Jennifer (00:00:01) – Welcome to episode nine of season 17 of The Growing Empire Show. Today I’m here with my special guest, Damien Lupo, a remarkable entrepreneur, real estate investor, and author who is inspiring. Journey from adversity to triumph resonates with millions globally. With a portfolio boasting over 70 companies, Damian’s resilience and innovative spirit have positioned him as a driving force in the entrepreneurial landscape. From soaring riches in his 20s to experiencing rock bottom at 30, including losing a $20 million portfolio and facing homelessness. Damian’s story is one of unwavering determination and reinvention, and he did this all through the world of real estate. So I’m super excited to get to talk to Damian today, so make sure you stay tuned.

Speaker (00:00:47) – Welcome to Growing Empires, hosted by real estate entrepreneur and trusted investment advisor Jennifer DeJesus. Growing empires provides insight to building wealth through passive income, producing real estate investments for those who want to build and manage a more profitable real estate portfolio.

Jennifer (00:01:08) – Welcome Damian to the growing empire. So I’m so glad that you’re here.

Damion (00:01:12) – Great to be here.

Damion (00:01:13) – Thanks for having me, Jen.

Jennifer (00:01:14) – Well, let’s kick off this episode with you, sharing a little bit about your background and the work that.

Jennifer (00:01:18) – You’re doing now.

Damion (00:01:20) – background. I’ve done a lot of bizarre twists and turns in the entrepreneurial space. I’ve started and run over 70 companies the last 35 years, starting when I was 11. And obviously 11 was not a big success, but it did solve a problem. And and that’s that’s what I’ve realized about myself, is that I’m, I’m built to solve problems, as any entrepreneur really has in their blood, is a, a need, a propensity to solve problems. And I got myself into a lot of problems when my ego took over those problem solving ventures. And we can talk about some of those stories and things. But ultimately, that led me to the space where I’m at now, where I’m in the middle of solving a huge problem in the in the housing and construction space, disrupting the construction industry. And what seems like an overnight success is, is really something that took 35 years to build all the the different thinking around business and, and really the temperament and the and the being.

Damion (00:02:11) – It’s kind of like the lottery thing. If you give somebody $1 billion, they’re going to lose it in a year or two. Like this is what happens with everybody because they don’t have a their temperature for wealth is not ready. Same thing with with running or a giant business. Like you really have to build yourself into that. And that’s that’s what I’ve done over the last 35 years is is build myself. And I think that that’s the big secret. You can’t just go into something. You have to build yourself into that thing.

Jennifer (00:02:33) – Awesome. Well, today we’re going to talk about changing your luck. And how do you go from being broke to a millionaire and how real estate is a part of that. I’ve asked Damien to join me to share his wealth of knowledge you’ve gained throughout the years on the subject, so we’re going to jump right in. I am super intrigued to talk to you about the construction portion of this, but let’s just start out with a little bit about, you know, your journey.

Jennifer (00:02:57) – So you went from riches in your 20s to rock bottom in your 30s, right? And now backwards. Right. So, you know, and I find that to be truly remarkable is that you can go through these life changing events and still come out on top and, you know, revive yourself. So can you share with me and with my listeners the some of the key takeaways that you had from those moments? And you know what? What got you through those challenging times? And how did you figure out how to rebuild and multiply your wealth?

Damion (00:03:31) – Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting because when you started asking the question, my mind went to Robert Downey Jr and I. And the reason I think that happened is because I was I was reading something on some clickbait that I was, I was reading yes yesterday. And and it’s we oftentimes see these celebrities that have gone through problems. They’ve lost their their success. They end up in rehab. They, you know, they OD, they die. We see all that kind of stuff.

Damion (00:03:53) – We see people come back like he’s a great example of somebody that hit rock bottom in a different way. But we I don’t think we notice or we hear a lot about sort of day to day, just average people that are not on people magazine. And and that happens like when I after in 2008, I had run made millions of dollars. I was in my 20s. I had my Ferrari. I was I thought I was very important and lost it all. And I mean, I lost all the money. The last 20, $25 million ended up -5 million. Lost my house, my dog, my girlfriend. So it’s kind of like a country song. And definitely I mean, it really was. And on the other side of that part of the process was I wrote a book called Reinvented Life, and when people there were a number of people that read that book and they came to me and they said, I thought I was the only one. And it made me laugh when I thought about it for a second because I’m thinking, wow, no, no, so many people have gone through these things.

Damion (00:04:41) – We just don’t tend to talk about it because we’re embarrassed or it hurts. We don’t want people to know. And so in this process of making millions, losing, I mean, I’ve done this several times where I’ve lost everything. The first time I thought I was going to be a stock genius, and I learned what margin was. And that was kind of an interesting thing, losing all my money in about 20 minutes. And I was like, okay, I guess I’m starting over. Wow. That sucked. But the the real estate one was was interesting because it took years to build. And when I was acting like a a gardener, when I was buying real estate and I was, I was helping people to, to buy those homes, using me as the financing. Basically it was rent to own kind of thing. I was I was doing a long, slow gardening farmer type of business. And it was it, it worked. It was a lot of work. It was really hard.

Damion (00:05:26) – There was no get rich quick. And then interest rates went down and I was like, wow, I’m actually really I feel like I’m really rich. But then it got to my head and and the problem was, I thought I knew everything. I thought I was ten feet tall and bulletproof and and so 2008 my I got my ass handed to me and, and the universe said, no, you’re not that smart. You’re not that good. And you got you started. Well, maybe you were always focusing more on you than than other people. And so on the other side of this, getting through this part of your question, what how do you get through that? Well, I had to spend a couple of years for me, digging down into the truth through a process of it was kind of a coaching therapy with with a therapist in Texas. And we asked one. Question for two years. And that question is what the book reinvented. Life was based on it, and the question was, what is true? So what I realized when I went through that process every week, going deeper and deeper into my own truth.

Damion (00:06:17) – The truth was, I am meant to teach things that I’ve done. I’m meant to go out there not to go to some school. I mean, I went to college and got thrown out because I started a bookstore on campus and they said, you’ve literally put the bookstore on campus out of business. So obviously I’m not meant to go to learn in an ivory tower. I was, I believe, from this process. I was meant to go and do things, learn from those things, have the wisdom of the experience, and then teach. So that’s that’s what I came out on the other side of this thing with was this, this truth. Like, this is what I’m supposed to do, and I’m meant to teach people and find ways to create financial freedom, not just by saying, hey, I’m Dave Ramsey, get out of debt. There’s way more to it than just that. That’s not enough. And I’m and there’s and it’s it’s hard. Like creating financial wealth is not easy. It’s not something you do in five minutes.

Damion (00:07:04) – It’s not something you will yourself by saying, I’m going to law, attract myself to wealth like that doesn’t happen. You have to actually do things. Yeah. So so that’s that’s the last decade was doing all the work, grinding and taking everything from the previous 25 years and compiling it and then continuing to grow and that that the secret is literally deciding to it’s can I continuous and never ending improvement. It’s a term a Japanese term that that’s what this has always been. And it’s and you add can I into a lot of work on yourself and that’s, that’s the secret. And what I found, Jen, is that most people don’t want to do the work. They just want the outcome. And that never, ever, ever, ever works. But where we see this, this whole like this messaging in society that says if you just if you just will it or you just beg it or you take it or whatever, it’s going to happen, that’s not how it works. And I mean, I’m 100% certain of that.

Damion (00:07:57) – There are no exceptions to that. But I can tell you that anybody, including a college dropout, that I’m not I’m not exceptionally smart or anything. There’s people are way smarter than me. I just happen to be out there and grind and ground, I guess ground longer and harder than most and and just wouldn’t quit. And I think that that’s a distinctive difference, that if you look at people that have made, it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be the Olympics, could be Michael Phelps. They don’t quit. There’s a time to quit when you’re literally still making buggy whips and and, you know, Teslas are coming out and you’re like, okay, maybe I should quit this. This is dumb. But for the most part, people just quit too early. And that’s because they don’t want pain. And pain is a thing. Like Joe Rogan said, he goes, I get up every day and I go and I jump in my cold plunge, and his cold plunge is way colder than mine.

Damion (00:08:41) – His is like 30 something degrees. He says. I do the thing that hurts first thing and then everything is easy. After that I’m going to go out there and I’m going to force pain and and I’m going to deal with it. And then after that, I know that there’s nothing that’s going to be harder or more painful than that thing I already did and I chose to do every morning. And I just think that people have decided that they’re not going to go in the cold plunge. They all want a hot shower. That’s that’s why most people are struggling because they’re too afraid of pain. And pain is just part of the process of life.

Jennifer (00:09:09) – Sure, I couldn’t agree more. So let’s talk about your the early phases of your journey. So the businesses that you owned or businesses that you are a part of that created the initial. Well, right. What were they? Were they any of them involved in real estate? Were they stock companies. What were they tech companies.

Damion (00:09:27) – Yeah, the in the 2000 I like the very beginning of the real estate stuff for me was it was actually Christmas.

Damion (00:09:33) – It was it was a new year, 1999. So I broke into real estate in the 90s, which is really funny by like 12 hours. And I bought a house on a credit card, which is a really dumb idea. And, and that was how I was going to get involved because I didn’t have any money. I had I had a lot of curiosity, and I had ambition and a vision. I wanted to be rich. I had read a couple of books that influenced this, which is really funny. One most people have heard about, I think a rich dad, poor dad by the purple tornado. The other one was Donald Trump’s Art of the deal book, and I was like, oh, this is so cool. And this is like Trump, the real estate guy, so forget about the politics. It was really funny. I was I was like, this is where all the money is. It’s real estate. So I bought this house and and then I said, okay, I got the house.

Damion (00:10:15) – Now what the heck do I do? I have no idea what I’m going to do have don’t have any money. So I just started living at Home Depot and learned how to electrocute myself and get high off paint fumes, because I didn’t know you’re supposed to open the windows. And I fell off the roof and blew out the plumbing and flooded. I mean, I did everything wrong. That was the beginning, though. That’s I mean, I just got into it. I, like, went into the line of fire and and then I said, okay, this is, this is interesting about another house and these were, these were creative financing houses. So people will often say, I don’t have any money, I can’t do it. And they’re brain stops. I said, I’m going to do this, how do I do it? And I got creative and took over mortgages and that that led to a couple more houses in the next four months. And it was interesting because I played a game called Cash Flow in April of 2020, and I was like, this is a cool game.

Damion (00:11:00) – I should do this whole thing on myself. Basically, I was analyzing my own finances, and when I did that, I realized I was about 30 days. We’re having to file bankruptcy.

Jennifer (00:11:08) – Oh my God.

Damion (00:11:09) – Oh, crap, I have. I have like three houses, 3 or 4 houses at that time. And I realized I wasn’t doing the thing I needed to do, which was I needed to sell them. I need to actually bring. It’s easy to buy things, it’s easy to spend money, it’s hard, and you have to do things. And this is my own financial, this is my my wealth. Temperature. Like I hadn’t cranked. I needed to turn the number up. I was stuck keeping myself at a certain level, and I needed to adjust that and that. That ultimately led me to returning phone calls to the people that wanted to buy the houses that flipped, like the switch got flipped, because the freak out moment happened when I was like, bankruptcies coming. And not only did I turn those houses, but I bought eight more in the next 30 days.

Damion (00:11:47) – And literally on paper was getting close to becoming a millionaire. And it was really funny because that was just a mental switch that happened. And I was like, oh wow, now I’m in flow. And so I from there I went and bought 150 houses over the next five years, and that’s where the wealth came from. It was it was just buying those houses and then it got bad because my ego took over. But that was, that was the there were a number of businesses inside of that that were running all those houses, you know, being being acquired and the portfolio being built. But it was really basic, you know, three, three bedroom, two bath houses that I just did a lot of. And I listened to people that had done it before me. I didn’t try to make everything up, you know, I tweaked things as I went, but I think I was dumb enough or smart enough, not sure which to not try to be smarter than the people on stage and the people that had actually done it.

Damion (00:12:34) – I just did what they told me to do. And I think a lot of people get in the way of themselves by saying, oh, I’ve got a better way to do this, even though the person has been doing it for 30 years. It’s like, no, I’m smarter because I’m 20. Usually a really good idea.

Jennifer (00:12:46) – So how did you educate yourself when you were in that initial buying stage? Like, you know, what made you make the first purchase and then what made you keep purchasing? Like, what were you what were you listening to? What were you reading? What was your mindset? Were you going to investor groups? What was happening during that time period?

Damion (00:13:05) – Well, there are a couple of things. So one, I was not listening to to people that I’d listened to before. I wasn’t listening to friends or family or anybody. I just basically isolated myself, put myself in a in a space of seminars where people were doing things and quite frankly, a lot of seminars, most people aren’t doing things.

Damion (00:13:20) – It’s like 80, 90, 95% of most people in most seminars aren’t actually doing anything. They’re there for the crack cocaine high of being at the seminar. But there are. But you sort of think that everybody’s doing it in the beginning. You’re like, oh man, everybody’s doing it. They’re all buying eight houses a month, and I’m just behind and. And so if you can sort of trick yourself, which is what I did, I went to these things and, and just said, wow, okay, this these are all the people and they’re all making it. I’m going to go do it. So that’s what I was surrounding myself with. In addition, I was I was reading the books that the philosophies of guys like Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins. It’s funny back that that month that I started that first seminar, I also listened to a Tony Robbins program called Personal Power two, and it was that moment that I decided I was I was not going to eat beef. So it’s a sort of strange twist.

Damion (00:14:02) – And I just started eating beef again. So probably if you’re vegan, you’re hating me right now. But I for 24 years, the things I did in 99 and 2000 stuck. And they created a lot of shifts and changes. So I was just surrounding myself completely absorbing through osmosis. And this is why it’s so, so freaking powerful to choose who’s going to be around you. Like literally your partner, your mate, your spouse, your friends, and and really, you’re going to become those people in every way. And we’ve heard this. You’re the average of the five people. I mean, not just not just in money, but like how much you make, how fit you are, your integrity. If you’re around a bunch of con artists, you’re gonna end up in prison. And I mean, like, all these things happen and we choose it. We choose who are around. Most people by default end up spending time with people they’ve always spent time with, and they wonder why their future is not different than their past.

Damion (00:14:48) – It’s like, because nobody around you is doing anything different, so you’re all going to have the same future. And that’s that’s what I did. I consciously chose to kind of blank slate myself and, and say, I’m going to choose consciously who’s going to be around, what’s going to be around the the triggers and the tokens that are going to inspire me or, or push me instead of saying, I’m just going to stay in the same environment, I’m not going to I don’t accept poverty as a reality. And and sometimes it looks a little delusional. But that’s how you break through your own temperature.

Speaker (00:15:21) – The episode will continue in just a moment.

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Jennifer (00:16:23) – You’re saying so many key things here. And, you know, one of the things that I’m picking up on is you were talking about, you know, just the everyday changes in the pain, specifically the pain. And I think that keeps people from actually getting off the ledge and actually investing in real estate to begin with. And not that it’s painful, but it’s the fear. It’s the fear of what could go wrong that prevents people from literally doing anything.

Jennifer (00:16:48) – So most of the world live paycheck to paycheck or corporate job to corporate job because they don’t know any other way, and they’re not willing to do what it takes to go out there and strive for something different. They’re not willing to put the work in, they’re not willing to put the time in, and they’re not willing to take the chances and have a little bit of risk, you know, just to be able to grow and to do things that are financially rewarding. So that’s really it was really a key thing that I picked up on there that I completely agree with.

Damion (00:17:21) – There’s something that’s interesting about this whole idea of pain and fear and hesitation. What we’re doing is we’re really tiptoeing safely to death’s door, and we’re going to get there and we’re going to we’re going to have an experience of hell on earth when we meet the person that we could have been. And that’s that’s the most dangerous thing when people will say, I can’t do this. The thing that makes me so sad and so frustrated.

Damion (00:17:41) – The amount of times I’ve heard people say, well, I can’t do this. I can’t take a risk because I have kids and I literally want to shake him, slap and punch him in the face and like, knock some sense into him because that’s, that’s the that’s the worst thing. If my parents, if I had ever heard my parents say and I and I actually think this is part of what happened with my dad, he hesitated because he was like, I don’t want to take risks because of my family. And that’s embarrassing to me. It’s like, yeah, but you literally held out your you’re the only humans are the only species that lives up to half its potential. Like, you don’t see a tree that says, I’m going to I’m going to grow halfway up. But humans do this, and a lot of it has to do with our our resistance to wanting to be judged. I mean, reality is there’s pain. You stub your toe, it’s painful, lose money, you make a mistake, there’s pain and and none of that stuff kills you.

Damion (00:18:24) – But what kills you is regret. I mean, it literally destroys you energetically, spiritually. It destroys you. And that that was one of the lessons that I got. It was a warning right before my dad passed away ten years ago, he and I sat down and and he knew he was he was about to pass away. He was dying of cancer. And he said to me, he goes, you know, there were so many things that I wanted to do. And so I could just like I took the first off, we started crying and I was like, this sucks. This is like regret just burning into into my soul. Like, I never forgot that. And it it really, it pushed me and in a weird way, inspired me to help as many people as possible never have that that conversation or that experience. And we do that because we’re afraid. I think, primarily of judgment. Judgment is painful. Like we don’t want like everybody’s feelings are very, very soft these days.

Damion (00:19:08) – And we don’t want to we don’t I mean, it’s true. It’s like, you know, you say something and somebody is offended and it’s like, I just think it’s been very easy for a long time. In general, we’re not going through the Great Depression. We’re not, you know, we’re not in the middle of a world war at the moment. And, and people have gotten very soft. And so they tend to hesitate and, and it’s really sad because, like, I grew up in Alaska and I’ve been to Africa and those are two places where you can literally have mistakes, cost you your life because something eats you. But people act as if like, I literally had mooses, you know, chased me and I had to dodge polar bears and like, like I’ve had those experiences. Most people don’t, but they act like there’s something in the bushes that’s going to come eat them. Called a mistake. We’re taught when we’re kids. I mean, everybody knows this. If you make a mistake, if you make 50% wrong, you are a loser.

Damion (00:19:53) – You flunk out. You’re you’re you’re a terrible person. In reality, if you get 50% wrong and you got 50% right in the real life, you’re either a gold medalist, a Hall of Famer, or a billionaire. Like that’s reality. Like that’s that is what happens. And so we’re from our birth. We’re literally programmed the wrong way about this whole mistake thing. And then we get really wound up about the judgment because we were so used to people judging us, and it holds us back from our potential. And then we wonder why we’re so depressed, why we’re on all these freaking antidepressants. It’s, I think it has a lot to do with we’re not really on purpose. We’re not. We don’t have a mission. We’re hesitating. We’re trying to play it safe. Like my parents told me to become an accountant or an engineer. I mean, can I look at it myself and go, would the world have been better off? No, I probably would have been on Zoloft or some other antidepressant, something, because I would be so miserable.

Damion (00:20:41) – That is not why I’m here. I’m here to disrupt things. I’m here to build things. And and everybody’s here for a reason. And it is not to play safe. It is not to play safe. But that is what we’re taught. And and it’s just infuriating. So, I think there’s an opportunity for people to pivot and past the place of feeling like they’re going to be eaten because nothing is going to eat you. Basically, your mistakes, losing money, you’re just you’re going to learn. You’re either going to win or you’re going to learn. And the problem is people go, well, I don’t want to lose and you’re not losing. You’re learning. But people go, oh, I’m going to lose money. Now. You just learned something not to do. And then you go and you go make it. You create it. It’s something you can make up out of thin air. And I think people just need to maybe, maybe twist their, their thinking a little bit and, and everything can change.

Jennifer (00:21:23) – If I had to ask you to summarize what your real estate investing journey has taught you over the years, what would you summarize that as?

Damion (00:21:33) – Well, it’s this is a lesson for business and real estate, but everything takes longer. It costs more than you think, and you’re not that smart. there things are changing there. So what’s interesting is I’ve watched a lot of people, including myself at times, get really wound up about things changing, and they go, well, if we could just keep it consistent, if we could follow this path. And that’s just not how the world is. It’s getting faster where it’s changing quicker. We’re accelerating the acceleration of everything. And when I got stuck, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the same thing and print money. That’s I mean, that can be a really useful tool, but people get really wound up and this is how it has been. So it should be. Nobody gives a crap. The market doesn’t care what you think it should do. And and so the lesson there is be nimble and you have to you have to learn how to learn faster.

Damion (00:22:19) – I think when, when people go to college and they go, I have these degrees and I’m like, yeah, but you’re literally all of that’s literally irrelevant now. And and they go, what? And like it’s just it’s just it doesn’t matter. You have to learn because things are changing and and it’s kind of like the people in the last ten years that did a lot of investing in apartments when interest rates were 3 or 4%, and now they’re 7 or 8%, that the world has changed and the model doesn’t work. And but people are holding on to it and I and so the biggest lesson is you have to keep learning when people say, well, I already know all this stuff. Like I’m going to personal development programs now. And I’ve been doing this for close to 30 years, and I go to them over and over. I read the same books I’ve literally read Thinking Grow Rich and The Richest Man in Babylon and all these core books dozens and dozens of times. Why? Because I’m always learning.

Damion (00:23:06) – Because I’m always changing. The person that’s reading the book is different than the one that read it last time. And and that’s the thing that puts me ahead of most other people is because I’m willing to keep disrupting myself. That’s the biggest thing that you got to do. If you’re stuck in the past, you’re going to get run over and and that’s that’s the lesson. It’s it’s being able to adapt faster and more open than the rest of the masses. And then you really don’t even have any competition.

Jennifer (00:23:32) – We talked about some mistakes or things that you’ve learned, like lessons that you learned. Let’s talk about some of the successes. Right. What were some of your big wins or your big moments that if you could teach everybody to do, you would.

Damion (00:23:45) – You know, it’s funny. One of my biggest wins was that living in my car was not going to kill me like that. I was like, oh, this is really cool. And here’s, here’s why. It’s like I always go back to these, these whatever.

Damion (00:23:54) – It’s like, it looks terrible. It’s a failure, it’s a mistake. But I just grew so much like the winds. As much as they’re fun, they’re moments in time. It’s like crossing the finish line. And. And I realized that that’s not the wind. The wind is the process. The wind is the actual race. The wind is the training before the race. The race is just this moment where you’re like, it’s like when I when I did my my black belt test 20 years ago this year, back in 2004, I asked my sensei. I said, so am. Am I ready to test? Like, what do you think? Am I going to pass? And he’s like, he laughed at me and I was like, why are you laughing? And he said, you’re already a black belt. This is just for fun. Just go out there and have a good time. And I was like, wow, really? And and that was because I had fallen in love with the process.

Damion (00:24:31) – So the big win is falling in love with the process. The big win was not the moment that I had a $250,000 check. I still remember I was flying back from Europe and let me tell you, the winds are fun, but it’s fleeting. It’s kind of like buying stuff on Amazon. Yay! Click buy and then it shows up and you’re like, Cool Christmas. And then that thing goes into your storage unit because you have a bunch of crap in your house. So the the process of building this stuff where you fall in love and you get lost in it, like I’ve been lost in my building process with frame tech for the last couple of years, and that’s just been this incredibly fun thing. The moment it goes online, that will be cool. The moment that it sells, that, you know, there’s this multibillion dollar event that will be cool. But what I’m having so much fun with is the process. So like the moments of success, like when I came back from Europe and I had a closing and I got a check for 250,000, that was net profit.

Damion (00:25:18) – Like that was in one day. Boom. Wow. Magic 250. Most people, 60% of the population doesn’t even have $600. And here I made like 250,000 seemingly in a day. And that was very cool. And then somehow I spent the 250,000 in about 20 minutes. I don’t know how that happens, but it did. And and so the success moments are fleeting. Like the oh, look, the trophy, the trophy is gone. I melted it down and spent it like I don’t know what happened. So that so, you know, the moments of making the money are really cool that some of the biggest success for me, truly, though, have been the moments where I’ve seen people that have come into my organization and being able to see them grow, see them happy, their life changing, that’s that’s success to me. I’ve you get past like all the shiny objects where it’s like it’s it’s cool, like a new car is cool. But I remember that Ferrari or the Porsche or I was like, wait, you know, it’s really cool giving somebody a car.

Damion (00:26:11) – What’s really cool is hiring somebody and watching them over a period of years grow into a position where you get to say, you’re the new CEO, you’re running this and I’m behind you like I support you that success. So if you’re going to talk about a moment in time that’s really cherished, it’s it’s when people are elevated or their lives change by as a side effect, our lives get so much better when we focus on other people. And I think the more people trust that, and the more people focus on that, the more that your life is is a joy instead of the struggle, because you get to see other people. And that’s why we’re here. I truly believe we’re here to serve and elevate and make other people’s lives better. So those have been the favorite moments. Doing the things and watching the people and watching them grow. I, I ended up being a side effect of all that. And the money is the side effect. People chase money and that’s the dumbest thing ever. Chasing a mission, chasing a purpose, and making other people’s lives richer and better and more fulfilled.

Damion (00:27:06) – There’s no doubt your life is going to be better. And a funny thing money ends up flowing and this is not like the Law of attraction. This is the law of hard ass work. And when you do that in the right direction, not going and digging a ditch, that hard work alone is not the right thing. Hard work with a mission, with a focus and and then, wow, all this money is here. And you’re like, How’d that happen? It happened because you’re on purpose, not because you’re just having a good time. Like, passion is not the key that that and I don’t know who says this. A lot of people say it. I couldn’t disagree more that if you just say, well, it’s got to be my passion. No it doesn’t. It has to be something that is meaningful. And and sometimes it’s going to be really fun and sometimes it’s going to be freaking hard and painful and you’re going to hate it. That’s that’s all part of the purpose. That’s part of a mission sometimes, and that the passion can be there.

Damion (00:27:52) – But I think people get really twisted nowadays. They see all these things on Instagram or these different reels and they go, oh, I’ve got to follow my passion. You’re going to follow your passion into the poorhouse and you’re going to be homeless, and it’s not going to be a good story. So maybe that’s not the only thing you should be focusing on.

Jennifer (00:28:05) – So thank you for listening to part one of my two part episode with my special guest, Damion Lupo. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and make sure you stay tuned for part two. And until next time, take care!

Speaker (00:28:20) – For more information about how Jennifer can help you plan, develop and manage a strong real estate investment portfolio, visit Growing empires.com.

You can learn more about our special guest here.