- Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan, Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast. This is episode 405, and my guest is Damien Lupo.
Damien had his first startup at aged 11, and he worked and worked and built and built, and eventually as a grownup person, he had amassed a fortune, but along came 2008 and like a vengeance, he found him himself in the middle of the housing crash, and all of the investment properties that he had purchased and all the things he had built up were gone, and he was bankrupt. And instead of giving up, he built himself back. And his companies today are all about community and practiced sustainability.
And really interesting guy I'd I, I really enjoyed this episode. We talk about the loss of ego, the importance of perseverance, being in the now, what it's like to have something taken away and how to build it back up again. Really a cool guy. I think you're gonna enjoy this. In other news, I've got Patreon now, patreon.com/susan Ruth, S-U-S-A-N-R-U-T-H-I-S-M. It helps keep this show ad free. It's also about building a community with all of you.
And it's a place for me to talk about all my different projects, all the art and music and writing, and everything I do, I'm gonna talk about on there. And if you are a part of the Tears, as they call them on Patreon, you get special bonus content and my thoughts on any given day photos and musical performances, special things, extra things. And hopefully this is gonna be a place where you can come and be a part of a community with me and we can grow it together. That's what I'm hoping for.
So general stuff, check out hey human podcast.com for links, and to learn more about my guests in the show, check out Susan ruth.com to learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors, lots of interviews and things like that on the website. Follow Susan Ruths and hey, human podcast on social media, and find my music on Spotify, apple music, Amazon music. Wherever you get your music, you'll find, uh, my last album, all I Ever Wanted was Everything and Surfacing To Breathe.
And lots and lots of records on there. Lots of songs. Okay, great. Review and subscribe to, Hey, human podcast on iTunes, uh, iHeart, uh, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast. It's out there in the podcast world on pretty much almost every podcast medium that I can think of. And thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing the show and for being a part of this. And I'm just, I really appreciate you. So be well, stay safe, be love. And here we go.
- Hello. Hello. - Hi. How are you? - Whoa. My, my shirt is doing funny things. Yeah, it's, - It's like it's doing this, - Uh, that is gonna be too weird. Let, lemme go change my shirt real quick. This is okay. . It looks like we're on LSD or something. Here. Hold on a second. - . I thought it was just me. . - Okay. That was definitely the weirdest thing I've ever seen on Zoom. I've - Never seen that before either. - Wow. - , it's all good.
It's an audio show, but that would've started to get to my eyeballs, so I'm glad you changed. - Well, good. Okay. You, you never know. I, I, yeah. All right. Well, so it would've moved me out too. Like it's really trippy, like Willy Wonka or something. It - Was, it was very trippy. Where, where are you - In Sedona? - Sedona. Oh, I love Sedona. I, uh, got to go to Sedona once on a, on my birthday and just by myself on a trip. And it was during a full moon. It was so cool.
- Do you remember which month it was? Was it like a harvest moon or, - Well, it was my birthday, so it was April, but it was several years ago now. That's - Some pretty cool full moons here. Like we have these giant moons and then the red rocks, and it's, it's pretty breathtaking. - It's just a really neat place. Anyway. Uh, definitely have to take lots of water when you go hiking. . - Yeah, that is a fact. People don't realize that.
They don't realize that in Arizona in general, and they're like, what is going on? It's really hard here. And I'm like, you're dehydrated. - It's super dehydrated. Yeah, yeah. Enough about that. All right, Damien Lupo, welcome to Hey, human. - Great to be here. Thanks for having me. - I don't know if you dug into the show at all, but how I like to start these is to find out about you,
your upbringing, where you grew up, what shaped you? Well, - It's, it's sort of a, I mean, I think everybody has an interesting story. If you dig, mine was, was very, very far north. I was, I grew up in Alaska and part of my childhood was dodging moose and, and watching the sun disappear for months at a time. And, and, and, and ultimately I think that, I mean, there's a lot of things that help shape who I am.
One of the biggest things psychologically was, was being told no. And I, not that that's unique, I think, you know, a lot of kids are told no, but like, it was interesting thinking back. My, my folks used to tell me, no, you can't have this or that or that the other thing, because we're broke, we don't have any money. And, and then they would explain to me how we had this much income and the mortgage payment was more than that, so we're already at a deficit.
And I was like, so I felt guilty about eating food. Like, I was like, wow. I started buying my own groceries when I was like 13. And it was just because the guilt had been baked in. And ultimately I just, I, I said, well, I don't like being broke makes me, it's like frustrating. And I, I wanted to start playing Nintendo games when I was 11. And so I, at that point, I, I said, well, how am I gonna do this? I have to go buy them.
So I started a business to go buy Nintendo games, to play the games because my parents told me they couldn't afford to buy anything. So that just sort of was the beginning of this whole, if I have a problem, my job is to solve it. And, and I think that that spilled into everything else. And it's led to 70 companies being, um, started and, and built. Because my par parents told me, no, we cannot afford Super Mario Brothers. - Did you have a big family or a small family?
- I had a couple of younger sisters that I grew up with. And so I I, and they're very different. And you know, I oftentimes people are trying to figure out who, who is, who is from the mailman, you know, was it, was it me or was it them?
And, and it's, I think it's always fascinating to see people and kids that are very different, but they were, uh, they were younger and, and I was the oldest and I was the one breaking all the rules as, as we would, you know, - You could have gone one or two ways. A child who is raised in a home where there isn't a lot of money that could bake in a mindset of always feeling broke. There's a thing about that language, oh, I'm broke right now.
I mean my, right now. And I try so hard to not use that kind of language because I think it, it creates a, a weird mindset. So it's interesting that you decided, okay, I'm gonna be making money. I'm not gonna live in this mindset. That's a hard thing to break out of. I think it's, - It's, it's really hard. And we see, and you, you, we definitely see people living in that mindset.
And it's, I mean, it's the same thing from people that were in the Depression, and they live as if they're still in the depression 50 or a hundred years later. And, and their kids, because of DNA, uh, spillover end up acting the same way. And they've never been in the Depression, but their cells, the DNA spilled over from parents to grandparents. So there, there is this power that we have with our mind to where we can, we can pivot and we can change.
And as much as I've been broke many times, I've literally no money negative. Like in 2008, I lost $25 million. It was negative 5 million and had a big, you know, that was a problem living in my car when that just because that happened though I was never poor and poor is more of the mindset broke is just a, okay, yeah, I literally had negative money. I was, I was worth less than the, the homeless dude on the side of the street.
But the, the reality is most people act as if they're poor, even when they have money. And, and that's, that's the big differentiator for me. That those two words, that's how I look at them. I look at poor as a psychological thing, and I look at broke as more of a numerical thing. It doesn't matter if, if we're broke or not.
To me, what matters is if we have a poor mindset, and that's what my parents and most parents are baking in, whether it's a rich mindset or a poor mindset, it doesn't matter how much money that family has, it really matters what kind of, how we think about money and how we think about ourselves related to money, - Money, oftentimes wealth has nothing to do with money at all. - That that's a thousand percent.
I, one of my, my buddies from growing up in Alaska passed away of cancer about a week and a half ago. And, oh, sorry. You know, I, I appreciate that. It, it's, you know, you, you realize the, the scarcity or the, the limited nature of, of life when people start passing away and, and we're in our, in our forties. And so the, the, the saying that health is the first wealth is was never true. Or, and every time some something, either I get sick or somebody dies. I I really think about that.
And, and so you're exactly right. You're spot on that the money is one of the wealths. It is not the only, and when people, and I was obsessed with this in, in the two thousands, it was all about making more money, never enough. And, and if I made more money, I would be happier. And, and the reality was all I did was have more money and more stress because I needed more money. And it was a, a never ending loop. And so it was, it was actually really helpful to lose 25 million.
It gave me great perspective and humbled the crap outta me. So I mean, I think that that's a, a pretty useful exercise for, for most people, although most people would avoid it like the plague. - Well, firstly, what is your friend's first name? The Pat. Johnny. Johnny. So, hi Johnny. Tell me what was the big thing that happened that had you lose all that money? That's a huge loss. - Well, and so here, here's the thing that's gonna surprise you. It wasn't the, the thing was my ego.
That was, that's what lost the money. And, and 2008, a lot of people got crushed in different ways with, with real estate, the whole market, the whole system, you know, imploding and what the, I melted down because I had, I had gone out into the wild thinking everything was gonna go up, kind of like a lot of people did. The last 10 or 12 years in the real estate market. Everybody thought, oh, everything goes up.
And for a lot of people, most people, it just hurt them because the expense of everything went up. But in, in the term, in terms of investing, it seemed like a great thing. If everything's going up, you're making money. And it's like, wow, I'm so smart. Well, I thought I was pretty smart. I thought I was. I mean, I worked my butt off. But back then it wasn't that I was super smart. My timing was really good, and I just happened to be working really hard with good timing.
And then in 2008, we found out that there, there were a lot of nakedness going on when the tide went out. And, and ultimately, a lot of my projects, in fact, all of them at the time, I had seven big projects, they all went negative. And instead of making me over a million dollars each, they lost me over a million dollars each. And that was because I didn't, I just wasn't a pro.
And and that's one of the really valuable things about going through life and being willing to, to crash and burn and, and learn. You, you get stronger and you go from amateur into professional. Um, like Steven Pressfield talks about there's a great benefit to going out and not worrying about falling on your face. It's, it's actually what creates wisdom.
And I think that there's a, an incredible advantage to not resisting it, but actually going with it and saying, okay, this is not gonna kill me. And if it does kill me, it won't matter. You'll be dead . So the reality is, you're, you're going to just get better and stronger if you're willing to learn and, and, and let your ego walk away or, or check it out the door. - Yeah. My friend calls it daring to fail. - I think that's a, that's a good way to, to represent it.
It's unfortunately, we're in, in America, we're taught that failing. Is it, it's a noun. It's not just a verb. And, and so people call themselves a failure, and I laugh about that. I'm, my parents used to give me accolades because I was a straight A student until about my junior year, and then I went off a cliff. 'cause I, I got very uninterested in just memorizing things and that that wasn't really what was tapping into my genius. And it seemed like this is the wrong path.
Unfortunately, our system says, if you don't get A's or B's or C's, you're literally a failure and you're a reject. And the crazy part is, in the real world, in business or in, in really anything, if you get half right, you're, you're a billionaire. You're like, the Uber's successful. Anybody that's been, that's really, really successful and we look up to has fallen on their face so many times and we just don't think about that.
- Well, look at baseball. It's a great metaphor for failure, success rate. - I, it, it is amazing. One of, one of the guys that that works for me went to, uh, played, uh, high-end collegiate Division one baseball. And, and so I I, I hear a lot about baseball and it's, it's really interesting that you, you're exactly right.
If you strike out seven times and, and you're a 30%, I mean, you're obviously failing every college and every school, but you're in the Hall of fame if you get three outta 10 rights, which is really wild. Not even whole runs. Just if you hit the ball and get onto a base, three out of 10 times, literally Hall of Fame, one of the best in history, which is crazy.
But it's, it's great. I, I think it's a great metaphor. You - Say your ego was a big part of things, and do you mean that you weren't willing to see the writing on the wall? It's sort of the, the person in Vegas that keeps throwing the money down, this next one's gonna be the one. - I think that there was this, this need to be important. It was, and project, you know, myself and, and, and it's more, was, was made me more valuable, more useful. Perhaps it would, it would make me more loved.
Like there's a lot of, a lot of things about money having more that we think it'll fix. And the truth is, money can fix a lot of things. Like if you have a problem that can be solved by money, you really don't have a problem. You just don't have the money. And so that's, I mean, that's reality. There's a lot of times I, I see, like when my dad got sick and passed away a decade ago, he was inside of a system with the va.
And so he had their system, but all the other stuff that was out there that wasn't part of the va, he didn't tap into 'cause he, he didn't have the resources. And so money would've, I think money would've not only helped him get different resources, but the lack of money and his thinking that I'm gonna be a burden to people when I get sicker and sicker and don't have resources. I think he checked out and gave up probably six to 12 months before he would've.
So money is valuable. Money is part of the health equation. And to say it's not, some people think it doesn't matter and, and you couldn't be more wrong. It's, it's also not the only thing. I thought it was the only thing, and the funny part is it got me incredibly sick because I was so stressed out that I ended up checking into the Mayo Clinic for a week in my twenties thinking I was gonna die.
And so, you know, there's this obsession, especially in America, Western culture, money is going and we see it on Instagram and all these feeds, look at all these success stories and all the bling and all the Lamborghinis and the jets and blah, blah, blah. And I mean, you're, you're in California, you see it freaking everywhere. And it's, and then when you're online, it's everywhere. So everybody can see it no matter where you're at Des Moines or those - Are deeply unhappy people is my argument.
- Uh, a hundred percent. And what one of the sad things to me is seeing social media feeds. We see the highlight reels for people's lives. And, and most of the time, and I find myself doing this most of the time, if I go to social media, which I tend to not go to, I'll post something and then I'm out. And that's usually on LinkedIn. I don't like going to places because I feel more inadequate. I feel like, wow, everybody has so many things going on.
They're so much healthier, they're so much happier. Look, all these vacations, all this success. And then I, I step back and I go, wait, my life is really amazing and I'm doing really well. What, what is going on? But I think that it makes most people feel fairly inadequate when they look at these reels. It's not really very healthy. And, and with kids, especially like teenage girls, it just scares me to see how they, their, their people are so wound up and seeing everybody else's stuff.
And then their, their self-esteem, self-esteem and their self image is so messed up and crushed that. So I don't know that social media is necessarily helping people's, their psychological, their self-concept. It's really getting, getting pretty beat up. So I'm not a huge fan. - Yeah, I think it, it does more damage than good. But I, I like to think of what Mae West said, good girls keep journals or diaries and bad girls don't have time.
If you were really doing all of this stuff you're saying you're doing, you wouldn't have time to actually put all that information out every day. But I don't know, that's just me, . I do, I think it is a, a real thing that people, the more you're on social media, the worse you feel about yourself. I read an article when I was in college that I thought was so interesting.
Uh, back when I was in college, I subscribed to so many different magazines and Cosmo and US Weekly and all this bullshit , these magazines that their whole vibe is to tell you, you're not pretty enough. You're not thin enough, you're not, your lips aren't bang and your hair's not shiny enough. You're not having the right sex, you're not whatever. There's all of these articles that basically tell you why you're not okay.
And I read this article, psychology Today or something, it said that they found that people who'd stop reading those types of magazines, their self-esteem goes up. And I thought, well, I'm willing to give that a shot and I canceled everything. And I am here to tell you it's true - That that's a little terrifying for people to think about. And it, it's the same thing with, with the news.
The the amount of people that are, and it doesn't matter what political persuasion you are, it's doesn't, it's, it's just the, the nature of, of news. It's become entertainment. And the entertainment is meant to keep you trapped. Well, how are you gonna keep people trapped? Make sure that they're in fear. If they're in fear. Yeah. Which is what all the freaking news does. - Fear and hate. Yeah. - Yeah. Fear and hate. And it's - Dopa, it's the dopamine, it's the pellet, it's the rap pellet.
- It it is. And so when you, I was thinking about, uh, when we were talking about this for several years, I was head down, grinding away building and focusing. I was living out in Alabama for a few years and, and I moved out to Austin LA in the fall of 2023. Only lasted about six months because I'd lived there a decade before. And I, I moved out there and it had completely changed. And I thought, what the heck happened? Where have I been? And then I realized I was grinding building.
I wasn't focusing on any of the stuff that was going on out there. I was literally focusing very, very near meaning like my team that were 10, 20, 50, a hundred feet in front of me. That was it. I wasn't paying attention to anything that was going on. A lot of the, I mean, there were so many in three or four years is a long time now with the amount of change that's happening, most people, they're, they're so wound up in the things that are happening every day. They're, they're tuned in.
They know exactly what's happening. And I was completely disconnected. And I, and I thought, wow, that was actually very cool. So how can I stay that way? Like just go down, be present, be real, be be building things instead of getting distracted and thrown all over with somebody else's agenda, which is, I think what most people are doing, they're just in the wind with other agendas, not theirs.
- And I think to your point a a minute ago, what does it serve if they're not actually able to be in their life and if it's detrimental to their health? Like for your dad, what's your dad's name? - Bob. - Bob. So for Hi Bob, uh, in his situation, did you go to him and say, you need to use these other places to get better. So he, he was the opposite, right?
Instead of being the super wealthy person that's going, going, going, he clearly sounds like he was set in the idea of what he was and therefore couldn't look beyond that in order to get more help or more resource. - I think there's an identity that drives our, our decisions. And so even though we're literally, it's like a death sentence that we've created and invoked on ourselves, we, we don't wanna violate. Then there there's a lot of consistency that Chaldini talks about in his book.
Influence. Once we decide one thing, we tend to decide things that are in alignment with the first decision because we don't wanna be out of alignment and, and inconsistent. It's like it violates a core premise of being human. So he had this, this love for the military and the VA and his doctors and nurses, and they were all inside of a system that gave you very strict, limited in a box type of resources. So it, that's, he was, he was doing his thing.
I, I remember for years I would, I was trying to get him to think differently do, and then finally I just gave up and I said, you know what? We're just gonna talk and talk about the weather, and that's what we're gonna do. And that's what we did for the, for the last three years of his life. We talked about the weather and we talked about my, the kids that I was, I was teaching at the Dojo. He'd asked me about that and then tell me about how crappy the weather was in Alaska.
And I'd say, dad, the weather is always crappy. You're in Alaska, you get three days of lease and that's it. And that's June. So it was, it, I let go of the, the changing. 'cause the reality is you can't change somebody that doesn't wanna change themselves and they have to do the work.
Any anybody that has kids or parents knows this or you know, probably anybody that has a relationship with another human being that cares about 'em and wants something for them, but they don't want it for themselves. You realize how frustrating that is and and when you let go, - It's so frustrating. Yeah, - Just better to let go. And I think ultimately if people want to change, they're gonna see you doing the thing they, the whole saying, be the change you wish to see in the world.
And I, I think that, that that's never been truer, that people are looking for role models that are actually living. It's easy to say stuff. It's easy to manipulate and build imagery, whether it's in Vogue or Instagram. What's really hard is to live it. And when you live it and people realize, wow, this is real, that's inspiring. And I think that that's what will inspire people to actually take actions that they wouldn't ordinarily do because they go, oh, somebody's really doing this.
This is not just bs, this is real. So that's what we need. We need people to step up and do the work and, and be the change. - I agree. I think that words have little power. It's action that has all the power. - Have you ever noticed people online? Oftentimes there's, there's some people that I've done work with in the past that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole now that are online constantly talking about two things. They're, they're, they are pounding their religiousness into your brain.
And I, I totally love people and their, their spirituality, but I don't want you pounding it into my brain. And quite frankly, if you have to do that, if you have to tell me how much you love Jesus nonstop and how much you're with the Lord, and then you tell me how much integrity you have, and this is your constant Instagram feed, I don't trust you and I don't believe you. So like, it's really interesting.
And then there are other people, most of the people in my life, I watch them and I know they have deep values and deep, a deep relationship with God. And it's awesome because they do it. And it's, it's a very open thing where I can talk to them about it and we can explore that, but they're never hammering me and they, they just, they walk it. So that's, that's what's inspiring. - Yeah, there's a big difference.
And I think the people, the people that have to say it over and over again, the ones that are screaming are the ones I trust the least. I always laugh at anyone that has to be Instagram official or Facebook official with the relationship. And then they write the big, I can tell how long the relationship's going to last by how long the paragraph of their saying how much they love them is. And the longer the paragraph, the shorter the relationship.
- That's scary. And I think that's completely accurate. Mm-Hmm, , I'll keep that in mind for the future. , what did someone just post? I'm like, well, this relationship's gonna last about three hours. . - Well, I would be wary of anyone that gets upset that you don't, but I'm, I'm private, but I, I think that when people are like, you need to say that you're with me, it's like, why would I need to do that onto the Instagram? These aren't this a real life. But anyway, we digress.
I'm curious, growing up in Alaska, which I hear is very beautiful, I have friends from there, it looks incredible. One of these days I need to get there. Were you in an environment where other kids were also not from super wealthy families? Or were you an outcast or an outlier and did that drive you as well? So - One thing that's kind of funny, Alaska is beautiful all three weeks of summer. So that's amazing. And then, and then it's just dark and gray and miserable.
But I don't, I don't know, I don't think that I really realized how relatively poor we were.
I just thought we were, you know, we were in a neighborhood and we were surrounded by other people, but then going, going to school and seeing people that where kids had vehicles and I was out there, you know, grinding away to work full-time as a freshman in high school so that I could save up to buy a really, really used car that I ran into the side of a curb in front of a school bus a week after I got it. Being surrounded, you see it, we notice it.
Like, I don't think you can, unless you're in a commune somewhere and or like you're Amish and you just don't have any access to technology. The reality is you're gonna see it. And it's, so I, yeah, I, I think I did feel slightly inadequate and like, we didn't have resources when people weren't on vacations. We, we didn't go on vacations. I, I, in fact, I think the only time I left Alaska really, other than when I was very, very young, was my senior year in high school.
I went to my grandparents for Christmas and it was miserable. I just, I mean, it was, it, I'm glad to see my grandmother before she passed, but gosh, it was just, it, it wasn't like the, the other trips that the kids would take skiing and going to Hawaii. So none of that stuff really happened. And we didn't have this stuff. My, my budget for school close was like a hundred dollars a year.
And I laugh now and I'm like, I spend a hundred dollars on a polo, like the one that we had earlier that was like, you know, that was twisted like Willy Wonka. But, so that was, when I look back, it's, it's more obvious now, looking back, back then, it was slightly frustrating. 'cause when we had the JC Penny catalog and it was school time and it, I was told, you have a hundred dollars and I'm thinking, all get a sweater, a pair of pants and some new socks.
And, and that was, that was kind of it. And so that, so I, I think there are, there's some, some things that we, we do see when we're in that environment, but it's also very normalized. Like my neighbor's house was very similar to our house. So the immediate, and that's why it's so important that we choose our environment. We choose the people we're around because we do become like them. It's going to shape me.
And, and I think a lot of people are very oblivious to that or they're fighting to protect it because they go, well this person's good and I can't just judge them. Well, the reality is you're going to be the people that you're around. There's just no way around it. You're gonna be their health, you're gonna be their integrity, you're gonna be their intelligence, you're gonna be their wealth. Some people wonder why their life is the way they way it is.
It's a lot of it has to do with the environment we have chosen to be in if you're in prison, that, that makes sense. But the reality is you can, I mean, people are coming into America right now. They're walking from freaking South America or Venezuela, and they're, they're showing up here and they're figuring it out. And I, I'm really wondering what the excuse is. Well, you know, my mom is here and okay, fine, you've got a frontal lobe and we've got the ability to make decisions.
So I think people do have the choice and, and the environment is such a powerful piece of just creating a life based on osmosis. So I that's, that's one of the, the greatest things that people could do. Just change your environment. - Honestly, I think that's why vision boards can be really helpful because it's something to look at and, and remind yourself of what is possible. Mm-Hmm, . Yeah, it's tricky.
People that are born into generational poverty, like generational wealth, generational poverty has its own parameters. And, and there's self-sabotage, sabotage. There's uh, there's that famous 50 cent line in his song where he says, you know, I'm trying to crawl my way out and you're pulling me back down. There's that, there's doubt and education, all these things, certainly. But I think ultimately, as we said before, words are one thing, but action is another.
And if you really want something, you figure out how to, how to get her done. I'll probably get emails for that. But I think, I think it, it might be true, and self sabotage is really a big thing for humans. - We have a kind of a thermostat for our lives where if like the AC or the heat kicks on if we go outside of this range. And so whatever that is, we've dialed in our perception of our reality. And so this is why people, when they win the lottery, they get rid of it.
They go into debt, they blow it, they give it away. It's, we have a concept of what we're worth, what we should have. And, and there, there's an interesting thing too. If you see people that make, say half a million dollars a year and you're making 50,000, you go, wow, they always make a half a million. And then you see other people that always make a million or 5 million or 10 million and they consistently do it. Why is that? Because that's their self-concept.
That's what they believe about themselves, and they believe, and they do certain things. They, they perform, they have, their words are different when you're around them. They don't say the same things. That somebody making 5 million versus somebody making 50,000, their vocabulary is different. Not because they went to Yale, but because they say things, they, they live in an abundance world. They in general, they don't have a fixed amount. Like they don't look at time and money the same way.
People that make 50,000 trade their time for money, people that make 5 million trade their money for time. There's just, it's like an absolute opposite when you 10 or a hundred x wealth and people don't think about that stuff, but they're, once you've got a, the belief about yourself, you just do things like, you literally don't go and, and drink beer and watch football every night in the fall.
If you are, if you're creating something, if you're building something, if you're exceptionally wealthy, you wake up. I mean, people that are really fit, what do they do? They're the ones at 5:00 AM they're at the gym or running or doing something. Are they the ones that need it? No, but that's who they are.
And so when you decide, like if you're, if you've got that poverty consciousness or you've been inside of a box, if you will, like these, these bad neighborhoods, and you've got multi-generational type of belief systems, you also can decide and be committed. It doesn't mean it's gonna be easy, but you have to commit. Like this is the, I want something different. And then you just, sometimes you breach brute force your way out of it, but most people are committed to it.
So they're, they're like, well, I'll just, I mean, this is how it is. It's - Like a hypnosis. And again, I mean that idea of you can be staring at a TikTok for 10 hours and lamenting your life, but the people you're looking at or making money by posting those tiktoks that you're, you know, it is, yeah.
It's a brutal system of, of self-sabotage. I think - One of the things I heard recently about like the things on TikTok and, and all the people that are selling whatever their miracles and, and instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna buy the thing, figure out what they're doing and then start doing what they're doing, instead of saying, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy that, that exercise machine, or I'm going to buy the get rich quick course or whatever it is.
Like actually ask you, ask yourself what are they doing? And then like model them. That's like one of the most powerful things. Model the people. Look those vision boards you're talking about. Find the people that are your vision board and then literally super glue yourself to them in some way and start saying, okay, if they're stepping left, I'm stepping left. That's a very powerful thing. Most people just hypnotically follow people because it's like, oh yeah, they're saying the thing.
Okay, well people did that with Adolf Hitler too. Oh yeah, he's saying the thing. So if you can actually be conscious, thoughtful and say, you know what, this is the type of person that I want to emulate, boy, it, it changes everything. - There's that great line in the, uh, movie Sabrina at the very end when spoiler alert the movie's from like the forties, so you can handle it, the spoiler. But at the end when the father says to Sabrina, here is, here's all this money.
And she said, where in the world did you get $5 million? And he, you know, he was the chauffeur for the wealthy man of the house. He said, I listened and when he invested, I invested. - Yeah. And, and what do people do? They think they know better. I can tell you that that's, that's one of the things that I remember back in the nineties, late nineties when I started an insurance agency. There was a model for how you do it and how you, how you become very successful and very wealthy.
And of course, at 19, 20 years old, I'm like, this is, it's new. I'm smarter, blah, blah, blah. And so I did it my way and, and I just sort of stumbled along and didn't really go very far. And then when I started doing real estate, I went to seminars and I did exactly what the seminar people told me to do. And I think I was doing it more than they were doing it. They were talking about how they did it. And I went out there and did it 10 times more. Like, but I did what they said.
And that's, that's a very interesting approach when you let go of your ego and thinking that you're smarter or better and you say, okay, I'm gonna listen. I see so many people that insist on doing it their way. And I get it, you know, when we're kids, you can't prevent a kid from touching a hot stove before they've touched the hot stove. Like that is part of being a human. You're gonna touch hot things, you're gonna trip, you're gonna break things.
But there's also a very powerful approach, which is don't make all the same mistakes that everybody else makes. Come up with some unique ones and you can write a book about it, but say, doing the same ones is like one of the dumbest things ever. Like we don't have enough lifetime to go and do all the same mistakes, so leverage off other people's experiences. - Yeah. Ouch is hot. Ouch is hot. Ouch is hot. , tell me about the Mayo Clinic. - Mayo Clinic is a beautiful place.
You don't really wanna spend a week there or any time, - What happened? What, what got you there? - When you have a lot of stress and like, stress is probably the, it's a bigger killer than, well everything. Um, whether it's smoking or cancer or heart disease or, or obesity, like literally stress. We're stressing ourself. We're stressed at everything. We look at a Facebook feed, we're stressed and, and were stressed about money, were stressed about relationships.
I was stressed because I was in this process of trying to get more money and it was never enough. I just kept stressing myself out and I didn't understand leverage teams building a culture, like all the things that I, I think I have a pretty good grip on now. I really didn't know. I just, I was like, oh, just work harder. And so ultimately stressing myself into a place where all the stress was building up in my body. And that's the thing that people don't realize.
Stress will build up and you're like, well, why am I having pains in here or there? Like I was just passing out syncope where you just literally outta know where you just pass out. Well that's because your body is, is dealing with toxins, it's dealing with toxic energy. It's literally just stuck. And so I went to the Mayo Clinic and said, what is the problem? Check everything. So they poked and pro and stabbed and scanned and all the stuff.
And, and at the end they said, well, your gallbladder has stones. And I said, well, what do you do? And they said, well, you can cut it out. And I said, great. Like four days later they cut this thing out and I was like, perfect. Typical American. Either you cut it or you drug it. And, and after that happened, I was, and part of the reason I went to Mayo is I was nauseous for two straight years.
So I can understand, and this is gonna sound maybe a little crazy or intense, but I can understand why people get suicidal when they're nauseous or like they're, they're going through chemo or these things being nauseous where you're wobbly, like you're on a, on a boat and you get seasickness. Being nauseous for two straight years was in incredibly debilitating. So I went to Mayo and said, I don't care what it takes. If you need to cut off my left half my body, whatever, just fix this.
This is terrible. So after that, that organ was removed, I thought, oh, that's good. All that did was just, it cut out a symptom or, and, and it, it wasn't the problem. The underlying problem was the stress. And so - Adrenals, your adrenals were wasted. Yeah, - A hundred percent. And that's, you know, you see that everywhere with people and, and how they, their lifestyles. So that process led me to a doctor in, in your, your neck of the woods.
That was Magic Johnson's doctor and the, the LA Kings. And he was, he was like a superstar doctor for executives and high performance people. Super cool guy. And we sat down for four hours. Now imagine this, my first appointment with this doctor, I fly into LA and I'm sitting there for four hours and I was like, this is not normal, normal, it's like four minutes. Here's the drug. Go, you know, call me in in a month or, or whatever.
And this guy sat there and, and we spent four hours and he was testing and really talking a lot, trying to figure out, very cool to have any practitioner getting deep and trying to understand fundamentally, holistically, well who you are and what's really going on. And at, at the end of this four hours, he said, well, there's two options. I can either drug you or I can help you holistically that's not pharma. And I said, uh, b please. And so we, we did some changes.
I mean, one of the changes that got got rid of dairy, got rid of caffeine started, he said, go to talk therapy. And, and you've gotta find an outlet. So part of what's so valuable about talk therapy or having a a, a therapist or a counselor or somebody, is you get this energy that gets stuck. All these, these worries, the anxiety, the, the depression, that stuff that just stuck, that's like literally killing you. It, it gets it out, it finds a home somewhere else you can let, let it, let it go.
And, and then finding a place with all the martial arts I'd been doing, that was a great place to let go of, of all this energy. And it could be hiking, it could be running, it could be working out. But if you don't get your, if you don't let your body go through a process to let go, it's kinda like if you ever see, um, I think it's a possum when they fall out of a tree shaking and they're like running on the ground.
It's very weird. But they go through this process and it's, it's a process to release the energy of the fear. Like it's a very interesting thing in nature. And I didn't, I had stopped doing that for several years. And when I stopped doing it, all of that, that fear or the anxiety was just stuck. He's like, you gotta find a place now you gotta shake like apostle. He, he didn't say that, but that's how, what it felt like. And I was like, okay. So I found a place to go shake like a possum.
I went out and, and I started doing yoga and I found a place to do martial arts and I then I started teaching martial arts again. And, and that is a huge shift when you can find a place for all that stress, energy. So like literally all the ailments, all that stuff went away. It wasn't about, oh, gallstones, cut out the gallbladder. That's the dumb thing we do.
And if, if you take a step back and get some help from an outside party that can actually see you completely, they're not, they're far enough away to coach you and guide you. And then you realize, oh, I can change some things. And it's not about cutting or drugging and, and everything changes. Also - Taking, teaching others takes the focus off of you. And again, we get so caught up in ourselves.
That's why I'm a big believer in you have to do things for others because it's for five fricking minutes. You'll stop thinking about yourself if just for that, - That's a huge shift that we could, we could probably spend a lot of time in society, bettering society. We start thinking. And whether it's volunteering or just listening to somebody or making it about them being present. That's one of the things you, you probably agree that we're lacking in today's age.
Just presence. People are either they're, they're depressed about the past or they're anxious about the future. It's always funny to me when I'm, I'm talking with somebody and I realize that they're reading a, their phone and they're texting somebody back while we're talking and, and then the next thing they say is, wow, amazing. Oh yeah. And I'm like, you have no idea what I just said 'cause you were not being present with me. And it's, it's one of the biggest insults.
And to me it's also one of the greatest gifts. Giving somebody, being present with them and hearing them lis listening, being absolutely present is it's like magic. And it's, and we can do better to our, our friends and our family and our customers and by being present with them and not making it about us, oh, well lemme tell you about my thing now forget about that. But it's all about you. It's, it's, it's a pure act of love that we really need more of.
- If we were able to not only do that for ourselves, our family and our friends, and be doing it for ourselves is a big deal. Not just standing over the sink, gobbling down your food, but actually thinking about the food you're eating and tasting it and going, wow, this, this tastes this way or that way. But when you go out into the world, there's so much cool stuff to look at. , there are, the trees are incredible. There's fun pictures made in the stains on the sidewalk.
You know, there's flowers and animals, there's dogs everywhere. It's the best. There is so much to see, but you have to be there for it. - Yeah. Most people are are literally in a, in a bubble. Even if they're walking past something, they have no idea it's there. 'cause they're either they're staring at a screen or they're, they're thinking about something that's not now.
- Yeah, we've lost that human interaction too, of just walking along and looking another human being in the eye and acknowledging that they exist. - Right? Yeah, we could, I I think that would, that would change a lot. I think a lot of people don't think that they matter. I think that there's Brendan Bouchard, uh, who's influenced a ton of people in the influencer space. Uh, live love matter, like that's his mantra.
And it's, I don't think a lot of people realize that they matter, like they, you know, and, and so to be, to be mindful and scary, you see people in, in cities where somebody's being attacked or something's happening or, you know, there's, there's somebody that's homeless and it's like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ignore other people.
And, and then every once in a while, you see, I mean, sometimes, sometimes the social media stuff's kind of cool where you see somebody that's, that's acting as if they're, they really need something and then somebody is just really helpful to them. And it turns out they didn't need anything. They were just seeing if anybody would care. And, and it's, it's nice, it's sort of heart felt warm and feels good to see people and you know, who knows these things could be all be choreographed.
But I think that there are, there are a lot of good people and, and I think we could all do better at being gooder to, to other people and especially strangers just being, you know, open-hearted and loving towards other people out there instead of trying to avoid it. - Yeah. Don't film tragedy on your phone. Step in and I mean, when to be safe, obviously don't get stabbed in the process or something, but yeah. And maybe we're turning a corner.
I believe there's more good than bad people in the world in a lot of shades of gray, I suppose. How, how do you find now in your world, uh, a good work life balance? You said you're still teaching? Yes. You still teach the martial arts? - So I, I I, I don't teach martial arts in the, in the dojo. It's, what's interesting is I created something called Yo Keto. It's a blend of yoga and aikido and, and reiki.
And so that really ends up being how I show up and, and when I'm teaching money or I'm teaching with my, my team, they're, I'm teaching in different ways. So it's, it's sort of like this thing called walking a keto or walking martial arts where you're just, you're, you are, you embody it. And after s studying for over 20 years, it's, it's just who I am. It's how I show up. And I, and my favorite thing is teaching.
Uh, I love teaching and help guiding people to their potential, whatever that is used to be about. Hey, I'm, I'm gonna teach you and you could be like me. Well, that's really got over that, you know, that's, that was my ego. And now it's just really trying to figure out what's where somebody's potential is and help inspire them. Give, let them borrow some confidence and help them get there. So that, that's what I spend a lot of time doing now.
And, and then a lot of time connected to, to nature, which I think is, is where God shows up without any type of manipulation. - Right. How do you help people to borrow confidence? How do you break through years and years of belief systems? - Small actions, once you develop a level of trust. And that's, that's the first thing. If, if somebody goes into a relationship and I'm in that relationship and they, and they trust, then they can say, okay, I don't have any idea how this is gonna work.
And it doesn't seem like there's a clear path, but you seem certain. So if they can trust me enough to borrow my certainty, then they, it ends up, if you've done something, there's an interesting confidence. You're like, oh, I've done this before. It's like, yeah, it's old hat, but the first time you do something, it's like terrifying.
But when you've got somebody you trust that is telling you you're not gonna die, you're, and if you fall, I'm right here, and, and you're like, okay, well I can let go. It's like that trust thing where the trust fall, you close your eyes, you fall back and there's somebody and you just, that they, you're trusting they're gonna catch you. When you have mentors or coaches that really great ones, that's what they do.
They, there's, there's this trust that's built and, and this, this confidence that's instilled that you literally get to borrow so you can make action, take action and, and move faster versus being stuck for a decade. Get things done in weeks versus years. - Mm-Hmm. Do you have a good work-life balance now for yourself? - I, so it's interesting. There's, I look at balance as kind of a farce. I look at, at seasons, especially as an entrepreneur.
I, I love what I'm doing. I'm always thinking about him talking about it. And e even when I'm wandering out around in the mountains, it's things come into mind. And when there are seasons of building things, it's kinda like I look at, say somebody like Michael Phelps, did he have any balance when he was out there swimming 10 hours a day and then eating three hours a day? You know, probably not. Does he do that now? No, he's, he's got a different thing. That was a season in life.
So as an entrepreneur, I think that it's, it's more that there are seasons. I have bursts of time and my challenge is, is to have those bursts, have those seasons and then let go. And that's the hard part. So am I very good at it? No, . Like, I tend, I go to Europe and I'm, and I'm like thinking about, Ooh, what could I create here? What could I build here? What I'm like, Jim, any Christmas, I can't just have some, have, have a glass of wine.
I gotta like go out there and build the next, you know, the next coliseum. And so that's the challenge. 'cause there's an inherent desire and need because my, that's, that's who I am in so many ways. And so we wanna, I think it's, we, we naturally want to be who we are and, and forcing something else.
Like one of the things that's funny is, is people that will say, uh, Sunday fun day or, or it's after five and I'm laughing and I'm like, I'm studying, or I'm growing or I'm thinking, and I don't, I don't abide by those rules. So my life looks different than most people's lives. And that's, and I've made those choices. Some people at five o'clock, they're out there and they're watching some sports and they're, they're drinking their beer and, and they are happy.
And you know what? They're gonna work for 60 years and they're gonna be doing the thing and they're not gonna have the same choices that I am. So I think we, we make compromises and we, we do decide. So is it balanced? Probably not from most people's perspective, probably even not mine most of the time. Well, - Comparison doesn't really solve anything. I, I, I meant for you, do you feel that you have a balance? - Uh, no. I'm usually pretty imbalanced. Okay.
- That's a very long and cutest route to get to the answer of no - No, it's, you know what I, I think what I'm, I've come to you is there are habits and there are things that are important to me. And having those in place helps me not feel totally out of balance. So for example, I've got a rhythm around working out. I've got a rhythm around going and hiking. I've got a rhythm around spending time with people I love about and care about.
And so doing those things, then I don't really worry about trying to have the perfect 15% of my time doing this and that it's literally, I just have habits that are almo, they become unconscious and, and it, and so my life works for me. But without those, I would constantly be stressed because I'd be like, I am so outta balance.
And I thought about that for a long time until I realized, oh, put in place these habits these rituals and, and there will, there will be a natural feeling of, okay, I'm in, I'm in a flow. So that was, that, that was my solution. Yeah. - Where's your favorite place to go in Sedona? - Well, so Sedona is just one big trail. And so my, my favorite, favorite places are just getting lost on the trails. And it's, there's, there's so many of them that it's, there's not really a, a favorite place.
It's just any of them being out there running across Linas or deer or, it doesn't really make any difference to me. It's being in this energy, being in clean air, being in a place where, where I can just let go. And what's interesting is there, I remember years ago somebody said, do you have any problems? And I said, yeah. And they said, no, right now, in this moment, do you have any problems? And I said, uh, no. And so going out on a hike, is there any problem?
No, there's no, and it's, it's more, it's more obvious when I'm, I'm wandering out there that there's no problems. And it's funny to hear people bitching about their, their problems in the world and, and this, this presidential election. I'm like, do you have a problem now? Well, no. Okay, then shut up and be in the now where everything is good. We just have projections and anxiety about something that might happen down the road.
Most of the things that won't, most of the things won't actually happen. So that's, that's a great question. What to have a problem right now, ask yourself that, you know? - Yeah. That's great. Damien, tell people how they can find you. - Best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Come, come hang out, connect, and you can see all the stuff that I'm doing and the fun projects of building things in Arizona with my big frame tech project. That's a, it's like a little, little teaser,
but yeah. Come. What, - What is frame tech? - So we're, we're disrupting the, the construction industry. And it's actually a very cool thing. I'll give you a quick snapshot of, it's, uh, we're, we're building all the bones for houses and apartments inside of a manufacturing facility. So somebody wants to buy, build a house, and they come to us, say, here's my plans from a house. We take their plans and they're gonna have a framed structure within about two weeks.
So normally that's a two to three month process. So we, we kill about 80% of the time to get a framing process done for a house. And one of the coolest things is we do this with 99% less waste because of our technology. We have almost no waste. So Normal House has a dumpster full of wood. We have literally like a little carton full of wood, which with corner cuts because we just don't waste the trees. So it's, it's a very cool thing.
It's completely disrupts the, the construction industry and helps solve a four to five or even 6 million housing unit problem in America. So it's, we've got a couple of plants that are going online here in Arizona, and it's gonna be rolled out across the country. Very, very cool thing that I think would inspire a lot of people to realize that it's not all bad news. There's actually some really good stuff going on.
- How do you fight the inflation that's going on these days with, uh, I, I see a lot of my friends who are in development are pulling out their hair because of the cost of building. - Well, when you, when, so part of what has happened and what continues to happen in things like construction, there's been almost no innovation in the last 50 years.
The last thing that happened was like the nail gun and just it's things, I mean, truly things don't change because when you build a big manufacturing operation, it's really expensive to stop it or to pivot. And so it, it's hard. You don't see a lot of innovation. The, the, one of the things that we're doing to help the inflation problem, the cost problem is when you can cut off 80% of the time and you can make it very specific.
Like on this date, you're gonna have your framed house, and then plumbers and electricians come in after you. It's very cool because think about the amount of time that re results in a lot of lost money. If you're having to borrow money and you're just sitting there and you're waiting and it's taking you two or three extra months, that's just throwing away money. Well, when you can reduce that time, it can save money.
So how do, I mean, that's one, it's a huge way for us to help this, this cost problem. Ultimately when the, the Federal Reserve and the government are printing money, like drunken sailors that there, there is a problem there. Like we can't fix that. But what we're doing is we're innovating and using technology and with our patents and, and the stuff we've developed, when you're saving a bunch of wood that think about, that's just thrown away.
Every one of those pieces of board that are thrown in the dumpster, you're paying for that. So when we reduce all that and we reduce the time, ultimately there's a huge cost savings for everybody involved because we've innovated. And that's, so it does help everybody. Are - You nationwide now, or still Arizona only? - It's Arizona only. Uh, and then it'll, it'll roll out across the country. Texas, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Florida are the next five spots.
- Okay. If I have a project, say in Alabama and you're in Tennessee, would it be able to be built in Tennessee and then brought to Alabama? - Yeah. So the, so what happens is all of all of the floor that the floor trusses, the, the walls and then the trusses, all the bones, all the wood are, are basically built and then they're stacked up on trucks, and then they're brought to a site and they're assembled there by our team. So it can be done, typically it's a 200 mile radius.
So the plant that we have in, in southeast Tennessee would literally be able to feed a big chunk of Alabama, and it would, it would push into even Indianapolis and, and some of these places up north. So there, it has a lot of, like the, these five, six plants that we're talking about are gonna cover about a hundred million people in America. Wow. So it's a very cool coverage. Yeah. It's a - Third of America.
- Yeah. It's, it's literally a third of America because of strategic locations in places, and not only strategic, but places that are not big cities. So it creates opportunities for like our, our plants here in Arizona, they're in smaller communities. So you have an opportunity for people to make really good wages working inside of a really cool culture. And they don't have to live in a city if they don't want to, which is really cool.
Like people say, I don't necessarily wanna live in a concrete jungle and they can live in a place and, and raise their families in a place that's, it's actually a place they'd like to live. But they've, that a lot of the jobs have been going away. Like we're gonna be the biggest employer in the, in our, our headquarters in Camp Verde, Arizona. That's, that's really cool. It's also why the mayor happens to love us because we're, we're doing something good for the community.
And, and when you do that, like there's a side effect. The side effect is all the success and all the money and everything. And it's because the mission is to disrupt an industry and empower people and, and hire people and, and not do it at the expense of the environment. Like there's, every stakeholder in this project wins. There's nobody that doesn't win. And that's, that feels really good. And the investors that are a part of it love it.
And, and ultimately the side effect is there's a giant amount of wealth that's created and we solve a huge problem. So it's, it's pretty, pretty cool to be a part of it. - All right. So anyone listening that might be thinking, Ooh, that could be a good job for me. Where, where would they apply? - You just go to frame tech.com, frame TE c.com, and you can learn about what we're doing and the jobs, the investment opportunities.
And then really truly, it's just cool to see it like to, to visit Arizona and, and go into this thing and, and you're like, wow, this is actually, like, this is, it's a beautiful thing. It's, it's one thing to see a big chip manufacturer that you can never get up and close up close and personal with, but seeing something where you have innovation, you have ideas and you have a team that gets together and build something. It was a napkin two years ago and today it's a plant that's about
to come online like that is in. Wow. - Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. That's great. That's really great. Well, thank you Damien, for your time today. - Appreciate you having me. It's been super fun. - Yeah. Really interesting conversation. I appreciate it. Well, great day. - You too. Thank you so much. Thank you - For listening everybody. Bye. Rate review and subscribe to, Hey, human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.