Damion Lupo is a serial entrepreneur.  His current passion is helping others achieve financial freedom and maximizing their wealth by taking advantage of the benefits of the eQRP.  He saw the impact of his parents not being prepared financially and he wants to get the word out so others take control of their finances and maximize their wealth.

The eQRP has many advantages that help you maximize your wealth, including tax-deferred growth, tax savings compared to SD IRAs and protection from creditors in case of a lawsuit later in life.

If you have interest in;

• Investing in alternative assets such as real estate with retirement funds
• Understanding the significant tax savings available with an eQRP compared to SD IRA
• Understanding the differences between an eQRP and a Solo401k

Then, you will want to listen to this episode with Damion Lupo!

Table of Contents:

• Where To Listen To The Podcast
• An Expert Perspective From the eQRP Space
• Investing With Traditional IRA Versus Investing With eQRP
• A Unique Thing In the Marketplace
• Charges and Penalties
• The Rules of Life
• Setting Up an eQRP Is a Mindset Shift
• Safe Harbor eQRP
• The Thing With Banks
• Humans Are Crazy
• How to Reach Damion Lupo

An Expert Perspective From the eQRP Space

Darin: A little background on Damion Lupo before we start the show. Damion Lupo is a best-selling author and has a book out called QRP, that talks about the advantages of setting up an enhanced qualified retirement plan. He's a fifth-degree black belt and has a passion for helping others achieve financial freedom.

So typically the first question I would ask is how many properties and how many units? But Damion is coming into this interview from a little different perspective. He's not so much a syndicator, which most of the guests, so thus far have been syndicators. But instead, he's an expert in this space as it comes to eQRP and QRP. So I wanted to really try to educate the audience and he's coming at it from that perspective.

So I know I asked you, do you own properties? And you said you used to, and now you're focused more on the digital side. So maybe just share a little bit about that.

Damion: Yes, it's funny when we were talking about that offline. Right now I've got a lot of digital real estate and it's sort of a funny thing, it's an early space. It's kind of like when I was buying real estate back in 1999, 2000, 2001. Everybody was doing pets.com, and I was over buying houses and it was not sexy. But then they got really sexy in 2004 and '05 when I had 150 houses.

The QRP Book

Damion: So I've definitely been in this space, I tend to be pretty contrarian. I do things usually fairly early or when they're not necessarily common. And that's where I am now. I've got a lot of digital real estate and the stuff that we're going to talk about. I help make sure people have the fuel so they can have the 100 or 500 or 1000 doors. Because you need capital in that, and that's what we focus on. So inadvertently, I've got tens of thousands of units that I've influenced and people being able to get them.

Darin: Yes, that's huge. So one of the things just to start out, and I'm going to talk about one of your books. I read a book called QRP book, I think you had another book out there as well but the QRP book is the one I read. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions from that if you don't mind, with the goal of educating the listeners.

Most listeners are either people that want to invest passively or are syndicators who want to scale up and grow. So I think that this will benefit both sets of listeners. One of the things I saw there, and I've seen this type of number quoted a number of times. But it's still mind-blowing to me that there's $30 trillion in retirement accounts.

Damion: That number is probably going to be 300 trillion with the amount of printing that's going on. Because you're going to see things like the stock market going up and quadrupling, 10X-ing because of all the printing. So the printing really does have yes, 30 trillion is a big number. It kind of goes deeper, going down a rabbit hole.

Where the Cash Is

Damion: If we started talking about the number of Bitcoins that there are in retirement maybe it'd be more relevant or how many ounces of gold, but regardless, 30 trillion of anything is a lot. Unless you're in Zimbabwe, then 30 trillion won't buy a loaf of bread.

So, I guess it's all relative. But yes, there's most of the liquidity to the point that you're making most of America's liquidity is in retirement accounts. People don't realize that they actually can touch it and do things with it. And they can do more deals if they're wanting to do property. Buy property they don't have all the money for, because that's where the cash is.

You are not going to go eat the equity in your house. You're actually going to need to be in your house, but could you do stuff with 401ks and IRAs? Yes, and other people's too. So this ends up being a very large pool of capital that's really not thought of very often and it's waiting for you.

Darin: Yes. I mean, I was one of those people. So I just got involved in the real estate space about three and a half years ago. And I grew up with the mentality of putting 10%, 20% into some kind of retirement vehicle and into the stock market. Whether it be through individual stocks or mutual funds or ETFs.

I didn't know there was another way. And so I'm excited for this conversation because I think there's a lot of people that still fall into that bucket. Where they just don't know they can do something different with it. So explain, just high level, like one, what does QRP stand for?

IRAs and 401ks

Darin: And then, how does somebody access that money to invest in something else? What can they invest in?

Damion: Interestingly enough, the IRS and the Congress back in early '70s passed a legislative piece called ERISA. That's what created IRAs and 401ks. And what happened is Wall Street got a hold of it. They said, "Okay, how do we get all this money trapped in our system so we can fee people to death until death?" So it was basically, "Hey, here's a 401k." Big people started getting those who work at work.

And they said, "Okay, well, I guess we have one of five mutual funds to invest in, maybe some stocks." So people just went along for decades thinking this was the option because that's what they were told. And unless you go deep into the code or you happen to be in a different world, like the seminar world, you'd never know that you can take all your 401k and your IRA money. You can take all this retirement money and do all sorts of things, because it's crazy.

The IRS says, "Here are the five things you can't do and anything else, go ahead." What Wall Street and what financial advisors tell you is, "Here's what you can do. Mutual fund A, B, C, D or E or bonds." A lot of them don't even realize this, but the ones that do don't want to tell you. They don't want your money to go anywhere other than their systems, so they can charge you with what's called AUM, Assets Under Management.

Investing In eQRP Gives You Absolute Control

Damion: In reality, the code is set up. So that any individual that has retirement money that controls it can invest in real estate, gold, crypto, private notes, international land. Like, really anything you want. So the bottom line is people have options, and this is most often the case after you leave a job. Once you leave a job, they say, "Where do you want to send your 401k?"

And most people say, "Well, I don't know, either an IRA or the next company you work for." So it's a default thing, most people don't realize you can take control of this. And every option they give you is not necessarily equal. So if you transfer to an IRA, for example, you're to have an IRA custodian telling you what you can and can't do.

If you transfer it to your next 401k, they just say, "Okay, here's the mutual funds." The only real option that gives you absolute control and allows you to grow is an eQRP, which is an enhanced qualified retirement plan. And that's what we build and we're the only ones in America that do it. Because I actually believe fundamentally that until you have control, you don't own the asset.

And it's an interesting thing to think about Darin if you, people say, "Well, I have these stocks." You don't really have those stocks, there's a counterparty, there's somebody else that's holding the paper. And so could those be taken? Could the treasuries be taken, could they be manipulated? Or they are manipulated. So I'm in favor of you controlling your assets because that's when you actually own it.

Investing With Traditional IRA Versus Investing With eQRP

Darin: Yes, a number of interesting things there. So one is for somebody that just doesn't know they can do it. It’s like, "What do you mean I can invest in real estate transactions? I can invest in gold and silver and other different asset classes that I can't with traditional IRA?" And the answer to that is, absolutely.

The other thing that you talked about was control and having control of your assets. Where you just sign up for a mutual fund through your 401k or through your IRA. It just is being managed through that custodian, and you don't have very many options as to what you can do with it.

And you can't pull it out until you retire, 59 and a half I think is the earliest age. But it's also confusing to people like, "They're talking about something that sounds complicated." And I think at first blush it does sound complicated. But maybe explain how easy it is to set up and transfer your money into one of these vehicles.

Damion: Wait, what's interesting is that I've actually met a guy in Belize last week that thought it was so easy. Because he's smart, he's a doctor. And so he went out and basically built everything and he built it wrong and he was basically cheap. He said, "Well, I can just do this myself." So he went out and figured out the cheapest pieces he could do and put them together. And I said, "I would never hire you as a doctor because you're cheap."

You Get What You Pay For

Damion: And I think a lot of people have to keep in mind that you get what you pay for. So is it easy from a user perspective, from our client's perspective, it's almost a complaint. It's really funny, people will say, "This seems too easy." And I say, "Yes, it takes a lot of energy and work to make something appear that easy and make it simple. Because at the end of the process, we build everything, we keep things in compliance."

Basically what we do is we hand somebody a checkbook, that's ironclad, bulletproof, not going to get you. If you get sued, you're not going to lose it. And it gives you options to invest in how you want to, what you want to invest with that checkbook. It's really fascinating when people realize what they're holding. They're holding all the control in a checkbook and it's protected and it works.

And at the end of the day, that's what matters. That it's legitimate and it works, and you're protected, and you're not exposed to the elements or lawsuits. And that's what you end up with. Most things out there can't really say that, and nothing can say all of it, because this is a unique thing. And that's what people really want. Nobody wants to be exposed, nobody wants to be naked with people suing their way to wealth and people wanting to actually control.

There are people that don't want to control it because they're too scared of their money. Because they believe all of the garbage that Wall Street says like, "Hey, you're too stupid to have control of your money."

Not a Good Candidate

Damion: And if you believe that, then you're not a good candidate to have control. But the reality is, most of the people listening right now are listening to the show and listening to us. Because they do believe that they're smarter than their financial advisor around their money. That their financial advisor is not going to have their best interest compared to theirs. Because here's the reality, nobody's going to care about your money more than you. People are frustrated by that because they go, "Well, I do care about it, but I can't control it." Well, now you can.

Darin: There's a lot of things about that. So one is, everything you read is to diversify. Have a diversified portfolio, but then your only options are stocks and bonds. So how are you fully diversified? The other thing is that, people will tell you just to put it in an index fund and just forget about it.

And so I took some money out and just tried it. I didn't know how this was going to work out, but here's how easy it was. I took an old IRA that I had transferred 401k money into, and I transferred that into another real estate vehicle that was well. It's going to be used for a lot of different assets, but I used it for real estate. So the options when I did my first syndication and when I started investing in passive deals, it was a self-directed IRA or solo 401k. That was three and a half years ago. Those were the only two options that I had heard of, and I have a company. So I set up a solo 401k.

Outside the Walls of Wall Street

Darin: I transferred money from an IRA I had with a very large financial institution, and just transferred it into that solo 401k. And then, I had checked writing ability, and I just wrote a check or wired the money into a real estate transaction.

Well, one of those real estate transactions I put a hundred grand into. And three years later, we're in contract right now. I'm due to get a hundred grand back plus another hundred grand. Well, if I had put it into the stock market and the average returns are what? 7%, 8%? Say I get 7,000 a year for that hundred grand when I'd grown to 121 grand.

I like the fact that I have control to make the decision and I could put it where I want. And I can diversify outside of what Wall Street tells me I have to put it in. So what I'd like to understand from you is, what's the difference between a solo 401k and a QRP?

Damion: An eQRP is specifically different from the solo 401k. When people there's a lot of terms.

Darin: So what's eQRP versus QRP?

Damion: So I'll explain those because there's a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Primarily by people that are trying to confuse the population into thinking everything's the same. It's what you do when you're a commodity seller, when you're selling the same thing. And it's basically very simple, and everybody's doing it. We don't sell solo 401Ks, what we created was something different, it's an eQRP.

eQRP Versus QRP

Damion: eQRP is different from the solo 401Ks, like what you have and what a lot of people have. They have something where you can never hire even a part-time person. You can never have a full-time person with a solo 401k. If you get sued, a solo 401k doesn't have the ERISA coverages where eQRPs are covered by ERISA. What does that mean? If you get sued, the courts can potentially take maybe most of your retirement money.

So you have limitations there, it's not necessarily invisible. Your name is probably on your solo 401k. It's visible to the general public, whereas an eQRP is anonymous and private. There's definitely differences. And unfortunately, there's a lot of characters that are out there that would like to say, "Oh, they're all the same." They're not the same. It's unfortunate that people are confused, but the reality is they all serve different purposes.

And yours, you made a good choice in not using an IRA when you did your real estate. Because you probably had debt in that deal, the syndication, right? So you avoid a UBIT tax, which is great. And so you definitely did a better thing than an IRA, and then the next step would be an eQRP to protect you. Because unless somebody is crazy and thinks that he’s never going to be sued. Or they say, "Well, I'm never going to hire anybody, even a part-time person."

I just think that that's small thinking for people. And some people are genuinely not going to hire anybody ever, and they're not going to get sued. I just don't think that that's the smartest play if you're trying to create financial freedom and wealth to limit yourself.

A Unique Thing In the Marketplace

Damion: If you actually said, "Okay, I do want to hire somebody." You would have to either move your solo into an IRA or go get a completely different type of plan. You'd end up with an eQRP anyway.

So those are the big differences. And obviously the big difference there too is that you're working with a company, that is, they're human beings. It's not a bot, it's not some app on a phone. When you actually need help, there's a whole team. And that's a unique thing in the marketplace, trying to actually get help from human beings. Obviously we're not the only company that has people.

I just find it interesting, there's a race to the bottom, across different industries. A lot of people go, "Well, I can get this one thing and I can get it for X dollars, and this other thing is more." And so they go with the cheaper one. And I think, "Well, you know what, eventually you're going to realize what you paid for and what you didn't pay for."

So I'm pretty conscious of that, and I think it's really good to think about what do you actually want? You want to have a team or are you one of these individual solo artists? I think a solo 401k is meant for somebody that always wants to do everything on their own because you really can't hire a team. And if that, if you have that mindset and that's where the wealth is. Wealth is with teams, rich people have teams, it's just something we should all remember.

Limited Tax Consequence

Darin: That's a good point. When I got started, and I don't know, you tell me when you guys started doing these eQRPs. But I didn't even know that it existed. My only two options were self-directed IRA or solo 401k. I went with a solo 401k for a couple of reasons. One, it does give me check writing control. Secondly, as you pointed out, it's a big savings on the tax front.

I don't know why the government set one up. Self-directed IRAs with different requirements and different tax implications versus solo 401ks and eQRPs. But the fact is, they did. So understanding the differences, and flexibility. Flexibility to be able to do what I wanted to and control it. But also have a limited tax consequence at the end of a good returning investment deal based on real estate that does have financial leverage. That was important to me.

Now, had I known about the eQRP at the time? I would look at, "Okay, well, what's the advantages of a solo 401k versus eQRP? Does it provide me more flexibility for the future? What's the cost differential? And do I see value in the difference?" That's kind of how I would look at it.

I would like you to talk about that tax difference because on my first syndication, again, I didn't know that QRPs were an option. And I think we had 44 limited partners and maybe I think I helped open like 15 self-directed IRA accounts. When that happened, I was like, "Look, if you have a solo company, you and your wife or husband you can set up a solo 401k like I did. If not, my understanding is the only option is the self-directed IRA."

The Cost of eQRP

Darin: Well, since that time, I've had two investors switch, transferred from the self-directed IRA to a QRP program. And I don't know if it was with you or if it was with another group. But to give them that additional flexibility and also to save them tax-wise. So if you're in a self-directed IRA, it sounds crazy because you're in a retirement vehicle. But you will have tax liability at the end of a real estate transaction.

And if you're in a solo 401k or a QRP, you will not. So let's just have you talk through. If somebody invested $100,000 passively, and let's say the leverage was, they got a loan on the real estate transaction of 70%. Talk through what that tax liability might look like, and then compare that to what it may cost to set up an eQRP. I'm guessing it's going to be significant savings.

Damion: Well, yes, this is probably the most significant thing for people, when you're talking about IRAs. If you've got an IRAs, self-directed IRA and you invested in real estate, like your example, great example. You put $100,000 into a deal and that deal is 70% leveraged, very common. And you make 100,000 like you were talking about.

So 70% of your profits are going to be subject to UBIT. UBIT is a 37% tax on almost all of the money. You're talking 37% on $70,000 in profit. So you do the math and you're talking 20 to $25,000 in tax. And so you just ask yourself, "Why would I do that?"

Darin: That's in a retirement vehicle.

Section 408

Damion: Yes, and that's even in Roth IRAs. So people say, "Wait a second, how is this possible?" It's because the tax code for IRAs is under section 408, and there is a trigger there. The reason that the IRS does this, they say, "Well, it's not really all your money that's making money. It's debt that's also making money." And so they say, "We're not going to let you keep all of it. We're going to take some of it because they feel entitled to pick your pockets."

What's interesting is that under the 401 section, which is where qualified retirement plans like 401ks and in your 401k and the eQRP live, there's an exemption. And that was because developers years ago got an exemption. Because the developers, they were using a lot of pension and 401k money to invest in their deals. And their lobbyists were just better than the IRA lobbyists, and they got an exemption.

So you're able to go and do this to be able to exempt yourself, not pay that 37% tax. It's funny, people will say, "Well, tell me the pros and cons." There are no pros to a self-directed IRA other than if you're cheap, you get a self-directed IRA. The next thing, and this is not beating up on you, because you did a way better move than the IRA.

The next cheapest thing is a solo 401k, where you have limited exposure in terms of you're not going to have that tax. But you have very big limits on how much you can grow and what you can do in your exposure liability wise. So why did you do that?

eQRP Is the Next Level

Damion: Because that was the best information you had, and it was a good choice. And so, I mean, actually, when people say I have a solo 401k, I'm like, "Great, glad you didn't do an IRA. And so good job." Now, the next level is the eQRP because it gives you flexibility to grow and not get screwed if you get sued. Because most people are going to get sued at some point, it's just how it is. Like in America, we live in the land of billboards that have injury attorneys.

So if you have assets, you got to protect those suckers. Again, you get what you pay for. And so when you get an eQRP, depending on whether you're by yourself, or if you have five employees, 50 employees, it works. You're going to invest, you're going to pay an appropriate amount. Might be a few thousand, it could be 10,000. It depends on where you are and how much of a team you've built. What it doesn't do is limit you on your growth.

Solo 401ks are very limiting on how much you can grow, like you can't, you're forced to never have an employee. And I'll tell you something, Darin, that right now, the IRS, and they've been doing this more and more. They're looking for people that are trying to play games with employees. Because people will say, "Oh, all my people are contractors. If it looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck. It's a duck and they're going to come back."

So here's what happens. Somebody says, "Well, I've got 10 contractors, three of them are full-time." Okay, they're only working for you. The IRS will come back and they'll say, These are employees.”

Charges and Penalties

Damion: Not only are we going to charge you payroll taxes, but we're going to penalize you. And we're going to charge you interest and all this stuff," and we're going to go backwards. We're going to say, "Your solo 401k is now disqualified because you didn't offer a 401k to all the employees that you had."

So people are trying to play games because they're cheap. And when you know that that's the game you say, "Well, let's play the game for real." So once you have better information, the question is, are you going to run with it? Or are you going to hide? Hiding is stupid. There's tons of wealth to be made, playing by the rules. People that say, "Oh, I don't pay taxes because I want cash." Like they say, "I only take payment in cash."

I look at those people and I go, "That's called tax evasion," tax avoidance. This is what justice learned at hand said is appropriate. You pay as little as tax, little tax as the code allows you to do, but don't cheat. Cheating is stupid. You know who doesn't cheat? Rich people. Who cheats? Poor and middle-class people. Because they don't have teams. So they say the only way that I can keep more money is by screwing the government. Guess what? The government is bigger than you, they will crush you if you cheat. Don't cheat, just have better teams.

Darin: Yeah. I mean, just have more knowledge. And figure out how the rich defer their taxes and continue to defer those taxes as long as you can.

Damion: And let me say something about that, because this is really good for everybody. The rich eliminate taxes completely.

Eliminating Taxes

Damion: So there's this idea of deferring it. The idea of deferring is powerful and useful and compounding money that the government was going to take. Then the next level is when you go to zero. And one of the values of having a boutique firm that spends most of its time, which is what we do on education. We're figuring out ways to eliminate taxes, not just defer it.

Deferring it one level, the next level is “eliminating”. So because of the tax code set up the way it is with bonus depreciation cost seg, the Roth accounts. There are ways for us to get people into a place where they earn money. It goes into a retirement account tax-free, it grows tax-free and we pull it out tax-free. And we can do that even before age 59 and a half. This is part of having a world-class team.

Just think about what I just said. I'm telling you, there's a way to go to zero. Not just maybe someday I'll take the money out and it'll be taxed. I'm talking about going to zero tax forever. And I'm talking about doing that at any age, that's the power of having teams. It's not about anybody knowing everything. That's one of the things. The problem is with smart people like us. We want to know everything. The idea is you need to know how to have a great team. The team is how you're going to get wealthy and how you're going to stop paying taxes.

Darin: I mean, learn from others and then hire the professionals and experts in each of those areas. Anybody that's done a multifamily deal knows that they need to have great attorneys, they need to have great rehab people.

Developing a Team of Great Leaders

Darin: They need to have great inspection people, they need to have great lenders. You can't do it on your own for sure.

Damion: And so the skillset there is developing the team. I was with Robert Kiyosaki and a bunch of other people this last week. One of the things he's always standing up and saying, "I'm stupid, I'm stupid, I'm stupid." He's not stupid. But he's not the smartest person on his team, he's not trying to figure out everything about Bitcoin and property management. He's got Kenny McElroy when he's looking at gold and silver, he's got people like Dana Samuelson.

So the reason I bring him up is because most people have read Rich Dad Poor Dad or they know the name. And he's incredibly wealthy and super smart and he is not the smartest person. So he's learning and growing. And the thing that he's learned is that you're not going to be the expert in anything.

Your job is to bring those experts together and then you work together. And then you say, "Here's the vision." Your job as an entrepreneur and investor is to have a vision, it is not the technical pieces. That's one of the dumbest things people do and it's usually the smartest people to do it.

Darin: So in that scenario, we were talking about before, if they were to pay 37% tax on 70,000, they had a 20, $25,000 tax implication. I'm not sure, did you answer in terms of like, what's the range to set eQRP up?

Damion: Yeah. So, setting it up depends on your situation. This is not a cookie-cutter thing.

A Cookie Cutter

Damion: Like when you look at companies, whether it's Schwab or different companies that are setting up solo 401ks, they have a cookie-cutter. We don't have a cookie-cutter, it's like a tax advisor. If a tax advisor says it's always the same thing, you need to fire them. Because it's not always the same thing, it's complex. So it ranges from 2,000 to 10,000.

Darin: Okay, what did you say? What was that range?

Damion: So it's going to range from 2,000 to about 10,000 to set it up, and this could depend on your situation.

Darin: I was going to say, I'm a business guy and your answer is not going to fly with me on anything I do. I'm going to say, "All right, well, what's the lowest and what's the highest?" And give me a range because I need to understand at least what we're talking about. So you're saying two to 10K, even if it's at the high end 10K and you saved 25,000 in tax off of one deal, that's a more than double return on your investment on one deal. And now you've got it set up that you can use over and over again.

Damion: And quite frankly, for most people, it's going to be three or $4,000. You see you're talking four or five or six X for your first deal. And like you said, it just goes over and over again. It's the right tool that pays for itself by an X factor, so that's the reality.

And let's say you have five, 10, 15 employees, you're going to save about $30,000 a year in fees. So you start realizing, wait, having the best is the smartest least expensive thing to do.

Win or Lose

Damion: Even though the dollars may just look like they're more, actually they're not.

Darin: Yes, that's huge. I don't want to spend a ton of time on the stock market versus other asset classes. Because typically you go in, you sign your HR info and you sign up for the 401k and it's a one-time deal. And you've selected the box on what you want and then you just let it ride.

Maybe you've seen, "Okay, the expense ratio on this mutual fund is 1%." And you're like, "Oh, that's 1%, it's like nothing." But then when you realize your returns, maybe your returns are 5% or 6% for the year. And 1% of that is wiped off because of expenses, that's 20% of your return. Then if you have a down year and you actually lose money in the stock market, in your mutual funds, they're still taking that 1%.

And so I think that people don't think of it as being a big fee. But when you look at it as a percentage of your return, compounded over 20, 30 years, it can be massive dollars.

Damion: I agree with you. There's a client who's a fairly well-known surgeon in Texas that was looking at his and a friend of his, one of his associates. They had moved their 401k after they shut down their practice. They’ve moved it over into eQRPs and did the math from their stock investing for 25 years. And when they compounded it, after the fees from Wall Street and the advisors and all that stuff that you're talking about, the one and 2% for this and that.

The Destruction of Financial Freedom

Damion: That's visible and invisible. They realized that they never were about two and a half percent compounded over 25 years.

Darin: Holy cow.

Damion: That sounds like a whole life insurance policy. That's terrible. And yet, that's reality. So the compounding works against you, even if it's one or 2%. It actually destroys any possibility of anybody being financially free with a 401k invested in stocks.

Darin: Yes, that's big. Another quote that was in your book related to taxation said, "Taxation is possibly the most destructive force ever." And my grandfather told me a long time ago, "Darin, you should either become a tax attorney or accountant, or hire the best one. Because taxes are going to be your biggest expense over your lifetime."

I had it in my head but I didn't take action on it. Then I was in the corporate world and I made really good money and I had to write really big checks to the government. It wasn't until I got involved in the real estate world where a lot of people have gained this knowledge on one, how to leverage their retirement funds and keep taxes low.

And then two, how to leverage real estate transactions and the depreciation related to that. To offset and minimize and possibly eliminate taxes altogether. And that was just an eye-opener to me. It was just surrounding myself with other like-minded people that helped educate.

Damion: I think you said something there that's super important and everybody should take a note on this.

The people that you surround yourself with are the most important thing ever.

The Rules of Life

Damion: H. Jackson Brown on this list of the top 20 things that you should know or the rules in your life. Number one was to pick the right person to marry. Because that will be, single-handedly the most important thing that will drive your happiness, success, everything.

And then the next thing is the other people that are around you, your friends and your associates, who are you getting advice from? Do you have those people? What we know is that you and I, and I think anybody that has half of a brain, if they have a whole brain, would say, "Things are speeding up, they're not slowing down." And if you think you're going to keep up by going and Googling, give me a break.

It's like that particular space has an exponentially growing database of information. And so you have to have people that are out there narrowing in on their thing, and then you bring people together. How are you choosing? Is it proximity? I call this proximity collisions. Well, my neighbor is a CPA, so I'm going to use that person. That's the dumbest thing you've ever done, unless that person happens to be world-class, and what are the chances? Very, very low.

So spending time investing your time with us is awesome because we can start thinking about that together, and then you can choose. You've got to be careful about who you choose, because it'll essentially become you. The people that are around you, that's who you become because you absorb them. It's very crazy, it's osmosis.

Differentiating a Solo 401k From eQRP

Darin: Yes, absolutely. So look, before I read your book, I didn't really understand the difference between a solo 401k and eQRP or QRP. And the asset protection, it sounds like it is a big piece there. Then secondly, if I'm ever to bring on employees that's another big thing. It's kind of dumb to be quite frank. I mean okay, I have to have a business decision, whether to bring on an employee because I have a solo 401k in my business.

I should be looking at that as, do I want to bring on an employee because I think that they had value and I'll make money by having that employee. Rather than, "Hey, I can't do that because I have a solo 401k." It sounds silly.

Damion: It's the tail wagging the dog what you just described. When you look at business, it's like saying, "Well, I have a marketing budget." And when I hear somebody saying they have a marketing budget, I'm like, "You literally are an idiot." Why do I say that? Because if you understand what your marketing is doing, what most people do is they say, "I'm going to spend $10,000 in marketing." If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

But if you understand marketing, you say, "Okay, well, I'm going to spend a dollar and it's going to create $1.25." Why would you not spend everything you can get on that?" Like, you just have to understand what the correlation is. You spend a million, you make a million 250. Obviously you're going to spend as much as you can, same with people.

The Right People Are Great Investments

Damion: And if you understand that people are not expenses, they're investments, but only the right people. Then you say, "How many people can I have become a part of this?" Unfortunately, a lot of people are just, they're scarcity minded.

So they say, "Well, I'll do it myself." I had that thought for many years after I lost 25 million in 2008, I thought people were terrible. I'm going to do it myself, at least I can trust myself. So nobody's coming into my world. And then I started just three or four years ago, I really shifted. I started realizing the power of people and the synchronicity and everybody that works with me.

That none of them are expenses, they're all investments, it's a team approach. It doesn't matter if I have an opening or not, for a world-class person I'm hiring them, I'm bringing them on. And what you're talking about is, is really a shift in mindset around abundance and world-class people.

When you shift into that, then the last thing you want to do is say, "Well, I can't really hire that person because of my retirement account." So you're spot on like people need to be thinking, "Am I living a little life or a big life?" You're not meant to live little, you're meant to live big.

Darin: Yes. I mean, it's huge. And having advice and from people that have already done it. So look, I'm telling you right now, I transferred money, let's talk about rollovers. I rolled over money from another IRA that I already had into the solo 401k.

eRQP Is a Tax-Free, Penalty-Free Rollover

Darin: And then I made money off of that. Much more money than I would have, I believe if I had kept it the same investments I had in the stock market. That was a tax-free, penalty-free rollover, it's just moving money from one institution to another institution. And then investing, putting out instructions for a wire to go into a real estate transaction. So, understanding that it's a tax-free, penalty-free rollover, and then it gives you control. That's huge.

Damion: I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of times people think, "Oh, I'm going to be taxed." So if you have the right team, not only can you roll things over from IRAs and 401ks into another type of plan without tax or penalty. You can roll them into an eQRP, or when you roll yours to the solo 401k, you can roll these things. There's no tax, there's no penalty. If you have the right team thinking through it, you can also convert to Roth tax-free, penalty-free.

You can also pull your money out at any age tax-free, penalty-free. There are so many options that are out there if you have the right team. And if you say, "Well, I'll just go Google it." I always laugh. I'm like, "Good luck on figuring out which is true and which are lies on the internet.”

Because you'll have two things and they're both in the same fond or different articles and they say opposite. So what do you trust? This is where you have to figure out who's actually saying what they're saying. People pay taxes because they choose to, bottom line is taxes are optional.

The Government Is Changing Things

Damion: Not like they are in Russia where it's sort of a suggestion, or Italy, like maybe you'll pay taxes. In the US, you can absolutely pay taxes or not pay taxes based on your advisors. And the government is changing things where they're wanting to equalize it, there's a word called equity. Not like we were talking about with equity and potentially in investments and real estate equity. I'm talking about equitable.

Kamala Harris, the vice-president, has talked about this, where we want to make everything equal. There's even a proposal to have 401k contributions, where everybody has the same benefit. Because rich people will get a bigger benefit if there's a deduction because they're in a higher tax bracket. There's talks about trying to equalize these things saying, "You can only have $5 million in a retirement account. If you have more than that, you have to pull it out and take a distribution."

There's all this chatter, what do you do with all of it? You make sure you have a world-class team that can help you navigate and they focus on that little niche. So, I mean, it just comes back to the same thing over and over. Why have I said team 40 times in the last 40 minutes? Because if you don't have a world-class team, you're dead.

Darin: I mean, you're dead, maybe you're not dead, but you're not maximizing the life that you can have. Your financial life and the life that you want to create in terms of time and time with your family, et cetera. Look, you said taxes are optional. Now, I think that it can be confusing to just say that like a blanket statement.

Tax-Free Wealth

Darin: I think where you're going with that is that, if you surround yourself with a team and get educated properly, you can navigate. And figure out ways to strategize and how to minimize or possibly eliminate your taxes legally.

Look, if you don't do all those things, you have to pay your taxes like it's not optional. The government is going to make you do it. But one of the things that was interesting was, when I got involved with real estate, I had somebody say to me. And you mentioned Kiyosaki and one of his advisors is Tom Wheelwright. I had somebody say, "Hey, have you ever read Tom Wheelwright's book, Tax-Free Wealth?" I said, "No." He said, "You've got to read it."

And so I started reading it and I was one of the people that he talked about. Like in his first chapter, "Hey, there's people that believe they're paying their fair share of taxes. And that's the patriotic thing to do." I was like, "Well, I kind of feel that way like I've written some really big checks to the government." And he's like, "Well, look, the tax code is like whatever 3,000 pages. The first few pages are, if you make this much money as a W-2 employee, this is how much you pay in taxes."

But the rest of the tax code 2,995 pages are incentives and where the government wants you to invest your money. And by doing so, they're going to give you an incentive and that incentive could be tax incentives. So why would you not want to educate yourself on how you could take advantage of those incentives where they want you to invest?

Setting Up an eQRP Is a Mindset Shift

Darin: Having a team to educate yourself, whether it be CPAs that are very proficient in the tax code or people like yourself that set up eQRPs. So that you can take advantage of the tax laws that the government has put in place because they want people to take those actions. I mean, that was a mindset shift for me. Because sometimes, if you're talking to people that are not educated, they'll think, "Oh, you're just trying to scam the system." And it's not the case.

Damion: Well, it's really fascinating to me your comment about patriotic paying taxes. And I look at somebody that, if anybody were to say to me, "Well, you don't pay taxes," and you're skimming or scamming or you're not doing the right thing. I go, "What the government wants you to do is it wants you to go create housing. It wants you to go hire people because the government sucks at both of those." This isn't communist Russia yet so we need the private sector if you go higher.

Darin: Hopefully, we'd all get there, my man.

Damion: We're heading there. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going in that direction, unfortunately, but the truth is not paying taxes like people got all wound up because Donald Trump is under a permanent audit. Has been for decades, always will be. That's what happens with big business, they're always under audits. You think Amazon isn't audited every year? They're under permanent audit, that's how it works. So Tom Wheelwright and I were talking about this in Belize a few days ago when we were teaching on everything.

The Government Doesn’t Need Taxes

Damion: We work with a lot of clients at WealthAbility, his company, because we're part of that team. The goal is to not pay taxes, why? People say, "Well, the government needs taxes." No, it doesn't. What it needs is it needs employees, it needs people to have jobs, it needs to have housing. It's not going to do it. Have you ever seen a government housing project? They're called the projects, that's not a good term.

If you live in the projects, it's not a nice place. So what does that mean? I think paying a bunch of taxes is freaking lazy. Why do I say that? Because it means that you haven't gone out there. You're too cheap to go out to an advisor. And you're too cheap to go to a seminar and learn about how you can do things that the government needs. The government needs us to go produce, it needs us to do things. Otherwise society falls apart, so the people that are hustling, that are going out there doing, doing it, getting it done. There's a reason that the tax code is set up.

You're exactly right, it's a series of incentives. There's very little in the tax code that talks about making paying taxes. Most of it's about government social engineering, pushing people to do certain things like the green technologies. We're going to spend trillions of dollars the next decade on green technologies, who's going to get rich? The green entrepreneurs, the people that are saying, "Okay, I'm going to have green apartments, not the color green." You know I'm talking about eco-green.

Darin: Right, exactly.

Doing What the Government Wants Us to Do

Damion: So this is the point. I laugh at people when they say, "I'm paying my taxes." I'm like, "Well, you're a moron, you should not be paying taxes. Legally, you should be creating other things the government wants you to do where they give you incentives." And people go, "Wait." It kind of scrambles their brain because they think that we're talking about tax evasion or something. No, we're actually doing the things that the government wants us to do.

Darin: Look, I was there three and a half years ago. I mean, what you're talking about, like go out and create companies that hire people. And create jobs and income for people and livelihoods and affordable housing and all that. My mindset wasn't there until I surrounded myself with other people that really educated me in that way. And I think it's really important. This is one of those ways to educate yourself so that you, what's that quote?

It's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. And one is the taxes you pay right off the bat. Then two, if you put it in retirement vehicles and then you're charged a 37% tax rate because you invested in something that has a loan on it. That to me is crazy. So taking advantage of that is smart, it's just smart.

Damion: It's what the government wants you to do.

The government wants you to be wealthy because the government knows it doesn't have the ability. The government is broke, it's bankrupt, the Ponzi scheme of social security, all that stuff is unsustainable. So it's incentivizing us to go out there and be self-sustainable, that's what it wants.

Safe Harbor eQRP

Damion: And there's ways to do that where there's the best possible thing people can do is a Roth eQRP. Because you're setting yourself up to be able to use leverage and to pay no taxes for life plus 10.

I mean, your lifetime plus 10 more years after you die, and somebody inherits that account. So then people come back to the question, "Well, if everybody's paying no taxes." Look, if everybody's paying no taxes, it means there's a booming, robust economy. There's always going to be taxes whether it's local taxes or other taxes. The better the government can do at incentivizing people to go create new abundance, the less the government has to do taking care of people that aren't prospering.

So that's the whole point here, it's about creating prosperity, and if you can incentivize people to go create. And we go back to our original topic at the very beginning, talking about IRAs and solo 401ks and eQRPs. eQRPs are about creating, they're about growing. A solo 401k is really forcing people to be small, and it doesn't help the system.

It's called a Safe Harbor eQRP that allows you to go hire 50 people, start with one. But then you're really doing what the government wants you to do and you get to control those assets. You can go to Roth. It's epic what's available, but you got to be willing to think a little bit bigger than playing scared. And playing not to lose is really what most people are doing.

Darin: Playing not to lose, yes. And not seeing the value of expertise of others, other team members.

Leveraging People Skills

Darin: So for example, I've got this podcast, I went down because I didn't know how to do a podcast. I went down to a podcast conference last year and I met somebody who was a consultant. And what he does is help people launch, and so I hired him and his team. When we're done with this recording, I'll send it all to him. They'll put it all together and make it sound nice and put it up.

When I look at him and his team, I don't only look at them as, "Okay, they're going to make it sound nice and put it out." Like he and his team are experts in what they do. And so I've received so much value back in terms of like, "Hey, Darin, you should be using this software for this component."

We talked about Google before, right? Well, I got to the point where I trust this guy. And he's worked with a lot of different providers for each one of these little niche software things. If I was going to Google every time I have to make a decision as to one little software component, and try to figure out, that's not the best use of my time.

Here, I'm able to leverage somebody that I trust, that's a part of my team. Now he's a consultant, he's not an employee of mine, but that's the same thing as using a company like yours. You have different knowledge, you've seen other situations, where other customers of yours have had a predicament. And you're like, "Oh, this is another one of those. Okay, this is how we should set it up versus going and Googling it and trying to figure it out all on your own."

Modeling and Hiring World-Class

Damion: I think what we've gotten used to is all the information out there. And we figure, "Oh, I can just go to the algorithm and it'll tell me the solution. We're not in a place where the algorithm is as good as we'd like it to be. Because it's still built by programmers and you can still play games." So ultimately the other question is, how much time do you want to spend bouncing around?

And then are you certain? I get to that point where I don't want to go and it doesn't matter whether it's accounting or legal or health and fitness. I'm going to model after people that are narrowly focused and world-class. And that's what will change anybody's life, is modeling world-class, hiring world-class.

It's a funny thing, you talked about a consultant. And one of the things I've noticed some people do is they'll say, "Okay, well, I'm going to figure out how I can get a consultant and pay as little as possible." It's like having a coach or a mentor and figuring out, "Oh, and they're saying they're too expensive."

The only reason a coach or a mentor is too expensive is because you're not committed. Because the reality is if you're committed to a coach or a mentor, you're going to do all the work you need to do and you're going to have a 10X effect or a 100X or 1000X off of the stuff.

When people say, "Well, I'm not sure about that," that coach is $50,000 for a year. And I'm like, "You're just not ready to do it because who cares if it's 50,000?" Even if that coach said nothing and you just heard, "Here's my commitments and did them.

Where Commitment and Action Meets

Damion: You think that 50,000 isn't going to be multiplied by two or three or 10 or 20?" I mean, it's about commitment and action. That's it.

Darin: I agree. I think that's the first step. In anything, whether you want to invest in something you haven't invested in, or whether you want to start your own company, whatever the case may be. You have to decide, decide that you're going to do it and then commit. And if you don't do that, then it's going to be very hard to have success.

Hey, a few questions that I have here from your book. One, non-recourse debt. So it talks about how these retirement plans have to have non-recourse debt. Now, can you invest in a real estate transaction that has bank debt or bridge debt. But the only people that have recourse are the general partners and limited partners don't have. So the eQRP invests in the deal, it has bank loan debt. It does have recourse, but it's not recourse back to the eQRP. Can you do that?

Damion: Yes, let's unpack that because this is a great point. When an eQRP invests, and this goes for all retirement accounts, when they invest in a deal, the individual that's the beneficiary. So it's your retirement account. You personally cannot sign, anybody else can sign, anybody else. That's what recourse means, it means you're on the hook. The retirement account can be on the hook because it's tied to the asset, but it has to be that the asset is the only recourse.

All About Leverage

Damion: So if you think of it that way, your retirement account is not going to guarantee unlimited exposure, can't do that. But it's not saying you can't have debt, it's not even saying you can't have recourse, it's just the individual beneficiary.

Darin: Got you.

Damion: So you've got to be mindful of that. And there are plenty of lenders that do non-recourse. We have lenders now that work a lot with our retirement account clients, and they'll do unlimited amounts of debt. So you could have a hundred houses, you could have apartments, they will do unlimited amounts of debt.

It's between 65 and 75% loan to value and they're reasonable rates, they're more than Fannie. They're not going to be three and a half percent. The truth is it doesn't matter what the rate is if it cash flows, if it actually can work mathematically. So there's a lot of options and real estate is all about leverage.

Darin: Right, absolutely. Hey, banks, I know when I was setting up the solo 401k, and I have to believe that it's the same with the eQRPs. Certain banks are better or understand how it works with these types of plans. Do you work with a handful of banks that are kind of specialized in this area?

Damion: We have a couple of relationships that we introduce to our clients only and exclusively. And the reason being, they actually know what they're doing. The reality is most banks don't know what they're talking about. They know how to sell you their bank products. And so if you come in and say, "I have an eQRP, or I have a solo 401k," they're going to look at you like you're an alien.

The Thing With Banks

Damion: It's because you're competing with them and they don't want to compete. They don't want to have you in control of your money. For two reasons, one, they lose fees. And two, they're concerned about liability from compliance. So most banks whether it's Wells Fargo, Chase, any of these, they're just not going to do it, they're not going to allow you to set it up. There's very few banks that are out there that you can actually walk in and tell them, "Here's what I'm doing." They're going to be excited, they're just not.

Darin: It's smart though that you can refer them to those specialists that do. Because look, even if you're, say, a single family I've never been a single family real estate investor. I'm focused just on large-scale multifamily. But there's certain banks that you go to get an investment loan from and they just make it so hard or they say no. But then you go to other banks that specialize in that type of investment and they'll write you those loans all day long. So it's knowing which banks to work with and which ones not to.

Damion: That's it.

Darin: Hey, in your book, you name a few different types of QRPs, you have the name of Rabbit, Squirrel, Honeybadger. All those are just names that you came up with and they kind of just segment out what somebody might be looking for in an eQRP?

Damion: Yes. The idea there with narrowing it down with the Rabbit, Squirrel, and Honeybadger was to really help people identify where they're at and whether they're by themselves. Whether they have rollover money, whether they have a company part-time, full-time.

Things to Expect From an eQRP

Damion: And when I say part-time, I'm talking about 10 hours a week, that's sort of part-time. So if somebody works for you for two hours, that's like babysitting. But when they're working for you 10 hours a week, that's part-time, they have to be included.

And so that's where you go into the Safe Harbor with the Honey Badger. It really was to help people understand where they are, because there's different things you need to do at certain levels. And then like with the way that we broke it up, so we came up with those names to really help people identify a little bit. That's my version of gender identity or something identifying as an animal.

Darin: Nice. Hey, how'd you get into this space and how'd you end up here and focused on this niche?

Damion: Entrepreneurs are always looking for problems, not to bitch about them but to solve them. And when I saw what was going on a decade ago, it started to get frustrating, seeing that this lack of information. And I also watched both of my parents retire, basically broke. I watched my dad die, concerned that he was going to run out of money before he ran out of time. And it was because he didn't understand that there were other options because he worked for the government. He was a military guy, very patriotic.

And they don't tell you anything about this. They say, "Here, it's a thrift savings plan. It's a government 401k." And he did what he was supposed to do and he retired, broke. And so I took it personally that the good people are being screwed by the system, to being enslaved.

The Prison Bars Called Wall Street

Damion: Put behind prison bars called Wall Street, and it made me mad. You get an entrepreneur that sees a problem and they get emotionally engaged because they're mad, then just get out of the way. And that's really what's happened.

Darin: So, how long ago? Was it 10 years ago when you started?

Damion: It was about 10 years ago, the QRP book 10th anniversary edition is this year. The original book was published 10 years ago. So before that it took a year and a half or so to write the book, and have it vetted, lots of IRS code. Trying to get something complex like retirement and tax code and put it into a readable format is all a really hard process.

Darin: Absolutely. I can imagine for sure. But hey, I'm thankful that you're out there and you're educating people because I still don't know why this world. If you're in this world, you go to conferences and I'm sure you see a lot of people that you know, like they frequent these conferences. But there's so many people still out there that don't know that they could do this, it's crazy.

Damion: Well, we just get hammered over and over by the system, by the Edward Jones of the world and the Fidelity’s. They say, "Here's what it is." And we read the Wall Street Journal and we hear about stocks. Unless you're in that alternative world and I laugh at it, I'm like, "What is an alternative about real estate?"

We all are involved in real estate because we sleep somewhere. And even if you're homeless, there's real estate, like it's the corner of the five by five you're sleeping on.

Paper Manipulation

Damion: That's not an alternative. What's alternative is all the paper manipulation. And people just don't know about this stuff because there's a very powerful system called Wall Street.

The financial services industry is like 25% of the GDP in America. And yet, what do they do? They just shuffle crap around, but it's very profitable. When there's profit, there's power, and when there's power there's protection. People are going to protect a system that enriches them. That is not enriching the people, it's enriching the powerful.

Darin: Yes, they're getting that recurring revenue stream year after year because the money's stuck. Hey, outside of work, what do you like to do?

Damion: So I'm a big fan of being outdoors, connecting to what's honest. What's honest is nature. So I like doing that and I spent a lot of time in that space.

Darin: So like hiking and camping and that type of thing?

Damion: Mostly hiking. One of the problems when you actually understand, or you have any experience of sleeping in a really nice bed, it's really hard to go sleep on dirt and rocks. Not really by saying, I enjoy being out and about and hiking and yoga.

Things that are really simple and grounded and calming. I think we're in society now where things are speeding up, they're not very grounded, they're stressful. And so finding ways to engage in activities that are the opposite of that.

I think if you're stressed, one of the most valuable things you can do is go for a walk with trees and nature. It tends to, you look around and you go, this just feels real because it's honest. Like there's no squirrel that's going to manipulate you.

Humans Are Crazy

Damion: If you see a squirrel running, it's just being itself. Nothing else in the world has a frontal lobe that thinks about the future. Humans are crazy, we're always thinking and there's anxiety, there's panic. Animals don't have that stuff, so I like being amongst animals and plants in it. I think anybody can benefit from being in those environments.

Darin: That's awesome. Look, when you're near the ocean or you're in the mountains or whatever, just natural beauty, you tend to have certain different thoughts that come in your head too. Whether it be like, what's important in my life? Or what's the next goal I'm going to go after, whatever the case may be.

You said hiking, not so much camping. My son is going to be a junior in college, my daughter just graduated high school. She's going to be a freshman in college in the fall. So we're going to be empty-nesters, my wife and I. I'm already like, "Hey, let's try this RV thing and go around." Sometimes expectations are different than the actual thing, but we haven't done it yet. But we're used to going to nice vacation resorts.

So getting my wife interested in the whole RV thing and living in a small little RV traveling around is a little bit of a coaxing. We may like it, we may love it, we may hate it. But if you don't try, you'll never know. And look, it's the same thing with investments or starting a business or whatever. If you don't take a chance, if you don't learn from others, if you don't bring on other team members, you're never going to be able to learn whether it was something for you or not.

Know Thyself

Damion: That's exactly right. One of the things that I love about business, Darin, is that it's a personal development program. And there's nothing that beats it, I mean, just nothing. You can take it anywhere you want, any day you want, I'm going to juice it, I'm going to expand it. You don't have to go to a Tony Robbins seminar. I mean, you should, but you don't have to. Like you just start a business and go hire somebody, watch yourself grow.

I think that's one of the things people miss. Like, "Oh, I don't want a person, there's people involved with it when you hire a person." I'm like, yeah. Guess what? It helps you to understand that you know thyself. Okay, that's a big part of this. So business is great. People that say, "I'm not a business person. I'm not a salesperson." You're missing out on who you could potentially be, because you're never able to actually grow it.”

Darin: Yes, and impact others. So hey, we talked a lot about different things here. We're coming near to the end here. Just wanted to make sure that I didn't miss anything that you think is really important that we should highlight before wrapping this up.

Damion: Well, I think that you've said this a number of times and I've sort of danced around it. You've said, you can learn and you should grow and just keep learning. And I agree with that. I think that the team is important because smart people tend to say, "Well, I'll just learn it all myself." But it doesn't mean that you should plan on being an idiot.

Self-Directed eQRP

Damion: And so the next step is really learning more and in this space. One of the things that I did a number of years ago was I summed it up so somebody could get the essence of it in about 10 minutes.

And that was the report that I wrote that you can download, get it on your phone. So I want to make sure everybody's doing that. Start with that, because what you shouldn't do is call me, or call my team or call anybody and say, "Okay, I don't know anything, just do it." That's stupid.

You want to show up at the party and be able to talk the language. And so to your point about learning, "Yes. You should absolutely learn some basics about law and accounting and retirement accounts. So you can have a conversation."

Otherwise, you're going to be led all over the place and have no idea what anybody's even talking about. I think there's a healthy bridge in having a team and also having the basics so you can actually have a conversation.

Darin: Yes, so I would maybe say, look, if you want to invest with your retirement funds, you have three options. Self-directed IRA, solo 401k, and eQRP. From everything that I see that eQRP has way more flexibility and control and asset protection, and limits your tax liability. And so whether it's Damion or somebody else, get educated, that's one piece.

But then it's not only about getting educated, you actually have to take action and you're not going to completely learn it unless you do it. So, peel off a piece and be committed to try investing in something outside of stocks and bonds, and see how that works for you.

Text eQRP to 72000

Damion: And to your point, what do you do? You take action, you've got to be committed and you take action. What's the one thing you can do? I mean, I'll tell you right now. Grab the phone if you're listening to this on and text, text the word eQRP to 72000 to get the report. We need to do things to create momentum.

Darin: Say that again, how do they get the report?

Damion: So grab your phone and text the word eQRP to the number 72000. That's going to allow you to get the report right to your phone and then you can share it. So even if you don't think that this applies to you, I guarantee you there's somebody in your life that's retired or is investing with an IRA. And they're about to get hammered with UBIT tax.

So super simple, keep it super simple. We send a text, the word eQRP to 72000, and get the report. And if you want the book, we'll send you the book too. This gets the ball rolling and that's where it happens.

Darin: That's huge. So if people want to reach out to you directly, is that the best way? Is there other means for them to get to learn more about you and your company as well?

Canned Gets Rejected

Damion: I think that the best thing, if somebody wants to reach out to me, is to find me on LinkedIn. I'll give everybody a tip on LinkedIn. If you want to connect with somebody, don't send them a generic canned thing, actually send them something. I love when people reach out and they're thoughtful, I read every message that comes in. I've got a team that helps me.

I read every one of them though. And anything that's canned gets rejected, I don't even care who it is. It could be the Dalai Lama. If the Dalai Lama is sending me a canned comment or question, I'm just going to ignore it. Because I'm looking for humans that have actual intelligent conversations. I like people, so I want people that will show up and spend some time. And that's how you find me.

Darin: So look for Damion on LinkedIn. His name, if you're listening and you don't have a phone in front of you, it is D-A-M-I-O-N, and his last name Lupo, L-U-P-O. I will have all that in the show notes, but just in case you're listening and want to write that down. Damion, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing, I know I learned from this. And I hope listeners, you enjoyed that one, until next week. Signing off.

How to Reach Damion Lupo

• eQRP Website
• Website
• LinkedIn