This Entrepreneur Lost Everything in 2008—Then Built This

Now, what about having an idea, but you need $40 million to make it come to reality? If you do, or maybe need a little bit less, then you might want to listen to this conversation because I'm going to talk to Damian Lupo, who is the Chief Investment Officer and founder of a company called Frame Tech. Damian and his group of really industrial engineers and innovators are Transforming the way houses are being built. So we're going to hear about how they are doing that. Damian, welcome to the show.

Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, thank you for coming on because I know you have a history. You've built over 70 companies and you've invested and bought over 150 properties. But FrameTech is taking a really innovative approach to how houses are being built and you're reducing the cost and the time and the environmental impact. All of which are great. But we're also going to hear about how this company has reinvented an industry. And I think that's really, really inspirational for anyone listening, that every industry can be re-engineered and for good. Damian, tell us about FrameTech, the problem that you're solving, and then we can talk about how you're solving it.

For sure. FrameTech is solving the housing shortage, the crisis. The crisis is that we don't have enough housing. We're probably 10 million units missing, and we go backwards every year in, in the United States and other places in the world where there's simply not enough being built. Old stuff is needing to be torn down and rebuilt. The population is growing. And the problem is there's not enough people able to do it. And the technology hasn't changed in 71 years since the nail gun was invented. That was literally the last major innovation. And so, there was a mad scientist, if you will, named Marvin, and he started off doing the framing of houses back in the '70s. And, he had an idea to transform how houses were framed, which is the core. Once you figure that problem out, once you solve that, then everything else can follow along. But, if you don't solve that, you're really stuck. And, he did that and had an idea and then it was in his brain for 20 years. And finally, that idea found us, found the money, and we got together and we had Frame Tech babies. And that's where things are today.

Let's just talk first of all then about how it came together because there's a team of you, about 6 or 8 senior managers, all with experience but different skill sets. And often companies start and maybe 1 or 2 founders, juniors somewhere beavering away, but you're an experienced group of entrepreneurs and engineers and people in the construction industry. How did you come together? That in itself is a good story, isn't it?

It's really fascinating when you put the time in, you become a person with experience, then naturally things sort of find their way to you. In the beginning, people without experience, you're trying to force things, you're trying to get things to happen, but what you need is you need the actual experience of doing things. And then ultimately what happened with FrameTech, There's a group of guys that all found each other through a mutual contact. And it was like, hey, there's a bunch of people with a bunch of brainpower and experience. And then there was my side that had a relationship network of people with money that wanted to find a great idea and an opportunity to grow their money. And we came together and over an afternoon meeting, we said, we like each other, we want to do this. And I said, all right. You've got your money. And these people said, fantastic, you're probably full of baloney, but we love it. And they decided they wanted to move forward and we launched this thing. So it was really about the timing and it was about people coming together that had had decades of previous experience and everybody was ready.

And I think what's really, really important just to note about that is that as we get older, that our experience actually does have a lot of value, right? I know that we're worried about AI, but actually experiencing connectivity staying in touch with people is a really important part of staying relevant and staying active economically. And David Epstein in his book Range, he talks about actually as we get older, the range of skill sets and connections that we bring to situations is part of our value as much as our functional skill set. Damien, take us through the innovation that happened. Obviously you mentioned that the nail gun, which is 71 years ago, which just shoots nails, right? I guess at high velocity and high speed. What's the essence of the innovation that Marvin had? Because I think that's also so important to understand that really any industry is open and ripe for innovation.

It starts off with a question. Can we do something different? Can we do it better? You can do different things. So there's a couple of questions. Can we do this? And then should we do it? And to your point about AI, AI is giving us a lot of how to do things and can we, and it's giving you— but it doesn't really answer the moral, ethical, or otherwise the question of should we? Why are we doing this? And so the innovation Marvin had was saying, okay, there's a lot of things that slow a process down of framing and there's a lot of waste. And can we speed this up? Can we make it better quality?

Yeah.

And, can we do this without all sorts of dumpsters full of waste? And ultimately, that turned into the material handling process, which is you take these bunks, these big stacks of boards, and in this process, this system that we built that's patented, you run your boards through it, check to take out any defects, you cut out the defects, and then you have all these different boards that are on a big assembly line and they get stuck together with a finger joiner. And, when you do that, you end up with all these boards stuck together and it turns into one continuous infinite board. And, when you have that, then you take and you cut off the piece that you want the exact distance, whether it's a 6-foot or an 8-foot or a 14-foot, whatever it is. And, once you have that, then you can use that to put into trusses and walls. So, it was really about giving us perfect boards, the exact size, and having virtually no waste. And that's never been done before. And that's the secret sauce here.

And there's a great video at frametech.com, and that's frame as in F-R-A-M-E and then T-E-C dot com. And there's an explainer video, which I'm also really a fan of from a marketing point of view, because Damien's explained these finger joints, and it's also then really nicely illustrated on the website for potential investors, potential partners, potential employees, and so on. So using an explainer video is great. And that innovation that you get one continuous board is a really great illustration for me anyway of how he's taken what was a recurring industry problem and, and thought of it. But then it needed your funds, your $40 million. What did the money gets spent on, Damien?

So when you build manufacturing, it's incredibly capital intensive. So you need a building. And when you do something new, you probably need a building that doesn't exist because you have a certain layout. So building the building, $15 million to build the building. And then all this equipment that you put in there and the robots, it's amazing how fast that adds up. And you end up typically with most businesses, you have an idea of what things are going to cost and then you start building and you say, ooh, what about this? Let's make it bigger. Let's add this. And then, your price tag goes up, which it did here. And, we were flexible enough to say, okay, yes, we want to have more robotics, more automation. From the beginning to the time we actually started producing, which was about 2, 2.5 years, that process, we ended up taking our headcount, the labor, down by about 30% because of the innovation. So, when you do that, Wow. We're creating all these jobs, but it's not as labor-intensive as it was going to be. And ultimately that ends up being more profitable and we're more efficient because of the robotics and we're using technology.

So you've, as you say, we normally plan on doubling the expense and doubling the time, don't we, from our business plan? It always takes longer and more money, but $40 million got you the first plant. I would like to hear the story of how you raised the money because some people might go institutional, one-on-one. Just tell us, you've got a An established industry with a new production process. What was the story in terms of raising $40 million?

So people ask a lot of times, how do you raise money? How do you make that happen? How does it happen so fast? And it's at this point, FrameTech has over $100 million that has come into it as it expands and is working on additional plants and locations. And none of that was institutional. It was all individuals, Main Street, not Wall Street. And how did that happen? It happened because relationships and trust was built over years. And when you have trust, there's— Stephen Covey has a great book called The Speed of Trust, and that has never been more relevant or more true than here where people that have relationships with us said, we like what you do. And it tells you that people really invest with people. They don't necessarily invest in the thing because if you If they don't really know who's running it and it's all about the team, then it slows everything down and people are uneasy. Here, this was relatively straightforward. People said, we like you, we trust you, and they wanted to be a part of what we were doing. And that's it. But again, it was built on years. So it wasn't a Google ad and that can work, but it's very different than when you have relationships and that there is no hack to that. You have to serve people and you have to give.

Yeah.

And then it's very easy to say, I've got this idea, and people say, we're in, 'cause we're investing in you.

And I think we're so obsessed with young founders and raising money quickly and becoming the next internet unicorn that your story just reminds us that there's a lot of money and wisdom in the connections that people build up over a lifetime, and that we should really be really sort of making the most of those, Daymond, as well, doesn't it? In terms of the platform, you've raised the money. What will be some of the obstacles that you face? Because presumably there are sort of entrenched interests in construction as well as there are in any industry, and you're bringing in an innovation that must be good for some and bad for others. So what's been some of the challenge there?

So there's— you run into— when you have something new, you're going to run into skepticism. You're going to run into people that don't want you to change the system. because they have a vested interest. When you're doing something faster, less expensive, more efficiently, people that are used to just milking the cow with their old system, it's very irritating to them when you potentially take away. And even though there's so much opportunity, like when you're talking about 10 million missing houses, FrameCheck alone is not going to solve this. We're not taking away business, we're adding capacity, we're adding supply. But there are people that think it's a zero-sum game. If we build something, it takes away from them, and that's simply not true. The other skepticism is in the consumer, the person, the builder, the developer who wants— they need more framing. They wonder if what we're saying is true because there's been a lot of companies that say they can do something, but they haven't been able to deliver. We've moved past that because over the last 8 months we've been delivering and the whole world can see our stuff posted online on LinkedIn and they can see our buildings and you can see an old house, like a house that's built in a traditional way. And then there's a FrameTech framed house next to each other. We have examples of that and it's night and day because our Our stuff is precise. It looks like furniture, and our stuff is potentially up to 4 times faster. So we'll produce— we'll frame a house from a slab to framing done in 1 day, and that normally is 4 to 7 days. So people are watching it, and that's— you have to deliver. You can have it— ideas are simple, ideas are free, and it's all about execution. And what's happened is we've executed, and now there's a— the market believes.

And when you say you could do it so much quicker, is that because in effect in the factory you are sort of preparing all the lumber to be the right size and it's kind of pre-cut? And I don't want to be rude here, but almost like an IKEA, when you get it, it's being assembled on site as opposed to being sort of fabricated on site. So is that essentially the difference? Yeah.

Anytime you can do something in a manufacturing contained system, it's going to be faster, it's going to be better quality. It's like the idea of building a car in your front yard as opposed to having a manufacturing plant that pushes that thing through with precision and robotics. And, it's the same thing, which one's going to take longer? You can build a Toyota 4Runner in a matter of hours in the plants in Japan. And, if you try to do that on your own, I don't know how long that would take, a year, 2 years.

Yeah.

It's the same efficiencies. You build all that stuff and then you bring it out and you basically put it together on site. And, it's unbelievably more efficient. It's not incremental, it's exponentially more efficient, more beautiful, more precise. Everything about it is hyper better. And ultimately, when you produce that type of product and it's faster, you start to make things less expensive because when you're shaving off time, it's saving money. When you produce more which we can faster, more supply economics, it's going to reduce the cost. So it's solving the problem. It's producing more and it's compressing pricing.

In terms of the distribution strategy, Damien, if you are maybe offering different people different values, are you able to go through the usual supply chain merchants, contractors, and so on? Or are you disrupting the whole sort of value chain in manufacturing and construction?

In this model, I mean, we're going direct to our customers. So it's more like a Tesla model. There's not brokers and middlemen. And so we're not— what that does is it saves people a lot of money that would— it's sort of like the financial system. If you can go peer-to-peer, it's way better than if you have 10 different middlemen, agencies, institutions. You want to do that, kind of like how Bitcoin takes out all the Western Unions. It's direct and there's really nothing in the middle. And that's just, that's better for everybody except the middlemen, which is irritating because they're like, how are we going to get paid? And sometimes they have to go away. And so ours is very streamlined, it's very direct. And people like that too because they know they're talking to one party that's going to deliver everything and they're not trying to figure out the 15 different people they have to organize. They have one phone call. And, and everything is done.

And in terms of, uh, the material you're using, wood, I will just ask that, that question about sort of sustainability. You've talked about reduction of waste, um, removing, removing offcuts, for example. What about the sustainability aspect of FrameTech, Damien?

This is one of the great things when you think about, and most people don't realize that, I mean, obviously framing is big with wood. 92% of housing is built with wood. In the United States and it changes around the world. But, when you think about wood, what's more sustainable than wood? And, the only question is, are these big trees or little trees? And, they're smaller trees. So, they're the ones that are replanted and grow over and over, not the 100, 200-year-old redwoods. Obviously, that's not sustainable, but this is incredibly sustainable and you just keep regenerating your forests. And, it's something that especially with smaller stuff, and we have innovation that we're working on that would make that even more sustainable. It's great because it works with a resource that doesn't have an end. It's not like there's a certain amount of oil in the ground and we keep finding new technology to be able to pull more out, but there's an unlimited amount of sunlight that's going to grow an unlimited amount of trees. And so, we're working with something that is extremely, if not unlimited, sustainable. We'll be back after a quick break.

Marketing is a puzzle. You can either give into the confusion or learn to love the solve. On the Axiom's Real Talk About Marketing podcast, guests like Aaron Schaefer of GM share how to manage challenges.

Make sure that you're not fixed in terms of what you're thinking about. The team's gonna change and, you know, the way teams operate are gonna change. COVID was a great example of that. The industry is gonna change, you know, are cookies going away or not? That was another great example of that.

And so how do you continue to Guests from HP, The Trade Desk, and Databricks share thoughts on today's marketing landscape. Find Real Talk About Marketing on YouTube, axiom.com, or wherever you hear podcasts.

And in terms of the sort of opportunity to provide low, low-cost housing, but also presumably emergency housing, housing where there's been a disaster of some kind, if you're able to rebuild at speed and at scale, do you have a strategy as well with FrameTech to be providing, if you like, sort of emergency housing and those sorts of things, Damien?

We're not really set up for emergency housing. The cool thing is there are companies like Boxabl and others that are built to build an entire house or these structures inside of a plant. And that whole thing can literally be put somewhere, can be on a semi-truck, And so, that's fantastic. We're more set up to be within 100 to 200 miles where we build every— we build it at our plant and then we bring it out on site. And so, there's different models. One of the things that's important in our business and really any business is to know who you are, what you do, and who you serve and not being everything to everybody. And, I've watched people say, oh, yeah, we can do that. I mean, we can do a lot of things that we don't do. And, that's on purpose because we want to be efficient. We want to be able to give the biggest impact. And, if we say, okay, we're going to build custom 25,000-square-foot homes. We can do that. Are we going to focus on that? No. Are we going to do it? Probably not. But we can. It's just being really clear on our avatar and our niche. I mean, the riches are in the niches, and that's never been truer. You've got to know who you are, and then you can expand. Amazon didn't start in everything. They started with books, and that was the niche, and then it expanded from there. So say it's the same model here. Yeah. So the first plant was really the test. Can this idea be executed? And when the answer was yes, we can, then the question is, all right, we can solve this massive problem. We need more capacity because at this point, we have way more demand than we have the ability to produce, which is a good problem. It's still a problem. And the question was, why are we doing this? We're doing this to solve a crisis and it's not going to be solved with one plant. So, we're continuing to expand in both Arizona with additional plants. into Texas. And we have on the, on frametech.com, you can see the nationwide in the United States, the rollout plans for these plants and in the key markets that they're, that we're targeting all over the country. There's, this is literally a problem everywhere.

And are you hoping to still have FrameTech as the business with these plants, or will you license the technology and have other, other companies start to use your tech because you could scale more quickly in a way, couldn't you? That way.

100%. And there's, there, there's an opportunity for, for outside parties to potentially license our stuff, our, our technology that we've patented, and, and build more of these. And so because the, the vision is to impact society, to build more housing, there's, there's not a, a really rigid model on how that's going to be. It's going to be where we, we protect the culture and we protect the brand And we build as much as we can to solve as many people's housing issues and drive prices down as possible. So it's fairly flexible as long as we don't violate our principles and our moral code and compass.

And Damian, you've got a long history as an entrepreneur. So let's shift gears a little bit because you've plainly got a great vision and a trajectory really for Frame Tech. Tell us a little bit about You know, as an entrepreneur, some of the lessons that you've learned when it comes to framing— and I say framing, framing a business, I've used that frame— but we're going to talk about your book, Unicornomics, which we're going to give a link to at the end. But tell us some of the lessons that you've learned in growing FrameTech and also some of your other 70 companies.

Well, one of the things I've learned is it doesn't matter if you're in the right business. It matters that you get involved in something. And most— and One of the things that people do I see all the time is they're trying to figure out the perfect business. And if I looked back and had that attitude, I probably would never started with anything because I've had all sorts of crazy things that I've been involved with. I even had an iPad business one time, an international iPad business shipping iPads to Sweden. And just a learning opportunity for me. One of the lessons was don't be in this business. And that can be a great lesson. What you shouldn't do is more important than what you should do. So it's going and learning different things from each of these businesses. And that's one of the things, it doesn't really, it's not about picking that perfect thing. It's about doing something and keep growing because FrameTech showed up 3 years ago, 3 and a half years ago in my world, but it was 30 years of all these previous businesses and experiences that leveraged on top of each other and got us to the point where we were able to do this. We couldn't, you couldn't execute something like this because we wouldn't have been the people that we are with those experiences and the ability to make decisions. And you're talking about something that requires tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars and the complexity of building manufacturing. You need to go through all the simple stuff and then gradually make it more complex. And so it was all those lessons from all those different companies, many of which didn't work. They failed. I mean, there were meltdowns and tens of millions of dollars that were lost. All that was part of the journey. And getting attached to the idea of failing is one of the biggest problems because nobody likes the idea of being told that they're a failure. If you actually embrace that and say, oh, this is cool, I'm going to learn something, then it shifts how you move through life. You're not afraid of it. You're actually looking forward to it because you know you're going to keep growing in that space. And that's one of the— it's all mental. It's the mindset of going into business more than the actual tools and techniques.

Damien, how do you cope with, if you like, the sense that you tried your hardest, you thought you were doing your best, but it didn't work? And Some of the self-questioning, if you like, the agonization of, well, what did I do wrong and can I really get it right next time? I'd love to hear how you build a robust mental attitude to that.

Part of it is getting that stuff, those questions out of your head. One of the things that happened after 2008, after I lost $25 million and started over, I did a process of my lessons. It was literally spending time writing down all the lessons And then putting them in front of me. And then I wrote books on it. One of my books is called Reinvented Life. It was asking the question, what just happened? What do I need to learn? When you get it out of your head, one, you're not ruminating on it and it's in front of you. And then you can start asking, okay, what can I, what should I do differently? And so, this process of getting this stuff out, and one of the ways to do that is you write things down and you ask and you get a great coach or therapist that's asking you questions that pulls this stuff out. A lot of times people don't get it out of them, so they just stay stuck in their stuff. And that's where you're going to get into trouble because then you're second-guessing yourself. If you can pull it out, then it's out. And it's like getting a virus out of you. It's like, okay, you're going to kill it. And sometimes you just need to embrace it, put it in a cage, and then you see it and you're like, okay, good. That monkey is now in a cage and it's not on my back.

I think the idea that you'd write it down and write a story, however, however long or short, is a great one. It actually reminds me of— I wrote all the chapter outlines of leaving China and what we had to do to leave there and rebuild in the UK. And I have all the outline, but I haven't filled in the paragraphs and the sentences. So you're reminding me really of what probably should be a really good project for me to do as well, Damien. You've lost $25 million. Writing it down is one thing, but how do you recover and help your family to feel safe under those circumstances? Because for many entrepreneurs, it's the financial insecurity that's the hardest for the rest of the family to bear.

It's hard. I mean, I think one of the challenges for a lot of people is they're dealing with a lot of fear from spouses. In my case, there wasn't a spouse. So And without kids, it's a different process. When you have spouses, when you have kids, I got to protect them. And I think there's also— I look back at my own relationship with my father and he played it safe. So he was playing not to lose. And at the end of his life, before he passed away, he literally said, there were so many things that I wanted to do, and he didn't do them. And so that's not a good model. That was more of a warning. I think that as entrepreneurs or just people in general that have ideas, you're really doing a disservice to your family by playing it safe all the time. And not because— I think it's important to be a good model, to be able to take risks, realizing that you don't have to take risks that are going to make you homeless. You don't have to take a risk that's going to kill you. And it's really about going for it in life because we're not going to regret what we did. We're going to regret what we didn't do. That's what we're going to look back on with just frustration. And I would suggest that that's important to think about instead of saying, okay, I'm going to hesitate, hesitate. I'm not going to do anything. You're not really doing the world a service and you're probably not going to ultimately make your family really proud of you when you didn't do the things that they're going to be proud of you for being bold. And I've seen that over and over again. I would suggest that's probably true universally.

No, I think that's a lovely sentiment. My daughter does say, dad, you keep thinking of new ideas. And I'm like, yeah, I know. That's the excitement of being an entrepreneur, but also we have to calculated risks. And you mentioned earlier on about the need to find people to work with. Do you want to share with us, Damien, your approach now as we're getting a bit older to reducing risk and reducing stress and increasing the chances of success? And you've got a book as well, Unicornomics, which we're going to share a link to. Can you just take us through— now you've come through all of those losing $25 million, rebuilding. So credit to you for that. FrameTech is going to be a legacy business, isn't it? I mean, you're going to leave a legacy for people. You're improving the world through what you're doing. What would be some guidance you'd give to entrepreneurs now who maybe are younger than you and I who are coming through this, who have said, hey, Damien, you're right. I got to go for it. I got to live my life. But can you help me out with a little bit of guidance?

A couple of things that I've learned, and when I wrote Unicornomics, it was really understanding that there's a foundational piece to There's a foundational— I call it the foundational 15% that gives you an 85% likelihood of success. And, what that means is in business, if you get these principles, if you build businesses, if you have the right team, if you have people, if you have a mission, there's this piece of business. Most people don't know what those things are, so they have a 99% chance of failure over the next 10 years. Whereas, if you get this foundational piece and if you get it done up For example, having no capital, really a problem because you're going to make decisions in panic and anxiety that are not really going to be very sound. And people go, oh, it's like cramming for a test. I just, I can figure it out. Yeah, but if all your mental energy is in a crisis all the time because you're running out of money, it's not sound. It's not one of the principles. So if you can say, okay, if I get these things right, I have an 85% likelihood of success, well then you start asking yourself, okay, cool. Well, if it doesn't work, I mean, statistically, that means I need 2 businesses that I launch and one of those is going to work. So you're really setting yourself in a position of advantage as opposed to, I'm going to go try an idea. Most of the time it's not going to work because none of those things are put in place. And I'll tell you, it has everything to do with 2 groups of people. One, mentors that are the wiser, balder, grayer that are around you that have been through cycles that have that wisdom. And then it's the execution team. One of my mistakes early was thinking I should do everything because I'm pretty smart. And that was one of the dumbest things that I've done is just saying, oh yeah, I can be my own accountant, my own attorney, my own ops person, my own marketer, instead of saying, okay, who are the best? I was also cheap when I hired people in the beginning. I would get whoever was the cheapest. And guess what? I got dog crap for a lot of the results. So going and finding the best, finding the best people, the best talent, Those type of people do not cost you money. They make you money. Cheap people cost you a lot of money. And that's a universal rule.

The cheap people are actually very expensive to hire is a really great— is a really great fact because I have made the same mistake. And, um, in fact, the things that you've just said, that could have been me, um, saying the same. And I'm also now out the other side where I'm hiring a coach and saying, at my age of 58 and 25 years running businesses on 3 continents, I'm hiring a coach for the first time in my life because I've realized that I keep making the same mistakes because some of the way that we behave doesn't change regardless of the business we're in. So finding a mentor and a coach is essential. But also, as you've done with FrameTech, you've plainly got an amazingly skilled and experienced management team, which also must make it a lot more pleasant, to be honest, to do.

When you have a world-class, truly a world-class team, what happens is you're able to let go of trying to be in the middle of things that you have no business being in the middle of because you trust those people to be able to execute, not just because they have skills, but because they have the resilience and the commitment. And if you don't have those world-class people, then what tends to happen is the grinders, the smart people tend to try to get in the middle of all sorts of things and they don't really do it very well. I found that with Frame Tech, it's the ultimate where these people are execution geniuses in their space. And then we come together and there's this incredible trust amongst the people, the leadership, because everybody trusts the other people with their skills and their commitment.

That's really nice. And considering you're solving such an important problem, it's fantastic that you've really safeguarded the chance of success. Demian Lupo, I am going to ask you, For a book or a podcast, because you've plainly lived a lot, accomplished a lot, and learned a lot. Is there a book or a podcast that you would recommend to people?

Culminating, I mean, I've read like you and many others, a million books. I'm really proud of Unicornomics because it creates in less than an hour an opportunity for somebody to say, okay, what are the things that are going to give me that chance at success? And I talk a lot about that on my podcast, FU, the Financial Underdogs podcast. So people can get a lot more of my brain and just the way that I think on that podcast. So it's really those 2 things, Unicornomics and Financial Underdogs. I think you can get a— if you like my thinking, if you like the way that I look at life and the experiences you want to leverage off of, those are 2 places where you can really gain a lot.

Great. And that's unicornomics.net. By the way, and of course I'll put the details in the show notes. And that's, it says the foundational first 15% to get your billion-dollar business. And you've got the individual packs of 10 and a pack of 50 as well that people can buy. Damian Lupo, fascinating story. It's always so hard in these situations because you've got a brilliant business to talk about and you've got amazing wisdom to share as well, trying to blend blend both. If people would like to find out more about you, obviously you've got Unicornomics and you've got your podcast, but what about getting hold of you? Can they connect with you somewhere?

Yeah, best place to just connect with me on LinkedIn. And I'm happy to interact with people and they can see what I'm up to and opportunities to do FaceTime and that kind of stuff if that's something of interest. So yeah, definitely reach out to me there.

And that's Damien S. Lupo, I think, isn't it?

On LinkedIn?

That's a good question. I, I think it's, um, if, you know, if you just put my name, Damian Lupo, in there, there's only one that you're gonna find. I don't think I have any impersonators yet.

No clones, no digital twins. Um, but if there is gonna be one, it should be the original they talk to. Damian, thank you for joining me on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, sharing so much amazing, uh, positive ideas and also inspirational wisdom.

Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.

So we've been listening to Damian Lupo, who is the Chief Investment Officer and co-founder at a company called Frame Tech. And he's in Sedona, Arizona, where it's beautiful, but a little bit hot at the minute. But it's some really some age-old wisdom there about surrounding yourself with people that are smarter and able to work with you and guide you. And also to make sure you've got some of the essential elements for success in place before you start your business. But the other final point is give it a go. You know, that being an entrepreneur is a way of life and it carries its risks, but it really also carries a large number of rewards. So I really, really appreciate Damien saying it's worth going for it because life is worth living. So thank you for listening to me, your host Jim James on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. If you've enjoyed it, please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. The reviews are great. But it's the sharing that really shows that you care. And until we meet again, encourage you to keep on communicating.