How Entrepreneurs Can Take Control Of Their Financial Future With Damion Lupo

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Welcome back to bacon wrap business. This is Brad Costanzo. And if this is your very first time joining me, welcome to the show. I think you're gonna love it. We've got some great topics in the past with some guests with a variety of topics from business to marketing to finance to investing and you name it. And today we're going to continue that last side of that with my new guest, Damian Lupo from Total Control Financial. And when I was introduced to Damian, one of the things that really kind of got me was the concept of what he's been doing, helping entrepreneurs and business owners really take control of alternative investments and understanding how to make the most of their money outside of traditional Wall street investments that most people think of. And how to really treat your financial portfolio, your retirement portfolio as a tool to create wealth, not just to save money. And when I was, when I dug deeper and I found out that he works with investors and entrepreneurs on Creating self directed 401k qualified retirement plans, which if that sounds boring to you, just wait. You're going to love this. Then this is something I've been looking into. I knew that I had to get him on the show. Damian's a really interesting dude, as you're about to find out. We've been talking here for almost the past hour offline. But over the last 25 years, he started and owned more than 30 different companies, including an insurance agency, precious metals firm, a venture capital company, a financial consulting firm, a dozen other real estate investment and development companies. I thought I had entrepreneurial add. I think Davion may take the cake. He's also, by the way, the founder of Yokido, his own martial art and holds three other black belts. We're not going to get as deep into that right now, but I want to bring you guys some of the wisdom that he's shared with me about the qualified retirement plans and how we can all use them in our business as well as something that he and I chatted about right prior to this conversation about kind of the world of startups and some of the misconceptions and fallacies about the excitement of a startup and some, some of the things that I'm doing and things that he's learned. That's just a preface of what we're going to be chatting about today. Without any further ado, Damian Lupa. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business.

Brad, I'm super excited to be here. I feel like a squirrel based on you describing the way I have all these businesses and background. I feel like I'm chasing shiny objects. But yeah, man, it's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. And you're in good company. I mean, I've done that myself. I've got heavy entrepreneurial add. I love new opportunities. I love chasing the. The thrill of what's possible and starting something new. And, you know, instead of just talking about, you know, like a lot of podcasts do, they'll say, so, Damian, tell me your story. How did you get started? What were you like as a child? What was your journey? I think a lot of people know that we all have various journeys, but I like to dive into kind of the meat of it. So let's talk about all 30 of your different companies.

Spin right through them. Boom.

So I actually want to say this. You've started up a lot of companies. What has been your biggest flop?

Holy crap. I mean, a lot of those are flops. More than 50% of those things did not work. And I think that that's one of the things that's really important for us to remember and people that are thinking about starting a business. If you're thinking about starting a business, that's probably a bad idea. If you're thinking about being an entrepreneur, it's part of the process is having multiple businesses and being open to learning because you do better on the second one and the third one's better than the second one because you learn those things. And you can't learn everything before you start your first business or even after your 10th. You're going to learn more on your 15th that you needed for your 10th. So it's a constant stair stepping. And I think if we really go in that way, my biggest flop, I mean, if we just want to nail it. I really described this in Reinvented Life when I did a deep dive on that mess up when I lost $20 million worth of property in 2008. And I had. I had tied my entire personal self worth to my net worth and I had a $5 million net worth. Sounded very cool. I was driving a Ferrari and all this fun stuff. Then when that flopped, I lost myself. I didn't know who I was when it went to negative 5 million. What I didn't realize was that this was a golden opportunity to learn and become better for the next thing. Instead, I spent several years sucking my thumb in a corner, basically crying over spilled milk and in a lot of pain. Now, if something doesn't work, I go, great. What did I learn from that? How am I going to be better next time? And if we can into things with that idea, then we don't get clobbered personally when things don't work because business is tough, and a lot of times it doesn't work. It's not a perfect system.

You're absolutely right. So you went from having a $5 million net worth, did you say, to being negative 5 million?

Yeah, I did the reversal. I got a little negative sign in front of my 5 million man.

How did you. How you know, how do you recover from that? Did you. I mean, did you. This may be a personal question, and if so, I can not ask it, but did you have to declare bankruptcy? Did you have to go through anything like, just harrowing with that? Have you climbed back out of that? What's. Because I. I've lost everything I've gotten before. Like, everything I've had, I've went from, you know, and I didn't have $5 million in net worth, but I had a good net worth. I went to zero twice in my life, but I went to zero, maybe like negative $15,000. And I've never had to start back over from, like, negative millions. What's the first step in that? How do you do that?

Well, the first step, and this took me a while, it's to realize that that number is just a number. It's made up. It's like when I did real estate deals and I made up a valuation on a house that I ended up selling. I just made it up. I made up net worth. So net worth is really worth very little, if we're honest about it. Because you can make it up. You can create it out of thin air. It can also be lost. So if we equate our worthiness to that number, then we're screwed. And that was why it took me multiple years to get past this, because I was tied to this number on a screen and. And I had people suing. I had banks coming after me. I had foreclosures. I actually didn't realize that you could have a credit score as low as mine. I remember one day it went from like 800 when things were flying high, and I looked at it one day and it was like 4:15. I said, how the heck do you have a 415? I thought you got like a 450 or 500 for getting your name right. And apparently you can be lower than that. So I couldn't qualify for a toaster oven. I had to. I actually had to get my family and a friend of mine to help me qualify for a rent, you know, for renting a house. And a buddy of mine actually helped me qualify for a telephone. I couldn't even qualify for a cell phone. I mean, it was humbling.

Wow.

And it took a few years for me to acknowledge that I didn't really like the guy that I was when I was building up my life based on just the money. And it needed to be something bigger. And when I realized the truth around who I was, I was able to change it. But until I acknowledged that truth, I was really stuck in the old person. So it took a few years for that. And that was the hard work.

What is the something bigger?

Something bigger is when I really. I leverage off of what I heard Peter Diamandis say a while ago, one of your Southern California neighbors. He talks about the new billionaire. And to me, I used to focus on I'm going to have a billion dollars or I'm going to have 100 million or whatever. So every million was just another million and it wasn't enough. And now the focus is. And the definition for a billionaire is somebody that's impacted a billion people, that's not impacted them in a negative way, not like Mao Zedong or something, but somebody that's really lifted a billion people up. The bigger mission is to find ways for me to create things that will help open people up to a life that they can live by design. I'm constantly thinking about that. And the money ends up being a side effect where people are hunting me and saying, hey, I want more of you and I want to write you a check instead of me trying to sell somebody on something. So I'm focusing on that bigger impact. And I think people say that a lot, but it's almost tongue in cheek. You really have to be willing to do a lot of work and give way more upfront than you're going to get. And most people get stopped too soon because they go, I'm not getting paid. So they chicken out or they just bail. And that's the big part about having that billion person impact, is being able to hold the vision long enough.

I like it. I like it. And I think that's important. I've actually heard Peter Say that as well, which is kind of that new definition of a billionaire. We were talking about startups and some of the risk involved and how I've grown to think in a lot of cases for me personally, that startup is a four letter word because it's a non validated business. It's got no traction. You're starting from absolutely zero. You're building what was your. You had an airline. We were talking about that. But there's a lot of challenges with just getting an idea and starting it up. And sometimes we get so excited about the potential of what our startup idea could be, we don't really think through the economics of it and will it work? And we wait. We can waste years and years on a half formed idea, which I've done in the past several times and somewhat recently as well. What was your airline analogy?

So it actually reminds me of a story of a guy that I just did some training with and we were talking about his stuff, his, his experience of selling his company for a couple million bucks. And basically what he did at that point, he had a couple million dollars and he had a choice, what am I going to do with this? And he thought, I'm going to go invest in these different things and I'm going to build these businesses. So he basically got a Runway which was this $2 million and he put a bunch, he put 8 million little pieces of metal all over the Runway. These are the airplane parts. And he said, I'm going to build these businesses with all these parts. So he had to figure out how to build an airplane instead of going and buying something that was already there. It's called an airplane with a pilot and you're buying into the airplane. Most of us find the juice. And that's what he was doing. He was looking for the excitement of putting something together. And I don't know if this is a guy thing or an entrepreneur thing, but we like to build things. And so he was doing that. And I said, man, you're literally finding skydiving adrenaline in all of your investing in your business. Instead of looking at this thing professionally and saying, how can I find the best airline to invest in and let somebody else fly this thing? So we have to really choose which one we're doing. And there's a reason that he had about 30% of his money left, because he was getting all the juice, the adrenaline. And that's where he was finding it in his life, in his business. Instead of going up and taking skydiving up, I mean, that would have been A smarter plan and a lot less expensive.

Right? And I think that's one of the, especially now. And this kind of dovetails into what you were just talking about, about how, you know, if you can focus on something bigger, like impact. I mean, you know, being an impactful entrepreneur these days is, I hate to use the word all the rage because I think that kind of takes away from it. And I don't want to take away from it. However, I think that one of the big problems. So I love these people, but I hate this word heart centered entrepreneur. I just hate it. Like it just, to me, it reeks of what I want to say, not ignorance, but it reeks of people who just say, I just want to do good in the world and they forget to look at your business as a real investment. It's an investment of your time, your energy, your money. And a business's purpose is to make money. It is to make an impact, right? That's how it makes money. But people, I don't believe, view their businesses as an investment and treat it as such, like they should. I think they treat it like, like you said, a, not everybody, but like a, like a thrill vehicle, right? Something that like, as opposed to really understanding the numbers, really understanding the purpose, really understanding the cash flow and the, the financials behind it so that they can make good decisions, better decisions along the way. And I actually want to segue that because we're talking about investments and I think this is a good example because now you're building a business around helping people and entrepreneurs how to utilize qualified retirement plans. Tell me a little bit more about that. I hate to like, just preface it too much, but give me the, give me the summary there of why this is so important now.

Well, just so that everybody have their eyes just glazed over like qualified retirement plans and they're about to turn. Don't stop listening because this is actually really applicable to you. It's. What we're talking about is IRAs and 401ks and these retirement plans that probably you have a lot of money in. And a lot of many people have their retirement money in these things, but they don't feel like they really have control. And the truth is most people don't. They have this small number of options for some mutual funds and then they sort of hope, which means they basically, their plan is, I'm going to smoke a bunch of Hopium and then it'll all work out when I'm 60. And the problem is you're just going to get really high and really old and you're not going to have any money left. So what we've done is the focus, the impact here is to show people a way for them to move that money from all these plans and move it into their hands. And it's called a qrp. It's the qualified retirement plan. It's essentially checkbook control of your money. So you can start investing it in things like real estate and don't slap me, but startups if you want to, or precious metals, things that are alternative. And the reason these things are so cool is because Wall street doesn't have control. They're not feeing you and you can do all sorts of really awesome things, but you have to be responsible. And that's the thing that I think a lot of people are either nervous about because they don't feel smart enough because they've been beaten down into the space of I'm too stupid to understand my investments or they just don't know this exists. And once you out, once you realize that you can actually have checkbook control of this money, two things happen. One, you realize, hey, I can put my money into something that's going to make me more than negative 5% a year, which is probably what you're going to have in your 401 or IRA. And two, you realize all your friends, family, people around you, just people out there have trillions of dollars stuck in this thing. And those are all your potential investors and partners and they don't even realize that they can put that money up. They say I don't have enough money to help you or, or to invest with you. But guess what? If you showed them this, all of a sudden they do. They have the ability to invest in your idea or your property or whatever it is. It taps into this literally endless well of cash that most people don't even realize is possible.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. My experience with using retirement accounts for alternative investments has been I had rolled over a, you know, a former 401k from another, you know, back when I had a job and I rolled that over into a self directed IRA in which I could like, I make private money loans to real estate investors and I can invest in all different variety of investments that I couldn't do with, you know, Prudential securities or whomever I was with. And then it was somewhat recently where I started to understand the difference between a self directed 401k and I am a one employee company. Like I use contractors, but I don't have multiple employees. And I didn't even think that I could actually have my own 401k and that I didn't really look into this. But there is a big difference between having a self directed IRA and a self directed 401k and the amount of tax deferment that you can do. Like I'm planning on doing this because I'm making a lot of money this year and I really want to defer and reduce my taxable income exposure, but at the same time have the ability to make these investments in alternative assets such as real estate, such as gold and silver, such as other businesses. And tell me a little bit, tell the audience a little bit more about the difference between, you know, or the options available for a business owner as it relates to like a, an individual 401k that they control.

Well, you hit something that's really important and that's the whole idea that the self directed IRA is what most people have heard about and that probably the biggest company out there is Entrust. And I hate to actually say the name of a company because I don't want people to go over there and go, hey, nice website and we should do business. But the truth is that you've heard about those, the self directed IRAs, because the companies that are doing those, that are setting them up, the custodians are making a fortune on all the fees for everything that you do. Every time you do a hard money loan or you do these different investments, they make a fee. So when you switch gears and you move and you say, I'm going to do a solo 401k or we call it a QRP, when you just use that, there's no more transactional fees, like none, zero. And so I've had people that have 30, 40 notes in there that they've loaned money out and every time they get payments coming in, they're getting charged. There's all these fees. So when you move it and you have your qrp, not only do you not have the fees, but if you want to contribute, like in your case, you want to contribute money. With an IRA, you can contribute 5,500 bucks a year. With a QRP, you can contribute 54,000. Yeah, that's 10 times as much. So imagine over 20 years, if you're contributing, you can contribute 5,500 a year. You got 100,000 bucks. Woo hoo, you're 20 years older and you got $100,000, that's a disaster. But if you put 50,000 a year in or you start building up to that you get a million and you can actually invest in things that like for example, one of the cool things is precious metals. You can hold those metals at your house, you can actually take possession. You can't do that in an ira. And the real estate piece is awesome because most of us know that with real estate there tends to be debt involved oftentimes. And if you use a qrp, you're able to invest, use debt, debt to partially finance your thing and you get to keep all the profit. With an ira, you're going to give away probably half the profit to taxes immediately. So kind of let that sink in. There's no good reason to have a self directed ira. Once you know about the qrp, it's literally a disaster and you're going to lose half your money at least if you're doing a lot of these deals like we talk about.

Right. And like you said, you can invest in real estate, you can invest in, you know, precious metals. By the way, you also wrote a book on gold and silver investing.

Right?

What is your. I'm just kind of want a rabbit trail over here. Just curious on your personal view of the gold and silver marketplace. Mostly for probably since 2008, 2009, if maybe, if not before. And there's been several times where I've almost like I'm a big believer in the underlying reasons and I. This is not a reason to go like deep down the rabbit trail. But what is your overall view of the gold and silver market right now? Is it.

The gold and silver market is crazy. It's unpredictable and it's going to be there for the next 5,000 years just like it has for the last 5,000. The truth is it's a great hedge because there's so much mismanagement of our financial system, the currencies. I mean every currency on the planet is a fiat currency and that just means that it's printed out of thin air. So what does that mean? It means all of them are going down in value and eventually they're going to be worth the paper that they're written on. Gold is not going to have that happen. So my opinion is that every single person should have 10% of their, of their liquidity in gold and silver.

Right.

And it's not because you're going to make a fortune. You might, but it's not why you have it. It's because you got to hedge against the idiots that are printing money. And there's a lot of them all over the world doing it.

Yeah, it's downside Worst case protection. I agree with you, but it is one of those things I remember back in. I think it was like 2009 or 10 or something of that nature. And I was like, I was ready to. To go all in and say, yeah, I'm. Maybe it was 2010. I was ready to put a good amount of money in there. But I didn't. And I kind of sat back and I just kept on watching it. It's like it's. It's just kind of lingered. It's almost. It's always almost the perfect time to put it in. But anyway, I was just kind of curious about your overall view on that because I actually have a very cautiously pessimistic view of the overall economy here in the short term because I do think there's a lot of fallout that can happen. I think we're highly overpriced. That's why I like having the ability to invest my retirement plan outside of the stock market, because I do not feel comfortable with it right now. We may have another couple years of good returns. I don't really know. But I like being able to put that into alternative investments for the downside protection.

I think this is a good place for me to plant a seed for everybody. And that is that the seed that I am 100% positive we're going to have a major correction in the next 18 months. And for me, it's a math thing. It's not a rectal poll where I'm just making this up.

I like a rectal poll.

I think everybody's got opinion on CNBC and things. And it's a lot of times it's just a rectal poll. In this case, we've got several things that are coming together at warrants. One of them is that we're going to have multiple raises on the interest rates. The Fed is going to change the rates. They're going to raise them. It's going to be another point over the next year.

You say we're not going to have free money forever. What?

We're not going to have free money. Here's the thing. Everybody watched the housing market go crazy. We watched the stock market go crazy. What was happening over the last 10 years of this going on? All the rates were dropping. And the exact opposite is going to happen when rates go back up. And that 25% increase in rates will cause a major problem in the real estate markets. And then you've got these boomers that are retiring. I mean, they're hitting an age where they're required by law, to pull money out of the stock markets, 10,000 of those a day are hitting that age. 10,000 people required to pull money out causes a huge problem when you have that much distribution out of a market. So what that means is those two things alone are going to trigger a major push down in pricing and it's going to cause a problem over the next 18 months. So when people say, what do I do? I mean, if I know things are going to collapse, the question you have to ask is, what are you investing in or what business are you building that can go right through that, that recession, that downward trend. If you're speculating in houses and it's all about the thing going up in value, you are setting yourself up for that problem. But if you're doing something that's different, you're creating value inside the house or you're doing investing that is for long term cash flow. Like you're serving millennials. There's millions of them that need housing and it's a certain kind that doesn't exist right now. If you're doing something like that, it doesn't make any difference if the market collapses. But if you're speculating with the stock market, you're going to get killed.

Yeah, I agree. And like, yeah, and I couldn't, I could actually not agree more. And that's where what you're doing with helping people understand the options they have through the use of a, you know, of a self directed plan that they can actually choose. And one of the cool parts about this, we didn't really mention it, but you know, If I've got $100,000 for instance, in my, in my Costanzo Marketing Groups 401k plan, I can borrow, what is it, 50% of that? Correct. Yeah, I can write a check, I can go, I can write a check for anything. Right. It can be for whatever I want. Am I, am I, am I limited.

On that yout can borrow 50, 50%, $50,000, whichever is less, anytime you want, just write yourself a check.

But I mean, can I spend it on anything I want? Oh yeah, right, exactly. So it's not like investments which are limited. Like I could take that to Vegas and blow it all if I want. Now I have to, you know, amortize that over five years, pay it back, pay it back with interest to myself. Question on that. So because I understand that you have to, you know, if it's a loan, right, you can take it, you can amortize that over five years and you pay it back with a You know, market rate of interest, that's kind of up to you. Does that interest rate that I'm paying. I believe it does. That goes back into my account, correct?

Yeah, you're paying yourself back. So you're actually increasing the size of your account.

What is jumping around a little bit? Because I'm asking these questions for my benefit and hopefully the listeners don't get too confused. But what is the big difference? You're familiar with the Whole Life Infinite bank policy of, you know, using whole life insurance? You familiar with that?

I am, big time. I used to sell that stuff.

Cool. What is the biggest difference between, like, if somebody's considering one or the others, do you recommend one over the other? And why?

I will be very gentle about it. The whole life thing for 99% of the population is a giant scam. The banking on yourself thing is a scam. The reason I say that, and it's math. I'm a math guy. It's my genius. We all have a genius. I'm a genius in math. I understand math. And I can pick things apart. And salespeople in certain places hate that because I will tear apart their pitch. The pitch. And I used to sell this stuff before I really understood what I was selling. And then I ran away from it. The reason it's. It's a scam is because there's massive commissions and your stuff is growing inside a system that's making an insurance company money. And if you look at it and you actually understand the costs and fees for all the life insurance and the commissions, which are easily 20, 30, 40%, and I've heard people say, oh, they're only a few percent. That's such bs. I mean, I've seen the backside of this. I used to work as a CFO for a life insurance operator that was selling the stuff. I know the numbers, and it is a scam. And you know what? Bring me the numbers and let's look at them and I'll dissect them. So the reason that's so different is because when you borrow money from your solo plan, your qrp, all that money is going right back to you. You're not paying fees. You're not trying to figure out if your interest that you're getting or that you're paying is offset by dividends. There's no funny numbers. The system, the insurance companies and the Wall street system sets things up so that they're very complicated and they can spin a story to make you feel are working. But the actual operation of a bank on Yourself when you have money. Here's the pitch with what they'll say. They'll say, once you have cash in here, you can borrow it, and you can either live off of it or you can borrow it, and the dividends that you keep getting paid are going to be more than the interest you're paying back. And that is not true. If you look at the math. If you actually look at the math, and I've colleagues that did this, they literally did it. And I said, how did it work out? And they said two years after I started doing this, realized the math didn't work, that I was losing money. So be really mindful of the math, even if you like the person. And a lot of the life insurance people are good people and they're very likable, but they don't understand the math. And if you really look at the math, the math tells you the answer. The answer is it's a scam.

Right. You know, I'm actually really happy that you say this for one primary reason. I remember when I heard about it years ago, actually, with Mike Dillard's Elevation Group, and that kind of sent me on to, you know, hunting about it, more information. And I read, was it Pamela Yellen's book, Bank on Yourself? And I started, and I was like, man, this actually makes a lot of sense. This is really cool. And I considered doing it. And then I was speaking with one of my clients, the founder of reivault.com, gary Boomershine, who is the person who turned me on to these QRPs qualified retirement plans. And he even said, he goes, now I used to be. I have a lot of experience in with the infinite banking model. And he goes, yeah, it's not right for like 99% of people unless you're making a tremendous amount of income. The 401k version is the way to go. I love hearing the fact that you just validated what I heard for the same exact reasons. So that it is very valuable because there's. There's so much misinformation out there about that.

A big part of the reason that it's. It's really. It's promoted and people have a spin on it. It's because it's incredibly profitable for people that are selling these concep. Yeah. And it's really like you just said, if you're making millions a year, this is a great way to find ways to capture your money, your wealth, your income, and to kind of protect it for your estate. But in terms of making money Whenever I see somebody selling it, I go, who's making the money here? And here's a great question, by the way. Anybody that's ever selling you a financial product, I always like to ask them, if you're telling me that this financial product is going to make me a lot of money, I want to see how much you've made off of the investments you've made in this product or in the actual commissions. Where the life insurance industry has made their money is not. It's not in the product making the money, it's in the sale of the product, it's the commissions. And we should ask that for anybody that's, that's pitching us a deal. Where's the money being made? Show me the money and I can show you the reality of it.

Absolutely. So you've got a company called Total Control Financial. Tell me a little bit about what you guys do. I mean, it sounds like you help people set these up, etc. Give me an overview of your business.

Right now, the business that the main focus of the business is setting up the solo plans. It's the qrps. It's really an offshoot of my DNA. And what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the values that are really important to me and the primary out of the six values that I live that the company is based on, the primary one is self responsibility. And this is very different from the typical financial world because the typical financial world, Wall street world, life insurance world, is all about abdicating responsibility. It's punting your financial life into somebody else's hands and hoping that they take that ball all the to the end zone, if you will. Little footballs. Absolutely, though and I don't think that that's a very smart plan. And the truth is everybody is really smart enough to run their own lives. They've just been told otherwise. And so the focus for the company and for the teaching that I do and the training and everything is really to empower people. And here's something that's really important that people really need to get that freedom, financial freedom especially, because if your finances aren't in order, forget about freedom. Like you're going to have a mess because it's like oxygen. It doesn't matter until you don't have any. So if you want financial freedom, it's not about cash in the bank, it's not about cash flow. It's about the confidence to create. And so what we're focusing on is bridging people from where they are to the Confidence so that no matter what happens, you lose your money, you lose your cash flow, whatever. You always have the ability to go out there and create. If you've got that, you're free and that's permanent. So that's the entire focus of the company. Creating that permanent financial freedom based on the confidence that people can go create their stuff again.

I love it. And you work, you're, you're not taking the place. Correct. Of somebody's overall financial advisor, cpa, et cetera. You've got to. Or do you do? This is a specialized practice that helps primarily guide people through this aspect.

Yeah, this, this is more of, I'm more of a trainer. So I don't, I don't, I don't tell people that I know about volleyball or baseball. But what I do know is I understand how to build the muscle. And so financial advisors say, okay, here's how you swing, here's how you do your thing that you're, that you need for the technical pieces. What I'm doing is I'm building up the overall DNA and they're, and helping them with that. So I don't know if something is right. A business or gold or property. I have no idea if that's right. So I'm never going to tell somebody, you should do this. I'm not going to should all over them. I'm going to say, hey, if you want to have the strength to make the right decision on your own, that's what I'm here for, is to give you that power.

I love it. I love it. By the way, I just want to circle back to one more detailed question as I was thinking about this because I know that you can invest in traditional stocks, mutual funds, etc. With a self directed 401k. And I know that that money is kept inside a, like a traditional bank account. Right. A checking account.

Yep.

If I want to buy ge, you know, do I, how do I go about doing that if it's in my self directed. Do I have to open up like an E trade account? But it's like an. And I'm just using E trade as an example. It could be like any brokerage account, but it's funded with that, with that money or how do I transact those things?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean you nailed it. It's that simple. The most common thing that I hear from people pretty much every time I talk to somebody new, they go this seems too simple. Like what am I missing? And I just laugh. I'm like, I'll create friction, I mean, if you really need it. But yeah, if you want to go buy the quote unquote traditional stuff, the paper assets like mutual funds or GE stock or whatever. Yeah, you set up an additional. It's essentially, it's a brokerage account somewhere that. Where they are the custodian for your stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and it's in addition to your other things. So there's no limit on how many of those accounts you can have for your plan. You just add another one. Because you can't just buy stocks out of your bank of America checking account.

Exactly. That's where I was going with that. Well, man, this has been. This has been fantastic. And I really appreciate you sharing all of this information and insights with me. But here's where I want to kind of turn the tables on you and allow myself or my listeners to help you. But what is a nut that you're trying to crack in your business or life right now? And by that I mean I don't care if it's a skill you're trying to learn, a person you're trying to hire or meet money you're trying to raise, a problem you're trying to solve, an idea you're trying to come up with, what is a nut you're trying to crack.

The nut is really convincing people and helping people shift their ownership of their financial space and not just giving them a tool, but really shifting them. And that's going to happen with the work that I'm doing with Transformation Nation. So I'm launching my show here this fall, and it's really going to be about the confidence. And that's. It's solely focused on building the confidence, the tools, the ideas, the empowerment that there's other people that we're not alone. And the nut to crack is to be able to share that with people and have it spread so that we can be around people that are also driving their lives, that are also feeling confident. Because if we're isolated and something happens, we tend to not feel like we can get through it. Oftentimes we back off. And if we're surrounded by people that are also on that. That journey and they're working on their confidence, it tends to help keep us going. So the more people that we can share this with, the more, I mean, I think that we really start changing society by that ripple effect. So the Transformation Nation project is really what I want support with. I want people to share.

That's fantastic. How can they share that? Is there anything they can do?

Yeah, it'll be live on itunes. It's coming out this fall. And so basically people will be able to share that and they'll be all sorts of awesome people that are going to be on there. You haven't been invited yet, but you're about to be invited because I'd love to have you on the show.

I love it. I love it. Can't wait. Well, for all my listeners, I definitely encourage you to check out. Go to totalcontrolfinancial.com schedule a chance to talk here with Damian or any of your people. I don't know what is the exact process. They fill out information and you get on the phone with them and kind of walk through it. But I imagine, you know, they can get some great advice on what's best for them over the phone.

Yeah, what people should do right now is go to the site and get a copy of the book. I mean, there's. Yeah, the book's great.

I got it right next to me.

Yeah, you can get a copy there. Just go visit, get a copy. It's free. I'm going to send it out to you. I'm going to send you a physical book. It's not just digital. I'm going to give you something you can hold and you can mark up and play with and start to learn. Because if you learn, you'll become more confident and that's the entire point. So that's your one task. Go to the site, get that book, and then see which parts resonate and grow a little bit.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Guys. Go check that out. It is something that I am personally doing is something that can make an enormous difference in your financial health, of your business, of your life, et cetera. And if you're not thinking about this stuff and you're only thinking about how to grow your business and get more sales coming in, you're missing out on one of the most critical and important aspects of business. And that's why I invited Damien here to share these insights with you. And if you have enjoyed them, grab the link on this episode and share it on social media and with your friends and family and leave us a review. Leave a review on itunes and let me know what you think. I read every single one of them. And by all means, if you have got any questions about this for myself, I'm going to get Damian's email here in a second for ability to contact him. But you can always send me an email@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com I read every single one of them. I'm happy to get back to you if it's something that I think I can help you with, such as if you're stuck, if your revenues aren't growing, if you kind of need help validating an idea and aren't sure where to turn, well, you can potentially turn to me. I love helping other business owners kind of get unstuck. Damian, how do they get control of you besides total control? Financial email, follow you on social, anything like that?

Yeah, yeah. You know, connect with me on. Just shoot me an email. Damiantotalcontrolfinancial.com that's probably the most direct way to get a hold of me. You can find me on social if you want to get me direct. I answer my emails like you. I like that. I like the accessibility and I love hearing people that take action where they write an email. Hey, man, I heard you. I have no idea what to do, but thanks. You know, that kind of stuff really makes me happy. It makes me happy that you and I spent the time to share. So, yeah, reach out. That's the best.

Awesome. Well, thanks again, Damien, for being a guest on the show. To every other one of my listeners, thanks for listening and taking time out of your day to listen to bacon wrapped business. Stay tuned for next week. Got a really cool interview coming up and as always, hit me up@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com see.