Episode 177 - Damion Lupo

You're listening to the only place on the internet that offers the perfect blend of high-quality premium cigars and cryptocurrency news and commentary. Welcome to cigars and crypto. Now here's your host, Invest New York. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this episode of cigars and crypto. You know who it is. It's your boy New R. Let me tell you. I am always excited to have new

and interesting guests with me today. And today I have both. His name is Mr. Damian Lupo. Damian, how are you, sir? I'm great, man. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. It's so pleasure to have you here, man. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. I'm really glad that you're here. I am not one to mix words. Let's jump right in. Damian, tell

me about yourself. Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I couldn't help it. Man, I was 11, 11 years old. I started a business. I hired my parents to drive me around and buy and sell Nintendo games. And that was because they told me we were broke. We couldn't afford it. So I said, well, I'll figure it out. And that's that's really what an entrepreneur does. You know,

you've got your businesses and it's about a hustle of grind and finding problems and you solve them. So I've been doing that. I've started 50 plus companies. I think I've made Damian every mistake that's out there, but I'm sure that that's not true. It just feels like it's sometimes because after decades of beating my head into the wall and breaking walls and breaking my head. I

just I've gotten to a place where I've realized that you can make a ton of money. But if you don't have a deeper purpose behind it, it's it's pretty shallow. And I tell you that from experience of creating a $20 million portfolio from zero in five years and then taking that 20 and turning into negative five and 12 months. So going through that process taught me

that there's really something beyond just the money. Because if it's just the money, it'll never be enough. It's got to be there's got to be a deeper why. And and that's what I found on the other side of that $25 million loss was there's a there's a reason I'm doing what I'm doing. And it's called financial bondage breaking. My mission is to is to free a

million people from financial bondage and. And you know, quite frankly, I think the money is the modern day slavery. It's that's that's what in shackles people and and there's another way around it. But it takes literacy and it takes people that are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom and the narrative that's out there. That's keeping people trapped inside of a bunch of smoking mirrors. Yeah, this

is going to be a great episode. I can see where this is going. I would like this. So you went from 20 to negative five. And you pulled yourself back out of that hole. What was it about that experience at the bottom that you identified was the reason you got to get there. And what decisions did you make to pull yourself out? Because I think a

lot of people. A lot of people want to own an operator business. A lot of people want to be self sufficient. But they don't know how. And I think the one thing that stops most people is fear. And me personally, if I lost 25 million dollars, bro. Fear extreme fear would set in at the bottom like, okay, now what do I do? So what did you

do when you got there? Well, here's here's what I'll tell you to start with is that that was the third time I'd lost everything. And and the first couple of times one was was about 10,000 bucks. Everything I had it built up over five years and work in full time. While I was in high school, second time was about a hundred thousand. And this time was

extreme. And the reason that happened was because if we're not getting the lesson, the universe God just keep giving a bigger opportunity for us to get it because we're too numb and dumb and stubborn to really get the lesson. So what I mean, the first thing I learned was how to blame people. And so when I learned how to blame people, I kept digging. And that's

one of the problems with most of the of society is where we're used to blaming. It's you look at the news and it's about Republicans or the Democrats or or or or California or New York, or text somebody else's fault. And that was I did the same thing. 2008, I was blaming everybody. My partner, no good dirty rotten scoundrel. It was Obama. It was Bush. Somebody

else's fault. And what I finally did is I said, you know what? Actually, this was one person's fault. That's me. I'm the one that made all the choices I decided as my responsibility. And it was in that moment. And it wasn't necessarily this big epiphany. It took years of doing deep work with a therapist with a coach with people that would mirror back what I was

saying. And then I'd see what I was saying. And I'm like, oh my God, that came out of my mouth. And so it was it was really a lot of learning going deep inside and peeling back the onion. That's what shifted. That's when I stopped digging when I said, okay, it's me. And what am I going to do? they don't blame other people. They might do

able to identify your own flaws and you need to be open to feedback from others about the things that they see so that you can build upon them. Now, I don't necessarily take everything that people say to me is the gospel because that's just not who I am. But I'm always accepting of feedback from people good or bad right because it's important. And I love to

hear that you believe in accountability, self accountability and being able to say okay, I dropped the ball on this. This was on me. Now I need to fix it you know. So we talked about how you got where you are today up and down three times right. But I want to go back to the point the question that I asked before other than the accountability piece.

What did you learn from the last fall because it's important when you fall to pick yourself back up right. I believe I have a phrase that I like to use falling forward right I'm going to fall right. It's inevitable all children fall right. But they get up and they take another step and they may fall forward but they're further than they were. The first time they

fell. So when you picked yourself back up, what did you identify as the first step you needed to take other than self accountability. I remember the first thing after I just I stopped denying that the reality was there. And the first step was asking for help. The truth is that success is a terrible teacher. And what I see right now is a lot of people being

very successful whether it's in real estate or crypto or in a lot of ways. People think that they're brilliant because they've made a ton of money or they're successful. And the reality is we're in a rising it's a rising tide. And that has to do with a lot of really stupid people. And I say stupid people because they're making stupid decisions at the Federal Reserve and

these places that have the ability to print money and manipulate and steal from the entire population. So what's happening. The thing that I learned was that you know what I'm responsible. But I don't know that much. And when I remember thinking I knew a lot when I was 20 and teaching people when I was selling insurance and I was this financial advisor and I looked back

and I'm like, God, I hope people didn't listen to me that close because I didn't know Jack. But I thought it. So it's it's really being humble enough to say, you know, I know what I know. But I there's a way more that I don't know. And and to me, it's the one of the learning pieces was to make sure that I have boulder grayer teams

around me that can give me perspective that I trust enough and I pay enough that I'll pay attention because a lot of times we have people that are around us. But we're not paying that enough so we don't pay attention. And so I often laugh at people I'm like, well, who are you listening to? They're like, well, my cousin, my friend, my spouse. And I was

like, what are you doing? Well, you know, I don't want to pay that advisor or that coach or that mentor because it's expensive. And I'm like, man, the cheapest advice, the most expensive advice you get is free. And because you're going to follow it because you're cheap. And and that's one of the mistakes I see people making. And so it was really going. It was going

through this thing and investing a massive amount of my resources, what I had left into me. And shifting and saying, okay, what do I not know? What am I not seeing? What am I missing? And that was a different question than I was asking before when I was making millions of dollars. It was it was being humble enough. And and not scared, you know, I was

scared of most everything for a while. You could beat up that bad man. You're in the time out box. I know that I know, you know, you said something to me that immediately peaked my interest. Well, you said two things, right? First, you dropped the favor, serving there. So that's always got my attention. But then you talked about crypto, right? So let's talk a little bit

about that. What's your experience? And or your exposure to cryptocurrency? Well, it's, you know, it's funny because I remember my stumbled into crypto. And if I, I think the coolest story is if I said, yeah, 2011, I bought a pizza and then I sold a pizza and I had 10,000 Bitcoin. That'd be cool. But I had no, what a pizza. It was a cup of coffee

and it was in Europe. And I, I was thirsty and a friend of mine had an institute. It was a crypto and arki institute out in Prague. And I said, you got a coffee shop in here. This is cool. I'd like a latte. He goes, you got to do with Bitcoin. And I said, well, how do I do that? I don't have any Bitcoin. How do

I get Bitcoin? He happened to have an ATM. So I traded some of my fiat, my, you know, those, those euros. And I converted it into Bitcoin, Bob, I saw a lot of a Bob, I saw a t shirt because I had whatever it was. It was like a hundred dollars at that time. And that was when Bitcoin was 600 bucks. So basically it was one

sixth of a Bitcoin. Well, now we're at 50,000 basically on Bitcoin. So you think about it. It's, it's $8,000. So I, so I, for, so $8,000 is what I spent. And today, basically similar dollars for a latte and a t shirt. That was the world's most expensive latte and t shirt. I mean, it was just one of those things where I said, oh, I'm going to

do this thing. I wasn't thinking that this could actually change the world. All I knew was that there was this interesting thing. And I had a very, very quirky very smart friend. And he saw the future before I saw it. And so that was the entry point. And then I started researching. And I realized, something is happening. And, and then I started getting deeper and deeper

into it. And I ran with the masses in 2017 into that bubble, where the retail hysteria drove people up into a place where they were being harvested. And it was, it was early. And so then we went into a winter. And I didn't do what I would do. And most people do, which is freak out and sell it the base. I just sat there. And, and

just sat. And that, that's been really, that's been really successful over the last few years because obviously. What Bitcoin, and what crypto is done. But that's not really the whole story though. The whole story goes way beyond that. It was just, that was the starting point and I was smart enough or lucky enough to buy a cup of coffee and get curious and curiosity right now

is the ultimate tool. If, if people are curious, you know, those are just so obvious. And I thought, I think that this was one of the things that I would really think about. And I thought, I'm going to go, I'm not going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to

go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I will have a bit of the same mentality. I wouldn't go playing with people out there. So, some people are like, I'm just going to go somewhere. Like, I'm just going to note, I was like, there's like, what is that? It's not like, that's a little fikry. You know, that's, right, it's sort of cool. So, yeah, everyone

got a little bit full of ideas. Ohh. So good. Is it, uh, that's just great. Uh, uh, well, I fed this place and, uh, I mean, right now, like, what I would like to do, is that, I mean even though that's not something I would like to do. It's like, it's a perfect place to find care, that's great for people, you know, people like to have

a lot of owner of it when stuff like and one of the options there was Bitcoin. It was like, what is this? You know, I played it no mind. Got to San Diego, uh, bought my trip back because I was going to be out there for a couple of weeks. And then I saw the option again. And that's how I felt down the rabbit hole. So

yeah, curiosity is, um, definitely a tool and a motivator, um, to help you to fall down the rabbit hole. It's really cool. It's really cool. So I, I'm looking at inventive life, right? Yeah. You want to talk to me about that? What's reinvented life? That's what you do after you lose $25 million. I think I need to reinvent, man. I, uh, well, here's why you write

the book. You, you, when, if you, if you sit still long enough, you realize I have a big mess and it's called my life. And I'm not going to figure that out of my head. When people say, well, I'm going to go on a run. I'm going to think about it. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to be good. I'm like, no, you want to figure

it out. Write a book. Try to explain it. yourself and to somebody else and have them understand. And so it was a couple of things. One, it was getting everything out. And two, it was, it was helping me and other people to learn from what I gone through. Because our, uh, what sad is when, you know, you make a mistake and then somebody else or your

kid makes the same mistake. You're like, why does everybody have to make the same mistake? There's plenty of mistakes to make that are not the same. And I thought, well, at the very least, I'm going to write this book and help me do better and be better going forward and make different mistakes. And every once in a while, somebody reads it and they go, you know

what? I learned something and I'm learning from your mistake. And I go, that's, that's cool. That means my life wasn't a complete waste or just me consuming. It was actually me being an example or a warning, but at least something that people could use to leverage from and do better than what I did. Yeah. I am a big fan who I'm getting thoughts out of my

head, whether it's plans or problems. As a matter of fact, I tweeted the other day. Nothing I do ever starts without me creating a mind. So when I have a problem, I, I, I have an apple in my Mac and I put the name of the problem right in the middle of the screen. And then I think about all of the things that are associated with

this problem. And that's usually how I work out really complex issues both in my life, um, in my professional life. And that's also how I plan things like I'm a project manager, I'm a not you project manager by trade. So it's always been my job to think things through from ATZ. Both the impacts, the financials behind it, everything. So I'm a big fan of getting things

out of my head. And I'm so glad that you mentioned that you wrote the book when you were feeling your lowest or when you were feeling like it was time to kind of gather yourself and galvanize your spirit to move forward. Man, a lot of people, um, don't see the value in doing that kind of self assessment. And don't understand the benefits of getting things out

of your head. So tell my listeners where we can find the book. So you can find the book on Amazon. The world's largest source of everything. It's outstanding. There's a, if you go to, if you go to Damien Lupeau.com, there's a workbook, which I'd recommend. You download it's just download right there. And it's, here's the deal that we invented life is not a Harry Potter novel.

You don't read it from front to back. It's actually meant for you to go through these 11 chapters and and do work each, each chapter and think on paper. So you're, you're joining the ride with the author. You're joining. My, you're getting into my head. And then you're figuring out what's in your head putting it on paper. Like you just said. And that's, that's the, the

point. The book was meant to be some type of work for you. And I know for work is like a four. Letter word now people are like, oh my gosh, work. And I, and I laugh like like, where do you think all the magic happens? It's in the work. Man, it's not, it's not just in your head. I, you got, you got to go do the

work. And so download that, that workbook and use it. Even if you don't even get the book, just use the workbook. But I recommend the book as you get the context of the experiences and hear all about the insane things. You might, it might make you feel better. If you're depressed, you read the book. You're like, man, I feel better about myself. This guy was crazy.

You heard it. Make sure you grab the book from Amazon. The link will be in the bio for this episode. And before I let you go, I want to talk to you about one more thing. Because I am a big podcast fan other than the fact that I have a podcast. I like to listen to podcasts while I do things, especially when I'm in the cigar

lounge. And one of the things I found out about you was the financial underdogs podcast. Tell me about that. How did you, how did that come about? Because I feel like there's a big FU happening. I mean, it's a Federal Reserve. It's our, it's the politicians. It's these, these elitist groups that think that they can do whatever they want. And a big part of this is

our monetary system is based on fake. It's based on power. And that starts with the central banks that are printing money, if you will, money, which I think is kind of funny that we think dollar bills and all this papers is money. So I thought, you know, I want to share this stuff. And I have these conversations with people. And sometimes it was just a conversation

with myself. And, and, and the more I was thinking about this stuff, I thought, I bet maybe somebody out there wants to hear what I have to say. Because what we're doing is we're hearing a lot of narratives that are based on agendas. And they're really a slanted narrative based on advertising and power. So whether it's Fox or CNN or MSNBC or whatever, it doesn't really

matter what the mainstream, if you will, sources. And so FU is just raw. Man, it's, it's me talking about what I, my perspective, what I'm doing, what I'm seeing. And trying to put it all together because I feel like we're an amaze. We're an amaze. It's like a dark. We're trying to go through this, this rats maze in the dark. And there's really no cheese. It's

just bump into walls. And so this is meant to be give a little bit of light for people to figure it out. And it have a sense of what's really true. And that's, that's the core question coming back to reinvented life. The ultimate question in that book is asking yourself, what is true? So if you're lost, if you're confused, if you're at a pivot, at a

intersection in your life, ask yourself, what is true? And FU is meant to be, it's asking the question, what is true? What's really going on? Not just what's, what's being said or what's the headline or how am I feeling? But what is really true? If I'm mad, what's really true about that? What am I mad about? If somebody's mad at me, if, if like, it feels

like I don't have as much purchasing power, like, what am I doing? The houses are all going up. Like, what's really true? What's really true is that our monetary system is a fraud and things like crypto. And I'll tell you something that I really think is important. The reason that I'm so passionate about crypto, especially Bitcoin, is because I think this has the ability to disrupt

the financial system and create world peace because when you can't print money, you can't print war. And war comes from a centralized system of printing money that empowers governments to have a free for all and go and do this domination trip like the US is doing. When you stop that ability, there's no longer the ability to go and just make ships that blow things up and

kill people and cause problems. Honest money creates prosperity and peace. And that's why I'm such a big fan of it. I don't know if you all can hear me clapping into microphone, but this is real. This isn't a sound effect. This is real. I, you know, the idea that Bitcoin can create peace when I first heard it seemed foreign to me. As I've been on this

journey and I've been blessed and fortunate to speak to people who know a whole hell of a lot more about Bitcoin than I do. I am a foreign believer that, like you said, when you can't print money, you can't print war. You just, you're unable, you're incapable of doing it. Because now you've got to ask me for my money if you want to do that. And

nine times out of 10, I'm going to say, fuck, no. Why spend the money? You know, I read an article the other day that said we spend $300 million a month for the last 20 years fighting since 9-11. And I think about all of the homeless veterans on strife. I think about all the homeless people in general on the streets. I think about the, our healthcare

system. I think about our education system. I think about people who have good ideas, who don't have access to capital and can't bring those ideas to fruition. Because they don't have that access to capital. What that could do for our society as a whole had that $300 million a month, every month. For example, I think that's a huge problem. 20 years have been spent here at

whom and not abroad. And just just wow, man. You know, there's, there's something else that a lot of people don't really get, especially if you're in the United States. I don't care. And like, I mean, I mean, Birmingham, Alabama. And there are really nice areas and there are places where it's like, am I in a third world country? Like it's pretty bad. But I've been in

third world countries. And even like the rough part of Birmingham is a lot nicer than places in like Johannesburg. Oh, yeah. Or places in Africa that I've been or in Asia, in Myanmar, where I thought I was going to be taken out by a warlord. Like places I've been, you don't realize how fortunate we are. But here's, here's the reason I'm bringing that up. There are

four billion people in the world that don't exist in society, meaning they're not banked. And if you think about that for a second, if you're not banked, you don't have the ability to interact with people. Like you can talk to somebody, but if you can't, if you can't create commerce, if you can't trade trade, Ron Paul, one of my favorite people in the world, talks about

how open commerce and free trade creates peace. And if you bring in four billion people, just imagine that you don't have an identity. And so the blockchain and, and especially crypto as a form of exchange brings four billion people into the global conversation and brings four billion people that matter that aren't in our system. And, and you know, you can't just you can't just print a,

you can't just print 300 billion dollars or 300 million dollars and do that in Bitcoin. It has to be in fiat. So when the thing that I think scares the system is that they can't control and they want to control. And so they're like, well, we'll just ignore those four billion people. But the reality is you've got a lot of people that actually are humans. And

I think a lot of these people, these central bankers are just power among our narcissistic sociopaths. The other tech heads that are out there, I think there's a bit of a, it's, it's almost an unusual space. They're like kind of like aliens because guys like Jack Mollaret strike, these guys are out there. Like they're doing something that matters. They're really bringing people into a world community.

And this isn't about a collectivist like we're all going to come by. Ah, this is about all of us working together. It's like, do you have the United States and Canada going to work? No, because we see each other as humans. We trade our biggest trading partner. Well, for all doing that, if you have people that are in Afghanistan or, or Australia or Alabama, and we

all are working with honest currency, we can all work together. And guess what? Nobody wants to go kill the person we're trading with. Like, well, I was doing that. You might get frustrated, but you're all thriving together. And the law of economics says that you start, you start improving the thing you do. And there's, there's an economic value to you trading with somebody else, else for

the thing that they do best. And all these things work, we all work together. And we thrive together. I mean, one of my very favorite people of all time that's passed away is Bucky Fuller. Bucky Fuller said that everybody on earth, every human should be a millionaire. And, and if you don't understand what that means, it means that there's true abundance, but we've been convinced by

Malthusian equity. It's the fact that there's no economics that there's scarcity. It's bullshit. It's absolutely not the case. There is so much abundance because the universe is abundant. And, and we've, we've been convinced otherwise. And so I think the actual honest space of money, honest money and blockchain and open communication and removing borders. Changes everything because the power goes back to the people. And I'm a

big fan of that. I've ever heard his name in a long time, man. I appreciate that, bro. What I add that to the show notes. So look, man. Tell my listeners, well, first off, I've really enjoyed this conversation, man. You are really interesting, dude. I want to have you back so that we can talk about the martial arts you do and some other cool stuff that

you into. We can really dig in and talk about crypto and your economic philosophy. But tell my listeners where we can find you. What do you do online? Best place to find me is is Damien Lupeau.com. It's my online digital presence. And if you want to, if you want to connect me, find me on LinkedIn, you can reach out and connect. Send me a message. But

all my stuff and everything I'm doing, you know, quite frankly, the the voice that I have online is, is probably best represented with financial underdogs. And so if you're going to do anything, just go in and check out an episode of FU because it'll give you more spice and flavor. And it'll give you real time. I mean, I'm talking about what's happening today last week. You

know, what's going forward. The infrastructure bill that's in the US Senate that's being, it's being a torpedoed by my idiot dickhead senator here in Alabama. It's more appropriate to, to try to blow apart crypto and make it hard. That's, that's important enough to say, you know what? I want to give $50 billion to the military. So if I can't have my way with that, then I'm

going to try to destroy crypto, which is going to drive it offshore. So this guy's a moron. And so I talk about stuff like that, you know, these people, and I'll call it, I'll name names and I, and I say it like it is based on my deep thinking on the subject. So FU is is really probably the one place that people would want to go

if they, if they like anything about what I've said or they like the, the energy of who I am. Perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, Damien Lupeau. Sir, thank you so much. I appreciate you joining me today. Thanks again. Appreciate you having me. Thank you.