either start or be a part of. And it doesn’t have to be X or SpaceX or one of Elon’s companies. There’s a ton. But the companies that are saying, oh, we’re good, they’re going to get obliterated.
They’re going to be like when Peter Diamandis talks about the six Ds and the author of Abundance, when he talks about dematerializing and digitizing, which is what happened to Kodak. If you look around, most of what you see is going to be dematerialized and digitized, including a lot of the people that are doing things. And so looking into the future, those are the types of places to deploy capital and also to be a part of. That’s why I got involved in this, because I saw us solving a huge problem using some different ideas and different technology. Because, like I said, there’s not a whole lot of innovation in this space. The last innovation was 1954 with a nail gun. I mean, beyond that, it’s been basically the same thing for the last 70-plus years. So I think those are the places to focus in terms of the biggest explosive growth in things for probably the next two or three years.
I think we’re going to see some massive moves in those.
Yeah. So tell us, what’s the model of FrameTec?
So FrameTec is a construction solutions platform. And basically what we’ve done is we’ve taken framing as the core. That’s the bottleneck. Why is housing so expensive? Why are there not enough houses? We’re like 8 million houses behind right now in terms of what we need versus what’s available. When you have not enough of something, prices go up. We’re not building enough. We’re not building it.
The quality is falling down. The wood quality is falling down, meaning literally the wood is not even able to withhold the structural standards that are required by laws and regulations. So everything is degrading, and there are less and less people that want to go out and swing a hammer under the sun and the rain and the snow. And so FrameTec, the idea there was how do we take a different way of building framing, which is 92% of housing? It’s all wood framing. How do we do that in a better way? Like not just a 5% better way, but like a 400% better way? So the idea was to build all the pieces. So we get a house or an apartment blueprint, and we build all the wood inside of a plant, and then we put the house up, and it’s basically a perfect house.
It’s a perfectly framed structure, and we do it four times faster. So if you can do things four times faster and you have a perfect product, and by the way, it’s about 99% less waste than a traditional dumpster-full-of-wood type of environment, you’re radically changing the model. And when you do that, it’s going to drive prices down, which creates more freedom for people. That’s why I’m doing this and why many of us are doing this. Because when things aren’t as expensive, it literally creates more freedom. When things get more expensive, it’s more like you’re in shackles, like you’re just stuck. And so the mission here is to keep innovating.
And we started off applying for one patent, got that patent. Now we have four that we’ve received, a couple that have been filed, seven more in the works, probably another dozen to two dozen over the next two years, that we just keep innovating. And that’s the cool part about being involved in the middle of something that’s innovative. It’s growth. And that’s one of the keys, I think, for everybody, is to find something where there’s growth. Because either you’re growing or you’re dying. And it’s where the fulfillment lands, where you get to be a part of a solution. It’s not easy, but it gives meaning to life. When you have a mission, when you get to work with really cool people that are really excited about a mission, you’re not just there going, is it Friday yet? Is it hump day? I hear that crap, Dave, and I go, what do you need, a different life, at least a different job, a different work?
If you’re going, it’s hump day. When I hear that, I hope to God I don’t hear that from my employees, where they go, it’s hump day. And I’m like, do we need to find a different position or a new path for you? Because that just tells me that you’re giving five to get two. You’re trading five days for two. And that’s not any way to live like you should be. There are plenty of ways to reimagine, recreate, and we’re doing that every day. And it’s a wild roller coaster, and it’s really meaningful. And it doesn’t mean that you’re going to always win on these paths where there’s deep fulfillment. You’re disrupting things.
I think it just keeps stair-stepping your growth into a better and bigger version of you. And that’s my hope for everybody, that they find that thing. And again, this comes back. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or you’re making. It’s finding that work. Because as humans, this is one of the big disruptions that’s coming with the AI and the robotics. There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to get disrupted, and where’s their meaning going to come from? Tony Robbins has been talking about this a lot. We get a lot of meaning from our work, the work we do. And if you’re already miserable, you’re going to have a harder time as things get taken away, the work.
So the encouragement is find that thing. Don’t just do something because you’re making a lot of money. You’ll wake up one day and go, wow, I don’t think that was worth it. I just traded all that life. So I get to come and be a part of something that’s inspiring every day with FrameTec. And we’ve got close to 500 investors that are a part of this, and they’re all swimming together. And it’s exciting to be a part of something. It’s meaningful.
You’re not going, is it five o’clock yet? I just feel sad for people that look at their life based on this clock that’s going to give them freedom and let them get out of prison at 5:00 every day.
Yeah, that’s such a great way to kind of tie this back to the earlier part of our conversation and really trying to create purpose and impact in your life, right? That becomes so meaningful that work isn’t work, right? You’re actually getting paid to exist. And it’s actually even more than that, where you’re getting energized from the work that you’re doing. So when it is Friday at 5 o’clock or whenever it is, right, you’re actually energized, and you need that.
And you know, a lot of people refer to working genius or unique ability, right? Everyone has their kind of different things or flow state, right, with Steven Kotler. So trying to find that for yourself, I think, is really important, and certainly doing that in a business. I think entrepreneurs have such a unique ability because the business is really a complete extension of your own nervous system and how you’re feeling. So you can extend that into the business and really drive that as an overall system or a conduit to higher levels of energy and growth.
So it’s definitely something to work on and think about and continue to evolve. But it sounds really exciting what you’re up to, Damion, and I love the combination there of the innovation and really applying that to solving the problem, which is a big problem that you’re trying to solve. So it’s a great tie-in for sure.
I think that that’s one of the things that is really valuable to look for, big problems to be a part of, just part of solving. And it gives you, it’s like type A personalities like me need to be around mountains and oceans and big problems because it gives us meaning. And what’s interesting is when you go through and you practice working on these problems, you practice doing that kind of work, there comes a point where problems and disasters and things that break, there’s like zero concern about them. You just work through them. They don’t scare you anymore. And when you build that kind of thinking around problems, it’s very empowering because you’re no longer afraid of crossing the street. You just go, and you trust yourself to navigate. That’s one of the pieces of advice I would give myself when I’m asked, well, what would you tell 20-year-old Damion? Fail faster. Get used to it.
Let go of what people are thinking and build that muscle. Build that muscle so that you can move freely through life without the concern. I think that that’s one of the most powerful things that people can have, and you can develop that at any age. It just gets harder as you get older and you have a lot more memory of trauma.
Yeah, that was just going to be my next question to you, actually. If you could give only one piece of advice, would that be it? Would that be your biggest piece of advice to the listeners in terms of how they could accelerate their own wealth journey?
It’s putting yourself in uncomfortable things that are not familiar. People tend to find a nest that’s cozy and safe and secure. And what we realize when we’re putting ourselves in uncomfortable things, going to a seminar, investing in something, is a couple of things. One, when you make mistakes, it virtually never kills you. It’s a small number of things. If you’re going to practice skydiving and you’re going to reinvent it without a parachute, yeah, that’s probably going to kill you. I mean, I’ve had skydiving accidents and even used my reserve chute, so I understand that process.
But that process of going and expanding yourself and then realizing it’s not going to kill you, it’s empowering. And you wake up with a freedom of trusting yourself deeper. And that’s like, I always try to convince people that freedom, financial freedom, is not cash or cash flow. It’s confidence. It’s the other C. People think it’s a series of net worth or passive income or something. It’s not. It’s confidence in your ability. So when you have the confidence and trust yourself to go do things, make things happen, that’s what freedom is.
But you don’t get there until you make the mistakes and you trust yourself and you trust that it’s not going to kill you. But you can’t get there until you’ve actually gone out and done the uncomfortable things. So I was talking to a friend of mine, and she was talking about how she’s gone and started doing improv. And at first, she was trying to figure out any reason not to go. It freaked her out. Now she has a good time with it. But that actually terrifies me. I do a lot of public speaking, but the idea of improv, I’m thinking, okay, I can be funny sometimes. At least I think I’m funny. But doing improv, wow.
I mean, doing stuff like that that’s so far out of our comfort zone is a very valuable thing to develop the freedom and trust that most people don’t generally have. We don’t start off with it where we just trust ourselves to go and do anything and not worry about the consequences in terms of being killed. But there’s a primal instinct about judgment and being ostracized from a tribe and all these things, and we have to get over that as soon as possible if we’re truly going to be free and move freely in life.
Yeah, such great insights there. I love that concept of financial freedom being cash confidence. Because look at how many uber-successful people we know that are centi-millionaires, billionaires, that have actually lost everything and then come back and not only gained it back, but even 10x, right? And that’s all because of thinking and that cash confidence, right? Because you have relationships, you have knowledge, you have skills, you can always make money and apply it once you know that, right? So that is really the ultimate, and I think the biggest hurdle for people trying to overcome.
The reason that most people don’t have cash confidence is that a lot of us grew up at times when, frankly, money was scarce, right? And we have this kind of scarcity mindset mentality that we’re all trying to overcome from our childhood, right? And always being conservative and all of this. But what that does is it creates linear thinking, and it doesn’t put you on this path of gratitude and abundance where you can think bigger and do bigger things.
Because a great way to look at that is to ask yourself, whatever the situation is, have I figured it out up until now? Have things always worked out? Yes. Have I always had a roof over my head? Yes. Have I always been able to eat? Yes. You’ve always been able to figure things out. And so looking backwards upon the successes that we’ve all had is a great way to build some of that cash confidence.
So really great takeaway there, Damion, as well as a bunch of the others today. I appreciate your time. If anyone wants to connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, either on the EQRP side or FrameTec, or connect, what is the best way?
I think the best way to find me directly is on X. Just look up Damion Lupo and you’ll find me. The companies we talked about, EQRP and FrameTec, are pretty straightforward. There’s great stuff online about them. You can get copies of the books I’ve written about things like the EQRP. But I love hearing from people that have listened to these conversations, and I love hearing how we can stay connected on X. I like X a lot because I think it’s the last bastion of actual freedom where you can talk and connect and not be censored by things, at least in the United States. So I’m always happy to connect with people there and see what they’re doing and what they’re talking about.
Yeah, awesome. Thanks again for dropping so many pearls of wisdom today. I appreciate all of the time and insights, and we’ll be in touch soon.
Sounds good. Thanks, Dave.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com. That’s pantheoninvest.com.