How To Take Control Of Your IRA & Invest In Real Estate, Precious Metals & Even Crypto w/Damion Lupo

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. You can get a free copy of my book@nextlevelincome.com click on the book link. I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out our Invest link. That'll help you learn more about how to gain access to our new self storage fund as well as other institutional quality investments. On today's show, you're not going to want to miss another appearance by Damian Lupo. He's going to tell you how to get his book for free. He's also going to tell you about how you can take back control of your finances. How you can actually use your 401k, your IRA money to invest in things not only like real estate, but also physical gold and cryptocurrency. How about that? Stay tuned. On today's show we have Damian Lupo. He's a best selling author of a dozen books on personal finance, investment and retirement strategies. And he's on a mission to free 1 million people from financial bondage. He hosts the Financial Underdogs podcast. Rips conventional wisdom apart for the Main street investor looking for truth about money and investing. And not only has he started 50 companies, actually more than 50 companies, he even found his own martial art, yokido. Damian developed the ultimate investor retirement tool called the EQRP which we're going to talk about today. And his strategy gives individuals total control of their retirement money to invest in real assets like gold, real estate and cryptocurrency. Today's show is sponsored by the Airbnb Kickstart course. My wife and I started our first Airbnb here in the last year and we've come to love the ability to earn more money than we would if we had a long term rental. If you're interested in starting your Airbnb business with little money, scaling your Airbnb business, or just learning tricks of about the industry in general, check out our airbnb course@nextlevelincome.com Airbnb that's Air the Letters BNB and you'll get a 20% discount code. Damian, welcome back to the show.

Chris, what's up? It's good to be back.

Oh man. So I was telling you before like you're one of a very select few that have been a returning guest on the show. And for those of you that missed it last year, we did a rushed produced episode with Damian because we were going into this Covid crisis and it was, I think it was in April of last year that we aired the show and we talked about the CARES act and you gave the audience just super valuable information. Damian, a lot of people don't really know what you do because you do so many different things, but you provide so much value and I love your mindset. So if you would tell the audience a little bit about your main business and then we're going to get into all kinds of different stuff.

Today, totally main business is the eqr and that's an enhanced qualified plan. It's basically a supercharged self directed retirement account for individuals and small companies. And we basically give people control of their money. So whether you're sitting there and have an old orphaned IRA or 401k from a company you worked for, or whether you're starting a business or you have a company with people, it's really just we give people control of their retirement money to be able to invest in real estate, crypto gold stuff that's outside of Wall Street. So we're really doing to disrupt Wall street and we've got over a billion dollars worth of disruption. Not that Wall street cares over a billion dollars because what do they care? They've got 30 trillion. But I think every one of the people that has the control of their money really does care. It's like the starfish on the sand. It cares when you throw it in the. You throw in.

It's amazing. And full disclosure, we have an EQRP through your company. I think you probably just blew some people's minds when you said that they could invest in crypto through their retirement account. Because people think, oh, I can invest in gold through an etf or you know, it's not physical gold. But so people can actually invest in crypto and physical gold through an eqrp, is that right?

Yeah. And hold it. I mean that's one of the things too. Like even with an ira, you can't hold anything. Still going to be in somebody else's custody. Which means if you don't hold it, if you can't touch it, you may not really own it. And that's a big thing for people to think about. ETF or physical gold versus paper gold, crypto that somebody else is holding versus you having it in a cold wallet like that. You're a nano ledger or a treasure or something. There's different versions of ownership in terms of assets and what we're really talking about is getting rid of counterparty risk. And that's when somebody else has the ability to influence your investment and you're just stuck. There's nothing you can do about it. So an EQRP takes out the counterparty risk in a lot of cases and gives you a lot of flexibility to do things that nobody really talks about. Because of the big Wall street fee game.

Yeah, no, it's huge. And we're going to get into. So if you're sitting here and your head's already spinning because you're thinking, you're like counterparty risk and wait a minute, I don't actually own these things. I mean, if you're out there and you've been following China, some of these companies that are on the American Stock Exchange, they're not actually Chinese stocks. It's like a phantom version of these stocks that have been owned through other exchanges. And then China just takes them away and there's no value left in these things. There's a lot of things out there that people don't understand about the way this works. But this is why I love talking to you, Damien, because we can get really deep. But if we step back. My MBA is in portfolio management. And one of the things I learned when I was going through business school is that I didn't want to be a financial planner because I thought the world of Wall street was broken. And I'm like, well, the way I invest. And at that time I was investing in Vanguard and low cost ETFs and those sorts of things. And in full disclosure, that's still a portion of my portfolio. But I thought I could just tell my clients, hey, go do this. How can I charge a fee for that? And then as I got older, and this is why we founded the show, we talk and teach people how to shortcut ways to the wealthy and the ultra wealthy and how they invest. And it shocks people to learn that you can actually take a 401k or an IRA and now you can have full control. So let's dive a little bit deeper into this first thing here, Damian. What is the law that allows this to happen? Because most people hear this and they're like, you can't do that.

Well, what's really wild is people say, is this new? Is this legal?

Exactly.

I go, it's new. It's been around for almost 50 years. And the code has been set up for a long time to allow this for people to have an individual plan or. And the code was set up for 401ks and IRAs back in the early 70s and it's, it was for the 401ks were meant for companies. So companies include individuals because you and I can be a company as a sole proprietor. And then IRAs were set up as, as a way for people that just wanted to put a little bit of money away as a tool, a shelter because all these, all these accounts, IRAs, 401KSRPs, they're all just shelters. The tax code is set up really because the government knows it's screwed, tries to put everybody on some type of basic universal income, which is what they're doing anyway, but they don't have the resources. So this was meant to be a way to take responsibility and start putting something away and be one of the legs of the stool for retirement. And so it was set up to where qualifying meant you had to have some type of business. And really what does that mean? It means you have something that has the potential for making money. And as a guy that has had more than 50 companies, just because you have a company doesn't mean you're going to make any money and it's still legitimate. It just has to be. Has the potential to do it. So people oftentimes go, well, I'm working, I'm a full time employee, I'm a doctor, I'm a dentist, I'm a butcher, something. And they'll say I don't qualify. And I say, well actually we have tons of people that have multiple retirement accounts and you have to have some Pepe. It could be an ebay store, could be a lemonade stand, it could be a million things. And so I think people talk themselves out of stuff a little too often because it's easier. You don't have to do any work. Oh, if the answer is no, it's like an attorney. You go to an attorney and you say what about this? And they go no. Well, it's easier for them to say no. And there's no potential litigation if they say no. So we do that in our own. Instead of saying, well is it possible and how might I be able to do it? One of the most powerful questions ever is how might I be able to do this? Because it opens your mind up to the question possibility.

Absolutely. And that's, you know, I try to teach my boys that. It's like, you know, once you say no or I can't do it. So we were, we were on vacation last week and took my boys out fishing. So first time they're fishing for, for big fish. We actually out there for sharks. And my younger son gets the reel and he's, he's reeling it in. He's, you know, nine years old and he's got a pretty big shark on the line. And he said, I can't, I can't do it. And I said, don't say that. Like, keep doing what you're doing. And you know, he reeled that fish in. So no, it's. You see it with CPAs, they say, oh, no, you can't deduct that. I saw this yesterday with an investor. Oh, no, no, you can't. Like, did you ask? Why did you ask? How did you ask? Did you look for a different cpa? And they just, they just didn't understand the tax code to do that. So I put them in touch with a CPA that does understand the tax code that could help out this individual and do that because they're like, oh, you don't want to do that. You might get audited. It's like, well, you're not doing anything illegal and you might get audited anyway. Actually, you probably are going to get audited at a greater rate because you're claiming more income, which puts you in a greater risk than if you took this legal deduction that you're entitled to and decreased your income. He said, I didn't think about it that way. Your CPA didn't tell you that either. So it's such a powerful thing. All right, so the eqrp, repeat again what it stands for. And then let's talk about the structure and people that can actually utilize it.

So it's the Enhanced Qualified Retirement Plan. This is a type of a 401k. It's not a solo 401k. It's not something else in a Wolf in sheep's clothing or whatever. The thing is, it's a different type of 401 built differently. It has liability protections, it has the ability to hire people. It's a different system for people that are really growth minded. It's not meant for somebody that has 5,000 bucks and they want to invest in stocks. That's not what this is in an IRA or something. It's a vehicle for responsible people that are thinking about growing their life. Potentially having some employees building up their assets in things that are not just mutual funds. So if you like mutual funds, that's cool against that. But this is meant for people that are looking for tangible stuff. Like I said, the real estate and the crypto and the gold and private equity is really the most common stuff that people invest and do. And I think it's just people that want to take control and ownership of their lives versus just advocating responsibility to an advisor that quite is really good at selling things and keeping you from running out of the market when it gets bad.

Yeah. And look, frankly there's value in that. There's value in having somebody that understands something that you don't and doing that. But there's also, there's the way it's done and then there's the optimal way to make something happen. So I'm sitting at dinner a couple nights ago with a surgeon friend, very successful, another friend, also very successful, and he looks at me and he goes, Chris, did you realize that I could take my IRA and I can put it in this other type of account and I can invest in your deals with it? I said Yeah. I said 25% of our investors do that. And he's like, why did I not know about this? And I said, he's like, shouldn't my advisor tell me about that? And I know, you know what the next thing he said was? I said, well, do you think he's incentivized to do it? And he goes, well, no. And he's like, I need to get a new advisor. So what he was talking about was a self directed ira. So a lot of people that are listening right now have heard about self directed IRAs. How is this different? Or is it different?

Yeah, they're totally different. In fact, they're built under different parts of the tax code. And what happens is because there's $10 trillion in IRAs, that's where the marketing, it's like you start off with all the marketing from Wall street that goes to CNBC and the Wall street, that's all just mutual funds. And so most people go there and then they bump into self directed IRAs like your surgeon friend and they say, oh, okay, this is an opportunity and it's better than the other option. But the problem is it still doesn't give you the actual control that you really want. Because IRAs require a custodian and they tax you if you real estate with debt. So the truly the freest thing is an EQRP because you can do deals, you can invest in apartments that have debt and you're not going to be hit with a 7% UBIT tax. If you want to buy gold, you can buy it and physically hold it. You want to buy crypto, you can physically hold it. You want to hire some people at some point EQRP expands into that space and becomes A safe harbor eqrp. So the differences are really the tax, the liability. You don't have protection in IRA the way you do with an EQRP. Most people don't realize, Chris, that you can. With IRAs and individual 401ks, those things can be attacked and taken depending on the state and the liability protection, it's not the same protections as a big 401k. And a lot of people don't realize that they have millions of dollars in these accounts. Good luck. You ever trip on a curb in San Diego and somebody sues you, they're going after everything you've got, including your, your 401k and IRA. So they're majorly different and a lot of people don't even realize that. So kudos for shifting from just the traditional thing into the self directed ira. But there's something far better than that for everybody to consider.

I'm certainly going to pass on your information to this individual so he has all the information as he makes this decision. Okay, so let's talk about what you can invest in. So we talked about again, we had a solo self directed IRA with my wife. My wife's an architect. We set that up several years ago until we learned about what you have here. And one of the frustrations that I get from investors is I got to go through this whole process. I got to file all this paperwork and there's all these people that don't really know what's going on that I got to go through. What's the process with an eqrp? So you get the account set up and then you have an opportunity, whether it's real estate or whether it's physical metal, whether it's cryptocurrency or maybe even a small business or something like that that you're purchasing. Right. What's the technical process that someone has to go through to move their money from the account into this investment?

Well, so the technical process is actually very, it's very not mysterious, but it's actually a lot easier from the client's perspective because we do the heavy lifting. We set everything up. It takes the days to build all the accounts. There's no possible way for it to take less than a couple of days. When we set everything up because there's multiple accounts, there's government limits on how many accounts set up per day. And anyways, when that's done, the client has their. They have a checking account and we move the money with them over. So we don't just hand the key and say, good luck Hope it works out. We were actually on the phone oftentimes for hours at a time with the fidelities and vanguards and all of these accounts. So it's super high touch of. It's a totally different experience than somebody that hands you a bunch of papers and says I hope it works out, good luck. And that's, that's pretty prevalent. So once someone has their money, what's interesting, especially comparing an EQRP to a self directed IRA where you have to get permission to get your money and you have to have a custodian and have to approve your stuff with this you'd like a deal and you say yes, you can wire or write a check and you're funded in minutes. Give you an example of that. Two weeks ago we had a deal we got involved with and we ended up raising $15 million in 24 hours and majority of it was funded within a few days. That would have never happened if we had IRAs that were being used because it would have been stuck and they would have lost out.

Yeah, no indeed, it definitely takes a lot longer. So what? So I mean obviously I see a lot of people investing in real estate, syndications, doing private lending. We've done some of that through my wife's self directed ira. One of the unique thing is like you can't self deal. Like we can't invest in my own deals that I'm putting together for syndications but outside of syndications in real estate. Damian, you mentioned a couple of things. What are you seeing? People use their EQRP funds to invest.

In few things that we're walking and we're seeing more and more momentum. Gold has been fairly popular for a while, physical possession of gold, taking it and either putting it in a private vault or just having it at home. The other ones we're seeing a lot of our land overseas. People are using it as a way to start investing in foreign countries to develop the ability to get citizenship and things. So there's some ways to do that.

Interesting.

And yeah, and then one of the big ones is the crypto space because well for one there's crypto. Is there it. There's this transformation in our monetary system around crypto. So it's excellent to be involved and it takes some time, but usually it also takes some capital. And one of the challenges with crypto is that the government's going to come after the tax on it. They're going to say okay, we want to tax it. One way to avoid all taxes completely is to use your retirement account. And especially using the Roth account. And that's the biggest opportunities for people right now is to shift some of their Roth EQRP money into crypto. And that way, when it goes where we think it's going to go, there's not going to be a big tax bill.

That is one of the best things that I've heard about that. And we were talking about crypto before the show today, so I kind of want to transition into that because one of the top questions I get. So we talk a lot about life insurance, we talk about real estate, we talk about structures and how the rich invest. And one of the big questions I get is, what do you think about crypto? And I didn't know this before the show. Is it true you started a cryptocurrency exchange?

We do. It's exclusive, it's for clients. And it's because here's what's happening. People are wanting to get in. There's a huge amount of momentum that's happening. Institutions are adding the crypto onto their balance sheets. Whether it's PayPal or Square or MicroStrategy, it doesn't make any difference. It's happening in Mass, Maryland, bank of America and individuals are saying, okay, I want to get in the game. And they want to have entities that are going to buy. The problem is there's a lot of AML and kyc. This is anti money laundering and know your clients, and that stuff slows the process down. When somebody says, my company wants to set up and they want to set up an account, it can take six months. So we took that six months and created a process to where somebody can take their cash in their retirement account and be able to buy crypto and have it in hand 72 hours. So we shortcutted the six months into less than six days. And that it's a game changer because you don't have time. You can't wait six months to do something. You're going to miss the process of something happening.

Yeah, no, that's. No, the system is just not set up to move at the way the world moves today. And I've had conversations over the years, business owners, employees, they get their funds in a 401k or an IRA. And I'll never forget the day my CPA turned and looked at me. He goes, chris, you need to stop contributing to these qualified plans. I was like, what are you talking about? They started talking about the tax ramifications. And then, you know, also like, what you can and can't invest in. So it's like, okay, you're allocated, you have this money and this is stuck in stocks, but you want to put more money in real estate, or you want to put money in gold or crypto, you want to stop putting money into that account. So one of the particularly impactful stories I had was a business owner, a surgeon, large surgeon practice, and this was during the 2008, 2009 crisis. And he's like, hey, I want to move my money out of here. I want to it into. In this case, we were talking about gold, and this particular individual is now heavily invested in cryptocurrency. He's like, chris, I can't get my money out of this account. So do you work with business owners? Do you work with people like that? And how can you help somebody like that?

Yeah, so the business owners that we work with are typically the clients that have, we set up their retirement account and so we work with them being able to get their money out of or wherever it's stuck. So we tend to take things that have a lot of friction or a lot of stickiness and free them. The entire mission that we have is to break people's financial shackles, break them free from financial bondage. And so part of that is these systems that people are stuck in, they can't get their money moving around. I mean, it's fascinating. It's not getting better, it's getting worse than the traditional financial system. Institutions and banks, it's getting harder and harder to get done because they're scared of, of tripping up and having a regulator come after him or making a mistake. Like it's really, it's, it's not a good time to be in the traditional system. It's a great to be in the alternative system. I'll give you an example. I wanted to get a loan and there are a number of places that offer it. Now we do this for some metals and crypto. But I mean, I was testing another platform and I thought, I want to get a loan. So on my phone I was able to get a half million dollar loan in about five minutes and it funded the next day. And being able to do that kind of stuff, you're never going to go to a bank and have that happen. Like this was all digital, it was all automated, it was seamless and it was smooth. And that's where our system is. The decentralized finance that's breaking everything. It's breaking banks, it's breaking lending, it's breaking title stuff. Like title companies, I think are going to Go away because it's too archaic. Blockchain is taking over. Same with insurance. All these things are going to be systemized technologically and there's no government in the world that can stop that because it is decentralized. So it's exciting.

Yeah. No, I'm excited. I think if you listen to the show and you kind of. It's about freedom, right? What you do is about freedom. And I love that and I love all the things that you're doing. So talk about the new. Is it the Safe Harbor EQRP that you guys are unique in offering? Is that the profit that's just come out here recently?

It did. It came out earlier this year. And basically what this did is it gave. Business owners, have teams, have people. Whether it's a surgeon that has a practice with 10 surgeons and a bunch of other admin people, doesn't matter. You could have two people or 20 or 50. It gives the owner and all the employees the ability to control all of their retirement money. This doesn't exist out there. Here's what we hear. My account's self directed. No. That means you can buy stocks that they're not letting you buy. The stuff that you actually want to invest in. When you're listening to this show and you're in this space, you want to do things like real estate. You want to do things that are real, not just the paper stuff. And so the Safe Harbor EQRP allows business owners or people that want to build businesses, I mean, imagine to your employees and saying, part of the package here is that you have a 401k, but it's a special 401k. This is going to allow you to invest in real estate, gold, crypto. You want to buy some bitcoin? We have a new thing with our company that we're shifting into where we're able to pay our people in as much of their wages in bitcoin they want. So not only that, we offer the 401k that has the ability for them to invest in bitcoin or real estate or all of the above. That's a game changer because people are getting more and more leery of all the traditional stuff.

Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so I'm a business owner. I'm listening. I'm like, but Damien, my employees, they don't understand that they're not going to invest in bitcoin. They're not going to do these syndications. What if they just want to put their money in an etf, like a broad market based ETF or something like that.

Perfect. Because that's built in automatic. It's all set up so you can still do that. They have to be able to do that. That's actually the law. When you have a 401, the employees have to have options. That's why you'll typically see at least options like A, B, C, D, E. And there are different risk profiles and things. So every, every 401k has to have those built in. And then we give all these other options. And what's also crazy is that the entire system is set up on AUM assets under management fees. So the average business owner, the owner is going to save 30 to $50,000 per year in fees because we don't charge AUM. It's a flat fee. That changes everything.

I do know that for our plan it's a flat fee, but that's amazing. So what's the downside then?

The downside is a good question. I have no idea why somebody wouldn't do this because it's pretty rare. Most of the system is set up on fees and building. As you build assets, you build fees. So a flat fee like you mentioned is extremely rare in anything. And to have something where you have the ability to self direct and a fly fee, it's like, why would somebody not do that? I have no idea. When people see it, usually the reason that they don't do something is because they don't believe that it's real. That's typically with investments or anything else where people hesitate. They're like, I'm missing something, I'm being conned, frankly, why people hesitate for anything.

Yeah, it's different. I mean, we get it all the time. Like, well, I don't know. I don't want to tie my money up for a long time in a real estate syndication. It's like, well, how much time is your money tied up in your 401? Okay, well, I'm 40 years old. Okay. When are you going to get it out? Well, I can get that money out. Not without some serious penalties. And it's just that's not what their friends or their family have told them to do in the past. So I think to me, I listened to it. The downside, probably if you're listening, it's a little bit of education. It takes a little bit of time to educate yourself. That's what I love about your company, Damian. You educate, you help people towards your mission. Um, I have your books. Share a little bit more with the audience about what books you have out there. What they're about and how they can get in touch with your company and find out more about these. This informational resources that you have.

One of the funny things about all the books is every book was written getting something out of me and sharing it with more people. So there's. There's a mission of finding a way to connect with more people, to serve more people. It's. It's very. If you. If you've ever studied or heard of Buckminster Fuller, that was his philosophy. It was. It was about serving more people. And everything else becomes easier and faster and simpler. And it's. It's what the universe wants. Serve more people.

You can have everything in life if you want. If you just help. Help people get what they want.

Yeah. And so, and so that's intention behind the books. There's a book on qualified plans. It's called the QRP book. I'll give you guys a chance to get a copy of that in a second to learn about this stuff. I wrote a book after I lose. I lost 25 million bucks called reinvented Life. I wrote a book on. Why did I write a book on gold? Because if I'm going to teach people why gold matters, I've got to be able to do it in a cohesive way, in a way that makes sense. So if you want to figure out whether you know anything, write a book on it and you realize how little you know. And I. And so that. That's why I wrote these books. And then one of them. Yeah. No, I mean, you did the same thing. You get it. And there's. It was funny. Last year I wrote a book called Unicornomics, and that was a book on the. Really taking the 50 companies that I built started and all the lessons there and said, okay, here's the. Here's the playbook in general. And part of that was to share with other people, and part of it was to help me make sure that I did the same things, like I learned from my mistakes. Because otherwise, it's a merry go round. You keep making the same mistake over and over again. So if you write it down in a book, then your employees can say, didn't you write this? That you're supposed to be doing it a certain way? And you're like, you're right. I. That sort of, you know, got me. Yeah. No, so, I mean, it's, you know, in terms of what we've been talking about, anybody that wants to get a copy of that book, QRPbook is a real simple thing just to go there and get a copy of it. I'll ship it out to you. And it'll also, when you, when you get that, you'll get an instantly downloadable report. It's the Cliff Notes. So you can cheat your way into understanding, which is totally cool unless you read it.

I read it. I read it. Went through it all. Terrific resource. We'll link that in the Show Notes. I think we had that LinkedIn the show notes for the first podcast you were on as well.

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of resources that are there. I think what will happen is whatever's resonating with you or singing to you. A lot of stuff that I've been talking about has been in the crypto space because I see that there's a, like in 1971, we had a transition going off the G off of the gold standard and year anniversary just passed it 15 or August 15th. It's just, I mean, like literally a couple weeks ago. And yeah, it's, we are in that transition from where we've been in a global fiat system into something different. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but decentralized finance is definitely a huge part of it. So there's, there's going to be more and more education that's going to be needed to even keep up. And so I'm doing my best to share what I think is relevant and I think that's education is what we do. I mean, that's what we're all about, sharing with more people and freeing them with impactful wisdom.

Absolutely. And that's why I love having you on the show. It's a bummer I haven't gotten to see you the past year with everything that's been going on, but look forward to seeing you again face to face, my friend. And I really appreciate you coming on, sharing some updates with our audience and we're going to continue having you back.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Chris. We'll see you soon.

Absolutely, Damon. Sounds great.

Bye.

Bye. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple podcasts. Sam.