Moving Forward is also available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Damion Lupo is a best-selling author and financial mentor. Today, Damion will share what it takes to shift your mindset to move forward in building your wealth.
Successes at a glance:
Financial mentor
Best-selling author of several books
Damion’s story:
Damion describes himself as the guy who’s “done more things wrong than anybody you’ve ever met” but faster. Damion has done everything from sell textbooks in college (which got him kicked out of school) to real estate investing, where he built up and then lost a $20M portfolio. However, the only thing Damion would change if he could go back in time would be to fail even faster. For Damion, failure isn’t a noun, it’s something we do to grow and improve.
Damion’s big why:
Rewrite the goals of retirement and change the way we think about finance and wealth. To do this, Damion teaches and encourages people to “fail fast” as he has done. The key word is “fast.” It isn’t failure that’s the big problem, it’s the rate at which most people experience it. The philosophical underpinning behind this is adding value rather than consuming it. Damion’s past lessons and failures have taught him that lesson. Citing Peter Diamondis, Damion is about helping a billion people rather than focusing on a billion dollars in the bank. The way to do this is to help others figure out the right questions to ask themselves so they can move forward.
Biggest challenge today:
Noise. There are so many opportunities that it’s easy to get knocked off course. The challenge is saying no and staying on course. Saying no is really important. Damion weighs it this way: decline the opportunity to help 10 people in order to help many more.
Moving forward past that challenge:
Get better at saying no: feeling bad saying no means you’re focused on someone else’s agenda, rules, and pressures. Understanding context is therefore key. You have to have a mission that you’re focused on. This means understanding who you are and what your values are. One tactic that Damion employs is to ask himself, “how am I going to 10x this year over last” – Damion understands that what worked last year won’t necessarily work this year. Also, having one-on-one conversations allows him to stay hungry, focused and to keep moving forward.
Knowledge bursts:
Damion’s message to people who are stuck in the paradigm of working in a job you tolerate and living moment to moment:
Damion cites his father who had the philosophy of enjoying life at retirement. His father was miserable and when he finally retired, he was diagnosed with cancer. In their last conversation, Damion’s father told him that there were so many things he wanted to do that he never did. This was regret. Damion’s story and that of his father reminds us that we do not have a guarantee of enjoying life after retirement or another year or day to do the things that really drive us.
Advice to millennials or Gen Zs who are struggling to pay bills and want to start a side hustle or grow their wealth:
Blow up their bubble of security: shifting somewhere. This can be mean moving to a new geographical location. Get up and do something. It may mean traveling, getting out of your environment, or volunteering.
How is Damion moving forward today:
Before Damion gets out of bed, he sits up and meditates: this allows him to create space to be open to what the day holds. It also allows him to let go of noise or clutter. Damion uses this to break the pattern of just being task oriented.
Meditation tip:
Shift your breath from your chest to your belly. Breathe in and distend your belly as you’re doing so. This will shift you out of the “fight or flight” mode.
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Who is Damion in five years:
Damion is a global teacher and looking at an earth that has shifted because of the work he is doing, freeing people from a restrictive mindset when it comes to wealth and retirement.
Damion’s question to his future self and response:
Question: “Was it worth it?”
Answer: “There’s no other way I would have done it.”
Parting wisdom:
“The most important thing we can realize when we get into the space of fear about screwing something up, that this is a belief system that school taught us. Mistakes are gift-wrapped opportunities from the universe, from God to grow and instead of looking at those as a negative, when we shift those into a positive, everything starts to change and our life opens up.”
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