WS607: New Laws That Temporarily Open Up Trillions Of Dollars For Real Estate with Damion Lupo

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.0] ANNOUNCER Welcome to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.4] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Damion Lupo. Thanks for being on the show again, Damion.

[0:00:32.8] DL: Hey man, it’s good to be back. Thanks for having me.

[0:00:34.6] WS: Yeah, I’m honored, I always enjoy our conversations, it was great to see you at the Best Ever Conference which I’m not sure what kind of conferences we’ll be going to in the future but I was glad we got that one in before all this happened. But always a pleasure to have you on the show. I know we’re going to have a different topic today which a lot of people need to be aware of that we’re going to discuss and I’m looking forward to it.

But a little about Damion, you should look back at some previous episodes, we’ve covered lots of topics and he’s an expert in eQRP and numerous things that you need to be aware of when you’re an investing personally and helping your investors invest. But Damion rebuilt his wealth since the first financial crisis of 2008 and can offer advice from the trenches. What to do, what to expect and how to do dig out.

Damion has been a professional investor for more than 20 years starting with the purchase of his first rental house he charged on his Visa. That move snowballed into 150 rental houses in less than five years. In 2008, he lost the whole 20-million-dollar business, only to bounce back and recreate his wealth in less than five years. We’ve talked about that on the first show, probably that we recorded Damion, so I would encourage the listeners to go back and listen to that amazing story.

But again, grateful to have you on the show. I know you recently moved but share with us maybe where you’re located and a little about what you’re focused on right n ow?

[0:01:55.5] DL: You know, I moved to the mountains, to nature and it’s interesting because with this whole corona thing, because last time we spoke and had the interview, it was like pre-corona and this post-corona and they’re wrapping the interviews around it and there’s a lot of interest in places that are maybe outside of the urban environment.

Things have shifted, like literally now, people are questioning whether or not student housing is going to be as solid as they thought because maybe students aren’t coming back? Maybe it’s all going to virtual? All the rules have changed and one of the things we decided to do was start pursuing things that are really recession-proof and I’ve been a big fan of gold for a long time and mini-storage because you know what? I’ve spent more money on mini storage if I had just bought a mini-storage, I would have literally broken even at this point with all the money I’ve spent on it.

Thinking about what’s coming, what’s going to last. I think we have to really reassess and not anchor down into the past. We have to learn from the past but the rules are all changing. There are some rules we’re going to talk about specifically that have changed in the last six weeks that are really going to get people excited, like really excited.

[0:02:55.8] WS: Nice. Rules that are changing, we need to be aware of. Let’s just jump in. I know that there’s thousands of people that can now invest that couldn’t invest in real estate before but now have the option. I hope we get into that but let’s get into those rules.

[0:03:09.6] DL: Basically, what congress did is they said, “Okay, we need to pump a whole bunch of money call it three trillion dollars in about three weeks,” that’s what they said. Whether you love it or hate it, the money is flowing and one of the places that’s flowing is out of retirement accounts. People have had 401(k)s and IRAs and the money’s basically been stuck.

Mostly it’s been stuck in Wall Street. What congress did is they said, “Okay, we know you need money and so we’re going to let you take up to $100,000 out of your retirement accounts, any type of retirement accounts and just either keep it and then you can pay taxes over a few years or you can roll it over into another account,” and you have up to three years to roll it over.

If you wanted to, you can literally take $100,000 out of your say, thrift savings plan if you’re a federal employee or your 401(k) or your 457 if you’re a firefighter. You’ve got all these different options. You can literally pull the 100,000 out and then self-direct it next week.

This opened up a whole world for people that previously, we’ve talked to thousands of people that wanted to do real estate investing. They trust real estate more than they trust Wall Street but they’re stuck. I mean, you know, you’ve got as a federal employee, you’re basically given this options that none of those include going and buying apartment buildings with your retirement.

That just changed, that was just one of the deals, that was a wave to self-direct. That was the first hundred thousand. And the second hundred thousand was the ability to borrow up to 100,000 out of 401(k)’s or eQRP’s and then you can pay that back over six years, no payments in 2020. It really gave everybody a chance to say, “Okay, you know what? I want to actually control some of my money.” I think it’s more of an unintended consequence of the government that all of a sudden, people are going to have a whole lot of money that they can potentially pull out.

I’m pretty excited about it and I don’t know if they did it on purpose or not but that’s definitely cool.

[0:04:53.4] WS: I think it’s pretty neat that – I just think personally, we need to know this because now we may have money sitting somewhere that we couldn’t use before but now we can invest it in real estate. Have more options. But also, you know, depending on if you are raising money for deals, you need to understand like maybe your niche that you’ve been focusing on just got a lot bigger or there’s more people available now that you didn’t think about before.

Maybe you have that common interest with that federal employee or firefighter or whoever that now you can connect with and you can educate them about ways they can invest that they couldn’t before.

[0:05:29.1] DL: That’s the big thing in a syndication space. A lot of people that we want to help that want to be a part of our deals, they weren’t able to until March 27^th and then everything changed. In fact, if you got people that said, “I’d love to do a deal but you know, I’m not retiring from the FAA or the government until 2030,” you can say, “Hey, you can literally start investing with me next week.”

It really changed the rules in the game. I mean, I want you guys to really hear: this that billions and billions of dollars just opened up. In fact, probably trillions of dollars just opened up so that you can help other people and your deals will never run out of money. I mean, there’s so much money that people were just stuck with.

They really want to do something different but they were always told, “No, wait until you retire.” Now you don’t have to wait but it’s a limited thing, it’s only this year. You got to do something now and educate people sooner than later.

[0:06:19.0] WS: It’s only this year. They have to make the investments so before December 31^st?

[0:06:24.6] DL: They have to pull the money out and roll it over into a self-directed plan. If you wait until after December 31^st, you’re not going to be able to pull that $100,000 out. And so it’s $100,000 or up to all of your money whichever is less. You pull it out and it goes to you personally and then you roll it into an eQRP and now you can do real estate, physical gold, things that were not on the table, they were not part of the G Fund or the growth fund or the S&P fund or all these Wall Street paper products.

[0:06:51.6] WS: Okay, that’s good to know, I didn’t realize that. They have to pull it out, t hey have to converts it and then they could sit on it at the end if they didn’t make an investment until March or June of next year?>

[0:07:02.9] DL: Yeah, some people say, well, is there a downside and my reaction just really biased because I think we’re all biased, I’m willing to say I’m very biased is that I trust having the cash either in my bank account or in gold while I’m waiting for an investment, more than I do having it sitting on some Wall Street balance sheet.

If you’re not doing anything, great, at least you’re in control of it. We are in very weird rocky volatile times. Market goes up, today it’s up 800 points, tomorrow maybe down 600 or 1,200 points. Getting out of that whole rocky rollercoaster, I think is a very big upside. If you’re sitting on your cash, the last 10 or 11 years, we’ve had this bull market and that’s interesting but it was very artificial so it may be artificial going forward. I just tend to think it’s better to have things you can control and that are not just this hope that we smoke and that’s the plan. I don’t buy into that strategy.

[0:07:57.3] WS: You know, I had a TSP for a number of years and you hit the nail on the head just the lack of control, it’s like, “I would love to put it in real estate.”

[0:08:06.5] DL: This opened that up. I think there’s you know, a lot of people unfortunately and obviously if you’re listening to this, you’re not one of them, they’re just going along hoping that one day, they’ll wake up and they’ll exit their job and they’ll have a big pile of money and everything will be good. But that is you know, abdicating responsibility is not a plan. It’s not a plan for having any type of security or stillness. I’ve had people when they came to me and said, “Look, we need help. We’re 55, we’ve got a couple of million dollars,” and they were scared to death because they hadn’t actually done anything, just been sitting in the stock market.

And they were like, “Okay, well, it’s sort of accidentally happened over 30 years, we don’t have another 30 years so we can’t lose it,” and they instead of being slow and methodical and spending time listening to your show and going devouring great resources, they just went and lost the money, it took them two years, lost the money.

Now is the time to grow ourselves, truly, that is the best investment. And here’s one of the cool things. You pull that money out, the disbursement or the loan, you could invest in things like education, mentoring, masterminds so you’ve got a lot of options because that is the best investment you’ll ever make. It’s better than any real estate, any gold, anything, it’s truly you, are the best investment.

[0:09:17.3] WS: Elaborate on that a little bit, how we can pull that money out to invest in education or something like a mentorship?

[0:09:23.8] DL: Once the money comes out, once you get the disbursement, it goes into your personal account. Basically, the way this works is if you have a hardship, meaning, if you’ve been impacted by coronavirus and the treasury and the congress left it very vague. If you’ve had any impact. Well, find me somebody in the United States that has not had an impact with corona virus? There’s something.

Once the money is in your account, you have one of two options. One, you have to put it into a retirement account within three years, either the old one or a new one or you have to pay taxes over the next three years. Let’s say you pulled a hundred thousand out and you said, “Okay, I’m going to invest 20, $30,000 in masterminds, in mentors, in people that are bolder and greater than me.”

I always think that’s a good idea. To do that, it just means that you’re going to pay taxes or you’re going to have to make up that money to return into a retirement account within three years. I guarantee you, if you have great people around you, you spend 20, $30,000 on investing in yourself, you’re going to have that come back 10 times in the next three years. If you’re thinking, “What am I going to invest in?” and you’re not really sure yet, invest in the person, invest in the team and that will guarantee you’re going to do better than you would by yourself, 100% of the time.

[0:10:29.1] WS: Love that, anything else that we could be prepared for as far as educating htat person and you know, we’re more of we’re having that – let’s say I’m the firefighter and you know, I’m listening to the show today. Now, all of a sudden, you know, I’m back at the station tomorrow, what are a couple of things that maybe even high-level that I need to know that I say you know, when I’m trying to tell people that you now have this option?

[0:10:52.8] DL: What you’re going to want to do is go to your administrator, usually they’re tied to the HR department and you’re going to say, “I’d like to see what kind of options we have for a hardship withdrawal from coronavirus, it’s from COVID 19, it’s a called disbursement, that’s the actual word and also, if it’s a 401(k) or 457, if there’s been a change to the loan rules.” The loan rules were before that you could have up to 50,000 or 50% of your money pulled out as a loan, that’s now 100,000 or 100% whichever’s lower. It’s up to the administrator.

Now, the thrift savings plan, the TSP has already announced it, it’s on their website that it’s available. It’s up to other 401(k)s and 457 plans, they can choose whether or not to do it. You just have to go to them and ask them, “Have you guys amended the plan with the disbursement option for COVID for up to a hundred thousand and/or, have you changed the loan rules so we have up to 100,000 we can borrow?” And then they’ll tell you.

And if you want somebody to three-way call and navigate that with you, reach out to us because we’re happy to help you get the education and figure out what your options are, a lot of times, it’s hard because we call somebody and we don’t even know what we’re talking about and we’re just like, “Hey, do you have access or do I have access or is there access to money somewhere?” You sound like an idiot and I don’t want anybody to sound like an idiot so you were asking disbursement and loan options, are they available, has the plan been amended and again, totally happy to help people navigate that to see if they do have the options.

[0:12:16.8] WS: Yeah, it’s hard to have that conversation if you don’t’ have any idea what you’re asking about, right? You know, and then the person on the other end doesn’t want to feel like they don’t know what’s going on, “You know, we don’t have that,” and you don’t know what to even ask next or to – That’s a great option, appreciate you offering that. Anybody else that we haven’t discussed like I know you said, potentially firefighters or federal employees, have a TSP, anybody else that might be in our wheelhouse we haven’t thought of?

[0:12:39.9] DL: Yeah, anybody with an IRA. If you have an IRA of any sort, you’re able to pull up to $100,000 out of that and move it into something else. And one of the things that people miss out a lot is they want to do real estate investments and they’re stuck, they have a Roth IRA for example, which is really stuck. But you can always pull Roth money if you’ve contributed it, you can always pull that out tax-free, penalty free any time. What the disbursement did was two things. It said, “No penalty, no 10% penalty for early withdrawal if you’re less than 59 and a half and you can pull up to $100,000 out if you’ve been affected.”

Before, if you actually were even able to pull out money like 10,000 bucks for hardship, it was only 10% penalty that you didn’t have to pay, so it wasn’t really that significant. There’s a lot of options.  One of the things that I’ve noticed is there’s a lot of companies that you know, these do it yourself or app companies for real estate or not real estate, but retirement things. You’re just left okay, basically, doing an app and then you have to Google everything and Google is confusing.

Its’ like anything with real estate or financial planning, you want a team that has an alignment with your best interest and can help you navigate, there’s too much information. Google will tell you anything you want it to tell you. It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth or not because somebody has written a blog with the wrong information and the algorithm will give you whatever you’re asking for in the wrong format.

Having the right people around you to help navigate this thing, all the different strategies with retirement. Because, Whitney, here’s the deal, you can pay no taxes, you can get tax breaks, putting money into retirement account, you can pull it out tax free, penalty free, you can spend it tax free. There are all these different ways to do this and yet how would you know unless you have a team?

What’s the goal? Find the right team and then enjoy your life without paying 70% of your money to taxes.

[0:14:21.9] WS: You mentioned the Roth IRA, is that for traditional as well?

[0:14:25.1] DL: No, it’s only Roth IRA’s or Roth eQRP’s, Roth 401(k)’s, it’s the Roth piece. And so, one of the things that we can do is we can convert traditional. Like you mentioned your TSP, you can convert that to Roth once you have self-direction, once you have an eQRP, you can convert from traditional to Roth and once it’s Roth, you can pull all that money out. You can do it anytime you want tax free, penalty free.

It’s a really interesting thing. Now, when you convert it, there are ways to convert it tax free. Just think about this: You put the money in there pre-tax, you haven’t paid tax, then you convert it to after tax which is Roth, you’re not paying tax and then you pull it out tax free, that’s a pretty good system of not paying taxes and it’s completely part of the system. So, why not use the rules that are there? I mean, their incentives to get us to keep stimulating the economy. They’re available.

[0:15:14.1] WS: When am I going to have to pay taxes on that?

[0:15:16.5] DL: You can actually do this and not pay taxes at all so because of all the different laws that have happened the last couple of years, this happened with the joint Tax Relief Act back two years ago when bonus depreciation came to life. You were able to take bonus depreciation and offset some of these conversations. It used to be a certain amount up to half a million. Now, it is an unlimited amount because of what congress has done in the last six months.

So, this is where you need strategists. You need people that can put it all on the table and this is high-level stuff. This is not your HNR block tax prepare on the corner, I promise that is not the person that knows about this stuff. It is people that wake up at 3:00 in the morning reading the code. People like me that have read the entire CARES Act and are like, “Okay, we can dissect what we can use here” and then I mean it is a great question, when do you pay taxes? How about never? I mean is never a good choice because I think it is the best choice ever and it’s available if you actually use it.

[0:16:07.3] WS: How do we know we have somebody that can help us navigate that? Obviously, it sounds like too good to be true right? You would want somebody that definitely knows this stuff like you said, that wakes up at 3:00 in the morning. I am waking up at 3:00 in the morning thinking about all of this other stuff I am doing but it is not about taxes.

[0:16:23.4] DL: No, it is a good question because quite frankly most people tax strategists, tax attorneys, accountants, to most people CPA doesn’t mean that they know anything about these strategies. It means that they can file your taxes and they’ve got credentials because they’ve done a lot of high-level bookkeeping, maybe not even high-level. So, the reality is you have to scour. And what I always tell people is that you are looking for the best person, go find the richest person you know and ask them who they use for everything.

I mean it’s – and then see if there is a continuity between lots of successful wealthy people and if they are using the same firm like we love ProVision because they are super high level and what happens is like with ProVision for example, they’re strategists, they’re world-class and so let’s say you pay $20,000 and people go, “I can do my stuff for 2,000” and I say, “Okay, if you pay 20 and they saved you a 100, what was the return?” And so, it is a different way of thinking.

It’s like, “Well, do you want to give your money to the government or do you want to keep it and pay a little bit for people that are going to help you navigate?” So, I think it is a choice.

[0:17:22.5] WS: What is ProVision exactly?

[0:17:24.4] DL: ProVision Wealth is a tax strategy firm. So, you’re probably familiar with Tom Wheelwright and the Rich Dad Advisors. So, Tom Wheelwright, he was connected to this firm and so they’re in Arizona and they do a lot of really high-level tax strategy. I mean they’re amazing, that is our firm. A lot of people that are in real estate syndications will use them. We’ve got three different firms that we love because the people at these firms are actually involved in syndications.

They understand it, they are dealing with people that have tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and so whether you have tens or hundreds or you just have half a million or whatever your number is, the same people are helping you with your strategies. So why wouldn’t you want to have the same strategy as the centimillionaires? I mean ask, what’s his name, Richard Wilson, the guy that wrote the book. I mean you want the best people on your team.

[0:18:13.9] WS: For sure, wow. So, what else do we need to know or to be prepared for discussing these CARES or the new provision?

[0:18:21.5] DL: Well, a couple of things and I glanced over the payments. So if you have any loans outstanding, you do not have to make any more payments in 2020 and if you take out a loan as part of one of those two options with a new loan then no payments for a year and if you have any required minimum distributions, RMDs then you don’t have to do this in 2020.

So, the government took pressure off all of these different places. You know they want to have money staying in your hands, not going to the government. They don’t want to force things. So RMDs, no payments. If you already have a loan for say like 40,000 you can take out another 60,000 bucks. So, you can add on an additional. So, you got a lot of options and if you are trying to figure out, “Oh my gosh, how do I remember all of this stuff?” All you have to remember is how to contact me and my team.

I mean having people I just want to hammer,– You don’t need to know anything. I see people coming in and you know I have heard podcasters sometimes and I listen to them and I go, “Wait, you interviewed me but then you went off and you just decided that you’re going to be the expert” and I am thinking, “Why would you do that? You’ve got a team and when you mess up, you look like a buffoon.”

So, Whitney, you’re great. You let me mess up. You know if I am going to make the mistake, hey, I am the expert in this space and you bring great people that know what they are doing because they obsess about it and that’s all they do. So that is the key, it is getting the people that can come in and diagnose and dissect your entire situation and then use it to your advantage.

[0:19:42.6] WS: For sure. It is all about having the right team members. It is like playing basketball, it is not a one-man team, right?

[0:19:48.6] DL: Well,unless you’re Michael Jordan. But then there’s your backups.

[0:19:51.5] WS: Well okay, there’s an exception. Yeah and I am not Michael Jordan. So, Damion, what is a way you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply to ours?

[0:20:00.3] DL: World-class people. I just hired, you know which is really fun in this time to be able to hire people and hiring people – I heard somebody give me some advice. It was probably on a really great podcast and I wish I could give it credit but it was basically this point and I’ve had a hard time with this for a long time where I was concerned because I tend to be pretty good about things like I can get anything done, but there’s no leverage.

And you can’t really build anything big and so the recommendation was go find something that you do constantly like every day and go find somebody and hire them and teach them and if it takes you 30 times like if you’ve got to spend five minutes with them 30 days in a row. And normally it would only take you five minutes to do this thing, do that because then after three days you’re done. You don’t have to do it again and your return on your time is like thousands of percent.

And yet you have to get over that hurdle saying, “Okay, I am going to invest. I am going to talk about the same thing for 30 dang days,” because it can make you crazy. And what I realized is doing that investment, it’s one more thing that’s off my plate and it is unbelievable. And you empower people to become part of a team and they become even better than you, which is the cool part.

[0:21:06.3] WS: Love that and I think you have to think too, most likely your first hire is not going to be somebody that is going to stay with you forever. You know you just got to get past that. You know they are not going to be that assistant that just stays with you forever, most likely they could be, but.

[0:21:20.7] DL: It’s a huge point. I remember being struggling hiring somebody, getting excited, getting nervous and then they lasted six weeks and it was – you know that’s part of it the process. I think you have to have a fortitude to be able – to be willing to go through that and what happens is it might not be the first or the second person and then somebody does stick with you and then they start teaching other people and it is magic. I mean teams are truly magical if you are willing to see bigger than beyond yourself.

[0:21:45.1] WS: For sure. It is interesting you brought up Richard Wilson. I was in a mastermind he was speaking at and he talked about it took him like six assistants before he found the one he has now. She is amazing. He said, “I had to fire all the rest before I got there,” you know?

[0:21:56.0] DL: You know what? It is funny because there is a program called culture index that is a great filter for people to figure out who they are and what they’re all about and their drivers. A lot of things out there whether it’s Myers-Briggs or these different things, this is the best one I have ever found and it’s mathematical like you literally can when you are profiling people and figuring out who you’re going to filter out of your hiring process.

I remember when I had my entire team years ago, and everybody did this index and the guy that was helping me figure out what this meant, looked at everybody told me about everybody. I never met him but he told me and I was like, “Wow, you’re really good,” and I said, “What do I do?” And he said, “You fire every one of them,” and I went, “Wait, are you serious?” And within less than a year a 100% of the team was gone and it had restarted.

So, it was really powerful to understand the right people like Jim Collins talks about the right people in the bus. If you have the wrong people, it is not going to be fixed until you kick them off the bus. I mean truly you can’t fix the wrong tendencies. It is like our values, you can’t just program some of these values, either they are there or not and our tendencies. So really important to know that stuff going in versus, “Oh, it feels good. They seem like a nice person.”

Your instincts came from your gut and you know what gut stands for, Whitney? Gave up thinking. So, I just recommend making sure you got some type of filter. My favorite is Culture Index.

[0:23:16.2] WS: Culture Index, how long does that take to take?

[0:23:19.3] DL: 10 to 12 minutes? It’s fast and I mean it’s – when we’ve had hundreds sometimes even thousands of people coming in looking for a position, what it does is it gives us a number of matching them towards the actual profile of what the work is, what the job is, what the personality traits are and then you can say, “Okay, we want people that are at an 85% or higher likelihood” and at least it saves so much time too and you don’t want the wrong person because it is not going to make them happy either. You know they are working then they hate their job and then guess what? They are going to leave.

[0:23:49.7] WS: And while we’re on that, where are you finding hundreds of employees or hundreds of applicants I should say?

[0:23:55.1] DL: So, what we’ve done is I had and I love this. I love when being in sales and if you are not learning how to sell, you’re in trouble. I mean truly I think that is an important skillset that is not really taught. I had a gal on LinkedIn reach out to me and her approach was outstanding and she is a recruiter and I said, “You know it’s funny, I am actually looking for a couple of people right now,” and I was a little nervous because I hadn’t done it before.

And so, she went off and I just watched her shine, bringing all these people and she spent all this time and I thought, “You were worth your weight in gold,” and so it wasn’t even me. I was just smart-dumb enough to say yes to somebody who impressed me and I just said, “Okay, I’ll give you a shot.” And it was worth it and I think a lot of people try to cheap out. With a recruiter, you’re going to pay 25% or more of somebody’s salary to have them go deliver and I can tell you it is worth every dollar.

[0:24:44.5] WS: Interesting, okay that is a great point. I am glad you brought that up. I have never used a recruiter but maybe I should consider it in the future.

[0:24:52.9] DL: Here’s the thing, it’s like any other thing. I am not good it. I am not good at recruiting. If you are a world class recruiter by all means, go recruit your people maybe but I suck at it. I am terrible. So, I want somebody that is really good and Chelsea is world-class. I mean she is unbelievable. It didn’t matter what I threw at her in terms of what I was looking for. She went out and found the best and people that were still working that she’s hunting them and I am going, “Wow, I don’t even know how you do this,” but this is her superpower.

[0:25:21.9] WS: Very nice. Does she have a business or is she just helping you now?

[0:25:25.9] DL: She does and I can definitely hook you up with it and you can share it with people if you want and I will give you a link to her. It’s her firm and she’s a killer out there.

[0:25:35.0] WS: Okay. Yeah, I am happy to put that in the shownotes or promote her as well. That’s awesome, a great service it sounds like. So, the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[0:25:42.4] DL: The willingness to not be attached to my flubs and my stubs and being willing to try things and spend money on things. Even though we can try things, I think a lot of times we get concerned about spending money. And the truth is, money comes and goes and the more you are willing to do it, the more you get serious about learning the lessons. And so spending money whether it is on coaches or a marketing thing or doing a podcast or whatever.

Spending actual money will help you grow faster because you will screw things up and you go, “Okay, why screw it up? I don’t want to keep spending the $5,000 I did on that one. So what did I learn?” you learn faster than if you just read something in a book. It won’t stick as hard if it is just a book.

[0:26:21.3] WS: How do you like to give back?

[0:26:22.9] DL: I spend a lot of time with people on their stuff outside of maybe eQRP or things that I am selling and to me that’s what matters because people are not just a sales target. We have lives, we have struggles, we have concerns and finding ways to map people out so they have clarity. When you have clarity, there is a sense of calm and clarity leads to power. And so, a lot of us are just wandering aimlessly hoping it all works out.

And so, the way that I give back is spending time with people and giving them a map and then it is up to them if they are going to do something with it because I can’t do something for somebody. I can help them see what they know inside and ask them good questions and so I spend a lot of time doing that.

[0:27:02.0] WS: Nice. Well, and one question I forgot to ask you before, I asked you that one, it was what’s your best source of meeting new investors right now?

[0:27:10.9] DL: Best source of new investors, you know going out and commenting in social because like right now, hardly anybody is actually going out to live events. I think going out there and commenting and just being a part of conversations, asking questions and then contributing, bringing something to the table. It is amazing if you are actually engaged, asking questions and then moving people together, you become somebody that people pay attention to.

And then when you do something people are going to say, “Oh I want to know more. I want to be connected with you,” because people don’t invest in necessarily projects. They invest in people that are running projects. So, you’ve got to have a voice. You’ve got to have some type of avatar out there. So, it is not going to happen on its own like what we are doing right now. If you’ve got an avatar people pay attention to you and they like you.

I like you and that happens with purpose not accidentally. So being a part of the conversations and being authentic. I can tell you it is not very common to be authentic. Everybody’s got a facade they’re trying to bamboozle people and not everyone but it is pretty common and when you show up authentically and truly.

It is like when we killed this deal we were working on last year. I had been working on it for almost two years and I shared with everybody why I killed it, you know it cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars to kill that deal that I had spent and just being really authentic about it, unbelievable feedback. So much support, so being real with people. Imagine that?

[0:28:32.1] WS: Love that answer, Damion, no doubt about it that’s – yeah, like you said a lot of people are putting on a facade. Yeah, getting on social media. But tell people how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you and if they are looking for help in figuring some of these tax stuff out and if they qualify, how do they get in touch with you?

[0:28:48.5] DL: The best thing to do is to text the word ‘eQRP’ to 72000 and what will happen is you’re going to get a report that’s going to give you some ideas about the eQRP. You will also have a direct access link to me and the team. So, once you get that, you text ‘eQRP’ to 72000. You will get this report and then if you have a follow up question or you say, “Okay, I want to do something,” you can just send a message to that number and it will literally show up.

And so, we’d be able to help you in whatever you need help but this gets the ball rolling and it connects you to us. So, I definitely recommend to just text it. I mean your phone is probably attached to you within three inches. That is how everybody is, so just text the word ‘eQRP’ to 72000 and that will get you connected.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:29:27.0] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

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[OUTRO]

[0:30:07.7] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]