Do you want to take control of your IRA so you can invest in real estate, precious metals, and crypto? Introducing Chris Larsen’s guest today, Damion Lupo, who developed the ultimate investor retirement tool called the eQRP®. With eQRP®, you can have total control of your retirement money and use it to grow your assets. Join in the conversation as Damion talks with Chris about why eQRP® is a massive upgrade from traditional IRAs. If you’re a responsible individual who wants to grow your life, you don’t want to miss this episode!

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How To Take Control Of Your IRA And Invest In Real Estate, Precious Metals And Even Crypto! With Damion Lupo

In this episode, we have Damion Lupo. He’s a bestselling author of a dozen books on personal finance, investment and retirement strategies. He’s on a mission to free one million people from financial bondage. He hosts the Financial Underdogs podcast, rips conventional wisdom apart for the Main Street investor looking for the truth about money and investing.

Not only he started more than 50 companies, he even founded his own martial art, Yokido. Damion developed the ultimate investor retirement tool called the eQRP, which we are going to talk about. His strategy gives individuals total control of their retirement money to invest in real assets like gold, real estate and cryptocurrency.

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Damion, welcome back to the show.

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

You are one of a very select few that have been returning guests on the show. For those of you that missed it, in 2020, we did a rushed-produced episode with Damion because we were going into this COVID crisis. It was in April of 2020 that we released the show. We talked about the CARES Act. You gave the audience super valuable information, Damion. A lot of people don’t know what you do because you do so many different things but you provide so much value. I love your mindset. If you would, tell the audience a little bit about your main business and then we are going to get into all kinds of different stuff.

Our main business is the eQRP and that’s the Enhanced Qualified Retirement Plan. It’s a supercharged self-directed retirement account for individuals and small companies. We give people all of their money, whether you are sitting there and have an old orphaned IRA or 401(k) from a company you worked for, whether you are starting a business or you have a company with people. We give people control of their retirement money to be able to invest in real estate, crypto, gold, stuff that’s outside of Wall Street.

We are doing this to disrupt Wall Street. We’ve got over $1 billion worth of disruption. Not that Wall Street cares over $1 billion because what do they care? They’ve got $30 trillion but every one of the people that have control of their money does care. It’s like the starfish on the sand. It cares when you throw it in.

Full disclosure, we have an eQRP through your company. You probably blew some people’s minds when you said that they could invest in crypto through their retirement account. People think like, “I can invest in gold through an ETF.” It’s not physical gold. People can invest in crypto and physical gold through an eQRP.

Yes, and hold it. That’s one of the things, too. Even with an IRA, you can’t hold anything. It’s still going to be in somebody else’s custody, which means if you don’t hold it and can’t touch it, you may not own it. That’s a big thing for people to think about ETF or physical gold versus paper gold, crypto that somebody else is holding versus you having it in a cold wallet like a Nano Ledger, Trezor or something.

There are different versions of ownership in terms of assets. What we are talking about is getting rid of counterparty risk. That’s when somebody else can influence your investment and you are stuck. There’s nothing you can do about it. An eQRP takes out the counterparty risk in a lot of cases and gives you a lot of flexibility to do things that nobody talks about because of the big Wall Street fee game.

You are sitting here and your head is already spinning because you are thinking you are in counterparty risk like, “I don’t own these things.” If you are out there and you have been following China, some of these companies that are on the American Stock Exchange are not Chinese stocks. It’s like a phantom version of these stocks that have been owned through other exchanges. China takes them away. There’s no value left in these things.

There are lots of things out there that people don’t understand about the way this works. This is why I love talking to you, Damion because we can get deep. If we step back, my MBA is in Portfolio Management. One of the things I learned when I was going through business school is that I didn’t want to be a financial planner because I thought the world of Wall Street was broken. At that time, I was investing in Vanguard, low-cost ETFs and those sorts of things. In full disclosure, that’s still a portion of my portfolio.

I thought like, “I could tell my clients, ‘go do this. How can I charge a fee for that?’” Why we founded the show is to talk and teach people how to shortcut ways to the wealthy, the ultra-wealthy and how they invest. It shocks people to learn that you can take a 401(k) or an IRA and you can have full control. Let’s dive a little bit deeper into this first thing here, Damion. What is the law that allows this to happen? Most people know this and they are like, “You can’t do that.”

What’s wild is people say, “Is this new? Is this legal?” I go, “It’s new. It has been around for years.” The code has been set up for a long time for people to have an individual planner. The code was set up for 401(k)s and IRAs back in the early ‘70s. The 401(k)s were meant for companies. Companies include individuals because you and I can be a company as a sole proprietor.

IRA is set up as a way for people that wanted to put a little bit of money away as a tool and shelter. All these accounts, IRAs, 401(k)s, eQRPs are all shelters. The tax code is set up because the government knows it’s screwed. It tries to put everybody on some type of basic universal income, which is what they are doing anyway but they don’t have the resources.

This was meant to be a way for people to take responsibility and start putting something away. It would be one of the legs of the stool for retirement. It was set up to where it’s qualifying that you had to have some type of business. What does that mean? It means you have something that has the potential for making money. Just because you have a company doesn’t mean you are going to make any money and it’s still legitimate. It has to have the potential to do it.

People oftentimes go, “I’m working. I’m a full-time employee. I’m a doctor. I’m a dentist. I’m a butcher. I don’t qualify.” I say, “We have tons of people that have multiple retirement accounts.” You have to have something out there. It could be an eBay store, a lemonade stand or a million things. People talk themselves out of stuff a little too often because it’s easier. You don’t have to do any work.

If the answer is no, it’s like an attorney. You go to an attorney and you say, “What about this?” They go, “No.” It’s easier for them to say no. There’s no potential litigation if they say no. We do that on our own instead of saying, “Is it possible? How might I be able to do it?” One of the most powerful questions ever is, “How I might be able to do this?” It opens your mind up to the possibility.

That’s what I try to teach my boys. We were on vacation. I took my boys out fishing. It’s the first time they are fishing for big fish. We are out there for sharks. My younger son gets the reel. He’s reeling it in. He’s got a big shark on the line. He said, “I can’t do it.” I said, “Don’t say that. Keep doing what you are doing.” He reeled that fish in. You see it with CPAs, they say, “No, you can’t deduct that.” I saw this with an investor, “You can’t.” “Did you ask why and how? Did you look for a different CPA?”

They didn’t understand the tax code to do that. I put them in touch with the CPA that does understand the tax codes that can help out this individual and do that. They are like, “You don’t want to do that. You might get audited.” It’s like, “You are not doing anything illegal. You might get audited anyway.” You probably are going to get audited at a greater rate because you are claiming more income, which puts you at a greater risk than if you took this legal deduction that you are entitled to and decrease your income. He said, “I didn’t think about it that way. Your CPA didn’t tell you that either.” It’s such a powerful thing. Repeat what eQRP stands for, then Let’s talk about the structure and people that can utilize it.

It’s the Enhanced Qualified Retirement Plan. This is a type of 401(k). It’s not a solo 401(k). It’s not a wolf in a sheep’s clothing. It’s a different type of 401(k) that’s built differently. It has liability protections. It can hire people. It’s a different system for growth-minded people. It’s not meant for somebody that has $5,000 and wants to invest in stocks. That’s not what this is in an IRA or something.

It’s a vehicle for responsible people that are thinking about growing their life, potentially having some employees, building up their assets and things that are not just mutual funds. If you like mutual funds, that’s cool. They get that but this is meant for people that are looking for tangible stuff, the real estate, the crypto and the gold. Private equity is the most common that people invest and do. It’s people that wanted to take control and ownership of their lives versus advocating responsibility to an advisor that quite frankly is good at selling things and keeping you from running out of the market when it gets bad.

Frankly, there’s value in having somebody that understands something that you don’t and doing that but there’s the way it’s done and the optimal way to make something happen. I’m sitting at dinner with a surgeon friend and another friend who is very successful. He looks at me and goes, “Chris, did you realize that I could take my IRA, put in this other type of account and invest in your deals with it?”

I said, “Yes, 25% of our investors do that.” He’s like, “Why did I not know about this? Shouldn’t my advisor tell me about that?” I know you know what the next thing he said was. I said, “Do you think he’s incentivized to do it?” He goes, “No. I need to get a new advisor.” What he was talking about was a self-directed IRA. A lot of people that are reading have heard about self-directed IRAs. How is this different or is it different?

They are totally different. They are built under different parts of the tax code. What happens is because there are $10 trillion in IRAs, that’s where the marketing is. You start off with all the marketing from Wall Street that goes to CNBC and The Wall Street Journal. That’s all just mutual funds. Most people go there and then bump into self-directed IRAs like your surgeon friend. They say, “This is an opportunity and it’s better than the other option.” The problem is it still doesn’t give you the actual control that you want because IRAs require a custodian.

They tax you if you stay in debt. The freest thing is an eQRP because you can do deals. You can invest in apartments that have debt and you are not going to be hit with a 7% UBIT tax. If you want to buy gold, you can buy it and physically hold it. If you want to buy crypto, you can physically hold it. If you want to hire some people at some point, eQRP expands into that space and becomes a safe harbor eQRP. The differences are the tax and the liability.

You don’t have protection in an IRA the way you do with an eQRP. What most people don’t realize, Chris, with IRAs and individual 401(k)s is those things can be attacked and taken depending on the state and the liability protection. It’s not the same protection as a big 401(k). A lot of people don’t realize that. They have millions of dollars in these accounts.

Good luck if you ever trip on a curb in San Diego and somebody sues you. They are going after everything you’ve got including your 401(k) and IRA. They are majorly different. A lot of people don’t even realize that. Kudos for shifting from the traditional thing into the self-directed IRA but there’s something far better than that for everybody to consider.

I’m certainly going to pass on your information to this individual. He has all the information as he makes this decision. Let’s talk about what you can invest in. We had a self-directed IRA with my wife who’s an architect. We set that up several years ago until we have learned about what you have here. One of the frustrations that I get from investors is I’ve got to go through this whole process. I’ve got to file all this paperwork.

All these people don’t know what’s going on that I’ve got to go through. What’s the process with an eQRP? You get the accounts set up, and then you have an opportunity, whether it’s real estate, physical metal, cryptocurrency, maybe even a small business or something like that that you are purchasing. What’s the technical process that someone has to go through to move their money from the account into this investment?

The process is not mysterious but it’s a lot easier from the client’s perspective because we do the heavy lifting. We set everything up. It takes days to build all the accounts. There’s no possible way for it to take less than a couple of days when we set everything up because there are multiple accounts. There are government limits on how many accounts per day. When that’s done, the clients have a checking account. We move the money with them over.

We don’t just have it and say, “Good luck, I hope it works out.” We were on the phone oftentimes for hours at a time with the Fidelities, Vanguards and all of these accounts. It’s a super high touch. It’s a totally different experience than somebody that hands you a bunch of papers and says, “I hope it works out. Good luck.” That’s prevalent.

Once someone says that’s their money, especially comparing an eQRP to a self-directed IRA where you have to get permission to get your money, you have to have a custodian and do your stuff, with this, you like a deal, you say, “Yes.” You can wire or write a check and you’re funded in minutes. I will give you an example of that. We had a deal we’ve got involved with. We ended up raising $15 million in 24 hours. The majority of it was funded within a few days. That would have never happened if we had IRAs that were being used because we would have been stuck and they would have lost out.

I see a lot of people investing in real estate syndications doing private lending. We have done some of that through my wife’s self-directed IRA. One of the unique things is you can’t self-deal. We can’t invest in my own deals that I’m putting together for syndications but outside of syndications in real estate, Damion, you mentioned a couple of things. What are you seeing people use their eQRP funds to invest in?

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

One of the big ones is the crypto space. For one, there’s this transformation in our monetary system around. It’s excellent to be involved. It takes some time but usually, it also takes some capital. One of the challenges with crypto is that the government is going to come after the tap on it. They are going to say, “We want to tax it.” One way to avoid all taxes completely is to use your retirement account, especially using the Roth account. The biggest opportunity for people is to shift some of their Roth eQRP money into crypto. In that way when it goes where we think it’s going to go, there’s not going to be a big tax bill.

That is one of the best things that I have heard about that. We were talking about crypto before. I want to transition into that. We talk a lot about life insurance, real estate, structures and how the rich invest. One of the big questions I get is, “What do you think about crypto?” I didn’t know this before the show. Is it true you start a cryptocurrency exchange?

We do. It’s exclusive for clients. Here’s what’s happening. People want to get in. There’s a huge amount of momentum that’s happening. Institutions are adding crypto onto their balance sheets, whether it’s PayPal, Square or MicroStrategy. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s happening in mass. Merrill, Bank of America and individuals are saying, “I want to get into the game.” They want to have an entity that is going to buy. The problem is there are a lot of AML and KYC. This is Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Clients.

That stuff slows the process down when somebody says, “My company wants to set up an account.” It can take six months. We took that six months, created a process to where somebody can take their cash in their retirement account, be able to buy crypto and have it in hand 72 hours. We shortcut the six months into less than six days. It’s a game-changer because you don’t have time. You can’t wait six months to do something. You are going to miss the entire process of something happening.

The system is not set up to move the way the world moves. I have had conversations over the years with business owners and employees. They get their funds in a 401(k) or an IRA. I will never forget the day my CPA turned and looked at me. He goes, “Chris, you need to stop contributing to these qualified plans.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” He started talking about the tax ramifications, and then also what you can and can’t invest in.

You are allocated with this money and this is stuck in stocks but you want to put more money in real estate, in gold or crypto. You want to stop putting money into that account. One of the particularly impactful stories I had was a business owner, a surgeon on a large surgeon practice. This was during the 2008, 2009 crisis. He’s like, “I want to move my money out of here. I want to put it into gold.” This particular individual is heavily investing in cryptocurrency. He’s like, “Chris, I can’t get my money out of this account.” Do you work with business owners or people like that? How can you help somebody like that?

The business owners that we work with are typically the clients that we set up their retirement account. We work with them. Being able to get their money out of wherever it’s stuck. We tend to take things that have a lot of friction or stickiness and freedom. The entire mission that we have is to break people’s financial shackles and break them free from financial bondage. Part of that is these systems that people are stuck in. They can’t get their money moving around.

It’s fascinating. It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse than the traditional financial system, institutions and banks. It’s getting harder and harder to get anything done because they are scared of tripping up and having a regulator come after them or making a mistake. It’s not a good time to be in a traditional system. It’s a great time to be in the alternative system. I will give you an example. I wanted to get alone and some places offer it.

We do sit this for some metals and crypto. I was testing another platform and I thought, “I want to get a loan.” On my phone, I was able to get a $500,000 loan in about five minutes and it was funded the next day. Being able to do that kind of stuff, you are never going to go to a bank and have that happen. This is all digital, automated, seamless and smooth.

That’s where our system is the decentralized financing. That’s breaking everything. It’s breaking banks, lending and title stuff. Title companies are going to go away because it’s too archaic. Blockchain is taking over, same with insurance. All these things are going to be systemized technologically and no government in the world can stop that because it is decentralized. It’s exciting.

What you do is about freedom and I love that. I love all the things that you are doing. Is it the safe harbor eQRP that you are unique in the offering? Is that the product that comes out here?

It did. It came out earlier in 2021. What this did is it gave business owners to have teams and people, whether it’s a surgeon that has a practice with ten surgeons and a bunch of other admin people. It doesn’t matter. If you would have 2, 20 or 50 people, it gives the owner and all the employees the ability to control all of their retirement money. This doesn’t exist out there. Here’s what we hear. “Is my account self-directed?” No, that means you can buy stocks that are not letting you buy the stuff that you want to invest in.

When you are reading this and you are in this space, you want to do things like real estate, things that are real and not just the paper stuff. The safe harbor eQRP allows business owners or people that want to build businesses. Imagine this to your employees and saying, “Part of the package here is that you have a 401(k) but it’s a special 401(k). This is going to allow you to invest in real estate, gold and crypto.

Do you want to buy some Bitcoin? We have a new thing with our company that we are shifting into. We can pay our people in as much of their wages in Bitcoin all they want.” Not only that, we offer the 401(k) that has the ability for them to invest in Bitcoin, real estate or all of the above. That’s a game-changer because people are getting more and more leery of all the traditional stuff.

I’m a business owner. I’m like, “Damion, my employees don’t understand that. They are not going to invest in Bitcoin and do syndications.” What if they want to put their money in a broad-market-based ETF or something like that?

That’s built-in automatically. It’s all set up. They have to be able to do that. That’s the law when you have a 401(k). The employees have to have options. That’s why you will typically see at least options like A, B, C, D, E, their different risk profiles and things. Every 401(k) has to have those built-in, and then we give out these other options. What’s also crazy is that the entire system is set up on AUM, Assets Under Management fees. The owner is going to save $30,000 to $50,000 per year in fees because we don’t charge AUM. It’s a flat fee that changes everything.

I do know that for our plan. It’s a flat fee. That’s amazing. What’s the downside then?

I have no idea why somebody wouldn’t do this because it’s rare. Most of the system is set up on fees. You build assets and fees. A flat fee is extremely rare in anything. To have something where you can self-direct at a flat fee, why would somebody not do that? I have no idea. Usually, the reason that they don’t do something is that they don’t believe that it’s real. That’s typically with investments or anything else where people hesitate. They are like, “I’m missing something. I’m being conned.” Frankly, it’s why people hesitate for anything.

We get it all the time. “I don’t want to tie my money up for a long time in a real estate syndication.” It’s like, “How much time is your money tied up in your 401(k)?” “I’m 40 years old.” “When are you going to get it out?” “I can get that money out, not without some serious penalties.” That’s not what their friends or their family have told them to do in the past. To me, I listened to it. The downside, probably if you are reading, is a little bit of education.

It takes a little bit of time to educate yourself. That’s what I love about your company, Damion. You educate and help people towards your mission. I have your books. Share a little bit more with the audience about what books you have out there and what they are about. How they can get in touch with your company and find out more about these informational resources that you have?

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

Zig Ziglar said, “You can have everything in life that you want if you help people get what they want.”

That’s the intention behind the book. There’s a book on qualified plans. It’s called The QRP Book. I will give you a chance to get a copy of that to learn about this stuff. I wrote a book after I lost $25 million called Reinvented Life. Why did I write a book on gold? If I’m going to teach people why gold matters, I’ve got to be able to do it cohesively, in a way that makes sense. If you want to figure out if you know anything, write a book on it and you realize how little you know. That’s why I wrote these books. You did the same thing. You get it.

In 2020, I wrote a book called Unicornomics. That was a book taking the 50 companies that I built, started and all the lessons there and said, “Here’s the playbook in general.” Part of that was to share with other people and part of it was to help me make sure that I did the same things that I learned from my mistakes because otherwise, it’s a merry-go-round. You keep making the same mistake over and over again. If you write it down in a book, your employees can say, “Didn’t you write this that you are supposed to be doing it a certain way?” You are like, “You are right. I wrote that.”

In terms of what we have been talking about, anybody that wants to get a copy of that book, The QRP Book is a really simple thing. Go there and get a copy of it. I will ship it out to you. When you get that, you will get an instantly downloadable report. It’s the CliffNotes. You can cheat your way into understanding, which is totally cool.

I read and went through it all. It’s a terrific resource.

There are lots of resources, whatever resonates or syncs to you. A lot of stuff that I have been talking about has been in the crypto space. In 1971, we had a transition going off of the gold standard. We are in that transition from where we have been in a global fiat system into something different. We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like but decentralized finance is a huge part of it. There’s going to be more and more education that’s going to be needed to keep up. I’m doing my best to share what is relevant. Education is what we do. That’s what we are all about sharing with more people and freeing them with impactful wisdom.

That’s why we love having you on the show. I haven’t gotten to see you in 2020 with everything that has been going on. I look forward to seeing you again face-to-face. I appreciate you coming on, sharing some updates with our audience and we are going to continue having you back.

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

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I hope you found this episode valuable. I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Check out, NextLevelIncome.com/coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I will send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for reading. Also please like, share and take 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

Important Links:

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• Financial Underdogs

• Yokido

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• Episode – Past Episode

• The QRP Book

• Reinvented Life

About Damion Lupo

His strategy gives individuals total control of their retirement money to invest in real assets like real estate, gold, and crypto.

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